Sacrifice: Persephone Mission 5

For this mission, Persephone gives us...


Gremlin
1000 Mana, 3 Souls

The Gremlin is basically just the Persephone version of a Seraph; a flying melee unit with a special ability to drag enemies toward it. So; severely resistant to melee, slightly weak to range, weak to direct spells, etc.

They're not as annoying as Seraphs with their combat lines, but they're not far behind.

In my experience, their pulling effect is overall stronger than the Seraphs, enough so they can be used somewhat reliably to eg drag units off of cliffs if you're willing to invest the micro involved in getting a Gremlin over an abyss and then targeting a unit and so on. This is actually the main feature they have going for them aside being less annoying to listen to; they are tougher than a Seraph, but for Manalith-raiding purposes the Seraph's speed advantage is generally superior.

I personally don't like Gremlins much, and rarely use them.


Rain of Frogs
1000 Mana

Rain of Frogs is Persephone's idea of a rain spell, and it's, uh, weird.

Where other rain spells drop projectiles into an area with indiscriminate area of effect damage, possibly with attached side effects, Rain of Frogs drops a bunch of frogs in an area, which then indiscriminately seek the nearest unit -friend or foe- and touch it, doing damage and temporarily severely slowing it. (A given frog vanishes on contact, to be clear) Rain of Frogs actually has much worse damage per projectile than the other rain spells, and suffers from having no potential for splash damage, but is potentially able to stack on a surprising amount of damage onto an individual unit, and due to the slowing effect they generally won't be able to escape after the first frog hits them.

It's also overall more reliable at doing at least some damage than the other rain spells -unless you want to count Cloudkill as a rain spell; I don't, but the wiki does- thanks to the frogs being willing to range fairly far to chase down units and all.

That said, I'm personally not very fond of it. I'd generally rather have Plague, honestly. Mind, you can have both, as Rain of Frogs is placed early for a rain spell, but... I'd rather take a different level 5 spell. In conjunction with Gremlins being kinda unappealing to me, it's not my choice. Not that either of them is bad, but I don't like the way you have to play to make proper use of them, and all of the other god sets at this level have solid reasons to pick them. Notably, Soul Wind and Seraphs fill very similar roles (The Seraph for the obvious reasons, Soul Wind by virtue of being a mass immobilization and damage effect) to Persephone's set while being overall much more useful.

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The mission is... odd.

On the face of it, it's a mildly gimmicky 2v1. In actuality, it's a very gimmicky 2v1, where you can either play the mission as a fairly straightforward 2v1 but miss out on the Boon or provoke Abraxus before dealing with Astaroth and thus get the Boon. She's supposed to turncoat if you banish Acheron, but my initial recording attempt did that and nothing happened. She didn't object to me blowing up her Manaliths or anything, either, and when I went to attack her even that failed to provoke her.

Seriously, why is it the Persephone missions are so full of scripting errors? Among other problems...

Anyway, as you can see in the video itself your ranged units can't actually attack the Demon Gate at range for no obvious reason. This makes Astaroth being right there pretty threatening, and ideally if you have Thestor you wouldn't do what I did of bringing him along into that particular fight. Indeed, ideally you'd probably try to actually use your Gremlins to handle the issue, since Astaroth wouldn't be able to reach them and the Necryls don't do enough damage to be a concern. If you don't care about the Boon, you can in fact skip fighting Abraxus and Acheron entirely; destroying the Demon Gate and then killing Astaroth is enough to win the mission.

The Boon itself is weird, being the only time Persephone offers you physical resistance instead of her usual regeneration bonus. This has the mildly amusing result that Persephone is functionally offering you a Charnel Boon here. It has me wondering if this was originally meant to be a Charnel Boon -you are engaging in unnecessary conflict, after all- and the devs just didn't bother to change what was being offered when they changed who offered it. In particular, Eldred's commentary about 'my actions had been witnessed' is strange in the context of how Persephone's presence isn't supposed to be felt here at all. If you accept the 'Persephone is blocked from here due to the evilness' explanation, then Charnel would be able to witness your slaughter and reward it. 'We are pleased by the wisdom and justice of your deeds' is just Persephone's stock Boon-offering line, too, so it's not evidence against this theory.

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Narratively, we've got a confirmation of the idea that Charnel summoned Astaroth to attack Marduk, though this route's Eldred doesn't believe it because... reasons?

More problematically, we've got it revealed that you can totally destroy the Demon Gate. This raises questions as to why it was never done before, given the game is quite consistent about the idea that Charnel is the only one who uses the Gate and everybody else -aside secretly Stratos, of course- would be perfectly happy to be rid of the thing. What, were they holding onto it as a possible escape route if the apocalypse came, only the game never bothers to intimate any such possibility?

A subtle point to consider is that while Zyzyx offers the possibility that the 'evilness' of Golgotha is what's keeping Persephone's presence out, that's really not the most rational read of the situation. For one thing, you'd think she'd have told us that she'd be out of contact if this was an established fact, in much the same way that Zyzyx always casually informs us of how Eldred will be cut off from his current god whenever you invade another god's home. For another, we know from Stratos' route that Sara Bella can cut a god off from their followers in an area, and indeed in the Charnel mission where we summoned Astaroth, there was discussion about Sara Bella not being 'ready', and references to Persephone being in a hurry -whereas this mission's briefing makes a reference to Eldred losing time waiting. It's pretty obvious when you put these together that the game is subtly implying Sara Bella had cut Eldred off from Persephone. This is a bit interesting, since it implies that Sara Bella's effect is more directed than you might have expected from the mission it explicitly came up -I'd historically assumed she cut all gods off from all followers in an area, based on the bit about Stratos being out of contact with you once you're on the island, but this mission makes me think the actual intent is that you're cut off from Stratos because you have no Altar in that mission.

Moments like this are some of my favorite parts of Sacrifice's campaign, where all the information to understand a situation exists in the campaign, but any particular run is unlikely or impossible to be able to figure out what's really going on in a given mission. It's a great form of rewarding the audience for thinking about the plot, and it helps make exploring the various permutations of the campaign more enjoyable too. A lot of games with this kind of branching storyline end up being a chore to check out all the possibilities, with little to show for it; often all the interesting information is crammed into mandatory plot beats, as if the creators are afraid players will miss it and believing that would be terrible.

While I have issues with Sacrifice's plot, this aspect of its storytelling is fantastic, and one of the reasons I'm doing this at all.

Anyway, see you next Persephone mission.