Alastor15243

Unless you aren't specifically talking about Final Bosses, this is almost entirely untrue. There seem to always be damned good reasons the final enemy castle needs to be stormed. Near as I can tell: 1: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary. 2: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening god. Necessary. 3: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary. 4: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening avatar of a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary. 5: Side story about a smaller part of a much larger war that hadn't yet been won. Not necessary except to rescue the child hostages and bring Eyvel back, so pretty necessary to Leif. 6: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary. 7 Lyn Mode: Saving Lyn's grandfather before his brother can kill him. Necessary in the sense that that was the entire reason Lyn was fighting. 7: Hector/Eliwood Mode: Stopping an evil sorcerer from summoning dragons to take over the world. Necessary. 8: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening god. Necessary. 9: Finishing off the remnants of a mostly-conquered army's military to get back the dangerous, world-threatening medallion in the evil king's possession. Necessary. 10.1: Stopping the casualties of Jarod'a suicidal blaze of glory. Not necessary, just heroic. Larger battle already won. 10.2: Fighting off a coup force that threatened to kill Elincia and take over the country. Necessary. 10.3: Does not conclude a story arc, not applicable. 10.4: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening god. Necessary. 13: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary. 14B: Killing the king of the invading nation so that the bulk of his troops threatening to conquer Hoshido surrender. Necessary, permitting the usual ridiculous messenger speed nonsense. 14C: Making all of the needless violence and suffering you've aided and abetted have even a semblance of a point by finally exposing the king as a literal monster to your siblings so he can finally be stopped. Necessary. 14R: Destroying the mad dragon god sending unlimited supplies of shadowy monster forces to undermine both kingdoms. Probably a good idea even though killing Garon would probably have solved the larger problem once the Nohr siblings learned the truth. 16: From what I've played? Granted. Neither of the final bosses I've seen are exactly threatening the world if they aren't finished off, though Edelgard probably has damned strong personal reasons for wanting her final boss to die.

Same. That seems to be what happens anyway, and I don't mind it.

I can't say anything about the blood pact yet, because I just know my opinions are gonna change when I actually see it, as so often happens in this marathon.

Even so, to have the rug basically pulled out from under us and get informed that what we've already accomplished turned out to be all we needed to accomplish is pretty pretty disappointing. We never actually had a mission where victory actually was in the balance as far as the narrative stakes were concerned. Imagine if, in any other game, the player had been informed close to the final battle that their actions so far were already enough to save the day?

Yeah, the "unspoken plan guarantee" is a trope for a reason. If you explain the plan and it goes off without a hitch, that's boring. That was more of a (poorly-worded I suppose) expression of annoyance at the abrupt cut to the base menu. I remember these having more flow to them in PoR. And as for Micaiah being a Mary Sue... I would argue she definitely comes closest to it in terms of every main character so far, in that I can definitely see a lot of the tropes common in bad fan fiction that must have spurred that accusation to begin with. Oooh, a third interpretation of that discrepancy between Pelleas and Elincia! Certainly sounds like something that could be true, but it's definitely an interpretation, given that as far as I can tell, we don't actually see many details of what kinds of politicians specifically win Daein people's respect. More the fact that it wasn't really even our doing that Daein won its independence. If I remember correctly, it's almost entirely Sanaki's doing, and we just stop Jarod's final suicidal blaze of glory before he can be executed as a scapegoat. The Daein Liberation army barely even gets its country-reclaiming momentum before it's settled through boring politics. We didn't even control the people who got Sanaki's attention, it all happened outside of our control, like we're just playing around at solving a conflict that would have been resolved eventually without almost anything that Micaiah does.

