Or, we would be, but we need another anime, of Ghaleon talking! Yay! I used to like Ghaleon, guys. I thought he was fun. What a self-own this whole experience has been. “What utter nonsense!” he says, literally floating in the air with stolen divine power. Okay, fair. “Perhaps you should demonstrate the power that gives you such confidence! Then we will see who is fit to be supreme ruler and who…IS DEAD!” I am going to take that as a reply directly to Mia just so that last avalanche of talking feels like it was for something. Alex stares unblinking back at his adversary. “Those that underestimate the power of the human spirit are destined to fail,” he says in the exact same monotone that Gamsthena used earlier. Sensing a pattern! An extreme close-up on Alex’s dopey face, complete with triumphant synthesizer crescendo, brings us in for the real zinger: “And that means you, Ghaleon!” Damn! GOT HIM!

Jesus, fucking now it’s time for the boss battle. And speaking of self-owns, for an epic final confrontation (and I think this is a pretty great one!), there isn’t a lot to say here, because the fake Ghaleon in THE GRINDERY had more or less the real Ghaleon’s entire moveset, and his kick-ass boss theme. There are tweaks–the real version doesn’t robotically go through his elemental spellbook in order on repeat, notably. The real version also, as noted when he used it to kill everyone, has Hell Wave, and works that into his rotation too. Sounds bad, right? Well, it is–it definitely hits the hardest of all of Ghaleon’s spells. But what it absolutely does not do is one-shot the entire party by a comfortable margin. “Well, that makes sense,” I’m sure someone is saying. “You had to grind out this whole dungeon before facing him again, and you’re stronger.” True, Team Power of the Human Spirit has gained a couple of levels since their last laughably brief Ghaleon encounter. And everybody but Alex even got new armor/dresses, so I guess I can cock my head at this and figure everybody else got their magic defense stat roughly doubled from a couple levels and one upgrade and that Alex got same from, uh, getting a new sword. Never mind, this totally works and is not Ghaleon downranking his own best spell in a hall-of-fame-level display of arrogance.

To make up for this unprecedented improvement of our heroes, Ghaleon does add a few more spells: Chaos Shield, which summons two floating purple eyeballs that provide him a shield that must be damaged off (no, I don’t know either); Worm Crush, in which he burrows through the floor to hit a couple people for jack and shit; Siphon Soul, which grabs a bit of health from everyone and heals Ghaleon for roughly 0.75 Sword Dances, and Fate Storm, which just kills a random person. Well, not Ghaleon. Or Gamsthena. Either would be amazing. This is mostly not irritating except when it’s Alex or Kyle, because it means I have to go through the trouble of buffing their asses all over again. Okay, so I lied, he has a lot more going on than the fake one! Ghaleon is an onion of spellcasting! I’m very impressed!

Ghaleon also says “Time…to DIE” every single time he does anything, including casting his eyeball shield, which does no damage. This guy absolutely has more spoken dialogue than anyone in the game (if everyone else combined even adds up to him I’d be surprised), and they couldn’t record a couple more pithy threats for this? Come on. Given that the fight takes twenty-five minutes and Ghaleon attacks twice a round, this is a bigger problem than you’d think! But after a record FIVE Silver Lights (two just for Alex!) one last Sword Dance brings the fifteen-foot-tall Ghaleon to his knees. So he’s now only eight feet tall.

Nash is getting a very intimate view right now.

You may note I did not bother to say that last Sword Dance killed Ghaleon, because that’s obviously going to take a minute. After some theatrical and very phlegmy coughing and wheezing, Ghaleon gasps, “How…can this be? My…FUTURE, my…DESTINY was SECURELY in my GRASP! [hack, hack, hairball] I had only to CLAIM IT. And now! I am disgraced…yet again. [bits of lung spraying all over the platform]” A final wheezing exhale sends Ghaleon crashing–but more like gently floating forward–face-down into the blue crystal floor, and then suddenly our heroes appear around his body. The effect, and I’m sure this was intentional, is as though Ghaleon is under a lone spotlight at the edge of the darkened stage to deliver his death soliloquy to the audience, and then five more spotlights appear around him to remind you other people were actually here this whole time. Has a more drama kid-ass JRPG ever existed? I posit it has not.

