Hey all, and welcome to the finale of this LP of Treasure of the Rudras, or Rudra no Hihou (did it backwards this time!). The final day of E3 is upon us, and what better way to celebrate the yearly catastrophe that follows Dave Lang and his cohorts by averting a similarly apocalyptic event in another world? Be sure to peruse the table of links at the bottom of this article for the previous entries in this year's Mento's Alternative to E3 2016 event. Yep, I'm upgrading it to an "event". I'm sure that's not an embellishment in any way.
Before we start, we have our last pre-amble concerning Rudra no Hihou; this time, I just want to review the game based on the single scenario I've played and consider how playing through the others will potentially impact my appraisal. After the LP is complete, I also want to make - for my own edification more than anything - a timeline of all the events I either triggered or saw happen as an incidental party. I think it'll be fun to refer back to that timeline if I ever get around to playing as the other characters, and see just how closely the sequence of events lines up from alternate angles.
So, how is this game? It's actually an awkward prospect; I don't think Rudra no Hihou is a lost classic. At least, not compared to Squaresoft's sterling output for the Super Famicom and SNES. I'm by no means someone who can judge their entire library, since I've only played about half, but Rudra slides somewhere in the middle in terms of overall quality of the gameplay. However, Rudra shines most in its presentation - the soundtrack and graphics in particular, which have always been strengths of the Squaresoft stable. I also appreciate just how weird its story and premise is, how its distinctive scenario-based format offers diverse but interlacing storylines (about which I can only comment about so much, of course) that for some reason I haven't called "Rudrashomon" yet and the game's emphasis on a (mostly) singular cultural source to draw all its legends and monsters which helps make the game feel more distinct from its "borrow from everything" contemporaries like Final Fantasy, as well as being more aesthetically and culturally cohesive. Whatever, I'm largely just playing game criticism buzzword bingo now, but I hope my point got across. That every boss was based on a Hindu/Buddhist deity rather than having them share the stage with Norse, Greek, African and Japanese mythological figures seemingly picked at random is a big plus in my books. Makes it feel like the game was based on a specific legend, rather than cobbled together from incongruous parts.
Back to the gameplay though, Rudra no Hihou is what you might consider "standard" Squaresoft, right down to how party members line up on the right while the bigger enemy sprites occupy the larger space on the left. I've talked (and demonstrated!) how well the larger sprites look while fighting, though I've perhaps not been able to give a similar exhibition to how well they animate given all the static screenshots, but the game generally plays exactly as it looks with all the random encounters, maze-like dungeons and NPC hint-gathering you'd expect. There are two divergent modifiers in the game's favor, for those of you who generally only revisit games this old (twenty years last April!) because they still have something unique to offer: how the scenario-based structure can factor into the world and dungeon design, and the Mantra system.
With the former, you have a lot of dungeons that you'll visit and revisit with the distinct feeling that you'll be travelling through them with another party at some point. For instance, you'll visit some dungeons without reaching its end or see any sign of a boss, often fighting enemies that are considerably weaker than your party along the way - what this suggests is that you're meant to encounter this dungeon for the first time with a different party, and your current party is only passing through for story reasons. The treasures are gone, the puzzles have been solved, and you're simply strolling through to complete a story objective or sweep up anything that remains. It's a weird feeling to walk into a dungeon and see that it's essentially been completed, even though it's your first encounter with same.
With the latter, you have an endlessly in-depth and modifiable magic system that - once you pick up on its rules - offers a great amount of versatility. While you learn the various elemental and healing mantras fairly quickly, you still need to figure out which spells raise people from the dead, or cure ailments, or cause status effects, or buff stats. Yet when you consider the amount of affixes in the game - the words that can be attached to the start or end of the mantras you have - there's a great deal of tweaking that can be done. For instance, most affixes increase the power of the spell while also increasing the MP cost, similar to how Fire has always progressed to the stronger Fira and Firaga spells in Final Fantasy with an inflation in MP each time. However, "PE" will boost the mantra's power but actually lower its MP cost. Others, like the suffix "NA", will turn the spell into a multi-target version, and there are special prefixes that will only boost the strength of a spell if it's in its multi-target "NA" form already. Best of all, the Aeon Genesis fan translation team who worked on this game really outdid themselves in creating spells with fixed effects that are actual words in English - "TORNADO", for instance, is a fairly powerful Wind-element spell that the game doesn't necessarily reveal (at least it didn't in Vbomb's chapter, unless I missed it) but the player could feasibly guess it. "LIFE" doesn't do what you might expect, but the thematically-similar word "ANIMUS" does. If you try MEGA or SUPER as prefixes, they do indeed have a significant effect on the power of your spells. So even though the Mantra system is a little Byzantine at first and prone to a lot of trash "non-starter" spells with any swears and dumb phrases you might concoct within its twelve-character limit, it's also a fascinating and ultimately game-enhancing experiment.
