Let's Play The Genius of Sappheiros [HIATUS]

[Your Everyday NEET]

I tried beating them at level 60s, the three days slugfest happens. But yeah, you'll need a good amount of grinding to reach comfortable level to beat the final boss and a great strategy to even beat them. Serela's strategy greatly help.

It's my birthday. Since I can't draw profile pictures, my birthday present will be re-opening my let's play. Welcome to the expansion of Genius of Sappheiros.

Expansion Prologue

I think someone's trying too hard to be edgy.

EDIT:
Reimu: Yukari. You should learn from me and start trying to solve things yourself too.

Funny enough. Once she started solving things by herself, she sucks at it. In NoR, she has the highest death count among my party member (Granted, I built her as semi-support + attacker, but still). Enemies seems to have a strange obssesion with poor Yukari.

[Your Everyday NEET]

Character Quest Part 1

One fun moment VS two bullshit moment. Well, all is fair in the name of this game I guess.

[Serela]

Lithos sure is a weird character to use. Pegasus Meteor Attack is learned in mid/late 60s and is pretty much a straight upgrade to Muscle Revolution, although Muscle probably has better EVA and if there's multiple targets, it lets you focus the damage on one. Her specialty, other than lolzing over randoms with Aging Drizzle (YESSSSSS), is that one of her passives Rainbow Wings buffs elemental damage by like 50%... so you can enchant her weapon with Byakuren and do major damage to elementally weak bosses with Pegasus Meteor. (Or just enjoy the +50% damage against non-weak bosses).

Although, you won't have Byakuren for a bit. Her rapier skills aren't that great, but she's got some status effects, at least, and they sorta boost Matk for her multitarget magic skills... which... work alright enough to use I guess? She's weird. It gets better when she gets Earth Shower at lv80, since it's boosted by Rainbow Wings, at least.

Cirno is... a dubious character. :T She can be pretty good for random fights, either to pierce levels of water resist for stable damage and some chance of freeze, or the better option, use her Ice weapon for AoE instant death with good damage alongside. Her AoE death physical attack on Ice is the best thing she can do, and it's pretty nice. But, apart from that, yeah, she's really not that exciting. She's pretty alright on ice-weak bosses? But not super special, still... (Her multihit attack with the Ice weapon is better for them then her magic, still. Plus it can let you get multiple chasers from Nitori, which is nice, even if they're showing their age now.)

Cirno is pretty important for Sanae's fight IIRC. Too bad after getting Mokou and Sanae the best she can do is be "good enough to use in randoms if you do want to use her", though.

...all the expansion characters are weird, but at least the others are more desirable than Cirno XD

[Your Everyday NEET]

Lithos sure is a weird character to use. Pegasus Meteor Attack is learned in mid/late 60s and is pretty much a straight upgrade to Muscle Revolution, although Muscle probably has better EVA and if there's multiple targets, it lets you focus the damage on one. Her specialty, other than lolzing over randoms with Aging Drizzle (YESSSSSS), is that one of her passives Rainbow Wings buffs elemental damage by like 50%... so you can enchant her weapon with Byakuren and do major damage to elementally weak bosses with Pegasus Meteor. (Or just enjoy the +50% damage against non-weak bosses).

...all the expansion characters are weird, but at least the others are more desirable than Cirno XD

I think Lithos' skill are all based around spectacle (since we have almost all of the final boss' attack), except this game is not made by Platinum Games.

I never use Chaser, it's harder to set up in this game and most multi-target elemental costs bomb. At least in NoR, the chaser is much easier to set up and more powerful that I based my whole strategy based around chasers. I can chase 3 magic in 1 turn, plus I can do around 700 damage per attack unless the enemy has more than 2500 HP or resists all 3 elements, I'll wipe them all in 1 turn. It can miss though (Which I learn the hard way when I fight the deer).

Almost all the expansion character are gimmicky

Spoiler:

except for Yuugi whose gimmick is just Hulk smash

.

Character Quest Part 2

Now that I have Mokou and her Fujiyama Volcano, let's have some fun!

[Serela]

Eirin can still use Starlight Arrow and mess you up. The fight's difficulty is mostly whether she actually does or not. Sanae is a pretty scary boss if you don't think to try Instant Deathing her summons, which... well, if you didn't know they were weak to 'em, you probably wouldn't think to try, making her pretty hard to do until you get some more characters.

