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Gargravarr
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New Entry: Tuesday 9th March
The following playthrough was actually done on Monday, I just decided to post it by itself as it’s pretty long.
Shade Impulse 3 – Cecil Playthrough
Cecil’s playthrough wasn’t that much better than Cloud’s. He might be able to deploy his attacks quicker, but he lacks Cloud’s raw strength. Another annoying factor was the fact that Cecil always starts fights in his Dark Knight class. I find it a lot easier to inflict damage quickly in his Paladin class, which meant I had to waste a few seconds at the beginning of matches with time-dependant DP chances switching to that form. Oh, and the CPUs didn’t seem to have much more trouble constantly dodging Cecil’s attacks than they did with Cloud’s. Still, I didn’t expect some miraculous solution just by changing characters…
The Onion Knight copy on Level 5 that I mentioned in Cloud’s playthrough was much more bearable when I wasn’t going for the DP chance. The Terra fight on the same level (one of the two “other battles” I mentioned but didn’t go into much detail with), on the other hand, was much worse than in Cloud’s playthrough. She was seriously one broken enemy. She avoided my attacks effortlessly, and was capable of Breaking me with just one or two attacks. Seriously, what the hell is up with these CPUs being able to get “first strikes” and “sneak attacks”? I haven’t noticed anything like that on their accessory lists… So anyway, even without going for the DP chance (avoid taking HP damage), I had to retry a lot of times. My HP was so low by the end of the fight that the Exdeath copy that followed could’ve OHKO’d me right away if he wanted to. Fortunately for me, however, he instead chose to use his Marilith summon right after my first successfully HP attack to try and stack the odds even more in his favour. Now, the Marilith summon freezes the opponent’s BP for a short time after a 20 second countdown. So, while this means that I wouldn’t be able to gain any more BP until the summon wore off, it also meant my BP wouldn’t decrease until the summon wore off either, even if I used an HP attack. This essentially meant that I could potentially launch HP attack after HP attack without having to wait for my BP to regenerate between them. After that it was just a matter of dodging the copy’s Delta Attack HP moves while staying close enough to hit with Paladin Force while he was recovering. I love it when CPU summons backfire…
I struggled a bit with the Garland copy again, but this time it wasn’t so bad. Sure he clobbered a couple of times, and was capable of breaking me with one or two strikes (damn “first strikes” and “sneak attacks” again…), but this time I managed to find an opening to exploit. I got close enough for him to use Earthquake (his BP was high enough for him to start focusing on HP attacks), dodged over his head where the attack couldn’t reach me, then, depending on Cecil’s class at the time, either use the Dark Knight’s Saint’s Fall Brave attack to start a chase sequence, or use the Paladin’s Paladin Force to hit with a direct HP attack. It didn’t automatically make the match easy for me, but it’s a tactic I’ll have to bear in mind in future playthroughs.
So, what else happened… Well, I manage to get a DP chance on Level 3 against a Golbez copy with 0.5 seconds to spare. Oh, and there was a pretty cool/funny moment against a Zidane copy on Level 4. I used Cecil’s Shadow Lance attack on him (Cecil throws his spear at the enemy and damages them the longer it has contact. Basically the closer you are when using it, the more damage it does), and he used his Cactuar summon on me halfway through the attack, reducing my BP by 1000. Unfortunately, by that time, I’d already done enough damage with the attack to reduce his BP to double digits, and the remaining Shadow Lance damage after the summon was enough to inflict Break on him, rendering his actions totally useless. Oh yeah, and because of my low HP due to all the nasty enemies on Level 5, I managed to break my record for lowest ever end-of-level score. I got nine points. Nine.
Two down, eight to go…
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