The Fall from Grace Auto-translated

I didn't quite understand, did you actually beat Zephyr?

Registered on the forum just to leave a review, because the scenario has too few positive ones. I liked the map, you can see a lot of effort was put into it. At first I didn't think I'd finish it entirely (from the comments I learned it's very hard), I was just curious how far I'd get.
The hardest fights were against Wulfstan (after which I realized how useful the AI's favorite spell is here...) and Kujin (it's hard to even describe how I got through that one).
My most useful actions, thanks to which I managed to complete the scenario, were:

Spoiler

Deflect Missile / mass Deflect Missile, thanks to which only my shooters weren't hit, and not fielding peasants in the fights against Ilaya and Zehir — without that the enemies would wipe me out before my turn even started

About the final boss

I was also intrigued by who the final boss would be (I read the spoiler), and kept guessing who it might be. I bet on the real Isabel — she did take part in the battle for the Claw according to canon, even if only in a cutscene, and she was bound to show up. So I was in for a disappointment)

Good luck with your future projects

I registered on the forum just to leave a review, because the scenario has too few positive ones. I liked the map — you can tell a lot of effort went into it. At first I didn't think I'd finish it all the way through (I learned from the comments that it's very hard), I was just curious how far I'd get.
The hardest fights were against Wulfstan (after which I realized just how useful the AI's favorite spell is here...) and Kujin (it's hard to even describe how I got through that one).
The most useful things I did, which allowed me to beat the scenario, were:

Spoiler

Deflect Missile / mass Deflect Missile, thanks to which only my shooters weren't being hit, and not deploying peasants in the fights against Ilaya and Zehir — without that, the enemies would wipe me out before my turn even came

About the final boss

I was also intrigued by who the final boss would be (I read the spoiler), and kept guessing who it might be. I bet on the real Isabel — she did take part in the battle for the Claw canonically, even if only in a cutscene, and she was bound to show up. So I was in for a disappointment)

Good luck with your future projects

Finally, the first documented playthrough of the map! Thanks for a proper review — all facts, no whining about supposedly inflated difficulty. I've played through it many times myself without using the Deflect Missile bug, only using mass Deflect Missile. I wanted to add Isabel, but it's unclear where to put her — all her allies are crushed, and Freyda is gone. In the original story, she wouldn't have accomplished anything without her allies and Freyda; she'd have stayed rotting in the dungeon, or her feeble attempts at rebellion (and without her soul and sound mind, at that) would have been crushed by the Red forces.

I registered on the forum just to leave a review, because the scenario has too few positive ones. I liked the map — you can tell a lot of effort went into it. At first I didn't even think I'd finish it all the way through (I learned from the comments that it's very hard); I was just curious how far I'd get.
The hardest fights were against Wulfstan (after which I realized just how useful the AI's favorite spell is here...) and Kujin (it's hard to even describe how I got through that one).
The most useful things I did, which is what allowed me to beat the scenario, were:

Spoiler

Deflect Missile / mass Deflect Missile, thanks to which only my shooters weren't being hit, and not fielding peasants in the fights against Ilaya and Zehir — without that, the enemies would wipe me out before my turn even came

About the final boss

I was also intrigued by who the final boss would be (I'd read the spoiler), and I kept guessing who it might be. I bet on the real Isabel — after all, she did take part in the battle for the Claw canonically, even if only in a cutscene, and she was bound to show up. So I was in for a letdown)

Good luck with your future projects

Finally, the first documented playthrough of the map! Thanks for a proper review — everything factual and no whining about supposedly inflated difficulty. I've played through it many times myself without using the Deflect Missile bug, only using mass Deflect Missile. I wanted to add Isabel, but it wasn't clear where to put her — all her allies are defeated, and there's no Freyda. In the original story, she wouldn't have accomplished anything without her allies and Freyda; she'd have stayed rotting in the dungeon, or her feeble attempts at rebellion (and that's without her soul or proper sanity) would have been crushed by the Red forces.