Radiant Dawn Day 8: Chapter 1-7 Yeah, like Jotari said... wow, it's kinda crazy that we literally have two battles left before a tiny barely-a-map and then the final battle of Part 1. This war... progresses extremely fast. Of course, we aren't even the ones responsible for dealing the finishing blow. Daein's freedom is assured before the final battle even happens, due to events done by characters not in our control. ...Pretty anticlimactic when I put it like that. But we'll see. The intro narration says that there's a vast number of mercenaries that Begnion's hired (with Daein's money), and I'm wondering where they came from. Begnion? Not from Daein, certainly, unless this is an evil amazon brigade since all the Daein men of fighting age are in labor camps. If betraying Daein were an easy way out, I think we'd have heard about it. Anyway, so I checked the bonus exp requirements, and it seems that the turn reward is peanuts compared to the prisoner escape reward, so I'll be taking this map slow to train my units and make sure every prisoner escapes. But back to the story, Izuka has apparently told Pelleas to stop coming to the strategy meetings, and now he's revealing his plan to poison a lake in order to kill the guards of a prison camp... a plan that everyone obviously thinks is completely ridiculous. ...Ugh. I get that this guy's evil, but he's just so hilariously easily shut down that he's less of an antagonistic force and more of just a strawman punching bag to make Micaiah look better. In other stories with characters like this, they eventually get into an infuriatingly undeserved position of power over the heroes to up the drama. Like, say, Dolores Umbridge. Here... well, like I already said: strawman punching bag. He storms out, and now we have to come up with a better plan, which we proceed to do... offscreen. Time to prep. Damn it, Nolan and Zihark don't have a support together. I could have sworn they got it in time for this chapter! Is this not chapter-based like in Path of Radiance? Did I need to keep them together more? Anyway, Aran gains 3 speed between bonus experience level ups and promotion. Not enough to double, but that's going to change shortly. He's going to cap strength, skill and speed hilariously quickly into his promoted tier, meaning that I'll be able to buff up his other stats to psychotic levels through bonus experience, which we'll have plenty of by the time we next see the Dawn Brigade again. That is going to make it annoying to use him in actual combat though, once he reaches the point where non-bexp levels are essentially wasted. Ike is going to suffer from a similar problem. I used most of my remaining bonus experience to promote Nolan, because that way I can equip paragon on him. That skill is going to be used mainly on him and Zihark, swapped back and forth to whoever most needs it, while the other one will get resolve, which, yes, I just managed to get off of Tauroneo. ...It's kind of ridiculous that it's chapter 7, 9 maps in, and I already have a mostly-promoted army. Man, the experience gain of the Dawn Brigade is ruuuushed. You can't sell master seals in this game. Pity. Was that the case in the Japanese version too? I seem to remember hearing that you needed these items to promote in the Japanese version of this game. Alright, let's do info conversations. Oooh! This is the one with Meg and Zihark! HAHAHAHA! I didn't realize until just now that Zihark says that Meg looks exactly like her father. Holy shit. That is a roast to throw at a poor girl if I ever heard one, but neither one seems to notice the implications. ...However... this conversation is rather frustratingly ambiguous as to whether or not Brom sent Meg or if Meg went without his permission. If it's the former... holy shit Brom, what is wrong with you? Unless of course it's somehow some insanely well-kept secret just how fucked up Daein is. Alright, now we get a talk with Pelleas. So, basically, Pelleas is incredibly grateful to Izuka for “reuniting” him with his “mother” and also for putting him in the position he is in now. Also, apparently there were some Daein senators that Pelleas mentions Izuka getting into contact with, and, well... my reaction to that is... ...Daein has a senate? I'm sorry, are you trying to tell me that Daein is a constitutional monarchy? Was the Mad King's War what Ashnard was capable of when he was acting with checks and balances? And if Ashnard got rid of said checks and balances, these “senators” have to either be useless puppet stooges, or people who haven't been senators for twenty-three goddamned years. Either way, how useful could they possibly be to granting Pelleas legitimacy? Quick aside: something