Ascension is hard

I've just beaten Ascension (without cheating) with my evil protagonist and I'm now working towards the same thing with my good protagonist.

I can provide some general guidelines for the very last fight which involves a certain Blackhearted priestess and your newly resurrected siblings.

1) Phase 1
If you can, the ideal is to string together as many Time Stops as you can in sequence so as to bring as many of the Five to 'near death' as you can.

The reason is that if you kill one of the Five, Melissan immediately shows up. This does not apply to Sarevok, who can be killed outright. The ideal is that if and when you do kill one of the Five and thereby bring Melissan into it, the rest of the Five are ripe for the plucking.

2) Phase 2
Kill the member of the Five who is most likely to avoid quick death. For the evil party, Balthazar should be killed first and foremost, since he can forever avoid getting killed with powers like Second Wind and Chant. For the good party, it should be Sendai who has plenty of Iron Skins, Contigencies, and Heal spells.

3) Phase 3
The ideal is to kill the rest of the five in rapid succession so as to keep Melissan reeling.
Ideal is one thing, execution often proves another matter.

Yaga Shura can present problems. The evil party had an easy time of it since Bodhi level drained him into rapid oblivion. I'm still contemplating how to quickly off him as the good party.

4) Phase 4
Time for the Blackhearted wench herself. She'll spin out demons like crazy, but ignore them and keep your eye on the prize. She can at will spin out a sequence of Absolute Immunity, Spell Trap, and Blade Barrier. This admits but of one flaw. The spell description for Absolute Immunity reads that if confers immunity to +5 and less weapons.

This means that +6 weapons can still hurt her. Those rare +6 weapons which I had previously discounted, the Staff of the Ram and Ixil's Nail, now become worth their weight in gold against Melissan. Of course, the upgraded Carsomyr and Ravager also come into play. The party members change over into these special weapons, and then just wail on her.

In the meantime, the mage should probably be constantly spinning out Mordys to keep those demons out of it.

Hope it helps.