Stage 5: Machinehead
It's NEEEWWWWWWW YUUUUUUUKOOOOOOO TIIIIIIIIIIME! Yep, yep, along with a flashy new upgrade for her Valis Sword, she also got a slick new suit of armor, which is way cooler than that yellow, red, and white thing she'd been wearing before. And with that slick set of new duds comes...
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING!
I wish I was kidding, but the Valis Sword upgrade is nothing more than some new sprite work. Literally NOTHING changes that indicates that the sword has been upgraded at all. Yuko still has the same slow and limited method of attack, her spells are exactly the same, and the sword doesn't look even the tiniest bit different.
Way to COMPLETELY fucking blow it here. Yuko could have gone from kinda lame and annoying to play as to being completely awesome for her Genesis finale. What the hell was the meaning of powering up the Valis Sword if it doesn't actually do anything for the fucking sword? What a HUGE disappointment. I know this pissed me off as a young'un too, because I always wanted to play as Yuko cause she has bloo hair, but Cham was just so much cooler. Even the cool looking new digs just can't make poor Yuko worth playing much unless you're trying to just make the game harder for yourself.
And if you are, you might just be in for that challenge you're looking for starting now...
Alright, I'm never one to really complain about videogame logic, but I really gotta ask... What the fuck? Industrial-type plants, toxic waste, lasers, robots, and fuckin' missiles? I thought this was a fantasy game? Where the hell did all this come from?
I'll let it slide, though, because the game's finally decided to turn things up a notch and provide us with a pretty decently challenging stage.
This area is fairly large. You'll notice you can make quite a vertical climb in this stage and find a lot of hidden items, including another 1-up attained by ATTACKING THE AIR! There are only a few enemy types here, but they work well enough. The flying kamikaze bug fuckers zip around and home in on you and like to come in groups of two or three if you don't take your time and deal with them when they first arrive. The purple Tox-o snakes can impede your progress a bit, working well with the kamikaze bugs. Laser traps are enemies that are in the background and can not be destroyed. They float back and forth and fire their laser at the ground, putting a temporary half to your progress while giving other enemies in the area a chance to take a bite out of your hide.
Like I said it's a decently challenging area, the only problem is that it's over way too fast. The stage almost feels like it may be vertically higher than it is horizontally long. Kind of a waste, but the challenge makes it fun enough to run through.
A cool little addition to the boss of this stage is that each character has their own brief exchange with him. I've included all three exchanges just for completion's sake.
It's nice that Rogles gets a mention in Yuko's exchange with Zalude, but I took care of him waaaaaaaaaaay back there, Hoss. That shit should be old news by now. Get over it! I also took out the somewhat cute and cuddly Megas. You should give me a little more credit here.
Finally! A challenging boss appears! Took you fucking long enough.
Zalude presents a nice challenge and probably the first legitimate challenge of the series. I consider a lot of sections in
Syd of Valis hard, but they're hard for ALL THE WRONG FUCKING REASONS! Zalude though? This guy didn't come to play house.
Zalude is basically the first boss in the series (on the Genesis) to do everything right. Nice attacks, fun attack pattern, and even makes el-cheapo Cham work her little ass off for the win. He starts the fight by flinging a series of spinny blades across the floor. While they're flashing they can't hurt you, but once they're fully visible and begin flying upward, they'll fling you into the air and do 2 damage which can totally fuck up your attack pattern if you're not careful. Some people might consider this cheap, but they may be forgetting something important. The slide is put to proper use here. The idea is to get close to Zalude and when the blades appear under your character, slide out of the way and then back toward the boss to continue your assault. While the spinny blades are working their evil distracting magic, Zalude throws a much larger and slower blade across the room which you have to jump or duck to evade. He'll sometimes follow this by rushing to the opposite side of the screen. You'll be working on this win for a while, as Zalude has a TON of health, ensuring that this fight is nice and drawn out. It shouldn't take long to learn the pattern, but fun boss fights in this series aren't exactly plentiful so enjoy it while you can.
Stage 6: The Cold Part
Stage six does NOT fuck around. I repeat. It does. Not. Fuck. Around.
The ice stage is by far the most brutal stage in the game and has the potential to snag more lives from you than any other area in the game. Why? Well, firstly most of the floors are super slick. Even when you stop, as expected, your character will continue to run for a bit before she completely comes to a halt. If enemies touch you here, you tend to slide back much further than you would normally because of the icy conditions. And lucky for you lots of enemies and obstacles are strategically placed around pits! This stage is also all about jumping and precision sliding. I mean RIDICULOUS jumping and sliding. The enemies are hardly a threat. This stage is all about finessing your way over crazy gaps using skills that the series hasn't even attempted to push onto the player until now.
Something you'll have to learn very quickly is that sliding is MAGICAL. For some strange reason in both the first
Valis game and this one, you're able to slide across gaps. Even when your entire body has clearly lost contact with the ground, you still retain the same forward momentum, which lets you clear gaps. I'm sure the Havok engine is weeping right about now...
I can deal with it though. Just a new little tool to get used to, I guess.
Things start out easy enough, but you'll soon find yourself having to make some pretty damn tricky (though some may seem just downright bullshitty at times) slides and jumps. The first of these treacherous "OH FUCK YOU" maneuvers comes at the end of the first area.
God, what a fun jump or slide this is to try and make. It's possible to clear it without taking damage, but I honestly got tired of trying. That little floaty snowflake enemy that spawns as you near the exit is just so fucking evil and wrong.
There's another evil part in the second area that involves riding a slow moving platform across an area where you have to jump and duck spikes while dealing with constantly spawning enemies. This ride has potential to end in quite a number of tragic ways. Watch out for the enemies that spawn RIGHT at the end of the ride to give you a last minute bump back off the moving platform to force you to do it all over again.
