Gamer--freakz

Sup, it's been a long time, but not as long as the previous gap between "Greatest Boss Fight" posts...


Anyway, today we got a boss from one of the games that only the hardcore JRPG fans will play...and that's from "Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice Of Arland". Seriously though, this game took a huge step forward from previous games in terms of the boss battles, everything went up over the roof here, and the boss themes in this game were just badass beyond all hell (despite being a game with a pink haired princess as the main character). Say hello to Airshatter, the final boss of the game, and probably the toughest cookie out there in the game (IMO he's harder than Evil Face from "Atelier Totori"). Before we go any deeper though, let me just clarify that the Airshatter that I'm refering to today is the one that you fight with Gio in your party, the one that you need to fight in order to get the "Alchemist!" ending. 


The normal Airshatter is a pussy, yeah, I said it. But for some god forsaken reason not known to mankind, he gains a f**king massive power spike when you decide to fight him with Gio. Without Gio, he is a shell of his former self. WITH Gio, this guy is a beast.

Yo, he is at least 10 times your size.

First off, this guy is f**king menacing. Second off, he can nullify your buffs like a jackass. His attacks hurt like crap, even at the low 70s, this guy can crush you without problem. Even with the best equipment and speed belts, this guy can WRECK you as hard as Masked G does. You WILL need the best equipment in the game with fire resistance mixed in there, because even when you take reduced damage from fire, his damage will stack up very quickly and you will lose control of the fight the instant one of your characters go down. You will need elixirs, LOTS of them, and make sure your characters have weapons with ice damaged forged in, any extra damage helps. As for your elixirs, make sure they are multi purpose, make them restore MP, revive fallen members, give fire resistance, so on and so forth. With all this in mind, you're ready to go.


Oh, and make sure that your guys are level 70, or at the very least, you need to be in the high 60s.


Fire is his play, and the volcano is his domain. If you have good fire resistance before this fight, you've pretty much secured yourself the first few turns of this fight. Yes, only the first few turns, because as the fight drags on, he WILL reduce your resistances and start doing a ton of damage. Meruru will probably be on permanent healing duty, don't bother fixing her for offense. Gio should be spamming shadow and strike, with a good speed belt, he'll be getting off multiple hits per turn, which is pretty much required, because he WILL be your main DPS in this fight. As for your second party member, I'd recommend Lias, Mimi or Esty. Lias's WT manipulation spam is VERY useful for this fight, because trust me, you don't want this guy taking moves, he hurts more and more with each hit.


With Mimi, reducing Airshatter's speed also helps tremendously. As mentioned with Lias, you don't want this guy moving if possible, with her SPD down debuff spam you can make sure that he takes only one move for your every 2. Esty is a risky one, but if you have severely buffed up weapons, you can destroy Airshatter in a short amount of time with Esty's defense debuff spam. Not to mention that she can get free turns just like Gio does, so she'll be joining him in bursting Airshatter down. Your party members have to go ALL OUT offense here, Meruru will be on healing and buff duty. If a turn frees you up to not use an elixir, throw in mystery ankhs or something to buff up your team, though this will be short lived, because Airshatter loves to debuff.

You will need to use EVERYTHING at your disposal.

Note that in this battle, you are constantly at a timer. Not only will Airshatter continuously reduce fire resistance from your team, making you prone to dieing more, he will be constantly using an attack Volcanic Bomb, which acts like a meteor item. Once he uses it, the damn thing will be bombing on your team every turn like its an extra attack from the Airshatter. What's worst is that he will continue to use it throughout the match, to the point where you will have to eat 3 bombs each turns PLUS the attack from Airshatter.


Needless to say you need to finish this fight fast. But with Gio on your team, this thing has 30000 HP and ridiculous defenses. To makes things EVEN worse, this idiot will use a move called Burn All after a set amount of turns when he hits critical levels. This attacks does thousands of points of damage and hits multiple times. In a game where your HP barely exceeds 999, a move doing thousands of points of damage is...just ridiculous. Needless to say, you WILL die from this move, and no, auto alarms can't save you, because this shit is OP. What CAN save you however, is two things. Gio and Totori. If you don't know, these 2 have passives that prevent them from going down.


That said, this is incredibly luck based. It happened to me, it can happen to you. Airshatter used Burn All, killed off Meruru, but Totori and Gio survived through their passives alone. Then Totori used Elixir to revive Meruru and the fight just continued from there. So there's a way to survive Burn All....Gio is a must have on your team, so you may be lucky enough to have his passive go off, the only reason you'd take Totori is because you'll want to use items offensively with Meruru, and you'll be using Totori as a healer.


Long story short. Kill him fast before his fire damage gets too out of hand, take elixirs that not only heal HP, MP and LP but also boost stats and resistances, take characters like Lias, Mimi and Esty for maximum effectiveness. If you do see Burn All....pray that Gio survives.


Rating: 8/10