Vandal Hearts #17 - Act 3-3 | 3 Years Later

Ash, Grog, Sara & Zohar return to the (almost) present day, just in time to help some of their allies from being cream crackered! There's also an old foe to contend with in the form of Zoot Gach and it's our first skirmish with Imperial soldiers. Quite an interesting battle here; you're managing two sides and it's a balancing act of drawing enough of the troops away from Diego and friends while not getting Ash and company overwhelmed. The Grenadiers are by far the biggest danger here (I'm seeing a pattern of ranged units being absolute pains in the neck...) and can easily wreck one of your party if you blindly rush in. This is also the first time that the enemy fields a dedicated healing unit, the Deacon, which is a top priority to take out for obvious reasons. Also, we have Clive, Ash's old C.O. who appears here as an NPC and he's....interesting. Another missed opportunity to have another character in the team, but at least he's not completely useless. It ended up working out nicely as he was forced to take the scenic route while I grabbed the items. He can mess things up and take out the last enemy if you're trying to keep one alive, so I left Zoot until last. Also, for the 'no deaths' achievement you can just let Clive die, but I wasn't going to allow that on my watch! This is the English translation of Vandal Hearts, an SRPG that is better known for being on the OG PlayStation. However it did actually get released on the Saturn, but in Japan only. Thanks to Stardust Crusaders and paul_met, this is playable in English and is more or less the definitive version of the game with additional content and fixes that the PS1 version didn't have. Almost every map has hidden items to find, usually on mostly distinct squares. I'll try to highlight these as I start each level. Some of these items are essential to unlocking a secret class for Ash near the endgame, so I won't continue until I find them all! Played on the BizHawk emulator with Saturnus core, with RetroAchievements enabled. You can find more info on the translation here: https://www.romhacking.net/translatio...