Vaati's Revenge

Vaati's Revenge is Golden Warrior's submission in Ragefest Three. It is a hack of Blazing Sword.

This Zelda-themed ripoff of Rondo of Madness was disqualified for slow gameplay, oversized maps, poor eventing, poor planning, terrible balance, luck-based bosses, am I missing anything? Oh, you can cause the chapter boss to not spawn and be permanently barred from completing it because killing him ends the chapter. But fear not, this is so hilariously awful that a walkthrough will, nay, MUST be provided.

Walkthrough

You SHALL NOT PASS!

The first objective is to kill Vaati, but first let's go over what the houses and villages do. The house near the start will spawn three generic Generals with decent weapons for later use, but will also spawn, ahem, four of a certain female Bishop. The house to the north of that, on the little peninsula, tells you where to find a Vendor that sells healing items. It's an INVISIBLE SHOP in a FREAKING FOREST TILE all the way at the bottom of the map, see where the marked forest is?! Visit the north-most village for an Elfire. The south-most village spawns Glass, Yogi, and Cameron. The house near this village spawns enemy Sages, so forget it. The middle village gives the player a Regal Blade, hope Vincent has the weapon rank for it! The house near here gives a healing item. Seizing the north-east castle spawns Guy, Karel, and Rath, and seizing the north-west castle spawns the chapter boss on the gate of the center castle. Make sure nobody's standing there when he spawns, or the chapter is unwinnable! Oh and Soren is recruitable by Neku. Somehow.

But oh, I haven't mentioned the core mechanic of the chapter: The weather alternates between rain, and fog, starting with rain on turn 1 and switching on turns 3, 9, 16, 21, and finally settling on fog permanently on turn 30. Rain does nothing but slow you down. Okay, so the walkthrough proper. Basically take everyone through the south path leading up to the castle in the north-west. While you're supposed to go north-east and take that castle first, who cares, you can skip it completely. There are less enemies on the south path, leading to extremely uneventful gameplay, but hey, the less time you spend on this crap the better.

The only thing to be aware of is the area marked by a magenta box on the map. Standing in it spawns Gandalf, who basically does what every idiot who hasn't actually read the frigging novels thinks he does, and he's not even that effective at it. First of all, the area that triggers his appearance is so small, most units can actually bypass it completely by sitting in the forest and moving through past the bridge. Nice job, Golden Warrior. Even if he does spawn, while Gandalf is basically unkillable, apparently SOMEONE forgot to note that Thieves, Assassins, Heroes and Snipers can move across rivers, so Vincent and Link - the only GOOD units here - can still make it to Vaati, though Link should go first to clear out the useless soldiers. Vincent doesn't want to waste ammo on them.

As for Vaati himself, the asshole is armed with Eclipse, Luna, and has three Berserkers as a vanguard. Kill the Berserkers with Vincent's guns. He can then attack Vaati from the forts, and then Link can come in for the big finish. Just be sure to pray Vaati doesn't pull off a Luna critical, OR you can kill him before he uses up his Eclipse shots. Seize the castle to spawn Dark Link at the center castle - again, if someone's sitting there, he won't spawn and you can't win. Dark Link himself is basically a game of chance, no matter how you fight. Get him to fight Link on a fort, hope for a crit from Zelda perhaps, or just hand Vincent the Killing Edge and hope for Silencer. There's a lot of hoping you have to do, but killing him mercifully ends the dumbest chapter to be submitted so far, and that's counting anything and everything by Hithere1, FELover3, and Ephraim225 combined. Now THAT is worthy of an award!