Part 8: Are arrow jokes worn out yet?
Part 5: Are arrow jokes worn out yet?
People debilitate over where to go, but there's really only one choice. We're headed for the mainland, Parmecia.
Could be worse. Time to tear down the ship and build a new city with it.
Do I really need to write a joke about this?
This is the best moment of the game, hands down. In fact, if SEGA would remake Shining Force 2 to “Shining Force 2: Adventures of Jaha Stepping on Rakes”, I would probably buy it at full price.
Meanwhile, some guy got caught in an avalanche or something. Bowie and crew are sent to go look for him, which naturally means there's a fight waiting for us.
New enemies, woo hoo!
They're a bit tougher than the last stock, but luckily they're spread well apart. I've circled the groups in which enemies approach you and numbered them. The AI is thankfully predictable for the next few fights, so it's really just a matter of careful planning.
The witch comes in packing Freeze 1. Same range as Blaze 1, but costs one more MP for 9 – 10 damage. Kazin will be learning the same spell shortly.
I tried this three times in the span of this update, and failed each time. I'm not sure if witches have a specific resistance or if the RNG decided to piss on me today.
Note to self: Stop putting Bowie on 0% terrain tiles.
Oh my god, I feel this in my bones.
Slade, we'll make a useful character out of you yet.
This strategy of boxing in archers works pretty damn well, let me tell you.
I think I know how this is going to end.
Okay, so I went in too aggressive on the third cluster of enemies. I actually don't mind, because this map is easy enough for me to feed kills to Slade, so I'm going to use it as a second chance to level him up.
Revisiting cluster 2. The goblin is leashed onto Jaha, so this was another situation of free kills.
Yes, I am going to take a screenshot every time this happens.
Several turns later, this is the situation:
I was really tempted to just let Kazin kill him solo, one hit point at a time. That was going to take me over an hour, though, so I let Slade and Bowie get in some hits.
Battle Report!
Level 10 4 HP/2 MP/2 ATT/2 DEF/2 AGI
Level 12 1 HP/1 MP/1 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI
Level 11 1 HP/1 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI
Level 10 2 HP/1 ATT/1 DEF/ 1 AGI
Level 10 1 HP/4 MP/1 ATT/2 DEF/2 AGI
Level 10 1 MP/2 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI
Level 10 5 HP/7 ATT/5 DEF/5 AGIIt took a bit of work, but Slade got caught up to everyone else!
It's also worth noting that Sarah is ahead in levels compared to everyone else, and it's going to stay that way. That's what happens when you're the only healer for over half the game. I may have to do a little bit of save state hacking to get her properly promoted at level 20, but we'll see about that.
Well, that was fast.
One year passes, and Big Bird shows up to our town.
Yeah, I'm nude and rude all right. A bunch of dialogue later, we realize the bird's name is Peter and we need to escort him back home. Peter “joins” the party at this point, but not quite. He's an allied unit, but we don't get to control him. It's a major pain in the ass. As many times as I've pointed out how bad the enemy AI is, the AI for Peter is going to be equally stupid. Peter will get himself killed and steal kills from more deserving characters for the next few fights, and there's nothing I can do about it.
All that said, Peter is the best character in the game by a mile, and everyone knows it. He has the highest attack growth out of anyone. He also has solid defense, flies, and auto-revives if he dies in battle. Despite his (minor) nerf in this hack, Peter is still boring and uninteresting. I will probably bench him for this playthrough.
Oh well, let's move on to the next fight which is a mere two screens away after I leave New Granseal.
Only one new enemy here:
Not too threatening, except for the fact that it casts Blaze 2. Because of that, it's in my best interests to start doing this:
This way, only one person at a time can be hit by Blaze 2. Of course, Peter is going to do his best to screw everything up, but that's life.
If I can keep this up when Kazin learns the area instant kill spell, this hack might not be too hard after all.
Sometimes Peter's AI makes decisions just as bad as the enemy AI's. This results in his getting killed the next turn, but you know what? Fuck him. Peter's a stupid character.
This looks awfully familiar.
Slade officially doesn't suck anymore!
The fight doesn't last much longer after that. This group of fights is generally easy and uninteresting due to how grouped up the enemies are. Taking on two or three enemies at a time isn't a problem for me anymore.
Battle Report!
Level 11 1 HP/2 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI Level 13 1 HP/1 MP/1 DEF/1 AGI Level 11 Level 11 1 HP/1 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI Level 11 2 MP/1 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI Level 11 1 MP/2 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI Level 11 1 HP/2 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI
This town is actually completely optional, and I'd skip it if it didn't have a new weapon for Slade. There's also this.
Why, yes you can.
As much as I rail on archers in Shining Force, they're quite a bit stronger this time around. All four archers have received small damage upgrades, but their real strengths have received indirect buffs. More on that later. It helps that May hits the hardest out of all the archers and you get her first.
Her stats are a bit under par, but that's how archers are. There's a very good reason for archers having dumpy stats, and it's not “they have range”. I'll explain this later.
Next fight happens a bunch of screens later and is another “random” encounter with no context surrounding it.
The three uncircled dots are bats that just fly in whenever they feel like it. There's only one new enemy this time.
Pretty beefy, but that's why we have Kazin. Additionally, there's only two of them, and they come in separate clusters, so it's just an exercise in leashing them to Kiwi and picking off the weaker enemies. The fight as a whole pretty much goes like the last one did. Fight the enemies in small waves, keep squishies out of harm's way. The only real interesting point of the fight is this:
There's a random chance that the witch will drop it on death. If the killer's inventory isn't full, he or she will pick it up. If the inventory is full, it'll go to the “Deals” section of the shop where I can buy it. But fuck paying for free stuff, I was ready to do some save state fuckery to get it for free.
This thing looks really good on May. It's +5 to attack, which is incredible at this point in the game. Later on, it'll just be garnish, but I'll cherish it for now. But that's not the awesome part.
If you use the Power Ring as an item, it casts the Attack spell, boosting the target's attack power by a certain percentage. It only affects base attack power, ignoring weapon values, so it works best on non-weapon users like Peter and Kiwi. Casting Attack on Peter was one of the easiest ways to wipe out the game, but I'm not going to resort to such scrubbery in this hack.
Every time you use an item that casts a spell, there's a chance for this happening. The item is still functional, but if I use it again without repairing it at any shop, then the item breaks. There's a trick to repair items for free, but I can't remember if it got removed in this hack.
I'm not going to bore anyone with the details of this fight. If you look at the clusters in the enemy map, you can predict how the fight went down.
Battle Report!
Level 14 1 MP/1 DEF/1 AGI Level 12 1 HP/1 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI Level 12 1 HP/1 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI Level 12 1 HP/2 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI Level 12 1 MP/2 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI
Level 11 2 HP/5 ATT/2 DEF/2 AGI
Level 12 2 HP/2 ATT/2 DEF/2 AGINEXT TIME: Terrible fight gimmicks!