The question, then, is whether or not Rudra no Hihou is worth coming back to years later. I would say yes; the one benefit of a Kawazu-directed game is that it has something you'll never see done again elsewhere, sometimes for good reason. I can't speak to Kawazu's other SNES games - his only other directing credit is for the three Romancing SaGa games, which I've been informed have varying amounts of questionable design decisions - but Rudra no Hihou is one where the weirdness works in its favor, or at least doesn't diminish the gameplay to a detrimental degree. Plus, if you're reading this, you have three other scenarios to try out (though the fourth is locked until the other three are complete, keep in mind) and a whole lot of bonus Mantra ideas to try out. You'll be starting out on a strong foot if you were to follow my lead.
Anyway, we'll now launch into what became a three-part (plus Finale) conclusion to this series. It didn't quite work out the way I'd hoped, but I did eventually do what I promised to do: complete the game as Sion/Vbomb and give everyone (and myself) a thorough look at a game that hailed from a genre and developer who were at their respective peaks, though for one reason or another managed to escape the gaze of almost all of us outside of Japan.
Part 9: Surts Him Right
Last time, on Rudrastic Measures: Surt, the surly giant who fought our equally surly hero Vbomb on top of a giant tower what feels like days ago, has given the party a list of destinations to visit across the Sky Islands in order to find a way back to Terra Firma. Presumably, no-one's invented parachutes yet. We're just about at the end of this whistlestop tour, heading towards the Danan Temple and the third of four Divine Danan mystics.
If you guessed the next dungeon would be a giant tower, well done. You have operational pattern recognition. I wonder if it bothers the people of this world that there are giant foreboding structures visible in every direction?The Tower of Spirit is nothing special, though I did puzzle my way into a hidden room with four chests. Two of them held equipment for Ture - for whatever reason, the big guy needs unique items, and since they're only useful to Vbomb's party they're all in those Jade-sealed chests. The other two chests turned into these very tough mimic guys. I really appreciate it when artists get weird with their depictions for mimics; take, for instance, the creepy long-legged monstrosities in the Souls games.Mayura, the Divine Danan of Destiny, told us very politely to get lost and Vbomb took it about as gracefully as you might expect. She's actually extremely powerful, whacking the party with constant high-level spells.I believe she's also immune to damage for the first half of the fight, because she doesn't change color (the telltale sign that you're doing serious damage) until she decides to make the fight real and transport us to some sort of inter-dimensional space. She even covers her elemental weakness of Dark magic with an elemental protection spell suffix I was happy to learn. Not bad for someone who resembles a naked woman who stepped into what she thought was a steampunk shower but was actually a HG Wells time machine. (I've been making up my own headcanon based on the art design for a while now.)Kicking Mayura's gratuitously bare derriere has powered up the Gram sword, though it makes no appreciable difference to its combat strength. It's stronger in spirit, then.They need to make these towers out of sterner stuff. More load-bearing walls, fewer load-bearing bosses. Apparently, the affect of taking down all these Divine Danans was a little more dramatic than we thought: the Sky Islands are falling back to Terra Firma! The Gram blade was nothing more than a magical lynchpin keeping the islands afloat!The game hasn't stopped torturing us about that damn airship either, talking of recurring "screw you, player" goofs. But wait... it's actually landing in front of us? Because we kind of need to get off this giant rock before it hurtles into the ground.Ramyleth is inside! He briefly joined Lockedwn and Friend after disappearing on us early on. He's as eager as we are to get back to Len and the Danan Castle that was our first destination in the Sky Islands and give Surt a piece of our mind.A nice touch, the sky bridge we passed through last time (you remember right? With all the laughing skulls telling us how doomed we were? That was fun) now has ground all around it. Maybe they can plant flowers later? I just hope there wasn't someone's house under here...Surt is naturally unapologetic about