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Let's Play Partia 2: I Can't Believe It's Not Fire Emblem!


epilepsyduck
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In a sea of LPs of FE games and ROMhacks made by people far funnier and more talented than I could ever dream to be, one LP stands alone...

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Partia 2: The Pretenders War, made by Imago Software and a sequel to their previous game (which, from what I can tell, is the only other game they've released), could best be described as "Fire Emblem for Android and iOS". It's got a few distinct features of its own to make it a bit less of a carbon copy, but it'd definitely pass a paternity test and leave Fire Emblem dodging child support payments. The team who made it were clearly rather small and working on a low budget, though, so it's obviously lacking in a lot of areas (though not as much so as its prequel, from what I've heard). It's a bit like eating off-brand food you found at the dollar store; it resembles the thing it's imitating well enough, but it isn't quite as good as the real deal. Still, aside from the slightly fiddly controls (which are mostly a problem thanks to how ridiculously small the portion of the screen that's actually dedicated to game graphics is), it's a decent little SRPG, and certainly orders better than most strategy games and RPGs on the Play Store.

Anyway, I'll be transcribing the dialogue (of which there is a lot) and explaining the mechanics as best I can, but due to a general lack of documentation and the complete lack of a script, I'm liable to miss a few things. You'll just have to bear with me on that. I've also only played up to a certain point, so the informativeness of this LP might decline later. I'll be trying to maintain an every-other-day schedule if I can.

Anything the characters themselves are saying will be italics, new character names will be in bold, my own comments will be normal

Enough of my dull babbling, though, let's get on with things:

Chapter 1 Prelude: So many words

 

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This is the screen that comes up when you hit "new game". While Horse Rule and Active Turn are interesting mechanics, I'll be leaving them off for the time being. I might change my mind later, since you can flip them back on between battles if you want.

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We get to name our hero, who I guess is basically like a cross between the Tactician from FE7 and the Avatars of more recent games; he's playable and actually important to the plot, unlike the former, but he's nowhere near as customizable or as much of a player-insert as the latter.

(Kade isn't his default name btw: as far as I know he doesn't actually have one.)

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We cut to our hero standing in a graveyard, apparently suffering from a case of dead parents and missing portrait in equal measure.

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Suddenly, the second malady is miraculously cured! I quite like the portraits in this game, they're rather spiffy.

Kade: I'll be leaving this damn town today. I won't be back until I become somebody.

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Suddenly, we cut to the village gate.

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This purple-haired loser is Raf, Kade's best buddy. Unlike Kade's other best buddy (who we'll meet shortly), the writers saw fit to give him a proper introduction and backstory by showing that they grew up in the same town.

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Something I didn't notice when I was first taking these screenshots was that Kade has two portraits, one where he's smiling and one where he's not. They look borderline-identical, though, so it totally slipped past me at first. As far as I know, he's the only character with multiple portraits. Watch the game prove me wrong and make me look stupid.

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Kade: Yeah yeah, done and done.

Raf: Kade, you are awfully eager to skip town.

Kade: This place has nothing for me anymore.

Raf: So, what's your plan?

Kade: Become a soldier, find my fortune, show all the idiots in town who they messed with.

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There's a few scenes after this, some of which have dialogue, some of which don't. I completely fucked up getting screenshots of all this, so I don't have all the dialogue from it, but there wasn't that much of it and I'm 98% sure none of this is going to come up again later, so I hope you won't burn me at the stake for my failures.

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We cut to our heroes sitting around a campfire, helpfully narrating how long it's been since the previous scenes happened.

Kade: Has it? Hmm...

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This girl is Serene, Kade's other best buddy. The game make no indication of when they met or how they became friends, so she's just kind of suddenly here.

Raf: Yeah, but Kade here, is sure to make a captain. Congrat!

Kade: Guys, shut up and get some rest.

"Yeah, a lot of our allies and comrades died, but you're totally getting a promotion, dude. It all balances out!"

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Now we're in a random throne room, facing the king/duke/leader-dude whose name I don't remember.

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... are we being promoted to Captain or knighted? Why do you need to "anoint" someone to make them a captain?

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That doesn't make sense as a response to what he just said, but ok.

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We're outside with our friends, after becoming a knight/captain/whatever

Raf: New comission and a new mission. What's it about?

Kade: We are to inspect a garrison near Pirin.

Serene: Inspection? For a war hero like you?

Kade: Work is a work. Let's go.

"Work is a work". Wiser words have never been spoken.

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Random, dialogue free scene of our heroes standing on a cliff. Then they just wordlessly move of screen.

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We'll be seeing a screen like this every chapter, detailing what we'll be up to. They're generally wordier than this.

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Raf: If the general had coughed when he started saying it, you might never know.

Kade: Come to think of it, you might be right. Why else would he put you in my unit?

Raf: Somebody has to babysit you, don't he? Anyways, we must be nearing that village soon.

Kade: A roof for a night is a welcoming thought.

Raf: I heard rumors of a beautiful serving girl at the inn there.

Kade: The things you waste your coins on.

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Everyone moves up the road a tad. I only just barely caught Serene moving, or else this screenshot would've made it look like they teleported there.

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I think we're about to happen upon the age-old , much loathed bandit chapter.

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Suddenly, some old people appear and flee the village. I'm sure they'll live a very long time.

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Unfortunately for them, some bandits make themselves known and cut them both down.

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Man, is it me, or are bandits always the ugliest fuckers imaginable.

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You're wrong of course. It's not their turn yet, silly!

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Finally, battle. While the map is actually a lot bigger than this, this is pretty much the only part that matters. There's a few visitable houses and a cave that basically functions the same way, but I don't have screenshots of what any of them say, so their dialogue is lost to antiquity. None of them give out items, at any rate, so clearly they're not important!

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This is our brave hero, and as you can see, he's faintly mediocre. From what I can tell, he's can get really powerful, though, and we don't really have much of a choice when it comes to using him, so we may as well feed him. Potions are just vulneraries, but they have 1 use and so are super-annoying to stock up on. I'll explain "surrounded penalty" in the growths section.

Check out those exciting descriptions, though! (In all seriousness, I might cut the description page entirely. Literally all the units in the next chapter have the exact same description iirc.)

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Raf here is a little stronger and beefier then his buddy, but not quite as fast or accurate. His Charisma skill is pretty nifty, working exactly as it does in the Jugdral games, though it it doesn't have the same range. Still useful to have around, though.

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Serene here might seem your typical shitty archer, and in some ways she is, but she's got a hidden ace up her sleeve...

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Skills-wise, she's clearly our star player so far. Rapid Fire basically lets her imitate a brave-weapon effect with any weapon in the game that she can equip, and the only cost is a really minor accuracy penalty (which I think Charisma cancels out in addition to its 10% boost, though I'm not 100% on that). Calm is also nice, since enemies in Partia are a lot more likely to fire off critical hits then they are in more FE games.

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Naturally, her description is identical to the other two. IDK why they bothered, really.

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So, how will this epic clash between our main characters and these no-name assholes end? Find out in the next update!

Growths, mechanics and stats

 

Stats in Partia 2 mostly work as the do in Fire Emblem. Magic works much as it does in Thracia, with it functioning both as magic damage and magic defense, and Luck, though still present, is hidden for some dumb reason. Movement also has a growth like in Thracia and Tear Ring Saga, and while everyone technically has a move growth, nobody's got one over 5%, so it's not something to get your hopes up about. There are also books that function the way crusader scrolls do in Thracia, with each of them basically being a carbon copy of one of the scrolls in Thracia, minus negating critical hits

.The "surrounded penalty" is basically an evasion penalty for when a lot of enemies are surrounding a unit. I'll quote Imago's official blog on this one:

Quote

directly touching = either up, down, left or right of the unit.
x = number of directly touching enemies – number of directly touching allies
y = number of close enemies (distance 2, so including diagonal) – number of close allies
z = number of somewhat close enemies (distance 3) – number of somewhat close allies
if (x == 1) evasion penalty + 5
if (x == 2) evasion penalty + 10
if (x == 3) evasion penalty + 20
if (x == 4) evasion penalty + 40 //surrounded

if (y > 0) evasion penalty + 2 * y
if (z > 0) evasion penalty + 1 * z

Basically, if a unit gets surrounded and there aren't enough friendlies nearby to help out, their evasion falls into the negaverse. This applies to all units, be they player units, allies, or enemies, and is mostly there to prevent one super-strong unit from just sitting on a fort and eviscerating everyone that comes by. It's a decent attempt, but sufficiently fast units are generally still going to dodge anyway unless they're just that outnumbered.

Enough mechanics, let's talk growths!

Kade:

HP: 70

STR: 30

SKL: 35

SPD: 35

MGC: 15

DEF: 25

LUK: 35

MOV: 5

The main character's clearly going for a jack-of-all-trades thing here, which could mean he'll either become great or mediocre. Let's hope it's the former!

Raf:

HP: 80

STR: 40

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 10

DEF: 35

LUK: 30

MOV: 5

That strength is pretty high as far as this game's concerned, and most of his other growths aren't that far behind Kade's. I think he'll do fine. Axes are pretty inaccurate in Partia 2, though, so let's hope he gets a little skill along the way.

Serene:

HP: 60

STR: 30

SKL: 35

SPD: 35

MGC: 15

DEF: 25

LUK: 20

MOV: 5

Those seem pretty average for this game, really. Her strength's the lowest of the current bunch, but she isn't as bad off as some of the characters we'll be meeting later, and Rapid Fire helps big time.

Contrary to what I said about my every-other-day schedule, the next update'll be coming a lot sooner then that. Let me know what you think!

Edited by epilepsyduck
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So... Fire Emblem, but worse? Sounds interesting, and I would know! Have a good time, I'm definitely going to read this.

Admittedly, I'm probably making it sound worse than it really is. It's hardly a bad game or anything, but it's made by a tiny, underfunded, inexperienced team, and it shows in more ways than one.

Hope you enjoy the LP, though! Admittedly it's the first one of these I've ever done, so it's probably not that great.

Alright, it's time for...

Chapter 1: Aggressively generic bandits

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Where we last left off, our heroes were engaged in an epic clash with a pair of immensely tough foes. Just when all seemed lost, however, one of them learned how to open his menu, saving himself and his allies from an eternity of staring at enemies who politely wait their turn to move.

As for the commands, Move, Item, and Rest do pretty much what you expect them to do (though why Move is a command and not something you do automatically upon selecting a unit is beyond me), Status just brings up the stat screen, and Cancel lets you back out of this menu.

