No! What is this nightmare? Cut off one head and two more take its place?! What part of "Final" Battle didn't make sense, people?! I want out. Please... just let it die!
Fun (by which I mean the opposite) note on the making of these three videos is... they were SO long that I couldn't manage to finish any one of them in a single sitting... reality beckoned and demanded I attend to it in one way or another. Funny how that happens after 90 minutes going on two hours...
As a result, all three of these monster-sized videos each have a little "seam" in them somewhere. Where I had to stitch an interrupt save and resume into it somehow. I spared no effort to try to keep it unobtrusive, even going so far as to match the MUSIC to frame perfection... or as close to it as my eyes and ears could make it seem. Which isn't fun or easy. Especially in a video that's this long. Made of TWO long videos.
I'll sit here and wait while you meticulously comb through each of them to find this not-quite-perfect transition in each where something, like the cursor or onscreen tile intel window suddenly moves for no reason. I know you want to. (Not even a little bit?!)
---
Mission "21": The Final Battle! (Max and Kanbei)
Yep, closing out the gaps in our mysterious methodology by which you didn't realize you were choosing your allies for this final desperate struggle, we've got another pair of COs to plug the untrapped conditionals that weren't covered by the previous cases.
If you deliberately snub Max when he first arrives on the scene to take the Olaf route through Blue Moon... but then don't play the extra mission that you shouldn't have had any reason to suspect was even there by completely destroying what was left of Olaf's Navy!, you get... Max! ...oh... oh no. Whatever shall I do. The most powerful CO in the game for doing LESS work. Oh no. Woe is me.
If you earn your way into Sonja's good graces and play her three extra missions while in Yellow Comet, Kanbei takes the field! The only exception here is if you also went through the four Green Earth missions as Sami, thus earning Eagle a spot on your final roster instead, which will override Kanbei, as you saw with the first run of this mission. Kanbei, in turn, will override any other option you earned in how you played Green Earth, meaning playing Andy the whole way through won't get you Drake if you already qualified for Kanbei.
"Any other option" also implies that you could have yet another outcome... because if you did ANY of the Green Earth missions in question as anyone but a continuous succession of Sami or a continuous run of Andy (or, to wit, ANY use of Max whatsoever), your eastern front will be fronted by... Sami. Yeah, I'd love to hang out with you, girlfriend... but, have you seen this ridiculous layout? I don't think this is what I'd consider playing to your strengths...
Sonja, for obvious reasons, can't play with you at all. Which is probably for the best, because none of her strengths would be useful here at all... unless you somehow activated her power and Sturm spent that whole turn of his attacking only her units, which you probably wouldn't have a lot of anyway, because yikes.
So that's that. Let the big burly man and daddy save the day. Oh, and I guess Andy's here, too. Partly because this was my third stab at it and partly because I have nobody who has any glaring weaknesses (and indeed does EXTRA damage of their own accord in all cases) to present to Sturm while giving him a heck of a wedgie for his own units' defense penalty. And they BOTH brought a healthy start on the ground muscle they'll be flexing. Wait... is that a Recon? Why, Kanbei? Why?!
...weirdly, Sonja and Kanbei have nothing to say to each other in this situation. Sonja just has extra time left over to notice that she's being ignored. Again. As usual. Because of course she is. It doesn't help that this is the case where she's actually indisputably wrong, but that's the danger of being a pessimist. During life-and-death-and-world-war situations. Whatever.
Of course, I'm not blind to the fact that I've talked absolutely zero strategy for three descriptions and counting to this point. 'Cause strategy might be important in a final, decisive battle to end all battles? Maybe a little bit, I guess. You're starting to sound like Sonja! There's clearly no place for that in... a strategy game.
The only real X factor here besides "hit him hard before he hits you" like in Enigma is that he'll actually use his CO Power now. Meteor Strike... sucks. There's a reason why no CO since Sturm has had something like this, and it's notably toned down in multiplayer. It automatically calculates out the most expensive devastation it can do to a single 3-panel radius epicenter, minus whatever damage it does to his own units. There's really no avoiding it, because this scenario is designed around his huge swarm of expensive units. At best, you might "bait" it somewhere less devastating.
Okay, good luck!
Информация по комментариям в разработке