Game:

Crystal Guardians (2024)

Duration: 1:19:12

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best jrpg ever , fight me , and i'll defeat you in it's most complex and completely unique battle system


like all of the 200 other people in the world who know about this game , i first played it in my teen years , my whole life i could not stand the thought of playing rpgs , the only other ones i recall having played in my childhood was pokemon silver pearl and paper mario , but grandia 3 changed my perspective on that as i fell in love with it for many reason , chief among them being it's battle system
(and funnily enough the version i played was japanese and i still managed to beat it)

there is 1 dark (not-so) secret it has though , and that is this boss , whom i reverently call the crystal guardian , and this is because up until this point the player has been able to make due playing through the game normally being leveled enough to overcome it's challenges

that all changes when you step foot on the mysterious majestic castle melc ruins floating in the sky

the melc crystal boss is a 1 of a kind entity , has no dialogue , no relevance to the story , not even any personality

it is but an autonomous being who only comes to life to serve 1 purpose
to gatekeep you from entering this sacred sanctuary

this part of grandia left the strongest memory on me , as it had become the closest thing i had to a childhood video game trauma , because this boss was the game's most brutal difficulty spike , it became the first part of the game i had to dedicate a large amount of my time to grind levels to get past this obstacle to continue the game

as i show at the start , the usual level at which i arrive at this part of the story is lv24,24,25,25 , yet the second time i've played through i needed to spend hours just grinding levels to lv31/31/32/32 JUST TO STAND A CHANCE at facing the wall of death

i failed many attempts at that level (some half hour slogs , some i get obliterated in 5 minutes before i could even activate my orb) , but i kept learning from each fight and experimented with different set ups for my party to try without leveling up anymore , till i eventually found one that was good enough to win , and in doing so i also realized something fascinating

that i felt like i would be capable of beating this boss at an even lower level than this

and now i played through the entire game again and got to this point , the previous time i beat the crystal guardian in my second playthrough brought much needed closer on this to me

now is my attempt at conquering that trauma and proving that i am an unstoppable gamer


.............also can we take a moment to appreciate how absolutely badass yet beautiful this boss looks? (and how beautiful the entire game is?)
also even though this is a generic boss theme , but in my heart i will always associate it with fighting the crystal guardian boss....

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