Shining Force Minimum Party Part III
Jul. 4th, 2023 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingJust to remind of the circumstances, Part I was adapted from a collection of GameFAQs forum posts I wrote in mid-2017. Revisiting the topic renewed my interest in this run, so I picked it up in mid-2023. This is the second time I've picked up this game to play in six years. It's weird. And this surely informs some of my decision making.
Between last session and this one, I had quickly browsed YouTube to see whether there were other folks playthroughs posted. I found two playthroughs that existed: one by a user called Ductape from 2018, which is complete and has no commentary, and one by a user called ThatZooooooooo from 2012, which is not complete and has too much commentary. This ThatZooooooooo fellow's personality may be pretty well the opposite of mine, but it's kind of funny that his playthrough seems to end just before Bustoke Quarry where my previous session began; thus, if you wanted to see a complete playthrough of this challenge, you could start with his and then jump into mine and besides the absurdly stark change in the tone of the player it might be pretty seamless.
This time, I managed to play for over three and a half hours, and finished quite a bit! We proceed from Battle 13 (Uranbatol Fortress) through Battle 18 (Road to Dragonia). Given the length, as always you can choose to take or leave the recording and I'll discuss the highlights briefly here.
Battle 13 - Uranbatol: I did this in one attempt, with no casualties. These enemies didn't provide particularly good experience for much of my team, with the exceptions of the two Hellhounds and one Artillery. In particular, the Dark Priests who first appeared back in Battle 8 really don't provide more than a single experience point for anyone at this point. This was sort of the theme today; while battle strategy comes into play and is discussed, most of what I'm doing is attempting to maximize experience gains.
It's important to me to promote my units at 20 to ensure they're nice and strong at endgame, given the reduced and sub-optimal party I know I am going to have. Would it be a big deal to do it with lower-levelled promotions? Not really, no. But I can, and it's interesting to me, so I'm doing it. Thus, I'm really trying to have my higher-levelled units target the enemies with bigger experience yields.
There's a slight degree of risk in delaying the entire team's promotions so much, as the game is designed anticipating units are all promoted in chapters 4-6 and units generally have much stronger stat gains after promotion. So if you wait too long (in terms of game progression) you can artificially add a fair bit of challenge. There is also the matter of the act of promotion bringing your stats down when you do it, so you may want to "choose your moment" with care. As with the idea of holding out until 20, this is unlikely to matter a whole lot but it's something to consider.
Anyway, Battle 13 was nothing special. We gained a little bit of experience. Earnest joined and we backtracked briefly to provide him with a nice, strong Power Spear. Earnest joins at level 8, so I also transferred Mae's Power Ring onto Earnest to help him keep up and catch up.
Battle 14 vs. Balbazak: This battle features Seabats, who are known to yield high experience for this part of the game and without anyway especially notable difficulty. I used Egress to repeat this battle several times to make use of these Seabats as well as the Hellhounds and Artillery, all of whom give good experience on units up to level 18. Only one enemy in this battle has any form of AoE and there aren't a lot of defense-penetrating abilities in play, so it feels "safe".
After the first run-through, Pelle was level 14, Earnest was level 9, Faris was level 15, Amon was level 15, Khris was level 15, Mae was level 17, and Balbaroy was level 13.
After the second run-though, Pelle was level 16, Earnest was level 11, Faris was level 15, Amon was level 15, Khris was level 16, Mae was level 17, and Balbaroy was level 14. Amon got killed by Balbazak right before I was leaving anyway.
During the third run-though, I positioned Khris a bit stupidly and she got killed in the early going.
By the end of this third battle at the docks, Pelle was level 16, Earnest was level 12, Faris was level 16, Amon was level 16, Mae was level 18, and Balbaroy was level 14. Near the end, I checked stats and realized that Balbaroy's stats were pretty substantially worse than Amon's, which convinced me that maybe Balbaroy was the best candidate to use the Power Ring. Faris got double-attacked and killed by Balbazak which neatly ended the battle when I was hemming and hawing about doing a fourth round, so that was a treat.
On the fourth and final run-through... well, we still didn't get anyone to level 20, but I was ready to be done. Levels were creeping up, especially for Earnest (actually, he was still at 12), but it was getting less noticeable. Anyway, Mae sealed the deal.
Battle 15 on a boat: I didn't remember the details of this one at all. We did it in one attempt and with no casualties. Again, I paid much more attention to experience gains than actual strategy (the game hasn't felt tricky since Battle 8, frankly). Pegasus Knights reappear here and I think they've got the same HP totals? Anyway, this one ended very quickly.
In Waral, we grabbed a bit of gear from the shop including some of the promotion-dependent equipment in advance (this would turn out to be kind of dumb). We also snagged the Mobility Ring; given that only Faris and Khris have really limited movement, I put the Mobility Ring on Faris, at least for now.
