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Well gentlemen, here we are. No more of that making the game characters do the commentary thing. I got sick of writing it, and this late into the game, there's not much else I could do with the concept.
Minor side note before I go on: It recently came to my attention that, in vanilla Thracia 776, it is possible to skip Chapter 8x but still get Tanya and Dagda back. If one of the two is captured before Chapter 4, Chapter 8x does not take place and you get the other character back regardless of anything, and then you can get the other back in Chapter 21x. (Not ONE of the guides I've seen has mentioned this, by the way, and not even the LTCers told anyone about it either.) I bring this up because this MAY have a similar effect on Super Thracia's Chapter 8x. If you could skip that horrible sidequest and still get Marty back, it would be VERY helpful. But I do not care to confirm if this is possible in Super Thracia or not.
Right, so where were we? Ah yes, now that we've conquered Lenster it's time for Leif to botch an invasion of Alster, and we get what's actually a unique chapter idea since your units have to flee the enemy units instead of attack.
As in the original game, you're more than welcome to simply have all the units by the castle get in there and end the map, allowing everyone else to get captured. No shame in doing that, but you do miss out on a lot of stuff.
Ah, but this is SUPER THRACIA. Naturally, the map has to be flooded with enemies. I'm actually annoyed at how much this hack relied on flooding the screen. I may or may not have fully known what I was getting into with this hack, but it was rather unfortunate that so many chapters consisted of one of three things:
1. Mildly harder than the original chapter with an avoidable trap
2. Massive waves of weak enemy units
3. Disgustingly awful fog chapters
I've got good news though, from Chapter 19 onwards, it gets interesting.
These two are back AGAIN, big surprise.
You can recruit both of these two in this chapter. Galzus is recruited by Mareeta, and Misha is suddenly recruitable by Karin. Even though I killed her previously...but hell I killed Zeed and Jemmy over and over too, so whatever. Anyways, they're both worth recruiting, the trouble is this is EXTREMELY hard, especially if Mareeta and Karin can't survive the kind of enemies that are here.
Here's the boss. Apparently she's supposed to be fucking Elincia which begs the question of why the hair is completely the wrong color. And she's not a Falcoknight. And doesn't have a Master Sword (which would represent Amiti.)
But before we get to the action...if nothing else...this hack does ONE thing that I actually really like.
That's right, Master Knight Leif as a third-tier promotion. He can't use any magic, and you'll probably stick to swords anyways, but I don't care, this is truly fantastic for him. And look at the movement on this boy!
Now then, it's entirely possible to just run all your units away into the castle with the enemy in tow, and you'll make it there, assuming the enemy doesn't trip a movement star or something stupid.
You may be tempted to kill enemies or even recruit Galzus and Misha. But you can't do that without a solid plan for this chapter's dick move of the day:
YEAH. The chapter starts with 50 enemy units deployed, and the game attempts to spawn in like 25 more every turn for 25 turns or something stupid like that, and this is where they appear, they just pop out of thin air and destroy you. So if you kill or recruit any enemies at all, be prepared for this shit! Capturing is okay, though, because they're not despawned until they're released, but good luck capturing any of these guys.
So what the hell do you do with this if you want Galzus and Misha? Do you just lure them all to the castle and hope you can recruit them and then flee on the same turn somehow? Recruit them, THEN allow them all to be captured, knowing you can just pick them back up in 21x? Warp in, recruit, Rescue out?
There's a way to make this all work, and it's NOT a good one.
There is a skill in this game called Dain's Shield. It negates effective bonuses from things like Bows against fliers. Third-tier flying units get it as a class skill.
Why is this useful? In Super Thracia, the enemy, will never, EVER attack a unit with Dain's Shield. They'll move towards them as if they were, but they never initiate combat. I do not know why. It's said to be a bug, and it's also said you can beat Super Thracia without abusing it. But the enemies are so high-powered that I do not know how you are supposed to win without this trick.
If you do not have a third-tier flier, you can also Berserk an enemy with the skill, because all Berserked units count as hostile enemies to every faction and can be attacked. So you can neutralize the enemy by doing this and then wait out however many turns until enemies stop spawning, then you're able to pick off every enemy one at a time which will likely take even longer.
I'm too fatigued to feign anger so here's some houses I picked up too.
So, in this run I ended up just fleeing because Karin isn't anywhere near level 35 and I don't know what else to do.
And now for the defense of Lenster. What could they possibly do with this one?
MORE Wyverns, of course! I know this is Thracia, but the screen doesn't need to be flooded with them EVERY CHAPTER!