Reisen is one of the best expansion characters. I'll let you cover the main gist of her abilities, but if you were so inclined you can easily use her as your main damage for -every- stage boss in the rest of the game (and a lot of the sidequest ones, once you get your status characters back) for broken-tier levels of damage- against some bosses it's not hard to hit 99999 without even targetting an elemental weakness. Her specific weapon gives her pretty alright attacks for randoms, too, along with her wide variety of slayers.

Also I think chasers are pretty amazing, you just have to pair up Patchouli and Satori and maybe throw in Marisa or Sanae (elec aoe when not buffing) or element weapons or something. In postgame though, her chasers are getting a bit stale, the damage is falling off, so it's too late for that- it only keeps up on bosses because of stuff like Sakuya's multihit attacks meaning you can chase like 6 times on a single attack for extra damage. Using her physical chasers with special effect weapons for lots of instant death or otherwise is fun, though, and some of her finals guns have extra slayers to use along with her element attacks to keep her somewhat relevant (which also carry on her physical chasers; being [? Element] is such a big buff for them). Weirdly, her physical chaser damage is boosted by IND...

...Nitori mostly isn't too exciting in postgame (They should have given her something more exciting than new elemental nonspells!) but she can hold her own in some of the fights, at least.

[Eilaris]

Out of curiosity, Serela, how does Sakuya with the Kusanagi fare on the final boss compared to Youmu?

[Serela]

Kusanagi makes other characters viable (It's about on level with Youmu's clearly specially-made katana for the final boss, after all) but you have to keep in mind the boss has very high evasion- and Sakuya's attacks have negative accuracy. Full Moon Revenge might not, but Full Moon Revenge is also kinda weak at this point in the game and iirc costs a lot of mp. A proc of "normal attacks hit twice" does more damage.

Mokou's Fujiyama Volcano would probably work with Kusanagi if her bombs/mp will last long enough? You can always just equip for more bombs, but MP is a little harder. No one else can compare, since Nitori and Patchy's bonuses don't boost DRK and Patchy's dark boost books only give exorcism on magic (Silent Selene does -not- do enough damage either way). Satori would be a massive "MAYBE." for Acala Sword or something if she could equip swords but she can't, and none of her late eyes are DRK and her DRK magic is NOT strong enough for this, so there's no way in hell it'd be enough damage. Aya maybe if her LW was up (it's a pretty massive boost- she gets power increases other than just moving twice) but she'd be fucking awful when it wasn't, so lel. And Byakuren's dark magic is too weak.

If you had a really weird set up that could use Nitori's all-chaser and physical chaser to attack with [? Element] chasers for Dark+Slayer, maybe, but I don't know how you'd get enough chaser procs for that to be worth anything. tl;dr, Mokou is the only replacement I can see that isn't "You could win if you can last long enough, but it's gonna take a LOOT longer than necessary." Maybe if you had both Satori and Patchouli as a mix of support and actually being set up for Dark blasting (I'm not sure if either would be better as physical or magic...) and Sakuya using Dragon Fang Sword or something. Plus Alice and Byakuren, of course. If you replaced Byakuren with Sanae to use her as a commander for MP restore, and put Mokou in with Kusanagi instead of Sakuya, maybe you could one-party clear. :V It'd be harder than using two parties, though.

...that was probably way more of an answer than anyone cares about :V:V

[Eilaris]

Quite helpful, actually!  There was one other big thing I was wondering, which is:

Which synthesis items before the postgame are ACTUALLY worth making, besides the obvious things like Rainbow Greaves?

[Serela]

Depends on what your party is at certain points in time- don't make weapons for characters you aren't about to use a lot before the next tier upgrade, for obvious reasons. I'd make a snake at some point mid-game if you want to, the mp drain and decent attacks make Sanae pretty alright in randoms when she isn't buffing and you don't need to replace it for a few tiers since she's not a big attacker, Marisa can use some increased mp regen from any broom and doesn't need to upgrade often either, Sakuya's swords are all nice (just don't make a whole lot of them, or you'll run low on trays and iron!), and I'd highly recommend Vyse Sword because it remains very useful into postgame. I'd recommend Nitori's sunflower seed gun because it comes in time for doing awesome slayer damage for not one, but TWO bosses, apart from being a boost for randoms, but obviously if you're past that point of the game it's too late for that. Satori's The Green Eyes is good until like stage 13 or 14 where Poison Art starts being less godlike, but you really don't need to bother making any eyes after that until postgame. Some of Mokou's fists give nice special effects and they're pretty good in general, so make one here and there if you want to. The Deva Scroll is great because it's the only one with IND boost, the late ones start giving defensive stuff at some point and letting Byakuren get tanky, but that might just be postgame...

