23C

This is Bruno’s last stage

You have to cross some mountains and go around a castle to get to him but I didn’t find the stage all that difficult. I had Sherufanir’s arbalests help from below the castle, and using Decline and magic spells helped clear out some of the enemies before my main force got into the castle to win.

24C

This stage seemed to be very similar to the previous one, and the same tactics worked. Ivar shows up to the right but I just ignored him and he left after a few turns.

I was annoyed to find out here that somehow I had done things wrong and Landius could not get the final class promotion. I was rather confused by the card drawing at the beginning and I tried to consult several sources, but apparently I never understood it correctly. This is also where I started seeing that McClain, Ricky, and Angelina were going to be dead weight most of the time, I’ll talk about this later. But the GameFAQs walkthrough that says you should make McClain and Ricky Serpent Lords is not good.

25C

This is the usual “Defeat Bozel” stage. Here you have to kill Bozel, get Landius to the back and pick up the Langrisser, and then defeat Chaos with Landius or one of Landius’ units. The first time I tried teleporting Landius up to Langrisser but that didn’t work at all. So instead I used a slow and steady advancement and mostly ignored Chaos (who wasted a lot of turns). In the picture above I think I am using Heal 2 to restore my health.

26C

To beat this stage I teleported Landius directly to Emily — I found this was the only way to save Lansford. He can’t die as an NPC or you lose the stage, but he has no AI at all. There are strong pikemen near where he starts and he goes straight for them on his horse and dies within a couple of turns. But once you have control over him you can move him down away from the pikemen, and use normal tactics to beat the stage.

At this point you get a love scene with Landius and another girl. I tried Sherufanir and Angelina but my love points with them weren’t high enough and they turned Landius down. Only Listil the demon accepted:

27C

This is the final stage and unfortunately it’s where my playthrough came to an end. I tried this stage several times, with different strategies and different pre-battle formations. I went back and cleared 26C again using the stage select code to class up Sherufanir, Lansford, and Naal, and I used the shop code to be able to buy anything, and I still couldn’t do it. The enemy archers and ballistae were too strong and I couldn’t take out enough of them (or their commanders) to stop them before the decimated my forces. Teleporting Landius up to the top didn’t work because he couldn’t get a turn quickly enough to avoid being killed by the enemies up there.

The problem is that too many of my characters were just outclassed and useless, particularly McClain, Ricky, and Angelina. Even at Angelina’s hidden Dragon class, with the best buyable equipment, she could not attack anyone, even grunts, without dying or being reduced to 2 HP. Her Archangels were fine but the enemy archers would just go for Angelina herself and kill her in two attacks. McClain was utterly useless. Ricky could do a little bit but not enough.

Lansford, Listil, and Landius were fine, and Sherufanir and Naal were useful, but that just wasn’t enough to be able to beat all the Meteors and archers.

So this is where I’m going to end my L4 playthrough, unfortunately. I may possibly redo the game when I reach the PS remake of it — if I do, I will do the A or B route, make sure I can promote Landius to a secret class, and do more sensible promotions for McClain. Angelina, and Ricky. But for now, I’ll have to end Langrisser IV here.