Touhou Chemblem - Low Turn Run: Chapter 4
6Cleared in 4 turns.
This is the first map where a low turn clear is noticeably different from an "optimal" one. In a normal game you would do it far slowly, probably dividing the party into two parts to fight the enemies in the west and the ones in the south, tanking Keine's magic with Yuyuko's high resistance stat just so that Mokou can recruit her without any problems. This is also the first chapter where steel weapons are for sale, but there's a shortage of cash, so some players would actually feel like using the first arena to get some money and equip shiny new steel weapons on everyone.
Just counting the steps Chen needs to take until the seize point, we can see that she can get there in 27 steps, which is 4 turns. This is a pretty good number but also means we're not visiting the village to the south of the starting point. The village gives you a Devil Axe, which as you might guess is not the most craptacular weapon to miss out on. However, I don't think getting this weapon would save any turns further on in the run, as axe users are not as useful in this run, besides the times when there's a problematic General boss and our Wing Spear user is nowhere in sight. This is fine though... Let me tell that later on we'll be ignoring a village that gives us 20 kilo gold. Now THAT's worth crying about.
Two characters join the party now. Mercenary Tewi and Archer Eirin. Tewi is okay. She can't equip Armorslayer/Swordslayer/Killing Edge at base due to having D swords, and her base attack and defence are also weaker than Mokou's and Youmu's. For that reason she is inferior to those other sword users you get early on in the game. As she grows, she has an above average defence growth, meaning she can get quite tanky, but the investment is not worth it, especially as her combat at base stats is so unimpressive. The only good reason to train Tewi is if you're going for a party of Kaguya, Eirin, Reisen and Tewi. The four of them provide support bonuses of +10 evade, hit and some critical to each other, which adds up and becomes quite significant.
A far better character is Eirin. She's an Archer suffering from typical FEDS Archer problems: 5 move and locked to 2-range. However, she starts with B bows and a Silver Bow. Look at those bases too: 11 strength, 9 speed, 9 defence. Unlike Yuuka, she is actually usable. Starting at lv. 7/0 also means she's close to promoting, and promoting her early is a good idea because it gives +2 move, +5 crit and a lot of speed (as a Sniper, she doubles practically everybody besides prepromoted enemy Heroes and whatnot). With 7 move, she is also more likely to be close to Reisen, providing useful accuracy and hit support bonuses to her. Yuyuko should promote first, though.
Eirin really shines in this map, OHKOing an enemy mage so that Medicine and others from the main party don't have to deal with her, and pulls a Knight so that she can 1RKO him (gotta love the Silver Bow). Tewi should go shopping and buy a Master Key and a Door Key. A Master Key is necessary because this challenge doesn't allow us to play slowly enough for thieves to get all the important chests and whatnot, otherwise we would be stocking up on steel equipment instead. That's fine, we'll get plenty of gold in the next map.
As for this map... I gotta say even with Medicine and Reisen covering for Chen so that she doesn't die, you're attacked a whole lot by Steel Lance wielding Cavaliers and Knights who all kinda hurt. We need some of their attacks to miss if we want to do this in 4 turns, and we want Medicine to kill stuff before Chen is in their range, because Chen can't tank at all (and neither can Medicine, to be frank but what can we do for now?).
Yuyuko can handle the Pegasi beginning with turn 2, and she reaches C lances later, meaning she can attack the Paladin boss with the Horseslayer we got in the last map. I give the bosskill to Reisen though. Reisen got a nice level, sadly no defence proc though. She'll have another chance, anyway.
Also, I hate how all the Javelins missed when you wanted them to hit. Nobody died as a result though, so it's okay.
MVP: Medicine.
Oh yeah, about Keine. She's a prepromoted Sage with C rank staves AND tomes, but her magic base sucks and her growths are terribly unreliable. Her niche is being the only healer with a movement of 6 for a while, and she can compensate for her low magic by healing with Mend. Being a mobile healer is more useful than one would think, so she's worth using over other healers. She will reach rank B staves very easily, and she can help with attacking too (one-rounding Knights for example).