Goheis are pretty eh until the final few, Aya is hardly even worth putting in the main party unless you really like her so a fan is over-investment (if you need breath reflect just use her starter weapon), Youmu really doesn't need any of her katanas until the final few (She'd prefer to access generic  weapon skills in randoms), same with books unless you just -really- like physical Patch since it gives her AoE and an elemental self-buff.

Accessories are a "make them if you need them" basis. Stat boost ones for offensive purposes are obviously nice. Armors are sort of the same, if you really want a certain element armor for defending against, the robes give magic damage up for certain elements iirc which is neat (But don't blow all your elemental shards, you'll want to make the late versions of the robes too!). I barely forged any armors until postgame, and the only shield you care about making is the one you get at the end of maingame that's like a lesser Aegis Shield. The Yasakani no Magatama and Yata no Kagami are obviously amazing.

[Your Everyday NEET]

Using her physical chasers with special effect weapons for lots of instant death or otherwise is fun,

Hahahaha.... Normally, I chases thrice in 1 turn, one of them should bound to connect right?

Character Quest Part 3

My current motto: If the enemy doesn't want to play fair, then neither do I.

[Serela]

Hahahaha.... Normally, I chases thrice in 1 turn, one of them should bound to connect right?

Depends if NoR chasers keep the weapon statuses! In GoS, the elemental chasers do -not- keep special weapon effects, so you can't do silly stuff 'til you get the ? element ones. I didn't use chasers too much in NoR (I was wiping the randoms hard enough with one cast of magic to start with, after all- I've been shown they're quite deadly in bosses though) But lesse, GoS LP update~

Yeah, unless a boss is vulnerable to petrification, the only thing Lithos can use competently in boss fights is Pegasus Meteor Attack (or maybe muscle revo for really evasive bosses). It can be tweaked with Rainbow Wings to be pretty silly though. Eventually

Spoiler:

I think at 94 or 96 or something she learns a new two-bomb spell that does 9999, to anything.

Reisen's multi-hit skills on her suppository are pretty good, imo. But it only matters if you use her in randoms (Which she's alright at, due to all her slayers), because for bosses she's gotta use spellcards and her innate noncards for special slayer of doooooom. Nothing is too resistant to variety debuffs! :D

Making all the orichalcum weapons is fun. Finally everyone can taste their delicious special equipments, and with good bonuses on them to boot! Some of them have hidden exorcism bonuses, for some reason. Although until you get all your party members recruited, you can't get orichalcum very quickly yet.

The Vyse sword sure is gonna be silly in a minute now!

Some of the character-specific material quests are a little silly until you obtain really sweet gear, it's true... :T Getting the Magatama no Yasakani and Yata No Kagami both forged helps you BS through some, though. Reimu's really is just sheer luck... (although Medoroa sure is silly on Satori.) On the upside, on characters you hardly (or never) forged anything for in the main game, you get enough materials from chests without having to do their subquests at all.

[Your Everyday NEET]

Character Quest Part 4

I apologize for the shortness of this update. I swear I'm gonna tackle the rest of the quest in the next update.

I'm bored... I'm bored of GoS because it's quests are tedious and boring. And I'm afraid of playing NoR because I'm getting nearer to my nightmare (deer, along with her friends that needs to be killed twice). I need to play a good game.

[Serela]

Marisa dies -really- fast to Vyse Sword via stuff like time stop or having Aya make you go first, so you can beat her first and avoid caring about sparks... except Alice actually becomes surprisingly terrifying if you do. I don't remember quite what happens, but something along the lines of becoming invincible most of the time... >.>

If you get Sakuya's Last Word up on any of these bosses, you can do silly one-shot tier damage on some. It's silly how strong her LW is. Also, her innate noncards are notably stronger than Full Moon Revenge, if you raise her accuracy enough to use them.

Nazrin's (and a crab in Stage 22) Kabuff +1 is learnable by Satori. A party defense buff, that's not expected... it's power should be comparable to Sanae's even with Sanae at max POW buff tree, based on me having looked at the move's stats in the JP Wiki.

