La-Mulana 2 - fish. it is a fish. it's true.

[PSI Ninja]

Spiral Hell is where my blind playthrough ended. I took a long break from this game just before figuring out how to enter this field, mostly because of real life issues, and also because I have this thing where I tend to stop playing games right before the end. Maybe it's because I subconsciously don't want games I like to end. Anyway, I had to look up some stuff to get myself back up to speed. But it's good to finally see how a blind player figures it out, in spite of all the shenanigans that happened today. Some of my own thoughts on Spiral Hell in the spoiler below:

Yeah, Spiral Hell is definitely easier than Hell Temple, probably because it's required this time. But the two feel so different in spirit, that I don't think they're comparable. Sure, there are the falling traps and references to rooms in the original (the infamous spike room), but I think it's missing a lot of the personality and intensity that made Hell Temple stand out. The only thing I found difficult here was the very last jump in that spike room (which also gave raocow trouble), because you only have a fraction of a second to make the jump to the next room without hitting the spikes above you or triggering the screen transition below. Glad to know that there's an easy way to circumvent that. Likewise, I just treated falling into Fenrir's trap as a death and restarted instead of fighting it again.

Overall, I thought that Spiral Hell was a bit disappointing and felt kind of phoned in. Maybe because it's pretty straightforward and relatively short, but it lacked that "wow" factor and didn't feel epic as the final dungeon. Not to mention all of the bosses on your path can be bypassed. I thought that they could have done so much more with this field, and it was a missed opportunity.

Also, that angel boss,

whose name is Skuld, was another boss I gunned down. Her spray attack makes it very difficult to get close enough to try anything else. At this point, I just wanted to finish the game as quickly as possible. The only reason I fought her was to get her glossary entry on the way to unlocking the "Encyclopedia Completionist" achievement.

[Alice]

The spike room, or more specifically Fenrir refight, is why I ended up dropping the game. I actually thoroughly enjoyed Hell Temple as a whole in the first game. Except for that shitty spike room. It's worse here though since failing it means refighting Fenrir. And at the time I reached it this meant EVERY SINGLE FREAKING TIME due to a stupid bug. I rage quit and haven't touched it since.

The spike room in Hell Temple was frustrating and unfun but excusable since Hell Temple was optional. Here it's no longer optional and not much less frustrating. Even more so when unlike in Hell Temple, hitting any spike results in you hitting every other spike on the way down which just adds insult to injury and whittles away your health. On your way to a boss refight that's far from trivial even with endgame gear. I failed about the same place as raocow on my initial attempt at the room, fought Fenrir and won, got back to about the same place, and as soon as I saw Fenrir was back I was just done.

I'd already been pissed off by how frustrating and exhausting making any progress had felt throughout much of the game in the first place but at this point I was also incredibly annoyed at the fact I could no longer even 100% the game thanks to the Blood Corridor crap completely locking you out of part of Takamagahara where I was missing a glossary entry. I had literally everything else collected that you could up to the spike room. (Which I think is everything except the final glossary entry?)

I was thoroughly unimpressed by Spiral Hell to begin with though. It's just a blatant ripoff of Hell Temple with everything that actually made Hell Temple interesting removed. It was a pretty awful final field. Even Eternal Prison and Icefire Treetop, despite how infuriating they are to navigate, are significantly better since they're at least interesting. If they were going to go with a Hell Temple inspiration they could have at least shelled out the effort to not make the majority of it a boring copy+paste job.

Edit: Also, raocow, I'm fairly certain that reaching Spiral Hell is actually quicker and easier from the other Immortal Battlefield grail point.

[Voltgloss]

just to be clear: Alice is correct that in an earlier build of the game, Fenrir at the bottom of the spike pit respawned even if you defeated him. somewhere along the way, this was patched so that if you actually defeat Fenrir down there, it does not respawn.

[helucard]

Once again, I feel as though I dodged a bullet by continuing playing 2 years later than I started.

[FPzero]

In the final drop of the spike room, you can also just jump straight down the center, and then jump left onto the wall and slowly grapple claw down it until you're at the right angle for the jump. Works better than trying to blind time the double jump if you're having trouble.

