Shining Force Minimum Party Part II
Jun. 29th, 2023 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingIn working on this blog, it's been interesting documenting old runs and in some cases finding existing documentation of old runs and just adapting that. Naturally, there's something authentic about getting immediate impressions from the time of the experience, and ultimately that's the idea and goal going forward. At the outset though, I just wanted to start by ensuring I had written notes about existing runs because I like this kind of thing.
Anyway, in addition to finding documentation of old runs... it's an interesting thing to actually find an old run. On a whim when I had a pretty well a full day without responsibilities, I decided to check whether I could capture from a Wii and whether this Shining Force save was there... and I found I could, and it was. So here we are with our second update for a run that began in May 2017!
In this session, I played battles 8 (Bustoke Quarry) through 12 (vs. General Elliot).
Depending how informed you are on this challenge, it's worth noting that there's a published guide to the Minimum Party Playthrough on GameFAQs, but that it says you require Diane; you don't. There are a few characters like Diane where the game positions you right in front of them to get them to join, but you don't actually need to talk to them. Thus, my playthrough is deviating a little bit from the known standard, if that's a thing.
I hope it's understandable that I took some time to get my bearings, but returning to this game-in-progress after 6 years was actually fairly easy.
Battle 8: Pretty quickly, I found that Mae was the clear MVP of the team, getting fast turns and having her typical stellar defense. I would use her to soften up skeletons for Amon and Balbaroy to defeat so that they would earn more experience. I also tried to get Amon and Balbaroy to go after mages and archers since they could deal more appreciable damage to these softer targets than they could to skeletons.
My first run at Bustoke Quarry in this video (which wasn't actually my first run at this battle; I had levelled Amon and Balbaroy at least a little bit here back in 2017) didn't go super well. Given the tiny party size, I expected this. The good news is, you don't lose a whole lot in defeat in this game and it's an opportunity to level up. Khris got sniped by an archer pretty quickly when I was careless with her position, and given the presence of mages I knew I was going to need her healing.
Faris was knocked down 1 HP shortly after Khris was clobbered, so at that point I was more focused on optimizing experience gains rather than actually winning. Balbaroy was defeated by a mage's Blaze spell, and Amon by the Master Mage's Freeze spell shortly after. It wasn't long before Faris lost his last HP; we could possibly have found a way to win with just Mae and Faris but there's some value in additional fighting. In the course of this, Faris was level 11, Mae earned level 13, and Balbaroy and Amon both reached level 8.
In the next attempt, having got my feet under myself, things went better! The additional levels and some luck may have contributed too, but I definitely paid more attention to the spacing from archers and other things. The entire party survived, with Faris level 12, Mae level 13, Khris level 12, Balbaroy level 10, and Amon level 9. I picked up the Moon Stone, which was dumb since I'm not recruiting Zylo. I guess someone will have to carry that around for all eternity now. Ah well.
I realized a bit too late that Mae could've upgraded her weapon - a pretty substantial upgrade! - before this battle. Whoops.
Battle 9: Given that there's only one or two battles we won on the first try so far, I wasn't super optimistic about this battle. That lack of optimism turned out to be unfounded! This battle went great. Despite the team's very different capacities for movement in forests, we managed to stay clustered and avoid a lot of attacks from enemies. Mae's impressive attacks kept the team relatively safe from the dangerous pegasus knights here.
Against the lizardman right near the end, Mae readied an attack, and I said, "Here comes Mae the destroyer!", and then this happened:
In this session sometimes it really felt like Mae was carrying the team. She does have a Power Ring equipped but I still find myself pretty surprised. Everyone got through this one alive without too much danger, and everyone gained one level here.
Battle 10 vs. Laser Eye: I've always enjoyed this one! My strategy was to have Mae - who I knew could tank some hits - rush through to the safe spot halfway across the land bridge while Khris and Faris would wait and then catch up later. This mostly worked out, although Amon and Balbaroy did end up drawing aggro and ending up in some dangerous spots part way through. The Laser Eye itself only attacked its allies with its first blast, and somehow ended up hitting Mae (which was a known risk) and Amon (I didn't realize this space could be targetted) with its second.
Despite it being indicated, I glossed over it and had no idea Amon could be targetted in this spot:
I thought the laser was just a neat 3-tile-row thing.
But it worked out! Once again, we won on our first try and with the whole team alive. Mae was up to level 15, Khris at 14, Amon at 11, Balbaroy at 12, and Faris still at 13. Pelle joined at level 8, and I was relieved to see that his stats were actually still pretty comparable to Mae.
Battle 11 vs. General Elliot: This one did end up taking two tries. I wasn't careful with the way General Elliot's "waves" move and got completely swarmed, with Faris being the only casualty... and in fairly short order.
So we took a second swing at it with a much more controlled approach. I thought it might be smart to put Mae and Pelle way out front, and then pull them back once they had the enemies' attention. This ended up working, where when Mae and Pelle pulled back, some enemies started moving back into their original formation. This was a very good way for my team to get the drop on the pegasus knights and generally have better control over enemy targetting.
General Elliot himself was kind of stupid. Nobody stood next to him for a long time, and Mae and Pelle stood there throwing spears into his face repeatedly without him doing a darn thing.
Consequently, this wasn't too hard. Levels ended up with Faris at 14, Mae at 16, Khris at 14, Amon at 12, Balbaroy at 12, and Pelle at 11.
For some reason I remembered there being more than one battle against General Elliot, but perhaps I just remembered doing it more than once because I was losing, or because I wanted Heat Axes or something.
