So yeah, cleared Masoukishin F.
Nice to see that Eran's as hilarious as usual.
They balanced out possession by giving enemies ridiculous amounts of HP; There are regular enemies with more HP than the final bosses of previous games. (You can still take down the final boss in one turn, though.)
Top aces:
Actually had Teal as one of my top aces too but he went and died.
So yeah, Masoukishin F. I guess I enjoyed it, but it was also pretty disappointing. It's painfully clear that they had meant for the series to go on longer and had to change their plans for some reason (probably waning sales and popularity); Characters just introduced in 2/3 die without accomplishing anything or don't even show up (remember all that shit about the Ohgain Project of Aerial that the last two games had been building up on? The entire fucking country isn't even mentioned until the ENDING where they just say "oh by the way those guys are fine"). It's pretty sad.
I wasn't sure what to think about them introducing a new protagonist-level character at this point in the series, but Sakito and the other new characters were decent enough; It ends up somewhat half-assed, though, because though he's THE main character for most of the game (you don't even see Masaki and the four masoukishin until around stage 35 out of 52), once the old characters come back he just sort of fades into the background, and is totally irrelevant in the last few stages aside from the stuff with Phyllis. And since he's the main character for most of the game, Masaki and so on barely have any screentime or development or story. In fact there's very little actual story in this game; Most of the plot revolves around tying up loose ends hurriedly.
As a game, this has the best balance in the series; Your units can tank a couple of hits so there're no bullshit one hit kills like in 3, but they can't tank THAT many hits so you have to either take the enemies out ASAP or use multiple units to divide the damage among them. Most of the weaker enemies go down in 1-2 hits, but there are lots of them. Possession still does ridiculous amounts of damage, but bosses have even more ridiculous amounts of HP so you can't kill the final boss in one hit like in 1/2. Ironic how they finally managed to get the balance right only in the final game.
I've been a fan of suparobo and Masoukishin for a long time so I'm really sad to see this end. I think it took too long for them to bring Masoukishin back; The series might have done better if 2 were released maybe ten years ago (which would still have been pretty late considering that would still have put eight years between it and the first game). It's a great series. I like it. It's just out of place in this age.
Ah well, hopefully we'll get to see the characters again in OG.