Another super fun slide comes in the third area of the stage right before the boss area.
I'm sure you can tell just from the pictures there, that this one is just NUTS. First, you have to get a slide under the spiky wall on the left so that you're nearly off the platform. This can take quite a bit of time to get right and the flying enemies in the area are there to make it even more annoying. Then you have to slide over to the next platform making sure not to slide too far and hit the little indestructable bouncy electric ball that keeps popping up and down. Even if you clear the slide, if you come into contact with him you'll be knocked back down into the pit to the left because the ground is SLIPPERY! ICE WORLD! WOOOOOOO!
When we arrive at the boss' chamber, we're given another set of unique exchanges depening on which heroine you bring into battle.
God, this dialogue is so bad... I don't really get what he means about two "beauties" though. Weeeeeiiiirrrd...
Big "story" baddie at the end of a big ol' bad ass stage that whooped my ass hardcore. This guy's definitely gotta be one to fear, right?
BZZZZZZZZT!
JUST when I think they're getting it right, they go and drop the ball again. This boss is so fucking easy that ANY of your three characters can stand right in front of him and just unload with attacks and defeat him without much trouble at all. All of his attacks can be nullified easily because your attacks destroy his projectiles rendering them utterly worthless! You don't even have to wait for the strength meter to build with Valna and Yuko, just unload. Fuck, I didn't even know this guy would teleport to the other side of the screen after running his pattern twice, because I could beat him so fast. I actually just waited it out a bit while taking pics to see if he'd do anything else. What a fucking waste.
After he falls, we're given a little more story bits with in-game dialogue.
Soooo... We were deceived into coming to the Dark World so that Glames could go to the Human World and build a tower? 'Kay, just checkin' :)
With the defeat of the last of Glames' no-name-yet-they-have-names lackeys, we bid so long to this cold, cold part of the world and prepare for the final confrontation!
Stage 7: Kill The King
What an annoying bastard-fuck stage this is. Shit on a shingle. At least it's difficult though, right? It's probably good that the game's amped up for its finale, but god damn it's out of nowhere. By the time you get to the end of the area, you won't lack any of the drive it'll take to bounce the big magic sword-weilding asshole out of the Human world once and for all.
The first area is a long trek up with many side-paths to throw you off. This place is what the game should have been beginning with probably Stage 2. Lotsa enemies inhabiting huge levels! There are quite a few annoying bits where you can fall down and lose a couple floors progress, but thankfully most enemies won't respawn to annoy you further.
That said,
FUCK. EYEBALLS. God damn, I haven't encountered a more annoying stage enemy since the blimps in Stage 2 of
Syd of Valis. I think they might even be on the same level as Medusa Heads from
Castlevania. The fuckers respawn CONSTANTLY and swarm the screen in circular patterns always homing in on your character. You honestly don't get much time to dick around in this stage as these guys are always pushing you forward. You'll often find yourself in very small cramped areas where they'll home in on you at an angle that you simply can't attack from and have to take a hit. Annnnnnoooyyyying.
The second area provides a brief reprieve from the little fucks though and is a nice straight forward hallway with some slides under spikes and a few flying dragon guys that aren't all that bad.
The third area is more of the same as the first. Another trek up, though not nearly as bad as the first one. Just some smaller platforms to navigate.
The final area before Glames simply has you dodging between some white goo dripping from the ceiling and some more flying dragons. Careful not to damage your nanomachines here.
The long hard road is over and we're face to face with the man who holds your Sword's dark twin. The Human world is counting on you. Though, I doubt they know they are, because something tells me this whole accident is gonna be covered up by the government.
Hey, look who it is hanging outside of Glames' chamber! Good ol' Nizetti. He got a lot smaller...
And WHAT BULLSHIT! You're going to use the storyline to force me into using a somewhat gimpy character for the final boss fight, but you wouldn't use the storyline earlier to give her a bit of a boost like a better attack or maybe less damage with that spiffy new armor? Oh, fuck you.
Here we are, face to face with Glames. The BIG RED MEANY Himself! Turns out though, he's not all that mean. At least the first phase of the battle.
He slowly inches toward Yuko swinging that big sword of his. Doesn't he know that shit's dangerous? He'll also occasionally stop and cast a SLIGHTLY MORE POWERFUL version of Yuko's Fire magic. I think they look more like peppers or maybe flying space carrots... He also has an ice attack you'll probably not even see. It comes in the form of a bouncy ball that slowly bounces down the screen top to bottom. Oddly, it only takes about ten hits to push this fight to the second phase.
The second phase plays much like the first, only now Glames floats around. He uses basically the same attacks as he did in the first phase, but his sword now fires a projectile and he can fire it two to three times in a row and connect a good bit of the time if he's close to the ground when he uses it. Other than him getting into a weird cheap-out "crowd you in a corner to steal your HP" pattern, he's a pussycat. Make good use of sliding when you can so he doesn't crowd you and stop to destroy his magic carrots when they're coming at you and this fight is over. There's not much to feel great about when you finally trounce Glames. He's just not a great final boss at all. Reminds me WAY too much of the Rogles fight at the end of the first game.
And with that...THE WORLD IS SAVED!
And thus, the Sega Genesis
Valis journey comes to a close. All in all,
Valis on the Genesis... Not quite as cool as I thought it was back then.
Valis and
Valis III are by no means horrible games, they're just blissfully average.
Valis III tried to and successfully corrected a lot of the flaws of the first game, but the lack of challenge is really what hurts both this and the first game badly. You could do a hell of a lot worse when it comes to some action platforming, but you could also do much better.
