Ys: Memories of Celceta Post-Game Thoughts

Well, finished my Hard mode run last night. Spoilery~~~

• The last few bosses were all right. Having maxed out Adol’s best weapon and armor helped. ^^; In fact, the battle in the Temple of the Sun was super easy. ^^ So if you want some decent challenge in the game, DON’T reinforce final weapons to maximum. ^^ (They even turn a Nightmare run into a joke.)
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• Using Adol as the player character allowed me to mow down all the enemies in the Bronze, Silver, and Gold areas with ease too. :B Aura Fencer for all!
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• I did the Silver Area first; just like I did in the Japanese version. XD I wrote up a mini walkthrough for the JP version of the dungeon: https://koukoupuffs.net/2012/10/18/ys-celceta-log-17/
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• I noticed that XSEED asked Falcom to mark starting points and doorways or whatever on the overview map of the Gold Area. Wish we had that luxury in the JP game. :E Still, it’s easy to figure out where you are as long as you pay attention to the green marker that indicates where your party is. Here’s a walkthrough for the puzzle there: https://koukoupuffs.net/2012/10/19/ys-celceta-visual-guide-to-solving-the-touch-puzzle-in-the-gold-space-%E9%BB%84%E9%87%91%E3%81%AE%E9%96%93-in-iris/
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• Oh lord, right before I went to fight the final boss, I checked the journal and saw I had 98.6% chests found. 9__9 Found one in the Underground Ruins in a place I completely ignored when I ran through there multiple times. 😛 The other one was in the Tower of Providence. Oddly, it wasn’t the chest that was in the lower level that can only be obtained if you fell at a certain spot during the dash across the falling platforms. ^^
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• Of course, I also have missing harvest points. X___x I came across one while going through some areas that I suspected I may have missed stuff since I was rushing through them. ^^ I found 2 so far — one in the Colonia Battlefield and the other in one of the mini tunnels in the Ancient Burrow. I think I only have one more left now.
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• It’s kind of annoying that it’s so easy to fill in shrouded areas on the map. That’s the reason I missed the one in the Burrow; I didn’t realize that anything was there since the harvest point wasn’t in the “field of vision”. 9__9
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• Fought the optional boss. Took several minutes of hit and run to beat it down. ^^ What I did was lure it into the more narrow area south of its original spot and then ran up to it and used Aura Fencer a few times & EX Skill, ran away to stand around to heal (I had the Spirit Cape+ on), and then go back and attack it again. ^^
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• Loaded up the clear game data on Easy to do the Boss Rush. XD I completed it but didn’t remember there was a trophy for getting through it without using Retry. I forgot which boss did me in. :V Pro tip: equip the Courage Scarf so you can gain SP while walking/running if you can’t use Flash Guard at will to replenish SP. :V You can’t change equipment during a boss fight so you’ll have to make all edits before selecting to do Boss Rush. Alternatively, the Blue Tree Earring may work well too.
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• Ahaha. I encountered a weird bug in the Underground Ruins on one of the bridges. I swapped out a character and for some reason, no clipping kicked in and the character fell into oblivion — that is, into an area of complete darkness. Other party members followed and then I got the Game Over screen. 9__9 They all said their dying phrases too. ^^
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• Added on Dec 11th: Finally!

  

  For a while, I thought I was missing harvest points in Mt. Vesuvio since I counted only 15 materials. Then I realized that the Strange Mass wouldn’t be counted twice even if it popped up from multiple points. >_> Anyway, I only managed to discover my missing location after loading up the Japanese version where I already got the 100% resources found trophy. After that, I proceeded to take screencaps, transferred them to my computer, and then go through them while comparing them with the in-game map of the English version. ^^;
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• Got all Boss Rush and Time Attack trophies! Turns out Volnake is a pretty good boss for the Reckless Abandon one. It may also be possible with the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Area bosses too. Only the Sacred Beasts’ Lair & Iris Central Area bosses stump me in terms of defeating them fast.
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• Opted to use the last Sun Stone I had to make the Gaia Mace for Canlilica. 😀
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• Edit on December 14th: BEHOLD! Double Platinum!!

  

• You know, it took until the 4th playthrough for me to realize that I could switch to another character and continue attacking while the initial chara I was controlling is pulling off an EX skill. 9__9
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• Pro tip: If you want an easy time against the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Area bosses in Iris, take control of Canlilica and Adol and use their high stun skills. The enemies are guaranteed to go down in seconds even on Nightmare with a high levelled party + equipment. ^^;
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• Speaking of Canlilica, I love her skills! She’s got range and area attacks which make battles kind of a breeze! I spam Gold Rush and Blitz Chaser like crazy. XD I also like quite a few of Frieda’s skills as well. The only characters I don’t really care for when it comes to fighting are Duren and Ozma.
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• While still on the subject of skills, I must say that I completely skipped over the little tutorial screen that pops up about them early in the game. (Of course, the page is available for review in the menu too but lord knows I NEVER look at the Manual section). As a result, I spent much time raging about how there was no sure-fire method of unlocking them. This came about after I thought I mastered all the skills for every character and was then baffled when the trophy notification didn’t appear. It turned out that Ozma was missing 2 skills and Karna was missing 1. Why couldn’t Falcom have just stuck with the criteria of unlocking skills when a) a character reaches a certain level or b) when certain skills reach a certain level? Anyway, here’s what I ended up writing: https://koukoupuffs.net/2013/12/14/ys-memories-of-celceta-jack-of-all-trades-trophy-is-ugh/