#sfrodd narsha

[claire-starsword]

The Guardiana Magic School Run - Part 11.5

Here we are indeed. This is Narsha's final interlude before she catches up with our force.

The first time I played this game, I moved Narsha a bit and was rushed by four ghost, dying in one turn. Perhaps because of that I have a warped perspective of the difficulty here. Of course, this time I have a much beefier Narsha here, so things might not be as bad. Depends on how much damage these ghosts do.

Staying where we start, the two first ghosts can rush Narsha anyway, so I'm moving a bit without getting in range of the other ones. Obviously I'm also casting Attack on Narsha as usual, that's the only strat in these interludes.

Look at how easily these things swarm you, I might have messed up. Perhaps casting Step would be better to try and avoid some of these guys. Especially since I already have absurd attack due to getting the Heavy Mace. Uh oh. Only one strat in the interludes huh, shut up me.

Most spots get me swarmed by four ghosts as I predicted, this gets me swarmed by only three. yay.

I guess I'm casting Step now anyway in case its useful later.

oh

lol

never mind my worries then let's have fun.

also you can see now why I said in my rules that it would be hard to keep Zuika and Mawlock fully uninvolved in this challenge, there's way too many ghosts swarming in too quickly, and I can't stop Zuika from countering.

What I didn't expect when writing the rules was that this would actually be a downside, he's literally just taking exp away from Narsha, I love you man, but she doesn't need the help today.

Oh well. That issue didn't last long.

Unfortunately, Narsha does not have Max's epic counterattacks, so she has to dispatch one ghost per turn, and even 1 damages pile up after so many turns. I have already used up Aura to heal once, and will have to use the Healing Seed as well since I have no herbs, thanks Kraken. If I need healing later on it will have to be the Shower Cures, which are a big waste on a single character. I do wanna see her solo this though, so let's go.

Except for the boss, the remaining enemies are spellcasters, which is not a big deal for Narsha's godly magic resistance, but should still be more than 1 damage. So that sucks as well.

Thankfully they don't seem to come all at once, so I can try driving them away while getting to the chests in this area as well. I think both contain Shower Cures.

oof that's damage. also I was not supposed to put myself in range, mistake.

Thankfully, these guys only have MP for a single spell, so as long as I oneshot the one that didn't attack I should be fine.

I do that, and the remaining one's physical attack is as impressive as you can expect of a spectre. Unfortunately more of their friends came forward. And unlike these things, Wizari has plenty of MP.

Let's see if they give up or something I guess.

They in fact do not, and things are getting quite stupid. I'm feeling that casting Step earlier on is gonna save me here, but it will require some brains. They all have bad movement so I should manage to get out of some of their ranges at some point.

I head to the top right corner and the enemies give up, but don't return to their previous position, so that's not helpful.

This sweet spot however gets only Wizari on range to attack me, so that's nice. She has 20 HP, so I'm not sure Narsha can oneshot, but I'm not underestimating the queen either.

>:D

Now I should be in range of a single Wisp.

And that's it baby! With these smart gaming moments I get to wipe out the Wisps taking only one more spell. Narsha is still pretty battered so I'll have to waste a Shower Cure anyway, but that's fine. I might wait a bit for it though since I don't think the remaining Wizari can do all this damage at once

(also i've already said this before i bet but it's so weird that they brought a character from Soul 2 as a generic enemy like, I guess she could do projections of herself but. Still weird. The other enemies are a fun reference but this is just weird)

Anyway. I grab the last chest and projection or not, Wizari is dumb enough to come forth despite me not being in range. So waiting to heal was not even necessary. I'm gonna heal anyway for safety since I don't know how much the Soul Eater does, and then get very sad if that turns out to be unnecessary as well.

Also let me say, I love the effect for Shower Cure/Aura 4 in this game, it's very cool.

yeah it was unnecessary. Alas.

We get the kill (is this thing even alive??), get 1000, a level up, and Step level 2 for our troubles. Another excellent job from Narsha, and it was actually challenging in terms of positioning and stuff. Man I'm so happy with how she's going.

Yes you will!! I can't wait!!

Losses: 0 Deaths: 2 The expected deaths on Narsha interludes: 0/3!!!

[claire-starsword]

[claire-starsword]

The Guardiana Magic School Run - Part 8.5

Look, a proper screenshot of Narsha's stat screen! I have never failed to take one, ever!

