Alastor15243

Blazing Blade Day 11: Chapter 15 Alright! Time for the first Hector-Mode-exclusive chapter! I just realized that the intro narration theme has a riff in it that sounds like the one they pepper all over Awakening's music. Fascinating coincidence there. Wait... Eubans... the Hurricane? Isn't that nickname already taken by Legault? Oh shit! Heath's making an early-bird cameo! Oh how I wish I could recruit him here. I'm intrigued by FE7's interesting design decision to make bow users the bosses of several siege maps. It's an interesting way to mitigate bow users' weaknesses as bosses, making them part of a mobile enemy against a stationary player, rather than the other way around. Anyway, this was pretty nerve-straining to prepare for. Another defense map almost right after the last one, which, if you'll remember, very quickly got out of hand. I won't be making the same mistake. I'm going for the treasure chests immediately, with Marcus. After that, I'll train my weaker units if I can. But if there's anything valuable in those chests, I need it. Badly. ...Curious that this chapter, which can only be seen after beating the game once, has Oswin essentially lecturing the player about what knights are good for like they wouldn't already know. But yeah, I think this is gonna work. I had Oswin, Lowen and Marcus take the three spots outside of the throne room, I baited in the western nomad with Erk, and then I had Eliwood and Hector take care of the northeastern part. I really hope killing the boss doesn't end this map early, because he's so aggressive I might have to kill him before I can get the chests. Lowen, like my other two cavs, still hasn't gotten much luck with speed level ups, but he leveled defense yet again, so hopefully people aren't kidding about the really low doubling benchmarks by the midgame. A bunch of fighters showed up by the west side, and they could easily rip Erk to shreds if I'm unlucky. Looks like it's time to have Oswin and Lowen retreat to support the throne room while Marcus wipes out the excess ranged units with a single hand axe enemy phase. Also because Lowen and especially Oswin are taking a beating and need to heal. Yet again I find myself really spread thin on healing due to the heavy enemy density. I really need more vulneraries for situations like this. I moved Eliwood over to take care of the fighters, since he has way less of a risk of dying horribly due to multiple kills and hits. Plus, he needs the experience still. Thanks to some daring rescue-dropping, I managed to salvage the fact that Matthew was too far from the chests to make it in time. He'll grab the last chest on turn 7. And I absolutely am going to try to grab that dragonshield from the boss. Speaking of which... Let's see... wait until turn 7 to kill the boss and risk not being able to kill him while I have the chance? Or try to kill him now, and if I succeed, risk whatever's in the chest I haven't unlocked yet? ...Fuck it, door number two please. Looks like it paid off! I figured they wouldn't make a boss that aggressive an instant win condition. But I was still nervous because, well... you never know what the devs are thinking. Lowen finally gets speed at the end of the map, and hey! He still gets defense! Oswin: I'll tighten the castle defenses at once! Hector: No, I grow weary of defending things. Let's pursue Marquess Laus and put him on the defensive! ...Um... so... ...who are you putting in charge now that you're leaving? ...Don't tell me it's Erik. ...It's Erik, isn't it? You two just put him in charge, and he never stopped being in charge, and the years went by, and then presto spaghesto, suddenly he's trying to murder your descendants. ...*Sigh*. ...I suppose they are pressed for time. ...No, wait, that can't be what they're doing, because then what even was the point of this chapter if we were always just gonna give Castle Laus back to the kid of the guy those mercenaries were fighting for? Why was protecting the throne so important if we were going to abandon it anyway immediately after? Honestly, this chapter makes this whole plot point feel worse, like... given they've spent time occupying the place, rather than simply defending themselves and moving on with their journey... it makes leaving Laus suddenly feel way more irresponsible than it did in Eliwood Mode. On the plus side, it is an interesting narrative concept I'd have liked to see explored a bit more more: a bunch of mercenaries essentially following outdated orders simply because it's their job. It sounds like they just got news that Laus was taken and acted on their contract to take it, not realizing that Darin had basically given up on the place. That's a lot like how I remember their appearance later in the game too, and that's kind of an interesting concept. Like a downplayed and more organic and human version of a battle droid acting on outdated orders for a war that's been over for years. ...At any rate, that's it for today. Take care, everyone, and stay safe!

