My God man you might be right, that's been bugging me for a while now and I didn't want to risk looking through a faq to find out.
Yea, its a strange class name tough. Swordman? Never heard it used before. Sword was kind of obvious, but the man part took me a while running trough various words. But then again, aside from never being used its a sensible enough designation for a low level sword user.
What about WLFBRN? Would you guess that means Wolf Baron? Some of the class names are easy to figure out though like SMURI and I think one is just called NINJA.
I also subscribed, I'm actually pretty interested in your thoughts on later, harder levels.
Since I actually owned Shining Force for the genesis I'll give you a few hints.
- Don't promote characters until they are level 20, any sooner and you won't get the best stat gains
- In the room where you get the moonstone, search all of the walls, there is a secret hidden item for Tao
- The egg you find contains one of the best magic users in the entire game
- There are multiple hidden characters, most of them outclass almost everyone else
- Don't bother leveling that elven archer, trust me on this, he will suck major balls.
- Didn't know that one. I've always promoted first chance, except Zylo whom I've never bothered to promote. He's still a serious damage-dealer until late game until around Musashi can replace him.
- Or that one. I may have to play this again.
- Eh, I've always thrown Domingo in the back room and completely forgot about him/her/it.
- Musashi is one. I've heard of Hanzo, but never found him. Some aren't really "hidden", you just have to talk to the guys with different sprites than normal most of the time.
- Really? I've always gotten decent damage out of Hans, and later, Diane.
Alright, cool lets play. Gotta work on your tactics tough. I haven't played SF but I know a little about these games in general. Use choke points, force weak enemies between you and strong enemies and use ranged units to whittle down the strong enemies who can't attack you. Your centaur knight is good for this because of relatively good armor and ranged attack. In general he probably should have a role where he attack from a distance and work as a backup to fill up holes that might emerge if one of your frontliners dies, he have a lot of movements points in flat terrain, but don't use him in the front line in general as he do not seem to have much HP.
A few things about that. Enemies almost never move from their starting position unless scripted to, and most of the time that scritping only activates in proximity of one of your guys. In fact, you can cheese the first battle using your ranged troops, and they'll never respond. Also note that even though Ken starts with a ranged attack, all but one or two other weapons for your Knights is a melee lance. Also note that Ken also gains ridiculous amounts of hitpoints later on.
I don't remember enemies ever dropping items in this game, except
the Heat Axe, which is guranteed to drop. And there's another axe towards the end of the game that does that as well.
The zombies have a special move if I remember correctly, one that you may not be prepared for.
They do? I know they can poison though. There's an enemy in the same chapter that has a powerful special attack that will really hurt you though.
Right, basically, I've managed to get onto chapter 3. I had a stupid amount of trouble with the Marionette, I managed to win though after practically sacrificing my entire force! Now I've just managed to get to the town of Bustoke, which apparently has been subjugated into mining all day.
That Marionette. I remember the first time I fought him. Ouch. Infinite MP and Freeze 3. Just ouch.
Grab the steel arrow from the chest near him and give it to Hans. Major damage increase.
Kill those clowns first. Preferably at a distance since they, nor does Marionette, don't move.
Actually, kill everything else on the map first.
Pile your team up near him but out of range of his Freeze spell, and learn the timing of the turn order. Then bum rush him after his turn.
Just remember, he regenerates at a rate of roughly half his max hp around every turn and a half.