Tales of Phantasia observations
Note: Damage figures in next few parts depend on difficulty. You'll most likely see the lower figures on Normal mode, the higher figures on Mania mode, and somewhere in-between in Hard Mode. Also, all of this is based on the GBA version of Tales of Phantasia unless otherwise noted. Although some of it also applies to the PSX version of Tales of Phantasia, the two versions have so many differences between them that they're effectively entirely different video games in practice.
More below the break/this line due to spoilers
Before battling Dhaos, your party should be at least level 60 on Normal Mode, level 80+ on Hard Mode, and level 95+ for Mania Mode. Morlia Mine Extension/Dwarven Temple should be completed before fighting him on Hard or Mania Mode. Mania Mode is only unlocked by beating the final boss at least once and then saving, by the way.
-During the final battle, Dhaos' first form can use Tetra Spell (casts Fire Ball, Ice Blades, Lightning and Glaive together, with only Glaive doing any real damage) Explode (2,500+ fire damage/all), Tidal Wave (2,500+ water damage/all), Dhaos Laser (1,000-3,000 damage to all), and Dhaos Collider/Corridor (4000+/all). There are probably other spells, but even on Mania, he's WAY too pathetic in his first form to last long enough to get many off, but if he does get his spells off, you MIGHT have a bit of trouble. All in all, he's pretty much the same as the previous two battles with him, only with higher HP (56,000 on Normal, 112,000 on Hard and 168,000 on Mania in the GBA version, 75,000/150,000/225,000 in the PSX version), stronger spells, and Dhaos Laser and Collider/Corridor being REALLY fucking painful now... He, as in previous battles, suffers from the crippling weakness of being REALLY easy to stunlock. This form should take about 2-3 minutes to beat on Mania, about a minute to 90 seconds on Hard, and about 30-45 seconds on Normal. Yeeeah...
-In his second form (Neo/Feather Dhaos), he is effectively pure hell in RPG final boss form. First of all, he can't be stunlocked in this form. He has a high chance of stunlocking you now instead. In the PSX version, he's just one target with 130,000 HP (260,000 in Hard, 390,000 in Mania), so I imagine he's slightly easier in that version. I'll refrain from talking in further detail about PSX Feather Dhaos until I've had the opportunity to play that version and actually know what I'm even talking about.
-in the GBA version, Dhaos' second form is a whole different ballgame. He has two targets in this version: His face and his arm, each with 130,000 HP on Normal difficulty. He fires several volleys of bullets from his mouth, each doing about 1,500-3,000+ damage in all and having a high chance to stun your party. his arms fire larger, slower fireballs which do about 300-1,000 damage with the same chance of stunning, and he likes to swing them at you for 1,000-1,500 damage, knocking you halfway across the battlefield. He also likes to have a bunch of almost microscopic bullets fall from the skies, each one doing about 200-800 damage and likely stunning any characters it hits. He likes to do this whenever anybody physically attacks him or even comes close to him, but he'll really just do it whenever he feels like it. He really wouldn't be out of place as a boss in one of those side-scroller shmups. He can also chain-cast Meteor Storm... His arm and face like to cast Meteor Storm in tandem, doing about 4,000-6,000 damage to your whole team. Worse still? On Hard and Mania, Dhaos' Arm LOVES to cast Revitalize (heals 60-75% of maximum HP) when either it or his face is below 25% HP, meaning, you could very well be fighting Dhaos' toughest form from the very beginning if you leave the arm to its devices. Dhaos' Face and arm have 130,000 HP apiece on Normal. On Hard, they have 260,000 apiece, and on Mania, 390,000. Also, his face and arm both appear to have super-high defense, so they tend to take half damage from weapons, and somewhat less damage from magic, though I'm probably just imagining this because he's incredibly hard to beat in this form anyway. If you take out his face first, you disable most of his deadly attacks, but have to deal with his arm possibly STILL casting Revitalize and keeping itself alive. If you cut off his arm first, he seems to spam his bullet hell attacks even more ferociously than before. If you fight Dhaos on Mania, you'll most likely be fighting this form for 30-45 minutes... IF he doesn't use Revitalize. On Normal, you'll probably be looking at a good 10-15 minutes.
