Here we are, the final battle. My heroes, wave after wave of enemies and one giant cup that I need to protect. Honestly at this point it isn't even a challenge.
Large numbers of enemies are met with rage, explosives and the ability of most of my heroes to flat out vanish before the enemy can come looking for them. We are in the best of all possible timelines here my heroes have been at high level for ages, every item they have ever needed is at their fingertips and they can even replenish their explosive flasks straight from the chalice!
I don't even get to show of the cool thematic stuff that happens when you lose heroes in this fight, or at least I wouldn't if I hadn't also recorded this cool bonus footage. Other than the difficulty, which I must admit is at least partially due to this particular run stemming right from the initial backer beta, I really love the thematic content of this fight.
It is a last stand where your heroes ancestors ready to help them should they fall. Standing guard of the chalice you zoom into at the beginning of every fight, beating back the demons of time as they advance on this most important of objects.
I really like the idea behind the very final twist, in some ways it undercuts the player's success but it rams home that this game is about the inevitability of time, at some point all things will come to an end and all we can do is fight to ensure that end is pushed back for as long as possible.
The inevitability of loss is the thing I have enjoyed most in this game, in other tactical games I am the kind of player who will reload and replay a fight because I lost a squad member. Here I am willing to face the loss and move on because even if they survive the battle, the loss of heroes is inevitable, they cannot and will not live forever, eventually even without ever losing a battle the loss of land and keeps is inevitable. Time cannot be stopped.
I had a great time playing and recording Massive Chalice and I will definitely continue to track its progress through to its release and probably will play through it again at that point. I don't think I will do another Lets Play of it though, I am very happy to let this one stand.
Tune in next week for a series of one of episodes where I try out games sitting in my Steam library.
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