Ritzia
This Chapter is actually very straightforward and shouldn’t be hard to pass. The first area involves getting to the very end of the beach towards the docks. Beat the lame Lorimar golems and a big golem will eventually show up. Take this baddie down and you can progress to the Lorimar Empire’s Flagship.
The flagship section is split into two parts: finding Ritzia and escaping with her. Both parts are easy to get through, but you’ll run into annoying alarms that summon enemies. Step on the alarms to stop the progress. In the second part, you need to activate switches of different kinds since Ritzia is stupid and won’t follow you everywhere. This place is a gold mine to kill enemies in full Panic(crown appears) since there are so many Mono objects to play with.
Trouble Spots
4-4: There’s not much to worry about, but there are a lot of ways to get accidentally hurt by cannonballs and the blue spheres. Just avoid fighting near them or, better, use a Gnome and watch the enemies take huge damage.
Boss: Lorimar Emperor, Stroud
Why does he look so much like the Dark Lord in a prior Mana game, I’ll never know. Stroud is the first real enemy who is immune to Mono save while he’s attacking. So, you can either a) fight him fair-and-square or b) use lightning-fast reflexes to nail him with a Mono object. He’s pretty tame at first, but he gets crazy when he’s near death. He’ll summon 2 clones and often do his ice shields that surround him and Freeze anything it hits.
This can lead to a physics-lock situation where all of his cheesy support can pinned Keldy and keep him down until he dies. If not that, it’ll be a Freeze-lock which is just as bad. Anyways, this is the time to bust out Salamander ammo to melt his clones and do some damage to the big man himself. It’s a lot easier to beat him without his cheesy supports, but he does summon his ice spheres every now and then.
Ultimate Mode Boss Changes
– fully resistant to Mono objects save the ship cannons and the wind turbine cannons.
– ice spheres are now rapid-fire and attack independently of Stroud’s base attacks.
– clones are summoned right from the start and last a lot longer.
– clones now have Stroud’s full attack set.
– ice spheres and clones automatically regenerate upon destruction.
Cheese method
Fire a Salamander when he charges his ice balls and then combo with Flaming Saber. To keep his Panic count high, toss any of the boxes and blue spheres nearby. When he’s almost out, toss another Salamander and combo with Flaming Saber. This is best used at the start of the fight since Stroud’s Panic lowers a lot when he’s low on HP. Highly recommended on ULTIMATE since he can do the same effect to you, except freezing you.