Sacrifice: Persephone Mission 1

As usual, we get a batch of four different spells to start with, though before that, Persephone's stat modifiers are straightforward; she has 75% more regeneration than every non-Charnel god. That's it. She's pretty clearly meant to be the baseline of the game, representing the default stats for a given unit at a given level, as unit regeneration is itself something that doesn't vary by unit type outside Persephone and Charnel's faction-wide changes. I suspect she's also meant to be the 'mario' faction, a well-balanced all-rounder who doesn't excel at anything in particular, though if that's true she pretty well fails at it.

Regardless, the actual spells are...


Druid
300 Mana, 1 Soul

The Druid is the worst basic melee unit.

Oh, it's got its Life Shield gimmick, and I historically had been underestimating it as it doesn't just provide protection from incoming damage but also blocks anything a wizard shield would block. The problem is most such effects aren't anything worth targeting at Druids in the first place. (Frozen Ground is one of the only cases it might crop up usefully) Life Shield itself seems to work out as something like a 40% reduction in damage from all sources aside damage over time, like a wizard shield, which sounds fairly impressive but is undermined some by Life Shield lasting fairly briefly. In the early game, Scythes will usually be tougher in real terms thanks to their surprisingly high damage and leeching being constants, and past the early game Druids will still die horribly to anything relevant even with Life Shield up. As far as I'm aware it doesn't really push them into any notable 'magic numbers', either.

Unfortunately, Life Shield is the only thing Druids theoretically have going for them bar the innate Persephone regeneration boost... which is largely irrelevant. In theory Persephone's regeneration boost should encourage playing her as a raiding faction, but her actual unit lineup doesn't particularly excel at raiding -Stratos is far better at such, and even Pyro has some better options- and in particular from a mono-Persephone perspective you rapidly pick up tools that makes the regeneration advantage pretty much completely irrelevant. There's only one Persephone unit in the entire game where her regeneration advantage matters, and it's not the Druid.

Though as with all basic melee units, Druids have an innate 10% resistance to ranged attacks. Whatever.


Ranger
300 Mana, 1 Soul

As an aside, I hate how the Ranger's icon is nearly indistinguishable from the Druid's.

The Ranger is terrible for exactly the same reasons as the Sylph was on Stratos, having superior range to the other three basic ranged units in exchange for being completely awful at actually hitting things. Unlike the Sylph, instead of merely having a bad special ability that has some niche uses, the Ranger gets a terrible special ability that's a complete waste of mana. Hooray, you can... reveal nearby units even through the fog of war? When you can often see them with with your eyes, and the game doesn't really provide actual stealth mechanics.

Like, okay, there's maps where the terrain can block line of sight, but really, I don't get the point of the ability.

As usual, they're horribly weak to melee damage, taking triple damage from such.


Shrike
300 Mana, 1 Soul

The Shrike is the one worthwhile unit in this bunch, being more or less a superior Brainiac. It's tougher, it has Life Shield to be even tougher if you bother to employ some micro (And every once in a while a Shrike will activate Life Shield on its own, though I've never noticed any particular pattern to this so don't rely on it), and in exchange it's not as fast and has a shorter range, while sharing the same knockdown stun effect on its attack. Life Shield is in fact sufficiently effective that while under it the Shrike can outright survive all basic attacking spells, a feat unique to it out of basic fliers. (Which is an example of a 'magic number')

This comes with the caveat that if you're using Shrikes it means you're also using all the other junk at this level, emphasis on junk.

As with all other basic fliers, Shrikes take doubled damage from ranged attacks and are functionally immune to ground melee because they refuse to fly low enough to be hit.

Also, as with the Gargoyle and Spitfire, I've no idea why the Shrike is a Mutalisk. It's particularly puzzling in the Shrike's case given its attack is supposed to be its voice, yet its attack animation clearly fires from the orb thing dangling from it rather than its actual mouth at the top.


Wrath
300 Mana

Say hello to the absolute worst of the basic attacking spells!

Wrath is awful. There is no reason to want Wrath. Its damage is tied for worst. Its cooldown is tied for worst. Its area of effect is standard. (ie nearly nonexistent) Its projectile speed is miserably slow. It has absolutely no qualities that are uniquely positive to it, and in fact it's more or less perfectly accurate to describe it as 'Insect Swarm if Insect Swarm elected to randomly suck'.

