Xenogears - Hammer & Death of Emperor Cain (Boss & Scenes)

Interesting bunch of stuff going on in this video. First up, we have Hammer returning since the first time we saw him turn traitor on the group to fight us with his new found power. And then we have a bunch of scenes after that show the death of Emperor Cain, as well as the Gazel Ministry put their real goal in motion of obtaining God's knowledge and God himself.

Overview

The fight against Hammer is pretty unique, and also pretty depressing, since Hammer is overall a really likable character throughout the game.

Video spoilers

So after Hammer's death, you see scenes of the Gazel Ministry mentioning that Emperor Cain stands in the way of their goal, which is to use the Key to reveal the location of Mahanon. When they tried previously, Cain used his power to stop them. I'm not sure how Cain can have such power, since he's restricted into his chair to stay alive. In case you aren't up to date with the plot, Cain is one of the oldest living humans since near the beginning of humans on the planet, who has stayed alive due to Krelian's type of research.

They also mention that only Cain can defeat Cain. It means Ramsus can defeat him, since Ramsus was created as a human from Cain's genes (something like that), so he has the power to kill Cain, and is manipulated into doing so by Miang and the Gazel Ministry. Also, Miang is referred to as "Mother" by the Minsitry. Would be major spoilers to explain why right now, though.

I cut out the scene of Mahanon rising, wasn't anything special.

Stats

Fei: LV64 - Rose Tabard, Dark Helm, StaminaRingS
Extra Ar DX, Ether Ar +1, Frame HP30
Citan: LV63 - Yamame Sword - BlackLeather, King's Helm, EtherStone
Kishin Sword - Frame HP30, Ether Ar, Extra Ar +6
Elly: LV62 - Psycho Rod - Beastly Robe, Starlight, EtherDoubler
Flare RodG - Extra Ar +6, DeathBlower2, Frame HP30

Strategy

Alright, so if you handle this right, it's not terribly hard and you can defeat Hammer before he explodes. If you take too long, you have to escape from the battle before he explodes. But doing so doesn't get you the awesome Trader item, which when equipped causes rare drops from enemies. It's a godsend of an item that helps with farming gil and getting the godly Haste equipment.

Anyway, Hammer starts out really weak, but every turn he becomes more powerful and morphs himself to hit you stronger and more times. It's not terribly scary, but the damage adds up eventually, and with your time limit of a battle, it makes things trickier.

The best method to deal damage is to have Fei abuse his System Id as usual, while having your other characters try to enter Infinity Mode to spam their Deathblows 3 times. To enter Infinity Mode, you have to get to Battle LV3 and then the next time you do a move, it has a certain percentage of invoking Infinity Mode. The percentage is based on things such as how much HP you have, as well as a couple other things. You're going to want to try to do this near the end of the fight, because the Mode only lasts 3 turns. Another method is to have someone slapped with a DeathBlower item, so they can do T+X Deathblows at only Battle LV1.

That's about it. You can tell before Hammer blows up, there's a bunch of dialog cues. So just hope you can take him out before he explodes. He decides to start exploding when his HP hits a certain point, in case you're curious.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Elly is no longer able to be used after this fight, so unequip her if you don't want to lose any important items she may have equipped. (I forgot if you can equip it after the fight, I think you might not be able to, but I was lucky because I didn't save after this recording).

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