I was rather torn about what kind of resolution I actually wanted. Killing all the dark mages obviously ain't right, and I wanted to bring the demons who wanted to leave the abyss through the portal to have a better life... but plunging the world into darkness with Ragnarok's rebirth and slaughtering countless innocents isn't really something I could get behind.
But then they KILLED LANITH. When that happened, I was 100% on board with kill 'em all. Also, seriously, what the fuck Lanith - taking the bullet like that was a total dick move. You and Pandy talked about this like one sidequest ago. Also also, I managed to beat Athena with just Pandy(lvl44 - I saved my level up potions until really late for maximum effect)+Lanith(lvl29) - I used my two life tonics to do it. But rather than making her much harder so beating her is impossible, I think you should just have her go insane if we beat her and then we fight dark athena or something as a stupid hard hidden boss.
Anyways, when Pandy decided not to blow the world up and saved Lanith, I was obviously quite happy, but wondering what now? Bad quasi-fanfiction of what I was thinking the ending would be ahead!:
My guess was that Aegis would be complete, and unstoppable, but now Pandy would be the one to take the bullet (Her parents died for her, that other guy died for her, Lanith almost died for her...now it is her time to sacrifice herself, to protect the lives of all dark mages).
The aegis crystals are spread out in a pentagon, they each fire a beam of light power to the center, which blasts up into the sky where it will eventually split into thousands of lasers that will obliterate all dark mages. Pandora has draconus fly her into the sky, launching her into the path of the rising laser to intercept it before it can scatter. She falls towards the mega light superweapon's beam, and gathers her darkness. A kamehameha battle ensues. At first she can barely hold her own, and the aegis's blast is pushing her higher into the sky. Her darkness isn't enough. She asks Ragnarok to connect her to the darkness inside the hearts of everyone else, so she can feel their pain, their suffering, and add it to her own. This causes her Kamehameha to push aegis's back, and as it does so Pandora begins to descend from the sky towards where aegis is on the ground. The distance between the two decreases until she is just above aegis and the sources of the two beams are point blank - BOOM, mega explosion.
Pandora's companions are knocked out, aegis is destroyed - and the darkness is burned out of Pandy's heart which leaves her catatonic, unable to feel anything.
Ragnarok discards her 'cuz she's burnt out and useless, and then he corrupts the crystals that powered aegis and revives. He starts seriously fucking shit up.
A fragment of Serene's soul was imprinted onto the crystals back when she used them, and that soul fragment got lazered into Pandy when she had her kamehameha duel with Aegis. The Serene fragment reaches the "child" inside Pandora's mind while she's unconscious, telling her that it's not too late, she can have a happy future with Lanith, she can build a new life etc. Serene says she has to go now, but she's leaving her light with Pandy, along with the light that was always inside her all along.
Pandy wakes up, and she's MAD - but this time she's mad at Ragnarok - rekindling her dark magic. She's pissed at Ragnarok for leading her down the path of a life filled with nothing but bitterness and anger.
Pandy tells Ragnarok that their deal is done, she revived him, she no longer owes him for saving her life. She tells him there's enough darkness in the hearts of men as things are, and that she won't let him create any more She demands that he go back to the abyss.
Ragnarok is pissed that Pandy is betraying him. ("Foolish human! This is the hour where I will give you your vengeance! Why do you oppose me?"). Pandy tells him to fuck off, that she can get her own vengeance, she doesn't need him, and she's tired of him fucking with her life.
She blasts Ragnarok with her magic - "Fool! Darkness cannot hurt me. AGH! This power, it BURNS. You've combined light magic into your dark magic??? That isn't possible!"
Ragnarok tells her that her new trick is still pointless, she can't hope to beat him alone. Pandy replies that she isn't alone, and summons Lanith. Ragnarok calls her a naieve little girl, and tells her those are HIS summons, and he summons draconus.
If draconus isn't in his final form, Ragnarok gives him a mega powerup and makes Pandora+Lanith fight him, and kill him.
If draconus is in his final form, he turns on Ragnarok, and Pandora+Lanith+Draconus fight Ragnarok. After doing enough damage to "win", Ragnarok gets annoyed and sends Draconus back to the Abyss.
After that battle, Ragnarok tells Pandora that she is a fool. He will show her how much glorious power she could have had. He revives her 4 allies, and imbues them with mega awesome darkness power to make them his ultimate apostles. He commands them to destroy the heretic (Pandora).
Pandora has the time to make 1 of them come to their senses. Her light magic fights back the darkness of her selected party member, restoring them to normal. She isn't strong enough to do that for all four of them though, so a 3 on 3 fight starts - Pandy and her chosen ally and Lanith (or a different summon if she changes midbattle) versus the 3 mega darkness apostles.
Pandy and her team win the fight (unless they don't and get a game over ;p) and she restores the other 3 to normal, telling them "Your darkness is your own, not Ragnarok's". Azrielle is obviously the hardest to convince, but Pandy tells him that Ragnarok has done nothing but use him. Ragnarok could have made life better in the Abyss, but never cared. She tells Azrielle that if they defeat Ragnarok and absorb the power they will be able to make the portals themselves. They don't need him.
Ragnarok gets real pissed that the apostles failed, that humans are useless - even demons like Azrielle are weak and failed him. He vows to annihilate EVERYTHING. Final battles begin.
After victory, Pandora & co establish a new kingdom of demons, darkmages, monsters and anyone else crazy enough to live there. Of course the old kingdoms will be at war with them (which satisfies Grygar immensely), and things aren't easy by any means, but Pandora is happy trying to build a new life and place where everyone is free from persecution.
As you can see, I'm a bit cheesy =P. As for what ACTUALLY happened, I'm a bit iffy on it.
Things make sense for Azrielle, who actually uses his power to do some good. I can see him starting up a demon nation, I don't think he's too power hungry so he won't try to conquer the whole world. He'll just carve out his fiefdom and defend it fiercely. I don't think he'll bother trying to wipe out ALL humans, he'll just murder all the ones in his new domain.
The ending also makes sense for Gryger - I'm sure he'll have loads of fun. At least, for a while. Soon he'll tire of weak opponents.
After that it gets iffy. What is Damien doing when he goes in that church? In my head I'm thinking he's like "Yo nuns, I'm a darkmage, y'all still love me?" and if they reject him he's like "Actually that's okay, I can just take over all your bodies anyways." and he surrounds himself with puppets.
Marcus, I really have no idea. I guess he just studies demons and starts writing bestiaries and stuff?
And the biggest problem I have with the ending is that it doesn't feel like any sort of ending for Pandora. The fuck is she gonna do now?
If there wasn't going to be a sequel I would say this was a terrible ending, but I guess since there's a sequel I just hope that we get a better picture of Pandy's future from that. I hope I don't sound too negative - I did enjoy the final scenes, especially Lanith's revival. When the music for the first Aegis battle started I just smiled and listened to it, then I turned the volume up and listened some more. And not just because it was a good track, but because I wanted to relish that feeling of "this is it! the end of this great game! savor it!". The Phase 3 Aegis (corrupting the crystal) was also very cool and well done. So were all the final conversations with the team before fighting Aegis.
Anyways, that's all I have to say, I'll end with a final "Thank you & great game!"