Noted! Thanks for understanding!

Man, Kaiji Tang actually answered this question for his characters, or a similar one, and I was linked to it for a thread I made a while ago. But the tweet got taken down for some reason.

Yeah, that absolutely baffles me here, why they had it be Darin and not Ephidel. If I had to guess, it's so they didn't cheapen Limstella and Sonia by having Ephidel be way, way less powerful than them.

Yeah, that's what I love about it, and why I hear "preparation screen" when I listen to it. It somehow manages, no matter how intense it gets, to constantly give off an aura of "something even bigger is coming". That "hold on to your butts, it's gonna get bumpy", "calm before the storm" feeling that the best preparation themes manage to capture, and yet it manages to capture it while being way more intense than any of them. ...But then again, the issue there is that that was apparently by accident, because it's actually intended to be a full-on boss theme.

I'm so sorry I didn't make up my mind on this sooner, but I don't think I can do this. I wish I could, but I have a lot on my plate at the moment, even with everything that's going on freeing up time. I have multiple projects I'm trying to balance, and I don't think I could give this the time investment it probably deserves.

So, this was inspired by the thread about Yoko Shimomura. Have you ever listened to a composer's music and thought to yourself: "Man, I really wanna hear them score a Fire Emblem game"? For me, the biggest time I've felt that way was listening to this song by Hiroyuki Sawano: All I could think while listening to this was how insane it would be as a second-half-of-the-game prep theme. Given the right story and stakes, this song would be perfect for one, and it would be absolutely mind-blowing to hear it playing before a battle.

Jesus Christ. How did my speed ranking tank that quickly!?

