A few decades ago the masses believed video games were a waste of time for lackadaisical youths to pacify themselves while ignoring their responsibilities as both kids and young adults. As more and more people started understanding the benefits of gaming so too did the perception of what a video game is and, most importantly, the benefits gaming can bestow on a person’s life changed. Hi, my name is James Bullock and I am a gamer who has spent the better part of his existence testing the laws of physics, exploring the vastness of a world ruined, and been a champion inside various arenas courtesy of digitized worlds both driven by reality and created through pure unbelievable ingenuity unlike anything seen by human eyes. And as a gamer I’ve discovered something else video games provide: life lessons. Today I examine a game and its final boss that reinforced the idea that sometimes quitting is a viable option, “Arcana Heart 3”.
Sometimes Quitting is the Only Option
Long-time gamers who have put their time into battling up the figureative ladder known as “Arcade Mode” in the fighting game genre know the harsh reality of what is to come toward the mode’s end as the adversaries reasonably get tougher before they reach levels of near impossibility. While gamers’ minds will immediately go to the likes of Shao Kahn or Geese Howard immediately, no one touches the final boss of “Arcana Heart 3” in regards to winning being an impossibility. Her name is Parace L’Sia and she’s overpowered as all hell! Though she was a part of the second “Arcana Heart” (and grossly overpowered then, too) as its final boss, her form in the third game is even harder than before. Seriously, the chick has a thirty-plus combo that she can unleash at any point in the fight (at times doing it at the start of a round)! And her remaining combos can result in a player’s character being stunned and obliterated without the chance to react.
Like Gill from “Street Fighter 3”, Parace can restore her health. While there is a chance to stop this ability, the player has to break through a shield in time to halt her (which is almost impossible depending on when she activates the technique). And just to add insult to injury, she starts off with a third of her health already gone (a meter that gets a little smaller with every loss as the game seems to hope you can do the seemingly impossible after failing about fifty times in a row). But she also has regenerating health – so, depending on how long a player survives without unleashing a significant amount of damage, L’Sia will reach full health halfway through the fight.
She can teleport around the screen with ease, shooting the four orbs that spiral around her like energized, unavoidable dodge balls. As if that isn’t enough, she has a cavalcade of status effect attacks that can poison, slow an opponent, or reverse the controls so a character will be moving backwards when the player wants them to go forward. Oh, and of course she has the ability to have not one, but two ultra, mega super moves! One traps her opponent in an unbreakable force field that implodes and obliterates at least half of a health bar, and the other creates a shield around Parace that quickens her health regeneration ability. Parace L’Sia is digitized evil personified that shouldn’t even exist. Whoever thought she was a good idea for a final boss battle needs to be banned from creating anything ever again unless the whole point was to teach people that, yes, sometimes it’s okay to just throw your hands up and grunt, “I quit!”
Have you learned any major life lessons from playing “Arcana Heart 3.” or any video game for that matter? Leave them in the comments below and, as always, thanks for reading.