similar was mentioned in the last game, with underground noble houses secretly lending the Crimean resistance support from in hiding. Is that a thing that happened in real life? Did noble houses really just “go underground”, so to speak, hiding from the new regime and supporting the resistance from the shadows? Pelleas then calls Micaiah “amazing” and praises her all-seeing powers for... doing some extremely basic inferences from what Pelleas pretty clearly spelled out for her, which is kind of ridiculous. Ah yes, this is when the game reveals that Pelleas is a spirit charmer. And then when Micaiah asks what the mark is, Pelleas explains what it is before ridiculing himself for lecturing her on something she has to already know, since he things she is one herself. Yep, he saw, but misunderstood, her brand. But this does confirm that you usually enter pacts with spirits personally. As Pelleas then explains, if you're a spirit charmer and don't know it, it's because the spirit bonded itself to you on its own, seeing vast potential in you as an infant. So while Pelleas all but outright states that this was indeed not the case for him, this does confirm it is at least plausible that baby Soren's brand could have been passed off as the “Spirit's Protection” to anyone in Daein who saw it. Still though... I don't think we get any confirmation of anyone besides Almedha who this mark was intended to fool. If there were other people who who knew that Ashnard's son had a mark on his forehead like Pelleas apparently does (implied by that being where Soren's is and also the fact that it's exposed when he wipes his brow in this conversation), and if these other people were important to securing Pelleas's legitimacy... we never hear of them. Of course, if Almedha was really well-known (and also not known to be a dragon), it's conceivable that she could have eventually blown Izuka's story if she had been kept out of the loop and hadn't been convinced this was indeed her son, but... ...let's move on. … … ...Well. This is infuriating. Apparently, while beorc and laguz aren't capitalized, “Branded” is. No, fuck that, I'm not doing that. I'm never going to be able to remember that, so I'm just gonna keep doing it lower-case. Curious. Pelleas initially uses the word “laguz”, and then later says “sub-human” in the next sentence. But isn't laguz described as a word that's almost unthinkable for anyone racist against the laguz to say? At bare minimum that seems to be the case in Daein. Merely saying the word as opposed to “sub-human” is treated multiple times in Path of Radiance like a huge deal for people who come from Daein. Shiharam is told he might be accused of being a traitor for even using the word “laguz” instead of “sub-human”. And yet here, Pelleas, who's willing to use the word “sub-human”, uses the word “laguz” too. At any rate though, he says that he's been “terribly mistreated” by people who thought he was branded, which would imply that being branded is more well-known than being a spirit charmer. But then we have that old man that Soren mentioned raising him, who didn't even seem to entertain the idea that Soren was a branded. He saw that mark and just assumed he was a spirit charmer. Anyway, we get a brave sword for our trouble. Insanely early, funny enough. And it's B rank, which in a game where the top rank is SS, is hilariously low. Now, fun little tip I came up with last time I played: If you use Mist, get her to B rank swords if you can. That way, in the final gauntlet, when everyone gets to equip their one weapon to be blessed with infinite durability and mantle-piercing, Mist, who has no business swordfighting in the endgame, can equip the brave sword, and then she can give it to someone else. So yeah, I'll be saving this thing. Gotta make sure it doesn't break by the end of the game. ...Yep, looks like Radiant Dawn ditches the “be in the same chapter” system in favor of combining that with some proto-Awakening support system. Meaning I'm behind on getting Zihark and Nolan to that crucial double-earth support they're going to need for the best chances of surviving Part 3. Well, nothing to do but make sure they can start next chapter. Let's go. So the plan seems to have been to use all of the player characters for Dawn-Brigade-style guerilla warfare to assault the keep itself while Tauroneo distracts the main force. I don't know enough about the makeup of this camp to say if this is a good or bad idea, so fuck it, let's just play the map. And thankfully, the game lets me deploy everyone I'd actually want to use, leaving leaving behind nobody but Leonardo, Edward, Meg and Fiona. And Tauroneo, who as the story explains, is busy