tricking us into causing the Sky Islands to fall. In order for him to complete his plan of Giants domination - he's the only other one I've seen so far, including all the races up in the Sky Islands, so I don't know how he intends to repopulate the Earth - he had to ensure that all the previous races would get wiped out along with humanity with the advent of the next Rudra. Vbomb rightfully calls him out on his bullshit.I technically didn't fight Surt before. That was more of a cutscene played out on the battle screen. This fight is for real though. Surt's a Fire element, which should be obvious to anyone who knows their Norse mythology (I think this is the only case where the games gets its mythologies crossed). He has a mean left hook too. He doesn't have a huge amount of health, though, and while he has some nasty desperation attacks as he nears his demise, his obvious elemental weakness means he's kind of a chump. As I suspected all along, really.Oh for crying out loud. We didn't think to put a Denver boot on that thing?Ramyleth's kind of a laid-back guy. Being the scion of a 20,000 year old civilization kinda gives you that "seen it all before" outlook on life. Deciding to complete the set for the sake of posterity, we head back south to that Ice Dungeon I couldn't get into.Door's open now, but it still has a few surprises for us. Like this yeti called Ice Jack. What's an Ice Jack?We find the Rudra stone for the Danan civilization with a little wormy dude that looks like something out of Richard Scarry's brain. He's not hostile though, and Ramyleth tells us why:Each Rudra is created to destroy the pre-existing civilization, but also takes the shape of the species that will replace them. That big knight guy that fell out of the Lago Stone early on? He was the deity for the Giants, who destroyed most of the prior race (either the reptiles or merfolk) and was the basis of the Giants that followed. Hence why Surt was obsessed with him. Rudras therefore take on something akin to the Hindu cycle of death and rebirth, in how they're both the destroyers of one race yet also the creators of another. As the Rudra that spawned the Danan, this guy is unlikely to want to harm us with Ramyleth here.Passing through the Glacier, we eventually meet the flamboyant Dyaus. He's certainly enthusiastic about forcing us to fight him. He's also not particularly tough, especially after fighting Mayura. He's a big Wind guy who doesn't like Lightning magic, turns out.We collect our second legendary weapon of the game, the Sigmund Sword. I'm sure this one won't be as underwhelming as the last one.We apparently didn't learn our lesson last time, and the entire glacier defrosts and carries us off with its current into the ocean below. It's never as easy as it is with the Master Sword, is it?That... is a very good question. Did we just get Monstro'd?
Part 10: Hitting a Nerve
Last time, on Going Deeper Rudraground: Betrayal! Drama! Getting eaten by a giant fish! These are the everyday occurrences of Vbomb and his team, who include Foxy the foxy hunter, Ture the scholarly giant and, now that he's finally back, Ramyleth the Mage King that's dressed like a Jester. We may have accidentally caused the destruction of the Sky Islands (yeah, our bad), but at least we're back on the ground. Well, in the ocean specifically. Remember that part about getting eaten by a giant fish?
Well this is gross. I guess every RPG has to have its "inside a giant creature" gooey dungeon. I wonder if we'll find Gogo down here...? At any rate, the trapped merfolk in here tell us that the creature is a Heg - a whale-like monster that lives peacefully with the merfolk, to whom they're sort of like guardian spirits. This particular one has been taken over by one of those Horsemen we probably shouldn't have left alone.Whoa, hey, we barely know this fish. Poking whatever the hell this is actually opens a gateway later in the level. I figured it'd be a recurring element of this dungeon, but it's actually the only one. The dungeons in this game, if I haven't brought it up before, tend to be incredibly short.Yol-Gee is siphoning power from the Heg, which I figured would come up but doesn't really. He's quite powerful too, with some nasty Water-elemental attacks. He's weak to Fire, but his magic defense is quite high so it's not the steamroll it usually is. Oh, did I mention that all-mighty Sigmund Sword I picked up is Water-based, and thus does very little damage to this boss or any of the monsters in this fish? 2-2 on these "legendary" blades so far.Unlike the other Horsemen, Yol-Gee seems quite