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Shining Force Minimum Party Part V
Jul. 8th, 2023 10:53 pmI picked up and played battle 22 and battle 23.
I had beaten Mishaela, so Faris newly had the Sword of Light and I had arrived in Prompt, the town of stupid people. Shortly after I began, I realized I also had the White Ring, Black Ring, and Evil Ring. The White Ring wasn't a challenge to use but when I tried to equip the Black Ring and Evil Ring on various characters it didn't seem to work for anyone; I seem to remember that being a thing, so perhaps I'm missing something... or maybe the issue is that I haven't recruited over half of the potential characters.
With the new rings, I also opted to give Bleu both the Mobility Ring and Power Ring so he could swap between to meet whatever needs I had.
I was excited to start this one as I knew I'd be recruiting Alef and Torasu soon, though unfortunately that wouldn't be until the very end of this particular play session.
Battle 22: The trek to the Tower of the Ancients (I think that's what it's called?) has some of our first mechanical enemies, which are Jets and Torch Eyes. I recall Jets being pretty nasty although it's possible that's because they're immune to Blaze and/or Freeze, although that doesn't really matter at all for me. I realized pretty quickly I was down a member - Balbaroy - so I decided to Egress almost immediately to revive him. I was sure he would be worth it in a battle like this one with terrible terrain.
Torch Eyes ended up being a different issue; they've got a rather strong defense-ignoring attack that seems to do roughly 20 damage to anyone. After clearing well over half of the map, with Bleu defeated but everyone else doing alright, I accidentally left Faris in an open spot where he was targetted by a Torch Eye for 18 damage and then a Minotaur finished him off with 13 damage.
Oddly, this was the first time I noticed that I guess you lose part of your money when you're defeated in this game? It really hadn't made much of an impact but when you go from 40000 to 20000 gold you notice.
On the next attempt, there were no big strategic differences although I may have been a bit more conservative with how I moved Faris. When he did act, however, it was pretty impactful with the Sword of Light!
That multitarget itemcast with the Sword of Light was really cool. I haven't had a whole lot of area-of-effect attacks in this playthrough so it felt pretty novel, and was reasonably effective to boot. Shortly after that part, however, Balbaroy died again. There were simply too many of those high damage, often defense-piercing attacks.
We won, and then went back to Prompt to revive Balbaroy. I wish the priest in Prompt were in a more accessible location, or that the Prompt folk had been more mindful planning their infrastructure. Perhaps that's part of their "town of stupid people" persona.
I grabbed the Turbo Pepper but I just held it for now. I thought it would be most beneficial for Adam.
Battle 23: This is a really fun battle. I like the layout, I appreciate the winding path for my high-movement units and the benefit my flying units get. The enemies are pretty reasonable, and you can get the Valkyrie spear from a chest. It's generally just great! It does feel somewhat lengthy, though.
I planned early for Earnest to get the Valkyrie because he's so much weaker than Pelle and Mae (both statistically and by level). I made a move for a flying unit to get the Valkyrie early and then pass it off, although this ended up going stupidly because Bleu opened the chest with a full inventory.
I just had Amon bring it to Earnest, just a tad later than I had planned. Everyone was living at this point, which is great because we had already attracted the attention of one of the Wyverns.
I spent some time monitoring the turn order here. In the early game, with the randomization and smaller agility values, it didn't seem like I could use that to my advantage too much. Here, however, I did things like have units act after a Torch Eye moved so that they could attack with lower odds of it getting an attack off at them. With that, we finished quite strong here, with the entire force alive. Bleu continued to make himself useful, too, and ended up at level 18.
With that, Alef and Torasu joined, providing me with my first offensive magic user! I found it a bit jarring that there wasn't one of those "(Alef joined the Shining Force!)" messages with the celebratory music.
I then proceeded to activate the next battle, too, which means I recruited Adam. I evacuated the next battle as soon as possible and did some minor save scumming (live!) to ensure the Turbo Pepper provided him with two permanent movement points. Adam also doesn't get a jingle when he joins but that might be a design decision because he's awful.