You can successfully lie to people and make Wrath sound sort-of-kind-of-not-worthless by comparing it to individual spells and noting that, for example, Fireball has friendly fire, Rock is really easy to accidentally waste on your own units, and Lightning has no splash at all, but none of these makes Wrath good and Insect Swarm really is 100% superior.

I've no idea why Wrath is uniquely terrible. It's technically usable, and at high levels you primarily care about sniping Sac Doctors, which it's barely adequate for, but seriously, it's awful. It's one of the biggest strikes against the possibility of taking Persephone at level 1.

In conjunction with Druids and Rangers being so awful while Shrikes are mostly redundant with Brainiacs... seriously, this is not a Persephone level to bother with.

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The mission is your usual basic introduction to the game, only it's actually pretty terrible at that. You can't lose the mission, which is something I guess, but you're constantly using and fighting notably higher-level units that completely distort your idea of what low-level combat looks like, which annoyingly enough obscures how (in)effective Persephone's level 1 forces are.

The Boon is also handled in an obnoxious manner. There's two possible outcomes to the confrontation with Thestor; the one you saw, where he dies, and one where he pleads for his life and you don't kill him. The latter happens if you kill all the other Charnel units before killing Thestor -this is quite likely to happen in default play, as Thestor has a similar statline to Faestus, including serious resistance to all non-melee damage, and furthermore he starts the fight by retreating to snipe from safety, and the result is that you don't get the Boon and instead you get Thestor as a hero unit for potentially the rest of the campaign.

In spite of his Charnel-style appearance, he's mechanically based off of a Persephone unit, one we've seen plenty of. The Gnomes all over this mission, specifically. So's Persephone-style Faestus, for that matter.

The one where you kill him is the scenario where Charnel randomly elects to award you with a Boon. This is, to be frank, bizarre on a narrative level, and on a game design level it's obnoxious and arbitrary; why is it in this case we're forced to choose between a hero and a Boon? It's particularly annoying since Boons are a truly permanent payoff while heroes can last you the whole game... or can get killed in the very next mission. It's also an unusually weak Boon, for whatever reason, to add insult to injury; I'd at least kind of understand if it was one of the best Boons in the entire game. Alternatively, if Thestor was on the level of amazingness of Sirocco, I'd imagine the idea was instead 'gamble on a great hero you might lose vs an unlosable minor advantage in the form of a crappy Boon'. As-is, it's.... uuuuh?

Seriously, Sacrifice, what is the design philosophy behind Boons?

As an extra layer of what to the whole thing, Thestor is able to join you without commentary or explanation if you skip this mission and then do a Persephone mission anyway. So you can go do some other god's mission, get their Boon without having to make any particular sacrifice, and then pick up Thestor anyway. So... what's the point of this choice, exactly?

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Narratively, we've gotten Persephone's spiel, and it's, uhhhhhh, weird.

Like, first of all invoking the 'triple goddess' concept is starkly out of place with everything else about Persephone. You may have noticed in the other routes that Persephone is more of a Maim, Kill, Burn sort of person, albeit one who is protective of those under her dominion. This is not a quality that's going to magically go away just because we're serving under Persephone; this first mission is trying to sell us on the idea of Persephone being a nurturing and motherly figure, but it's an anomaly. And we still get the 'if talking doesn't work, kill them' line. She pretties it up with fancy-pants language, but that's what it boils down to.

The 'triple goddess' thing is so underused by the game I'd completely forgotten the game ever invoked it at all up until I went to record this mission, in fact.

The entire plot thread with the Gnome infighting is also confusing. On the one hand, we've finally gotten some context on Faestus; he's so quick to turn traitor because he's already been tossed out by his own people. On the other hand, it's not really clear what the heck is supposed to be going on in general here. Thestor starts up some kind of... something... brings in a bunch of Charnel creatures somehow... okay? No, seriously, what is happening here?

Even weirder, the game never addresses what's up with Thestor. Why is he a Charnel-looking zombie Gnome thing? Dunno, the game doesn't even acknowledge it. This is true even if you go the 'keep him alive' route, and he doesn't switch to a different skin in later missions. So... seriously, what?

The whole mission is so deeply confusing I genuinely suspect it was one of the first missions designed and then the game's proper concept radically changed and they didn't really go back and do anything to make this mission more consistent with the rest of the game.

See you next Persephone mission.