doing other things. So at least they explain it. I didn't remember that being the case, but it seems I was wrong. Aran seems to have finally found enemies other than weighed-down pegasus knights that he can double: armor knights! After he promoted to halberdier! I gripe, but Aran's defense is absolutely ridiculous now. He's taking basically no damage from these armor knights. Literally no damage from the one with the javelin. And now we see Tormod, and I love how Tormod hasn't grown out of his old boyish face nearly to the same degree that Sothe has. Not sure if I already said this, but I don't like the new version of “Come, Join Us!” in this game. The old one in PoR was much better. This one feels... like a clumsy attempt to make it more intense, but it's just overwhelmed and busy. So yeah, we just got Tormod, Muarim and Vika. Three great characters... ruined by absolutely abysmal availability. They're tier 2, like Sothe, Zihark, and now Aran and Nolan, and you get them for the rest of Part 1. And then they disappear for the rest of the game. It's not until Part 4 that get them back, at the same level you left them, two chapters before endgame. After Ike and Sothe's story promotions to tier 3. I'll use them when I need to, but I'm really hoping I don't have to make too much use of them, because I sure as hell ain't getting any return back on the investment. Note to self: get celerity off of Tormod. Anyway, so, we get a talk with Tormod, during which... the recruitment theme... plays again. Because it was playing prematurely last time. But anyway, Sothe and Tormod talk about the issue Sothe asked Tormod to look into. An issue he asked Tormod to look into so long ago, apparently, that Sothe's had time to have a growth spurt in the meantime and piss Tormod off with how tall he's gotten. Jeez, how long did this mission to figure out what's going on in Begnion take? There are some enemies grouped by the back gate, and I'm using Muarim to approach them because Jill's bulk still isn't quite good enough for her to survive all four of them at once if they suddenly decide to rush in. Good call on my part. They did in fact decide to all rush in immediately upon getting within all of their ranges. ...Nope, wait, they all still seem to be holding still except the actual armor knight guarding the door, who just bailed to attack Muarim. Wow. So he just left his post and let the doors swing open on their own. Laguz don't suffer movement penalties indoors, and hey, also, bird laguz have canto now! Nice! Pity they're so heavily nerfed in other ways I don't quite feel like getting into yet. These remaining guards are just refusing to move. This is why I hate it when games add stationary groups of enemies with enough attack power to take out most of your units. Either you don't know they don't move, in which case it's absolutely terrifying to approach these groups, a terror that later is revealed to be you cowering at the shadow of a mouse... ...or you do know, in which case there's literally no strategy to taking them out at all. That is why stationary enemies should be labeled, so that the fact that they don't move isn't some secret to exploit, but a known part of their AI you need to account for when making your strategies. Because when the game actually broadcasts that enemies won't move, they need to come up with better ideas than this to challenge you. Yep, and of course they start moving the turn after one of them gets attacked. Thankfully by that point I had taken out enough of them that Jill's death was impossible. Man, biorhythms can be a pain. It's utterly surreal to see Zihark having a 50 ish hit rate against an archer because some biorhythms synced up just wrong. OH THANK GOODNESS. Okay, so, I accidentally fucked up and put Zihark in death range if he ate another longbow attack and a mage went in. Not having a healer nearby except Micaiah (who would die if she used sacrifice and then got hit), I had no choice but to bait the longbowman with Micaiah and pray he'd take the bait. It worked. And it also turned out to be totally pointless, because those mages don't seem to be moving for any reason. I suspected that might be the case when I learned they wouldn't go down the ledges to attack Aran earlier, but... I didn't want to bet anyone's life on that. At least not any more than I already had to. Also, apparently the Daein prisoners kept here... are in soldier gear. You have generic villager portraits in this game, do you not? Why are these ex-soldiers in their armor!? Good on this game for not having the B button do anything on its own, by the way. Given that it's nearly on the bottom of the controller, that prevented a great many accidental