to be correct, it beat me.

after a 50 hour long love hate relationship, a broken controller, and a few grey hairs, i finally finished the last battle. its been a long time since ive had a challenge like that and im glad i stuck with it. the final battle itself was a 6 part battle which took the better part of 2 hours, though much of it was spent swearing after id been massacred.

i found one particular element of the plot to be intreauging since ive never encountered it in a rpg. [spoiler]the whole parental abuse thing that velvet experienced by her grandfather[/spoiler]

over all the game wasnt great, doesnt have an ounce of replay value since your generally repeating the same areas 6 times. even the plot itself gets old after the 3rd story overlap.

oh well, now i can finally play the two new games i got: star ocean and the new castlevania which i dont even know what its named.

OMG, what? Really? WHY?! Lmao, I bet 20 of those hours were spent trying to farm all the sh*t to get your HP leveled. That just killed the game for me. And after the Pooka Prince (which is the second story, btw) I got tired of the overlapping. The final Fights were pretty epic... and they'd even change a bit by who you chose to fight who (know this because I died... allot).

Overall, the games just pretty graphics and redundant gameplay... I don't really recommend anyone going out of their way to try and play this.

But one thing is for sure, mad props for actually beating it. Hands down the game is hard as hell.

Yeah, I actually appreciate an earlier post by Lantis warning me of the difficulty (underneath the pretty facade) and decided to take it off my radar.

But yes, congrats on beating it.

thanks guys, i totaled a controller in rage while clearing this game. i started out on normal mode and found even the first few stages to be near impossible and changed it to easy. it quite honestly didnt change a damn thing, the game was evil.

by and large there wasnt a great deal of anything in this game. i regret that i didnt buy either the castlevania or star ocean game sooner so id of given up on this game rather then beat it.

by far the most difficult game ive ever endured was nocturne, one of the few i never did and never will beat.

That's strange... I beat Nocture as well as the optional boss (which made the final boss look like a pansy). But Nocturne was a much better RPG. The ending sucks (at least the one I got) but for a post apocalyptic RPG, I kind of liked it. I probably won't ever play it again though unless there's a game plus mode. =/

But yeah, I did the EXACT same thing as you. Played on normal thinking that I've payed enough action RPGs in my time to tackle the standard difficulty... only to be proven wrong... very wrong. I didn't get past the introductory dungeon before putting it on easy. And even then, I didn't notice much of a difference.

Lantis... Nocturne does have a game plus mode... did you not wait for after the credits?

As for the topic at hand, my hat is off to you. I managed to make it to the last "individual" story until I stopped. I was kind of tired after the first book, but I'm a completist. I still couldn't do it. The last person you play, before Ragnorak, sucks and I was already upset enough as it is. So I congratulate you on your major accomplishment. I say major because it is. Actually able to push your way through. Good job.

oh god does the last story arc book suck! their hp is abysmally low, everything does outrageous damage all the time without a hint of mercy, even their attack is horrid. even at level 30 their hp was still very low comparatively, and the last or second last chapter of that arc was nearly impossible - the final boss nothing short of an act of insanity.

did anyone notice how bad the game was whenever too much was going on at one time? the entire game would turn matrix style and everything would instantly slow, reducing response time and often resulting in a death. its like they designed the game for some other better performance system and then never bothered to adjust it for the ps2. i wonder if playing it on a ps3 would eliminate that hassle?

the frog status effect was an instant death - wasnt worth waiting for it to go away. some of the other status effects where just mean spirited, especialy when they compounded together.

i also hated the 20 seconds of wasted time just waiting for the monsters to appear. it made hard battles worse because i had to waste a ton of time just waiting to give it another go.

nocturne was harsh, if you didnt pick the right monsters then your evolutions fell dead flat. when you realized they where crap, you often had to rely on a miracle to beat the boss battle so you could backtrack to try something else. i can still remember that one optional dungeon that was a big mess of hidden trap doors and invisible walls plus hard enemies - no f*cking thank you!