Next we're heading for Balbazak. We'll get to recruit Ernest and we have the privilege of fighting oddly-high-experience-yielding sea bats.
Anyway, in addition to finding documentation of old runs... it's an interesting thing to actually find an old run. On a whim when I had a pretty well a full day without responsibilities, I decided to check whether I could capture from a Wii and whether this Shining Force save was there... and I found I could, and it was. So here we are with our second update for a run that began in May 2017!
In this session, I played battles 8 (Bustoke Quarry) through 12 (vs. General Elliot).
Depending how informed you are on this challenge, it's worth noting that there's a published guide to the Minimum Party Playthrough on GameFAQs, but that it says you require Diane; you don't. There are a few characters like Diane where the game positions you right in front of them to get them to join, but you don't actually need to talk to them. Thus, my playthrough is deviating a little bit from the known standard, if that's a thing.
I hope it's understandable that I took some time to get my bearings, but returning to this game-in-progress after 6 years was actually fairly easy.
Battle 8: Pretty quickly, I found that Mae was the clear MVP of the team, getting fast turns and having her typical stellar defense. I would use her to soften up skeletons for Amon and Balbaroy to defeat so that they would earn more experience. I also tried to get Amon and Balbaroy to go after mages and archers since they could deal more appreciable damage to these softer targets than they could to skeletons.
My first run at Bustoke Quarry in this video (which wasn't actually my first run at this battle; I had levelled Amon and Balbaroy at least a little bit here back in 2017) didn't go super well. Given the tiny party size, I expected this. The good news is, you don't lose a whole lot in defeat in this game and it's an opportunity to level up. Khris got sniped by an archer pretty quickly when I was careless with her position, and given the presence of mages I knew I was going to need her healing.
Faris was knocked down 1 HP shortly after Khris was clobbered, so at that point I was more focused on optimizing experience gains rather than actually winning. Balbaroy was defeated by a mage's Blaze spell, and Amon by the Master Mage's Freeze spell shortly after. It wasn't long before Faris lost his last HP; we could possibly have found a way to win with just Mae and Faris but there's some value in additional fighting. In the course of this, Faris was level 11, Mae earned level 13, and Balbaroy and Amon both reached level 8.
In the next attempt, having got my feet under myself, things went better! The additional levels and some luck may have contributed too, but I definitely paid more attention to the spacing from archers and other things. The entire party survived, with Faris level 12, Mae level 13, Khris level 12, Balbaroy level 10, and Amon level 9. I picked up the Moon Stone, which was dumb since I'm not recruiting Zylo. I guess someone will have to carry that around for all eternity now. Ah well.
I realized a bit too late that Mae could've upgraded her weapon - a pretty substantial upgrade! - before this battle. Whoops.
Battle 9: Given that there's only one or two battles we won on the first try so far, I wasn't super optimistic about this battle. That lack of optimism turned out to be unfounded! This battle went great. Despite the team's very different capacities for movement in forests, we managed to stay clustered and avoid a lot of attacks from enemies. Mae's impressive attacks kept the team relatively safe from the dangerous pegasus knights here.
Against the lizardman right near the end, Mae readied an attack, and I said, "Here comes Mae the destroyer!", and then this happened:
In this session sometimes it really felt like Mae was carrying the team. She does have a Power Ring equipped but I still find myself pretty surprised. Everyone got through this one alive without too much danger, and everyone gained one level here.
Battle 10 vs. Laser Eye: I've always enjoyed this one! My strategy was to have Mae - who I knew could tank some hits - rush through to the safe spot halfway across the land bridge while Khris and Faris would wait and then catch up later. This mostly worked out, although Amon and Balbaroy did end up drawing aggro and ending up in some dangerous spots part way through. The Laser Eye itself only attacked its allies with its first blast, and somehow ended up hitting Mae (which was a known risk) and Amon (I didn't realize this space could be targetted) with its second.
Despite it being indicated, I glossed over it and had no idea Amon could be targetted in this spot:
I thought the laser was just a neat 3-tile-row thing.
But it worked out! Once again, we won on our first try and with the whole team alive. Mae was up to level 15, Khris at 14, Amon at 11, Balbaroy at 12, and Faris still at 13. Pelle joined at level 8, and I was relieved to see that his stats were actually still pretty comparable to Mae.
Battle 11 vs. General Elliot: This one did end up taking two tries. I wasn't careful with the way General Elliot's "waves" move and got completely swarmed, with Faris being the only casualty... and in fairly short order.
So we took a second swing at it with a much more controlled approach. I thought it might be smart to put Mae and Pelle way out front, and then pull them back once they had the enemies' attention. This ended up working, where when Mae and Pelle pulled back, some enemies started moving back into their original formation. This was a very good way for my team to get the drop on the pegasus knights and generally have better control over enemy targetting.
General Elliot himself was kind of stupid. Nobody stood next to him for a long time, and Mae and Pelle stood there throwing spears into his face repeatedly without him doing a darn thing.
Consequently, this wasn't too hard. Levels ended up with Faris at 14, Mae at 16, Khris at 14, Amon at 12, Balbaroy at 12, and Pelle at 11.
For some reason I remembered there being more than one battle against General Elliot, but perhaps I just remembered doing it more than once because I was losing, or because I wanted Heat Axes or something.
Next we're heading for Balbazak. We'll get to recruit Ernest and we have the privilege of fighting oddly-high-experience-yielding sea bats.