presses when laying the wiimote down somewhere. Yet again we have a bunch of enemies with really high attack ranges and worrying attack power, kept in check only by their refusal to move for reasons I cannot see. Christ, these things shave years off my life when I play ironman. I like how all of these old PoR characters have conversations with each other in this chapter. I can't tell whether or not Muarim's decision to call Sothe “Sir Sothe” is mocking him or genuinely misguidedly trying to be respectful. The “I suppose I have to respect your manly pride now” comment suggests the former, while the “I could never speak so familiarly to my little one's friend” comment suggests the latter. ...Ugh. This is a Japanese honorifics thing that translated horribly, I just know it. ...Man, Djur has a pretty badass battle quote: “Errrrrrgh...! Blundering through like a bull in a china shop... Come closer, so I can shatter your ambition like glass! I will beat into your very bones just who rules this land!” ...Not gonna lie, right now, if I made a top ten list of lines I was looking forward to hearing voiced in a remake? Pretty sure that'd be on it. I thought he'd be a pansy when he said at the start he'd elect to keep most of the elite guards with him, but now it's starting to feel he's a genuinely competent man who saw the possibility that this was a trick and kept the best men with him to fight them off just in case. Anyway, prisoners are escaping, boss is just about dead, we're pretty set here. Just gotta finish up and then seize. Yep, done. Oh yes, this scene, where Izuka learns about Sothe's laguz friends, and decides that they absolutely have to let them fight, and plans to silence any racist backlash with “the proper punishment”. And then comes one of my favorite exchanges in Fire Emblem history: Izuka: But laguz... they're powerful! (An expendable...) Just what we need. By all means, invite them to join! Sothe: They're good friends. I'll sure they'll agree to help if I ask (you mumbling creep). Okay, next scene and... I'm already confused. Sothe asks Tormod how he got there... “so soon”. Implying the investigation was really fast. I guess I'm just gonna have to assume that Sothe and Tormod didn't meet in person when Sothe asked him to investigate how much Sanaki knows, because there's no way this mission actually took long enough for Sothe to grow “too tall” for Tormod's liking. Also, Micaiah expresses annoyance when Tormod mentions that he's an old war friend of Sothe and brings up Ike, when, like... I wish they'd just come out and say how Micaiah actually feels about the Mad King's war. She said something to Fiona that indicated she didn't blame Lanvega for not helping Ashnard, since he was just protecting his countrymen, so I think we can assume she doesn't believe Ashnard was in the right... but like... what is she annoyed at Sothe about? For the mere fact that he's a walking reminder that Daein was in the wrong? ...Or is she just jealous of all the new friends Sothe made while she was away, given how she's in love with him? Is it that she isn't even sure herself why hearing him gush about Ike makes her so mad? Also, I'm sorry, did the game just have Tormod say that Sanaki was already “investigating on her own”? How fucking hard can it be for the apostle to have some of her loyal soldiers just visit another country? The place is such a veritable shithole right now that it would be nigh impossible to hide how badly Numida is running things! Of course, now Micaiah kind of... just bares her soul to Muarim, this total stranger to her, about how she's never seen Sothe this relaxed despite having “taken care of him for so long”, and Muarim just flat-out tells her that if she talks like that, she'll just be giving away that she's a branded. And then he just warns her that there are those among the laguz who call people like her the “parentless” and, like Stefan said last game, “deny [branded] any laguz heritage, honor, or dignity”. ...But he doesn't mention anything about being able to sense branded. Did I just... did my memory just make that up? I could've sworn somebody said that in-game before Vika's conversation where she gets the heebie-jeebies around Micaiah. And I'm almost positive that somebody said that eventually. Did... wow, if that's not true, then several of my complaints with branded lore... are gonna have to be revised. ...But the chapter's over. We got a cool 3008 bonus experience, got everyone out alive (despite several frustrations), and now everyone in our proper army is promoted except Micaiah, Jill, and I guess Ilyana. I think that's a good day. So that's where I'll leave off until tomorrow! Stay safe, everyone!

