Well then. Sleeping is anti-town, it looks like.
Writing a quick argument up now.
--General combat points:
(1) Hibana has the ninja skillz to match Ryu.
Opening cutscene shows her taking on three enemy stealthed fighter jets. She leaps off a skyscraper onto the first jet (outspeeding the jet in flight) and destroys its cloaking. When the second jet fires a rocket at her, she kicks the rocket into the third jet, destroying it. Raw speed, reflexes, power -- she can hold her own. And, as mentioned, she's invisible.
(2) Ryu's dopplegangers are not all they're cracked up to be.
The problem with the dopplegangers is that they're constrained to follow Ryu's actions. If Ryu throws a shuriken, they mimic his action -- but there may or may not be an enemy in front of them at the correct angle. It's kind of like mimes in FFT. So basically they're going to whiff a lot.
(3) Duke's fine.
Mercs Heartless Angel doesn't cause any injury; it simply "mak[es] him extremely frail to the point where it'd be easy to OHKO him." (And drains his mana, but he doesn't have any.) Considering the teams are fighting in an entire amusement park, they won't meet within the first minute. So the Heartless Angel effect wears off with no ill effects.
(4) Jake has invisibility and armor buffs.
So the enemy has to deal with invisible Master Chief with heightened critical thinking and armor on top of his armor. Also, invisible Hibana.
Re: Seymour's dispel: Invisibility still gives us the element of surprise. If you think that Seymour's going to be sitting around casting dispel instead of attacking once the battle is joined, that would be up to you, but it doesn't blunt the impact of that first strike.
--Terrain also greatly enhances Team Chief's advantage.
(1) The control room enables Team Chief to monitor enemy movements.
A standard interpretation is that attackers (Team Ryu) start near the entrance of the terrain, while defenders (Team Chief) start at the heart of the terrain. In this case, that would be Dritte Stock, the lowest floor. The central control room located on that floor contains a life reading monitor which shows the placement of all living creatures in the facility. It doesn't require user input, just displays automatically on the map of the facility. So:
- Jake will know exactly when to cast buffs.
- Chief and co. can have fun with invisibility & ambushes (especially because Chief has ~critical thinking~).
(2) Duke has scuba gear.
Which is neat.
--
You put your RESOLVE HAT back on, which conveniently is the same hat as your NORMAL HAT.
{Drakeryn}