Unlike last battle we have little room to prepare at the beginning, I'm hoping her 20 attack will do something without a boost, cause i'd like to not waste a turn spellcasting.

It is EXACTLY enough. I love this woman.

Yeah. She's just Max no. 2. There's only one worry left before I declare this battle a cakewalk.

First it is more of an actual walk cause we can grab these chests without a single enemy around.

Now, the problem. Everyone say hi to Shining Force's most recurring creature!

The Kraken here isn't as cool as it is anywhere else, but still has some chonky stats as you can see by its HP here. It can get up the bridge and block your path, in which case I'm usually toast, but I've never leveled up Narsha this much before, so maybe we can take it today? We'll see, I'm not sure what triggers it to climb the bridge or not and I don't wanna risk too much upon being able to do these interludes deathless.

But it would be so cool. In preparation, I finally cast Attack. This takes out half her MP and cuts her away from using a second Aura this battle, but she's full of healing items so I'm hoping it won't matter.

Worth mentioning, besides the Kraken there's like, two more Outlaws waiting to ambush us, so yeah, there's myriads of ways we can get blocked on the bridge. It never happened to me, but I'm wondering if they and the Kraken can work together to surround you on both sides. Sounds bad! I don't know what to do besides advancing though, and I'd rather have the Outlaws in front than the Kraken.

We're dead.

I can't even try using the Defense Potion she found because it went to the Item Box, it would do wonders for our survivability here. As it is we're just toast, unless I can bait the Outlaws one by one back to the start where the Kraken can't reach.

They took the bait, there's hope. I'm not touching that Kraken ever.

Oh that +2 defense is so appreciated.

I finally heal and attempt to hit this beast. This could be a mistake as I don't know if it can counter, but that's exactly it, I really wanna see its stats.

That's a valiant effort from our queen, if I could use Zuika I could see us defeating this thing. It's not worth the risk though.

Apparently it does have a chance to drop a better mace for her, which is peculiar. And I guess it can't counterattack after all. Valuable information.

More importantly the Outlaws continue to be suckers so let's keep up with the plan.

F-

Aaaaaaaaah I should have dragged the Outlaw further back, shouldn't I???

Shoo. Go away. There's nothing in bridge. Out.

…It is not leaving.

Okay. Panic over. We have three healing items so I think we can do this, it's just a massive waste, and will give me a heart attack if this thing gets a critical hit.

She's trying she's trying so hard go Narsha go!

Oh this would have been so useful to cross the bridge. Step is another Narsha exclusive spell which raises a character's movement by 2. Will be beyond useful in forest/mountain battles.

WE'RE SO CLOSE I'm gonna be careful though and heal before finishing it off.

YOU DICK YOU CAN WALK ANYWHERE???

GET WRECKED

GET MURDERED

I WAS TOO HYPED TO SCREENSHOT IT BUT THIS THING GIVES 2000 GOLD. Also dropped the Heavy Mace, I don't know if that's guaranteed.

God this is so incredibly satisfying I always wanted to kill this thing.

I also thankfully did not have to waste a Healing Seed in this foolishness, and am now much more prepared for murder.

It's a joke to deal with the remaining Outlaws after that. All that's left is Gobgovitch, but I'll heal first with Aura just for paranoia. I doubt he's stronger than a whole Kraken.

LMAO

Tumblr is bullying me with the image limit but, he had 20 HP.

Well, Aura gave her some extra exp, that was definitely the best move. I love being good at games intentionally.

We finish the battle only to be again disappointed by naval services, as they're too dangerous here. Next time we, well, we get back to the Shining Force for all of Chapter 3, but then we get to Narsha's greatest challenge yet, and I am very hyped.

With that said, updates to this will slow down if not halt completely in the next months, because Shininginktober is coming! It's, tomorrow actually, I totally thought I had more time, but I expected to be late for most entries so whatever. That's why I'm saying months plural. As you can see I did get some warmup though :) So see you soon for that!

Losses: 0 Deaths: 2 The expected deaths on Narsha interludes: 0/3!!!!!!!!!

[claire-starsword]

we back from tumblr's image limit. And to think i am actually holding back on the screenshots lol

Lowe and Khris are ready to do their healer job and Khris gets her first level up, including a chonky magic res raise that already puts her above Lowe in this stat. I never paid much attention as to who is the best in this stat, besides the goddess I'll introduce eventually (soon?), so that'll be interesting to see.

