YMMV / Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection

• Game-Breaker:
  • Triumphant Towel: This accessories allow you to use unlimited magic if you have full HP, having it equipped, together with Gourmet Chopsticks (which doubles HP recovered from food), fairy as pet (who can heal you), enable you to use Alwen's extremely potent and far-reaching dark magic to sweep through the dungeons with ease.
  • Even better if you also got Trapper's Crest, which nullifies all trap damages, you don't get this until very late in the game though. Trapper's Crest can also be used on the snow slopes, which will make the extremely hard Kappa's Canyon slightly easier.
• Goddamned Boss: Most bosses in the Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection are of the annoying variety rather than the hard variety.
  • Montblanc when you face him at Moonbria Castle Graveyard. This is by far the most annoying boss in the game. She summons a bunch of zombies to dance around with you in a circle while she either create a shockwave or drew stars around you. At some point she will confuse herself and whining by herself, that's the only time you can attack her for damage. Note, if you fail to hit her and hit a zombie instead, or if you ever step outside of circle that stars formed around, all the zombie will jump on you at once. If you do hit her, she'll fly into the sky, during this point she's invincible, what you need to do is to clear out the other zombies that's starting to form. If you don't, they'll self-explode on you. Moreover, the less health point she has, the faster she and mosters will spin, have fun!
  • The second time you face Montblanc, she will pretend to be Princess Alwen. The Fake Alwen can use real Alwen's fire, earth, ice, and wind magic. Moreover, she will eat food during battle, which will recover her health and raise her level. If you are under leveled at this point, you'll have a hard time hit her for damage.
  • Thermidor: he doesn't hit that hard and his skills are generally easy to avoid. However, he has two different unfair skills when you fight him two different times. In the Moonbria Dungeon battle, he can stop the time, during which he can move and you can't, and he can hit for massive damage of you at will, the only way to counter this skillis to use wind Arcanum Magic (which made you invincible for a bit) right before he uses time stop move. There is no warning when he does it though, so you can only hope to get lucky. The second time you face him at spiral fortress, he can disable your partner, your pet, as well as your food so you can't regain health. That's why most guides on both fight against Thermidor suggests Level Grinding so you can take him down in few, if not one, hit.
  • Galgarion: Known infamously as "the bomb boss" in the East due to the most effective way to defeat him. The hit point in the second phase of this boss fight is located on the back of the boss, which you can't easily reach. What you should do is throw a bomb under the boss, the explosion will cause him to fall to the ground a bit, which is the chance you can jump on the back and deal damage to it. Then, just as the boss will get up, you threw another bomb, cause him to fall down again, rinse and repeat several times. Otherwise, this'll be a long fight.
• Moment of Awesome: Odessa, Pokkle, and Claude piloted planes to help Ra-Laira, Pipiro, and Fiona to punch a hole in a massive tornado, then Alwen provided a magic barrier for Ragna to fly through it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Gallendeau, the macho gym leader with a ridiculous suit and an even more ridiculous exercise move routines, is actually Alwen's father, Duke Guiscard du Moonbria. It's hilarious as Alwen's memory of him is kind and caring but serious and stern. Then here he is, goofing around with a ridiculous suit.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: This game is a lot easier than the previous game, ''Zwei: The Arges Adventure", which was as Nintendo Hard as Falcom get.
• That One Boss: Unlike the Goddamned Boss entry from above, these bosses are actually really hard to fight.
  • Abyss Flower in the forest level. The first two phases are not hard, but in the third phase, the boss will suddenly dive down to grab in its mouth and drain your blood. It recovers a lot of health for the boss, and at this point in the game you probably don't have enough source to fight a lengthy battle against it, made it really hard. The bite attack is extremely hard to avoid as the way to avoid it is slightly counter-intuitive (You need to jump to the side but also towards the mouth of the boss)
  • Service Penguin in G-Coliseum. You think a cute penguin won't posed too much of a challenge? You'll be surprised. Even at level 30 (which is probably where most players will stop, you can get to level 31 but it's impratical), a hit by the penguin will drop 27 to 30 points off of your health. The penguin also have a grab attack that's hard to avoid due to how fast she is, she will then fly into the sky and throw you down (similar to Seismic Toss in Pokemon), if you don't eat food in the meantime to regain your health it's likely an instant game-over. Furthermore, during the final phase, you can't hit the penguin while she's down because 1) During this time she receives no damage and 2) She will retaliate by a powerful whirlwind cutting attack (that's the best decription I can come up with) that you can't avoid. In the meantime, an attack by you is likely only able to knock off 1/5th star after about 3 hits, and she has a lot of health stars, make this a very long fight.
• That One Level:
  • Surprisingly the hardest level of the game is not a combat level, but a snowboard mini-game at Starfall Hamlet. It contains 4 parts, complete each part will earn you a better medal, complete part 4 will earn you a platinum medal for the level. Sounds easy? Well, in the original Zwei 2 the first two levels ask you to not miss a single pot in the required time, which is a lot easier said than done, and part 3 added in a requirement that you can't take damage. Some of those pots are placed at extremely hard to reach places that you can't get to it unless you have perfect control. Finally, in part 4, you are asked to do all of the above as well as beat the course manager Kappa in a race, who will get a 1-second head-start. It's not uncommon to spend hours to try to complete even one part of the level. This is so hard that in the re-release, Falcom added the option to lower the course difficulty after every 5th failure.
  • For a combat level, look no further than Melzedek's Spiral Nexus. It makes sense to be hard since it's the last dungeon in the game. It has those gravity balls lying around that will suck you in, you'll take the damage from the ball itself as well as the falling damage. A particularly annoying one is at the third phase of the dungeon that you can turn it off using a switch, but by the time you get back to the ball it'll turn back on, hopefully you got the glider and Accelering in your arsenal, or it's going to be next to impossible to pass that place.
• That One Sidequest: Getting a Platinum Medal, the maximum rank, in a dungeon is easier said than done. To wit, you need to break every jar (including the mimic jars), beat the dungeon in a time limit and without taking a single hit. While it's very easy in earlier dungeons (especially when you're overleved), it gets very difficult in later dungeons, with enemies that can pop out of nowhere and numerous hazards like cannons, spikes, bottomless pits, lava and poison. And good luck getting a Platinum Medal during a boss fight, which not only requires taking no damage and beating it with a time limit, but also requires not using healing items at all during the fight.

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