"Documented" is a strong word. I don't have much in the way of proof, other than "screenshots" of the results of the last three battles and the saves, which isn't very informative (but I'll keep them just in case: https://disk.yandex.ru/d/R2wL_0NRjvCIYg).
Since we're on the subject, let me also note what I liked.
— The locations are as close as possible to those from the original campaign. Not only are fragments of the maps recreated, but the same scripts are used as well (for example, the Curse of the Netherworld over the garrison and the sunset effect before the fight with Arantir).
— The battlefield designs. Some fights have interesting details in the background. This stands out especially in the battle with Wulfstan: zealots and warriors are locked in melee, archers are attacking, masters of the spear are shooting from the walls, a half-destroyed garrison stands in the middle of the battlefield, and behind it you can see those very catapults that breached it in the cutscene. Beautiful! Too bad the later battles don't have anything like that.
— The battle scripts. First, the computer's heroes here don't spam single-target Deflect Missile; instead they cast quite serious and dangerous spells (the kind they almost never use in Tribes of the East), actively use mass buffs and racial abilities. Second, on top of that, the enemy hero can cast something before the battle or cast several spells at once (for example, seven right at the start). Third, all sorts of surprises can happen during the battle itself, both bad and good: sometimes the enemy summons something, sometimes reinforcements arrive for you. All of this adds variety compared to the usual PvE fights.
— The very concept of battles with a preset build, army, and spells. Paradoxically, the lack of a strategic component is exactly what added variety for me. In this regard, the map reminds me of the "Knowledge is Power" scenario. I got to try playing with builds and creature upgrades I normally don't use. For example, I knew it made sense for the Knight to take "Master of Fire" — to halve the enemies' defense — but in a normal game I'd never try something like that. At first I thought the build changes were justified by the story (like, you're turning to the dark side, so Light weakens but Darkness and Chaos appear), but no, it's more of a gameplay convention. Many of the local builds can't even be assembled in a normal game, so the game offers a somewhat unique experience.
But, as it seemed to me, while in the first half of the scenario every battle played out differently, starting from Gotai and up to the end the build didn't really change, and I no longer had to use any new tactical tricks, unfortunately.
As for how balanced the battles themselves turned out, I can't really say, since I'm not much of an expert on that. Some fights seemed much harder to me than the ones that followed. But at least they're all doable. The outcome of a battle is heavily influenced by luck and starting initiative, and that's a roulette. Slight changes in how you play through, and luck will work differently. Don't field some of your troops — and the creatures act in a different order, and you might get a chance to have them die on something of the enemy's before someone else kills them. Thankfully, there are autosaves (sometimes I also made regular ones to skip cutscenes), so you can retry endlessly. But how anyone could beat these fights on the first try, I can't imagine.

I completed this scenario on Heroes, playing the new harder version. I had previously tried to complete the normal version but was unable to play through to victory.

Walkthrough

The scenario consists of 12 battles that the player must win sequentially. All troops, skills, and artifacts are preset by the map's author and cannot be changed. In addition to the replays, I'll describe how I approached each battle.

Godric. The only fight where we play as regular Freyda with Retribution after any Light spell. There's an interesting battle script here: as soon as we kill 4 enemy stacks, the remaining 3 switch to our side, but enemy demon stacks appear. The key is not to touch the strong enemy Zealot stack and quickly kill any other 4 stacks. When the demons appear, the Zealots kill them without issue and we win. All subsequent battles are played as the new Freyda with Helmar's specialization.

Duncan. The main thing here is to cast Deflect Missile on a single Zealot so they shoot at them instead of our shooters. Last time I won this fight immediately and easily. In the new version, it took several retries until everything aligned favorably enough to deal with the enemy Paladins while preserving enough troops to finish off the remaining stacks.

Wulfstan. Single Deflect Missile on the Zealots at the start of the battle, Haste and Slow, then the battle is won thanks to Life Drain on several of our stacks. Overall, I played it the same way from the start; the successful attempt differed in that the computer seemed to play more foolishly than in the unsuccessful ones.

Tolgar. A lot of reloads in this fight. The main idea, in my opinion, is that you can't drag the battle out and need to force the Dwarves to leave the castle and attack us. There were unsuccessful attempts where the enemy had too much luck and too many Stuns. Deflect Missile here seems like a waste of time; I didn't use it at all in the successful attempt. I also encountered a technical issue: the game crashed twice during the Erls' turn, which seems like a bug in the game itself rather than the map.

