The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I was listening to the 2nd to last final battle on FFX and it made me realize how much they could've done with that battle with a track that good, but they screwed up. This made me think about last battle in general. After all, that's the battle that ends the game. It should be treated with care, but most often it's not.

Some things I look for in last battles:

1. If a boss has something that takes 2 minute to animate, don't use it very often.

Pretty self explanatory. Though I never had Sephiroth use Super Nova on me 10 times or anything extreme like that. Another thing. If something takes 2 minutes to use, then it should do a lot of damage. I'd say Skies of Arcadia is the worst offender of games in recent memory. Ramirez's attacks take a LONG time to animate and he uses them almost every round.

2. Linked battles. If there is the 'somewhat significant to story but not quite the last boss' guy, make sure he appears somewhat close to the last battle. Besides, it's kind of boring to see the last boss change form 5 times or whatever. The game guilty of this from recent memory is FFX. To put it simply, it's like FF7 but you fight Jenova-SYNTHESIS in the beginning of South Cave instead of the end. By the time you actually got through the dungeon, it's not clear if you'll even remember who you've fought at the beginning.

3. Wear and tear. Most final battles seem to feel obligated to put you through this huge maze designed to wear you down. However, you'll noticve that 99% of RPG has a save point right before the last battle, which makes it easy to recover from that. The final dungeon should be relatively short. FFX again comes to mind as the worst recent offender. The only purpose of the crystal shard area right before the final boss is designed to wear you down.

4. The Last Elixir Problem. Last Elixir, known as Megaelixir in the US FF games, is one of the biggest problems of final battle. They're called Last Elixirs because you only use them in the final battle. Though not every game has an item that heals everyone completely and all MP too, there are usually items of comparable power. Usually by the time you reach the last boss you've a good stockpile of the godliest of healing items which makes the battle trivial. Boss just blown away three guys? Use Mega Phoenix. Caster ran out of MP? Throw an elixir. Heck, just throw an elixir on somebody every single round! I propose either to get rid of overpowering healing items in general, or use a model like Brave Fencer. You can buy Elixirs and items of similar caliber in town, but you can only carry a fixed number of them, and the cost is nontrivial either. When I play Brave Fencer I try to avoid using the S-Drink or whatever the highest class of healing item is because it's expensive, but it's not out of the question to use one. In RPG you almost never use an item of Megaelixir's power unless it's the last boss, or if you happen to have a ton of them already.

By the way, what's your favorite final battle? Mine is Chrono Trigger, versus Lavos. Though there is an abundance of Megaelixir items in that game as well, Dreamless/Grandstone tends to kill people with low physical/magical defenses, so you really can't take advantage of Megas that easily.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana, tahoma; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I'd probably say that FF7 had the best end battle for me. I love the part where Cloud and Sephiroth face off one on one, and the actual battle felt like a good culmination to an epic.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I disagree on the last dungeon being short thing. It really depends on the system though. In Chrono Trigger, the Back Omen can be considered the last Dungeon, but in most cases, if you aren't using New game +, you will fight Lavos after you have completed that dungeon. The thing I liked most about Xenogears was the long dungeons, same deal with Vagrant Story. Grandia II, had some long dungeons, but I don't know what the reason was, I didn't really enjoy playing through them. Skies of Arcadia seamed like it had long dungeons at the beginning, and then they got shorter as you went on, the last one was really short.

My favorite last battles,

1) Skies of Arcadia, it just seamed somehow more epic than any battle in the History of RPG's. But I agree, in the battle where you face Ramirez, his spells do take long, but not even close to as long as some Final Fantasy games I can think of.

2) Xenogears, I don't know why, the game had a relatively simple ending, but this was one of the most fulfilling battles in a game I have ever played. With RPG's, topped only by Skies.

3) Final Fantasy III, maybe it's because I was young, but never have I finished a game and got an Adrenaline rush like that before

4) Chrono Trigger, this is another one I really enjoyed, probably the end battle I have fought the most when it comes to RPG's.

There are more, but these are the ones that stood out for me.


