I decided to challenge myself and do a play through of TPA2 using only the hero in brutal mode. I was able to beat the final boss and all of the challenge levels with the exception of the Lava Challenge in League 6. That one needs a flying unit, so you can't do it as the hero alone. Since you spend all your money on the hero, you can get your stats pretty high. I played the Psy Fighter class, and rolled until I got one with the light element.
Final Stats:
Power: 88
Defense: 62
Mind Blast: 11
Light Blast: 11
Light Bomb: 9
Feedback: 10
Vengeance: 9
I chose light because it has few enemies with resistance and it has the longest range attack of all the elements.
The hardest part of doing this is the first few levels. It takes a while to figure out a precise move order to beat the first several levels. You also end up repeating the first 2-3 or the random cave to earn money and level up your skills. Initially, you want to concentrate on improving defense to get Feedback and then Vengeance. These need to be leveled some until you can heal yourself reasonably well with them. Once you get your skills leveled up a bit, you will be able to complete the first league. From there, I was able to go straight through without repeating any more levels for the most part. The one exception to that was leveling up light blast to be able to complete the One-Turn challenge in league 9.
As far as combat strategies go, it was important to leave some room to get away from enemies in order to recharge psy points. Psy points will be a very limiting factor at first. I also found it necessary to swap out resistance orbs depending on what enemies were in each encounter. Reading the descriptions of the encounters and then selecting the appropriate orb played a big role in staying alive. Also, since you don't have any other team members, dying is not really much of a setback as you won't lose others you have trained up.
If anyone else wants to try doing this, just be patient and take it slowly at first. You will need to spend a bit of time leveling skills. But it is entirely possible.
Final Stats:
Power: 88
Defense: 62
Mind Blast: 11
Light Blast: 11
Light Bomb: 9
Feedback: 10
Vengeance: 9
I chose light because it has few enemies with resistance and it has the longest range attack of all the elements.
The hardest part of doing this is the first few levels. It takes a while to figure out a precise move order to beat the first several levels. You also end up repeating the first 2-3 or the random cave to earn money and level up your skills. Initially, you want to concentrate on improving defense to get Feedback and then Vengeance. These need to be leveled some until you can heal yourself reasonably well with them. Once you get your skills leveled up a bit, you will be able to complete the first league. From there, I was able to go straight through without repeating any more levels for the most part. The one exception to that was leveling up light blast to be able to complete the One-Turn challenge in league 9.
As far as combat strategies go, it was important to leave some room to get away from enemies in order to recharge psy points. Psy points will be a very limiting factor at first. I also found it necessary to swap out resistance orbs depending on what enemies were in each encounter. Reading the descriptions of the encounters and then selecting the appropriate orb played a big role in staying alive. Also, since you don't have any other team members, dying is not really much of a setback as you won't lose others you have trained up.
If anyone else wants to try doing this, just be patient and take it slowly at first. You will need to spend a bit of time leveling skills. But it is entirely possible.