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Part 1: The First of Many Bandits Note: This playthrough assumes its readers are entirely familiar with the game of Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword. You have been warned. Hello, everyone, and welcome to my first ever Screenshot Run of a Fire Emblem game! For my first foray into this genre of web content, I’ve chosen Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword (Or just Fire Emblem, if you’re stubbornly American) as my game of choice. This game holds a lot of nostalgia for me for various reasons. However, this won’t be just any playthrough...this will be a LORDS-ONLY playthrough. That means that my list of combat-worthy characters has been reduced to just three: Lyn, Eliwood, and Hector. Other than that, however, I am being fairly lenient with myself in terms of rules. Any character outside of those three can still be brought onto the fields, and they can still perform any non-combat actions they can normally. So healers can still heal, dancers can still dance, and thieves can still steal and unlock things. In addition, any character besides the lords can still engage in combat, as long as they don’t actually attack. You know what that means...MEATSHIELDS! (That being said, I’m still going to make sure none of them actually die if at all possible) Finally, any character besides the lords may participate in the arena. However, I may only level a character 10 times for each arena. An important thing to note. Due to some unfortunate circumstances, I am unable to use my old version of the game. So sadly, that means no Lyn Hard Mode and no Hector mode. Eliwood all the way this time. In addition, due to the way Lyn Normal Mode forces its tutorials on the player, I will be forced to use other characters in certain situations. Sadly, there’s no getting around this. Since we’re playing Normal Mode, this sequence of events will be the same every time. Tactician found unconscious, Batta the Beast, omae wa mo shindeiru, nani, so on and so forth. I think even the level you get might be the same every time. Just one thing I felt worthy of note. Don’t worry, Lyn. You’ll be getting stronger. MUCH stronger... Alright, finally time for some actually interesting gameplay. I gotta say, I love Lyn’s line here. You can just feel the derision seeping from her every word. Funny story, I actually had to look it up, and canton is another word for a territory. You learn something new every day. Alright. My commands: “Listen to Lyn.” ...Except they won’t, because it’s Lyn Normal Mode, meaning that your choices are, half of the time, irrelevant. Several turns later, we can FINALLY do something for ourselves. With the tutorial out of the way, we can get on with the run. Zugu, the boss of this chapter, may seem harmless enough, but don’t let your guard down. If you’re not careful, he can kill Lyn pretty easily. In fact, this happened on my first run through the game. I was so innocent then... In order to make sure Sain and Kent don’t perform any attacks, I have to do a little bit of trading. I could just discard their lances and give the rest to Lyn, but I’d like to be able to sell them later. And while I’d rather not let them take any attacks, the fact that Sain has to be put in that position due to TUTORIAL means I can’t afford that luxury. So, Lyn abandons Sain to his fate of being hit with an axe to go kill the other Brigand. I have to kill this one, because while I’m sure the AI would go for the one that couldn’t attack back, I’d rather not take that risk. All according to keikaku. Now... Kent runs away to get out of the bandits line of fire, and Lyn trades with Sain to get his iron swords. We’re going to be going through a lot of them. As you can see, Lyn can’t kill the bandit in one round, so Sain runs away too. With no other choice left but to throw himself on to Lyn’s sword, the bandit dissolves into a level up. Considering that we only have Lyn and two other characters to use in this game, we have no choice but to take what we can get. With that out of the way, Lyn heads east to do some more bandit-slaying. A few turns later, we’re finally at Zugu, and this right here is why you shouldn’t just rush him with Lyn alone. Despite his low hit chance, if I were to attack him here, there’s a chance he could kill her on his turn and end my run right there. So we let him attack first instead. I know right? So annoying, insisting they’ve got to do the fighting. And lo and behold, he hits her. While it’s far from a guarantee he would do it in his other battle as well, it’s proof that Fire Emblem doesn’t pull its punches, even in Tutorial Central. Of course, that doesn’t mean he isn’t easy as punch when you think instead of charging right in. And another level up. Not really. We’re still gonna be slaughtering everyone in our path with you. The only difference is that instead of being 100% bandits, it’s gonna be 70% bandits. For comparison, Lyn from the beginning of the Prologue... ...And Lyn at the end of Chapter 1 (What does ‘Stouthearted’ even mean?) Growths: HP: 70% Strength: 40% Skill: 60% Speed: 60% Luck: 55% Defense: 20% Resistance: 30% Total: 335% Average: 48% We’ll be seeing a lot of Lyn, especially over the course of the next ten chapters. I’m far from an expert on growths, but even I can tell this is a classic Myrmidon setup. Of course, when we’re done, she’ll be able to take hits with the best of them. Growths: HP: 80% Strength: 60% Skill: 35% Speed: 40% Luck: 35% Defense: 20% Resistance: 20% Growths: HP: 85% Strength: 40% Skill: 50% Speed: 45% Luck: 20% Defense: 25% Resistance: 25% Sain and Kent are your typical Cavalier duo. However, since Kent is the one with the higher HP, he’s the one we’ll be using more often in Lyn Mode. However, there’s another Cavalier coming later on that will be far better built for the long term, so if there’s one we’ll be using out of the three of them in the endgame, it’ll be that one.