#srw loe

[tearsoftime0086]

He's finally here!!! He came to drop off his father's lunchbox ^^ unfortunately his actual recruitment comes much later

[tearsoftime0086]

Initial Lord of Elemental thoughts - it's very enjoyable! I'm about 10 stages in, and it feels almost like a Fire Emblem mini on the SNES. 1st part of the game has no manual deployment choices, so you really only need to focus upgrades on Masaki. If you're the type of person who likes curating a small squad of units in SRW/Fire Emblem, I'd recommend this game. The last stage only gives you 5 optional slots!

Character highlight so far is Feil - it's neat seeing the context and personality alluded to in SRW EX. As someone who's usually not as into the OG characters, the game does a great job with its meatier, character-driven writing. I'm invested!

[tearsoftime0086]

Done with my SRW Lord of Elemental/Masoukishin playthrough! Took the Volkruss route. Fun, shorter game if you're even mildly interested in the Masoukishin characters. The game's writing and plot will do the rest and get you hooked!

Few notes: I feel like the gameplay loop gets a tad broken towards the late game when everyone on both sides starts getting double move. This alongside innate HP regen makes it a very player phase game - a lot of the strategy becomes counting spaces so you can one-turn kill bosses and tougher enemies. Lots of units start getting bunshin too - not ashamed to say I save scummed a little ^^

For anyone wanting tips, focus your upgrades on Masaki for the first half. Akashic Buster is a great weapon to invest in. Once you pick units you like, you can start aiming for full upgrade bonuses.

Shoutout to Luck, Love, and Rally as my top 3 critical seishin/spirits. As for my final squad of units...

Masaki - has Luck, Akashic Buster, near 100% availability, and lots of movement. Fun protagonist unit, but might have smaller damage output at the start of chapters as he gains morale for Akashic (nothing a single Rally can't cure).

Ryuune - great ranged weapons without morale requirmeents, plus they get nice full upgrade bonuses. Luck makes her a great pickup for 99% of the game, but she'll need a lot of weapon investment if you want her to do anything against Volkruss.

Shu - the OP, Athos-esque unit of the Volkruss route. His degenerate cannon shredded the boss without money spent on upgrades. He also gets Luck!

Saphine - Luck (do you see the pattern here lol) and Rally. Comes with lots of upgrades and double move, so she replaced Mio in the final stage.

Presia - You need a bit of patience to train her - the Diablo is nothing special and her piloting skills even less so. But once you get her to a respectable level she gets Luck, Rally, and Resupply to become the best seishin generalist. Learns Hot Blood to hold her own eventually too.

Zash - the last of the double move squad, and the only one without Luck! Not here solely due to player nepotism though (as much as I adore him), as he gets Rally as well as a nice pseudofinisher move that only needs 1 morale.

Yang Long - from this point on the units did not get double move and were around 10 levels behind. Regardless, Yang Long is a great bruiser unit that can come into his own, I just focused on Zash for that role in this playthrough hehe

Tytti - Love and the repair module. Honestly she just was a Love bot in the endgame, but she's also a good unit if you invest into her. Does solid chip damage even without upgrades in early/mid game.

Mio - Zamzeed is a good tank, but you'll struggle with damage output unless you commit to getting her secret finisher and upgrading.

Well, that's about it! I recommend this game if you're looking for an old school SRW to dig into for a couple hours. As for pics, I uh... just took a bunch of Zash screenshots haha. I'll put one here but let me know if anyone wants to see his (3) conversations in this game lol

[tearsoftime0086]

Somewhat shameful update: now playing SRW Masoukishin/Lord of Elemental solely for like 10 stages of Zash in the endgame.

I got mad that SRW EX's combined Ryuune route erases any mention of Zash (regardless of whether or not he dies to Kirkus) in the ending. Went scrounging for Zash content and well... here we go. We'll see how I go about posting updates haha