I...I did it. I actually did it.
Unfortunately, it was a little disappointing; though I do enjoy seeing people take on minimalist challenges that force them to find cool exploits and strategies, in RPGs that strategy is usually just "I hope you like level grinding!". You have to overlevel so much for the camp battle that everything after is trivial. I remembered the Coria Bridge battle as excruciatingly difficult, but I just ended up cheesing it by popping adrenaline pills. Rescuing Sarn Kamina got a little dicey, but I interpreted my challenge to mean I could use
any vital (starred) unit, so Silithis managed to hold the line while the Striders murdered everything. I actually did lose Battle with Clotch a few times until I realized I had to rush the north tunnel if I didn't want to get overwhelmed, then it was easy. And, just like in my first game, I cheesed the final battle by flying over and oneshotting Tarion. I found that battles with lots of weak enemies were a lot harder than boss battles, but that's to be expected, considering that swordsmen specialize in dealing heavy damage to single enemies but have no method for crowd control. Their physical resistances got so high (those stats are without armor, by the way) that standard enemies couldn't do anything more than chip damage -- Sabrina actually managed to get over 100% crush resistance, and Emma got 101% slash resistance! The only thing that really posed a threat was Mind Blast, since unlike elemental attacks it can't be dodged, but you don't see enemies use that on a regular basis until the very end.
It was funny to see how it broke the story, though. There were so many scenes where Emma asked questions or gave orders to thin air. Also, I got to see everyone's last words!