[Your Everyday NEET]

If you get Sakuya's Last Word up on any of these bosses, you can do silly one-shot tier damage on some. It's silly how strong her LW is. Also, her innate noncards are notably stronger than Full Moon Revenge, if you raise her accuracy enough to use them.

Yeah, I got it during Satori boss fight. And she dies faster than ants. At least this game doesn't force you to kill 2 40k HP boss in the same turns or else the boss revives her partner with full health. That's just bullshit.

This was the primary source of my strong distaste for this game. All drops being exceedingly rare didn't bother me that much, but when boss battle after boss battle after boss battle resulted in conversations with my friends that went "How do I beat X?" "Use Alice" "I don't use Alice" "Then... ?"

Validon98 is currently doing a no-Alice ru. In GoS and he seems to have a good progress in it (I don't how you defend against Tenshi without Alice). It seems he's currently in stage 20/21.

Character Quest Part 5

Mokou wrecks the first part while Sakuya wrecks the last part of character quest.

Elixir may be cheap and useful. But good luck trying to learn that skill.

[CF7]

Validon98 is currently doing a no-Alice ru. In GoS and he seems to have a good progress in it (I don't how you defend against Tenshi without Alice). It seems he's currently in stage 20/21.

I pretty much did No-Alice run save for party splits using Reimu/Marisa/Aya/Mokou/Satori. Some parts were harder (sometimes a lot harder) than they should have been and some were not so bad. You can do some really fun stuff with Satori, if you commit to learning lots of enemy skills. And actually you can do lots of various fun things with the game if you're creative enough.
Tenshi's TPK is physical, so you can defend against it using Reimu's phys-negating barrier or use Nitori's camouflage. Plus after the initial opener, she telegraphs the use of the TPK the turn before she's going to use it with a "Drill" move, so you know it's coming. Her other attacks are not threatening enough and you can get by with just healing.

[Serela]

Remilia is an awesome sweeper for random fights. IIRC her javelin skills are mostly better than her innate ones (Unless you need higher accuracy or spellcards!), and Star of David is nice sometimes for HP% damage. Unfortunately her stronger spellcards have too much cooldown for her to be much special in bossfights, but she shines gloriously for randoms, so it's alright.

Darkonium Marisa quest isn't so ba-oh wait, that's because I fought it using both super accessories... right... >.> I don't remember if that's one of the quests I ever -stopped- doing that or not. If you just put on some physical resist (I don't recall which kind...) and use a healing commander you should be able to? I guess you might want to wait for a better weapon.

Elixir/Raise Dead both require Reimu's lv90 skill to learn. Emphasis on REQUIRE. If you use charm and luckgarbage your way into getting it used on Satori, it literally just doesn't work right because revives. Unless Elder Dragon has it in the Control list after all, but it's phenomenally difficult to control him, so that's not even worth it. In any case, iirc when I used Raise Dead it fullheal'd. Having revives on someone other than Sanae is nice.

[Validon98]

Oh, NEET mentioned my run. Yeah, I'm around on stage 20, the only bosses I've ended up using Alice for were Reisen and Chichiro or whatever the name of the octopus maid was, so in other words, only the party splits (which means she's super underleveled, but I'll probably throw her into my commander slot during stage 21 to boost her up so Lithos won't get her starting level gimped). Dunno why I'm doing it, but I guess after like... three or so runs where I didn't experiment too much (last run was the first where I didn't get Mokou and Byakuren early, truth be told), it's nice trying to play the game without relying on one character. It's given me a LOT of appreciation for Mokou's Xu Fu's Dimension, which I've pretty much never used before, on top of things like a true full chaser, party, etc.

As for Tenshi, you don't get Reimu's multi-target physical/magical damage blocking barrier until somewhere around Lakebed Temple even if you keep up on her leveling (I didn't get it until stage 20, actually). You instead use her barrier that nulls the four basic elements on turn one, and by that point you should have gotten Sanae's defensive buffs up on top of shifting the Land away from Earth enough that further casts don't do much more to you. Also, Earth resistance accessories. Those help a lot.

[Your Everyday NEET]

Character Quest Part 6

This will be the last time I tackle those tedious character side quests. I fucking hate those quests!