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Everyone moves a little closer to the enemy. For whatever reason, Autoend Turns isn't a thing here, so we have to bring up the menu to do it.

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Suspend and End Turn have obvious uses, and I'll be showing off what the other commands do later. For now, let's end our turn.

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One bandit rushes down and immediately attacks Kade, despite a less dodgy and double-y target being available. The AI really loves to pick on him, presumably because his death ends the game.

Any way, neither of them hit each other during this fight. Kade even doubled him and missed both attacks. Maybe he heard me call him "mediocre" and offered this up as punishment.

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Serene comes up to show off her cool skill.

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Rapid Fire up top, just a basic attack on the bottom. You can see why I said I think Raf's Charisma is somehow cancelling out the accuracy penalty, though in hindsight maybe the skill is just a dirty liar and there is no penalty.

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Anywho, Serene knocks this guy down. I didn't manage to get the XP bar, since it appears for half a microsecond, but nobody levels up in this chapter anyway. I honestly have no idea how the XP formula works in this game.

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Here's Raf, simultaneously going up against the remaining bandit and showcasing his biggest flaw: he has major trouble hitting anything other than lance users. Let's hope he gets some skill to remedy that situation!

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Both of them hit each other, Raf hitting for far more then the bandit could ever dream of doing in return.

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It turns out Rapid Fire has another penalty that its skill description doesn't mention: it has a 1-turn cooldown period. It's still pretty cool despite that, it just means you can't spam it too much.

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Serene proves she doesn't need it, though, when she crits this guy's head off.

Unfortunately, this apparently triggered their trap card or something, because suddenly there's a cutscene:

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Hot Topic employee: Die, worms-

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After that intimidating scene, he proceeds to completely bungle the whole "killing people" thing.

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In this near-death experience, Kade's thoughts turn to architecture for comfort.

(actually, I just fucked up getting a screenshot)

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Everyone apparently remembered to wear their plot armor today, because not a single blow has landed in this whole cutscene!

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Anyway, the goth creep just sort of moves towards everyone, and they back up. I guess after his incredibly effective attack against Kade, they realize they're no match for him.

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Suddenly, a robot of some kind arrives with good news for our protagonists.

Hot topic employee: ...Very well. Let's go.

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Everyone just leaves.

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Kade: I don't know, but he could have killed us all by himself. Damn it!

Serene: The village is wasted.

Kade: There's no point in lingering on. Let's hurry to the keep.

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We get the stage results screen, and some much-needed funds for our team!

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We cut to what I think is a balcony. Is it me, or is the perspective kind of fucked up here?

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Oh, it's the king/duke/whatever guy!

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The general appears and moves down to greet his liege.

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This is General Victor. We'll be seeing more of him soon.

Generic leader: General Victor. Welcome. There is news of a revolt near Rushelm. I want you to investigate it further.

Victor: Rushelm, that is...

Generic leader: Duchess Mabel may not be able to deal with this alone. Also it possibly involves a claimant.

Victor: ! That is quite serious then.

Generic leader: It is all but a rumor until proven otherwise. At first we need to strengthen the border and gather intelligence...

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This guy suddenly starts talking. Apparently he's the generic ruler man's son.

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Gee, I wonder if he's talking about us.

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We'll do you one better, we're already in Pirin. Truly we're the right guys for the job!

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General Victor can sense that his time here is done, so he leaves the non-euclidean balcony.

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Generic leader: I doubt it. If he was under our noses all this time, we would have known. But still it is not to be taken lightly of. Malak's dog is off his leash and he is very dangerous.

Generic son: I saw the report saying Saracut already cross the river with a sizable host.

Generic leader: Yes, but since then with no haste. What is he scheming?

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Then, apropros of nothing, we're treated to our camp/village screen. It functions like a cross between the castles in Genealogy and the base menu in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. Overall it's a rather nice feature.

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That's enough for this update, though. Stay tuned to see the biggest clusterfuck of a defense mission I've ever seen.

Mechanics, menus and stuff that I forgot to mention in the last update

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Here's the menu that comes up when you select "Units". Standard stuff, moving on.

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This is what you see when you select "Report". No, there is not a random brown square in the middle of the screen, that's actually what passes for our map. It's got little flashing red and blue dots on it, and it's currently blank because I'm the worst at everything.

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Here's what comes up when you hit "Options". You can also access this from the title screen. While it's immensely tempting to boost the message speed and set the dialogue to auto-scroll, if I do that I won't be able to actually transcribe any of it, so those options are staying how they are. The Control option allows for two options, single tap and double tap, the latter of which just makes the already slightly awkward controls even worse.

Also, it turns out there's a couple mechanics about growth rates that I forgot to mention. The first is that, when a unit on your side dies, all the other units get a 25% boost to their growths for one turn. The second has to do with HP: units get a 10% bonus at 3HP, a 20% bonus at 2HP, and a 30% at 1HP. Combining all these mechanics with the books means that those relatively low looking growths can get boosted to absolutely crazy levels if you plan carefully. Luck apparently also used to boost growth rates (which is extra fun given that Luck is invisible to us), but apparently was removed because, and I quote, "after some considerations of complaints from Ayra that the end game was too easy, I removed it in effort to make the game more challenging. Ha ha."

Because I'm really good at contradicting myself, the next update should be up tomorrow instead of the next day. It's almost like this schedule didn't mean anything!

Edited by whenbananasattack
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Alright, everyone, strap in for more exciting bandit action with...

Chapter 2 Prelude 1: All about that base

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Where we last left off, we'd been rather abruptly introduced to the base menu. This update'll mostly be us exploring this magical wonderland.

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Let's start with the Camp menu. The Camp has two possible options, but only "Items" is worth your time. "Organize" just lets you rearrange the order people are in on the menu, and thus is totally useless and will never see the light of day.

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Access Cargo and Item Exchange, respectively. They kind of speak for themselves.

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Enough camping, let's visit!

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We got a blacksmith, an item shop, an inn, and a pub. As tempting as developing alcoholism sounds right now, we'll be visiting them in order, so the pub'll have to wait.

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This jolly gentleman appears when you enter the blacksmith. Every shop in the game has at least one shopkeeper whose portrait and dialogue appears every time you enter their store, and the pub's got no less than three of them. It's exactly as annoying as it sounds, especially if you don't have the text set to "fast"!

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As far as weapons are concerned, he only has iron and wooden weapons for sale. One semi-interesting thing about the shops is that none of the items have infinite stock, and you can buy back items you sold to the shops as long as you don't go on to the next chapter. It's a bit like Genealogy, but without weapon repairs.

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Now we move on to a more unique (and vastly more annoying) aspect of the game: armor and shields. Armor basically raises your defense as long as it's equipped and loses durability whenever you take a hit, and shields are similar except they only boost your defense randomly during combat instead of all the time, and their bonus stacks with the armor one. They're nice bonuses for your characters, but any enemy who wears them becomes a tedious grindfest where you have to waste weapon hits just to break their equipment before you can even dream of doing damage. It doesn't help that the only classes who can equip already have high defenses anyway.

I don't bother buying any of these items. None of our three characters can actually equip armor, at any rate, and I'd rather not have them filling their inventory with junk just so they can trade it to someone who can actually use it during a battle.

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Here's the item shop.

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Items shops are pretty much like shops in GBAFE, selling both items and magic. The magic tab's completely empty right now, though, so it's basically like those early game shops that sell nothing but vulneraries.

Again, no shopping was done. Potions are annoyingly expensive given that they have only one use, and we won't be needing any keys in the coming chapter.

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The true purpose of the inn is for healing (why you'd need to heal while in the base menu will be revealed later), but occasionally you'll find units here that you can hire. I think this happens about six times in the whole game. Let's see what kind of super-powered recruit we can find here!

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Y'know, I always felt like the bench needed to be a bit warmer. You'll do just fine for that!

So, yeah, of those six recruits I told you about, five of them are randomized, which means no portrait, no description, rarely any skills, and often just plain garbage bases. I also have no way of checking their growth rates, so using them runs the risk of wasting XP on a unit who'll never be any good (though XP isn't quite as hard to come by in Partia as it is in a normal FE game). Just to rub salt in the wound, this guy can't come with us into the next chapter, so he can't even prove himself more useful then his pathetic bases would indicate.

Let's leave this den of depression and finally get a drink!

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Wait... there's no option to get drunk here. I WAS LIED TO!

So, yeah, the pub kind of feels like the place where the developers put features that they really wanted to add to the base menu, but couldn't find a better place for. You'll see what I mean shortly.

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"Talk" just brings up a single line of generic dialogue providing (often incredibly stupid or redundant) advice. It's like the augury mechanic in Blazing Sword if Hannah and Nils just told you to go fuck yourself after you paid them. At least this advice is free.

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I what I guess is a combination of Secret Shops and Aimee's Bargains, the Merchant sells a bunch of rare and useful items for a ridiculous sum of money. There's pretty much no way we can afford any of this stuff right now.

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The Guild Man is effectively an arena up to the point that I've played currently, and I have no idea if later it'll start offering up non-arena missions. You still have to wager your money and life to compete here, but it's not quite as it was in normal FE:

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The arena is an actual battlefield, albeit a small, featureless one. I guess because of the lack of battle animations they thought it'd be boring to just watch to sprites flail at each other for twenty minutes.

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Here's the problem with armor and shields making itself known. That 2 damage isn't factoring in all those times his shield activates and adds even more to his already high defense, making Raf do a whopping 0 damage. Enemies in the main campaign don't always have armor and shields, but enemies in the arena not only always have them if they can equip them, they always have the best armor and shields available to them. Grinding in the arena is certainly still possible, but it takes a lot of rejecting missions whose difficulty is higher than "Hard" to be feasible, which is tedious as fuck.

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After Raf finally kills this fucker, his weapon is nearly broken and his health is low. You don't automatically heal once you've finished an arena mission, so you've got to go to the inn.

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Unfortunately, in addition to paying a fee, you have to have potions in your cargo (and not your unit's inventory, it must specifically be the cargo) to use the inn. The good news is you don't need a potion for each unit, but units can share potions between them instead, though you'll still need multiples if you have a lot of injured units. Of course, if you don't have a lot of potions on hand, you'll have to spend 200 crown a pop to do any healing, which gets pretty expensive. Ultimately, grinding in the arena is rarely worth it for that reason.

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Let's check out one more place before we head out into the world. The "Misc" menu.

