Part 6: The Mountain Where Gods Reside (L)

For the most part, enemies are identical between difficulties. There are occasional changes in placement though, like how Shizuha spawns next to Minoriko this time. Not only does the terrain she's standing on make her harder to take down, she's in range for Minoriko to use her Support Attack.

So with all of my characters maxed, chapters should be a breeze right?



I wish. Even if their attributes have been pumped, all of my characters are lower in level than their Normal mode counterparts. Hell, with the exception of Reimu all the enemies here are higher-leveled than my team.



Until my team gets up to speed, I'm better off crowding everyone around Keine.



With her taking the blows, the crew can safely counter without burning SP to stay afloat.



The Plan, which you will be seeing a lot of, is for Reimu to solo one half of the map while the rest take care of the other.



One of Marisa's bigger issues is her abysmal Focused movement. The danmaku here is just too thick for her to safely fight in, but she can't even get in range to attack if she focuses.



Keine's presence makes it safe for her to just spam Alert and rush right in at least.



Enemy AI is surprisingly decent. If Alice didn't cast Focus, she'd have a 69% chance of hitting. That was safe enough for the AI to prioritize countering, but now that the rate's climbed to 99% it chose to Evade instead. This results in the Focus spirit turning into more of a defensive spirit than an offensive one; what's the point of getting more accurate if the enemy just halves your hit rate after all.



Alice hit anyways.



On the other side, Reimu is so overpowered the AI won't even bother moving to attack her (though they'll still attack if they don't have to move, no SRW J problems here). She's getting closer and closer to one-shotting them, so no biggie.



And back over here this fairy just dodged both Alice and Marisa.

Alright, skipping to the boss.



I'm pretty sure Minoriko's Owotoshi Harvester has a different animation on Lunatic. Instead of a straight line of potatoes it's a shotgun salvo ending with a larger "bullet".

Before I end my turn, I have Marisa cast Alert then not attack. Why? Because she's currently the most appealing target.



And on Lunatic, bosses can cast Spirits.



Sure Keine could have just taken both hits anyway, but it never hurts to plan ahead.



...Oh, right, Support Defend can't trigger on an enemy Support Attack.



Shizuha has Trust too, which is actually helpful in my case since it lowers the potency of Minoriko's Berserk.



Most of my army being long range attackers makes it unfortunately impractical for Keine to break formation and drop her finisher. For now, at least.



It's important that I kill Minoriko immediately, because she has Guts (refill all of your HP). I'm personally not a fan of activating a spellcard without at least half of my characters ready, but healing spirits can throw a wrench in any strategy. So it's always a good idea to check the boss' status screen.



And speaking of that, here's Minoriko's. Her spirit pool is Guts, Strike, and Grit, and her skills are Berserk level 5 and P-Danmaku (increase Power by 2 when you start a turn standing in danmaku).



Shizuha's too for good measure. She has Alert, Trust, and Focus.



Since Support Attack can't trigger off of combination attacks, it's better for Marisa to use the less accurate Narrow Spark. If she hits, great. If she doesn't, Keine will.



She hit.



With the spell out, Keine's free to take out Shizuh-



oh god damn it.


_{Lunatic adjusts spellcard danmaku effects as well. Aside from having harsher generic penalties, Sweet Potato Room slices off 9 Power instead of 5.}
Well this is pretty much worst case scenario. Keine can't take more than a single hit, and Shizuha and her Support Attack are still around.



So good thing the AI went full stupid and targeted Reimu! Minoriko didn't even cast Strike, what the hell.



No sense looking in a gift horse's mouth I guess.



Shizuha was less stupid and cast Alert. Now I have to choose between risking Keine's death to strip it off, or letting Shizuha keep her free dodge.



Except not really because everyone has Support Attack so who cares if one attack misses.



Cirno's a perfect turn to sacrifice too. Girl can't hit a damn thing, but Grit lets her safely start off Support Attacks.



Too bad the game's damage calculations don't account for misses. See, another one of the quality of life improvements FMW2 added was dynamic counter selection. Instead of just picking the strongest available attack your character has, when someone gets attacked the game calculates which attacks will do just enough damage to kill on the counter and then picks that. This goes for Support Attacks as well, so Keine used her much weaker First Pyramid instead of Amaterasu. What to do now?



Throw Reimu at the problem.



Should have seen that coming.



Oh whatever, Keine can clean up her own mess. She's in range for Headbutt now too.



Though Minoriko's going to have to survive Magic Team first. Alice summons a Hourai to use the bomb Shizuha just dropped,



then fires a Shanghai Doll.



Ideally Marisa would have been standing in range for Support Attack so I could use Master Spark + Shanghai Doll.



Then Minoriko would have actually died.



But nope, jerk casts Guts and made all of that pointless.



Minoriko is still really dumb though and keeps trying to hit Reimu.



Who responds with Fantasy Seal + Headbutt on player phase.



Berserk level 5 is a hell of a drug though.



So then I just threw everyone else at her. Marisa missed, Alice missed, Hourai missed,


Keine missed,



and now it's all up to Cirno. She has the lowest hit rate here so I guess I'm scre-



Are you fucking kidding me?



Well whatever, that's that. If you're curious how it took 7 loads to record five attacks, I forgot to press record once.

------
The game has stopped. Thank you for your efforts.

...The Scarlet Devil Mansion, the home of the vampire Remilia Scarlet and her attendants. In hopes of enlisting their aid, Marisa makes a visit.

These people were the ones behind last summer's tumultuous incident. I wonder how well this will turn out?

In any case, let's meet again in Chapter 18 of Fantasy Maiden Wars P: "Laying a Hand on the Scarlet Devil Mansion".

(Translation Rough Draft)