-Plume Dhaos (Dhaos' final form) is generally fairly easy, and certainly FAR easier than the complete and utter nightmare that is Neo/Feather Dhaos, but he CAN be a very nasty boss when he wants to be. I can't speak for the PSX version, because I haven't played it yet, but in the GBA version, it is very easy to back him into a corner and stun-lock him to the point where you can kill him without ever seeing him do more than a few token physical attacks. However, if he manages to get out of that corner, or he manages to stun your entire party with his attacks, things can get very ugly, very quick. He spams lightning-quick, powerful physical attacks. These include series of 6-12 golden fireballs (blue lasers in PSX version), each doing about 300-800 damage and possibly stunning characters, powerful kicks and punches that do about 500-1200 damage apiece, a green energy sword uppercut thingy that does about 400-800 damage to everyone, a green Hadoken that does about 400-1,000 damage to all and knocks the party onto the other side of the battlefield, most likely in stun status, allowing him to charge up a spell before you recover. It may not sound like much, but he's incredibly fast, and he likes to pull long-ass combos off, too. He's especially fond of flying next to your party members and just smacking the shit out of them, too. When he's not spamming extremely long chains of physical attacks or being stunlocked into a corner, he also has a powerful repertoire of spells, including Time Stop (allows him 5 seconds to pummel your party with several rounds of powerful physical attacks, or maybe a spell or two), Meteor Storm (1000-3000+ non-elemental damage to all; not that bad), Black Hole (3000-4000+ dark damage to all), and, on higher difficulties, Extension/Extinction (ToP's version of Ultima, 4000+ damage to all) and, though, thankfully, this is rarely seen, even Revitalize (heals 60-75% of his maximum HP; when you see that orange casting glyph, and a huge blue healing circle pops up below him, that's your cue to CRY). Yes, on Hard and Mania, he can heal himself almost entirely to full with a single cast. BTW, Plume Dhaos has 160,000 HP on Normal, 320,000 HP on Hard, and 480,000 HP on Mania. Do the math on that one. He also has high defense, though not quite as high as Neo/Feather Dhaos, and takes slightly less damage from both weapons and magic than normal. This form should take about 15 minutes to defeat on Mania if everything goes right, and closer to a half-hour otherwise. On Normal, you should beat him in 5 minutes, tops.
-In the PSX version, his final form's theme is probably one of the biggest musical tearjerkers in video game history (his final battle theme in PSX is I Miss You..., whereas in GBA, it's changed to the still-pretty-awesome Stream of Time, probably because they were too lazy to loop I Miss You... Seriously, it doesn't loop in the GBA version), doubling the humiliation if things go sour and he kicks your ass.
-Also, there exists a hack for the PSX version that contains two extra difficulties that are even MORE difficult than Mania... Unknown and God Mode. Enemies on Unknown have 4x more HP and 1.75x higher attack (and possibly all other stats) than on Normal, and on God Mode, they have 5x more HP and 2x higher attack (maybe all other stats too?). Their attacks also have high critical rates and are very likely to stun, and their spells will most likely charge significantly faster as well. To balance this, mostly because you NEED it, they also give more EXP than on the other difficulties, with enemies giving 5x more EXP on Unknown and 10x more on God.
-Allow me to let you know what you're in for during the final battle on God Mode while I'm at it... Dhaos' first form has 375,000 HP, Feather Dhaos has 650,000 HP, and Plume Dhaos (aka his angelic form) has 800,000 HP. Also, it's fairly safe to assume that Plume Dhaos knows Revitalize (known in the PSX version as Resurrection, known to players as Dhaos being a cheating asshole) on God Mode as well, and will probably be even MORE ruthless in using it than on previous non-Normal difficulties. Oh, and of course, his latter two forms' physical attacks will kill you a LOT faster than they would on previous difficulties, and they can already kill you pretty fast on Mania. You'll probably want to be at least level 300 to stand half a chance against Dhaos. Sadly, or, on second thought, thankfully, such a hack doesn't exist for the GBA version.
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