Part 21: Chapter XX: China is in the Shape of a Horribly Disfigured Doughnut

Chapter XX: China is in the Shape of a Horribly Disfigured Doughnut

"Where's my enemy?"





That's my line, buddy.

"Who are you? Oh Zhang Bao. You will regret opposing me."

Only Sima Yi is cool enough to find the heroes so tedious and minute, even in the face of his last defeat he forgot about them altogether.



Nope, shut up.





Something still tells me that this is going to be an unnecessarily long, drawn out fight..



Not today, or thankfully ever.



This is my all time favourite defeat quote ever by the way, it captures the scene quite well.



For the final camp, there is to no surprise: nothing to be found, but back story.

"Sima Yi has two strong sons."

"Since Cao Cao died, there has been nothing but misery in Wei."

"Isn't that a Shu accent you have?"

Quite thoroughly Wei, madame*, assuming Zhang Fei taught his son to speak like he did.

*North-eastern part of the map, near the Great Wall, on a peninsula near Qingzhou.



Remember when camps were EXCITING to go to? Now that we have everything, it's one more town, then a straight bloodfest with no resting.



And wha'd'ya' know, the final town is right there!

"We will never give up this castle."



His soldier bar intermingles, I give him that, but other than that:



He relies completely on tactics, whoopsy daisy!



His first ally is horribly balanced in a low statistical sense, which translates to he sucks.



He's clearly the big threat of this fight, which is kind of sad to think about, seeing as he is about to be horribly clobbered by tactics, and made trivial real soon.



"Oh no!"
This is the fun of running through two dungeons, and fighting Sima Yi a second time.



But once the only tactics worthy tactics user is wiped off planet Earth, it's back to old style fighting from there on out.



Yet somehow, you've managed to hide Sima Yi on his, who managed to escape from us yet again.



Upon defeat, a big huge bridge spawns, which leads to Luoyang (the city that Dong Zhuo burnt down way back when), thus making our journey across China a full circle.

"They say Sima Yi holds Luoyang Castle with millions of soldiers."

Just a general fact coming from a nerdy history major: ancient history whether it be Greek, Chinese, Persian, Roman or whatever usually have grossly exaggerated statistics. Nothing better than the Spartans outnumbered 10,000 to 1,000,000 Persians at Thermopylae, or Zhuge Liang in China drowning 1,000,000 enemy troops at sea! Europe was shitting bricks as it was ~2,100 years later when Louis XIV was threatening to unleash a mighty force of 400,000 troops on Europe.

By the way, sorry for totally ruining the Battle of the Red Cliffs for you.

"Sima Yi is a true tactician. The road to Luoyang is probably littered with his men."

Ugh gate battles, aren't they just the worst?

"Wei will be taken by Sima Yi's army."

Well, he already marched on the former capital of China (Luoyang), AND killed Cao Pi, shortly after declaring himself perpetual dictator of Wei, so...

"In the past, Luoyang was burnt by Dong Zhuo. But now it's been rebuilt. It's the biggest castle in Wei."

"Sima Yi's sons are Sima Zhao and Sima Shi. They are said to be brilliant men."



And with that, here we are: the final showdown of the entire game.



Before that is done, I've taken the liberty to absolutely grind the shit out of the team, which actually isn't all that hard, thanks to the commander fights, and this is what a max party looks like. Zhang Bao is able to go toe to toe with Sima Yi's force, but has an unfair advantage in terms of tactics, and the rest of the team are fierce as well.

Also, I found out from grinding in this run, you DO lose soldiers when you run out of food, it's sort of like a perma-poison effect.



The main reason why I went and did something as pansy as grinding in an RPG is to show you this:



Way back when in Yuan Shao's saga, there were talks of a hidden person in Bohai Castle, right?



This is a very special person.











It's just one level, who honestly cares? But I'll gladly take that extra 2,000 soldier boost. This is the max level in the game by the way, Ma Chao is a bit more scrub than I remember, and Zhao Yun is still our best friend.



Marching to Luoyang from Bohai, we are shown the shear power of Sima Yi's brain, as he managed to stop our rear raid on Luoyang with a flimsy gate, meaning we have to go all the way back to the front of Luoyang.





I also failed to bring a Gullwing along, and it was the most painful experience I have ever had with this game.



But that aside ladies and gentlemen:

Endgame hath come, read on.