So, Tower 3. First up, let’s check in with the strategy guide to see what ridiculous feats of min-maxing are expected of me. Well, it looks like the Defibrillator Vest and Soldier’s Honor accessories I found in Tower 2 both have skills I should have extracted, as the mutated Realians in Tower 3 alternate between instantly killing my party members and disabling their attacks. I settle for equipping these items on KOS-MOS and Ziggy, who finally acquires Executioner. Of course, Tower 3 has almost none of the Roombas that Executioner works so well against, but the animation involves Ziggy looking away like he’s a cool guy near an explosion as a giant guillotine blade thuds into the ground, so who cares?
Like a boss.
Because there just weren’t enough ladders in Tower 2, Dr. Mizrahi made sure to place a bunch more in Tower 3. You’d think, with this massive ladder budget, that he could have put a couple of them in Tower 1 instead of the stupid one-way elevator/laundry chute combo. While navigating Tower 2’s ladders was mostly a matter of picking one and stumbling into flamethrowers and/or treasure chests, in Tower 3 there’s a bit more of a puzzle element to it, with destructible bridges, arbitrarily destroyed flooring preventing access to ladders, and large boxes inexplicably sitting on top of other ladders. It’s still not really a puzzle, because there’s no real way to screw it up. But puzzles in Xenosaga are more about making something that should take five minutes–like getting from one side of a room to the other–take an hour, without even the minor side effect of making you feel like you’ve accomplished something. Well, I’m sure someone out there thinks that finding a couple more accessories and another Segment Address decoder count as accomplishments. But someone out there also thought that the earlier cutscenes with Albedo and MOMO deserve Oscars.
If there weren’t a large pile of cutscenes still ahead of us, I would make more of an effort to describe this irritating trek through Tower 3. But we’ve got bigger fish to fry, and seriously, it’s one fucking room with a bunch of stupid ladders. There’s only so much I can do with this shit. And because doing it once isn’t enough fun, the guide recommends clearing this tower several times to level up techs, ethers, and skills, since the last thing I want to do is “rush forward to a stage you cannot beat.” Well, guess what: even half-assing this as much as I possibly can, I manage to complete this dungeon without arbitrarily reclearing Tower 3 over and over again. The main reason? The two bosses at the center of the Phallus of Nephilim are clearly intended to be A.G.W.S. fights, so it doesn’t matter in the slightest what fucking skills and techs the party has. Bradygames really deserves a slow, sarcastic golf clap for this one.
Past the Room o’ Ladders Redux, the party finds a much smaller room with three phallic pillars of red, green, and blue light, each one presumably representing a tower in the Phallus, given the color scheme. Each pillar is incrementally destructible and emits a differently pitched chime, so clearly this is a puzzle. KOS-MOS, though, has no time for anymore cutesy puzzle bullshit, and just wantonly explodes portions of the blue and red pillars until the doorway to the south unlocks. The game actually does illustrate how to handle this puzzle, via a tiny mockup version in a room to the west. I didn’t even bother entering this room until I’d already solved the puzzle with a combination of brute force and dumb luck. Logic would dictate placing the clue to this puzzle in the room before the puzzle itself, not the room after, but what the fuck do I know? Clearly these guys are the puzzle experts.
Leaving via the door to the south leads to the final bridge console. Tower 3’s tip emits a bright blue jizz beam and links back to Tower 1, which also allows access to another platform at the midpoint between the two. After a trip back to the Tower 2 save point, Jailbait makes his way to this platform, which is now lit with the three colors of the towers. He fiddles with the console here to create another sparkly elevator down to the entrance of the center shaft of the Phallus, or the Urethra of Nephilim.
Inside the Urethra, Jailbait runs up to confront his best pal Albedo, still sitting on his throne, and still clutching MOMO’s unconscious body. Oh, well isn’t that strange. No one really bothers commenting on this, because they’re all stupid. Albedo greets them with, “Please spare me from any trite lines like, ‘You’re still alive?'” No one was going to say that. Shut up. “Life and death are merely empty words lacking any power over me.” They obviously still have some power over him, namely the power to make him never stop fucking talking about them. Caressing the MOMO in his arms, he asks Jailbait if she knows the truth about how the two of them are “monsters.” Yeah, he mentioned it over breakfast one morning. “Before we go any further with this relationship, MOMO, you should know that the guy everyone thinks is my dad, this other guy you’ve never met, and I are all weaponized ladyboys. Pass the bacon.”
