Wild Arms 4 - Finished the challenge run! Let's talk about Divine Weapon. Levels are 40 Yulie, 42 Jude, 45 Raquel, 48 Arnaud or something like that.
Everyone is Class Level 6 except Yulie. Yulie has Healing Plus, Raquel has Iron Divide, Arnaud has Extend for critical passives.
Form 1 kinda sucks. It has Belial's gimmick except he's slower and it doesn't stop magic. Illusion prevents his attacks / focus fire, getting some people out of a line is important because otherwise Punishing Ray (line fire magic) really hurts. But overall not too bad, Arnaud does most of the killing.
Form 2 comes in. It's a new battlefield but PCs keep their HP and accumulated CT. Anyway, everyone starts in the same hex. Divine Weapon 2 has...
Claymore - Usually opens with this, does some decent magic damage and cancels the turns of everyone hit, hits the targetted hex and any adjacent ones. Fortunately it innately misses often enough. If he spams it and it hits repeatedly, gg.
Dead Heat - Isolate with a very small chance of ID.
Napalm Flare - Kills everyone in the targetted hex. uh technically it's like 5000 - target MDef damage or something, I dunno, but on this challenge lol surviving it ever outside like Yulie defending. Raquel resists fire and gets OHKOed. Fortunately he never uses this early, and seems to have a bias to using it on adjacent hexes when he does.
Prismatic Laser - 3HKOish damage to all hexes, slams everyone with fifty million status effects including Poison and Misery (UGH) and sometimes sleep/petrify because hahaha.
Anyway if Prismatic Laser is used I pretty much lose. To evade misery I need to waste turns moving, and between its base damage + poison + random fatal status I'm in terrible shape even before these lost turns. And he has the ability to use it AGAIN and misery whatever hexes I've selected as my news ones. Fortunately, it is never used remotely early, so it is mostly an incentive not to drag this fight out at all.
The strategy for this form is thus obvious enough,
spread out (fortunately, Dead Heat sometimes helps!) Getting people far apart makes Claymore less dangerous (nobody in the centre hex also helps) and of course reduces the risk of Napalm Flare killing too many people. Arnaud can claim the ice hex and launch some powerful Hi-Blasts, Jude can Apoptosis and Raquel can Iron Divide to reasonable effectiveness. Yulie focuses on using Healing Plus Odoryuk to heal/revive everyone.
I have about four resets here on each run through this fight. It's a simple enough fight, but the things that can go wrong (mostly involving Claymore or Prismatic Laser, the attack which OHKOs a hex isn't that bad I swear) are enough that it's fairly tough. Fortunately resets take the battle to the start of phase 2 (preserving the HP/CT situation from then, too).
This takes us to the third form. Divine Weapon 3 sits in the fire hex in the back with four devices surrounding him (two in front, one on each side). HP is fully healed (and dead PCs from the previous phase don't incur Max HP Down) and CT is reset, so it's basically a new fight in all meaningful ways. FP is also set to 100 to start the fight. What he does...
ABM Lancher: A large number of hits (10?), each striking a random hex not occupied by Divine Weapon or any devices. Jude and Raquel die in 3 or 4, Arnaud and Yulie in 5, typically. At the battle's start there are three unoccupied hexes, later on the number increases to six. This is magic damage, and since its multiplier is so high, MDef is extremely significant. This means that Protect is a big fucking deal for this attack. Yulie takes 0.
Arch Smasher: 2HKO everyone. It appears to target a hex, but it's full MT (unlike Claymore or Slumber Fog which only hit adjacent hexes to the targetted one). Under Protect, it does less, but still never worse than 3HKO to anyone but Yulie, who is 5HKOed or so.
Boost Attack: Next attack does triple damage (with all of its hits, in the case of ABM Launcher). The effect goes away after said attack, even if the attack misses.
Handy Cannon: Physical, hits the nearest PC hex on a line. Bad damage! But still manages to 2HKO Yulie. Like 5HKO to Jude.
