Game:

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (2005)

Duration: 2:04:20

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7

The Endgame!

We've only got 3 Siege Tomers to deal with this time, which is nice. I wasn't actually planning to keep playing after that first turn, I just did the first turn as a test to see how it would go, but it ended up going really well when I slept 2 of the 3 Siege Tomers and had some other lucky occurrences like Illyana triggering Flare with Rexbolt on a dragon. Still didn't kill it, (goddamn are they tanky on Maniac) but was nice to see. So I showed the stats of my party and checked out the enemies at the start of the 2nd turn at 16:50.

Ashnard's forces have a bunch of units with skills scattered about in them. On Maniac, there's even more than there are in Hard, so you need to look out for them. Though there's really not much you can do about it them triggering. If you have Nihil, it might not be a bad idea to give it to one of your tanks that'll be enemy phase-ing a lot of the enemies.

I handled this stage by splitting into 3. Ike and Oscar headed down the center, Jill and Boyd took care of the left side with some tome support from Soren, and Gatrie took on the right side with support from Rhys and Illyana, with Mia aggroing a few enemies here and there. All other units were just staying behind enemy lines for support/to not die. You really need to be a max level unit to be able to pull your weight here.

Gatrie had the hardest time staying alive, because the Siege Tomer on his side didn't get knocked out like the other two were so he kept getting blasted by magic, and the enemies had such high damage output they could damage him even with physical attacks. There's also a Swordmaster that comes in on him with a Rune Sword and he can deal like 30 damage in one round, so that caused me a reset at one point.

Jill dealt with a lot of the enemies' ranged attacks with counterattacks with a Tomahawk, and when her HP got low and she triggered Resolve, she just started tearing through them. Boyd also drew some fire away towards her and his Biorhythm was good and could sit on a thicket tile, so he dodged most of them. I swear his HP has rarely ever gotten low enough to actually trigger Wrath. One of the Wyvern Lords that move in on that side has Nihil and a Brave Axe, so I had Soren put that son of a bitch to sleep. That'd have been bad for a low HP Jill if her Resolve was just turned off.

And Ike, obviously, just tore through everything with Oscar, almost never being hit. Just position it where Ike does most of the tanking and he'll either one-round or severely weaken everything that comes to fight him.

I was using all my siege tomes and sleep staves here, including my best healing items. Ended up using all of them, which is nice, justified me holding on to them. Bryce is a knight sub boss of the stage with good stats, but Ike can handle him. You want to take him out along with all the other enemies before turn 10. On turn 10, Ashnard starts moving.

Ashnard's stats are the same as they are on Hard, but he's made to fight an Ike at max level with stat caps, so he's still hard. Like BK, you're really relying on Ike triggering Aether to deal with him. Nasir can move in and help pile on damage against him with his dragon breath, but you have to keep an eye out for his Laguz Gauge getting low. If he reverts at the wrong time, it can be very bad for him. Also, I had him using Beorc Guard against Ashnard, but it doesn't seem to work on him. They really love giving Ashnard and BK a bunch of hidden effects, huh?

When Ashnard moves out, he also gets a bunch of reinforcements to spawn behind him, and they will happily gang up on Nasir or Ike, whoever the AI thinks is more vulnerable (almost always Nasir). I used the last of my long range options dealing with them and had Ike and Nasir steadily make their way to the right to lure Ashnard further away. Once he was out of range, my other units could move in and help clear out the adds and--most importantly--kill that damn Bishop with the Physic before he had a chance to heal Ashnard. During this time, my own mages were using long range healing options to keep Nasir and Ike healed up, with the Ashera Staff in reserve as a panic button.

Once Ashnard's defeated, he revives with even higher stats. At that point you can call on help from a Royal Laguz, with Giffca being the best option. I called him, but then Ike triggered Aether enough that Ashnard went down before he even got close enough to help.

And that's that. I cut out the unskippable epilogue BS and cut straight to showing the Records at the end. I'm so disappointed by who was 1st place.

Anyways, for my closing thoughts on Maniac, it was fun to play PoR in a different way. But it definitely has some annoying things to it, like all the siege tome spamming and it hitting a point where only like 6 of my units could actually fight on the frontlines anymore. It relied a bit too heavily on just bloating the enemy HP and numbers than anything else. Still, overall, I had fun with it.

I'm not playing RD again.

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