Continuing off an old post I had about the currently unobtainable TwistedSwd that's been vaguely hinted at since chapter 2:
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
Toby Fox what are you cooking???
