Reading some SRWK draft logs on Serenes Forest sparked some interest in me in dusting off the all-female run I had stalled on a few years back. Checking my save file, I was on stage 18A... which is to say, I was already past that scary Godannar base defense stage that always looked intimidating during the planning stages. What the heck, let's give this a shot. Note this is a replay (fourth run, in total), in case you're wondering why I'm not getting my ass kicked for having such a limited PC roster.
18A: It turns out that Festum grunts tink against the universal Fafner cast barrier, so Kanon could safely hold off the entire initial wave of enemies without Kazuki's help until the main team arrived, upholding the core principles of this playthrough. Core Gunner and Sayaka/Mazinger did about 95% of the work after they arrived because, well, they kick the crap out of the rest of my team to date. <_< Especially with Zoids on the other side of the routesplit.
19-1: Stargazer stage, ahoy. This would look insanely daunting if I didn't know from past experience that only the Windam grunts actually bother to go for the DSSD base. I'm rusty from several years' layoff and couldn't position Stargazer correctly to handle all the enemies near the bottom, but Rainbow Jerk helped it clean up everything with Kotona's L1 chain attack from a skill chip while the rest of my team rushed to handle all the enemies near the right side of screen. The bosses were little more than fodder and swiftly dealt with after the actual lose condition of the stage got settled.
19-2: Big stage for recruits, with pretty much the entire SEED cast joining up by the end and Daiku Maryu finally getting a female pilot so I can use it. Bad planning meant that it had zero upgrades and was badly underlevelled when it first showed up, but I managed to feed it kills on Destiny after it got pulled close on a plot event and later the Minerva, which pretty much got Lulu caught up on levels in two actions. ^_^ Legend Gundam's MAP was the only real enemy threat, but luckily I managed to kill it before it even got a chance to MAP anything.
20: I think this stage had 4 separate waves of reinforcements, which is J-level silly; Akatsuki's MAP got some good use on the one space/moon stage prior to endgame (;_;). I didn't manage to take out either fleeing boss on this stage due to lacking most of the game's heavy hitters, but as I still had 11 million+ after dumping a bunch on the SEED crew + Daiku Maryu + Fei Yen I don't really care much.
21-1: Stupid V-On corridor of tedium, oh how I loathe thee. Core Gunner somehow had 8 move after parts equipped so it did most of the grunt-cleaing on counterattacks, with an assist from Rainbow Jerk since Kotona picked up L2 A-combo sometime around here.
Gameplay on the whole isn't terribly interesting, since a lot of K's mechanics are fundamentally broken and I had enough carryover cash to make even the scrub units uber relative to a first playthrough. Carryover is needed to make scary stages like the base defense missions actually managable, but as a consequence I end up steamrollering the rest of the game. Still, there's some real comedy/novelty value in having the likes of Sayaka as my combat MVPs for once. Hopefully the game will pick up more now that I have something resembling a whole team of units with actual offense, as opposed to only 4 units who could outdamage Build Angel. At the least, it's something besides Picross to kill time while waiting for FE13's release.