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As you can see, it's just the place to turn on all those options we saw at the beginning of the game. They're staying off for now, though.

Let's actually start the chapter.

Chapter 2 Prelude 2: I hate ponies so much

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More bandits. Weeeeeee!

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This dude's Herman, and neither he nor anyone else we're about to meet is important as far as I can tell. They're not exactly an exciting bunch.

Kade: How many?

Herman: Ten... fifteen... there more coming behind them.

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Kori here has no intention of calling the bandits after this. Apparently it wasn't a great first date.

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Mark shows up to tell us we're even more outnumbered than we thought.

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Charlotte basically reiterates what Mark said, and apparently forgets how to count in the process. No, I did not take a screenshot too early, shut up.

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Quent comes in just to tell us how boned we are, I guess.

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Kade makes liberal use of his ellipses to hammer home how shitty the situation is. C'mon, dude, you're not a silent protagonist, don't act like one!

Serene: If this keep fails those bandits will pour into Elsace. We must do everything to prevent them from breaking the keep or reaching the western road.

Raf: Yeah but don't risk your neck doing it. Maybe it's best we let them get past us. Certainly the duke must be sending his army to defend the land. We've been delaying them for weeks!

Kade: They have numbers but they lack the training or discipline.

Raf: We've mostly new recruits only.

Kade: But they are alright. This is a good bunch.

Raf: Yeah. So I really don't want to see them dying on us.

Kade: Agreed.

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It's the twin brother of the bandit from before, coming to avenge his fallen kin!

Ugly Fuck: Go you worthless swine! Move!

Anyway, I think it's time to check out our new grunts! I won't be showing anybody's descriptions from here on out unless someone pitches a fit about it, because none of them are interesting and these guys all have the exact same description anyway.

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Herman's base speed is fucking garbage, and his skill is frankly even shittier. He's nowhere near tanky enough for such a huge evasion penalty to be anything but crippling. I don't have high hopes for him.

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Kori's base speed isn't quite as bad as Herman, but frankly he's not exactly usable right now either. Continue is orders better than Counter Attacker, but he needs to get lucky and grow out of those bases if he wants to actually contribute at all.

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Quent is our only magic use right now, and he's going to be a huge asset in this chapter. Whether or not he continue to be useful depends entirely on how he chooses to grow and whether or not any better magic users come along the way.

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Mark is some much needed meat for our team (he's actually faster than Herman, which is just inexcusable), and his skill makes him an even better tank than he already was. A shame we don't have any shields to take full advantage of it, though.

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Charlotte's a bit of an oddity. She's hardly a bad unit, but her bases are completely outclassed by Mark, and her skill is too niche to really make up for that. Still, we need units who can kill something tougher than a butterfly, and who won't die when someone sneezes on them, and in that she's undeniable better than the cavaliers.

And no, I don't know why she has proficiency points in a weapon type she can't use. Maybe she used to be an axe armor and changed professions recently.

So, can our assorted team of weaklings and war heroes fight off the ridiculously large swarm of bandits that'll soon be at their gates? Let's hope so!

Growths

Herman:

HP: 60

STR: 40

SKL: 30

SPD: 25

MGC: 5

DEF: 25

LUK: 10

MOV: 5

As if it wasn't bad enough that they gave him bad bases and a skill that ruins his evasion on enemy phase, they've given him growths to assure that he will never, ever be able to dodge or tank reliably. He's lucky his class can equip shields and armor, because otherwise he'd be completely unusable.

Kori:

HP: 50

STR: 30

SKL: 30

SPD: 25

MGC: 5

DEF: 25

LUK: 10

MOV: 5

So much for growing out of your bases. Your growths are worse than Herman's!

Quent:

HP: 50

STR: 10

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 30

DEF: 15

LUK: 10

MOV: 5

Those aren't exactly great, but I guess they could be worse. Mage's can kind of get away with so-so growths given how few enemies have high magic.

Mark:

HP: 60

STR: 33 (might be a typo? somewhere in the 30-35 range, anyway.)

SKL: 30

SPD: 20

MGC: 5

DEF: 30

LUK: 10

MOV: 5

Honestly, given that his bases aren't in the fucking toilet and his skill sort of helps his defense, I can handle his sort of meh growths. Seemingly everyone in Partia 2 is kind of meh.

Charlotte:

HP: 60

STR: 30

SKL: 30

SPD: 25

MGC: 5

DEF: 40

LUK: 10

MOV: 5

She seems designed to actually be a slightly better tank that Mark, with those growths, but Charge is still less useful than Shielder, so I guess it kind of balances out.

Divided into parts for easier reading.

Edited by whenbananasattack
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There are also 7 Russian mobile Fire Emblem games, haha. These production values seem astronomical in comparison.

Seriously? Are there any LPs I can read?

Not that this one isn't interesting. They seem to be hiking up the scale of the battles quite quickly.

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Seriously? Are there any LPs I can read?

Not that I know of. I only found out about them thanks to Celice and have never seen anyone talk about them since. Most of the games function fine on KEmulator and are fairly intuitive to play even if you don't know Russian, so trying any of them out is an option.

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Also, it turns out there's a couple mechanics about growth rates that I forgot to mention. The first is that, when a unit on your side dies, all the other units get a 25% boost to their growths for one turn. The second has to do with HP: units get a 10% bonus at 3HP, a 20% bonus at 2HP, and a 30% at 1HP. Combining all these mechanics with the books means that those relatively low looking growths can get boosted to absolutely crazy levels if you plan carefully. Luck apparently also used to boost growth rates (which is extra fun given that Luck is invisible to us), but apparently was removed because, and I quote, "after some considerations of complaints from Ayra that the end game was too easy, I removed it in effort to make the game more challenging. Ha ha."

Yeah, I'm the one guilty of that. I went back and forth with the developer of the game with LONG e-mails about the balance and story problems. I had no ideas about Luck even existing in this game in the earlier version, or the "low hit points growth bonus" thing honestly. No units have speed growths over 5%? I guess I really lucked out then: Selena and Raf had 9 mov at game's end if I remember well for example.

Anyway, in my opinion the biggest problem in this game is the experience gain works. A lot of stages have huge amounts of units (and cavalries have Canto on top of that), so you need a few elite units able to tank the blows. You get about the same exp for being hit than you do in killing a unit, so your "tank" units gain experience drastically faster than any other unit. The exp formula also barely affects higher level units, so the offset keeps growing worse. I'm someone who always try to use a lot of units and I forced myself to spread the experience around, but even then I couldn't prevent getting a few units that were basically invincible the closer I got to endgame.

Following that, the developers decided to make an Hard Mode to the game, as well as cutting experience gains all across the board. This only served to make the problem worse:comparatively, your super units will be even more super, and your other guys that can't tank will fall behind really fast and be useless. For example, to do stage 2 on hard (The one you are at right now), I used 100% of the mage's book charges and he gained less than 2 levels. On the other hand, Raf had gained like 7 levels since he was one of the only characters that could even barely survive the enemy rush, even at the best chokepoint, with Mark not far behind. None of the cavalry units (except for the reinforcement one) could survive more than one attack and were effectively useless. I didn't have the growth rates for them, but from what I see here they have no potential either...

Despite that, for the price I think it was worth it, especially for an Andorid game (Sword Requiem is basically the only better Fire Emblem-like game I have seen on Android, and it has a huge amount of bugs and translation issues). I enjoyed my playthrough overall.

Thanks for this playthrough! I'll be reading it for sure: I'm looking forward to reading it, especially to see how your feelings are compared to mine! Also kind of curious to see what strategy you'll use for that chapter, since it's one of the hardest and most fun in the game in my opinion (despite 75% of your units being utterly useless during it on Hard).

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There are also 7 Russian mobile Fire Emblem games, haha. These production values seem astronomical in comparison.

Wow, I didn't know about those! They seem kinda neat, though you're right when you say Partia 2's the better presented game by quite a margin.

Seriously? Are there any LPs I can read?

Not that this one isn't interesting. They seem to be hiking up the scale of the battles quite quickly.

That sounds like a suggestion.

Yeah, despite the chapter being about fending off a bandit raid, the scale of this battle is considerably larger than the previous one. It certainly doesn't feel like the typical lame bandit chapters at the start of most FE games.

Yeah, I'm the one guilty of that. I went back and forth with the developer of the game with LONG e-mails about the balance and story problems. I had no ideas about Luck even existing in this game in the earlier version, or the "low hit points growth bonus" thing honestly. No units have speed growths over 5%? I guess I really lucked out then: Selena and Raf had 9 mov at game's end if I remember well for example.

Anyway, in my opinion the biggest problem in this game is the experience gain works. A lot of stages have huge amounts of units (and cavalries have Canto on top of that), so you need a few elite units able to tank the blows. You get about the same exp for being hit than you do in killing a unit, so your "tank" units gain experience drastically faster than any other unit. The exp formula also barely affects higher level units, so the offset keeps growing worse. I'm someone who always try to use a lot of units and I forced myself to spread the experience around, but even then I couldn't prevent getting a few units that were basically invincible the closer I got to endgame.

Following that, the developers decided to make an Hard Mode to the game, as well as cutting experience gains all across the board. This only served to make the problem worse:comparatively, your super units will be even more super, and your other guys that can't tank will fall behind really fast and be useless. For example, to do stage 2 on hard (The one you are at right now), I used 100% of the mage's book charges and he gained less than 2 levels. On the other hand, Raf had gained like 7 levels since he was one of the only characters that could even barely survive the enemy rush, even at the best chokepoint, with Mark not far behind. None of the cavalry units (except for the reinforcement one) could survive more than one attack and were effectively useless. I didn't have the growth rates for them, but from what I see here they have no potential either...

Despite that, for the price I think it was worth it, especially for an Andorid game (Sword Requiem is basically the only better Fire Emblem-like game I have seen on Android, and it has a huge amount of bugs and translation issues). I enjoyed my playthrough overall.

Thanks for this playthrough! I'll be reading it for sure: I'm looking forward to reading it, especially to see how your feelings are compared to mine! Also kind of curious to see what strategy you'll use for that chapter, since it's one of the hardest and most fun in the game in my opinion (despite 75% of your units being utterly useless during it on Hard).

Wow, really? That's kinda cool. I thought about sending an email to get some info on some of the more opaque mechanics from the devs, but given how long it's been since their blog's seen an update, I wasn't sure if I'd get a response.

