guardians_song (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
guardians_song) wrote2013-11-16 11:24 pm
guardians_song) wrote2013-11-16 11:24 pm
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Aura-users are RIDICULOUSLY useful on a higher difficulty.
Also, my All-Mage Playthrough memories are correct: mages are massively powerful in this game. I'm hedging "overpowered", because it is balanced in some sense, but the sheer number of enemies in the endgame that have Defense-ignoring attacks frankly takes away melee units' best advantage.
And in exchange, you get never-miss, high-powered attacks that you can aim at long range.
I think what balances Shining Force mages is that they start relatively weak, die to stiff breezes before promotion, and are often inferior to physical units in the low-Defense, high-accuracy early game, and about equal midgame. In Chapter 7, they begin to catch up, and prove useful in the clusterjam battles that take place in all the wooded areas of which the designers were inexplicably fond.
In Chapter 8, if you do not use mages, you are deliberately hindering yourself.
(I should know. My first time through, I used one mage until Chapter 8. >_< Chimeras are pretty much a gear check for mages. That's not said in jest. They're high-HP, high-damage enemies with a 25% evade rate. And Shining Force, being an old game, has a bizarrely streaky RNG, so this will manifest as your units hitting consistently and then missing several hits in a row. Guess what it does to your battle strategy when several units completely waste their turns? It isn't pretty.
And then we get into the Blue Dragons, which are basically Chimeras on steroids. Yep. I got the idea that the designers REALLY meant for you to use magic, how about you?)
If I HAD any more mages to use, I WOULD be using them. The endgame of Shining Force is a mage's world. Particularly when you're doing a challenge mod that ups enemy HP to dumbfounding levels. (I'm just waiting for a generic enemy to show up with ??/?? HP at this point.)
This is a great game, and a WONDERFUL mod! :D
And in exchange, you get never-miss, high-powered attacks that you can aim at long range.
I think what balances Shining Force mages is that they start relatively weak, die to stiff breezes before promotion, and are often inferior to physical units in the low-Defense, high-accuracy early game, and about equal midgame. In Chapter 7, they begin to catch up, and prove useful in the clusterjam battles that take place in all the wooded areas of which the designers were inexplicably fond.
In Chapter 8, if you do not use mages, you are deliberately hindering yourself.
(I should know. My first time through, I used one mage until Chapter 8. >_< Chimeras are pretty much a gear check for mages. That's not said in jest. They're high-HP, high-damage enemies with a 25% evade rate. And Shining Force, being an old game, has a bizarrely streaky RNG, so this will manifest as your units hitting consistently and then missing several hits in a row. Guess what it does to your battle strategy when several units completely waste their turns? It isn't pretty.
And then we get into the Blue Dragons, which are basically Chimeras on steroids. Yep. I got the idea that the designers REALLY meant for you to use magic, how about you?)
If I HAD any more mages to use, I WOULD be using them. The endgame of Shining Force is a mage's world. Particularly when you're doing a challenge mod that ups enemy HP to dumbfounding levels. (I'm just waiting for a generic enemy to show up with ??/?? HP at this point.)
This is a great game, and a WONDERFUL mod! :D