#twisted sword

Hi. I’m happy to hear that he liked them!!

Designing the Twisted Sword is interesting because we don’t know its Light World counterpart, which was the basis for all the other sword designs. What we do know is its crafting components: the Pure Crystal and the Thorn Ring. So I used those as inspiration for the design.

Weird Route is not the forbidden path, it has always been a path. Side B. In a game like this Pacifist and Genocide are two natural paths to take. It defies nothing, it is expected. I think The Sword Route in Chapter 3 doesn't reflect The Weird Route. It tells us about the Forbidden Path, the route to the Sword. In the second chapter we get a peak at a weapon that can't be gotten. A weapon that requires the Thorn Ring and a Pure Crystal. We know how to get the first part and so naturally everyone assumed the path to the Twisted Sword in in Weird Route but no. Seam is in Hometown and we need the Dark Crystals from Super Bosses to be purified. You cannot complete the path to the Pure Crystal in a Weird Route so the Twisted Sword remains out of reach. In a pure good route you cannot get the Thorn Ring. So How do you walk two paths? You walk a Twisted path, to Twist the Roots to get the Twisted Sword.

The Sword Route minigame tells us as much: The Forbidden Path started with Ice Magic.

We must use Noelle to achieve the ring. After we get the Ring Noelle is Used Up. We no longer need her. Take the Ring and walk the Path of a hero build up your power to seize the Crystals from the Bosses. Once you get the Ultimate Weapon for Kris, Kris is Used Up. The Twisted Sword has a status called Trance and in the data everyone is creeped out by it. I suspect that the Sword puts Kris fully under our power. With the Sword we defy the fate of Side A and Side B and build a path somewhere between. The path that shouldn't exist. The Forbidden Path, The Sword Route.

If you've played chapter 3, you know at the end there's a fight against The Roaring Knight that's seemingly unbeatable.

Keyword seemingly, as if you're determined enough to survive the battle, you get the next Shadow Crystal, more specifically, you get the Black Shard, an item described as being part of "the Black Knife"

At the moment, the Black Shard is the strongest weapon you can have in the game, not only because of the whopping 16AT, but because of its special property to deal damage to Dark enemies, which doesn't gain significance until towards the end of chapter 4:

Dark Enemies, like the Titans and the Titan Spawns

Enemies that when defeated with The Black Shard, increase a new counter on Kris's status screen: Slain

This squarely puts the Black Shard as a thematically important item: Anything strong against the main threat of the game's a big deal, and the amount of effort put into it, more than all the shadow crystals before, signifies the weight this new item carries, and the weapon the Roaring Knight carries if what we have is simply a shard of it

But that's the thing right? It's a weapon tied to getting the shadow crystals, just like the twisted sword, but its effect of slaying dark enemies is so strong, what makes the twisted sword so special?

Going back to the stats again, 16AT isn't just the highest AT stat in the game, it's also the EXACT SAME AS THE TWISTED SWORD

Which, by looking in the data, ALSO has the effect of doing extra damage to Dark enemies

So not only are we four chapters into the game with what we now know was only a glance at what seems to be the strongest weapon in the game, the added bonus of whatever "Trance Down" truly means only heightens the significance of the twisted sword

Because if the guess on how to get the Pure Crystal is correct, to make the twisted sword you have to not only beat all the secret bosses (INCLUDING THE ROARING KNIGHT) but also either need to abort a weird route run, or somehow give Noelle a different ring later in the game, after already going through said route: which outside of abandoning the route, a player might only do if they "are done using Noelle" to get it in the first place, so they give her weaker items (looks at "She was Used Up"), or they give her an even stronger ring

Oh and also, the thorn ring basically allowed Kris to control Noelle, implying that once kris equips it, we will successfully attain full control over Kris' body!

Toby! What the fuck Toby!

Aborted Weird Route is still strange. Currently, there's 2 ways to do it. 1: Don't snowgrave Berdly 2: Don't reveal yourself to Noelle in ch 4.