[Serela]

Some of the quests are fairly annoying, especially in terms of locating them. Thankfully you can skip doing ones for characters you didn't forge multiple weapons for. The quest sets are static too, so especially once you beat Stage 22 and unlock the Kourindou bosses (wonderful exp farms and mass forging funtimes), you don't generally have to do many annoying ones (Although I eventually get tired of fighting the Terminator... :T Sometimes that fight doesn't go well.). Granted, some kourindou bosses are hard, but most of them are really easy if you know what you're doing. (Elder Dragon and Otherworld Challenger (not-royal-duke) are the hard ones, Terminator is a runner up, the rest are e.z.! Mind Flayer for awesome exp farm times, woohoo instant death weakness! It even shows up twice in a row regularly!)

Cirno's is the hardest character quest if you don't have the super tank accessories yet. It's not entirely trivial even if you -do- have them... at least with Reimu's if you have bad luck you can just Run and try again and it's usually on the first map. And yeah, if the fight isn't going well, I'm pretty sure you're allowed to Run on these and just start the fight over.

[Golbez]

I liked the personal quest. They can teach you about the abilities of the characters.
For Reimu I specialized her into swords and teamed her up with Nitori. Still a nasty one.
For Cirno I think there was some way to heal her when doing damage, combined with her counter move.
Byankuren I had the most trouble with, you can give her some life draining knife and perfect-resist her but it can easily go wrong.
Well, thats what I remember, It was quite some time ago since I've played this.

[Serela]

Ooh, using Nitori's no-evasion commander skill for Reimu's is a good idea.

Byakuren is definitely luck-based but Perfect Resist gives you a pretty high chance of living. Whilst Patk Up+Elec Weapon on a good dagger (so you get hp drain from the double-attack skill) kills it at a good pace.

Cirno, I forgot, magic reflect makes it much easier to survive through without the ultra accessories... provided you don't get hit by a fire spell on the turns reflect isn't up. Just one or two generic physical resist accessories and Remilia commander drain gets you through everything else, with counter up to help damage. If you don't care about using Cirno though, you don't need to bother with it.

[Your Everyday NEET]

For Reimu I specialized her into swords and teamed her up with Nitori. Still a nasty one.
For Cirno I think there was some way to heal her when doing damage, combined with her counter move.
Byakuren I had the most trouble with, you can give her some life draining knife and perfect-resist her but it can easily go wrong.

I don't need to reduce enemy's EVA to 0, all I need is to penetrate its Perfect Dodge.
Cirno regens greatly from water. Cirno's magic Reflect makes is easier for her to die because 6 of the fairies use physicals.
That disk's HDD Crash penetrates 50% of her RES. So yeah, its all luck based. You can use Plasma Knife from angel in stage 21. Or you can silence it.

Stage 22 - Underworld

Think this is easy. Just wait for the next stages.

[Serela]

Penetrates 50% RES, but even with only half of a Perfect Resist you're pretty good. The RES boost is pretty huge- good for stopping Vortex in other situations. (Useful on your nuker in boss fights with vortex, or even cast it on the Terminator himself!) Plasma Knife makes the fight a little faster but it's really not necessary, silencing it is a good idea though- what's that from, the orichalcon knife...? Hmm. (Or just casting it once you get to that chunk of the fight, but I'm not sure how good the accuracy is to make it worthwhile)

Magic Reflect doesn't make it easier to die :S It's one of Cirno's own skills so it's not like it uses your accessory slots and you need to stay under a certain amount of damage per turn. You might want all three accessories for physical resists, but I'm pretty sure I've beaten it with less because you can drain/regen all your hp between turns as long as you're not getting one-shot (or paralyzed by the axe user, iirc). Either bring a fire robe or hope you don't get fire'd whilst reflect isn't up (Use Perfect Freeze or something on that turn to hopefully stop the mages from moving, chance of Cirno getting melted is fairly low).

Straightforward stage with straightforward boss! Evasion works pretty well on her too. If Alice has blunt resist, her provocation skill and Poison Shield pretty much end the fight already. Reimu is capable of blasting her to smithereens due to light weakness. tl;dr, she's easy peasy no matter what way you slice it. About as straightforward of a character to use, too... HULK SMAAAAASH! Not sure if she's worth using in randoms with how often she'd be limited to her (Albiet quite strong) normal attack, but when it comes to bosses, all you need is a sweet slayer weapon (and/or Byakuren enchantment for weakness) and high enough level for her better skills, wham~ Berserker Soul can be quite good too with multihitter weapons or otherwise, and with 101 IND (or a cast of Hyper Trigger!) it'll last 3 turns instead of 2. Theoretically you can berserk her to raise her attack power during it too, but I'm not sure if it's worth doing... never tried it out, maybe it's good?