And guess who showed up to the party! You actually have to STEAL that scroll if you want a complete scroll set! Oh but don't worry, the Gungnir bonus doesn't factor into the steal mechanic.
Anyways, there's a reason I held off on using this on Asvel.
It's because it barely does anything for him. For whatever reason, NONE of the promotions in Super Thracia give any bonus weapon ranks, which is one of two reasons I've struggled to get B and A-rank staffers in this playthrough.
The other is that every staff in the game only gives 1 weapon EXP, unlike in the original game where it varied based on the rank of the staff used. I have used a RAM watcher to confirm this. This means you have to do a LOT of staff rank grinding to get an A-rank staff user, and steal LOTS of staves to make it happen.
Anyways, Leif seems to have kidnapped some children of his own, but luckily there's a Rogue to break them out and steal from the castle. Well, it's better than enemies randomly having a staff that's supposed to be locked to Tina.
You can Rewarp Schroff to this house for a free Silence. Might help.
Right, so, we have flying enemies that can break down walls to get at your units which are scattered about the map, naturally. Apparently you can do something to mess with the AI in this chapter, but I'm not sure it works in Super Thracia.
So, the big plan this time is to hole up all my units in the throne room and turn this map into a big battle of attrition.
Which seems to be a wise choice...look where the reinforcements come from! How am I supposed to get to the storage tent?!
The chest has a Knight Crest. I have plenty of promoted units as is.
The Meteor Bishop has movement stars. FANTASTIC.
So yeah, this is what this strategy plays out like. Look like fun?!
We're gonna need a REALLY big shield!
All he gets is Pavise and NO other weapon ranks. These...these are the most awful third-tier promotions I've ever seen. Only the fliers get good skills, and that's because an alleged bug makes them untouchable.
You know, this is actually supposed to be a defense chapter, but it doesn't end until Trabant is defeated. What the hell is Celice doing in the time it takes for that to happen?!
The best strategy seems to be using Dire Thunder on Trabant, since the Gungnir now negates criticals.
If he's wounded though, he has Vulneraries for that too.
I'll just be confiscating the scroll.
Honestly, the numbers just make me cry.
WHERE! WERE YOU!
If Nanna is alive, you get Ares instead of Diarmuid, and if you stole the Mistolteen before, you now have TWO of them, which is pretty good. Only Ares can use it and it's a ranged sword for some reason. He also comes with a Body Ring.
I realize I'm on fast-forward a bit here, but trust me, this chapter won't--
Oh god. A LITERAL river of blood.
So, yeah, there's dozens upon dozens of enemies, lots of Ballistae, and, um...
Yeah, this old trick. Warp has infinite range, so skipping straight to the seize point is very doable here.
A Ballista boss is actually interesting. His weapon is the Blue Swallow, a Ballista with 250 Accuracy, 30 Might, 4-15 Range, and gives Nihil. It does not negate criticals.
Chapter. Over.
Oh wait a sec.
The church that gives Linoan her promotion is right next to the start as well, almost forgot that on my playthrough.
I did this for Lucius too.
Okay, so THIS at least gave him some good weapon ranks.
The prison chapter is not much to speak of. You get a shot at rescuing anyone captured by the enemy, as always, but why bother? They're not gonna catch up to your party if they were captured like ten to twenty chapters ago.
The enemy knows this, because the prison is now guarded by an infinite flood of Ardens with Master Swords. Luckily, you are more than likely much better equipped now to deal with their gimmick than back in Chapter 3.
Zombie Sara is back, and she's sitting on a chest with no possible way of getting her off it. Can't capture her, can't kill her, can't teleport her somehow. How can you unlock that chest, then?
The Unlock staff! Yeah now you see why it was important to grab, huh? Actually the chest just has a Fire Gem for you, so you too can have an infinite-use Vulnerary. Somehow it seems less helpful in the player's hands...
I can hardly believe it, but they were actually courteous enough to give one enemy a steal-able Lockpick in case you ran out of keys or something. Of course, if all your Thieves are dead and you have no keys, there's no way to clear the chapter without Warping anyways. If I had to point to any one problem with Thracia 776, it's that right there; even the original is prone to creating unwinnable scenarios, far more frequently than any other Fire Emblem.
Right, that aside, this chest has a Sleep staff.
There's a Master Seal and Fenrir in these chests.
And since the Ardens only move 1 space unless they're attacked, evading them is very easy. I actually got Sothe to have enough Build to steal the Master Swords they weild, so I was able to farm up a good number of them.
It didn't save me from the rest of the game, but it was funny, at least.
Next time: The playthrough might be in jeopardy.