Blazing Blade Day 10: Chapter 14 So, the narration describes Merlinus as a “droll merchant”, and honestly, the word “droll” doesn't sound like what it means. I hear that word and I assume it means the opposite of “amusing in a weird way”. Wow. I'm assuming this is a Hector-Mode-only thing, but the narration outright spoils that Leila is a good guy by using her portrait as one of Ostia's spies. That's supposed to be a surprise in Eliwood mode, I know. Darin: How are they coming here!? Ephidel: Perhaps when they went to Santaruz, Lord Helman was still clinging to life... Okay, Ephidel, I get that you're not technically an assassin, but you're a shadowy cloaked figure working with a bunch of assassins, and created by an evil magical genius for the express purpose of being a shady backstabbing agent of conspiracy. How can you be that bad at killing people? If you were in a hurry or got distracted by something more important, I can understand not being absolutely thorough with the job, but... ...Okay, in fairness, they weren't expecting Eliwood to make it, and had planned for him to die. But that's another thing: why did you send a bunch of mediocre lackeys after him when the last batch of mercenaries proved insufficient!? ...Right, well... ugh... that's actually a problem with a lot of games that don't make it clear how much of the power level scaling in gameplay is actually canon, and if they really got that much more powerful over the course of the game... ...Fuck it, let's just get back to the game. ...Huh. Hector says he's gonna “go for a ride” to survey their surroundings. So he can ride a horse? Well gee, that would be helpful to do in combat, wouldn't it? I like how Hector, the presumably brash and reckless one, is the one who suspects a trap. Oswin helps, but Hector clearly had his own suspicions. Oh shit. I forgot. Apparently hard mode doesn't have the fortune teller. Well, I mean... I get that, kinda, but it would still be nice to have a reminder for people who haven't played the game in a while but wanna do a harder mode anyway. Incidentally, I checked the rest of the “Fortune” menu, and apparently I've got five stars in everything but tactics (speed), which I have to assume is due to all the faffing about in Lyn mode to get Nils to level 7. Oh shit. Glad I checked this. I'm so used to Erik using a silver lance that I may have just assumed that without looking. But on this mode it's a horseslayer, which means whoever I send after the guy, it can't be Marcus or Lowen. I'm also dangerously short on vulneraries, especially when I know I'm gonna have to leave someone behind to defend Merlinus, and I only have one healer at the moment (though that will hopefully swiftly change). Thankfully (I swear to god I initially accidentally mis-typed that as “Tankfully”), Oswin should be good as long as he has a few vulnerary uses, and Matthew can steal us a batch with some rescue-dropping tactics on turn one by stealing from that knight. I'll take the secret book from storage, because given my financial situation that shit's definitely getting sold. Marcus will take care of that, while he's going off to save Priscilla. If I have time before more reinforcements show up from behind (I really want to get out of here before Merlinus gets overwhelmed), I'll sell the goddess icon too. Alright, I've been skating around this, waiting for it to actually come up, and now that I'm okaying my preparations, it has. Part of this never occurred to me until just today, but I kinda hate part of how Merlinus was implemented in this game. Most of it I like. I like how he can actually realistically level up now, and I like how he creates these optional “defend your base” missions for a bonus reward. However... I don't like the “Deploy Merlinus?” prompt. First off, because it happens after you've prepared, and if the positioning of Merlinus ever becomes a problem for first-turn tactics, I'm gonna be docking some usability points for that. Not much though, since this is still going above Binding Blade in a landslide. Second off, because as far as I can tell, there's literally no benefit to saying “no”. If you deploy him and he survives, you level up. If you deploy him and he doesn't survive, he doesn't level up. If you don't deploy him at all... he still doesn't level up, and you don't get to use your merchant at all. It's one of those things where it's hard to believe people came up with it and didn't realize the problem. Frankly, I'd have made it so that if you don't deploy him, he still levels up, or that if you deploy him and he dies, he loses a level. Something to create a situation where you'd actually want to not deploy him if you don't feel you can protect him. As it stands, there's literally no reason not to, even if you're certain he's going to die. And that makes the question utterly meaningless. I was about to kill the soldier by the northern village, but then I realized that if I do that, there's no guarantee that Erk isn't gonna be an idiot and go chase after the entire army and get himself killed despite his great stats. So I let the soldier live and simply bait him in with Rebecca, hoping that the soldier will attack her instead of Erk (who