cordial. He's been keeping the Heg alive in these toxic oceans through his symbiosis with the fish, and we've weakened both him and the Heg sufficiently that he asks us to help cure it. Foxy recalls that her noble family is in possession of the Holy Grail (I've heard of the rich girl whose family owns everything, but...) and so we ask Yol-Gee to swim us as close to Eremia Mansion as possible.That means crossing this desert. Not a tall order, since it's only about ten tiles in every direction on the world map, but it means we get a new battle screen background out of it.I'm really starting to dislike those two.Foxy's mansion is in a state of disrepair, which puts her out of sorts. We take the back entrance. Into her base, I mean. Ugh, I'm bailing on this caption.The house is full of minor undead enemies and a scroll that tells us that the family and servants relocated to the nearby port town of Oriab. Kinda ominous, but I get the feeling the explanation for all this is part of someone else's scenario. The house is empty but for a few chests where I came in, so it's definitely spooky.Before I move on though, let's discuss the new geography of the world. The Sky Islands conveniently landed between the landmasses that were already here, creating a lot of landbridges between several areas of the game. If I was so inclined, I bet I could backtrack to a lot of earlier dungeons to see what's beyond those clock doors I keep passing.Like this one in the Ruined City of Catulia, for instance. Between the door here, some suddenly unlocked doors in the north of the village and the new inventory in the equipment store, taking the time to come back here was definitely worthwhile. All the same, I'm not sure how often I'll take big detours like this. I kinda want to beat this scenario, you know? Eremia, Foxy's dad, tells us that Dr. Muench borrowed the Grail some time ago for his experiments. Dr. Muench, you might recall from way back when, was introduced by Foxy as the mentor of Wizmaker/Surlent. Looks like we're overlapping again.I didn't think to mention Advol until now, but it's a ghost town. Well, specifically, it's a zombie town. Something awful happened here and all the civilians are undead. They have some semblance of rationality, but all of them will attack you if you try talking to them. The only non-zombie in the town is the innkeeper, if you need to restore your HP and MP.The Cult of Rudra is clearly involved with whatever went down here. They descend to the basement via an elevator, and we quickly follow.I gotta say... Ramyleth sort of has a point. I guess we're the only species so far to have started a cult worshipping the being that will destroy us all.Talking of ominous, not only is it like the Spencer Mansion down here but they've been experimenting on whatever Rudra resembled the Reptiles. And it's missing.Dr. Muench is, sadly, among the bodies of the scientists down here. Whatever they were working on with the Lago Stone and the Holy Grail, it blew up in their faces. Again, I feel like this is something that another party sees happen in real-time. Muench, however, is not all the way dead...Kudos localization team. You undercut a creepy moment with a Ghostbusters goof. (All right, it was pretty funny). Nagiya is the third Horseman we've come across, and apparently the one most closely related to Death.That seems... personal? Nagiya starts the fight like a G by immediately killing Foxy. Permanently. That's her soul in Nagiya's rib cage. No amount of resurrection spells are getting her back. Being a person down makes this fight a little tougher than anticipated, and Nagiya's very fond of the Dark element, and has a huge number of Dark-based mantras. He also has a very powerful version of the mantra STELLA, which draws HP from enemies and gives it to the caster. The damage he's taking from our Light mantras is vastly overtaking whatever he's healing, though.Before vanishing back to the underworld, Nagiya reminds us that even though he was an inconsequential boss in a series of same, at least he got his Sephiroth moment by killing our love interest. This... this is bad news.
Part 11: FOXYDIE
Last time, on Rudra-Roh!: Foxy's down (the most underrated of all Tarantino films) and with her dies Vbomb's chief hypewoman. Surely this can't stand! No demonic grim reaper is going to keep her away from us forever, even though he did kind of take Foxy's soul and eat it. Oh hey, don't read this synopsis if you haven't seen all the screenshots above yet. Sorry, I should've stated at the outset that there'd be some Game of Thrones shit going down today.
