Shin Ankoku: Who cares what day?

I'm now up to Chapter 8 on Hard 5, and I have a confession to make: I...used a save point once. Yes, it is very shameful to do such a thing, but believe me when I say I wasn't eager to make the decision to use it. Here's the situation:

Pretty late in Chapter 5, with Social Knights and Pegasus Knights spawning out of various forts at an absurd rate (they appear on the beginning of the Enemy Phase too). The Social Knights aren't a huge concern, because I could've easily made a chokepoint or two and healed the meatwall(s) while blasting away.

The real problem was with the Pegasus Knights, because chokepoints mean nothing to them. In addition to this, they were armed with Javelins, which does not bode well for a meatwall (Steel Lance hit from the Social Knight and then a Javelin hit would easily be fatal). They were so powerful that even Wolf or that other Horseman were completely worthless against them, because a Steel Bow hit would not be fatal and they would receive a fatal double in return. Stupidly, the only unit capable of winning against one of them with some ease was Marich with Excalibur.

Anyway, the mistake I made was actually the second time I did it in the same attempt, so you'd think I would have learned from before. The mistake was to get too aggressive, which lures a Pegasus Knight towards my main team (on the right side of the map). Because of this, you end up with two choices: retreat and make absolutely sure to limit the attacks received to one round per unit (any more would be fatal), or go all out and limit the attacks received by reducing enemy count.

The first choice tends to run into problems with movement. Your weaker characters have a harder time getting behind your new wall, and Social Knights have 9 movement, which makes an effective wall difficult to construct.

The second choice was what I went with the second time around, and is the reason I used the save point. There were three enemies left in the area (one Pegasus Knight and two Social Knights), and I had used a unit or two more than I would've liked. I was left with a few specific units to kill off some rather super enemies, so things were pretty bad.

Once I finally decided on a plan, I knew Sheeda would be required to drop the full HP Social Knight in a single hit, because evade is pretty unheard of in this game (excluding ballistae attacks). To do this, I needed a critical hit at around 23% with the Wing Spear, and by this point, I wasn't fond of the idea of staking my progress on such low odds. This is why I saved.

Sure enough, the first try gave me a normal hit. I reset and then tried again, and got the critical hit I needed. After that, the chapter was mostly a cakewalk (especially because I had a save to fall back on if I really wanted).

So there you have it. I still strongly disapprove of using save points, but I feel it was slightly justified in this instance. Regardless though, what's done is done.