One would think, after their prior experience in the field of Killing Ghaleon, our heroes would be hesitant to high-five all over the place without at least kicking Ghaleon’s corpse with a fur-lined boot first, and checking any nearby rustling curtains. “Yeah! We did it, Alex!” Squeak says. Yes, this time he’s dead (OR IS HE??????), but if I were on this platform, exhausted of Silver Lights and Angel Tears, I would be building a Darth Vader bonfire for this motherfucker, just in case. Alex at least has the presence of mind to pause for one second before he agrees with this assessment. It’s sad that one dialogue box of ellipses is enough for me to be like, “Alex learned something, and I’m proud of him.”

As with the first time Ghaleon supposedly died at their hand, Alex’s friends are in a celebratory mood and are already thinking ahead to applying their new appreciation for free will and goddess-free sovereignty to the rest of their boring heteronormative lives. Nash is practically high on the thought, telling everyone, “The Magic Guild will easily be restored to its former glory as long as I’m involved with it!” Mia’s immediately all, “NASH NO, BAD,” even though this doesn’t seem like that terrible of a thing to say. Nash still gonna be Nash, after all. “That’s what I would have said if I was the way I used to be!” he adds. “Ha, ha, ha!” Oh. He’s not covering up for saying what he really thinks! It’s a big joke! He’s laughing! Mia likes this new Nash, though she apparently liked the old one just fine too, and he admits, “I used to be kind of arrogant, wasn’t I?” I am PRETTY SURE that kind of deep personality trait doesn’t just vanish when you kill your old mentor like he was a tumor in your brain, but I wish Mia and Nash happiness in their coming decades of being in denial about this.

Since Mia has already resolved her own arc by talking with Nash about Nash, she uses her allotted time to reflect about the past. “Fifteen years ago, Althena and Dyne made the decision to change their lives forever,” she says. “It’s not that Ghaleon didn’t understand their decision…he didn’t want to understand it. He loved Althena, I’m convinced of it…and he was jealous of the Dragonmaster.” Mia can repeat this dogma until she’s blue in the goddamn face and here I will remain, unmoved. “His heart was wounded, and his beliefs were shaken, when they chose to become human,” she goes on with about 95 percent accuracy. “He must have felt like his world was falling apart. And that must have been when he decided to take on the power of a god himself…” Or it was later, on the toilet. Just saying it’s possible. Anyway, I was being unfair to Mia earlier, as she ties this weakness of Ghaleon’s to her own feelings of weakness, and tells a protesting Nash, “Everyone has weakness in their heart. The Goddess shielded us from our weakness when she took care of us. But she realized that we could work together to overcome it… That we could turn our weakness into strength. I wish Ghaleon had been able to recognize that…” As much as she is missing the love triangle mark here, this is a really nice distillation of what this game has mostly been failing at getting across in these last few hours, and it actually uses what we know about Mia and Ghaleon to get there. A version of this game with Mia as the protagonist would have been immeasurably better. I am not a crackpot.

Kyle seems to be talking himself into Ghaleon deserving to die because of everything he did, which I don’t think anyone here was disputing, but why not have Kyle suddenly wracked with guilt over the murder of a tyrant? “But I have to admit that I admired how hard he fought for what he believed in,” he adds. You don’t! You can just keep that one to yourself! “It’s too bad that all he believed in was himself…” He also believed in the power of oratory. And a good daily skin routine! Just guessing. As I’m wondering if this is all projection on Kyle’s part, he says, “Maybe I should learn a lesson from Ghaleon and try not to be so stupidly confident…” Oh, we’re so close! A moment of growth! I can feel it coming! But then Jess goes, “Hmmm…” and Kyle descends into Dipshit Hell again. “What are you mumbling, Jess? If you have something to say, then say it!” Jess merely notes that he was in the middle of making a good point, Kyle notes back that he is full of good points but Jess is too dumb to clock them, and round and round we go. It’s like one half of the room is undergoing major personality upheaval and the other half is running the entire fuck away from it.