[Your Everyday NEET]

Magic Reflect doesn't make it easier to die :S It's one of Cirno's own skills so it's not like it uses your accessory slots and you need to stay under a certain amount of damage per turn. You might want all three accessories for physical resists, but I'm pretty sure I've beaten it with less because you can drain/regen all your hp between turns as long as you're not getting one-shot (or paralyzed by the axe user, iirc). Either bring a fire robe or hope you don't get fire'd whilst reflect isn't up (Use Perfect Freeze or something on that turn to hopefully stop the mages from moving, chance of Cirno getting melted is fairly low).

I used her Magic Reflect on turn 1 during the boss fight. It gets me killed instantly. I know, stupid move.

Sidequest Superboss Part 1

I have a rotten luck.

[Serela]

Killed instantly? You still definitely need to equip physical resist accessories. Then you use Remi drain on turn two to refill your HP as you start manipulating the land to get regen going.

For the hydra, you don't necessarily need Alice- you can just boost Aya's evasion and debuff Acc to dodge fang crushes. However, it's a little more reliable to use Alice in case the back gets fang crushed. Reisen can do 99999 on it- try inflicting Poison too along with hitting 5 debuffs!

Medoroa is pretty sweet, but it's not very spammable.... the damage gets pretty high with some Matk tweaking and a buff, though. At least Satori gets some MP cost reductions in her pow tree, and some staves do it, but until you can craft the Azoth, it remains real expensive. And meteor, sadly, sucks eggs. There's only a few magic skills that are really worth using in postgame, like Mad Thunder. In postgame I actually used her with her charm-inflicting final eye (it doesn't say it does charm, but it does) or the mp drain dagger and spammed (mostly physical) status skills in randoms. Once you can grab Punish the Judgment, though...

Mech Dragon is really easy. If you give Aya mystic resist and evasion you're pretty much set to wail on it with ice until it dies. Evolution Breath is the only dangerous attack it's got. Cirno is actually pretty good here if you forge her Ice weapon, although it's about the only boss she's much good for.

With a party of Alice/Byakuren/Sanae/Satori/Reisen you can easily kill the obsidian boss, too. Debuff it to hell (Satori's are more accurate then Byakuren with her Id tree, so she's worth taking- and she's got poison!) and special slayer it into oblivion. It's not that hard to debuff and afterwards it does zeroes. What an easy boss.

If you want to fight the Terminator, Alice/Byakuren/Satori/Marisa/Patchouli is probably the easiest way at first, although there's other ways to get the damage if you want to level Nitori (ostracon gun) or Lithos or something. Aya commander 3bomb first turn, if Byakuren's patk debuff doesn't land you have to reset, but Satori's lands about 100% of the time and then she does top tier damage with Mad Thunder afterwards as Marisa/Patch wail with elec and elec boost field. Refresh Byakuren's debuff ahead of time as it gets a little low, and at some point CAST PERFECT RESIST ON THE TERMINATOR because the main worry of losing is that it casts Vortex and dispels itself.

...Elder Dragon and the devil's heart fight are legitimately hard to do before you reach stage 27. You can beat the Dragon earlier if you really want to though (Kusanagi is nice!) and the devil is beatable if you get Reimu to 99 instead. :V (Otherwise for the devil you need probably Yuugi's Super Aja weapon which is unlocked after beating stage 26 iirc, or Satori's ultimate nuke spell from stage 27.)


...stage 23 is actually kinda hard. Stage 24 is easier by a long shot. There's a reason I brought Satori to spam stasuses for 23. x.x Hmm, with a strong stab weapon, though... what else were those dang beholders weak to? Instant Death? I don't remember which status was better to use. Sakuya's IND tree and Power Direction skills might be handy.

[Your Everyday NEET]

I might as well describes the Vita-exclusive character.



