Part 20: Even when it's easy, it's hard
Part 13: Even when it's easy, it's hard
Just doing some cleaning up around Creed's mansion. I do some shuffling of movement based items. I take the chirrup sandals from Jaha and move them onto Karna, the quick ring goes from Kiwi to Gerhalt, and the running ring (which is +2 MOV rather than the +1 of the other items) goes on Sarah. Mobile healers are happy healers.
There's actually no reason for this at all. Just thought you should know.
Sweet release.
Oh yeah, there's a plot or something involving dwarfs. Dwarves have some goofy music. It's my least favorite track on the album, but still not bad.
Dwarves, as played by Keanu Reeves and Terry Bogard. Anyways, now that we've solved a problem, we get dynamite as a reward. This is important for moving on or something.
There's also a weird glitch here where the healed dwarf ends up taking the fairy's high-pitched voice. In fact, there's a lot of voice glitching in this game, but this one is the most noticeable as it's scripted every time.
The rocky river leads back to New Granseal, which has been fully constructed. This is probably the dialogue hinting that you're supposed to promote by now. Being a game from 1994, the dialogue is unchanged if you haven't promoted yet.
The only staff I'm ever going to buy in the entire game. It gives +5 DEF to wizards and vicars. It's not much, but it's something to make them just a little bit durable.
One of my wishes for Shining Force 2 was that more weapons would actually have secondary effects like that. As I've discussed before in this LP, if I were to hack this game, another change would be to make weapons more diverse. But enough on that before I get derailed.
As a reminder, there's no shops when you're in Creed's. Fuck up too many times, and you're out of healing items. Restocking in New Granseal has left me pretty much broke.
Rick is now my weakest attacker, behind even Elric without the power ring. I toss the power ring on him to keep him relevant for now.
Shut the fuck up.
Good to see the castle is still made out of wood and we can't afford proper stone. Anyways, time for an audience with the king.
A mistranslation that always caught me off guard. This one is really on par with Final Fantasy Tactics.
Glad to hear it's that easy, your highness. Of course, King Granseal will continue to sit his fat ass in the throne while Astral is the one who tags along with us for the rest of the game.
Hi there, Diane. She's the same class as Elric, naturally.
Also, in New Granseal we have tactical headquarters that serves absolutely no purpose at all. You can see your characters marching in formation or hanging around the rest areas, depending on whether or not they're in the current fighting party. They have different quotes if they're fighting or not too. I decided to replace all the character quotes with the not-fighting ones, since they're generally more amusing. For some reason, a bunch of characters are fixated on Jaha's height even though he's a dwarf. I don't get it either.
Since you guys were kind enough to make the rest of this game significantly easier, I figured I'd pay you all back by making it harder on myself.
His replacement?
Yes, I even had to sell a mithril to afford a silver tank to promote her to a brass gunner. Fiscal responsibility!
We're back at the first area where we fought a witch after crash landing on the continent. Mostly new baddies here; the only returning enemy is the skeleton, who doesn't hit too hard anymore. The new blood is kind of weird, though. Lesser demons have boost, though I'm not sure they're programmed to ever use it - a godsend, because this game would be impossible if they used it with even a bit of intelligence. Dark bishops get Aura 1 instead of any level of Heal, so they're pretty much stuck with an overexpensive version of Heal 1. Dark snipers are equipped with a weapon from the very end of the game, and have a very low base attack value as a result. Not sure what the design choices involved in any of these were, but there you go.
I could have sworn Obob said he replaced Aura with Heal in every monster, but I guess he was wrong.
First set of enemies. Not really threatening since skeletons are wimps after the chess and Mitt Romney fights.
The sprites for brass gunners and vicars. For all the people that hate vicars out there, I will grant them that the sprite is extremely doofy. On the other hand, putting around in a golf cart with a cannon as the sidecar is pretty baller. I'm also not above healing people at full HP for more experience.
And now that I have a second healer, I can use Sarah to Slow enemies more often. Unfortunately, skeletons are immune to status effects, but oh well.
Brass gunners also have a kind of cool attack animation.
Something I've yet to point out: How much experience you gain from healing is actually a function of percent of max HP restored. Since 11 HP is the majority of Kiwi's life, it gives Karna a huge chunk of EXP as a result. Power leveling Karna is another minor reason to keep Kiwi around for now.