Energy Sabre: Physical, melee only, stronger than the above but still doesn't do better than 3HKO fighters / 2HKO mages. Having someone adjacent to him is necessary for it to ever be used.
Accelerator: Before anyone's turn but his own, Divine Weapon sometimes gets a free turn, just freaking because.
Devices go between Arnaud and Jude, and have physicals similar in power to Energy Saber. Divine Weapon gets his second turn after the Devices, before Yulie (sadly. Yulie is only class level 5, since Healing Plus is an essential passive).
The strategy on the opening rounds, after many experimentations, proves to optimally be as follows:
-Jude uses Arc Impulse on the Devices in front of the party, killing them.
-Arnaud moves to the ice hex (so that subsequent Hi-Blasts will be stronger. This importantly puts him in range of one Device, which he will hopefully dodge, giving me enough FP for a first-turn Odoryuk if need be. Putting him in range of both by moving forward means he dies too often, and also hems in Divine Weapon so that he'll never move
-Yulie hopefully survives. If she can tank an Arc Smasher while protected, Protect self then prepare to throw out Odoryuk from there. If she can't, Odoryuk/Heal/etc. immediately.
-Raquel and Jude use their turns to either kill an enemy in the centre hex, if one exists, or to move and claim spots adjacent to Divine Weapon.
-From here on, kill the remaining Devices as quickly as possible, Arnaud casts Extend on Yulie to keep Protect up as long as possible (and recasts it as necessary), Arnaud Illusions the boss, place 1-2 PCs (NOT Yulie) are adjacent to the boss to encourage Energy Sabre, Reinforce the PCs adjacent to the boss to keep FP high, and spam Odoryuk like it's going out of style, eventually lower the boss to 0 HP with Apoptosis/Hi-Blast/Iron Divice/Dragon Edge.
So let's review what can cause me to lose:
-ABM Launcher is used first turn, and enough missiles (4+, sometimes 3) strike the PCs' hex such that Jude dies. Or, y'know, everyone dies. That feels more common than it should be.
-Yulie sustains enough damage from to die before her first turn, which can be due to any combination of ABM Launcher, Handy Cannon, and Arch Smasher. Divine Weapon gets two turns minimum she has to deal with, so to avoid this I need to get lucky with ABM Launcher missing a bunch, or Divine Weapon moving instead of attacking on his second turn, or Jude activating Defender against a Handy Cannon.
-Yulie runs out of Protect at a bad time and needs to heal on the turn when it happens. From there, if ABM Launcher focuses on her or DW uses Arch Smasher twice before her next turn, she dies and I lose.
-Divine Weapon moves to the centre hex and hits Yulie through Illusion. (I try to Isolate him away if this happens.)
-Raquel or Jude dies on Divine Weapon's second turn, 1-2 Devices move to the centre hex, then hit Yulie through Illusion.
-Accelerator comes at a bad time. Especially early in the fight.
-Boost Attack Arch Smasher. Protected Yulie can only barely survive this and he may complete the 2HKO with a regular Arch Smasher. This is when Protect is up. If it isn't, MT OHKO.
Things actually become pretty safe once the Illusion/Protect/Extend lockdown is in place. Protect, in particular, is absolutely crucial. With it, and Divine Weapon not adjacent to Yulie (with someone in the centre hex to block Handy Cannon if they're still lined up), the only attacks he can hit her with are magical, and they don't do very much to her. As long as she lives and I gain FP at a reasonable clip, I can keep casting Odoryuk to both fully heal Yulie and fully revive her allies. So at this point, even DW getting off multiple unfortunate Accelerators is something I can survive. Awesome!
Unfortunately, getting that far is a colossal pain. And the first time I try this fight, I don't have Extend, as I foolishly thought Hyper would be more valuable. Whoops. This leads to multiple resets in which I think I have DW locked down only to have Protect expire at a terrible time, Yulie takes too much damage and I lose. Eventually I redo the fight chain with Extend learned, and finally get everything to go right long enough for things to be set up properly. I still lose once after successfully casting Extend, because the first time I get Extend off it isn't until Protect is about to wear off, so when they both wear off it happens together, and of course DW picks that time to be an asshole.