Thanks for explaining XP formula, since frankly I had no idea how it worked. That system does seem to favor tankier units over glass cannons, which I guess is a bit of a reverse from the usual state of affairs in FE. Honestly, I kind of wish they'd imitated the XP system of the FE games a bit more closely, since some of my units end chapter 2 extremely close to level 20. Raf in particular is basically unstoppable now.

Also, thanks for reading! It probably looks like I'm coming down too hard on this game, but I do actually like it, I'm just sort of annoyed with some of its mechanics. Armor and shields in particular just make combat with some enemies take forever. I also had trouble with how small the portion of the screen dedicated to actual game graphics is and how unresponsive the controls occasionally felt, but that might just be because of my shitty eyesight and clumsy fingers.

The update'll be up later tonight, since I'm still in the midst of cropping the screenshots and everything. I actually had to start the game over and rerecord this chapter, so a few things will be different from the last update (namely, we get a random recruit who doesn't suck).

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Once again, we prep ourselves for a huge helping of bandits with...

A brief interlude: Kade and Raf's grinding adventure

So, tonight we're starting off with a new save. Nobody gained any levels in the prologue still, but a few things are different now:

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First order of business, we've done away with Phuirt the Phailure and replaced him with Nal'at the Noble. Seriously, though, those base stats seem a hair ridiculous for a level 6 wyvern knight. Sadly, like Phuirt, she isn't coming with us into the battle proper.

Now, Nal'at here cost over 6000 crowns to recruit, which was nearly double what I started with. In order to gather up the money to hire this lady, I had to do a lot of arena grinding. The end result:

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Our brave heroes are looking a lot more buff these days. Unfortunately, I had almost no money after all this, so Serene ended up going into battle with a Wooden Bow instead of an Iron one.

Anyway, onto the not-that-anticipated battle itself!

(A word of warning here; This update's pretty long and has a lot of images)

Chapter 2: The siege of the level-up screens

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Again, there's a massive amount of space in this chapter that goes basically totally unused. There's a bunch of houses scattered around the battlefield, but since merely reaching them would take longer then actually winning the battle, I didn't manage to see what they say, nor if any of them give us nifty items. I'm truly the worst LPer.

Now, in my first playthrough of this chapter, I found myself trying to give everyone equal attention and XP, a move which just resulted in my forces being slowly pushed back and caused the repeated deaths of our two resident failures, Herman and Kori. Eventually, the bandits had completely overrun the fort itself and we were basically holding them off from outside the western gate.

This time, I'm not making that mistake.

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Kade and Raf will be holding the eastern side of the fort, with Serene and Quent providing (completely unnecessary, it turns out) ranged support. Meanwhile, Charlotte and Mark will be doing the lion's share of the work on the northern side, while the cavaliers pick off stragglers where they can.

Let's take a peak at our unworthy foes.

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To the west we've got these nine jerks, who'll be receiving an additional nine dudes to back them up. On my first run, these guys were the ones giving me headaches, but this time around, they'll be a lot more manageable with a levelled-up Kade and Raf on the job.

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This is pretty much the most threatening foe on the eastern side. 3 magic isn't exactly a lot, and he's not exactly all that accurate, but getting hit can take quite the bite out of a unit's HP, so it's best to squish him ASAP.

Also, those coins are basically this game's version of gems or bullion. All the enemies this chapter are at least carrying one. I'm sure it doesn't indicate anything about any new recruits we might be getting. Honest.

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These dudes up here will also be getting reinforcements, but later in the battle. Given that the north gate is being defended by a motley team of losers and rejects, this side of the battle will probably be a bit more difficult.

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This guy's a bit of an asshole. His stats aren't much to look at, but that "Eastern Sword" is basically a Wo Dao/Shamshir, and thus it can occasionally crit and bring units dangerously close to death. As long as he only targets the armors, though, things'll probably be ok.

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This is how our party is arranged at the end of the turn. I had Charlotte use "Charge", which not only requires her to not attack, but she's not even allowed to move in the same turn as using Charge. This skill sucks.

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Enemies move. The eastern guys will take an additional turn to engage, but the guys to the north are already in position to slap our units around.

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Herman moves up to plug the gap between Mark and Charlotte. I hope he doesn't get too fucked up in the process. Kori, meanwhile, will be demonstrating Partia's version of dismounting.

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This is the dismounted cavalier sprite. Despite the sprite seemingly holding a sword, Kori is still only able to equip lances. I'm sure everyone who gets really mad at Thracia for screwing lance knights over will rejoice.

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Kori actually hasn't lost any of his combat stats or skills in the process of abandoning his mount. Frankly, dismounting feels a bit half-implemented in Partia 2, but given how shitty the cavaliers are I guess I understand not penalizing them further.

I put him back on his horse after this. His only advantage right now is 7 movement, he doesn't need that yanked away from him.

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Charlotte's use of Charge is immediately wasted by this nomad shooting at her. It was such a fantastic use of her turn, too!

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These guys are still moving. They'll be engaging our Destructive Duo next turn.

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Before they can reach us, though, they get some backup! Honestly, you can see why this side of the fort was the first to fall on my first run through this chapter. There's even a promoted unit with them!

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Mind you, "promoted" doesn't mean "formidable". He's even got a skill that allows both us and him to ignore defense in a battle, meaning his one OK stat sometimes gets nullified!

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I totally end up doing this like the idiot that I am. At least he doesn't crit me a second time.

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On the enemy phase, Kade doubles an armor dude and gives us this bleh level.

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I can't tell if Mark's level here is better or worse.

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And then this asshole crits Herman and nearly kills him. I have no one to blame but myself, really.

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Charlotte is bizarrely dodgy for an armor unit. Of course, she ends up missing the cavalier, too.

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Raf's first engagement of the chapter is similarly disappointing. God, you guys are such a letdown.

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Hearing news of how pathetic these guys are, a few allies show up to even the odds!

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Here's Nan, our first thief unit!

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And Petros, our first healer! You will certainly be needed.

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Our resident grouch Bendt is making his single personality trait known. Maybe he's just angry that his parents named him "Bendt".

Nan: Bendt, get over it.

Bendt: Get over what? That lucky bastard. I should've made the captain not him!

Nan: (sigh) Complain it to the general yourself. Let's move on.

Enough of Bendt tsundere-ing up the air, let's look at our new scrubs:

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Certainly a better showing than the starting cavaliers were giving me. Let's hope your higher bases correspond to better growths.

They don't!

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Generic earlygame healer. I have no idea if he even promotes or not, since I can't find any promotion bonuses for healers on the page that has all the promotions listed. Either way, we'll need him, at least for now.

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Nan's a thief, with all the good and bad that such a thing implies. She's not really much of a fighter, and seriously risks falling behind if you aren't constantly babying her, but she provides some useful utility so you don't have to clutter up your inventory with keys, and she can steal from enemies.

No, I don't particularly know why she comes with a key, given that she doesn't need it to unlock stuff.

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Serene is having serious trouble actually denting most of these enemies, what with her low strength and crappy weapon. Kind of wish I had left her with the half-broken iron one instead, almost. She crits this guy, at least, trying to prove that she's still relevant.

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Herman retreats from his little misadventure. Honestly, I don't know why I thought I could rely on him. Kori moves in temporarily until Bendt can fill in for him.

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Kori manages to kill this guy. I'm sure it was entirely by accident.

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Charlotte gets her first level. More survivability is always good.

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Mark manages to actually hit this myrmidon/"East S" guy, killing him immediately. Finally done with that crit-happy pest!

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Next turn, Petros heals Herman, presumably making fun of his incompetence all the while. Nan heads down to unlock that shiny treasure chest.

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Mark, my lovely little meatshield, Strength is great, but I'd like if you got some Speed or Defense at some point, too.

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Serene, in a desperate scramble to prove herself more than just another shitty earlygame archer, nabs a couple essentials, and magic just because.

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Now's not the time to start slacking, Raf! Just because you could probably handle this whole level yourself is no excuse for laziness!

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Suddenly, these guys show up. We've pretty much mopped up the first wave, though, so they shouldn't be too bad.

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Nan finds a skill scroll. From what I can tell, this chest has random stuff in it, which is pretty neat. I'm not sure if all houses and chests are like that.

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Serene kills a man. I think this is the first kill she's gotten the whole chapter.

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I move Kade and Raf forward to deal with the dregs. These guys should be all cleaned up in a couple of turns, and then everyone here can help the losers hold their shit together up north.

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Raf chooses not to disappoint me this time around. I think he might be our best unit at this point.

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Kori moves up and kills a bandit. Can anyone see the brilliant strategic move I've made here that is not at all a terrible mistake?

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Charlotte, with a shake of her head and a weary sigh, moves up to stop Kori from getting trampled.

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She gets a pretty good level out of it. Movement on an armor unit's always nice.

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Mark clears the way for another unit to help out.

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Herman does his very best, which, as we all know, simply isn't good enough.

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Petros gets such a genuinely terrible level it might prove fatal to viewers. Avert your eyes.

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Quent gets in on the "shitty first level" action.

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Some meh level-ups in the same turn. Herman's at least trying to make up for his flaws: Kori just plain fails to deliver.

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Now that his friends have successfully saved him from my his own stupidity, Kori retreats. Frankly, he's lucky he didn't die, because he came pretty close.

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Mark heard about the club where all the cool kids hang out, "HP-only levels", and decides he'd like a membership.

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Is Herman secretly a hemophiliac toddler riding a horse with a broken spine? God, he's so terrible.

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Meanwhile, in a far less shitty part of the fort, Serene and Quent kill the last two dudes. Raf and Kade are free to help, and Nan runs up to snag a few coins from the remaining bandits.

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Our formation is like this next turn. Bendt levels here, getting HP and Skl.

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As it turns out, stealing doesn't seem to work how it does in the FE games. I think it's based on Tear Ring Saga, where they can only steal on a successful hit (and even then, only some of the time). Given that the way thieves steal in TRS is the worst system imaginable, this is a crushing blow. Nan doesn't end up stealing anything this chapter.

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Charlotte keeps getting the essentials, apparently well aware of how much Mark outshined her. She might actually be slightly better than him now, if only because of her 6 move.

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Raf must have the biggest muscles in the world by this point.

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Why

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I think this kill went to Bendt. I don't remember. Anywho, this guy's the last one left, so the chapter finally ends.

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We need that money so badly.

The plot'll be coming in another post, because if I put it in this post we'd go over the image limit. Sorry to keep you waiting for the exciting, often confusingly-worded drama an intrigue of Partia 2.