Now that Albedo has specifically called attention to her, Jailbait’s all “MOMO!” And from behind him, Catatonic!MOMO puts her hands around his neck and starts throttling him. Ziggy, Shion, KOS-MOS, and CHAOS!!! stand there doing absolutely nothing. Well, KOS-MOS does whip out the R-POPCORN attachment so they have something to snack on while Jailbait gets strangled to death. As she’s choking him, interference-free, Catatonic!MOMO whispers, “I want the me that’s inside you…” I’m not even going to bother figuring out what that means, since the answer is probably “nothing.” With a flash, Catatonic!MOMO reverts to her true Kirschwasser form. Only at this moment do the others react. Shion puts her hands over her mouth and cries, “MOMO?!” while Ziggy says, “That’s not her.” YOU THINK SO, BUDDY? What tipped you off? The other MOMO giving Albedo a comatose lap dance? Or this one murdering Jailbait in front of you?
By the way, they’re still not helping. If my little strawberry parfait dies because Ziggy and everyone else caught Shion’s pudding brain disease, I’m going to light my desk on fire.
‘KOS-MOS, use X-DUCKFACE!’
Oh, and Albedo is still talking. Shocking, I know. “Free from the bonds of flesh… A pure consciousness has no true form. All that exists is the longing for reality,” he monologues while Jailbait wriggles around. I guess that’s him fanwanking how the Kirschwasser managed to disguise herself as MOMO? Honestly, I was ready to accept that without question. But thanks for trying, I suppose. Sick of Albedo’s chatter, and realizing that his “friends” are just going to stand around and let a little girl kill him, Jailbait finally screams “Get off me!!” and blasts the Kirschwasser back with a radial blast of fire. At this, MOMO squirms a little in Albedo’s arms. “Did you see that, ma pêche…?” Albedo asks her rhetorically, since her eyes are closed. “You’re witness to his true nature right now…a consciousness desperately struggling to stay alive. Such a pitiful sight.” Holy shit, Albedo, we get it, you’ve conquered mortality. No one fucking cares.
“This is unseemly, Rubedo,” he goes on, like Jailbait defending himself is somehow worse than mindraping a little girl. MOMO moans for Jailbait again, which just prompts Albedo to use his pointy fingers on her brain some more. Let’s just say Jailbait isn’t the one who makes me want to take a shower. Well, he makes me want to take a cold shower. Totally different. “Albedo! Get your stinkin’ hands off of her!” Jailbait cries, sounding even lamer than George McFly. He waves his little pistol at Albedo threateningly. I know he missed the self-decapitation demonstration earlier, but you’d think he’d realize this is a futile gesture anyway. Albedo obviously does, so he sucks some more mojo out of MOMO and basically dares Jailbait to shoot him. When he does, Albedo quacks on some more about the sweetness of pain and feeling alive and blah blah worst character ever.
While he’s doing awful things to MOMO with his hands, Albedo continues to lecture Jailbait with his patented bloviating dime-store psychology. “Try to remember, Rubedo. What it takes…what you must do… Or…have you lived in peace for so long that you’ve completely forgotten?” Jailbait, still pointing his gun at Albedo despite that demonstrably failing to do jack shit to him, replies, “I don’t give a damn about what you have to say!” Neither do I, and yet here we both are. Isn’t that frustrating? Anyway, Jailbait demands that he give MOMO back, but Albedo’s like, “Uh, no, I would prefer to keep molesting her.” Jailbait calls him a “freak contaminated by U-DO,” which gets Shion to pay attention for the first time in 10 minutes, if only so she can repeat, “U-DO…?” in a braindead tone. “More like…evolved,” Albedo replies. “I experienced but a fragment of my true power that day. The waves that inundated my body are now a part of me!” It totally makes sense that UUUUUUUUUUU-DOOOOOOOOOOOO and Albedo are BFFs. “I’ve reached a higher stage of existence compared to you incomplete mortals,” he adds, just so everyone has to take a shot. (Serious note: don’t make a drinking game out of the Albedo scenes in this recap. You will kill yourself.) Finally, siphoning more God knows what out of MOMO, he declares, “I am the alpha and omega of perfect consciousness!” Albedo’s oeuvre here was just one element short of perfect, brain-melting turgidity, and that element was a Xenogears reference. He’s truly on top of the mountain now.