I'm still considering whether I regret that Turbo Pepper usage or not.
I had beaten Mishaela, so Faris newly had the Sword of Light and I had arrived in Prompt, the town of stupid people. Shortly after I began, I realized I also had the White Ring, Black Ring, and Evil Ring. The White Ring wasn't a challenge to use but when I tried to equip the Black Ring and Evil Ring on various characters it didn't seem to work for anyone; I seem to remember that being a thing, so perhaps I'm missing something... or maybe the issue is that I haven't recruited over half of the potential characters.
With the new rings, I also opted to give Bleu both the Mobility Ring and Power Ring so he could swap between to meet whatever needs I had.
I was excited to start this one as I knew I'd be recruiting Alef and Torasu soon, though unfortunately that wouldn't be until the very end of this particular play session.
Battle 22: The trek to the Tower of the Ancients (I think that's what it's called?) has some of our first mechanical enemies, which are Jets and Torch Eyes. I recall Jets being pretty nasty although it's possible that's because they're immune to Blaze and/or Freeze, although that doesn't really matter at all for me. I realized pretty quickly I was down a member - Balbaroy - so I decided to Egress almost immediately to revive him. I was sure he would be worth it in a battle like this one with terrible terrain.
Torch Eyes ended up being a different issue; they've got a rather strong defense-ignoring attack that seems to do roughly 20 damage to anyone. After clearing well over half of the map, with Bleu defeated but everyone else doing alright, I accidentally left Faris in an open spot where he was targetted by a Torch Eye for 18 damage and then a Minotaur finished him off with 13 damage.
Oddly, this was the first time I noticed that I guess you lose part of your money when you're defeated in this game? It really hadn't made much of an impact but when you go from 40000 to 20000 gold you notice.
On the next attempt, there were no big strategic differences although I may have been a bit more conservative with how I moved Faris. When he did act, however, it was pretty impactful with the Sword of Light!
That multitarget itemcast with the Sword of Light was really cool. I haven't had a whole lot of area-of-effect attacks in this playthrough so it felt pretty novel, and was reasonably effective to boot. Shortly after that part, however, Balbaroy died again. There were simply too many of those high damage, often defense-piercing attacks.
We won, and then went back to Prompt to revive Balbaroy. I wish the priest in Prompt were in a more accessible location, or that the Prompt folk had been more mindful planning their infrastructure. Perhaps that's part of their "town of stupid people" persona.
I grabbed the Turbo Pepper but I just held it for now. I thought it would be most beneficial for Adam.
Battle 23: This is a really fun battle. I like the layout, I appreciate the winding path for my high-movement units and the benefit my flying units get. The enemies are pretty reasonable, and you can get the Valkyrie spear from a chest. It's generally just great! It does feel somewhat lengthy, though.
I planned early for Earnest to get the Valkyrie because he's so much weaker than Pelle and Mae (both statistically and by level). I made a move for a flying unit to get the Valkyrie early and then pass it off, although this ended up going stupidly because Bleu opened the chest with a full inventory.
I just had Amon bring it to Earnest, just a tad later than I had planned. Everyone was living at this point, which is great because we had already attracted the attention of one of the Wyverns.
I spent some time monitoring the turn order here. In the early game, with the randomization and smaller agility values, it didn't seem like I could use that to my advantage too much. Here, however, I did things like have units act after a Torch Eye moved so that they could attack with lower odds of it getting an attack off at them. With that, we finished quite strong here, with the entire force alive. Bleu continued to make himself useful, too, and ended up at level 18.
With that, Alef and Torasu joined, providing me with my first offensive magic user! I found it a bit jarring that there wasn't one of those "(Alef joined the Shining Force!)" messages with the celebratory music.
I then proceeded to activate the next battle, too, which means I recruited Adam. I evacuated the next battle as soon as possible and did some minor save scumming (live!) to ensure the Turbo Pepper provided him with two permanent movement points. Adam also doesn't get a jingle when he joins but that might be a design decision because he's awful.
I'm still considering whether I regret that Turbo Pepper usage or not.