Unfortunately her MP increase is too late, she's out of MP for this fight already.

Everyone's lumped together at big risk of another AoE so I need that mage dead now.

Gong punches the evil out of him I guess. It's ridiculous how much stuff is dropping in this run.

The rest of the enemies are wiped easy, with even the healers getting in the fun. Now we have a long and boring walk to the other side of the river. I'm fairly sure no more healing will be needed so I'll start spamming Lowe's heal for exp. It does get him a level up in the five boring turns it takes us to get to the final enemies.

Somehow I chose the perfect bait position for Max.

Do you see the signs of something beautiful in the near future?

It's not as fun as I expected because Max wiped out one dwarf on his own, but. Time for Tao to debut her own AoE too. And remember kids, you too can learn how to do this if you enroll in Guardiana's Magic School today!

Absolutely nothing else notable happens, enemies are wiped out with no issues. Max does get a level up with small increases for once in his life though.

After some cringe and some cryptid sighting, we can now finish Chapter 1. I check the deals section and there's nothing new. Sadly, we only have money for one more Steel Ring and that's it. I give it to Lowe for now. In the previous part I considered the Evade Ring as a cheaper possibility, but guess what? We're 10 gold short for them. So I just buy a couple of herbs to replace Khris' seeds, those heal 40 HP so definitely shouldn't be used now.

Nothing else to do! We follow the secret passage to Rindo, hoping to reach the land of magic, Manarina, where our beloved ice queen awaits. And speaking of queens…

Once upon a time, there was a princess who looked at her father killing hundreds upon hundreds after the sudden appearance of a dark cloaked red eyed and horned advisor who says stuff like "look into my eyes my lord". And the princess thought, "hey there's something off about this". And she was somehow the only one. So she had to flee an assassination attempt and brave vast deserts and dark caverns in hopes that heroes out there could help her restore her country from the hell it had became.

That's the past though, we're not playing the plot, we're playing the Guardiana Magic School run. Narsha is just off to visit her old friends. Unfortunately the hell desert still exists. Given my rules I bet I'll just die here, but let's see how it goes.

At the very least I can die with some loot.

And good thing I learn how to access the stat screen in battle, right? Now I can do this introduction properly. Here's the aforementioned goddess of magic resistance, Narsha.

...

I said, here's the- oh god i somehow didn't take the screenshot. And didn't notice it through the whole week this post has been in production.

Aaaaanyway. The main thing is that she has a chonky 30% magic resistance at level 1 and I expect it to double through the run. She's also a specialist in support magic, already starting with the Attack boosting spell which is frankly broken in a regular playthrough. The catch is that all her spells cost a lot of MP. Attack level 1 is 10 MP and pretty much depletes her already, you can see her HP and MP in the previous screenshot.

Speaking of attack, her stat in that isn't bad either. Unfortunately, she has little defense and is alone in this interlude, which is why I expect to die. I still cast the Attack spell to try to get some kills and exp at least. It gives her a +8 and lasts through the whole fight.

We get a Medical Herb, and I always forget but in this version opening a chest does not end your turn.

We have two rats nearby and I would love to not get hit by both at once, which might be possible, movement sucks for everyone in the desert.

Also Zuika popped up to help, he's the usual way you do this interludes by being super overleveled for this point, but. Magic user playthrough. So he's just gonna chill here.

I play the long game baiting these rats to the pillar, now I think the second one won't reach me. Absolute nonsense I never do in these games, but finally something in the vibe of a challenge run I guess.

It also turns out to be very paranoid as she just destroys the rat thanks to Attack.

And another drop I can't believe this at this point lmao

My original plan was to just get loot but now I'm wondering if these herbs can actually get me through the battle. She taking 2 damage from the rats, and the spiders and scorpions here should be stronger, and also in bigger groups. I'm willing to try at least.

She levels up and the +3 defense gives me even more hope! She also already gets Attack level 2, she gets her first spells super fast, probably for these interludes. Of course, that won't be useful now as she's out of MP.

Another Medical Herb, and now there's these enemies to deal with. Legit wondering if I can do the pillar strat, it's gonna take so long I hate it.

Never mind I was overthinking it, this rat is very stupid.

…at this point the game just thinks i'm baby. It is right, but hey.