As glorious as this would be, I forgot that lesser demons are also immune (or at least highly resistant) to status effects. It's like the game somehow knows that I'd be abusing Slow as much as possible now that I have Karna.
I'd just like to take this time to remind everyone that Luke is actually the more durable of the two birdmen in this game.
The background if a flying enemy is sitting on impassable terrain. Don't think I've shown it up to now.
Even with two healers, I can't avoid random criticals on my squishies.
I'd say this is what it looks like after seven or eight turns. The random blip on the top left is a lesser demon that I lured down and killed individually. The other cluster is a sniper, a skeleton, a bishop, and...something else that I don't really remember. Not really threatening anyway.
The inverse of the rook situation from the chess fight. Archers have longer range, so it's easier to leash them away from the enemy.
Did I say skeletons were a non-threat for some reason? This game really likes making me eat my words.
At least, in the end, I got an isolated healer. I think you all know how this is supposed to go.
Wait, that's not how it's supposed to go at all.
Okay, so the asshole won't heal himself and it costs me another 260 gold. This is the first time I've ever seen healer AI behave like this. Fuck you, game.
Battle Report!
Level 11 2 HP/2 MP/1 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI
Level 6 4 HP/2 ATT/4 DEF/4 AGI
Level 6 1 HP/2 MP/1 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI
Level 5 1 HP/1 MP/3 ATT/3 DEF/1 AGI
Level 6 4 HP/2 ATT/2 DEF/3 AGI
Level 5 2 HP/4 MP/2 ATT/4 DEF/3 AGI
Level 5 2 HP/1 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI
Level 3 4 HP/2 MP/3 DEF/3 AGI
Level 3 4 HP/3 ATT/6 DEF/3 AGI
To North Parmecia, it is.
In case we weren't silly enough to give Elric or Janet the silver tank, the game now gives us Rohde as a brass gunner. The game gives you one of each special promotion (pegasus knight, master monk, sorcerer, and brass gunner) in case you weren't smart enough to find the items on your own, but they all kind of suck in comparison to their alternatives. One of them got significant upgrades in Challenge Mode, but the other three are rather eh. Rohde is one of those three.
As much as I hate myself, there's really no reason to put all four archers into the battle party at once. Rohde stays benched because he's arguably worse than Elric.
Also, Astral drives the caravan now that Rohde is a party member.
Of course, there's monsters in the cave. We're treated to that same gimmicky darkness shit we had in the hobgoblin cave, so I'll be glossing over this fight for the most part. Thankfully, this is the last time we'll be seeing this garbage. Only one new enemy, and there's only one of him at the very end. Nothing to worry about.
Since there's not too much to talk about in this fight, enjoy this medley from the orchestrated soundtrack. The opening is in the less violent “evil” places, such as Creed's basement where we contact Evil Spilit. At 1:28, we get the theme that plays whenever a (non-boss) enemy attacks and also during intense dangerous situations, such as the earthquake that leveled Granseal. 2:52 transitions into the “evil march” that plays whenever you're in a dungeon or cave, such as right now. The medley closes at 4:44 with the music that plays whenever a promoted character attacks. The finale is one of the stronger points of the album, so I suggest you give this track a full listen.
We don't need no stinkin' terrain effect.
Why do I do this? The thing even had 20 out of 76 HP left. Fuck this RNG.
Having two healers affords me the ability to ram headfirst into dangerous situations without any sense of formation or tactics. It's nice, really.
But not that nice, apparently.
The last few enemies, and it ends the fight pretty quickly, as you can guess.
Strangely enough, dark soldiers are resistant to fire. I guess it's because they're colored red.
Battle Report!
Level 7 2 HP/1 MP/1 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI Level 7 2 HP/1 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI Level 6 2 HP/2 MP/4 ATT/5 DEF/2 AGI Level 7 1 HP/1 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI
Level 7 2 HP/2 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI Level 7 5 HP/2 ATT/5 DEF/2 AGI
Level 6 2 HP/1 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI Level 5 4 HP/2 MP/2 DEF/2 AGI Level 6 4HP/1 ATT/4 DEF/2 AGI
The spoils of war. It's a consumable item that actually restores 20 MP. I can't remember how many you find in the game, but it's not many.
NEXT TIME: A centaur with SARS is still better than Chester!