would slaughter him in a single round and thus be in the same position of having no convenient soldier to attack when his turn arrives). This way, I'm hoping Serra can talk to him immediately. He'll be great to have on the team if I can make this work. I really hope I can make this work. ...It didn't work as hoped. The soldier attacked Rebecca from a space out of Erk's range, causing Erk to take a potshot at a soldier from across the cliff. Not the worst outcome, but now I have no guarantee he won't run uncontrollably away from Serra before she can recruit him. OH THANK GOD. That was terrifying for a little while, but thankfully, with no one to attack, Erk went towards Serra, with enough time to spare to recruit and heal him before anything went horribly wrong. I also managed to take care of the initial enemies fast enough to send Marcus to kill the pirates before they could sack the southern village. Funny how it seems the pirates have also developed a mountain branch, judging by how bandits come from the mountains at the same time as the pirate calls for the normal pirates to appear. How enterprising of them! But yeah, holy shit. I totally get Marcus's psychotically high position on the tier list now. The idea of not using this fucker on Hector Hard Mode frankly strikes me as psychotically insane. These maps are clearly designed for you to use the shit out of him in certain spots if you want to get the job done. Even with his overwhelming power and mobility, you still have barely any room for error. Marcus is the absolute last unit I would want barred from my team in any run of this mode. And while I get that now... ...I kind of also don't like it. If I had a unit of this overwhelming power in a game I made, ideally I'd make it something of a situation where you have multiple jobs to do, and you have this one badass you can send to singlehandedly do any one of these jobs with ease, but only one. Basically a sort of panic button where it's up to the player's discretion what challenge they feel they need him for, or if they're willing to risk not using him to try to get the job done with people who have more to gain from it. Contrast that with here, where it's painfully obvious the exact thing they want you to use your paladin for. This feels very “figure out the one single solution” puzzle-y here, which is a complaint I have a lot about the beginnings of some hard modes. There's really no need for it, especially since none of them can keep up that kind of difficulty forever. I much prefer the modes that start out easy, but gradually get nightmarishly hard. Oh man, Erk and Serra's dialogue here... I can't tell whether Serra's really so egotistical that she interpreted “You're the last person I wanted to see” as “I wanted to see you again”, or if this is some kind of counter-snark, like the one from Pirates of the Caribbean: Norrington: You are, without a doubt, the worst pirate I've ever heard of. Jack Sparrow: But you have heard of me. Forgot to mention this earlier, but it's curious that this isn't a seize map. Which means I don't have to have Hector go towards the castle. Maybe I should leave Hector behind to guard the tent? ...Nah, he's my best shot at killing Erik. Man, making Serra be the one who has to recruit Erk is surprisingly dickish on Hard Mode. Your only healer has to go off doing an extremely time-strict job that lets her spend very little of her time healing. Especially if you then want the village. Now half of my army is gravely injured, and I still haven't managed a single turn to use a heal staff because I needed Eliwood and Erk to team up to kill the mercenary that was blocking me from blocking the village from the bandit, and thus Serra had to literally block the entrance with her body. Oh yeah. This scene. This scene where Erik calls for reinforcements. I remember this scene vividly. I love it from a writing perspective, though from a plot perspective... I have some grave issues. Or at least I think I do. Let's watch. Holy shit. Watching Ephidel talk Darin into abandoning his own son in order to escape... I mean I get that he was in deep shit and had to evacuate or die, but leaving his own son behind... and being talked into doing it that easily... honestly, this made me feel really bad for Erik as a kid. And itt still is really sad, even now that I know that it doesn't make him grow up in any way by the events of Binding Blade. That said though, why the fuck are they even taking Darin? They're using him to start a war in Lycia. Near as I can tell, that plan's fallen through, and he has very, very little to offer them at the moment. What exactly is he doing for Nergal on the Dread Isle in chapter 19, exactly? Is he funding them? Or was it an elaborate ruse so they could eventually harvest his quintessence? I mean, when Nergal makes those mega-morphs in the final battle, Darin's one of them, so that suggests, for all of his foolishness and cowardice, he has some kind of quality that makes him ideal for that sort of thing. Did he have a shitton of quintessence due to his raw ambition or something? ...Wait, maybe the plan hasn't completely fallen through yet. I seem to remember Darin and Ephidel having a conversation