Growths

Bendt:

HP: 70

STR: 30

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 5

DEF: 25

LUK: 15

MOV: 2

*sigh* I don't know what this game's got against cavaliers. I guess he's got better bases and a skill that isn't terrible, though. Maybe he'll surprise me.

Petros:

HP: 50

STR: 5

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 25

DEF: 15

LUK: 5

MOV: 2

Moving on.

Nan:

HP: 50

STR: 20

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 10

DEF: 20

LUK: 10

MOV: 2

Combat viability isn't in the cards for Nan, sadly, which is aggravating given the way stealing seems to work in this game. That speed is sort of weirdly low for a thief, too. I don't think she's going to amount to much.

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Forgive me, LP gods, I must triple post. Here's the plot stuff that couldn't make it into the last update, as well as the stats of our characters so far!

Chapter 2 Conclusion: Ten points from Duke Aran

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General Victor shows up to congratulate us for holing such a shitty fort with such shitty soldiers.

Kade: Thank you General.

Victor: Things are moving faster than I anticipated. The man who calls himself son of prince Eltir has gathered up quite a followers. They took Rushelm by force. Duchess Mabel is missing and presumed dead. It's a terrible affair. I'm on my way to Kolder to ask for some help from duke Severin on behalf of duke Aran. You will accompany me of course.

Kade: Yes sir.

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This might be my favorite line in the whole game so far. What the fuck does that even mean?

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Yes, Serene seems very... "aunty", I guess.

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Presumably because he can soar through the skies on his ass, or whatever it was you said?

Kade: No not really, sir.

Victor: It's because you have a cool head that makes fair decisions. I expect much from you now!

Kade: Yes sir!

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Just like that, we're in a fancy castle place.

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Apparently, we're requesting help from Severus Snape. I never realized he was a duke in addition to being a potions teacher!

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I'm sure he'll be very understanding and offer his aide with no strings attached.

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Or he'll just be a huge douchebag about it. I guess that's the more likely option.

Victor: Duke wanted me to remind you that this revolt involves a pretender to the throne.

Severin: Yes, I am aware- of the imposter called Aanon.

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Whoever this "Duke" is that seems to have replaced Duke Aran in Victor's heart, he's a very inquisitive fellow.

Severin: The old man still hasn't given up the search?

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It seems like any place called "the river lands" in fiction suffers a good deal from bloodshed and warfare. Just ask the Tullys!

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No, we came here to ask you to faff about.

Victor: Yes, m'lord. For the south.

Severin: I guess I might lend my lances for your cause, but only if you will oblige me a task.

Victor: Of course, m'lord

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Apparently the Snape household is having a little father-daughter spat that can only be solved with weapons. I'm sure you've seen similar situations in your own homes.

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We're spat back into the base menu.

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We finally get a chance to save. Next time, we'll be meeting someone who makes Serene look like Raf and one of our new recruits will meet their match.

Current Stats

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Kade got kind of overleveled, but it's turned him into one of our best units, so I'm not complaining too much.

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I have no idea how he got 7 movement, but honestly I don't care. Raf's only real flaw is his so-so speed, which is still a good deal ahead of a lot of other people's. Still, I guess that's got more due to massive overleveling than anything.

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Serene isn't quite as impressive as her buddies up there, but she's still ahead of the curve. I wish she'd get more strength, though, since she can't rely on Rapid Fire all the time.

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That's a decent strength stat I guess, but that 3 speed is just sad. I can't imagine him working out in the long run.

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While Kori's speed isn't completely terrible, everything else is just blah. I don't know where he gets off having such a smug portrait when he's such a weakling.

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Mark's definitely proved himself more capable than the disastrous duo known as Herman and Kori. 3 speed kind of worries me, though, but his defenses make up for it to some extent.

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It's hard to say whether Quent will be good or not when he's only got one level up so far. Not like we've got any better options for magic users yet, though.

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That extra point of movement does make her rather appealing, and she's got good defense and OK speed, but Mark beats her in strength and has a skill that isn't a waste of time to use, so I'd say things are about even.

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I don't think Nan leveled up at all, so it's hard to say whether she might prove useful. We kind of have to keep her around for thief utility anyway, but I just hope she doesn't turn out as mediocre as I think she will.

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There's really nothing to say about this guy. We need him because we need healers, and healers really don't have to care about stats that much.

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Bendt's probably the only cavalier worth putting any actual effort into, though his growths are just as mediocre as the other's. We'll see if he can catch up with the Kade/Raf train.

Edited by whenbananasattack
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Wow, nice LP. I'm also played this game right now. I'm now at stage 20.

In stage 2; you can visit the cave in the north-west, the house in the south, and the house in the east to get items. I think, the house in the south have Pride, and you can promote your hero with this item (Swordman-->Hero)...

Edited by Lanzz
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Nan actually has a pretty neat design, I might want to take notes; the round face, hairstyle, and face-tattoo all mix together pleasantly, and would probably look good in GBA format.

Yeah, most of the portraits in this game are really nice. The game's pretty decent graphically in general, I think.

OH WHAT THEY'RE ALREADY USING PREPROMOT-Oh nevermind. Seriously, that guy sucks.

I'm not sure why they even bothered making him a promoted unit.

Wow, nice LP. I'm also played this game right now. I'm now at stage 20.

In stage 2; you can visit the cave in the north-west, the house in the south, and the house in the east to get items. I think, the house in the south have Pride, and you can promote your hero with this item (Swordman-->Hero)...

I am a beacon of failure and regret.

Yeah, I had a feeling those houses probably had something nice in them, but I didn't get a chance to check because most of them are so ridiculously far away from the action. I guess I'll just have to live with the sting of my failure.

So, because I didn't plan ahead, the next update'll be coming tomorrow instead of today like it's supposed to. Sorry to keep you guys waiting.

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Nal'at (the dragoon) is utterly amazing. Her stats are better than most pre-promotes of that level, and she's not even promoted yet. I got her later than you did, but by the end of the game she was basically game-breaking good.

Holy eff the arena abuse! Yeah, I'm not expecting you to have any sort of challenge until the convoy chapter at the earliest... I admit it's kind of hard to not use it when its so utterly easy to abuse. Especially based on how hard the stage you just bet is if you don't do any arena fighting.

Raf also got a lot of movement too in my game. He got up to 8 movement relatively quickly and Serene got up to 9. Talking about Serene, she was incredibly good in my game, enough for her to basically be able to tank the entire enemy armies except for at the very end (where she was merely super durable). Much better than the one you are having for sure. Main character was very good too (especially after promotion where he can equip shields for even more invincibleness).

Healers don't promote at all in the game, and there's no other class that can heal besides them.

I got rid of all those cavaliers too as soon as I could (I think Bendt participated in a chapter or two and that was it). I did use the two female cavaliers you get with the caravan for great success later on (With a spoilery caveat I can't say),

I used Nan throughout the entire game and yeah, she never was any good at fighting. I didn't have the growth rates, but she definitively did follow them. The low speed in particular is annoying. And yes, she can only occasionally steal on success, so that's not impressive at all.

There's the Mug skill that allows you to select ANY item that is on the enemy unit. This includes their armor, shields and equiped weapons. I put that skill on Emily (one of the two female cavaliers), and she could literally steal everything with over 50% success rate. If you go to the arena, the enemies have really rare, powerful and expensive equipment. Steal everything, make a huge profit and kill them at your leasure. Based on how insane the armor and shield bonuses are, it was usually faster to steal the enemy armors before trying to kill them.

Unfortunately, Mug is thief-only now so this particular abuse is gone. Probably for the best actually: it allowed trivialising the game even further. That does remove some options to deal with armor and shield though...

"Apparently the Snape household is having a little father-daughter spat that can only be solved with weapons. I'm sure you've seen similar situations in your own homes."

I decline to answer this statement!

Edited by Ayra
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@Ayra: Man, it sounds like this game was actually easier in earlier versions than it is now. Sucks to hear the thing about healers, since it means they'll always be helpless and need constant babysitting.

Also, I didn't realize the "random" guys in the inn weren't actually random themselves, merely randomly placed. That's a little disappointing. Can you give me an idea of what other units make themselves known through the inns?

Thanks for explaining some of these mechanics, btw. Frankly, a lot of them are rather arcane and really should've been explained somewhere in the game itself.

Someone here is bad at keeping herself on schedule and it's me! I'm still sort of in the middle of organizing and uploading the screenshots for the chapter proper, so until then, have:

Chapter 3 Prelude: Mysterious free weapons

Most of this update'll be taking place in the base menu. Sorry to make you wait this long for something so trivial.

The first thing I did here was take all our new recruits from the previous chapter (minus Petros for obvious reasons), and give them one level in the arena, with Bendt taking so long to actually kill his opponent that he ended up getting two. I contemplated doing more, but even getting all of them a single level was frankly kind of tedious, and I have no patience for it. Besides, we don't need to snap the difficulty of this game over our knee any more than we already have.

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First we have Herman stubbornly refusing to get out of his rut.

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Then we have Kori, desperately trying to avoid the chopping block. If I didn't already have it on good authority that you suck, this might've changed my mind about you.

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Despite an impressive showing in the last chapter, Charlotte fails to deliver here. At least she got strength.

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Mark is determined to become as beefy as Raf, no matter what it takes. He even got speed!

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Quent actually had to go through the arena twice to level up, providing us a mishmash of stats he doesn't need while missing the ones he does.

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Bendt had two chances to impress me, and he failed both times. He may as well have glued his ass to the bench.

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Nan took for-fucking-ever to actually kill this dude, but eventually nabbed his potion.

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Bleh.

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Anyway, I sent Charlotte in a second time purely to test that Blessing scroll I got, and discovered a mysterious new option when she moved to the top of the stage.

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We got an item! I have no idea why or how, but we did!

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Anyway, this is what the scroll gives us. I didn't end up letting Charlotte keep this, and I haven't let anyone else use it yet. I might just sell it.

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After I healed everyone at the inn, I decided to check out this new recruit. Let's hope he's better than our current mage.

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He most certainly is! Admittedly, that's probably got more to do with his higher level, but still. He's also the only one of the inn recruitables with a portrait and (completely generic, mind you) description, so bonus points for that!

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Here's Quent right now, for reference. Kerns is better in literally everything but speed, and on that merit they're merely equal. Still, we'll have to wait and see his growths before we decide who's truly better overall.

