<b>Note: Nova's build has been remade! Give her section a look over even if you remember what she can do from M4. A lot has changed.</b>

This is a pretty large mismatch, as my team of heavies has all the tools needed to neutralize the enemy team and they don't have any answers to them. Let's go over why quickly.

The first and most important member of the team is Ashley. In case you never played Wild Arms 2, he's your average jRPG protagonist, equip with a gun + mega bayonet that fits a lot of weird ammo...but none of this is super important to us because he has a super mode that takes its power from the world-threatening final boss of his game. That's his Knight Blazer form, present here in its ultimate version, Over Knight Blazer. It is an enormous power-up - its sheer strength lets Ashley more or less obsolete the rest of his party combined throughout the entire game. Just three examples to illustrate:

-Before KnightBlazer is acquired in its base form, the party faces a bioweapon called Trask. It's a pretty tough boss for Ashley and his friends the magician Lilka and bazooka-and-missile-launcher-packing soldier Brad, whose attacks do heavy damage. After they're captured, Ashley gains KnightBlazer and, while being exhausted from being crucified for hours, fights Trask alone. Its attacks do damage in the single digit, and stats effects don't work on KnightBlazer.
-Later on the ARMS' squad's headquarters, the flying castle Valeria Chateau, is attacked by their enemies and a monster who's a living bomb is primed to detonate while the castle is flying in midair, with enough force to destroy it outright. Ashley wrestles with it and holds it in place so the two of them together can be jettisoned up into the air, and enters Knightblazer mode just before it explodes point blank. The fall of thousands of feet to the ground and a castle-busting explosion in his face only leaves him with a limp that he quickly shakes off. See it here: https://youtu.be/W1aqEZkQ95Y?t=731
-Most impressively, near the tail end of the game, after rescuing Ashley from being stranded in space and returning to land, the ARMS are tasked with defeating the nuclear dragon Grauswein. This creature is literally nuclear powered, and upon death will explode with the power of a country-busting nuclear bomb. The entire rest of the party sans Ashley fights it, but can't take it down (even though counted amongst their number is Brad, whose recently acquired Railgun is so powerful it heavily damages an entire supertech fortress with a single shot in a cutscene). Ashley then comes in, in Over Knight Blazer form and takes on it solo. He wins, allowing the heroes to dispose of the nuclear dragon without it blowing anyone up with its death throes.

In short, Ashley is the real deal, and nobody on the enemy team has the needed firepower or durability to take him down, especially after buffs. Which leads us to Terra - she flies, the enemy team has no fliers, she can buff and heal her allies and revive them if they somehow die, and she has double strength Ultima blasts. I think she speaks for herself, honestly, especially against a team that is all close-ranged except for The Boss' machinegun.

Last, but not least, we have Nova. First off, she's permanently invisible and her cloaking doesn't break on attack anymore. Second, she has an inbuilt enemy-radar that can even see psychically cloaked enemies, thus nulling The Boss' stealth hax without compromising her own. Third, one of her gadgets gives her an energy shield that tremendously dampens damage received, thus taking her from a squishy stealther to a much tankier all-rounder. Lastly, her entire arsenal is available to her, including a plasma rifle, a monomolecular blade, a ballistic rifle she uses to take down a warship singlehandedly, and...a gunblade. A futuristic gunblade that gives her a limit break on top of the teleports and AoEs she normally has. No, seriously. And it's spammable too!

https://youtu.be/EtmB0QjYYAk?t=177

All in all, this is just a really grim look for Team Mutant. There's a huge tank they can't really kill (because the only one who has the weaponry to hurt him is Shirou...and it's <i>Shirou</i>), a top tier stealther who counters Boss' own stealth, and no good answer to Terra flying up and smoking people. Mini-Wesker Boss and Deathknight Yu are strong, but sadly outgunned here.