The series should go back to having cute sprites representing the characters in map view, like in the 3DS games. Keep the 3D models to fight scenes and cutscenes. Also, stupid, petty demand: make the loops of their idle animations sync with the beat of the music, so it looks like they're doing a cute little dance.

Fire Emblem x Pokemon. A Fire Emblem game set in a medieval world of Pokemon trainers. Salamence riders. Rapidash paladins. Bold knights fighting alongside their beloved pokemon, gaining support bonuses from fighting alongside each other. We almost got this crossover instead of TMS. If only Pokemon Conquest hadn't been a thing.

Yep, those three were definitely in mind when I made my choice of words. I haven't actually done the math to see who has the literal worst availability, aside from the obvious ones like the endgame characters, but I'm confident Tauroneo is at least one of the worst.

Not particularly, it's more that most of his early appearances feel like they're done entirely by accident, which feels weird, like he just has random comparatively-menial tasks he's responsible for. Like I said before that quoted paragraph, Begnion knows where the Daein Liberation Army is and where it's headed. It's utterly bizarre to me that they can just wander around not as a small group of freedom fighters, but as a full-on army, and still not meet any resistance from the enemy army that knows where they are and where they're going. No, I just feel the starting destination should have been closer to the desert, because it feels utterly bizarre that their best ideal target is so far away. There was absolutely no need to make their first destination Terin. They could have picked any closer area and the script would barely have to change. Yeah, I don't think it's likely Izuka, which is why I'm so confused because he's the only one with a semblance of a motive to rat the liberation army out. But unless it's just a crazy coincidence that Jarod personally ordered Fiona to be mobilized, and she wound up deployed to the same location that the Dawn Brigade wound up going to, the script seems to be giving every indication that Begnion knew they were coming here with their talk of traps and Jarod knowing the Daein army is "on the move".

Interesting question! Hm... ...Well, technically there's no need for the hostage plan itself to exist, because all that really needs to happen storywise (if even that) is "something makes Fiona change sides". That could be any number of things with basically no impact on the rest of the story at all. But I do like this gameplay premise of having to protect green units who are themselves protecting other green units, so... ...I'd probably get rid of that "alright, then let's kill the hostages anyway" part of Laverton's plan, because that's really what ruins it. If Fiona had intervened while Laverton was trying to force a surrender, that would allow the gameplay to stay the same while the logic of the plan is fixed. I may be missing something though, this is just off the top of my head.