[PSI Ninja]

I have mixed feelings about the 9th Child fight. The first two phases felt like filler, because they were trivially easy. So it was annoying to have to go through them each time you died during a later phase. For the third phase, it's very difficult to avoid damage while riding the tentacles up towards the face. The mantra chant to make the boss vulnerable seemed finicky to me. Sometimes I needed two tries to get it to work. I guess the face needs to be fully on-screen for it to take effect? I chanted as soon as I could see the face while hitching a ride from the rock elevators at the start. The third phase was the most infuriating part of the fight for me, and my success in the final phase seemed to depend partly on how little damage I took here.

On the other hand, I thought that the final phase was a lot of fun. It was just satisfying to find the ideal sub-weapon to use for certain Guardian attacks, such as the flares for Anu and the bombs for Echidna. Rapid-firing chakrams for the times when it hung out halfway up the screen felt awesome too. It took me quite a few attempts, but I felt myself getting better every time. Honestly, if this phase had been the whole fight, then I would have been happy.

[Crow]

also just fyi rao there are a few -things- you can do during the escape sequence that are completely optional but Neat™
if you want to know what they are/where to find them i can post them after tomorrow's video

[Bluster Kerfuffle]

the mother got her wish in the end, how beautiful

[helucard]

Beating the game through your own achievements is a valid stance and an admirable one at that. "Maybe it's selfish" you say, but... No? I'd think other people DEMANDING you do 100% would be selfish, especially since it's... just for the sake of completion - it's your playthrough. Play it your way, yo.

You figured out the whole 5th Prophecy element of the fight quickly enough. I despised that entire phase personally though, just on a design standpoint. The rest seems fundamentally fine, but that one phase is the one part that can kill a run just by virtue of its Damage Lines Everywhere policy. It restricts movement with those lasers and demands movement to avoid them, then it fundamentally requires specific movement to reach a combat ready position - which if it's badly synced, will drag you into lasers. Then when you're up there, you absolutely cannot waste your time with throwing damage out, or you spend more time in laser hell, but if you're too hasty you get punished. It's a miserable phase to endure, and ultimately your performance here impacts how long you can keep up the fight against the Final Phase.

It took me 2 days to beat this fight. Seeing you ace it on that turn you carried like 95% of your health in though? Amazing. I feel validated. I totally feel the pain on having to make it back to the fight every single attempt though. With all the other QoL changes between LM1 and 2, like restarting in front of ankhs and stuff if you die at a boss, I'm... genuinely baffled by the decision to neglect that here. The walk back every time was demoralising.

Also love last moment Gun - in the end, she can show off how powerful she is, but it means nothing when you can just be Harrison Ford on a sick day. Respect.

Best of luck with the escape!

[Voltgloss]

Also love last moment Gun - in the end, she can show off how powerful she is, but it means nothing when you can just be Harrison Ford on a sick day. Respect.

heck yeah

[Awoo]

Also love last moment Gun - in the end, she can show off how powerful she is, but it means nothing when you can just be Harrison Ford on a sick day. Respect.

heck yeah

From what I've heard, Harrison Ford was apparently pretty sick when they filmed that and didn't actually want to *film* the elaborate scene they had choreographed, so instead he remembered that Indiana Jones carried a revolver and decided to pull it and shoot at the guy.



for what it's worth.

[S.N.N.]

Seeing this LP wind down reminds me how much I loved this game when I first played it. Not going to deny that the boss design wasn't the best, and some of the late-game stuff felt a bit broken and/or lazy - see: most of Spiral Hell - but I still really loved a ton of the riddles and overall atmosphere. That, and solving some of the tougher puzzles (i.e. the footprints, Brahma, connecting the Corridor of Blood) really gave me a feeling of success I haven't really felt from any other games since.

Also: proud to say that although I didn't post my boss order earlier, the order I beat them in actually matches the 9th Child's build-up from each, so heck yeah!

[FPzero]

I actually love what Spiral Hell represents as a climax, especially as someone who cleared Hell Temple. I love the idea/theory that Hell Temple was actually part of Eg-Lana the whole time, and that the reason it was so hard to get to was because it's a secret entrance to Eg-Lana. It's a little bit of fan-service, by bringing back the hardest area in the original game, and saying "now you have to do it". It's a bit easier than the original for that reason, but I loved it nonetheless, even with a few Hell Temple traps still in there.