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Also, this is what the lady in the pub has to say to us. Gee, thanks, I would never have guessed.

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Here's the unit deployment screen, which I don't remember if I showed yet or not. It didn't appear last chapter, but it does appear for the arena.

Kade is mandatory, unsurprisingly, and we can only bring five other units. I bring Kerns, Nal'at, Serene, Petros, and Nan. Raf's sitting this out, since I'd like to at least pretend there's some sort of challenge present.

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Kade is being brought in to deal with an unauthorized flag, which goes against city code ordinance. These fiendish criminals must be stopped!

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Victor talks trash about the puny rebels we'll be facing. Given that his already-promoted ass could probably handle all of them, I don't know why he bothered bringing us.

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Again, given the fact that you two are hilarious powerful compared to the rebels here, and have a massive army with you, I fail to see why you need six guys to twiddle their thumbs at the ass end of the battlefield.

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"Yes sir" is Kade's only contribution to this entire conversation.

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I'm not sure describing our contributions to this upcoming chapter as "flanking" is really accurate.

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You thought I was kidding, didn't you?

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After his intense discussion with Victor, Kade walks all the way over here. This is pretty far removed from most of the battle, and frankly we'll only barely be contributing. Most of the killing will be done by Victor and Snape Severin's forces (not so much from the guys themselves, though).

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This is Arthur, lamenting the pretender formerly known as Aanon's terrible tactics. He should stick to pop music.

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I'm sure his loyalty to Aanon will totally win out in the end, and he'll die heroically defending his liege.

Stay tuned for the massively unbalanced NPC battle that ensues.

Growths:

Kerns:

HP: 40

STR: 10

SKL: 20

SPD: 20

MGC: 50

DEF: 10

LUK: 20

MOV: 2

I think Kerns might be Lilina in disguise. That's a pretty high magic growth for this game, but Kerns is otherwise kind of bad at everything. Still, Quent is only marginally better in most of those areas, while being considerably worse than Kerns when it comes to the most important stat for mages, so I think Kerns probably wins this one.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@Lanzz: Dont worry, babe, I already figured all that out. Thanks for trying to help though!

We're back to our regularly scheduled programming with...

Chapter 3: Why are we here again?

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Where we last left off, General Victor and Duke Snape Severin, they were engaged in an epic clash with some rebels. Shall we check out how balanced this fierce battle will be?

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These are the average stats of the rebels. Again, seemingly all of them brought their lunch money with them.

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Right here are the average stats of the green dudes. I don't know about you, but I think they just might have an advantage.

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Here's General Victor, who could probably handle this whole rebellion business by himself, really. Despite that, he's going to be sitting on his pretty white pony and just sort of watching things unfold.

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Duke Severin is also here to watch the ensuing slaughter. I don't know why he brought money, perhaps he wanted to do some light shopping while the battle raged.

Turns out there IS apparently a secret shop on this map that I didn't find, too. That may have been more accurate than I realized. A DEVIOUS LIE TOLD BY DEVIOUS LIARS! (Actually, I just misread something in Imago's guide. Oops.)

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The more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that both sides are employing ballista. If our units had not been grinding themselves into divinity, the enemy ones would probably be a problem, but as it stands, they're basically just a nuisance.

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I start moving Kade and his posse. It'll be a few turns before we can actually engage the enemy, especially because most of them will head north to get destroyed by Victor and Severin's army.

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Not wanting to make the same mistakes I did the first time, Nal'at flies down to visit the cave. You can see this, but her flying animation is weirdly slow and jerky for some reason, which makes it annoying when she has to fly huge distances.

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The ballista react to our presence predictably. The next few turns will mostly be them taking inaccurate potshots at our dudes.

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Meanwhile, most of the rebels start charging north to get decimated by the green guys. The neutral units will not budge an inch for now, but eventually they'll begin charging south, so we have to mop up as much XP enemies as possible.

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Nal'at finds this random old man in a cave, here to explain the fate of Duchess Mabel.

Weird old man: She was so beloved... Gods scourge him and his men!

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His righteous fury causes him to morph into a long bow for us to use! Serene will love this, I'm sure.

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Serene gets hit by a ballista, and takes steps to ensure such an event will have even less impact next time.

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Meanwhile, this clusterfuck is still raging on, all without any input from us. I'm not kidding when I say it's perfectly feasible to win this chapter without ever killing a single enemy.

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We're slooooooowly getting to the point where we can actually do stuff, aside from getting hit by ballista assholes.

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Not before more injury-induced level ups, though. Kade is honestly just ridiculous at this point.

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This shit's still going on. I think the mage managed to kill one of the armor units, which is the only death the green units suffer this whole time. Once they start to move, it's gonna be a slaughter.

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Kade starts clearing out these pests.

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Serene moves down to recruit Arthur. See if you can spot the tactical blunder I've made.

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Victor, meanwhile, announces to Severin what they need to do to complete their shop class project.

Victor: Advance soldiers!

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Our allies are now moving, and will swiftly take down any remaining rebels before coming to help us out. We need to finish off these guys before they can steal our XP!

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Also, Arthur attacks Serene, and she very nearly kills him by responding with a crit. You were sent on a mission of diplomacy, Serene, not of violence!

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Get on the winning side, kid!

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Showing these just in case you forgot what these two looked like. Gaze at Arthur's magnificent turtleneck and tremble!

Serene: What in the world are you doing here?

Arthur: I've joined up with Prince Aanon. He's son of Prince Eltir and the rightful king.

Serene: You don't believe that now, do you?

Arthur: I... I am...

Serene: Come on, you're coming with me. Hurry!

Serene's aunty ways have brought another wayward soul to our cause!

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His base stats are ever-so-slightly higher than Serene's despite her higher level, but man those skills are terrible. Maybe his growths make up for that, though?

Not even a little bit!

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Nal'at's first taste of combat, and she flubs it. C'mon, you're supposed to be amazing, live up to your reputation!

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Man, these ballista can dodge weirdly well for an immobile siege engine.

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Petros comes in to patch up Serene and Arthur after their little tussle.

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Next turn, I try to have Nan steal from this ballista, and she misses both times. Again. At least she got defense I guess?

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I decide everyone else can probably handle that ballista, so I send Nal'at to handle this one. She actually hits him this time, but only once.

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Kerns gets his first level attacking an armor from across the river, then cleverly hides behind the stat box to avoid my wrath from how poor it was.

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Kade, meanwhile, just gets stronger and stronger.

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These guys have cleared out all the rebels up north and are slowly plodding down to "help".

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Nal'at actually finishes the job this time.

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And gives me this garbage. You're lucky your base stats are so absurdly good, because I'd drop units for less.

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Nan finally fucking steals something, and nearly dies in the process. Whoever thought copying Tear Ring Saga's stealing system was a good idea needs to be destroyed.

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Petros heals Nan and actually gets the only stat he really needs this time. Keep it up!

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Moving on.

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Victor is getting really excited about his unrelated carpentry project.

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Hey, that enemy could've gone to good use, I'm sure! Fucking greenies...

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Nal'at moves in the way to stop them from stealing this kill from Kade.

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Kade kills him and we finish them off. That "ally fallen" number is because of one of the NPC dudes; none of our guys are dead.

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With no cutscene or anything, we are sent back to the village.

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Tune in next time! I promise it won't take me a week, honest!

Growths

Arthur:

HP: 60

STR: 25

SKL: 35

SPD: 35

MGC: 15

DEF: 25

LUK: 20

MOV: 5

Identical to Serene's except for -5% strength? I think I'll pass.

Edited by whenbananasattack
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It didn't take me a week, because it took me 8 days instead! That's not technically breaking my promise, right?

Chapter 4: Negative losses

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We start things off with some pointless advice from everyone's favorite tavern lady. I won't bother showing you all the shopping, since frankly it was just more boring iron weapons. I sold off all our potions, because that's basically all they're good for, and the shop finally started carrying spells, so I refreshed our magic supply a bit.

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Then we get the objective, revealing that despite the huge combined forces of Victor and Severin that utterly demolished the enemy in the last chapter, we must conquer the city alone with a force of 8 people. That is very FE, I must say.

I bring Kade, Raf, Serene, Nal'at, Mark, Charlotte, Petros, and Kerns.

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You should give people a chance to comply with your orders before you whine at them, Kade.

Raf: Let's get these suckers. Elsace! Elsace!

Serene: Hurry up and break the barricades.

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Here's Aanon, our pretender-prince-antagonist-type! He's bound to live a long, happy life.

Aanon: No matter. In a few minute lord Fenril will come and fetch me back.

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And so, the chapter begins. For once, we have a map where there isn't a fuckton of unused space, though it's rather cramped and there's not a whole lot of enemies. Still, at least now there aren't giant swathes of pointless terrain that may as well not be there.

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Our first order of business is to break down these barricades, as Serene suggested auntily. They don't have much health, so they're not really much of a problem.

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These are the average stats of the archers posed on the opposite side of the barricades. They're not much defensively, but they can double a few of our units, so they can be a bit of a threat.

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There's a promoted archer hanging out with these guys, too. He's a fucking asshole.

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Also, there are some shops here, which, as far as I can tell, are the only enterable buildings in the whole city, since the other houses are obstacles and all. Nal'at will be doing some shopping to show off their wares.

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Our team gets to work tearing down this garbage.

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Serene somehow knocks down a barricade by shooting an arrow at it. Also, check out the new range from her longbow, proving that this longbow's the real deal and not a horrible lie like the Thracia longbow.

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As you can see, Charlotte and Mark are a little out of shape compared to some of these guys. Mark in particular gets doubled by every enemy in this chapter!

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Nal'at, on the other hand...

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This is Mark getting doubled and being brought to like a third of his health. His tankiest days are behind him.

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He enacts his revenge on the next turn, though.

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And gets a shitty level for it. Maybe he's feeling the archer life now?

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Nal'at is lucky that she starts with such ridiculous bases, because frankly her levels have been ass so far. I wish I could see her growth rates...

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Serene demonstrates a fundamental understand of her flaws, and strives to fix them. She also gets magic because why not, I guess? Staff/Bow unit confirmed

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Honestly, Raf is just kind of unbeatable at this point. At this point he's just a behemoth of biceps coming to obliterate all in his path.

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Though Kade gives him some serious competition, to be fair. Kade might secretly be Nino or Est for all I know.

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Do we even need other units at this point? I'm seriously wondering here.

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While everyone's dealing with the remaining archers, Petros patches up Mark so he's ready to prove he hasn't completely fallen behind.