Radiant Dawn Day 7: Chapter 1-6-2 Oh hey! This is a kill boss map! Sweet! That means I can do this super quickly if I play my cards right! And hey! The boss has a drop-when-killed paragon scroll! SCORE! Alright, time to prepare. ...It's still super annoying that I have to manually count spaces from my starting positions because the game doesn't highlight your own units' movement ranges on the preparation screen. It makes first-turn preparation just that much more tedious. I remember being annoyed as hell that Three Houses doesn't let you individually highlight enemy attack ranges during the prep screen, and this is unquestionably worse. But I think I've got it now. First order of business is to get that western bridge covered. I do that with Tauroneo and Sothe, who can just barely make it from their mandatory starting positions. Everyone else takes out the enemies around the ballista right in front of us. Shoddy hitrates really make player-phase gambits a scary gamble. It really hurts the utility of player-phase units when you can't reliably keep them safe by killing the other enemies around them. Thankfully I had enough units around to provide backup plans and some mulligans. Alright, turn one went pretty well. I'm using my best units to rush each side of the map, because I've gotta protect Fiona when she turns traitor, and also take out the boss as quickly as possible. Jill and Volug are heading to clear the way for Fiona's escape. See, a scene happens at the end of player phase 1, where Laverton brings out civilian hostages and threatens to kill them if Micaiah doesn't surrender. Micaiah then surrenders, because she foresees that Fiona is going to betray Laverton to save them. While I do roll my eyes a ton at how ridiculously mustache-twirly a lot of the Begnion army behavior is, I have to say that the line “This so-called 'Liberation Army' is forcing me to sacrifice this boy!” is really good at pissing me off in the right kind of way. All I had to do was hear that one line as he readied his spear at the child hostage and I instantly wanted him to die. Painfully. So, props there. I remember some conditional praise of Lundgren for invoking similar feelings, so yeah. So then, after Micaiah drops her weapons and everyone else follows her lead... ...Laverton prepares to kill his hostages anyway... before he subdued... any... of the Daein... Liberation... Army. Like, their weapons are just on the ground. They can pick them back up again, which they proceed to do after this cutscene. Even if Fiona hadn't intervened, Laverton would have accomplished nothing but pissing the Dawn Brigade off and sacrificing his leverage over them. This is... I can't believe I didn't notice how idiotic this plan is. Anyway, Fiona and her seven unit cavalry platoon all grab the hostages and run off with them, suffering from rescue penalties in the meantime. Except Fiona. Because just to mock us, the game decided she should get two personal skills, and one of them is savior, which makes her immune to rescue penalties. Alright, Aran's at level 17 and has 19 defense and skill. Chances are, next level up is going to put him in bonus exp territory, so I think I'll be using all of my bonus exp to get him promoted after his next level. Oh, also, thank goodness! Looks like ballistae at least show you their might in this game, if not their hit and crit. Anyway, yeah, the west side is pretty trivial, because most of the enemies rushed the east side to pursue Fiona. It's pretty much impossible to save all of the Marado soldiers since they start so close to the enemy, but there are more soldiers than civilians, so you can at least realistically save all of the civilians they carry since others will pick up the slack when anyone falls. One of the Marado cavalry moved, used a vulnerary, and kept moving. I wonder what the logic was behind where he stopped, or why he stopped at all instead of just using the vulnerary after his full move. He did it right in front of an enemy, though I don't know if that had any bearing on the decision... I brought Leonardo to take control of the ballista just in case, but unfortunately, the Radiance games decided to be complete dickbags and make all ballistae only operate in one direction. Meaning that all the ballistae you “reclaim” from the enemy are damned near useless to you, since they're pointed at your army, not the enemy's. Great. And here I thought I was gonna have some fun with Leonardo for once. I've gotta make sure Tauroneo isn't the one to kill the boss. He's insanely useful right now, but the issue is that... well... he has some of the worst availability in the game. See, Radiant Dawn has this unfortunate tendency to, since it shifts from so many perspectives, constantly take units in and out of your army. Tauroneo is playable in this chapter... and no other chapter of Part 1. So if he kills the boss, he gets the paragon scroll, and it's entirely possible, if I remember correctly, that this means the paragon scroll just stays with him until Part 3. It's possible he's still in the party but unusable after this chapter, but I don't wanna take that chance with this thing. ...Shit, I really should have taken resolve off him when I had the chance. Hopefully I still can. Damn it. I couldn't save one of the civilians. RIP old man. I just didn't bring enough units to the east side of the map. I miscalculated which side would need more, and only brought Jill and Volug, thinking getting there quickly was more important than being able to kill lots of enemies on player phase. I thought those Marado guys would be able to clear the bridge faster. Thankfully... yep! The boss has been baited in by Tauroneo with his silver lance, so it's over now. As long as I can kill him this turn, we're golden. Paragon get! Chapter over. Ohhh! So that's why I mistakenly remembered this being in Marado. Fiona refers to the people Micaiah rescued as “my people”. Was she talking about her soldiers, or did that boss actually specifically choose Marado civilians to use as hostages to threaten Micaiah? I'm gonna have to assume she means the soldiers Micaiah helped bail out, because, I mean, the latter is just too stupid even for this game. If those were specifically Marado hostages, did Laverton seriously expect to be able to get away with just killing them for shits and giggles without Fiona turning traitor? Anyway, Fiona is the daughter of Lanvega, who is one of the four riders from when Greil was one. The others were Bryce (the heavily-ridiculed Camus from last game) and Tauroneo. Honestly, the game makes her out to be this big deal, but... ...Okay. She's basically one of the worst “Ests” in the series. She's got pretty good growth rates, more than one personal skill, a lot of things going for her... but she's just terrible. Her starting level and stats are atrocious. It's kind of ridiculous how weak they make her for how much of a big deal they make out of her legacy. And then we get a scene with Jarod and Numida, and they talk about how all the fuss the Daein people are making with their rebellion could attract an inquiry from Sanaki and Sephiran. And here I am frankly amazed that 1: Sanaki is still unaware of this after three years, and 2: these people seriously think Sephiran could possibly not know yet, and that him acting like he doesn't isn't incredibly suspicious. Anyway, I get a shitton of bonus exp, 3922 to be precise, which is gonna be peanuts eventually, but for now it's enough to start having fun with BEXP abuse. ...Tomorrow. For now, I'm done here. Stay safe, everyone!

Not rushed so much as just "in a game that generally doesn't tell its very good story all that well".

Palla Emblem has some great content, like this absolutely ridiculous Tool-assisted LTC of Thracia where they RN abuse in order to give everyone ridiculous level ups, treat movement stars like it's galeforce, and beat maps in such a ridiculous and spectacular fashion that it's just amazing to behold. This is a playstyle where Ronan becomes an unironically top-tier character, just to give you an idea of how insane this is. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLz9xZUchaeDe772pmVWrBFJh1oEhq2-z

My immediate thought is that it's a shame all the image links are broken.