Sacrifice: Pyro Mission 9

As with the prior two gods, Pyro gives us one new unit and that's it.


Phoenix
1900 Mana, 5 Souls

The Phoenix's most notable quality is that it's the only unit in this tier that's truly a ranged unit. The other units are all either melee or have a ranged attack with a very short range. (The Rhinok's splash radius is so huge it partially offsets this, admittedly, but only partially) The Phoenix is outranged by stuff like artillery, but it genuinely has proper range. This gives it a pretty big advantage at very high soul counts, since a large number of Phoenix going up against a large number of Hellmouths will start inflicting casualties before the Hellmouths have a chance to attack at all. It also gives it a bit of an edge at killing wizards in spite of not having a homing attack or the like, since Phoenix don't crowd each other nearly as badly as eg Hellmouths and Rhinoks do.

Nonetheless, the Phoenix actually has two additional qualities of note. Firstly, as one might guess based on the visual similarity to the Tickferno's projectile, the Phoenix's ranged attack burns away mana in its victim. In fact, it behaves exactly like the Tickferno's projectile, which among other points means that units that are missed by the initial hit but duck back into the beam will end up taking damage. The second thing is that the Phoenix can cast Fireform on itself, and surprisingly it does this fully autonomously, no need for you to push an 'activate ability' button or anything. I'm not sure whether their Fireform cast blocks various effects the way the wizard spell does, but I do know it inflicts damage to units that get close to them, and quite a bit. It doesn't even cost them any mana to cast! Nor does it ever run out after being initialized, short of death.

The Phoenix is, of course, fragile for a unit of this tier (Because Pyro), but it still has nearly 5000 hit points, 50% resistance to spells, and 25% resistance to ranged attacks, and its refusal to ever land means non-flying melee attackers can almost never attack it to take advantage of the fact that it has no melee resistance. This makes it unique among ranged units as something that just plain cannot be killed on a moment's notice without invoking some of the ultimate spells like Death or Volcano. This is quite nice in the campaign for simplifying fights against AI wizards, since you're not having to necessarily achieve a critical mass to avoid constantly scooping up souls and resummoning ranged units. You can just field Phoenix and keep them healed.

It's also arguably one of the best of the units at this tier, able to perform well in basically any situation with little in the way of weaknesses beyond being expensive and high-level. The Rhinok is more broken, but it's also more flawed.

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The mission is yet another Pyro mission in which an enemy times out and vanishes partway through. In this case, it's Acheron, and he does it quickly enough it's possible you'll only have one proper engagement with his forces. This is good, as otherwise this would be a 3v1, and that would just be maddening. It's also good because Acheron has Astaroth with him -which is, to be frank, baffling on a narrative level- and Astaroth is a pain to actually kill. I actually managed it in the video, and since the AI never uses Animate Dead that's not a worry, but previous occasions I've done this mission Astaroth got dealt with by Acheron timing out because he's obnoxiously durable.

I'd been sure the ambush in the equivalent Charnel mission applied to this Pyro mission, but it didn't happen in this video. I'm not sure if that's a bug (I keep running into bugs I've never seen before in doing these recordings, so it's entirely possible) or if it's a deliberate difference between the missions.

Regardless, as functionally a 2v1, this mission is... actually not so bad. The beginning can be a bit rough thanks to how difficult it is to get a second Manalith up before getting into a fight, but thankfully Abraxus and Sorcha will generally not end up clashing with you simultaneously. As such, it's entirely possible to get a decisive win over Sorcha -as I did- and from there be much better positioned to handle the rest of the mission. If you manage that, once Acheron times out you've probably basically won, particularly since Acheron leaves a pile of corpses behind that Abraxus and Sorcha won't try to Convert. (All his stuff dies with him when he times out)

I do have to wonder why the Pyro campaign has so many missions in this vein, though.

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Narratively, it's worth pointing out that two gods were killed off-screen, with Pyro contributing nothing. This is weird, particularly with the plot actually emphasizing that Pyro is very dominant.

It's also amusing to me to note that a fair amount of Pyro's dialogue throughout the campaign is set up as looking like paranoid suspicions but it turns out he's completely right. (Okay, the idea that Persephone was part of a 'conspiracy' to pretend Ashur/Marduk exists isn't right, but still) As we've already seen in the Charnel and James routes and this one, Stratos is indeed a backstabber who can't be trusted and whose friendly facade is enabling his backstabbing.

It's odd to me, though, how the plot frames things as Pyro losing interest in Marduk/Ashur/etc once the other gods are all dead and Eldred running off to handle the issue himself. It feels like an extension of the story wanting you to see Pyro as a bad person, rather than as an in-character sentiment. It's pretty clear Ashur/Marduk does exist by this point, and if Pyro is going to wipe out all his rivals why wouldn't he go after Marduk? It feels like a moment where Pyro is breaking character so the story can make you think he's a terrible, irresponsible person for letting a world-devouring demon run around freely, instead of arranging an in-character action for him to take that will get the audience to hate him.

Anyway, you can see how the beginning of the final mission has Mithras/Marduk providing the same speech Eldred was given in the Charnel version. You can also see in the transition that Eldred mentions with some surprise that Pyro 'didn't betray me', which is baffling of a statement. Pyro never betrays anyone in the entirety of his route! In fact, if one were going to talk about betrayal, Pyro is the one being betrayed in his route, with Sorcha abandoning him, the plot playing up Hachimen switching sides (Though he's presented as a mercenary so it's a more debatable example), and Charnel allying him with to use him as a puppet and then turning against him with no warning. It's one of the more obnoxious attempts by the game to demonize Pyro, because it makes no sense whatsoever for Eldred to expect betrayal from Pyro. It's not like Pyro lied or anything else to make him seem untrustworthy! Yes, he's a slaver, yes, he's perfectly happy to kill all the other gods, yes, he's all-around not a great person... but he's bizarrely trustworthy as far as how he was actually written. And it's not like this quality of Pyro's is exclusive to his own route! Meanwhile, Charnel's route involved Eldred getting mad about being lied to, and yet in that route he doesn't express an expectation that Charnel is going to betray him.

On a related note, it bugs me that Sorcha does betray Pyro. You can argue that this was foreshadowed by the slaver mission, that Pyro's methods bother Sorcha, but that was never followed up on and it's a really hard sell that she'd jump ship to Stratos. It just feels like more contrived 'Pyro is bad, you the player should hate him' stuff rather than an organic extension of events or any kind of gameplay-purposeful choice.

As a contrasting example; if Charlotte were to betray James in his route in an equivalent manner, even if it had way less setup I'd be inclined to suspect it was so you could have a James on James fight. Pyro, however, can effortlessly justify such mirror matches by having you fight Hachimen -he's already gone to Marduk, after all. So this isn't a plot thing attempting to serve a game design purpose, and happening to hurt the plot in the process. This is a plot thing happening for plot reasons, except by 'plot reasons' I mean 'meta goals of the writers with inadequate narrative justification', while harming the plot and adding nothing to the gameplay.

Ugh.

See you next Pyro mission.