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I have no intro for this entry besides this sentence. Probably because I did kind of talk about it during one of the chapter write ups. Well, I guess I did have more than that one sentence after all.

5. Manfroy (Genealogy Final)

The penultimate boss of Genealogy and one of its main villains, arguably *the* main villain, is pretty oddly positioned, guarding a castle on the other side of the one where the actual final boss lurks. Of course, it makes sense since you have to deal with Manfroy to get access to the tool you're intended to defeat Julius with, though it is possible to beat him anyway. And you have reason to hurry up in trying to take him on. It's a spoiler to go into too much detail, so I'll spoiler tag the explanation and any direct references to what is going on here. Manfroy has mind controlled Julia into attacking Seliph, and you have to kill him before you can free her.

The biggest challenge in taking on Manfroy is that he's not alone. Guarding the path to him are six dark mages wielding Sleep staffs, which have 10 range and are guaranteed to hit anyone whose resistance is lower than the users magic, and Hel tomes, which are 1-2 range weapons with low hit but that reduce your HP to one if they hit you. And they start moving once you get within their range! While it doesn't sound too hard to bait them out (a unit with high enough resistance can get in their sleep range to get them moving early despite not having a target), you have some serious time pressure as alluded to before, which can be quite extreme depending on how long you're willing to waste on trying to bait the AI into a worse position. Few units in Genealogy have good resistance, so only a small part of your army can afford to get into Sleep range, and no one wants to take the risk of a Hel tome unless they're guaranteed to be out of range of everything on enemy phase or can be healed up immediately. On the other hand, you pretty much have to bait them into moving because they block the path off to Manfroy, and it's already hard enough to get units up there safely without having to bring yet another along to kill off a generic and clear the path for the boss killer (AKA Seliph).

And then Manfroy himself doesn't make life any easier on you. If you do try to storm in before his minions start moving, you'll have to deal with his Charm skill and 4 leadership stars giving +40 hit/avoid to the ones closest to him, including the one you need to kill to clear a path. Even a 60 hit tome is scary with that kind of boost. And anyone who strays within ten squares of him will have to face his Fenrir tome, packing enough attack to finish off even some units who have been healed up from 1 HP if they weren't healed by someone with high magic or the Recover staff. And with 150 hit he's not going to miss much. Then when you get close, you have to fight his Jormungand tome, with an extra twenty hit and 6 more might, bringing him up to an impressive 49 attack, the highest of any non-holy weapon user you'll ever have to face. And he has Adept too, of course. And Pursuit but he's too slow to really make much use of it. Seliph with his monstrous +20 resistance Tyrfing can take it just fine of course, but few other units can chance it. And even Seliph can't do it if he's too low on HP, which the gauntlet leading to Manfroy can often make happen if you're not careful.

Surprisingly though, Manfroy's offense, though impressive, is not really his biggest asset. It's actually his durability of all things. This old man has 80 HP, 23 defense and 27 resistance, meaning he's actually the overall bulkiest non-holy weapon assisted enemy in the entire game. And with leadership and the castle bonus bringing him to 90 avoid, he's not even easy to hit either. Even Seliph with a brave sword or Tyrfing (its +10 skill gives it effectively the same hit as the brave sword) caps out at 74 hit on him. You can of course bring Charm units up to help with that, but as mentioned repeatedly it's not always easy to get people up here safely. And even with a power ring and capped strength, Seliph with the Tyrfing can only do 37 damage per hit, or 19 with a brave sword, either of which falls just short of ORKOing. It's likely intentional that Manfroy has exactly enough defense to survive even four brave sword hits from Seliph, and it's quite a change from the past few maps where most castle bosses can be ORKO'd fairly easily by Seliph.

Of course, if you know about mechanics the game doesn't explain, you can have a brave sword with 50+ kills on it (always a good thing to work on getting during a Genealogy playthrough), giving it the potential to get critical hits, which can chew through Manfroy quite quickly, though you still need to worry about accuracy and the lack of a resistance boost means you need to be at much higher HP to do it safely. Ares with his innately giant crit rate on Mistletainn can likewise have a solid chance at killing and can obviously canto away to let Seliph seize (important with those Hel mages still around!), and he has better accuracy thanks to Mistletainn's +20 skill. And you can always chip with a unit that can take two hits if need be, since it only takes 4 damage to set Seliph up for the kill (he almost always will cap strength and a power ring is generally a smart investment on him). So it's not like you're screwed or anything here. You also have a four way dancer, the Rescue staff (on a mounted unit thanks to Leif, no less), the Leg Ring, etc to help with getting people in range. It's definitely doable, just fairly tricky.

Manfroy is fairly "simple" to kill, in that he doesn't require you to bait him out (since he doesn't even move) or trick him to switch weapons (since enemies auto-equip whatever weapon lets them counter in Genealogy) or do anything fancy to make him stay dead, like a certain final boss does, but actually setting it up can be anything but. He's a boss that is defined by the entire situation in which you fight him and the way it doesn't allow you to take your time moreso than by his own, admittedly impressive, capabilities.

Up next: Do you like spoiler tags? Because this entry will be spoiler tagged down to the very name. Especially the name, really. Which probably makes it a little awkward to try and guess...unless you list the game your guess comes from openly but tag the name?

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Meow!