Hero-only run in brutal mode

[sarlok]

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.

[Idozen Cair]

Can you describe how you beat the final boss?

[CraigStern]

That one needs a flying unit, so you can't do it as the hero alone.

Not even with the azure orb?

[sarlok]

The azure orb comes from that fight, so while it would allow you to complete the challenge, the only way to get it is to complete the challenge first.  I guess you could hire one flying person to do the challenge once and then do it again solo, but that sort of defeats the point.

As far as the last boss goes, it wasn't actually very hard by the time I got there.  Since you can keep pumping all your money into just the hero, you get some very nice stats.  Using light bomb helped deal damage while keeping me away from the enemies.  My light bombs were doing 99 damage, so the first two turns knocked out everyone except the two healers (Ravinale Protectors), the Elder Tig, and Zem.  Next turn use feedback to heal up and kill one healer.  Next turn light bomb kills the other healer.  Then you just keep light bombing the crap out of Zem.  I think this would be harder with any other element as you would have to get much closer to the enemies.  I used the green and yellow orbs for increased speed (very important) and psy regen.  I also had the golden orb equipped, but it didn't seem to do much for me; I guess it only regenerates health when you rest, which isn't often in the boss fight.  For resistance, use either the black orb to make the fight before the boss a lot easier or crystal to make the boss easier.

Honestly, the hardest encounters were league 1 teams 3 and 4.  At that point in the game you don't have any orbs, your health is low, and your attacks are weak.  It took a lot of repeating the first couple of stages to earn money, then buy vengeance, then level vengeance to heal enough to make a difference.  You also need enough health to take several hits.  I think I did it with 32 or 34 health.  I had leveled vengeance to return somewhere around 20 damage.  It was also helpful to have mind blast + a full vengeance to be able to kill one of the bandit raiders (31 health on brutal).

[CraigStern]

The azure orb comes from that fight, so while it would allow you to complete the challenge, the only way to get it is to complete the challenge first.

Ah! Indeed. Look at me, not remembering the sequence of events in my own game.