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And then his hard work is undone because I left Mark in range of the archer. I'm a master tactician, I tell you!

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Charlotte gets a meh level while trying to deal with the world's dodgiest sniper. Seriously, dealing with this bastard took what felt like forever.

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Mark brings an end to the sniper's reign of terror, and continues to pine for a new class assignment. Sorry, buddy, there's no reclassing in Partia 2!

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Nal'at will be taking some time out from this battle to go on an exciting shopping spree. Since canceling our of the shop immediately ends her turn, this actually took three turns to do, so the following screenshots are slightly out of order with the rest of the chapter. We'll have to deal with the fucked-up time stream at a later date.

So, what wonders shall we encounter in the first shop?

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Skill scrolls! All of them being [weapon] evasion and [terrain] fighter skills! USELESS!

How about the next shop over?

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Just more fucking potions and keys. EVEN MORE USELESS!

Alright, what about the armory?

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Steel weapons, two for each weapon type! Awesome! I bought one of each of these.

"But bananas!" you screech at me like a chimpanzee "You have enough money to buy ALL of these weapons! Why didn't you?" And, though I don't appreciate being yelled at, I'm going to show you the reason anyway:

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Yep, that's right. You can't send shit to the convoys directly during battle. I don't know what this game has against fun and convenience, frankly, but this is a major annoyance.

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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I discover the ballista can actually fire back at Serene if she uses her longbow from 3 spaces away. Is that true in most FE games? Not that it matters, since she kills him in one hit anyway.

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Our formation ends up like this, and Kade ends up forming a bit of a meat grinder here, where enemies kept toddling over to him and getting eviscerated.

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It even nets him a bland-but-still-useful level!

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Man, Serene's been getting a lot of strength lately. Maybe she'll turn out OK after all!

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While Kade engages in a life or death duel with his evil twin, Charlotte plops down to lure out the armor knights.

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They end up being fast enough to double her, so I pull her back and let Kerns take care of things.

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Yeah, you're definitely Lilina.

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Our team gets ready to take on the horrible might of not-a-prince Aanon! I didn't get a screenshot of this, but he's got a lot of armor that makes it very difficult to actually damage him, so Kerns ends up doing most of the work here.

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It turns out I spent a bit too much time faffing about, though, because Fenril, aka Hot Topic employee from the first chapter, has come to save the fake prince!

Fenril: But alas the general sees more use out of the lad... Let's escort him out.

I'm sure we can take him though, right?

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NOPE! We'd better finish off Aanon before he saunters on down and demolishes us, then!

Also, yes, he DOES have a promotion item in his inventory. I think it's just there to taunt you, since there's no way in hell Nan can possibly survive a round with him (and I didn't even bring her, anyway).

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His friends are... considerably less intimidating. No, I don't know why two of them have portraits and one of them doesn't.

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Kerns takes down Aanon and actually levels up twice! I didn't know that could happen. He gets a nice spread of stats from it, too.

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Aanon: Somebody help me! Please...

At least he's not randomly inserting hyphens into his dialogue like most FE boss death quotes.

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We... somehow lost negative four allies? What? But we didn't lose nor recruit anyone this chapter! How the fuck does that work?

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We cut to Snape Severin in a torture chamber. Wow, and he seemed like such a nice guy before all this!

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I didn't think becoming a bard would be a job that required apprenticeship. Partia 2 is a very educational game.

Severin: Who set you up to this? Tell me.

Aanon: I just called him lord Fenril. I never learned who he was m'lord. Augh! Please stop! He took care of everything he did!

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Severin's disgust made Aanon sneeze himself to death.

Severin: Now this business is done. You have to keep your end of the bargain, Victor.

Victor: Of course m'lord.

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Severin then leaves the room and Victor talks to Kade, who cleverly disguised himself as a text box in previous screenshots so you wouldn't know he was there.

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I don't think his killing of Aanon can really be flagged as "impatience". It's not like he got frustrated that a web page wouldn't load fast enough.

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Condemned? What, will she be put on trial if we return her to the duke? How is "running away from home" even a crime?

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Victor: She is reported to have headed south to the Free Cities. Are you familiar with that place, Captain?

Kade: No sir. haven't been there sir.

Victor: It is not really a nation but a collection of independent city states. It's a very diverse place with all sort of people.

Is the rest of the world just made up of clones?

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Ok, first of all, what means much trouble? And second, somehow I doubt Severin even knows what friendship is, much less would he actually want to be friends with us. Dude's kind of got "secret evil traitor" written all over him.

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Can Kade and the fragility of masculinity stand up against their toughest opponent yet?

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For 2000 money, I'm sure they can handle it.

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And thus, the chapter ends. Now, I'm not going to PROMISE anything like last time, but I'll do my best to be at least vaguely on schedule from here on. Sorry for all the waiting!

Edited by whenbananasattack
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Haven't you played FE before? ALL the civilians are clones of each other with a few different templates! No wonder a place full of "diverse people" is such a strange concept!

Most of the characters we recruit in the upcoming chapter are the same two classes.

It's actually not that time of the week again, but it will be soon. Instead, here's a:

Mini-Update: Grinding because there's no tomorrow (for most of these guys, anyway)

First things first, we've got a new recruit from the Inn!

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Phuirt, is that you? Why is your name "Alduskeng" now?

So, yeah, that's not an encouraging start, but I remain optimistic about him. Perhaps he's a reverse of Nal'at's "excellent bases but seemingly meh growths" issue?

Kinda!

Anyway, this is just a quick update to show where all our units are at this point, since we haven't looked at anyone's stats since they first joined the party. If you're wondering why most of them are level 10 all of a sudden, I used the arena to get some of our shittier units at least vaguely up to par. How much did it help? You'll see!

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Compared to most everyone else, Kade is a bit of a monster now. I wish he'd gotten some movement at some point, since a lot of our other units have, but other than that he's basically perfect. I hope we get a promotion item for him soon, since we probably won't be able to afford the ones the merchant has for a while longer...

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Raf seems to have traded some of that speed in for more movement. He slowed himself down so he could move faster? I don't know, he's basically as good as Kade, at any rate.

(Also, i didn't get a screenshot of this, but he has the Blessing skill now. I felt it matched up well with his Charisma.)

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Serene hasn't been shining as much as her friends, sadly. Yeah, I know they have a good +8 level advantage on her, but still. Rapid Fire is what's keeping her relevant at this point.

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I'm not sure we need any units other than Nal'at at this point. At level 10 her stats rival level 20 guys like Kade and Raf, and she utterly outclasses almost anyone else. She hasn't been getting the best levels, though, so maybe her meteoric rise is at an end?

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Herman's at least somewhat viable now, though his Counter Attacker skill still kind of sinks him. That's a rather nice strength stat, but 5 speed + a skill that ruins your evasion + mediocre defense = basically useless.

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Kori is so uninspiring and mediocre that it's painful. Given that his growths are basically "Herman's growths but -10% strength", that shouldn't be a surprise.

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Y'know, for an armor knight, Mark isn't really all that tanky. He's got an impressive show of strength going on, but I expected more survivability. Six movement is fun to have on an armor unit, though. It's not every day where you see a dude in huge armor running almost as fast as a horse.

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Getting Quent to level 10 was a pain in the ass, frankly, and it wasn't even worth it. Kerns is better in almost every area, and in the one meaningful place where Quent beats him (speed), it's by 1 point.

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A bit more armor-y than Mark, though only a little. Kind of a shame she's got such eh strength, since she'd probably be better than him if it wasn't for that.

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Extremely thief stats right there. I'm a little surprised she got decent speed since she's got a 30% growth in it, but I suppose she knew the true purpose of a thief is to get disappointing skill-speed-luck levels for all eternity. I also love how she now has less movement than even the armor knights; evidently you can be faster than someone and yet unable to keep up with them at the same time.

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Healer. Who cares? Moving on.

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Despite having the best bases of our three cavaliers, he's actually turned out to be the worst of them. I'm not sure why Imago, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen to make all cavaliers suck. I'd like to see at least one that isn't complete trash, but I suppose we'll only encounter such a thing in my wildest fantasies.

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Honestly, magic is all I want out of him, and it seems to be all I get out of him, so I'm happy.

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Next.

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Not-Phuirt here actually surprised me; he got a decent spread of stats in the hellish ordeal that was getting him from level 1 to level 10. Still, I'm not sure I really need TWO bow units, and Rapid Fire makes Serene a lot more appealing than she'd normally be, so my efforts were probably wasted here...

Anyway, that's how our team's looking today. Most of them are probably not getting fielded again after this, especially because the next chapter only lets us bring four units, and one of those HAS to be Kade. Still, given that we've got a few demigods on our side at this point, we don't exactly need the rest of these rejects anymore anyway.

Stay tuned for an exciting escort mission where we recruit over half a dozen mediocre new friends!

Actual not-disappointing update will be coming either tonight or tomorrow. Sorry for the letdown.

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You thought we'd escaped Bandit Hell after two whole chapters without a bandit in sight? Discover how wrong you were with...

Chapter 5 Prelude: Contemptible cavaliers cease continually being crap

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Let's start things off right with some pointless non-advice from the barmaid. Apparently, the reports we've heard are wrong, because Severin's kid didn't just go to the Free Cities, she went to go free the cities, making them even more free than they ever were before! What a trooper!

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We can only bring four of our units into this next chapter. If that seems weirdly small, it's because the game is about to dump a million new dudes into our lap. In addition to Kade's always-deployed ass, Serene, Nal'at and Petros will be coming. Wave goodbye to many of the units we've been using up to this point, because few of them will ever take the field again if I can help it.

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We start off in what looks like a cozy ski lodge or something. If you're wondering, this isn't the guild man/guy who runs the arena, he just happens to be using the exact same portrait. Maybe my comment about the rest of the world being made up of clones wasn't all that far off.

Raf: When was it?

Mysterious clone: Nine, ten weeks ago?

Kade: Here, take your money.

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Evil giggling is no way to make us trust you, sir. You already look exceptionally seedy as it is.

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After his sudden laugh at the nothing that was funny, he casually strolls out of the ski lodge so our heroes can discuss how hard it is to find this kid.

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Serene: At least we still have a trail.

Raf: So what now? Where on earth is this 'Kamal'?

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We suddenly cut to a very wide, completely undecorated hallway, where our heroes are set upon by a portraitless menace!

