The Tedium Event Horizon
I know that I said that I was done with The D's games, but there's still one more thing that I forgot to bring up.
After beating Skylight, you have access to a bonus dungeon: Theus' Castle, located in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. It's precisely like every other dungeon in the game; a linear corridor filled with inescapable, tedious encounters. The only saving grace is that you're nigh-guaranteed to gain a level with each fight, so you'll probably end up at max level before you reach the end. Oh, and the background music is a remix of the final dungeon theme from The Demon Rush, just in case you thought The D didn't have enough unearned pride in that game.
There are four sections, labeled Heaven, Limbo, Hell, and Cocytus. Each of them has you face a souped up version of a boss from the main game, first that guy with two hard-to-destroy minions, then that guy with the hive mind symbiote that you had to freeze in order to damage, then the one with the flamethrower who counters everything by dousing you with gas, and then the final boss.
But you'd think that would be it right? Not quite.
Yep, the ultimate boss is none other than John A, our mysterious informant.
So does the boss theme sound a bit familiar to you? Like the dungeon theme, it's also a remix of a theme from The Demon Rush--specifically, the final boss theme.
Anyway, he's just like the boss of chapter 5 of the main game in that he can use Synergy attacks on his own. His is called the Competency Nuke, and it's the same attack that he used on those soldiers that tried to kill Melissa in the main game ending. It can be nasty, but it's really easy to see coming and defend accordingly.
That aside, despite the use of a final boss theme, he's nowhere near on par with The Demon Rush's superbosses, or even its final boss. In terms of offense, Competency Nuke aside, he's pretty unremarkable. His attacks inflict stun and he's quite fast, but, like the entire second half of this game, and the dungeon leading up to him, he's more of an annoyance than a challenge.
I used the same party that I did with the Impossible, and although Bethany's fragility proved to be a bit of a problem, it was more than made up for by my putting some of Simon's skill points in health, health regeneration, and shields, rendering him quite literally unkillable.
So that was the ultimate challenge that Skylight had to offer, and your reward is some more lore to dig through the pause menu for, about the organization that John A is part of, and how they've planted moles in GTAL to keep the True Skylight Symbiote under wraps, such as Alicia, who we met all of three times over the course of the game, and our old friend Simon, but I already knew that thanks to playing the sequel beforehand.
What about The D's other games? Do they have any optional postgame challenges like this? The Demon Rush has challenge battles and a challenge dungeon available from the main menu, but I'm sure you can guess how I feel about playing any more of that game. Skylight 2 has a number of challenge missions available from the menu, but given how dull some of the missions late in the main game are, I'm far from keen on doing them. I don't have access to the full verions of either Skylight Freerange games, so that's out. Legends Corrupt has a whole bunch of other game modes that add nothing to the overall game experience, so if you think I'd be willing to give any of them a try, then you have another thing coming.
So that's it. I have exhausted the material in these games that I am willing to tolerate. At least they didn't take nearly as long to document as Tobias Cornwall's did.