I think the only things I have yet to finish in COE33 are the Gestral mingames (I did get to the party atop the big obstacle/parkour course, as well as the simpler one,) finding the last of the Gestral children (I want to say I'm at 5/7 or something?) and, well...
The main story of COE33 concludes... well, it's a bit of a spoiler to say where or who the final boss is, but the point is that you're going to be able to do this well before you finish all the optional stuff. Much of the game's high-level challenges are really balanced for someone who has already beaten the main story, and I say this having pretty much trivialized the last "level" of the main story (I was one-shotting some very scary-looking monsters - not as in, killing them without dying on the first attempt; I mean Monoco would use an ability and they'd be dead before they could attack).
As epic and heart-wrenching as that finale is, it's functionally just a little past the midpoint, if even that, of what you can get out of the game.
It is, frankly, a little odd as a decision.
Thinking of another game that I poured tons of hours into, Elden Ring's base game does have quite extensive optional areas, with Miquella's Haligtree/Ephael, Brace of the Haligtree serving, I'd say, as the true "omega dungeon" of the game (a term I borrow from Final Fantasy X, which was the first game I remember playing that had this "harder than the final dungeon" kind of area.)
However, I think you could argue that's not really the case in Elden Ring. The final boss of the game (not counting its DLC) is, actually, up there along with Malenia as a difficult boss. Both required many attempts for me the first time I defeated them, and while I think you could certainly argue that Malenia is harder than Radagon/Elden Beast, they're roughly on par with one another. (Elden Ring is such a profoundly massive game that it has other contenders, like Placidusax or Mohg, though the latter at least I think very few would consider the hardest boss in the game).
The point is, in my 7 or so clears of Elden Ring, I've always done Malenia before Elden Beast, and it never made the Elden Beast a pushover.
So, again, it's an interesting choice on the part of Sandfall to make the conclusion of the story in COE33 balanced for far before you're going to be able to clear the other stuff.
Still, I've been making my way through it. There are some very tough fights - the final boss of the Flying Manor, which itself requires you to beat souped-up versions of four main-story bosses before facing the unique boss of its dungeon (where if the boss gets a hit in, it heals for like 500k, which does give you a long time to practice those perfect parries).
However, what appears to be the true, ultimate final optional boss, is one whose design is 100% a giant tribute to FromSoft, and is, fittingly and frustratingly, every bit as mind-crushingly hard as what From throws our way. Details past the spoiler break:
The highest-level area, I believe, in the game, is a place called Renoir's Drafts. It's a tough dungeon in its own right, if a little on the small side. You face Aberrations, Creations, and also some of the weird carpenter guys from the Reacher. There is a Chromatic Creation here, which is extra-challenging because it puts Inverted on the whole party, making healing harm you instead (luckily this seems to turn off Pictos/Luminas like Healing Parry and Healing Counter, though of course if you know going into the fight, you can just turn those off).
Actually, maybe harder in here is the Gestral Merchant, whose fight is, fittingly, the hardest of those fights.
However, at the end of the dungeon is another portal, which leads into an inner dungeon/zone called The Abyss.
And yeah, if you thought that name was evocative of a certain knight from a famously popular Dark Souls DLC, I don't think this was an accident.
Like in Dark Souls (I never got to this part/didn't have the DLC, so this is from watching videos) you plunge into a deep, dark pit, and there, amidst glowing golden swords made of light all plunged into the ground, you find Simon, a member of Expedition Zero, whom Clea reanimated and re-forged into a massively powerful warrior.
Simon fights with a massive greatsword, but beyond his many speedy attacks, there are a couple things that make him extra deadly:
First, he seems to have insane Agility, so he often acts twice in a row.
Second, on each of his turns, he gets to do one bonus action, so to speak:
If any members of the party has shields, he'll steal them to protect himself.
He can also, in a way that I don't think can be dodged, reduce a character's HP to 1 (Clea's Life is a pretty good lumina to deal with this, though he hits hard enough that you're going to need very high HP and Defense to make any healing worth your while).
And lastly, the most brutal thing: if he gets a turn after one of your party members has gone down, he can "remove them from the canvas," meaning that they're out of the fight.
His attacks are tough, but I've gotten pretty good at reading them - I think there are four, a "light combo" that has two vertical plunging attacks, an attack you need to jump over, and then a final strike, then he "drops his sword" to attack you with punches, which is one strike, two quick strikes, and then two slower strikes, and then a "heavy combo" that is I think either three or four. Basically, it'll take you a while to figure it out, but it's not unreasonable.
But then, the toughest part: once you finally take him down, a cutscene plays... and then phase 2 starts.
And here, I've gotten pretty good at getting him to phase 2, but phase 2 is very, very hard.
He uses some of the same combos, but now, his sword creates a weird little echo of light, so that a moment after his attack lands, the other blade does. To an extent, this means kind of "double-clicking" the parry button with the same timing you already knew.
However, he also has I think two other attacks, using the Sword of Lumiere, one of which is "Simon attacks at light speed" (giving me PTSD flashbacks to Favored Consort Radahn) and another that I think is just "attacks with the sword of lumiere," and these attacks come so quickly and hit the entire party that I just have not lived long enough to put much damage on him in the second phase.
I do know that Verso gets a cool sword off of this boss, and I don't think I'll want to do NG+ until taking this guy down, but boy it's going to take some real determination.
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