In the PSV version of GoS, Akyu has been undummied out. She has above average HP (her HP is higher than Reimu's or Lithos'), low MP, and even worse stats than Satori, strangely her stats growth explodes when she's Lv99. Her unique weapon is Brush, basically a cross of spear and rod, with good support skills. She can equip up to medium armor and shields. Using her Gensokyo Chronicles, she can copy enemy's skills by killing them herself. Her skill is divided into 4 forms. Magician form gives her all sort of mid-top tier spells, Warrior form gives her all sort to top tier physical attack including second tier elemental breath, Insect form gives her lots of debuff skills, and Aquan form gives her really good support skill. In short, she's a good multiform jack-of-all stats. She does have a weakness though: Her lives and bomb are just 1 and 2 respectively. Die once in any battle, you can't use her anymore. Her Last Word is Gensokyo Chronicle, it reduces all damage against the party to 1/3 for that turn only.

On top of being a good jack-of-all-stats, she's also an AMAZING support. Her Commander skills are:
Passive: Item Drop Rate +100% (Yes, she doubles item drop rate)
Support 1: Treatment: Cure Permanent and Variety status, and restore HP to the whole party
Support 2: Blast: Damages all enemy. Damage: High

Her skill tree consists of Poetry Wing, Record, Memorization, and Chronicle. Poetry Wing increases her HP, MP (up to 50% and 40% respectively), Lives, and Bomb. Record strengthens her physical attack. Memorization strengthens her magical attack. And Chronicle increases her gained experience and party experience value as well. (Note: Her 20 POW skill tree except for Poetry Wing increases her lives by 2). Increasing her Brush skill tree gives her small boost of PATK, MATK, ACC, Physical Deflect, and gives her healing skills and Mystic based attack.

Disclaimer: This information may be wrong though as I can't read Japanese that well.

[Your Everyday NEET]

...stage 23 is actually kinda hard. Stage 24 is easier by a long shot. There's a reason I brought Satori to spam stasuses for 23. x.x Hmm, with a strong stab weapon, though... what else were those dang beholders weak to? Instant Death? I don't remember which status was better to use. Sakuya's IND tree and Power Direction skills might be handy.

Status + Reisen = good way to kill enemies. Nitori's 6th tier weapon slays Transcendent. But it's counter though...

Stage 23 - Forest of Magic 3

To think I spent 3 days strategizing against that boss when answer is just right in front of my face:

Spoiler:

Yuugi

.

Note: After this stage, I will effectively play the game blind as this is the last stage I play 2 years ago.

[Serela]

Woohoo, onto easy stage.

[Your Everyday NEET]

Stage 24 - Garden of the Sun 2

Serela's right again. This stage is easy.

But still, as you go on, your offensive and defensive option against boss becomes increasingly limited from here on out.

[Serela]

Easy stage, easy boss. You might not have a lot of offense options, but it's not a very intimidating fight either, so eh. After these two fights your options -increase-, really, because you don't have quadruple hatreds crowding up the fights and necessitating Reimu along with whoever else. (Technically, Reimu is still a pretty important option for the next fight though, come to think of it... *coughs* But there's a few other ways around it! ...err... one or two other ways? >.>)

Spoiler:

About Hina's last phase I was mentioning there- Normally, Reimu's unreflectable light attacks are the only real option for finishing the Hina fight off, but you can also Reflect attacks back at Hina (Cirno, Satori's Reflect Wall, Mirror Shield), and I'm not sure but you might be able to Reflect a dispel onto her or use Satori's Vortex? (Learn from terminator, probably) Although, unless you want to be weird, Reimu's the best option. Satori's Breaths and Marisa's lasers work, but you'd have to tank an awful lot of counters to beat the final phase that way. Hmm, I wonder if I'm forgetting any other unreflectable attacks... I don't -think- time stopping prevents reflection...?

Getting through the middle of the fight is easy. Anyone with a staff (or Sanae/Reimu) have magical dispels, and Satori/Reisen have physical dispels (plus Reisen does crazeballs damage as always), which let you dispel both of her normal barriers. Plus Reimu/Marisa can just outright ignore the magic reflection barrier. She's weak to dispel, so it's easy to inflict. Keep in mind that in order to be able to finish the fight, you have to be able to stop her regen- whether through preventing Dark land from building (Reimu or Patchouli's land skills), from Sakuya's Colloseo World, or from a strong enough poison. Otherwise you literally cannot trigger her final phase and she will refuse death.

But yeah, lots of materials! That's good, because people who craft a good amount of stuff in maingame will run out trying to craft all the orichalcon weapons... not to mention all the steel you'll go through trying to make armors, ouch.