The 9th Child fight was super hard for me but that's because I basically went full aggro the whole fight. You played much more reserved and it paid off huge. It was definitely a fight I beat with just a sliver of HP left. Bombs were a really good idea for the Echidna part of the fight; I never thought to use them and instead went with spears.

3rd phase of the fight sucks royally though. It looks like it might have been patched at some point though, because when I fought it I recall sliding off the rising tentacles really easily if I hopped on at the wrong angle. Didn't look like that happened here though, at least from what we saw.

[helucard]

for what it's worth.

I had never seen this video, so that's something new :D
Thanks

[Alice]

raocow, your excuse for not using app combos kinda sucks to be blunt. Your excuse basically boils down to the game not giving you the combos in the way you want and then doubling down by refusing to even use a guide. Like if you don't want to use them, fine. Just don't go with such an easily countered excuse. Just flat out state it instead.

As for the final boss, I never fought her since I stopped at the spike room but in both Iso's lp and this one I wasn't particularly impressed overall. For the most part she's not really all that different than Mother was. And in that regard it actually kinda feels like Spiral Hell is perfectly fitting for her. A near clone of a field in the previous game that was better. Likewise Mother was a better fight overall in my opinion. (Though to be fair, this one is far from the worst in LM2 at least. It's just unimpressive.)

Parts of the end of the game are pretty neat like the Brahma puzzle and the prophecy stuff. The Corridor if Blood was interesting in concept but the fact it locks you out of even using the corridor and thus permanently locks you out of at least one area was really bad design. (I keep hearing from people that you can bomb that glass tube but despite hearing this from a lot of people I have yet to actually come across anyone who has personally done it. The closest to that was someone earlier in the thread, possibly Voltgloss, who tried it before completing the Corridor of Blood part and saying it didn't work. In which case it's either a false rumor or has a really arbitrary prerequisite that they shouldn't have bothered adding.) But the actual final field is, as I said before, one of the least impressive areas in the entire game. Even the infuriating to navigate areas like Icefire Treetop and Eternal Prison were significantly better. I'd probably classify Spiral Hell as my least favorite field in the game in fact.

[raocow]

but... but that is why I didn't use apps. I'm sorry if the way my brain engages with things isn't valid apparently ?!

[Alice]

but... but that is why I didn't use apps. I'm sorry if the way my brain engages with things isn't valid apparently ?!

The issue is that you actively used combos in the first game but are acting like the second game is somehow worse when the first game only ever explains like one combo. (The one for backside grails and even then it only hints at it iirc.) But here it's now inexplicably unacceptable because the game doesn't spoonfeed you combos despite the fact it actually does in the form of Mulbruk. You just don't want to waste time having to talk to her repeatedly to get them all. And that much is actually cool. She tends to repeat herself a lot so it can take awhile. But at that point there's really no excuse to not just resort to using the page on the wiki that explains combos or something though. It's information you could very easily get in-game if you wanted to invest the time so it's completely reasonable to just save the time and grab a pre-compiled list of the combos.

If, on the other hand, you simply didn't want to use app combos in the first place then that's fine too. It's a weird thing to insist on in my opinion since it flat out ignores a useful mechanic of the game but it's your choice there. The issue I have is that your specific excuse is really quite weak and seems more like this latter example while trying to justify it as the first. And my point is that if you just don't want to bother with app combos then you should say that instead of giving a weak excuse about it.

[raocow]

I mean my point is that if when you did a combo and it told you what it actually did I would interface with it, but it doesn't so I don't. As you said Mulbruk keeps repeating herself so it's not a fun discovery mechanic at all.

like the game gave me a clear 'increase damage' recipe and I used it.

[raocow]

I dunno it's also possible I'm just explaining myself badly

[Alice]

I dunno it's also possible I'm just explaining myself badly

After that last post I think we're both largely in agreement for the most part and it's just a matter of our perspectives managing to miss each other. For the record I agree that they could have done better to help players figure out combos such as listing combo effects in app descriptions after you've heard about it from Mulbruk or equipped it and actually personally experienced what it does. It might also have been a good idea to add some sort of indicator when you have an app selected that informs you of what other apps you have that you know will combine with it.