about Darin abandoning even his own best men and relying entirely on the Black Fang for protection, and it didn't happen here. But I kno that at that point, Darin should have basically nothing left to offer if he isn't just being tricked for Quintessence farming. But then Ephidel should have been able to do that himself, right? What's going on here? ...But at any rate, back to gameplay, where the remaining cavalry charges and then it starts raining. I really, really hope that if/when the rain stops, it happens at the beginning of my turn. Christ. This means it'll be a few more turns before I can get Priscilla. Interestingly, it looks like houses are clearer terrain in rain than plains are. Cavalry seem to be able to cross it with just one move. Well, I mean, I guess they have roofs, but I don't think that really helps horses move around them better... Alright, the rain's stopped. Good news: It happened at the beginning of my turn, so the game doesn't pseudo-ambush you by suddenly changing how far the enemies can move on the enemy phase without warning. But I mean really, what kind of a low bar is that? Why even bring it up? Do I really expect any game in the series to screw up like that? What travesty of a game would think that was an okay thing to do? HAHA. I KNOW, RIGHT? Let's move on. The bad news is that Erik and most of his cavalry are chasing the more fragile units I sent on that mission to get Erk: Eliwood, Rebecca, Serra, and Erk himself, obviously, followed by the wounded units I sent off that way to get healed: Dorcas (who's unarmed so that Marcus can have an iron axe), Bartre, Matthew and Guy. They've all been healed up, which is good, but now basically the whole Lausian cavalry troop is charging between that cliff and that village at them. Which means my best bet is probably to bottleneck with Eliwood from the space directly east of the southeast corner of the village. That way, I can fit a healer and a ranged attacker adjacent to him, and have him tank as much of this as he can, gaining some sorely-needed exp in the process. Honestly, I wish it were remotely realistic on Hector Hard mode to see what happens when Erk visits Priscilla's village. Guess I'll have to read that from the website. Oh, that's nice! They have basically the same conversation in a talk event if you don't use Erk to recruit her. SWEEET. Secret Books sell for 4000 gold. That is way better than I was hoping! I thought it was just gonna be 2k! Looks like we've got money after all! FUCK. I forgot about Merlinus. One of the pegasus knights made a beeline for him. Looks like that's one more chapter I'll have to wait before getting his wagon form. Now I also have to finish my shopping immediately too, if I wanna buy much of anything. Erk continues to get stupidly good glass cannon level ups, hitting both 10 magic and 12 speed at level nine. Best part? This apparently isn't even that far off from his averages! He's only blessed by 1 in speed and 2 in magic! Erik's gone down, and in the process Eliwood's reached 10 speed, which means it should probably get easier to train him now that he can double things. But I'll be feeding some more kills to him now, because why not? My tactics rank is already burned into the ground, and even if it weren't, this isn't even a ranked run! I'm gonna be pairing Priscilla and Erk together since I've never seen their supports, but I also hear that he's the only exception to her infamously tragic romantic options. Hmm... So Darin “always” felt Laus deserved to rule over Lycia. I wonder if there was anything beyond “because that would make me king and I want to be” that made him say that. It'd be interesting if a remake could expand upon the lore of the territories of the Lycian Alliance. Okay, so, we have Erik saying that Elbert approved of the idea of rebelling against Ostia. And we know everything else he's saying is the truth. So despite the source, there's some credence there. But we don't know the context or the full picture here either. But we also have him mention Darin and Elbert argued a ton about Elbert not trusting Ephidel and the Black Fang, which suggests that either Elbert change his mind quickly, or this entire thing was a ruse to learn more about the Black Fang. Oswin seems to feel these “rumors”, as he puts them, are enough to justify basically severing ties with Eliwood and Pherae entirely, while Hector doesn't believe that Elbert is a traitor at all. I honestly get the feeling that we're not supposed to believe Erik, but I also weirdly don't remember this plot getting... any closure at all. Honestly, this talk between Oswin and Hector feels... weird. The only way I can justify Oswin spontaneously kneeling and swearing his service to Hector is that he's either trying to avoid being sent away in case Hector does wind up betrayed by Elbert somehow, or the entire thing was a ruse to test Hector's judgment and whether or not he'd throw Eliwood under the bus over these rumors. Beyond that, this conversation feels... whiplash-y. ...But, at any rate, we've got that done, and come Monday, it'll be time for the first Hector-Mode-exclusive chapter of the game! Stay tuned! But more importantly, stay safe everyone!