That was one too many pretentious statements for Jailbait to handle–oh, and he wants to save MOMO and stuff–so he starts shooting again. This time, he succeeds in blowing Albedo’s head off, but now everyone gets to be treated to the regeneration trick. “Impossible…” Ziggy monotones. “Is that nanotechnology…?” Shion responds in the negative, adding, “Nanomachines can’t work anywhere near that fast, and besides… Not even the research laboratories have models with head-regenerating capabilities yet.” They must not, or someone would have tried to grow her a new, working brain by now. Also, I like that Ziggy is content to stand around and watch the little girl under his protection endure torture, but once there’s something to exposit about, he can’t just sit back. Fucking A–Jailbait excluded, what is wrong with these people?
CHAOS!!!, who’s been more silent than anyone but the Geishabot 5000, exposits that Albedo is a U.R.T.V., “just like [Jailbait]…” Shion’s is all “Wha-huh?” at this, so CHAOS!!! explains further: “They were created for the express purpose of eradicating U-DO.” Of course, Shion responds, “U-DO…?” First, fucking skank. Second, is now really the time for all this exposition? Can’t they discuss U.R.T.V.s and U-DO and every other goddamn acronym under the sun after they stop Albedo and get the fuck out of here?
Of course they can’t. And it wouldn’t matter anyway, because Albedo’s going to talk as much as he fucking pleases. This is torture. He’s now moved on to calling Jailbait a frightened, selfish jerk. “Rubedo…so cruel…” he says. “And yet this girl clings to you so dearly. Isn’t it pitiful?” There are more pitiful things in the world, like the fact that my alcohol has run out before my tape. I know I pity me. Everyone sees something twinkly fall away from MOMO and hit the ground. Thankfully, it is not one of MOMO’s crystallized tears, turned into the Silver Moon Crystal–it’s the bullet bracelet Jailbait made for her. “One more layer…” Albedo is saying. “Just one more layer, and then I’ll have everything inside of her. I’m sure you know what that means, Rubedo.” I’m sure we all know what that means.
Even though we’ve all been witness to MOMO’s mindfucking for a good long while at this point, Jailbait decides he can’t take anymore. Shouting “Noooooo!!” he explodes with fire again, freezing everyone else in place and apparently in negative light. In that instant, we’re transported into MOMO’s traumatized brain, I think, where Dr. Mizrahi is lecturing into his webcam. “This is the extent of my power…” he tells MOMO via Skype. “Nobody can stop the events that are about to unfold. All I can do is delay the inevitable for just a while longer. But at the least, I can entrust this to you…” Shaking his head, like he feels bad for MOMO that this is about to happen, he continues, “The events are starting to come together. Soon, you will meet them… So, until then…” Albedo’s voice cuts in over this, so I guess even with Jailbait freezing time or whatever, he’s still poking away inside MOMO’s abused little head. He can’t wait to see what Joachim Mizrahi “entrusted” to her, but before he can get to it, he’s assaulted with a bunch of her memories of her ineffectual rescuers (including at least one CHAOS!!! ass shot), and then a vision of KOS-MOS leaps to the forefront. No, I have no idea, either. A beat later, Jailbait’s fireball reaches him and knocks him off his pedestal and away from MOMO.
MOMO’s most terrifying memory.
Jailbait runs over to MOMO to check on her and the others follow, like they were at all interested in her welfare before this point. Meanwhile, Albedo is laughing again. Why didn’t they just dress him up in clown makeup, call him Kefka, and call it a day? But I’m just a hater–laughing during dramatic scenes makes him deep and complex. “I see!” he says through his giggling. He looks at KOS-MOS, and then at Shion, before declaring that “It all makes sense now…” No, it doesn’t. Fuck you for saying it does.
Golden showers from Albedo!
Either Albedo got what he wanted out of MOMO or he’s just as bored with this scene as I am, because he decides to jump into his white mech with the fabulous lavender trim. “But now…Rubedo, how about we enjoy a moment or two together,” he says, spurring on the last three doujinshi artists who weren’t already all over that pairing. “Come on… Our time has arrived!” For some reason I will probably never understand, he sucks the soul of his Kirschwasser copilot into the controls. Maybe they’re the batteries for this thing? I don’t know. I’m just happy I can stop transcribing Albedo’s lines for a few minutes.
Like I said earlier, given that this battle is against Albedo and his mech, it is intended to be fought in A.G.W.S. The party is even automatically set to Shion, Jailbait, and CHAOS!!!, in case I’m slow on the uptake with this. Sadly, even with all that foreplay between Jailbait and Albedo, this encounter is a poor climax–it’s all basically a warm-up for the next fight, with our heroes doing nothing but beating on Albedo until he goes away. For what it’s worth, though, Albedo does enjoy assaulting Jailbait with his mech-sized phallic lightsaber.