[Voltgloss]

(I keep hearing from people that you can bomb that glass tube but despite hearing this from a lot of people I have yet to actually come across anyone who has personally done it. The closest to that was someone earlier in the thread, possibly Voltgloss, who tried it before completing the Corridor of Blood part and saying it didn't work. In which case it's either a false rumor or has a really arbitrary prerequisite that they shouldn't have bothered adding.)

So interesting update here: I tried again to bomb that glass tube, this time *after* sealing the Corridor of Blood, and it DID suddenly work. (I was surprised; I thought it was a false rumor too.) So it definitely is an actual thing (at least in the most recent patch) but does also have the arbitrary prerequisite of "for no apparent reason, this won't work early; it only works once you would actually need it."

[Alice]

(I keep hearing from people that you can bomb that glass tube but despite hearing this from a lot of people I have yet to actually come across anyone who has personally done it. The closest to that was someone earlier in the thread, possibly Voltgloss, who tried it before completing the Corridor of Blood part and saying it didn't work. In which case it's either a false rumor or has a really arbitrary prerequisite that they shouldn't have bothered adding.)

So interesting update here: I tried again to bomb that glass tube, this time *after* sealing the Corridor of Blood, and it DID suddenly work. (I was surprised; I thought it was a false rumor too.) So it definitely is an actual thing (at least in the most recent patch) but does also have the arbitrary prerequisite of "for no apparent reason, this won't work early; it only works once you would actually need it."

Well it's definitely good to know that it does indeed work then. That really is a completely arbitrary requirement though. If anything I'd be willing to bet it plays into people not thinking to bomb it when it'd be useful because if they have tried, they likely did earlier in the game simply due to its resemblance to the bomb tube in Super Metroid.

[Crow]

rao's allowed to play the game however he wants even if it makes it a worse experience for him

see: playing on hard mode

[repairmanman]

Combos are something you're supposed to find out incrementally, same with some of the hints for damage boosting items. You should be talking to phobos and mulbruk as often as possible, as they usually have something to tell you. The combos are something you're just supposed to mess around with in general. You get very clear feedback when a combo DOES something, so it's just finding out WHAT that something is that's all trial and error.

Since the game is over and it really doesn't matter: The only thing I actually got upset over is that you never once used the subweapon hotspring(other than the very first time) in ancient chaos. It made the entire 9th child fight a joke, but it would have made so much of the game more manageable for you. It makes using a subweapon not use ammo(you still need one ammo to use the subweapon though). So many of the speedruns go around with a gun with a single bullet for this reason.

Edit: It has to be from an update after 1.7.7.1, because I can't break the glass tube on mine.

[Draexzhan]

For the record, I was the one who first brought up breaking the glass tube with a bomb in this thread. I just wasn't positive I actually did it or if my brain was making stuff up, because even the wiki stated that area would become permanently inaccessible after sealing the blood corridor. IIRC, the version I played where I broke the tube was 1.6.6.1. It was in late June/early July of 2019.

I wasn't aware there was any further discussion about it or else I probably would have loaded my save to confirm.


EDIT: Oh yeah, I should probably talk about 9th Child. I know a lot of people don't like this boss, primarily because of phase 3, and I get that, but I still really like this fight. It took me many attempts to beat it, but once I got all the patterns down, man did I enjoy it. I think honestly my biggest complaint is switching mantras mid-fight messes up the fight's pacing. But I appreciate the existence of a "puzzle" phase in this boss fight, much like how the freeware version of LM1 has one. I also like the subtle detail of the entire arena flashing every time the 9th child takes damage. The third phase is more messy than it ought to be, and the player really should have more tentacle elevators. But Mother had a really, really solid formula for its boss fight, and I don't blame NIGORO for using that formula here, I'm genuinely glad they did the "take a move from every boss" thing again. However, I will agree that it could stand to have more differences. Maybe if it wasn't another figure of light that you were fighting but now it's red and has leg tentacles.

La Mulana 3's final boss is "The Grandchild" who is green and has four legs and a tail.