YOU ARE UPSETTING THE CAT!

Jess, too, is ruminating about Ghaleon’s motivations, and whether he actually had the best interests of their world at heart. I am relieved when Jess bails on this line of thinking by the end of her sentence, because if we had to go from wounded lover to self-obsessed ambitious dictator to misguided leader wracked with “economic anxiety,” in the span of one scene, I don’t think my neck could have taken it. “I guess we’ll never be sure, Alex,” she says. A TRUE MYSTERY. “But there is something I’m very sure about… Your love for [Gams] is stronger than Ghaleon’s power over her ever was.” I guess we’ll see about that in a minute, won’t we? Jess hits the Gams talking point a little harder than everyone else, since Nash, Mia, and Kyle all just noted as an afterthought to what they actually wanted to talk about that Alex should go to his lady love. Not Jess, though. “I’m a little jealous of [Gams],” she says now. “Unlike some guys, you’re not embarrassed to show your love for her…” Oh, honestly, woman, we have been over this. Also Alex and Gams’s love is more or less entirely presented as “She is perfect, and he, uh, knows she is perfect.” Like, if we’re already inhabiting the fantasy land where Alex is head over heels for The Virgin Mary Sue up there, why wouldn’t he be? SHE IS LITERALLY A GODDESS. Anyway, as just happened with Kyle’s serious thoughts being derailed by Jess’s snarking, Kyle decides to razz Jess for wanting some more PDA, a thing he apparently hates. Please. I know they’re going to get divorced in like a year, but these two have one hundred percent also had sex in public. But for once Jess notes that she and Kyle can hash all this out later, when Gams is safe and sound and not brainwashed into sucking the planet dry of all its energy.

Now that every one of his friends has urged him up the stairs to get that fairytale ending, Alex does so. But–speaking of lessons the Dragonmaster should have learned by now–he is rewarded with several bolts of green lightning to his face. What?! But isn’t she all better now?! This is a dumb joke that is predicated on the assumption that Gams, the only person at the top of the stairs, is the one doing this, but fuck me, here’s Kyle: “What was that?!” And Squeak: “It was…[Gams]!” Why are they like this? What did I do wrong?

From her magic corona, Gamsthena announces, “Humans are forbidden from entering the sacred chamber!” Which part do we think counts as the sacred chamber? Because they’ve been here for a while. And Ghaleon was also still technically a human. Or an elf? I don’t know. Maybe elves are cool here. Alex is still yelling Gams’s name, and she is not a fan of this: “I am Althena! I am the Goddess who made this world and who rules it with impunity! How dare you fail to recognize the face of your creator! Leave here now or be destroyed for your ignorance!” She punctuates this with a few more green energy darts. When Squeak wonders how they can get Gams to recognize them again, Alex grunts, his kidneys full of Goddess lightning, “That…that isn’t [Gams]…” Shit, he gave up on her pretty quick, didn’t he?

And then, the worst fucking thing happens, guys. Well, my brain just belched at me, “What if Squeak’s dragon form was a furry buff human with a 12-inch penis but he had the same voice,” so let’s go with second-worst: Ghaleon is still alive, and his injuries have not rendered him unable to speak his mind on this current Gamsthena situation. “Well…it seems…as though…the world needs…a god…after all…” he says. That is an utterly nonsensical reaction to what just happened, but I’ll take it in the context of the silver lining that Ghaleon is obviously still dying. Not that he seems to care! “I have no…need…to fight…you…again…” he tells them, a single drop of blood hanging like drool from his mouth, and his wedding cake collar all tattered, “when I…have already…emerged…victorious.” See, he’s getting the last laugh because Gamsthena is being a real bitch up there, gone mad with her reacquired power. “And better yet…her memories…of Dyne…of being reborn as a…human…have been erased.” How one led to the other is left unexplained, as is the personality shift–nobody ever bothers voicing this because they’re so preoccupied with Gams’s right to be a human girl, but the pre-shenanigans Althena we’re shown is not a deity obsessed with “absolute power” who enjoys hurling energy bolts at her peasant creations, and erasing her memories of being Gams has apparently made her less like she used to be. I guess we’re just supposed to take it as a given that Ghaleon’s brainwashing made her act like him in addition to him dressing her up as himself too? But it’s weird. Nobody is like, “But ALTHENA is nice and ALTHENA would not act like this.” Only that Gams wouldn’t.