Conquest has awesome gameplay and a terrible story. GBA sprites have aged amazingly. Almost nothing in FE1 has aged well.

I'm aware he's fightable, but no, he never really came up.

Blazing Blade Day 9: Chapter 13x Oh god. Fog of war, ironman, with no preparation screen and no ability to control who starts where. As usual, the beginning part is always the scariest, but with fog of war and (apparently) ambush spawns, I need to stay as far away from the darkness and forts as I can. But I still want whatever's in that damned village. Initially I sent Marcus up north to clear the way, which worked, but he took way more damage than I expected. I healed him up and everything, but wow. Anyway, he's guarding the east now. I have Oswin holding on to Merlinus since he's the only one who can still take pretty much just as much of a beating even with halved speed. HOLY SHIT WHAT!? THIS HAS NOMADS!? NOMADS ARE COMING FROM THE FORTS!? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, GAME! YOU PUT THE UNITS WITH THE HIGHEST ATTACK RANGE OF ANY UNPROMOTED UNIT IN THE ENTIRE GAME... ON MAPS WHERE THE PLAYER STRUGGLES TO SEE PAST THE END OF THEIR ARMY'S NOSE!? Thankfully I got the torch transferred from Serra (who used it once at the beginning) to Matthew, so now I can see exactly what's going on and what places I need to defend. WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THE SHEER NUMBER OF REINFORCEMENTS HERE!? HOW THE FUCK WAS I SUPPOSED TO GET TO THAT VILLAGE IN TIME WITHOUT KNOWING WHERE THE- ...Deep breaths... ...In hindsight, I should have given Matthew the torch before the end of chapter 13. I knew a fog of war map was coming, and I didn't do that, and that cost me valuable information I could have very easily obtained. Still, holy shit does this make me question the viability of a changes-blind ironman run of this mode. There was practically no window to visit that village at all, especially not once the sheer numbers of enemy reinforcements clogged up the path there. I basically would've had to send Marcus over immediately. Which I was going to do, until something demanded his attention, unknowingly costing me my one window to get what may be my only money for a while. And even if I hadn't chickened out, he might very well have died when he got trapped away from my army unless I gave him basically all of my vulneraries. Looks like I'll be selling Erk's goddess icon for cash. ...Still, mere survival has been reasonable enough. Enough of my army is tanky enough at base to guard enough of these bottlenecks, and if you're proactive at getting rid of enemies, then not every area will be swarmed at once. I've learned my lesson here: Don't take chances with villages. Visit them immediately, and send the goddamned Winged Hussars. Hopefully, if this mode is reasonable, that will be enough. Alright, so I succeeded. Not exactly with gusto, but nobody died, and I got Merlinus. ...Curious that, unless Merlinus is just kissing ass here, Pherae is apparently right after Ostia in terms of how much authority and respect the houses of Lycia command. I always got the impression that it was just another one of the non-Ostian houses of roughly equal standing. Before Eliwood and Roy, what did Pherae do to get this reputation? “It's nice to be appreciated for a change. Lately, people just seem to want us dead.” Ah, blunt, understated humor. How I love it. And then, of course, there's the line. That incredible line that I'm frankly shocked never became as memetic as “Ike, father of Sothe's children”: “Lord Eliwood! Lord Hector! Take me into your bosoms and keep me safe forever!” I love how even Eliwood is a little phased by that absurd, borderline homoerotic line, and actually pauses a second before he can give a polite response. Hector doesn't seem to give a single shit, however. He just gets straight to business, letting him be as weird as he likes without comment, as long as he does his job. That... wasn't what I was expecting, but now suddenly that strangely sounds very much like him. He's never been one for manners, after all. Makes sense he wouldn't be too phased by people being weird. Well, this chapter was short but stressful. And a very big eye-opener of how proactive I'm gonna have to be if I don't want to get slowly eaten alive by my lack of resources. Also, I have no money, so I'll have to find a way to make my current supplies of stuff last. Take care, everyone! Next map is gonna be a fun one! ...I hope.

