Shining Force CD: Book 1 - Battle #4 [Magnus Style/Super Hard Mode]
Battle starts at: 0:55
Challenge Details:
-No Deaths (Fire Emblem Style): Since characters can be revived after a battle, taking an FE approach will spice up the challenge.
-Minimal Grinding: This is to enhance the set challenge. What this one means is that I won't go completely out of my way to level 20 promote ALL of my characters that I plan to use by abusing the Egress (retreat) spell. With the exception of grinding for the Heroes, Healers, and Mages, I won't dedicate a lot of time to grinding, and when grinding time DOES roll around, it'll be off-record, for the sake of time. I will sync any aftermath-grinding with cutscenes via edits and let you know when I did a grind.
-Playing on Super Hard all the way from Book 1 to 4. Might have to bend the rules a bit during Book 4, but we'll see...
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...Well, this one was tougher than it should have been. Despite my notable... derps in the video, this battle is naturally quite challenging, for multiple reasons aside from the No Deaths penalty.
The most obvious one right off the bat is the respawning Dwarfs in two of the three exposed areas of the Bastion. Because they come back at the beginning of each cycle of turns on the invisible turn list, you've got pressure from these guys constantly; they still hit pretty dang hard. The best way to solve this is to simply have someone occupy the space, though this also means limiting the amount of fighters to engage in battle. Sig was a good choice in my take here because he sapped his MP dry and fighting up close with him early game is too risky. Apis was temporary until we sorted out the treasure hunting aspect of the battle.
The Death Archers are another problem. Their defense is retarded for a ranged enemy, and Super Hard is mostly to blame for this with the stat increases for enemies. They hit very hard as well, as you've seen during one of the derps I've mentioned. I only wiggled myself out of that sticky situation because I had to think of a counter strategy on the spot, took some worthy risks, and prayed to the almighty RNG Goddess that the Archer didn't double attack at any point. If my team were properly grinded, they aren't much of an issue, but given that my members (aside from the Monks) are all at the appropriate level, this makes the battle more challenging instead of being over leveled, as masochistic as that probably sounds...
The final challenge here is the Dark Mage. Yeah, that one boss in Battle #1 that we curbstomped? Well, with all our fancy items and equipment from the first battle gone, this punk is stupid amounts of durable. It more or less requires just about all of your strongest units to gang him, but the most important thing to take note of when fighting enemies with level 2 attack spells is to make sure neither of your units are bunched up/directly beside each other, or else you'll sustain heavy damage with the multi-target. Level 2 spells can hit up to 5 characters at once, so it's advised to space them all out one movement space between each other, if you're in the position to do so.
This is actually a pretty great map to grind because of the respawns, but considering MP is limited and I didn't want to risk getting others killed just for the sake of getting Sig and Cray up to speed, I just went with clearing as best as I could and prioritized survival. Since Ruce caught up amazingly fast in this one video and got himself a shiny new axe, he's more or less our hardest hitter now, so I'll be Heal 1 spam grinding my Monks off-recording in the next battle before I record the actual run of it.
Oh yeah, the next set of stat boosters. This time, we've got the Cheerful Bread, which adds 2 to 4 points to HP at random (Most boosters work like this). Then there's the Powerful Wine, which adds the same amounts, but it's an Attack stat booster. I'm saving the wine until I figure out who needs it most, but I did give the bread to Nick. While Ruce would benefit from it more, in the long run, it'd be wasted on him because his HP is naturally about half of what Nick will have by endgame, and it won't stop him from getting murdered in one hit by level 4 Blaze in the late game. It's a smart move to keep the Hero with the most HP out of everyone, so whenever he's impacted with high level spells during endgame, he'll survive longer with the extra HP. He'll be the main guy taking licks later on, after all. Nick has high defense by nature, so Protect Milk is wasted on him. I gave that milk to Wendy.
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