You healed the entire fight.

I’m only chewing on this stupid detail because I’m in for one more round of Ghaleon talking a bunch without text boxes, a curse of which I thought I was forever free because I forgot this part happened. Don’t get old, folks, it sucks. Now that the dying Ghaleon has staggered to his feet, he has a good blood-saturated chuckle at Alex’s expense. “Behold the ruler you must serve,” he says. “Oh yes. You GOT what you WANTED, but NOT in the way YOU imagined. KNEEL before the black goddess of Lunar, DragonBOY! Kneel, and submit to her DARK. DESIRES.” This line would be a good one for him to go out on! Just saying. He doesn’t. “For though I shall perish, [wheeze that sounds like it was acting at first but then he inhaled a bee] I go knowing that I succeeded in tearing your one true love from you ETERNALLY. And BLACKENED. This. Pathetic. World. Forever.” One more round of spirited cough-laughing at his deeply petty life goals, and Ghaleon explodes with a black sunburst, and his body is gone. Well, that’s definitely the last we’ll see of this guy, right? Right. No question.

When Ghaleon is gone, for good, forever, Alex’s ocarina theme begins to play. I don’t think Alex is supposed to be playing it, though it is a solid anvil drop regarding what he needs to do next. After a moment of blessed silence from everyone present, Alex finally says, “I’m going to take [Gams] out of this trance…and I’m going to take her home.” He asks everyone, Squeak included, to stay behind, which Squeak somehow manages to take personally at a time like this. Get the hell over yourself, man.

CHIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKSSSSSS

Let’s just skip past the pep talk Alex gets from each of his friends–minus the above because I can’t resist highlighting it–because nobody’s exactly got any surprise insights in store. Jessica does heal Alex once she’s done with her iteration of “Believe in love, and love believing, and be in love with believing in love,” which is nice of her and actually helpful, because this shit is about to hurt and Alex doesn’t even have access to Squeak’s marsupial pouch full of Healing Nuts.

Alex starts up the stairs again, and Gamsthena still doesn’t want some gross mortal anywhere near her, even if he’s wearing a hat that makes her feel stuff somewhere down deep. Alex says nothing in return, but I have him pull out his ocarina and give it a little tootle. As the strategy guide is really, really insistent upon, Alex has to do this or Gamsthena will just ice his ass once he’s moved far enough up the stairs. This also means Alex has to have the ocarina in his inventory, hence the actual mechanically crucial point of him leaving Squeak to hang with their lesser friends. The real asshole move of this, of course, is that the thudding hint about the ocarina just now comes after it is too late to move the thing from Squeak’s inventory to his if you did not know this. I don’t know if I’ve once removed the dumb thing from Alex’s person, just in case I forgot about it later. I do appreciate that the game made one choice within it truly matter, even if the way it matters is killing you if you kept one useless item in the useless sentient item bag, and Goddess help you if you happened to save at this particular point without knowing that, because you would be supremely fucked. That’s good gameplay is what that is!

Nothing really happens when Alex plays his ocarina, which of course leads me to play it like six times just in case that divine jester hat also comes with noise-canceling earbuds. Gamsthena gets more and more agitated as Alex ignores her mandates and keeps walking toward her like a creep that can’t hear the word “no.” She pulls every trick she can to make this chud back off of her, including calling him an “infidel,” name-dropping herself several times, and of course barraging him with as much fel energy as his armor can absorb. It seems playing the ocarina actually prevents Alex from taking any damage, which is maybe the craziest detail of all. Regardless, nothing will deter Dragonmaster Alex from completing his destiny of just assuming shit will work out fine if he just keeps moving forward, and soon he is at the top of the stairs and in a pretty familiar anime cutscene.