Like
Velagunder before it, the second boss of
Ys II is invulnerable to physical attacks. After completing their descent into the Mines of Ys and their subsequent ascent through the Ice Park, the player solves a brief illusion puzzle and finds themselves confronted by a monster that casts fire magic of its own.
While Velagunder had to be attacked immediately after firing, Tyalmath instead requires the player to take advantage of an opening just before he attacks rather than right after. (In practice the boss is vulnerable both before and after, but if the player wants to survive then they need to shoot first at least once.) Similar to Dark Fact, the difficulty of the fight comes from Tyalmath being able to fire in eight directions while the player can only do so in four. It also comes from Tyalmath having something the player doesn't—being able to bump. The player now feels the full weight of losing the original combat mechanics, as Tyalmath tries to simultaneously shoot them down with fireballs and chase them around the arena to ram them into the snow.
The most interesting aspect of the fight is how Tyalmath uses perspective to convey the illusion of depth, jumping up "towards" the screen and becoming bigger or smaller depending on how close he is to our own world. It's an impressive visual effect
even on the original PC-88 hardware, but it also betrays something about
Ys II: this game is much more an aesthetic showcase for the computers and consoles it was published on than it is a mechanically sound game. This is far from the last boss in
Ys II meant to show off hardware power, but it is one of the more blatant.
Fortunately, boss #3
marks a significant upswing over what came before.
No comments:
Post a Comment