(Also, check out that female dismounted cavalier sprite! Far as I can tell, it's the only sprite in the game that's different between genders, though I might be proven wrong later.)

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Kade briefly slips into Silent Protagonist Mode, forgetting how to use words but discovering the secret of pronouncing punctuation marks.

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This is Erin, who will be getting quite a bit of dialogue in this upcoming chapter! Well, relative to almost everyone else we're recruiting, anyway, who don't receive so much as a single line of it.

Kade: Yes I am. What's it to you?

Erin: Well, you are in a bit of a stew. Great caravans go there only twice a year and next one's months away.

It seems like we won't be getting any first-class caravans to travel with, and must settle for riding in in a business or economy caravan instead.

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That's a question, not a statement, Kade.

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Claims that no "great caravans" are traveling to Kamal right now.

Immediately suggests traveling with her own caravan, which is going to Kamal soon.

That's incredibly rude, Erin.

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Here's Thomas, the only other new recruit who's getting any real dialogue to speak of. He's also suffering from astigmatism or something, since he refers to us as "men".

Erin: These are some Granians who want to go to Kamal!

Thomas: Granians? Kamal? Who are you and why are you trying to go there?

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Kade tells some devious half-truths to convince this merely average caravan to let us hitch a ride with them.

Kade: It seems she is Kamal. Or at least headed there a few months ago.

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Kade: I cannot tell you much except taht he is a high lord of Grana and would pay well for her.

Erin: Thomas, I don't think these guys are bad and beside we were looking for some more guardsmen anyways.

Thomas: Erin, you cannot trust strangers like that. Where in Grana are you from?

Hey, Thomas, that's rude. We are perfectly trustworthy 100%, outside of the fact that we're lying about who we are and what we're doing.

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Kade's "disguise" seems to consist solely of claiming to be a mercenary and not a soldier. It's still a better disguise then Eliwood, Hector and Lyn could come up with, though, even if I'm not 100% sure why we can't be more honest with them as to what we're actually up to.

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Kade: I'd serve Elsace. But now I am here with a job.

Thomas: You certainly seem like a capable bunch... But I need men who will guard the cargo safely to Kamal. Can you swear on the task?

Kade: ...Until we reach Kamal, yes I swear we will protect your cargo.

Escort Mission Status: Accepted

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And so, our adventure with the Caravan of Mediocrity begins!

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Pretty much the only capable person in said caravan guard, too.

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Cut to Erin asking Kade where he has and hasn't been.

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Kade is not the most well-traveled of souls, which makes sense given his upbringing and occupation.

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Why are streets full of marbles a point in Nassau's favor? It must be incredibly difficult to walk around there!

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Kade cranks up the charm.

Erin: For a mercenary, you're not that well-traveled, are you?

Kade: No I guess not.

Erin: Oh you Granian men... c'mon, tell me about something.

Kade: What do you want to hear about?

Erin: I don't know. Anything interesting I guess. I love stories. For example, where are you from?

He's from a generic, nameless village that I'm at least 85% certain we will never see again at any point in this game. Not as exciting an origin story as, say, Wonder Woman's, but it's what we've got.

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Don't worry, Kade. Unless she's got special ~storyline importance~ like Raf and Serene, she probably won't utter a single syllable ever again once the chapter ends.

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The chapter actually begins. We've got a lot of new units to check out, so let's get started and hope not all of them are terrible.

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First off, Erin. Unlike our previous cavaliers, Erin's bases are actually decent (aside from that HP), and her skills actually improve her defenses rather than crippling them. The only thing that concerns me is that 9 strength, since most everyone else here who's worth using is packing at least 10. Still, we could probably do much worse.

(I didn't get a screenshot of this, but for whatever reason neither she nor the other two cavaliers we get here have descriptions. Not that it matters, really, since the descriptions are so bland that they may as well not be there anyway, but I just found it odd)

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Erin's brother Val is better than his sister offensively, but but has inferior speed. I suppose they're the Cain/Abel duo of Partia 2. Again, usable bases combined with decent skills, especially his longer-ranged-but-lowered-effectiveness version of Charisma. He just might be useful.

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Thomas is our resident Jeigan/Oifey, I suppose. His biggest problem is that he doesn't have a whole lot of room to grow, but his bases are solid enough that he's probably at least somewhat usable, if only for a little while. Also, I like his portrait, but that's probably just because I've got a thing for scruffy guys with earrings.

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Earlin, despite his terrible name, is a decent enough character too, and our first myrmidon- sorry, "Eastern Sword". His HP is sort of terrifyingly low for his level, but he should be okay to use. I've heard of another, better unit of the same class that's coming later, though, so maybe he's not worth it...

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Unfortunately, not everyone can be a winner. Take Louis here. Despite being just a single behind the cavaliers, his stats are utterly pathetic. 3 strength in particular is just heinously low at this point in the game, and he doesn't even bring any cool skills to the table to make up for it! For his sake, he'd BETTER have some good growths to make up for this nonsense.

Surprisingly decent!

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If Louis is like Ryan, then Alonso is like Gordin. He's in the same class, joins at the same time, and his bases are a tiny bit better in some ways, but still not enough to really justify using him. Does the Ryan/Gordin comparison apply to their respective growth rates too, I wonder?

They definitely do. We've found a new benchwarmer!

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Asif is our second thief, and his stealing mechanics are very different from Nan's. Instead of having to attack enemies to get a chance to steal from them and risking his pathetic ass for potentially nothing or potentially the wrong item entirely, he instead gets to choose what item he'd like to try and steal from an enemy directly, though he seems to have a very low chance of actually succeeding in this. I have no idea what the related calculations are for this skill, to be honest, but I'd assume they're based on speed or skill or somesuch, which Asif doesn't have a lot of right now. Thieves in Partia 2 suck.

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These are the two NPC merchants we need to protect, creatively named "Cart". They're apparently male carts, too, since cart equality has yet to take hold in the Free Cities. Despite their immense strength, they are obviously helpless, and need us to defend them as they go down the road. They also have a wonderfully detailed class description:

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The game really wants you to know that this is a cart, and not, I don't know, a sled being pulled by tarantulas or something.

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We start moving south, ahead of the carts to protect them from all the nothing out there. The map starts out utterly devoid of enemies.

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The carts move on the ally phase. They seem to follow a predefined path, with little regard to their own safety.

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Erin apparently waited a full turn for Kade to actually answer her question. How patient.

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I can see why it's Raf and not Kade who has the Charisma skill in this army.

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Raf isn't even here. He's wherever unused units hang out when they aren't on the field in games like this!

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Am I detecting a Chemistry-Free Hetero Romance coming up? Maybe I was wrong, and this girl is actually story important?

Erin: You are the leader of your bunch, aren't you?

Kade: Why are you so curious about other people's business?

Erin: Why not? I like to know how people think and feel and become friends with them. I'm being nice here you know.

Kade's got all the personality of a dial tone, Erin. I think you're wasting your time.

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Erin: Ha ha, that's true too. I am a lot less busy than my brother for sure.

Kade: That sour looking fellow.

Erin: Oh yes, he's the one.

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We don't get to discover how Val feels about being called "sour looking" because the conversation ends. It's not his fault he tastes of lemons!

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There's a house sitting in the middle of all this forest behind some cliffs. I have no idea if it's actually got anything worth visiting it for, but I decide to send Nal'at down there anyway.

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Everyone moves south some more.

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Also, I didn't show this last turn, but the Enemy Phase thingy shows up for just a second before the Ally Phase one does, despite the lack of enemies on the map. I'm sure it doesn't mean anything.

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The little caravan guys move...

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And immediately summon enemies, apparently called "the highwaymen", to make this chapter a bit more exciting.

Thomas: Everyone, protect the cargo! We must cross the bridge!

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Can our heroes save the Exceptionally Unexceptional Caravan from brigands and their own stupidity in equal measure? We'll see in the next update!

EDIT: Fuck me sideways, I forgot the growths for our new friends.

Growths:

Erin:

HP: 50

STR: 30

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 15

DEF: 25

LUK: 10

MOV: 2

Those are a little uninspiring, to be perfectly honest. Still, her bases are just good enough that I think she can get away with it. We'll have to see if she gets lucky or not.

Val:

HP: 60

STR: 40

SKL: 30

SPD: 20

MGC: 5

DEF: 25

LUK: 10

MOV: 2

Val's got less of a shaky strength growth than his sister, but has an inferior speed one to make up for that. Again, not the greatest growths around, but his bases should hold him for at least a little while.

Thomas:

HP: 60

STR: 40

SKL: 30

SPD: 25

MGC: 5

DEF: 25

LUK: 5

MOV: 2

Okay enough growths for a crutch character, but he's only got 5 levels to use them in! I have no idea what the difficulty curve is like, though, so he might be usable later despite that?

Earlin:

HP: 70

STR: 30

SKL: 40

SPD: 35

MGC: 5

DEF: 25

LUK: 10

MOV: 2

He seems rather okay. I'll might use him, but he might be a little outclassed by Kade for a while.

Louis:

HP: 60

STR: 40

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 10

DEF: 40

LUK: 20

MOV: 2

As far as Partia 2 is concerned, these growths are basically astronomical. He's probably gonna need a lot of spoon-feeding in the arena to actually be useful, though, and even then there's no guarantee he'll be useful at all, so I'm not sure I want to put in that kind of effort for him.

Alonso:

HP: 60

STR: 35

SKL: 35

SPD: 30

MGC: 10

DEF: 30

LUK: 20

MOV: 2

Alonso trades in the great-for-Partia-2 growths of Louis for bases that, depending on your point of view, are basically identical or actually marginally worse. I'll pass.

Asif:

HP: 40

STR: 20

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 10

DEF: 20

LUK: 20

MOV: 2

This game really hates thieves, I figure. His growths are borderline-identical to Nan's, just trading 10% HP growth for 10% Luck! As it stands, I'm not sure if Mug makes him better or worse at thief stuff than Nan just yet; it's not a particularly good system, either, but could it potentially be better?

Cart:

HP: Cart

STR: Cart

SKL: Cart

SPD: Cart

MGC: Cart

DEF: Cart

LUK: Cart

MOV: Cart

Cart

(That joke was funnier in my head)

Edited by whenbananasattack
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Cart cart cart cart cart cart

Honestly, the character balance in this game seems really weird... at best. At times, the game just dumps tons and tons of trash on you, with a few salvageable people... was the game expecting you not to know which ones to use, and thus make how difficult the game would have been a guessing game, for some weird sort of balance?

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