lots of boss fights...

I sure hope that this isn't a pattern in this game, again I went through 4 boss battles in a row, long dull ones...

After entering the room with the giant door I was thrown into a battle with a giant lava worm. It took a few tries to figure out it's patterns, luckily the game lets you start back up at the beginning of the fight. Then is was just a long drag of charging, using a powerful attack to chip off 5% health, and healing. The bosses seem to be really strong, but health kits are so cheap your party lasts for ever, so each fight is just whacking each other for up to half an hour.

After that fight we got the red moon crystal, but the randomly helpful belly dancer turns out to be a empire general all along (not much of a surprise) and uses it to summon a giant ancient war monster. Those for unnerving giant heads I saw on the way in turns out the be the 4 heads of the weird crab like thing. The battle against it turns outjust to be an endrance test to survive about 6 rounds before the game admits the fight is an impossible waste of time and resources. Wish I didn't have to try 8 times before being told I'm wasting my time...

The next battle is a ship to ship one against the empire general, and it's mostly a pointless fight too since you can't do any damage really until the main harpoon gun is ready. This is made worse by the fact that every couple of turns you have to chose a course of action, get it wrong and the harpoon is delayed even longer. so it's basically 4 turns of charging and healing and then killing the other ship in one shot when the game feels nice enough to let you use the harpoon. Once defeated the general calls off the giant monster, we get the moon crystal back, and the general has to walk home. This is odd since it's a floating desert with no towns on it, and it's been stated that some one would barley survive a day on foot in it, so this is almost a death sentence that the heroes happily give out.

The last boss fight was optional and my mistake to getting into. When we got back to port I spotted a big NPC that I haven't seen before, so I talk to him and it turns out that it's a evil pirate that has a price on it's head. Figuring that this will be a simple ship to ship battle like last time I agree to fight, then I find out that the guy is just the body guard for the small mage boss and it's a straight battle against the two of them, and I can't just quit since I didn't save yet after the past 3 fights. This was a long and frustrating battle, the guard has attacks that can kill any one not blocking with 1 hit, and the mage has spells that cuts the strength of the party in half, confuses one character, heals the guard, or just does tons of damage. So I first target the mage, but I find out that when his health is low he flings his guard at some one for an instant kill, so I have to chip away at the guard while he keeps trying to lower our strength. I finally get into a pattern of charging, attacking, healing, and removing status ailments to kill the guard. Then when all my healing items are gone and half my team dead I start on the mage, constantly alternating between attacking and healing or charging. After over half an hour of this I beat them and the two remaining characters go up two levels.

If all the boss fights are as long, drawn out, and potentially pointless I'm going to have a very hard time finishing this game...