Because I want to see how support Kaguya works on her own, I won't be using either Yukari or Iku in this team.
While the instant full gauge effect is pretty nice, I think you will have trouble buffing your characters stats to acceptable levels with only Kaguya in the maingame because of Stone Bowl's massive SP-cost.
Meanwhile, I'd also like to try Tenshi as my only tank for the entire game. I've done main game runs with her before, but I haven't taken her all the way through the Plus Disk yet. I want to see just how many bosses she has difficulties with, because I suspect it may be fewer than I originally thought.
Come to think of it, the number of bosses with strong defense ignoring moves really isn't that high. Eiki doesn't count since any tank other than Komachi has trouble surviving her attack. I think the Serpent of Chaos also has defense ignoring attacks, but I'm not sure if there are any other bosses with attacks like that in the Plus Disk. Some trash packs on the plus disk floors have Rasetsu Fist, at least those bodybuilder-kedamas have it, but I don't think trash matters much.
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Has anyone tried to do a 4-character playthrough without significant overleveling? I've thought of something like this:
With the skillpoints I'd normally distribute between 12 characters used on only 4 characters their skillpoint levels will be quite a bit higher than in a normal game, so maybe it's possible to beat most bosses while still being in the upper range of the level recommendation or slightly above that. Since I can't switch heavy nukers with long delay in and out I'd have to play defensive and try to outlast bosses while dealing steady damage. I'd need a tank, healer, physical attacker and magical attacker.
I'm thinking of
-Meiling, because she's a great overall tank, can remove status (+minor healing) and has a great selfheal
-Remilia, because she has very high defensive stats and HP even when built for ATK, great SPD and can keep herself constantly buffed at near +100% without problems (with ailment resistance gear of course)
-Reimu, should be obvious. Great Hakurei Barrier and Exorcising Border are required for this.
-??? (Maybe Kanako? She has good DEF, a good single target nuke, a great multi-target attack and can also target DEF with her spells)
I'm a bit worried about the lack of debuffs, that will make bosses like Yukari probably impossible, but Reisen and Maribel don't have enough DEF to survive attacks like arrow rain or snipe.
I've thought about using Rinnosuke for slot 2, but he seems inferior to Remilia in pretty much all categories. His damage isn't higher, Scarlet Gold Sword may have a better formula then Spear the Gungnir, but it has more delay, he isn't as fast as Remilia and he levels slower. Scarlet Gold Sword also costs 52 SP and he has a terrible SP recovery of 6%, compared to Remi's astronomical 28% baseline. This is important, because I'll probably have to spend quite a few turns focusing to regain SP. World-Shaking Military Rule is also pretty useless here, at least compared to Curse of Vlad Tepes. I expect boss battles to take much longer than in a 'normal' game and being able to keep herself buffed at all times is a big plus for Remilia. She has no multitarget attacks though, Rinnosuke would certainly be better on trash.
Trash in general might be a problem. Only Kanako can really do something meaningful in random battles in that team and her big multitarget nuke costs 148 SP. I can probably do something about that by investing lots of skillpoints into her SP and maybe Reimu's offensive stats, so Fantasy Seal remains a decent multitarget attack even in the later parts of the game.
SP and TP will be a big problem in the early game, but the early game is pretty easy and both can be boosted with enough skillpoints.
I'm almost certain that the plus disk is impossible with a 4 character team, the damage won't be high enough to bring bosses like Bhaal Avatar down before his stats get too high, or Shikieiki before she uses Trial of Ten Kings. But Yukari is the only boss in the main game that seems problematic to me. Yuugi could be pretty hard with only 4 characters, but she's optional, I don't even know if I'll be able to hurt Tenshi, but she's optional too. Flandre might be interesting, with 3 times as much skillpoints it's probably possible to bring even ATK-Remilia's combined defensive stats high enough to take 0 damage from Laevateinn after her selfbuff.
Any thoughts on this? Is this even possible and worth trying?
Would you choose other characters and why?