Battle 16 under Waral: The worms and upgraded skeletons were once again giving fairly good experience to my characters whose levels were in the high teens, so I ended up doing this battle twice... and definitely not because of the difficulty.
By the end of the second go-round, Faris was level 18, Mae was level 19, Khris was level 18, Amon was level 18, Balbaroy was level 17, Pelle was level 19, and Earnest was level 15.
Battle 17 on a boat: Almost immediately, Mae reached level 20. I quickly use Egress to promote her, figuring otherwise any experience she earns goes to waste.
This battle also has enemies who appear partway through. My characters were being poisoned a little bit, which was kind of new and interesting. I had no means at all to cure poison, so I just left them alone and healed the HP of the ones who needed it most.
The Conch and Shellfish enemies were terrible at providing experience; any experience I was gaining really seemed to be coming from Seabats and the Gargoyle (who may or may not have been running the show here). Nobody else got level 20, although lots of folks were close now: Pelle, Khris and Faris all got to 19 here.
In Prompt, we got to feel stupid for buying Steel Lances earlier because the better Chrome Lances appear here. I also grabbed one (currently useless) Guardian Staff here for a later character based on advice that LastJustice offered in May 2017.
Battle 18 - Road to Dragonia: I didn't cure Amon and Earnest's poison, so I abandoned the battle pretty quickly to run back for a quick cure. I entered the battle a second time, and while I remembered that there were appearing enemies, they didn't seem to be triggering, so Balbaroy and Amon ended up waaay up front. This ended up causing some difficulty for my centaurs in the middle of the map who could barely move in thick forest.
While things did get a bit worse at this point, it also presented opportunity: the Master Mages and Worms allowed for the force to get a few levels. Pelle was first. I was ready to Egress to do this battle again, and it was also an opportunity to make Pelle into a PLDN. Sensing this opportunity, I decided to repeat this battle.
Something unusual about using Egress and re-doing a battle with hidden enemies is that the appearing enemies are on the map right away when you restart, and with their AI active. This makes repeating this battle actually quite different. Having that forward wave of Master Mages and Worms backed by Golems was actually quite tough, and there were some serious close calls. I think it was legitimately harder the second time!
Pelle also died in the worst of the assault, getting surrounded and pounded by Golems while still at promoted level 1. Despite the hardship, Mae's giant HP pool post-promotion gives me quite a bit of hope for the future:
In the course of this second real iteration of this battle, Faris, Khris and Amon all reached level 20 (with Earnest and Balbaroy at 19). Rather than walking into Dragonia, we walked back into Prompt, did some promotions and some equipping.
I am looking forward to Dragonia in the next part, including a new recruit to level up some more.
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Between last session and this one, I had quickly browsed YouTube to see whether there were other folks playthroughs posted. I found two playthroughs that existed: one by a user called Ductape from 2018, which is complete and has no commentary, and one by a user called ThatZooooooooo from 2012, which is not complete and has too much commentary. This ThatZooooooooo fellow's personality may be pretty well the opposite of mine, but it's kind of funny that his playthrough seems to end just before Bustoke Quarry where my previous session began; thus, if you wanted to see a complete playthrough of this challenge, you could start with his and then jump into mine and besides the absurdly stark change in the tone of the player it might be pretty seamless.
This time, I managed to play for over three and a half hours, and finished quite a bit! We proceed from Battle 13 (Uranbatol Fortress) through Battle 18 (Road to Dragonia). Given the length, as always you can choose to take or leave the recording and I'll discuss the highlights briefly here.
Battle 13 - Uranbatol: I did this in one attempt, with no casualties. These enemies didn't provide particularly good experience for much of my team, with the exceptions of the two Hellhounds and one Artillery. In particular, the Dark Priests who first appeared back in Battle 8 really don't provide more than a single experience point for anyone at this point. This was sort of the theme today; while battle strategy comes into play and is discussed, most of what I'm doing is attempting to maximize experience gains.
It's important to me to promote my units at 20 to ensure they're nice and strong at endgame, given the reduced and sub-optimal party I know I am going to have. Would it be a big deal to do it with lower-levelled promotions? Not really, no. But I can, and it's interesting to me, so I'm doing it. Thus, I'm really trying to have my higher-levelled units target the enemies with bigger experience yields.
There's a slight degree of risk in delaying the entire team's promotions so much, as the game is designed anticipating units are all promoted in chapters 4-6 and units generally have much stronger stat gains after promotion. So if you wait too long (in terms of game progression) you can artificially add a fair bit of challenge. There is also the matter of the act of promotion bringing your stats down when you do it, so you may want to "choose your moment" with care. As with the idea of holding out until 20, this is unlikely to matter a whole lot but it's something to consider.
Anyway, Battle 13 was nothing special. We gained a little bit of experience. Earnest joined and we backtracked briefly to provide him with a nice, strong Power Spear. Earnest joins at level 8, so I also transferred Mae's Power Ring onto Earnest to help him keep up and catch up.
