Book 1 burned.
The rest of chapter 4 was pretty anti-climactic. The generic enemies stopped being threatening, and I was prepared for boss double turns this time. Occasionally my characters were threatened by a bolt spell or demon breath, but I had two aura casters, and a large stock of healing rains (why were these buyable?), so it was rarely lethal. I say rarely because I did lose Amigo in the final battle; it's hard to recover from a demon breath when it kills you in one hit, you know? Other than that, the battles were straightforward and underwhelming. Kinda disappointed.
Nick: 14/13
Ruce: 14/14
Sig: 14/11
Wendy: 14/12
Apis: 14/15
Cray: 14/13
Claude: 14/12
Stock: 14/14
Mayfair: 14/12
Kashing: 14/12
Gates: ?/13
Lug: ?/12
Bench
Gyan: 14/3
Randolf: ?/10
The dead book
Yeesha: 11
Fake Domingo: ?/6
Shriek: ?/8
Shade: 14/8
Amigo: ?/7
Top 5 characters
1. Cray: Easy choice for MVP. Best attack of the force, great durability once he got some levels, on top of having heal and boost? Yeah, easy decision.
2. Stocke: Dropped off near the end, but was a death machine for the hardest part of the game, doing insane damage for an archer. Probably better than Lyle, I didn't think I'd say that about any ShF centaur archer.
3. Ruce: Great tank, and the enemies really liked attacking him for some reason. Was always among the physically strongest members of the force, too.
4. Apis: Like Stocke (and most starter centaurs), he dropped off near the end, but was always valuable. The best early game character, he wasn't quite a match for Dantares, but he was a hell of a lot better than Ken, Chester, Donhort or Campbell.
5. Claude: He was good. A little too good, because his stellar stats meant I gave the critical sword to Nick, and he was stuck with a lousy weapon. Still, there were quite a few times having a birdman came in handy, and my other fliers had a way of dying quickly. Easily better than the Genesis Birdmen, but I'm not so sure about how he stacks up with Birdpeople on the Saturn.
Least valuable character (who I regularly used)
Wendy. Blaze 3 is your best spell at the end of the game? Get out. Keeping her alive was a waste of effort, she made Wizard Kazin look like an MVP caliber character (and Tyrin the best character in video game history).
On to book 2!
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SuperNiceDog won the Guru contest. Good job.