As a number of evaluations of this recreation have famous, crucial strategic ingredient of this recreation is studying to anticipate enemy AI. The enemies (so far as I do know) by no means attempt to anticipate what you’ll do; they make each transfer as in case you’re going to cross your flip. So what you ideally need to do is head off their transfer, both by shifting the character they’ll assault, or shifting another person into the spot they’ll transfer into. If two characters find yourself in the identical sq., whichever unit has the lesser Weight stat can be pushed out of the sq., and so they additionally lose their assault likelihood.
You do need to watch out shifting a unit out of a sq. the place they are going to be attacked although. Teams of enemies will have a tendency to focus on the identical unit, so that you don’t need to transfer the focused unit into a spot that leaves them open for assaults from the opposite models within the group.
Ideally you may also assault the spot the place you already know the enemy character goes to finish up, however this isn’t at all times attainable.
I’m unsure if there’s a approach to 100% predict the AI; if that’s the case I haven’t gotten there but. Generally it’s apparent — if one in every of your characters is at 20 HP they’ll nearly definitely be focused by the enemies. But when everyone seems to be at full HP, I discover issues are much less predictable. You may suppose they’d go after the characters with decrease max HP or decrease protection, however this doesn’t appear to be the case. Nevertheless, in case you predict fallacious, so long as the unit survived you then have a transparent indication of who the opposite persons are going to assault.
One other essential concern is realizing which of the enemy forces are going to maneuver first. It’s not essentially fixed from flip to show; it looks like they do have a tendency to maneuver the identical teams first except they will get you with an space of impact spell.
The spellcasters and different AoE strikes are the toughest to foretell, I believe. You’ll be able to’t ensure precisely the place they’ll transfer (most often) and the precise placement of the AoE impact is typically onerous to learn as effectively.
Lastly, you need to watch out about leaving your models in dangerous positions for the subsequent flip as effectively. If an enemy spellcaster goes to succeed in your vary within the subsequent flip, you’d ideally need only one unit of their AoE.
All of this makes the technique fairly a bit completely different than what I’m used to for different video games. From what I can inform, that is moderately divisive amongst individuals who performed the sport, as to whether or not they prefer it or not. Most battles that I’ve fought should not onerous to complete, though ending them with out dropping any characters (for the double cash bonus) might be more difficult, particularly if there are bosses with nasty assaults.
Anyway, I’m nonetheless making it by this recreation fairly slowly. A number of notable battles from chapter 2:
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This can be a stage design that they like to make use of, the place your characters begin on the backside of a giant hill. This enables archers to snipe you from the highest of the hill (which will increase their vary rather a lot), and lowers your motion as you progress up the hill. I discover that normally one of the simplest ways to do that is keep way back to you’ll be able to and let as lots of the enemies come to you as attainable; typically the archers will even come down the slope to a degree the place it’s a lot simpler to get them. These chests can solely be gotten with flying armor.
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Standing results might be fairly nasty on this recreation — as of mid-chapter 3 I don’t have any cure-all skills, and you may solely maintain 2 gadgets per stage. So except you already know prematurely which standing results you’ll have to have heals for, you just about simply need to keep away from them as finest you’ll be able to. This stage has a boss, which an increasing number of levels do. The fundamental technique for these bosses for me is to attempt to wait so long as attainable to combat them, after which rapidly encompass them and use the Help bonus to do massive injury; even when they kill one or two characters you’ll nonetheless have the ability to finally put on them down.
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I needed to restart this one as a result of I went ahead too rapidly. Every time you might have an enemy group shifting in direction of you with a spellcaster you need to be actually cautious, as a result of you’ll want to cope with the spellcaster earlier than they will do big injury to your pressure however in case you simply attempt to go previous the remainder of the enemies they’ll damage you badly. One factor you are able to do is see what their assault vary is (which the sport makes straightforward) and transfer one character in there, particularly in case you do it on the finish of a flip then you’ll be able to transfer them out subsequent flip — spellcasters usually act first after which they will waste a spell.
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I believe that is the primary battle with 2 bosses the place you need to beat each of them. You can not allow them to each attain your guys on the similar time otherwise you’re in hassle, so you need to keep again and allow them to transfer into your vary individually. In the event you can beat one in every of them with most of your guys nonetheless left it needs to be OK.
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After that I didn’t discover the final battle that troublesome, simply keep again and let the enemies come to you — the one massive risks are the magician with the reduce spell, and the boss himself, but when he’s alone and most of your characters are nonetheless round it needs to be OK.
Two extra chapters left. I’m not going for the Vandal Hearts Sword or any specific ending as a result of it seems like it could require an excessive amount of work; I haven’t been revisiting any outdated maps to get the treasure chests, and I’m not going to do it so long as I can hold progressing by the sport and beating the maps.