Time to jump back on the dying manta ray to save our girlfriend. Priorities!Meanwhile, the dying fish problem sort of solved itself with the suddenly purified ocean. Way to go Sclonna! We'll take credit all the same, though.Anyway, the dying Dr. Muench told us that there's a sage that lives in a Hidden Village that might know how to save Foxy. It's extremely convenient, as is the fact that Ramyleth knows exactly what he's talking about and that this is a Danan village that remained on the surface. One little forest puzzle later, and we're in.Sclonna's apparently just hanging out here after cleaning the oceans. She does us a solid and gives us the last of her Revive Herbs for Foxy. I'm sure if I played her scenario first, I'd be peeved about giving away my super useful herb for some party of assholes I once met on a boat.Right, so not exactly an Aeris moment. Square's going to save that for next year, I suppose. As thanks, we give Sclonna's party the Heg Ocarina we use to communicate with the big fish. The merfolk in Sclonna's party kinda guilted us into it by reminding us of the importance of the Ocarina to her people. I'm cool with it; let them hash it out with that demon controlling the fish who keeps complaining whenever we force him to swim us somewhere.My next stop is getting back home to Danelf, after I find a message that Pastor Miller left in Oriab. Since every port has a world map, I thought I'd check to see if it got updated with all the landmasses. Cartographers in this world work quick, huh.Back in Danelf, I just need to go right out of here to meet Pastor Miller in his church. Like I should've done all the way back at the start of the game, I suppose.Miller's told us that, even though the world has been purified of its pollution, the Rudra is still coming and we're getting the first signs of its approach: cosmic radiation that kills anyone outdoors at night. I wish we got a good look at these killer moonbeams; they sound badass.On the way out, Pastor Miller's statue vanishes from the altar. This non-sequitur of a miracle apparently indicates that the Jadebearer that the statue represents - I'm guessing the only female hero, given the statue was female - has left our world. Not to worry though, as we're sure she's just in space or something. I'm sure she'll get a lot of use out of nature powers up in orbit. Nature abhors a vacuum after all. We''re told to report in to the King, which is one of those things that doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the game progression flow but lots of sense for Vbomb the character, who is supposed to be the Knight-Captain in charge of the castle's security. Our standing orders still apply though: find a way to dismantle the Cult of Rudra. The old coot on Mantra Peak is apparently fighting them off as we speak. More backtracking!The Cultists are crawling all over Mantra Peak, turns out. The way up to Zora's cave is an odd mix of finding soldier corpses from Cryunne, occasionally bumping into cultist mini-bosses and fighting the weaker enemies from the start of the game.When we finally find Zora, she's being threatened by this limber fellow. Ravana's kind of a chump, though that might be because I've learned a lot of useful mantras since our last boss. POWERUP (which I got from the Hidden Village) and MEGAMI (which I got from a random cave on the way over here, and has to be a SMT reference given how many of those games Aeon Genesis has worked on) are both "game-breakers": the first greatly increases the physical strength of the party, while MEGAMI is a party healing spell that's far stronger than the standard LEF. He has a weakness to Water-based Mantras too, but we just wailed on him. It was bruuuutal.Chekhov's Portal to the Netherworld finally comes into play, and Zora directs us that the Rudra Cult has set up in the Netherworld - which is actually just a subterranean kingdom that once belonged to the reptiles. Down here, you're partially shielded by the Rudra's world-cleansing cosmic rays, and I think their intent is to wait it out down here and take over the world after the Rudra's done and joined his brothers as a Han Solo fossil.We finally find our mentor Taurus. This has been a game-wide quest of Vbomb's, so he's stoked to meet up with his hero and fight some cultists side-by-side.I mean, sure, there's only seven of them.No! Taurus feeds us some bull about the glory of the Rudra, and demands we hand over our Jade to help make the Rudra perfect. He was a cultist this whole time!Forced to fight his mentor, Vbomb's basically apoplectic at this point. Taurus doesn't seem brainwashed though; rather, he's a little too pragmatic for his own good. We get a sense of where Vbomb got his reckless attitude from, as Taurus calmly tries to talk us down by reasoning that becoming powerful is what's important, and who stronger than the Rudra that will kill us all? As an opponent, he's... OK, remember when I told you about the game-breaking mantras? I'm a weak-willed guy, turns out. (I also just kinda want this scenario to end, for as much fun as I'm having.)Before we can proceed to the final dungeon, we need one of the fantastical treasures of the Rudras (title drop!). We have a Psycho Shield that Taurus gave us, but we either need the Apocalypse Sword or both Shields. Fortunately, Wizmaker seems to have been busy, and has found both the sword and the other shield. We propose a trade, though we're given the option of the sword or the second shield (I look forward to seeing how this trade works out in Wizmaker's scenario). By the way, we're in a Reptile town that's under the Earth. The reptiles once filled these tunnels - it was their domain, in the same manner that the seas belong to the merfolk - but this appears to be the only one left after their own Rudra some several thousand years ago before we came along. Anyway, this guy's apparently just freaking out about a nightmare and gives us eight prefixes in case we didn't already know them. I sort ofwonder how I could've gotten this far without knowing "NA"?And here it is, Shumisen. The location of the new Rudra, and the source of the planet's cycle of life and death. Definitely has an "the final boss is this way!" look to it, don't it? This is actually the last place I can manually save - from here on out, it's the end or bust!
Finale:
Last time, on My Rudra, My Rudra and Me: It's been quite the ride, but now Vbomb and his beleagured team are standing outside the very gates of Hell ready to save the world from utter annihilation. What is the nature of this Rudra deity of destruction? Is it a sentient creature, or is it simply the form of the destroyer that some other God has created to eliminate us? If so, are we going to have to try really hard to not think of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?