Blazing Blade Day 8: Chapter 13 Jesus Christ. Looks like this mode is really gonna make a habit of throwing in extra pegasus knights. Given that my starting formation is less than ideal and I have no idea how these enemies are gonna move and how overwhelmed I'm gonna get, I decided to play it safe, toss Marcus Bartre's hand axe, get him into range of one of the two archers and one of the two pegasus knights to the southeast, and just nuke them from orbit. This proved slightly unnecessary with the power of hindsight, but I still think it was a good call with the information I had. Meanwhile, Oswin, Bartre and Dorcas went to secure Merlinus's village, because we definitely want Merlinus sooner rather than later. Curious. I'm pretty sure this sprite for the village witch is the same as the one for the fortune teller I get in chapter 14. Are they the same person? I seem to remember this person being in a Lyn Mode village too though... And yes, I'm well aware of the hilarious glitch that happens if you use this mine in the right way. I know, firsthand, that if you reset right as an enemy walks on a mine and then resume the chapter, you'll be in control of the rest of the enemy's turn, letting you do shit like have Vaida transfer her ridiculous enchanted spear straight into Merlinus's tent. You can do even crazier stuff in FE8 using a similar glitch, namely giving every single character in the game a dark magic weapon rank by stealing enemy-only rankless monster magic. That sounded really time-consuming though, so I never even bothered trying that one as a kid. But yes, I definitely had fun with the “uber spear”. Bartre's first level up gives a full left column of HP, strength, skill and speed. Definitely encouraging, because I need this guy if I wanna finally see Karla. At first I was scared that it was gonna be a really time-consuming slog to make it safe enough to charge Guy with Matthew, but thankfully, a turn after the reinforcements started showing up, he started charging, and wound up going right into Matthew's range. Oh wow, I kinda forgot what a hilarious jackass Matthew is here. He says “I believe you told me you owed me your life,” and then Guy immediately reveals that Matthew made him say that, as a condition for being fed. Does Matthew make a habit out of shit like that, hoping for the moments like these where he gets to call one of these cards in? That's... I love it. That's brilliant. Also, it's weird that Guy's static, not-talking face in this scene is smiling, while his expression immediately goes to the proper serious/angry face whenever he actually says his lines. Alright, the major danger has passed. I've secured both villages (and it looks like they have at least slightly personalized lines for whoever visits commenting on Merlinus's dropped torch), and the reinforcements are being dealt with. Now it's just a matter of feeding kills now that the enemy numbers have thinned. Suddenly a lot more forces came out, requiring some player phase tactics, but I didn't really have any reliable options, largely because I couldn't put Guy close enough without getting him in range of a hand axe bandit. Choosing to keep him and all others out of the range of said bandit so Hector could hand-axe him... turned out to be something of a mistake. But what I wound up doing was doing the least-likely-to-succeed but also least-dangerous-if-failed action first, to see if it worked: having Hector attack a sword cavalier with Wolf Beil while standing on a fortress. It worked, meaning I can now probably kill everyone but the archer. If I hadn't succeeded, I would have had everyone retreat to deal with them next turn, rather than risking one of my numerous squishies getting hit twice and killed. Man, early-game cavalry are really tough in the GBA games so far. They're not as tough as they were in Binding Blade, that's for sure, but in the pecking order of how powerful enemy generics are, with soldiers on the bottom, cavalry are pretty damned near the top. Shit! I completely forgot to check if these guys are the Black Fang or just corrupt guards turned against Helman- ...Nope, looks like the boss's description confirms, they're part of the Black Fang. How progressive of a guild of assassins to hire so many knights. ...Oh! Looks like only the boss is part of the Black Fang. His generic boss dialogue says everyone else was just a pack of hired mercenaries. My efforts to feed the boss kill to Hector (even he struggles to do damage to the bastard without his Wolf Beil) were thwarted by Marcus getting a crit on him when I was trying to soften him up. Ah well. Such is life. I did manage to buy a ton of hand axes, which are going to be super useful in this game, way more useful than they were in Binding Blade. Oh hey, it's King Batou, except it's way, way more believable that he's still alive! Alright, so, Helman “told Elbert about Darin's plans”. I'm gonna have to remember that, because from what I've heard, the game is unclear how much Lord Elbert was really in on this whole Lycian conspiracy, and I wanna see if I can piece together enough clues to at least make a plausible headcanon. ...Look Helman, I know you're dying and probably can't think too straight, but simply telling Eliwood to “go to Laus” and that “Darin knows all”... I'm pretty sure that almost allows Erik to set a trap for Eliwood due to the ambiguity of how willing to talk Darin'll be and how dangerous he is. Kind of amusing that the “steward” of Santaruz uses the same sprite as the equivalent guy in Caelin in Lyn Mode. But more importantly, I like how they actually address the political consequences of a dead ruler, and Hector and Eliwood give pretty reasonable-sounding instructions for the people to follow. Honestly, so far, the story's holding together pretty well, and again, the actual narrative aspect, as in the actual act of telling the story wholly apart from what the story is, is definitely the best in the marathon so far, and that's to be greatly commended. Still bracing myself for when things apparently get supremely dumb though. Take care, everyone! Stay strong, stay safe!

Roughly 0.66%. There's a handy website I love using for these sorts of calculations: http://vassarstats.net/textbook/ch5apx.html

Lyn Normal Mode is more fun than Lyn Hard Mode. Neither one is of any gameplay merit whatsoever for anyone familiar with the mechanics of the series, but Normal Mode at least has a lot more fun character dialogue during those forced events "Hard" Mode skips. A recent replay made me realize that FE7's tutorial is really well-done, not just in terms of what they explain, but how they keep it fun and engaging for the people learning it. Lyn Mode has surprisingly risen up to be in the upper half of my favorite Fire Emblem stories as a result.