Battle 14 vs. Balbazak: This battle features Seabats, who are known to yield high experience for this part of the game and without anyway especially notable difficulty. I used Egress to repeat this battle several times to make use of these Seabats as well as the Hellhounds and Artillery, all of whom give good experience on units up to level 18. Only one enemy in this battle has any form of AoE and there aren't a lot of defense-penetrating abilities in play, so it feels "safe".
After the first run-through, Pelle was level 14, Earnest was level 9, Faris was level 15, Amon was level 15, Khris was level 15, Mae was level 17, and Balbaroy was level 13.
After the second run-though, Pelle was level 16, Earnest was level 11, Faris was level 15, Amon was level 15, Khris was level 16, Mae was level 17, and Balbaroy was level 14. Amon got killed by Balbazak right before I was leaving anyway.
During the third run-though, I positioned Khris a bit stupidly and she got killed in the early going.
By the end of this third battle at the docks, Pelle was level 16, Earnest was level 12, Faris was level 16, Amon was level 16, Mae was level 18, and Balbaroy was level 14. Near the end, I checked stats and realized that Balbaroy's stats were pretty substantially worse than Amon's, which convinced me that maybe Balbaroy was the best candidate to use the Power Ring. Faris got double-attacked and killed by Balbazak which neatly ended the battle when I was hemming and hawing about doing a fourth round, so that was a treat.
On the fourth and final run-through... well, we still didn't get anyone to level 20, but I was ready to be done. Levels were creeping up, especially for Earnest (actually, he was still at 12), but it was getting less noticeable. Anyway, Mae sealed the deal.
Battle 15 on a boat: I didn't remember the details of this one at all. We did it in one attempt and with no casualties. Again, I paid much more attention to experience gains than actual strategy (the game hasn't felt tricky since Battle 8, frankly). Pegasus Knights reappear here and I think they've got the same HP totals? Anyway, this one ended very quickly.
In Waral, we grabbed a bit of gear from the shop including some of the promotion-dependent equipment in advance (this would turn out to be kind of dumb). We also snagged the Mobility Ring; given that only Faris and Khris have really limited movement, I put the Mobility Ring on Faris, at least for now.
Battle 16 under Waral: The worms and upgraded skeletons were once again giving fairly good experience to my characters whose levels were in the high teens, so I ended up doing this battle twice... and definitely not because of the difficulty.
By the end of the second go-round, Faris was level 18, Mae was level 19, Khris was level 18, Amon was level 18, Balbaroy was level 17, Pelle was level 19, and Earnest was level 15.
Battle 17 on a boat: Almost immediately, Mae reached level 20. I quickly use Egress to promote her, figuring otherwise any experience she earns goes to waste.
This battle also has enemies who appear partway through. My characters were being poisoned a little bit, which was kind of new and interesting. I had no means at all to cure poison, so I just left them alone and healed the HP of the ones who needed it most.
The Conch and Shellfish enemies were terrible at providing experience; any experience I was gaining really seemed to be coming from Seabats and the Gargoyle (who may or may not have been running the show here). Nobody else got level 20, although lots of folks were close now: Pelle, Khris and Faris all got to 19 here.
In Prompt, we got to feel stupid for buying Steel Lances earlier because the better Chrome Lances appear here. I also grabbed one (currently useless) Guardian Staff here for a later character based on advice that LastJustice offered in May 2017.
Battle 18 - Road to Dragonia: I didn't cure Amon and Earnest's poison, so I abandoned the battle pretty quickly to run back for a quick cure. I entered the battle a second time, and while I remembered that there were appearing enemies, they didn't seem to be triggering, so Balbaroy and Amon ended up waaay up front. This ended up causing some difficulty for my centaurs in the middle of the map who could barely move in thick forest.
While things did get a bit worse at this point, it also presented opportunity: the Master Mages and Worms allowed for the force to get a few levels. Pelle was first. I was ready to Egress to do this battle again, and it was also an opportunity to make Pelle into a PLDN. Sensing this opportunity, I decided to repeat this battle.
Something unusual about using Egress and re-doing a battle with hidden enemies is that the appearing enemies are on the map right away when you restart, and with their AI active. This makes repeating this battle actually quite different. Having that forward wave of Master Mages and Worms backed by Golems was actually quite tough, and there were some serious close calls. I think it was legitimately harder the second time!
Pelle also died in the worst of the assault, getting surrounded and pounded by Golems while still at promoted level 1. Despite the hardship, Mae's giant HP pool post-promotion gives me quite a bit of hope for the future:
In the course of this second real iteration of this battle, Faris, Khris and Amon all reached level 20 (with Earnest and Balbaroy at 19). Rather than walking into Dragonia, we walked back into Prompt, did some promotions and some equipping.
I am looking forward to Dragonia in the next part, including a new recruit to level up some more.
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