Thank you!This is Gomorrah. From this point on, the game sort of resembles the end of Final Fantasy IX. I only mention that because I know there's at least one other mod around here who adores that game. Gomorrah was created to ensure that the Rudras would appear on schedule every four thousand years for reasons he doesn't feel like disclosing to mere mortals like us. We just know it involves a "Gafu".Moving through this final dungeon, which is just as short as all the rest of them, we suddenly hear a cacophony of screams (or as close to it as the SNES sound chip can replicate) and suddenly all the skulls and bodies in the background start moving around. It's a freaky effect.By the way, Ramyleth wasn't lying: we got deep into Shumisen just as our time limit finally ran out, and the Rudra burst into being. This is the fated God of our destruction, and the basis for the species to follow us. It sorta looks like the next folk would've been bird-like, or maybe Xenomorphs? Either way, they're shit out of luck, because we humans aren't budging. The Rudra was... disappointingly easy for a final boss. For one, it had an obvious elemental weakness (Water), which I didn't anticipate. It also didn't hit hard, nor did it have a huge amount of HP to whittle down. The game makes it clear that the Rudra needs to collect all the Jades and the "Treasures" we're wielding, not to mention it just got born a few minutes ago, so it's fair to say that it was ill-prepared for a sudden beatdown. We're all celebrating the averted apocalypse, but...Right, Gomorrah's still around. With some fighting words for us, no less. He's not done with us either way, and opens up the way to the Gafu at the center of the planet.Rostam and Huey are down here, mysteriously, though they seem to be zombified. Either way, we can't reach them. I wonder if they appear in someone else's scenario? Either way, it's good that Vbomb got some closure on their whereabouts and status. KindaThe Gafu, and stop me if you've heard this one before FFIX fans, is a Godlike living conduit that takes the souls of the deceased and transforms them into new souls. When the Rudra destroys the population of the planet, the Gafu takes the influx of souls and transforms into members of the new race. It's also instrumental to the Forced Evolution thing Gomorrah's got going on, and possibly older than anything else on the planet. Gomorrah is revealed to be the mastermind behind the Rudras, but even he is simply following the orders from even more ancient and powerful beings, one of which we briefly met outside the Cult headquarters. The game's Garland, in so many words. The identities of the Majestic Four, the people actually behind Gomorroah and the Rudra cycle, is one of those big mysteries I suspect other scenarios will fill in. Anyway, it's time to fight the true Final Boss. Gomorrah is no joke, unlike the relatively weak Rudra. Not only does he have around twice the HP, but he's untouchable until you've taken down his three henchmen, each of which is almost a boss in of itself. Each time we defeat one, Gomorrah brings a new soul forth from the Gafu.It's not until we've defeated the three adds that Gomorrah starts to get serious. He's packing a lot of Dark magic - fortunately, almost all the new armor in that Reptile town was Dark-affiliated, so that lowers his damage output a lot. Also useful is Foxy's amazing new whip weapon, which we found in this dungeon and carries with it a Light-affinity. Just keeping her and Vbomb buffed in strength is causing them to cause around 2500HP per round.Love Whip strikes again! Gomorrah would be a challenging foe, but the game's so thoroughly broken at this point that it was simply a matter of time. I didn't even have to use save states or anything.Saizou, we find out, is the Majestic Four member who appeared to help us. He was fairly human-looking, so I wonder if humanity was built in his image? There's a lot we don't know about the machinations behind the Rudras, though I think Vbomb and co. are just pleased that we've postponed the apocalypse for a few thousand years.The game ends on a little epilogue scrolling text, simply rehashing what we'd done. Beating up weird immortal sorceresses in the center of the world, saving the day by foiling the global devastation of an eldritch destruction deity built to look like a race that will never exist. Same ol' Squaresoft bullshit, then.And that concludes Vbomb's scenario. I think his is probably a lot more straightforward than the others, even with all this weirdness. I'd love to find out what happened to Wizmaker after we left him in the Reptile town, or to Sclonna after she went to space, or even those two knucklehead thieves after they stole our airship for the billionth time.Though as tempted as I am... I think it's time to call it here. Thanks for joining me on this journey deep into the unknown annals of the Squaresoft library everyone, and for that matter I hope you had a fun E3. Maybe I'll swing back around and do something E3-related next, but for now... well, the Lang/Boyes/Vignocchi E3 panel is about to begin, and I dare not miss a second of it. Bye!
