Part 53: Offering to the Falling Flowers (L)

Music: The Ayakashi Sheds Spring
_{Imagine this song on loop, forever, and you have my aural experience this update.}



Alright, here's the main event. I'm going to be blunt here: my team is absolutely not optimized for this chapter. I have no idea if I can even legitimately win, but I guess I'll find out.



Given how many enemies there are, you might think the general Lunatic buff would be a problem.



It's really not, though. Say hello to the strategy I used for for the past 10 chapters: grouping everyone up into huge Support Defend blocks and slowly crawling to the boss.



All of my tanks have Berserk 9 at the minimum, and most have a couple levels of Defense Up too. As long as they're not suffering from Defense penalties, they should be able to stay alive indefinitely.



The actual source of difficulty is right here. Ran has Double Image again, starts with 110 Power so she can immediately use her MAP, and moves on the first enemy phase.



She will always be near Chen, who has Support Defense and is giving her a friendship boost to boot.



And even if I blow up Chen, Ran can just bring her back.



And even if I blow up Ran, Yukari can just bring her back. But she'll usually hold off on it until Boundary of Life and Death, which as you might recall is right after Border of Humans and Youkai. You know, the spell that leaves all of my units bunched up.



So obviously, Ran has to die immediately. And the best way to do that is to have everyone inch forward just enough on the first turn that Ran can't quite reach me on her second turn.



She'll probably use Ultimate Buddhist anyway, so everyone also has to blow some SP. I have SP Up on a couple of my Reals just so they can make it through to Yukari.



As expected, Ran spins.



And happily enough, Chen moved just out of Support Defense range. I'm all clear to murder Ran now.



Shizuha is around solely to help me do this. Aside from essentially nullifying Focus, Strike also bypasses Double Image.



But first I kill this ghost. Remember that I'm really early in the chapter at the moment; nobody has the Power to really spam finishers.



Nobody but Reimu that is. In yet another example of why she is the best, she can use Fantasy Seal as early as 120 Power. Getting 50 kills makes a unit start off with 105 Power, and being the unit with the most kills grants another +5 on top of that. So Reimu only needs to rack up 10 Power to get going, and that's pretty much just two battles or so.



Sakuya's World is also usable at 120, so I immediately blow two on Support Attacks



and then save scum until I can safely land a third.



Everyone else proceeds to burn SP like crazy to do as much damage as possible.



And after a ton of save scumming to find the best sequence of attacks, Momiji scores the killing blow.



This leaves Mokou completely unprotected against the rest of the enemies, but oh well.



Aya is also doomed, but she was only in because I had extra cost so no real loss.



The next enemy phase is pretty much save scum hell: I need to get out of it with both Sakuya and Youmu alive, or at least have them soak up enough hits that nobody else dies. The only way to do this is to reload until they trigger Private Square or Ghost Half enough times to live.

Or get lucky and have the AI randomly decide to ignore them in favor of Letty and Momiji. That happened on something like my tenth attempt, and while I was really confused I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.



With Ran dead, I'm free to group everyone up again.



And just in time too, because on Lunatic Yukari starts moving on the fourth enemy phase!



This is a death sentence for Sakuya, since Yukari has Sense and Fury. Sure, this isn't enough damage to kill her,



but the crows are still here too, and they both have Fury.

With Ran dead, the next problem I have to deal with is the Yukari-Zenki-Goki Fury trinity. Zenki in particular is the biggest threat, since it does the most damage.



And there's still the ever looming wave of spirits to deal with. One of my tanks is pretty much guaranteed to go down to a focused assault (it's the usually one that has to take Chen's attack, because she hits ridiculously hard), and this time it was Meiling.



Thankfully about four spirits suicided on Reimu.



Dai chugs down every single SP restoration item she has, then goes nuts with the healing.



While the Fury trinity can kill one person a turn, they're more likely to spread out their damage. The enemy grunts, on the other hand, are very willing to focus fire. Their deaths are top priority, no matter how much save scumming I need to do.



Once they're thinned out enough, the next priority target is Zenki. Marisa drops a bomb to free Reimu space to move.



One wave of Support Attacks later and the deed is done.



Chen falls to a similar assault. At this point, I've made it past the toughest part. It's all mopping up from here.



Once I take down Goki, I'm clear to start moving up to the Saigyo Ayakashi.



Along the way, Sanae hits max faith.



Once I'm almost there I start attacking Yukari.



Who's bulkier, but not that much of a threat. Her only real claim to fame is her absurd 107 SP. She's been casting Sense and Fury every single turn and she's only just now reaching her limits.



She goes down like a sack of bricks to what remains of my army.

Music: Sage, Please Guide Me

Here's Yukari's FMW3 theme to spice things up.



Once she's declared her first spell, I've essentially won. If I wanted to, I could just time out every single spell from here on out. Ran and Chen's respawn would be a problem, but if I had brought the Three Fairies I could have easily stalled to victory.

You've probably noticed I haven't brought the Three Fairies.

It's against my better judgement, but I'm going to try to capture as many spells as I possibly can just because why not.



All of Yukari's spells have ridiculously jacked up effects on Lunatic by the way.



Also while I just said I'd try to capture as many spells as possible, I'm not going to get Curse of Dreams and Reality. I need to spend these four turns clearing out the remaining enemies and healing all of my tanks.



Dai was eventually shot down, though, and this leaves me with very little options to handle Yukari's Spirit spam. I have no more SP on anyone except Koa and Reimu, and Reimu is still down south.

I think this might end up with everyone but Reimu dying.



I had to suicide Momiji, but I got Yukari down to critical on her second spell. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to count this as a moral victory because I can't capture Double Black Death Butterfly. If I do, Yukari will have her action next turn and be able to use a Sense'd MAP. Which would kill Reimu, which would ruin any chances I have of getting further.



Boundary of Humans and Youkai is six turns long on Lunatic, by the way. And no fake out like with Flandre.

Also there's basically no way you can make it to every safe spot without using a bomb unless you got Unfocused Movement on every character or still have Aya alive. So I'm just going to have to waste all of my bombs.



I made it through, but it cost me everyone except Reimu and Letty. So much for doing this legitimately!



Also even if I did make it through this spell with a bomb still in stock, on Lunatic Boundary of Life and Death cuts the range by 2.



Just for fun, I'll show you what'd happen if I went for the kill. Letty suicides herself taking out Yukari's Alert,



Reimu gives it her best shot,



Yukari summons Ran,



Ran summons Chen,



Ran kills Reimu.




I kind of like the implication that Yukari is the one who brings everyone back after a game over.



Anyway, the smart thing to do is to split the AI's attention. Letty will be the decoy, while Reimu flees out of Yukari's range.



Letty is just durable enough to survive all three hits if none of them are criticals. Save scumming helps!



And neither Ran nor Chen have Strike, so once Reimu is out of the danmaku field it's just a matter of save scumming so she keeps dodging. And she's got great odds, so it's not very bad.



Five turns to go!



And it looks like they'll be easy ones, because Reimu is far away enough that Ran and Chen's AI breaks. They'll only move one space forward a turn.



Victory!









And here are my stats for Lunatic: