Yeah, the replacement characters aren't anywhere near as useful as those you make yourself. Even really bad pairings produce better characters than the replacement characters you'd get otherwise.
After this LP, you should do a short mini LP of this.
Not to disappoint you, but that would require an awful lot of work for very little reward. I mean, I'd have to play through the entire game again, which is already very long, and through the entire playthrough, I'd have to make absolutely sure that none of the females get hooked up, and then start the mini-LP at chapter 6, and reiterate the second half of the game using inferior characters. So yeah, sorry, I don't intend to do that.
Actually, I've been aiming to frequently update this LP every day, because I only have so much time that I have access to my computer. I want to finish this game and the LP before I have to leave home again, which is only in a couple weeks. If I had indefinite time through, after this I'd probably do an LP of Front Mission, or I'd try to find a better translation of Thracia 776 and then do that.
ANYWAY:
We have Musar's troupe to take care of. He has quite the diverse band of ragamuffins at his disposal.
Musar has weapon users of every kind in his service, and he himself is a descendant of Sety, giving him access to the very powerful A-rank Tornado wind magic. He has very decent speed, and tornado only has a weight of 2, meaning that he'll get to Pursue much more often than you're guys. This makes him extremely dangerous since he can two-shot pretty much anyone in your party.
For one, it's not a good idea to chase battle them in the road between the hills, it's just not. Instead, I have the fast moving Faval run in and pick off one or two whilst running away.
Luring them into the trap I have at Luthrecia! Now, Musar is extremely dangerous, and my first few tries at this battle actually failed because I kept getting people killed because I forgot how stupidly powerful Musar is.
Until I just go "Aw fuckit, I'm using Shanan.", and then Shanan was the Musars.
Oh wait, no, he just killed him flatout, nevermind.
The rest of the guys shouldn't be too hard so long as only put your strong guys at the forefront of the action. In the above shot, I actually got pretty lucky due to the walloping that Oifaye and Faval received. I could've definitely of done that better, but noone died so I don't care.
During the action though, a FEW MORE people reach levelupability:
Faval:
He upgrades to a Sniper, and really doesn't receive anything besides increased stats. He should've atleast gotten Continue, that would've made a modicum of sense, goddamnit. Still awesome though.
Patty
Yes! Patty upgrades and becomes a ThiefFighter! This gives her the pursuit ability. The way I have Patty configured, she's a BEAST. She has a 50+ kill hero sword, giving her the auto-continue and critical abilities, as well as very good accuracy. Her Odo lineage through Holyn excels her speed and skill growth tremendously, meaning that she gets to use criticals and moonlight sword with a high enough frequency to be a seriously damaging fighter. She already had an excellent kill rate with just the two swings as a thief, but now she can swing 4 times per combat, basically guaranteeing that she'll get to kill whatever it is she's fighting.
Just awesome, I absolutely love Patty.
Johan:
I'm really starting to resent Johan. He doesn't have any form of repeated attack besides the Hero Axe. He doesn't have the strength to two-shot most enemies. He doesn't have the skill to be really accurate. He has ALOT of trouble completing the arena, whereas every other character will stumble every now and then, he just plain can't do it. He's not only inferior to his uncle Lex, at this point in the game he's inferior to EVERYONE because he's a standard character with preset parentage.
And really, pretty much all standard characters are irritating. I mean, the main ones like Celice, Julia, Shanan, Leaf, and Oifaye are very good, I don't mind them. Altenna is good as well, even if she has a few glaring weaknesses. Even Fin is decent, even if he's competing in a setting where everyone is simply better than him. Characters like Johan, Johalva, and Hannibal though? I can't stand them, because while they're not only bad characters, but they're made extra bad through the fact that you can't engineer their parentage beforehand and atleast attempt to fix up their poor stats and abilities.
But really, axes and axe-using units REALLY get the shaft in this game. Axes are the heaviest weapons in the sword/spear/axe triangle, immediately putting them at a huge disadvantage due to how crippling weight is. They're so heavy, in fact, that while they technically receive an evasion bonus against spears, it's completely negated by the fact that axes are just so damn heavy. Axes are strong, but are also the least accurate weapons of the bunch. There's a reason that the first enemies in the game are predominantly axe-users for these reasons. As a matter of fact, there's very little variety in the axe department as well. While all three weapon-types have a iron, steel, silver, and hero variety, swords and spears beat out axes by also having "Slim" varieties which are lighter and weaker. Alas, there is no such thing as a 'slim axe'. There's a throwing axe, sure, but I've personally never used it because it's so weak and heavy.
Also, there's very few, actually good axe-users in the game. In the first generation, you have Lex, Ardan, and Lechesis that can use axes, and in the second you have Johan/Johalva, Hannibal, and Leaf. Only Lechesis and Leaf have the real stats and abilities to make good use out of axes, but it's a waste because they could be using other, better weapons instead. I'm then excluding Hannibal just because I hate him and he can't be used for anything, so then you just have Johan/Johalva. Johalva DOES have the charge ability, the least useful of the continued attack skills, but he doesn't have the speed to back it up. Besides that, they all depend on the hero axe, the only decent axe out of all the axes available to you, and the two hits it guarantees just aren't enough. One other frustrating fact about axes is that you CAN'T pass down ANY AXES WHATSOEVER from the first generation to the second. This is because there are NO CHILDREN that have the prerequisite skills to inherit them. This is just an annoying tidbit that always gets on my nerves.
I mean, sure, you could give Johan/Johalva the pursuit ring, but seriously, fuck them. The pursuit ring belongs on a speedier character that can make better use of it. Now, you could argue that Johan/Johalva aren't meant to be offensive characters, but rather defensive characters due to how high their defense growth is, but this spontaneous rant of mine has continued long enough.
See where my cursor is? That's the village that will net you an extra Barrier Ring. I had Altenna pick it up because I decided "Hey, I made some good use out of Brigid/Faval, I'll try to get more use out of Altenna by compensating for her miserable weakness to magic" and that's what I aim to do. She's gonna be awesome just you watch.
Our next destination is Grutia Castle straight south from Luthrecia, manned by a Black Bishop named Juda.
Juda isn't too intimidating by himself, but he has Fenrir, a long range black magic, and as you can clearly see, he has a fuckton of IronArches and he has exactly one KillArch, which is basically a LongArch that also has a chance of criticaling.
So, basically, he has NOTHING BUT long ranged ordinance under at his disposal. Anything attempting to get close to him will be bombarded by a torrent of arrows and magic. For this reason, this guy is very dangerous because even your sturdiest units can easily be chipped to death by all these attacks.
Don't send your massive blob of units at him willy-nilly, Instead, having your sturdiest and speediest units all charge him. Fee is included in this group because she has a shield ring and the defence sword, giving her EXCELLENT physical defense, as well as the nihil skill so she can't be critical'd. These units should be able to withstand the barrage or dodge every shot as they run up to the castle and hopefully kill him and his arches with no difficulty.
Now, that wasn't so hard, but it sure as hell had the POTENTIAL to be. After everyone is dead, have Celice go up and seize Grutia.
It seems that Arion can't be persuaded to lay down his arms, this conflict must be settled in a fight to the death!
King Arion has other plans though...
Holy shit that's alot of dragons!
What he intends to do is send exactly one platoon of dragons to Mease, Kapathia, and Luthrecia, and try to capture them and deal a decisive blow in this battle.
Unfortunately for him, I have warp magic and a fistful of spite.
I leave Hannibal chillin' inside Luthrecia, because damnit, he's gotta be useful for SOMETHING, I send Sety to Kapathia, and Leaf (with my recently acquired Tornado magic) to Mease. Now, I DON'T REALLY need to protect Luthrecia or Kapathia, as losing them won't harm my win condition one bit, but I'll be damned if that punk bitch Arion one-ups me!
Do his dragons stand any chance whatsoever?
No, they don't. Even Hannibal, equipped with a hastily purchased javelin, has no trouble dispatching them. Sety just slaughtered them, and the ones at Mease honest-to-god won't attack the castle because they have a little glitch in their AI that says "Don't attack if you have no chance of winning" and so they just linger around the castle's entrance instead. That's why you can clearly see Shanan there as well slowly killing them all one by one.
Well, Shanan's also there in order to fuel the Balmung's kill rate, because I noticed that he only needed a couple more kills in order to hit 50. Balmung doing crazy crits is fucking awesome, I'm telling ya.
There's only one person left, ONLY ONE TRUE FOE left in the chapter, and that's Arion. This is one of the most difficult matches in the game, HOW will I overcome it?!
NEXT TIME!