Labyrinth of Touhou 19F

[Heian_Alien]

Anyone tried 12 randomly selected character runs in LoT2? What's been your experiences? Is it possible to get stuck with unlucky compositions? Do lategame characters trivialize the early game?

[qazmlpok]

I've never done a random run, but my last playthrough was with a fixed cast of 12, including 3 PLUS DISK characters and Byakuren. Late game characters definitely do not trivialize the early game. Their skill point costs are so high they usually can't do anything but their basic spellcard attacks for a long time. Doubly so for any skills that require/synergize with other skills. E.g. for Byakuren, when you recruit her normally, she can probably get 3 of her sutras right away, and you'll have access to the strategist subclass to keep the buffs up longer. You probably won't get any sutras at all until 5F or so; longer if you want to use her boost skills instead which are probably going to be more useful.

[FabulaFares]

Completely random runs are probably gonna be pretty tough, because you could end up stuck with very loopsided party compositions (e.g. too many attackers, too many tanks, too many mages), or lack certain niches (e.g. healer, de/buffer, ailments, defense piercing).

Of course you can probably still clear all the content in the game by grinding/overlevelling, but otherwise I think something like 6-8 random chars with the rest being picked consciously would probably be a better experience.

[Tori]

@FabulaFares That sounds like a better idea. I'm not sure how it would work in practice though. Maybe you wouldn't have trouble fulfilling needed roles if you randomized it, somehow, idk.

[abao]

If you get yuyuko in your random characters... about half of early bosses can just be oneshotted by lvl1 nirvana.

[FabulaFares]

Recently remembered FantasyJared made a Hard Mode NG+ save with 54 chars (all characters except Renko/Maribel, so you get to fight the 3 deformed bosses), which also has all characters start with 400 BP (so no BP grinding is required to unlock optional fights/events), so I thought I might as well post the original save and the converted Steam version.