Favorite Final Battles of all game types:

In No particular order:

Terranigma
Perfect Dark
Skies of Arcadia
Super Mario World
Illusions of Gaia
Final Fantasy Adventure
Conkers BFD
Vagrant Story
Donkey Kong Country III
Metal Gear Solid
Faxanadu (even though it takes like 3 seconds, it was somehow always fun to fight that one)</div>

<div style='font: bold 12pt "Comic Sans MS"; text-align: left; '>BAH! GOD DAMN YOU!!! You spoiled the game for me!!! And you didn't mention Aeris, wtf?! Why isn't she at the end?! DOES SHE DIE OR SOMETHING!?</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>She is at the end. At the end of the ending when the Lifestream is gathering around Meteor, you see a scene of Aeris right before the credits start rolling. Also, her physical body does die at the end of Disc 1. Don't you remember? :P</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>WHAT THE HELL?!?!?!?! What do you You mean she might die?!?!?!?!?!? I'm almost half way through disk one though</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Yeah that was definately awesome, make sure you have the Omnislash though. :)</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>You didn't like the ending to Zelda: tOoT?!</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>On the other hand, unless Ramirez is casting a spell (Eternes or Drilnos), all his attacks take a while to animate... especially if he does like Silver Nightmare and get a long special move.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Draconwick; text-align: left; '>Doesn't matter if you have it or not... he uses it anyways.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Missed one =)</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Ramirez?</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana, tahoma; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I certainly didn't fight Lavos right after the Black Omen. I went and did all the side quests. I always do that. (Which explains why I've yet to beat FF9.)</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Aren't the Sidequests available before the Black Omen?</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>You can fight Lavos anytime by taking the warp to 1999 AD.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>That's true, you can fight him at the beginning of the game if you want to =)</div>

<div style='font: bold 12pt "Comic Sans MS"; text-align: left; '>........ army geek, you have no emotion left in that hollow shell you call a body :)</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Personally, I like a grueling last battle. Makes you really feel like you've acomplished something, especially when you've been building up to it for 20 or 30 hours. Kefka was like that (all 3 forms), same with Sigma from the X games</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Haven't played Skies, but I agree with the rest. A good RPG is made that much better with a kick-ass final battle and Square's classics all have that</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I did not like FF7 very much, but I'll have to agree with you on that one. The last battle was pretty darned good</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '>My favorite would be fighting the Devourer of Time atop Terra Tower in CC. It took me close to half an hour to go through all the forms, but when I finally finished, it was exhilirating. The accompanying score was excellent as well. I think the game ought to have ended there, personally. The final boss was lousy in comparison.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Lavos was a little bitch. :P</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '><b>Link:</b> <a href="http://movies.rpgamer.com/ff/ff7/lastco ... onf.mov</a>

For your viewing pleasure.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Crono Trigger: good music and a lot of fun to kill Lavos. Xenogears: one of the more interesting battles and hard, too. FFT: excellent music and he was pretty damn hard. FF8: probably the only enemy in the game that took me several tries to beat.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Heh...I laughed out loud when I first saw him use Omnislash on him. Take that, Sephiroth!</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Only if you rushed through the game. Kefka had less that 40,000 HP.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I don't spend time building up. I just go through the game</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>FFT's last boss is pretty easy to beat, or are you thinking of Wiegraf?

Bum rushing Deus usually works for me in Xenogears. In fact it works better for me than taking out the four angels around him. You lose a ton of fuel trying to take out that flat guy unless you happen to have Z-Chargers too, but if you've Z-Charger you really shouldn't be able to lose that battle. Two infinity bars on Xenogears is usually enough to finish him off.

As for FF8, I think that drop HP to 1 followed by Meteor deal is pretty cheesy, but other than that the battle is pretty decent. Really sucks when you start having stuff like Full-Life or Aura blown away. Shockwave Pulsar can be nasty if your spirit is low.

I really liked the Lavos battle. It was short (no dungeon to go through, Lavos had a lot of HP but it wasn't to the point of taking forever), and it's a pretty intense battle. The time warp effect is probably the coolest "I'm the last boss and I happened to build my last stronghold by the doorway to another dimension" effect out there, and it actually make sense that Lavos will be in a place like that.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>He counters with Ultima if you kill him before he got a chance to use Fallen One, though it only does like 2-3K on everyone.

Kefka doesn't really hit that hard if memory serves correct... does Havoc Wing do status damage besides physical? If not, then he doesn't have anything really threatening.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Heh...I almost forgot Wiegraf. That was just fucking stupid. Fight, critical, game over, WTF?!</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Zeus, Kefka was a wuss even if you didn't level up. All you need is 2-3 guys with Ultima, and his gay ass is toast.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Oh yeah...Ultima. If you didn't have that spell, the game would be fine.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "arial narrow"; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>Simple solution: Don't use Espers. Makes the game quite a bit more interesting.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>For some reason, mine was especially satisfying, because for some reason I didn't attack Seph at all. My "Counter" materia kicked in at about 50hp and Cloud kicked ass. So it was like "Yahhhhh! I kill you! But I don't quite finish and you come back from death to slash me into bits! AAAAAH!"</div>