We call this a protagonist level up.

We get the Shower Cure, which heals 20 HP of every character at once and is thus the kind of stuff you wanna save for the ending. Not like I can use it now, Narsha got so many herbs she has her hands full.

ugh. i hit image limit again. But we're almost at the end and I don't want a third reblog. WHat you'll get is image ID without the images, because that's the production level we're at now.

[Super attack! 33 damage to G. Spider.]

[Narsha finds: Medical Herb]

This is flat out bizarre at this point.

[Narsha gets to level 4, gaining +2 attack, +4 defense, +2 speed, +4 max HP, +1 max MP and +3% magic resistance. She also learns the Boost spell.]

I actually use an herb because I'll be reaching for the Dark Mage now, and. Yeah. By now you have definitely understood that Narsha is the easy mode of the game, I'm almost regretting saying in my rules that I'd be counting her deaths here separately, though I'll wait until the final interlude for a verdict on that, that one is spicy. Defnitely embarrassing to think this one would be hard though lol, I guess I never even tried to do it without Zuika in normal playthroughs.

Also. Let's have some fun with the series' inconsistency. In the original SF translation, the Attack spell was called Boost. In the following games, it was translated as Attack, and Boost was the translation for the Support spell, which raises defense and speed. So, which Boost is the one Narsha just learned? Neither. This is a new spell that raises the damage of offensive magic.

[The Dark Mage is too stupid to see me coming even once I'm in range of their magic.]

[Narsha obliterates them in a single hit and finds a Healing Seed.]

oops. turns out he's also the boss, there's no victory conditions screen at the beginning and I forgot to check them in battle. So I might have wasted a bunch of experience. But also Narsha is so absurd I don't think it will matter, I'm very happy to see her not die here, and curious on how she'll fare in the following interludes which are way worse in case you're mad at me calling this cakewalk a challenge run. Personally I kinda am. But chapter 2 also starts on one of my least favorite battles so, yeah! We're currently at a very weird intersection of hubris and dread, see ya next time.

Losses: 0 Deaths: 1 The expected deaths on Narsha interludes: 0/3!!!

The Guardiana Magic School Run - Part 4

We're back and after all the setup in the previous part, we can just move on with the plot. The Guardiana's Magic School gang gets a tour of Alterone's escape rooms, to Max's delight, and he fails at them, requiring the help of a beloved old pal again.

Seriously, why did she know this was here. I approve but I also have questions.

She unfortunately has some catching up to do level wise, but healers are useful on any level so who cares, and she's not that away from Lowe in terms of stats.

We get a Healing Seed from this terribly placed chest, like, why this.

As I anticipated in the previous part, Khris has as much defense as Tao (derogatory) so she gets loaded with all the Steel Rings I bought last time. I also give her a bunch of healing items that I got from chests. Don't even remember how much a Healing seed heals, but would suck to spend them this early, this is just for emergencies, and because I forgot to plan to buy herbs for her early. To be fair (hubris incoming), I don't think the next battle will be that hard.

As you can see, the clear bonus for this one is the Jagged Flash, which I've insulted enough last time, and is not even usable in this playthrough. I guess we've somehow established a rivalry between the magic and axe schools huh, the epilogue was right.

This battle divides into two areas on each side of the river, with the enemies on top splitting between them. Usually on my normal playthrough I split the team to get the clear bonus, so I'm used to doing each area with roughly the same amount of characters I have here. That's why I'm not too worried.

Of course, hubris has killed me before, so Max has the right idea too, let's be careful with the squishy spellcasters.

I, also need to dunk on myself a bit, i've complained so much that this game doesn't let you check stats during battle but uh, turns out it does. It's with the R button. I'll dunk on the game too because that's a weird choice, just let me click on things with A like a normal person. Also it doesn't show enemies you haven't attacked yet it seems, which is kind of a pain. Perhaps on Chapter 4 I'll get to explain how bad that can be.

Enough rambling, I believe starting from the left will be the best as there are less enemies, we should be able to dispatch the bats before the knights come, they tend to stick to blocking the bridge. Let's do some boring turns of just walking.

It takes four turns for us to get remotely close to each other. As I said the knights are sticking to the bridge, so I'm gonna bait the bats with Max and deal with them first. There are two more bats beyond the river and I expect them to come too.

