Tokyo Mirage Sessions

Описание: Challenge rules:
1. EXP may only be earned from forced battles or battles required to complete Side Stories.
Farming EXP from reinforcements is not allowed and the Watchfulness skill is banned.
2. Lunatic difficulty on a New Game.
3. No Incense stat boosters.
4. Carnages may only be upgraded once.
5. Bonuses from the Encore version of the game are allowed.
6. No attack items, buff items, Attack/Magic Mirrors, or Clap Tracks.
7. No use of game-breaking skills such as Pastel Power or Tetra-/Makara- guard/karn.

Pheros is fought in Tsubasa’s third Side Story, which was available back in Chapter 4 but wasn’t actually reasonable to complete until now, since Pheros is level 46. That’s not the only thing that makes this battle difficult in this playthrough though, as Pheros is accompanied by two Red Barbarians that respawn a few rounds after being defeated. One notable rule for this challenge is that I may not defeat respawning enemies since each extra Red Barbarian eliminated would grant over 300 base EXP each, which complicates matters significantly here.

Pheros only gets a single action per round and for most of the battle she uses Mazio, Mabufu, and Spirit Drain. She also has an Almighty attack called Death Mascara that may inflict Seal, but appears to only use it once, immediately after her HP drops below half. Her damage isn’t that unreasonable, although Spirit Drain is capable of draining a lot of MP from some characters. The two Red Barbarians use Tarukaja or Rakukaja for their first actions, then use Shellsplitter on every turn beyond that. Naturally, those two pose a major threat to Tsubasa since they’ll likely one-shot her if they connect and Pheros also can Session off of them as well. Tsubasa is unable to swap out of the battle, so a major challenge here is finding a way to handle the Red Barbarians without defeating them too quickly or compromising Tsubasa’s safety.

Although Tsubasa’s survivability here can be ameliorated somewhat with Hit/Evasion control, that’s really not enough to protect her with two Shellsplitters being used every round for most of the battle. What she really needs is for another party member to draw aggression so she doesn’t get targeted as often. In the previous chapter Mamori could have filled that role by using Marking to increase her odds of being targeted in addition to having Shield of Devotion, but even she would get worn down with Shellsplitter lowering her defense every time she was hit. Instead, this becomes the prime opportunity for Yashiro to shine for the first time. His Counter skill is invaluable here since it draws the Red Barbarians’ aggression away from Tsubasa, protects him from taking damage, and counterattacks all in one. Tsubasa remains relatively safe with him using that every turn, and the Red Barbarians don’t die too quickly since I avoided giving him a Strength-boosting accessory in order to limit the damage his counterattacks would do.

While Counter is perfect for handling the Red Barbarians, it does create another problem in that Itsuki and Tsubasa must buff, heal, and attack Pheros with only two actions per round. Itsuki was reduced to full support duty since he can’t begin Sessions on Pheros and Tsubasa couldn’t use Zandyne often either since she had to use Fog Breath and Debut Smile, so one part of my plan was to have Yashiro use Charge and his Mortal Curse Special Performance, which places him in Counter Stance after attacking. I was only expecting that to do about 2000 damage but thanks to an extremely timely Duo Art activation, it ended up doing over 4000 since Charge boosts the power of every physical attack in the Session chain. Both Red Barbarians were at low health by the next round so I swapped Yashiro out for Kiria so she could take the experience from those in his place, and once both of those were gone there were a lot more opportunities to attack Pheros. I swapped in Mamori after that for Shellsplitter and to potentially protect Tsubasa from further Shellsplitters, but the Red Barbarians only got to attack once after respawning before I finished Pheros off.