Designing Ys II, Vol. 3: Gelaldy

Among the seven bosses of Ys II, Gelaldy stands out for being the most polished. Velagunder was boring and Tyalmath underwhelming, and the boss immediately after Gelaldy is downright embarrassing. But the boss of Burnland/Burnedbless has a distinct attack pattern that meshes well with the magic system and creates phase-like sequences of interaction with the player. It's not a multiphase boss in the Dragonlord sense, but just slightly more complex than the likes of Nygtilger and Khonsclard.

So why does Gelaldy work? The fight begins with the big green guy simply chasing the player around the arena, immune to both physical and magical attacks. After the player leads him on long enough, Gelaldy will stop and heave up a tapeworm, causing the player to now be pursued from two different angles. After evading the tapeworm for a bit, Gelaldy will recall it and loop back to the beginning of his pattern.

The key is that Gelaldy's points of vulnerability are when he is either spitting up or horking down his worm. At any other time the Fire spell will simply bounce off of him, while at these moments the player can blast away at the big beheaded beast. This property is what creates the fight's victory sequence; the player evades, then fires while Gelaldy is setting the worm up, evades again, and then fires when he's taking it out of play. Mechanically it follows a pattern in Ys II—Velagunder was vulnerable after attacking and Tyalmath immediately before, now Gelaldy is vulnerable both before and after his attack sequence. Having a sequence to the fight makes it more engaging for the player than Ys II's previous bosses, as it gives them cues to pay attention to and something to plan for during the moment-to-moment play. It's no Dark Fact, but you're always watching for that opening while going up against Gelaldy.

On a broader level, Gelaldy represents a kind of threshold in the gameplay of Ys II. Every Ys boss takes place before a doorway that represents some kind of major change, whether that's acquiring new information through a Book of Ys or even traveling to the land itself. The journey up to the point of fighting Gelaldy has been about ascending up towards the peak of the island, while the journey after is about saving its people and undoing the hundreds-year-old circumstances that placed it in the skies of Esteria. There's not any particular deep significance in what he is as a monster, but it's important that this boss leave an impression on the player as they're going between these two components of the storyline.

(Also of passing interest is that this specific section of Ys II seems to have impacted Toby Fox's Undertale. He's already listed the music of the duology as influential, but the PC Engine/TurboGrafx version's Burnland and the later Ys Core areas seem to have influenced Hotland and the CORE in Undertale.)

Count your lucky stars that this boss turned out so well. Boss #4 is frustrating in an entirely different way...