This is the third and final battle of Apocalypse that has a guest team mechanic. Unlike the samurai and Satan, the Messiahs are very well equipped to handle what Stephen will throw at them, even on the tougher difficulties. They each come with a wide variety of useful offensive and support skills, as well as an impressive item supply that completely dwarfs what the samurai have for the YHVH fight.

Given all these tools, what makes this fight difficult on Conflict difficulty? Well, I'm not using Nanashi's team for anything except for Dekaja and Magaon to counter Pair Production, since I'm trying to set it up so their presence is as insignificant as possible. However, the effect of their presence in the fight is actually much worse than not being present at all. Whenever one team fails to damage Stephen for a full turn (reflected damage counts), he is scripted to open his next turn with Singularity Wave, which is effectively an instant kill on one team member. This means that one of the Messiahs gets deleted from existence every turn, with the exception of the first turn and if Convergence is reflected on Nanashi.

Despite this hindrance, the Messiahs are so overpowered on Conflict that they can still defeat Stephen even with Nanashi's team dragging them down immensely. Instead of four press turns, they only get three, and one action has to be spent on reviving the fallen party member each turn. They tend to struggle a lot early on since they only have three press turns to attack, heal, and revive, but once physical and gun weaknesses open up the battle becomes much smoother. I was lucky here that Singularity Wave hit Flynn on the second turn when Stephen used Pair Production, since he was able to revive with Enduring Soul and save two valuable press turns.

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