Truly Defeating the Lantern King Seriously Locked by a Romance?

[Kappa Omicron]

So in my first playthrough of the game, despite me being in a romance with Valerie, I somehow accidentally overwrote my entire relationship with her and got locked into a relationship with Nyrissa.

I believe it happened when I offered to give her the briar, and when she asked why, I picked a seemingly friendly dialogue options saying something like "Because I care about you", but I had no idea that meant in a romantic sort of way. I just meant it as in a "I feel sorry for you" kinda' way.

Anyway, moving on I went on to get a really satisfying ending in completely beating the Lantern King by throwing his own curse back at him. Which I assumed was only possible because of me researching every single Curse Research that came up.


Now, a few different playthroughs later, I decided to create a truly lawful good character build with no interest in getting into a relationship with anyone romantically.

I researched all the curses again, intending to destroy the Lantern King proper, but upon giving Nyrissa her briar and being asked "Why", I picked the lawful answer. I just wanted her to be whole again so she could see the error of her ways, and then accept punishment for the error of her ways.

Instead, she refused, which doesn't even make sense considering she's been searching for the damned thing for thousands of years...

After she denies me, I don't really like the wording or any of the options left (my feelings towards most of the dialogue options in this game tbh), but my character, knowing the Lantern King is the true one to blame for all of this suffering, I opted to ask her to form an alliance so we could take him down together.

She agrees. Awesome.

Now, I fight my way towards the Lantern King, and after defeating him in combat... I'm given two bullshet main opposing options to choose from:

Side with Nyrissa and become immortal.
Side with the Lantern King and become immortal.

My character has zero interest in becoming immortal. Especially seeing how warped beings become when they lack mortality, the Lantern King doing all of this just to help with his boredom for example.

So I'm looking through the list, and I am not seeing anything relating to using curses against the Lantern King to give him the smackdown he honestly, very truly deserves.

Why?

I spend an insane amount of time researching every single curse I came across in the game. I sunk in an additional 100+ hours into this one playthrough to make it as perfect as I could with all the knowledge I've gotten from previous runs.

After researching all of the curses, and apparently having a good understanding of them, please tell me why I didn't have an option to kick the Lantern King's stupid, glowing, fiery face with that knowledge?

Please tell me that this particular way of truly "defeating" the Lantern King is not locked with you being forced to have a Fey fetish and getting with a psychopathic murderer of Kingdoms.

That one ending I accidentally got where I used Nyrissa and my knowledge of the curse to truly beat the Lantern King was the most satisfying way to defeat him I've gotten so far.

All of the other ones I've had have felt pretty empty. After spending all of that time researching curses to beat him, I was forced to ask him to lift his curse he put on me, and then he went away.

That wasn't satisfying at all. If the only way to actually wipe that smug smile off his face was to romance Nyrissa, I'm going to be very upset with the narrative direction of this game.

Feel free to make me aware of another way to actually defeat the Lantern King without romancing Nyrissa if there is one, that actually involves in giving him the suffering he actually deserves. And without wanting immortality in any way.

If there isn't one... All I have to say about that is "Wow..."

Sorry if I sound overly aggressive right now, it's just I seriously put a lot of effort in what was going to be my "final" playthrough of this game, and I wanted to end it off on a high.

Instead, I was left feeling extremely disappointed.

[Hawke]

As far as I know, there's no other way to defeat the Lantern King, but to romance Nyrissa.

On my last PT, I went with Shyka's resolution (the kingdom did not burn, which was a good thing), though it would not align with a Lawful character nor it would be a true victory (TLK got his ego hurt, but that was it).

I agree that it is disappointing.

[Kappa Omicron]

Originally posted by Hawke:

As far as I know, there's no other way to defeat the Lantern King, but to romance Nyrissa.

On my last PT, I went with Shyka's resolution (the kingdom did not burn, which was a good thing), though it would not align with a Lawful character nor it would be a true victory (TLK got his ego hurt, but that was it).

I agree that it is disappointing.

Thanks for clarifying that for me, I really appreciate it.

Man, that is really, really disappointing. I honestly enjoyed 99% of the game, with only some minor gripes with the wordings on a lot of the dialogue choices.

But locking the only way of being able to properly (and satisfyingly) defeat the Lantern King behind a romance was a really poor decision to the narrative in my opinion. It's like, all that work you have to put into researching the curses end up becoming a huge waste of time without prior knowledge that in order to benefit from it, you have to romance a specific person.

We definitely should've had an option to use that knowledge without the romance.

I still enjoyed the game, though. It's just such a shame I left the game in a feeling of disappointment at the end.

Here's hoping Wrath of the Righteous improves on that front.