After reducing DW to zero HP there's a cutscene and you have to Arc Impulse him (100 FP unite, nothing else will kill him). Using Reinforce/etc. can keep FP near 100, but it's still a bit dicy to re-gather everyone in the same hex, not having anyone die, and trying not to use Odoryuk. There's a bit of a balancing act but fortunately Revive works well so everyone moves to join Protected Yulie again and she casts that as necessary, eventually things work out and I win.
I'm not sure how many resets that was total for Divine Weapon. 70? Way more than anything else, by far the hardest fight of the challenge, and certainly rather RNG-based even once I'd honed my strategy. Thank goodness you can restart the fight at the beginning of phase 3, or this would not be sane. Although it does mean I get to hear an awful lot of Hauser rambling about hope giving way to despair and telling me to drown in the sea of war I desire. Seek help bro.
Pretty fun, generally wasn't too excessive except for Divine Weapon. What's very funny is due to having a much better feel for the game, I had less trouble with some bosses on this goofy challenge than I did on my real first playthrough (obviously a number of the puzzly bosses like Hugo, but also e.g. Miscreation). Divine Weapon was very obviously the hardest fight, Belial was probably second... or maybe Super Soldier. Fiore/Asia, Prototype Gear, and Riesenge were also good. A number of other bosses had the potential to be very nasty like Guardian Chimera, Jeremy 2, Kraken, but fortunately I prevailed first try. PC notes...
Jude: Nerfed by losing his basic physical and Mystic. Overall these aren't toooo large a nerf. Jude now has relatively better offence due to not competing with Raquel, and the physical durability/dash to get where he wanted to distract bosses was nice.
Yulie: "Everyone is more fragile" arguably hits her the hardest (she dies a lot), and obviously Quicken and Turn Shift and Crisis RFX Up are significant things to lose. In some ways the central PC in the challenge because she's the only one who can heal or revive, so battles end up often feeling like "what can other people do to keep her alive", via their positioning, Arnaud's Jump, Illusion, etc.
Arnaud: Yulie might be the most important PC in the challenge, but Arnaud is, final battle aside, undoubtedly the MVP. With no loss to his offence (besides gems I guess), his Blasts and Hi-Blasts become some of the most important ways of dealing damage. He remains the tankiest PC, which is huge when everyone is fragile; he's often the last one alive, finishing off boss fights. Illusion is a ridiculously amazing spell, shutting down any physically reliant bosses and making ones who are even partially reliant significantly worse (a big part of why Belial was the second hardest boss of the challenge is that she is fought before I have this). Extend and Reinforce only saw utility in the final battle but were great there. I guess the main thing he loses is Slow Down, and that is significant, but it doesn't really impact his importance in boss fights.
Raquel: Well Raquel obviously got nerfed the most. Her basic physical (and the utility of Move and Attack along with it), Intrude, and Red Zone are far too important to her game. Nevertheless, she managed to shine a bunch early on because Poison Bite was crucial for dealing with bosses for much of the game (especially Belial). Once boss HP kinda flatlined midgame this becomes less important, so really Raquel's main thing from then on was having great damage against anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck beside her, and draining to keep herself alive. Probably the LVP of the challenge? Arguable; it could be anyone but Arnaud.
Kresnik: Loses Adrenaline Rush, but has a great base physical, healing, and oustanding durability, by far the best PC when he's available, goddamnit I hate this challenge why did I do it.
Fun times. Five playthroughs of WA4 in the books. I was debating if I hate myself enough to try the aftergame with this challenge... probably not.
Codename STEAM - Mission 8 in the books. Having fun. I'll weigh in more when I haven't just written a WA4 mega-post.
Hyrule Warriors - Picked this up again now that all the DLC is out, immediately I am hooked. This game is way too addictive.
