ShF3: Beaten. Last Taros run went smoothly, final battles were a bitch and a half though. You fight on three fronts at once, rotating between each of the three forces, and if you're doing poorly in one of the fights, some of the enemies there may get sent over to Julian's (the main hero) battleground as reinforcements. Naturally, since enemies in Insane have nutso defense, it took me a while to clear them out, so Julian got to deal with a bunch of extra snipers and melee fighters, who are of course 2HKOing counter-whores, so that was fun.
The final boss was comparatively simple. Even with two attacks per turn he's rarely in danger of killing anyone, just because Scenario 3 throws so damn many healers at you that you can almost always fit in an Aura or a high-level Heal spell between his turns. Just make sure to crowd together to split up damage from his best attack (which deals 90 total damage whether it hits one person or 12), and put people with high defense at the very front to soak up his melee hits. Add Slow magic to debuff his defense, mix in a few thousand HP of damage, victory.
So, of course, I go on to the Premium Disc and its run of nine bonus boss battles. Which I was happy to discover can also be set to Insane! The first five are bosses from the main game, unscaled (but with more support than they had the first time around). Most of them are easy, although fighting six at once in one of the fights did earn me a reset. Then you get into the real meat of the mode - updated versions of old games' final bosses. Dark Dragon is a joke - low MDEF, lowish HP, no good damage. Iom (from the freaking Sword of Hajya Game Gear spinoff) has nasty support that swims around and is hard to coax into a corner for people to melee, but the boss himself is fine. Zeon? Ohgod. 4000 HP. Three-digit defense in a game with subtraction stats, and where my very best character has 128 attack power. Poison that deals 30% MHP damage per turn. Doubleacting (and he regenerates HP after every action). This will be fun.
