The Let's Play Archive

Shining Force 2

by inthesto

Part 6: Reset count: Three

Part 4: Reset count: Three

Last time we left off



Man, there are dead bodies just ten feet that way.



The Granseal Army Improv Club really needs to stop doing shots before their performances.

Enough joking around, let's climb on up to that tower in the back.



Wow, being swallowed by a giant demonic cloud? That doesn't sound familiar at all, nope. Whatever, you're not going to die and I'm going to have a lot of fun kicking your ass in a couple of weeks.



Oh hey, this is new. A bunch of stairs later and




Apparently King Galam has channeled his animal spirit, and it is a baboon. Also, a helpless princess.





Almost all the enemies on the map are guys we've seen before. Three knights, three archers, a mage, and a priest. However, there's also a pair of these dudes:



That's the shit that's been causing all this trouble. Believe it or not, these things are bosses. And there's two of them. This fight is incredibly not easy.




Initial survey of the situation shows two knights and one archer. However, there's another knight and two more archers in very close range who will probably leash onto somebody by the second turn. The mage and the priest thankfully hang back until very late into the fight. But the real object here is to get Slade caught up to the rest of the party.









Slade is so shitty that one fight goes by and he already can't hurt things. This is going to go very poorly; I can already tell.



By the third turn, half the enemies have dogpiled onto me. Ordinarily, I'd be okay with this because archers and knights aren't too dangerous on their own, but not only are there six of them, but they all have ranged attacks. That means they have a much easier time circumventing formations and hitting my squishies. Not being able to protect my squishies means








On the plus side, I get to flex Blaze 2 with Kazin. Even catching two targets with it puts the MP efficiency far above that of Blaze 1.



It also does 9 – 10 damage, which is a pretty good amount. Dealing out 19 damage in a single turn gets no complaints from me, but trying to trick archers into the right formation is difficult.



Meanwhile, three enemies are leashed onto Sarah, and I manage to get her to heal herself just in the nick of time.



I'm not even done with the first wave of archers and knights, and the second wave is already incoming. A mage with blaze, a priest that can heal, and a boss are going to ruin my shit if I don't clean up quickly.



Twice in one fight? This is clearly my lucky day.




Obob was wise enough to give Kiwi enough defense that even the beefed up boss would only do 1 damage to him. I couldn't have asked for a better leash.



I could, however, ask for a more secure leash.



I could also ask the dark smoke to not attack my mage two turns in a row. Or I could ask this game to have a less opaque turn order system. Or I could put down the controller, drink a bottle of wine, and return several hours later. Which I did.



This thing has 50 hit points. There's another one after this.



Well shit, that's gonna leave me with Bowie, Chester, Sarah, and Jaha. With the first dark smoke still well above half HP and all these enemies still left, there's no way I'm winning this.



I'm not exactly excited to be doing this, but it's better than losing half my gold.

Okay, so I'm going to need a new plan. A plan that involves lots of steroids.




Please don't ask me how many times I had to save state to get the maximum value out of that power water. At least now Slade will be capable of doing damage.



Why the hell not, I need the extra inventory space for healing items.



Of course, this happens in the first turn. Every time I type F8, that means I loaded state to the beginning of the battle. It's going to happen a lot.



Oh cool, dead healer in the first three turns. F8



Oh cool, a knight leashed onto Slade in the first turn. I'm healing him, but guess what's going to happen soon?



F8



You know what, Slade? You just park your ass way the fuck back there, and I'll call you when you're needed.



This is probably the cruelest thing I've ever done to myself. Between having no luck with the RNG and being incapable of planning two minutes into the future, it's no wonder I always lose in Battle for Wesnoth.

Several turns later, I've got most of the first cluster killed and the dark smoke leashed onto Jaha. The mage and the priest, who have far worse movement range than the smoke, after still incoming.







A fifth of its life in one go! Kazin, you're an okay guy.



Yeah, who didn't see this coming.



If I had the ability to bench characters, I would do it by now. Slade hasn't even gained a level yet, but I'm too deep into this fight to reload now, though. Better to finish it off and hope I can catch Slade up in the next fight.  I won't be able to. 



Smoke hits Kazin.



Kazin retaliates with his last Blaze 2.



Smoke moves again and kills Kazin. These were seriously back-to-back actions. Bosses get to move twice per turn. It's not particularly fair. The fact that the AI is programmed to keep the second smoke hanging back until everything else is dead is the only thing keeping this fight reasonable.




Sarah got Heal 2 a while ago. It actually heals up to 25 damage in this hack. A really nice buff, so Heal 2 is no longer “pay 2 more MP for extra range”.



Did I remember to mention that Kiwi gets dispell now? Did I also remember to mention that it has a fuckoff gigantic radius?




Kiwi's functionally invincible now.




The best part of this is that it still wastes its MP. Of course, it goes both ways. Expect a future update where I get somebody killed because I forgot a mage was silenced.



All I've got left is that second dark smoke, the red blip in the top left.



My master plan is to leash the thing onto Bowie, forcing it onto a 0% terrain square. Of course, I quickly realize how bad of a plan this is when I notice that Bowie is the only guy who can hit the smoke in this situation.



Okay, that's a lot better. The smoke doesn't last another turn after that.

Battle Report!

You know, I have no fucking clue because this fight had so many resets in it, I'm not sure what's what anymore. Suffice it to say that Jaha, Sarah, and Chester are all level 10 and Kiwi is level 9. Kiwi currently has the highest attack and defense out of anyone.




I couldn't give any less of a fuck about the stupid princess. Baboon-Galam floats away with her, but not before I snatch the Jewel of Evil away from him. All this causes an earthquake because demons.



We high tail it back to the docks where it's safe. Any geology majors are free to tell me how being on a boat during an earthquake is actually completely unsafe.





I don't think our insurance covers that.

NEXT TIME: Slade doesn't suck anymore!