Arantir. Break the catapult, deal primary damage with shooters, and watch throughout the battle to ensure the cart isn't destroyed. Use Mass Deflect Missile; single doesn't help because the Archliches will still attack the shooters. I lost an attempt where Earthquake knocked down the gate. Then I lost an attempt with two holes in the wall because Arantir charmed the Zealots and they killed the shooters. In the successful attempt, Earthquake left only one hole in the wall, on a more favorable side, and Arantir didn't cast anything dangerous.

Gotai. I didn't really understand the concept here at all. I just played a few times and somehow got lucky enough to win.

Kujin. Now this battle I really liked; I'd describe the idea as: "Think like a demon, not like a knight." We have a real knight army and summoned demon stacks. We imagine we're playing as Inferno and take advantage of the computer ignoring "gates" if it can hit a real stack. There were some retries at first, but as soon as I focused on the correct tactic, I won without any problems.

Ylaya. It's important to choose the right formation, otherwise it's a loss. Single Deflect Missile worked poorly for this fight even in the old version; there's no point in even trying it here. So we cast Mass Deflect Missile; the computer's target selection logic becomes very strange, and we hope it rarely chooses our shooters. The shooters deal enormous damage here, and after several reloads, the battle is won.

Zehir. This is the very fight I couldn't win last time. Here you need to start with Mass Deflect Missile, then force the enemy to attack one stack at a time rather than all at once (I don't know how to explain it better; there's a replay). Also, the random was clearly better this time. Funny enough, this is the only battle in this playthrough that I managed to win on the first try.

Zehir (second battle). An interesting and beautiful fight that required some thought. I eventually came up with this tactic: Mass Deflect Missile, then Mass Dispel to remove the enemies' Deflect Missile. It's important not to break the Hive or Wall of Swords so the enemies can't reach us. We shoot the enemies with our shooters, and once we have a big advantage, we all rush forward and finish them off.

Freyda vs Freyda. The battle consists of three stages: first we fight against humans and undead, then against elves, and finally against humans again. Losses from the previous stage don't affect the next one at all, but everything happens within a single battle, meaning if you lose on the second or third stage, you have to play all three again. I quickly figured out how to win the first stage, then managed the second, but the third was impossible. Then this idea came to me: drag out the first stage of the battle so that the enemy Freyda spends all her mana and can't "retaliate" in the next two stages. That's what I did, and the next two stages were won immediately without any problems. An excellent battle!

Biara. In this battle, I first thought the goal was to kill all real stacks as quickly as possible. I played that way, but it turned out that even when left with only gates, Biara continues to fight. After that, I started playing simply for the complete destruction of all demons. In one of the attempts, I managed to win, generally without coming up with anything original; everything just fell into place more favorably than in other attempts.

The scenario was completed in 1 game day, "Battles won: 12", "Battles lost: 0" :)

I've already said that the scenario is very difficult. This time I want to add that its main difficulty for me is how much it differs from all the maps I've played before. The first time I played the normal version, and almost all my experience playing Heroes 5 was nearly useless there. This time I managed to win the harder version, despite having played Heroes little between the two playthroughs, and never as Knights at all. What changed? First, the fact that I had already played the normal version. Second, knowing that the map was well-tested by the author (meaning all battles are winnable), I was determined to replay each battle as many times as needed until victory.

I didn't understand the situation with the final battle: I planned my tactics based on the assumption that killing only the real troops would be enough. But when I managed to do that, it turned out the battle doesn't end; you have to kill the summoned ones too. Later I won the battle simply by killing all stacks. If this is a bug, it needs to be fixed. If it's intentional, it would be advisable to warn the player with a separate message that different rules apply here. The battles with Zehir also had many summoned creatures, but there was no such problem.

I liked the battles that were initially difficult but where I managed to understand the idea that allows you to win confidently: Godric, Kujin, both battles with Zehir, and "Freyda vs Freyda." In the other battles, there was too much fighting against randomness for me; perhaps I just didn't figure out how to play them more correctly. I've uploaded an archive with replays of all battles in this scenario. An unusual map, interesting battle scripts, beautifully crafted battle arenas for each fight, a storyline, and cutscenes. I'm glad I was finally able to complete this scenario.
Thank you once again for the map!