Well its a Monday again, and what better way to start the worst day of the week with an article about videogame antagonists. For this week were going to talk about the main antagonist from arguably one of the best RPGs of all time, Lavos from Chrono Trigger.
I have played Chrono Trigger ever since I got my hands on it on the original PlayStation, and Ive played it from time to time all through out the years on different platforms but never managed to beat the final boss. Recently I played Chrono Trigger on the DS and to my surprise I finally managed to beat Lavos. After 11 years I finally beat the enemy of my RPG-centric childhood. There will be a bit of spoilers ahead so be warned!
Lavos is a giant parasite that crash landed on an alternate version of earth, which is the games’ primary setting. Lavos crash landed on earth on 65,000,000 BC and dug underground to collect every DNA of every living creature that ever lived to become the ultimate organism. Chrono and the rest of the party did not know of Lavos’ existence until they were sent into the desolated and ravaged future. There they learn of an ancient creature that rose from the ground destroying everything. Chrono and the team, refused to accept their inevitable and horrible future, set on an adventure through time to stop Lavos from destroying their future and unravel the mystery of the galactic parasite.
Lavos is encountered in some parts of the story. Its either for plot or you can fight him in any part of the game. Defeating him in some part of your playthrough other than the end of the game results in a unique and different ending with 13 endings in total. Once you encounter it, it will begin to change into several bosses that you’ve encountered throughout the game, using the same strategies to defeat them. After you beat Lavos in that mode its head disperses and you enter its shell revealing a humanoid body containing all the DNA of all living creatures that ever existed since its arrival. You have to target its arms in order to destroy the body. This form is pretty straightforward and most likely the least interesting of his forms.
After you defeat Lavos in that form it finally shows its final and true form, The Lavos core. In this form Lavos is in its strongest and is the most heart-stopping boss battle in the game. Lavos teleports you to different locations in time and then using an ability that corresponds to that timeline and location. The strategy of the boss is fairly simple, there are two pods that surround Lavos. You cannot deal reliable damage to Lavos without destroying at least one of the cores and Lavos revives them after a set amount of time. Then after this long and thrilling battle you are then rewarded with an ending that correlates how well you did in the game and how much of the story/side-quests you have finished.
Lavos as a final boss is very well crafted that it incorporates the idea of time travel and inevitable doom, and made it into a gripping and memorable final boss battle. The boss battle isn’t a let down as it is quite challenging and the build up towards it was right on the money. Lavos is scary and powerful as the game states it to be. After you beat it, it leaves you content and fulfilled now that you’ve saved the future and destroyed Lavos once and for all. Or have you?