What’s On The Shelf | Games, Music & Culture

Welcome back to the Race to Git Gud, where I attempt to take on the FromSoftware game catalog with all the confidence of someone still using cards from the opening levels during the endgame. In the interest of brevity, and to save my wrists from this terrible keyboard, I went back through Ruh-Arok Temple several times to unlock all of the elemental side levels.

There was no fun. There were no interesting developments. I hated every second of replaying the same level over and over again.

Anyway.

The next destination for Katia is Hupon-Jen, the stalking grounds of the legendary White Tiger. The dark and damp forest floor is absolutely top shelf in the vibes department, filled with overhanging branches, misty pathways, and mysterious mushrooms sprouting up from the earth. It feels ancient and alive in a way that a lot of Lost Kingdoms’ environments surprisingly manage to pull off.

Each of these legendary monster levels follows a similar structure. The creature waits at the end while the route forward is blocked by random encounters, locked paths, and environmental obstacles. Normally this repetition would start to wear thin, but Hupon-Jen makes it work because the entire forest feels like it is shifting around you as you move through it. Even if the gameplay structure has been done to death by this point, the atmosphere carries it over the finish line.

Pushing forward through the twisting woods, Katia eventually comes face-to-face with the White Tiger itself. Similar to the Great Turtle, you need to defeat the beast in combat in order to prove your worth and unlock its power. Unlike the lumbering Turtle, though, the White Tiger moves around the battlefield with ridiculous speed and aggression. It darts across the arena and hits like a truck, making the encounter far more tense than the previous legendary battle.

Still, proper positioning and exploiting its weakness to fire eventually turns the mighty beast into an expensive rug.

The White Tiger card itself is a summon card rather than an independent transformation like the Great Turtle. Once deployed, the Tiger launches forward in a devastating charge attack capable of dealing massive damage in a straight line from Katia’s position. It’s aggressive, fast, and extremely satisfying to use.

With the incredible atmosphere of Hupon-Jen behind her, Katia moves onward to Terjon Temple, home of the Blue Dragon. A lot of the naming conventions in this game really boil down to adjective-noun combinations. Great Turtle. White Tiger. Blue Dragon. FromSoftware, surely we could have gotten a little more creative here. The levels get cool names while the legendary monsters sound like placeholder text.

The water-based Terjon Temple revolves around activating several magical orbs in order to break the frozen seal protecting the Blue Dragon’s chamber. Surprisingly, the enemies throughout this area are much easier than most of the other endgame encounters. Dragon Knights and Crystal Roses make up the bulk of the resistance, turning the level into less of a brutal gauntlet and more of an opportunity to grind experience.

Even the final encounter before the Dragon is surprisingly tame. Two Ice Golems stand in your way, but a decent Earth card slices through them without much effort.

With the path finally clear, Katia enters the final chamber expecting a showdown with the Blue Dragon itself. Instead, the Dragon is standing awkwardly beside a massive block of ice containing a frozen Kraken.

This “boss fight” is a complete joke.

The Kraken can swing a tentacle around and toss out a freezing area attack, but it folds almost immediately under pressure. Within moments, the terrifying sea monster has been transformed into fantasy calamari while the Blue Dragon just kind of watches the whole thing happen. Then the card is handed over like this was all part of the plan.

While the Great Turtle and White Tiger are both extremely strong cards, the Blue Dragon is on an entirely different level. Using the card restores every card consumed during the mission and places them back into your deck. If you level it enough to duplicate the card, you effectively gain infinite resources and can bulldoze your way through encounters without worrying about conservation.

Three of the four legendary monster levels are now complete, and Katia finally turns her attention toward the fiery wasteland of Yalwog before the final showdown at Broch Black.

The finale is almost here.