Brigandine Grand Edition with the Grand Battle Patch on hardest difficulty:
I totally like the game's best ever feature of looting rare magical items from enemy monsters and enemy generals in battle!
You can see - check - a comprehensive statistics of the enemy in the UNITS menu and see the entire monster army in a list that you can sort any way you like. That list shows separately what magic items the enemy generals are wearing and you can see separately what magic items are on the monsters! You can also see the strongest / highest level enemy monster / who has the biggest HP or INT or Agility, etc...
The EPSXE emulator is a State-Based software and when I can't steal a magical item by killing an enemy general or monster, I just need to move onto different hexes with my attacking units ==> this RESETS THE RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR and I'll have new chances to steal the coveted rare magic item!!
Also is a unique fantastic feature on the emulators that you have QUICKSAVES = SAVE STATES, which
quickloads the game in half a second! This way I can try different moves, different spells, if I don't like that my commander or my favorite ELITE monsters are mobbed and beaten to a pulp by the enemy. If I'm getting party-wiped, I just load an earlier save-state.
Also - mid-battle - I frequently press ESC in EPSXE, this pauses & exits the Fullscreen emulation and gives me Desktop and I go and copy the entire save state folder (sstates) into a new numbered backup folder. Currently I'm at "113. Camelford castle attack". This way you can multiply the max number of save-slots into infinity. You won't need more than 10.
For Maximum Fun:
This patch makes the game even harder and removes the time limit in hardest diff. Absolutely necessary for making Elite Units [!!] is the
infinite mana cheat (activated all the time) in
EPSXE:
1. PEOPS Sound Audio Driver plugin v1.10 (Beautiful music)
2. GPUBladeSoft 1.64 for the video plugin (Best graphics)
Duckstation emulator I only use for creating my Elite Monsters by summoning until I reach the 140 max creatures cap AND using the AUTOFIRE button [CIRCLE] set onto (LEFT SHIFT):
1. I go to the Summon menu.
2. Select a monster I want to summon and set the UI cursor to "Do you want to summon this monster?" on YES. Then I press TURBO SPEED, then I press the LEFT SHIFT (AUTOFIRE 2 frames). This begins to summon monsters with turbo-speed and I reach the maximum 140 monsters cap in about 15 seconds. Then I begin to delete monsters by checking their Max Stats, which monster I like, I jump over: also in TURBO mode, because the next selection and delete is super fast this way. Also I use Duckstations expanded QUICKSAVE and QUICKLOAD functions frequently, so when I see and delete monsters super fast, I can go back, if I accidentally delete a high-Stats Elite monster. Then usually 2 or 3 super-elite monsters remain. Repeat the ELITE recruiting process this way if you want. After repeats I usually get 6 or 10 super elite monsters and then I just select the best one or two from even this super elite bunch!
Using the re-NAME menu, I give these monsters ALL CAPS NAMES. If I manage to summon a super-rare = highest stats monster, then I put an exclamation mark after its name, to signify that monster is a Legendary Heavyweight. This makes battles even more fun. ==> just watching how much harder your legendary monsters hit the enemy's average monsters!
Also enemy monsters guarding the highest level enemy Lord or general have unique names, which adds to the fun factor, when s
tealing these rare & high level monsters from the enemy!!
Also is critical a Cheat Engine Table (CT) made by Ashthebloody - giving you beautiful possibilities, like if a hero reaches Max Level Cap 30, you can set his level to 1 + experience to 0: the hero retains all abilities, but can progress further! ==> his / her stats (Mana points, etc..) will increase and you can try out new classes with these heroes, when they reach EXPERT! (carry over some abilites to the new class!!) during their "re-juvenated new run from Level 1", so your heroes can gather more unique abilities!
Also if you already succeeded to steal a magical item - or find it via sending your hero knights on quests - , then with this table you can simply duplicate magic items and give some heroes the same ones, but only if you already looted one! (Just a personal rule)
I also use this table to give my monsters a 'Stone of Revive Once Upon Death', since I found it last week. So I decided to multiply this Revival Stone, since I already found one.
This way its even more convenient to not to lose my precious Elite Monsters!! In Runersia you can also multiply Re-Summon Stones, so you can summon all your Elite Monsters back, there its easier and more fun: you can play out dramatic monster "Fight to the death" scenarios, then you can simply re-summon your dead elite monster anywhere - to any castle - in Runersia. So Runersia is better in this regard. But Brigandine GE has way
more hardcore monster types and the Waging Global War Feel is much better here!
Also Brigandine GE has a much more beautiful and better thought out World Map and
the entire game really feels like you are waging a war! That negative-review writer on Steam for Runersia was right!