Bat behavior happens, and I messed up, the knights are actually out for blood.

Gong and Tao team up to take out one bat, and Max woke up as soon as the turn started, though you still can't move on the turn that happens.

So yeah, he's not doing anything any time soon lmao

He still remains the greatest bait ever though. He and Gong still take only 1 damage from anything here, so I don't think anything will be a threat except the Dark Mage.

Tao and Gong wreck the two knights that advanced, and a bat from the other side finally comes, being greeted by Gong's counter immediately. Meanwhile, Max…

Well, he is overleveled anyway.

Khris finally debuts by healing Max for 25 exp, which I think is more she'd ever get in the mega drive version. Not exactly sure how they adjust the exp for healing, but it will help a lot.

She then manages to finish the bat tormenting Max doing 4 damage, which is more than I expected! Go girl we're one battle away from the Power Staff!

I really wanna bait this bat before dealing with the bridge gang. Gong still has the Rousing Ring so there's no sleep risk.

Actually the real reason there's no risk is that Gong has had enough of bats in general.

I try getting some exp for Lowe with this kill, but bats being bats, it dodges.

Max asks for five more minutes on his afternoon nap, unfortunately for him he's a warrior so he returns to battle, finally making some sort of line to defend my squishy people.

He's just in time to take a Blaze level 2 to the face. Ah, the wonders of magic.

...

oh c'mon, I've hit tumblr's image limit, that's gonna be a pain to deal with in this run. continuation in the reblogs i guess

[claire-starsword]

[claire-starsword]

absolute dorks love them

also i continue to lose it at the plot being occasionally interrupted to remind us that Max and Mawlock have their own tcg quest going on the side. Maybe in a more serious story it would be annoying but here it works just fine, it’s just one more fish out of water thing for fish out of water Max to deal with, and it doesn’t interrupt important character moments of plot beats anyway, it was tacked at the very end of the scene.

I’m also just fascinated with Mawlock in a meta sense at this point. Narsha it’s a perfect fit for the plot and some very important humanization of Runefaust’s side of the conflict, Zuika is a rando but fits the universe just fine (half of shining force is just getting randos on your team after all) but Mawlock? He doesn’t fit, and he’s not trying to. He’s really leaning on the card mechanic which does sound interesting and because it’s just a few scenes it’s actually kind of charming? Yes i am a random extra to add features to this remake don’t worry about it sir let’s go buy more booster packs for our deck and move on

[claire-starsword]

why does she turn into an orb

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Shining Force RoDD wallpapers from a backup of the Shining World website.

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Shining Force “family squabble” doodles by Yoshitaka Tamaki, the character designer. From a backup of the Shining World website.

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o man i was worried the bikini was gonna be just gross fanservicey stuff (and might be for Tao i haven’t tested it on her) but this is hilarious actually. And better than her stupid “become orb” animation

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hmm this is a lot of dialogue that shouldn’t be locked by defeating Ramladu with Narsha specifically, the game only hints that she has to be on the team and she isn’t a fighting class. The card collecting is a cool challenge but an entire character arc behind a messed up requirement? bad

am glad to see the dude acknowledging why he got possessed though

[claire-starsword]

haha i just said she’s like a deuteragonist and look at that, bolt weapon.

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on one hand i’m pleasantly surprised that they’re leaving this dude’s morality kinda open to interpretation instead of being all boo hoo i was possessed, like yeah everyone says he was a good guy before but the main person saying that is his daughter which is biased as heck, who knows what made him fall to the darkness, it might have been an actual weakness of his character and i like when the game lets me think that instead of forcing too much pity in the guy

at the same time, is this it for Narsha? the game built her up as pretty much a deuteragonist at this point and i thought Ramladu would be the peak of her character arc, but nope, she’s largely just here now. Don’t get me wrong i love her but what was the point of her plotwise? probably none as this game has zero clue what is doing in terms of narrative theme, it’s kinda like SF2 but with at least leagues better character writing

[claire-starsword]

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boy if there’s some way to win that i’ll be impressed

This continues to be fascinating in a meta way, in that Mawlock seems to be an overpowered dude who wants Narsha to be in the story no matter what. Kinda getting really sad imagining that if there was a Narsha in the og shining force universe, she likely died

[claire-starsword]

OH GOD SHE LOOKS SO COOL I NEED TO HUNT FOR FULL ART LATER