screenshot Let's Play FE4 Binary: Where Hacking Goes To Get Hacked

[epilepsyduck]

So, the non-canon Deadlord Felis shows it's face finally. Mus kicked its ass out when it found out it could turn undead. It hates Mus ever since.

Honestly, I think I'm just gonna call him that now. Way better than the Count von Count name scheme I've been using.

I feel like this is a reference to something but I'm a sentient cave bear who doesn't get it.

Manfroy and Dreizehn I remember being quite luck-based, so Imma sacrifice a couple FE12 cavaliers for your good fortune.

Be sure to get Luke and Rody, I hate those losers.

Things went so smoothly that I'm not sure I need the intervention, though. Save them for Julius!

Manfroy's narcissism reaches an extreme as he creates the perfect army, consisting almost entirely of himself. Once we get rid of him and that Deadlord reject, though, we can get Julia and her scary tome off our backs and get an even scarier tome in her hands.

Final Chapter Part 6: A Dance with Dragon-baiting

Before we can deal with Manfroy and the Manfrettes, we've gotta go all the way around Julius and the Deadlords. Time to trudge through the woods again!

No time like the present to start patching people up.

Julia tries her best to undo any of that work though. I guess there's only one response to that.

If only Sage's had a higher Mdf cap than 27, then she'd be unstoppable.

In addition to everyone taking the long way around, we've got Altenna, Areone and a bunch of immensely powerful dragon riders coming to back us up. I know just the thing all the green guys can help us with!

Baiting all the Manfroys away from the castle, of course! They'll be fine.

The ugly old men shuffle forward and put the neutrals to sleep. More importantly, a lot of them end up outside Manfroy's considerable Leadership aura.

This makes them easy pickings for my own units, though they get a couple hits in.

Thanks to the considerable distance between us and the castle, a little dancing is needed to reach the rest of them.

Getting rid of them doesn't take too much fuss once we do get there.

In trying to kill Johan, they have instead made him the most powerful man in the world.

The pretend-Manfroys didn't take too much effort to get rid of, but the real deal is gonna be a whole other ballgame.

You need your absolute best weapons to really deal any damage to this guy at all, since you're only getting one or two hits with no criticals or skill activations.

He, of course, is pretty good at dealing damage, so I patch poor Nanna up as well as everyone who got Hel'd on.

What few dragon riders didn't get knocked out try to help, bless their innocent hearts, but Manfroy is in a whole other league.

Manfroy might be a master of manipulating literally the whole continent, but when it comes to combat he makes the same silly decisions as everyone else.

Ares will be fine for sure.

Sadly, the damage Nanna dealt got healed by Felis over here. Fuck off, buddy, we'll get to you in a bit.

With the Charisma Zone in place, he's not quite so accurate and hard to hit.

Mind you, the RNG still likes him more than me, so it doesn't help too much.

Larcei's Blaggi Sword lets her nullify the special effects of Manfroy's tome, but she still can't deal great damage thanks to Awareness.

I think our brave leader Celice will be needed to wipe this scourge from the earth once and for all.

To think all it takes to beat Manfroy is a fancy ring given to you by your ghost parents.

Speaking of Celice's weird family, Julia is no longer Silenced and is out for blood.

Dragon blood, that is. These guys have really come in handy!

I wanna save a couple charges on my staves for the Deadlords, though, so let's see if we can get rid of this guy real fast. Forseti should be a good place to start.

Arthur certainly manages to exceed expectations, though! Levin's son has far outdone the old man himself.

Let's get him to safety so someone else can finish the job.

That "someone else" is Larcei, who feels a bit cheated since she didn't get to kill Manfroy and needed another superboss to munch on.

No, bad Julia! I need those guys for your asshole brother and his zombie friends!

Time to ransack- er, "liberate" another castle I guess.

The Blaggi kids help get him where he needs to go afterwards.

Yay, she's no longer trying to purge us from afar!

She gets to keep the Purge tome, thankfully, though there's not a whole lot of use for it at this stage. Still, it might be useful against the Deadlords.

I think you all know what she really needs to be useful, though.

The boosts may have been cut into a bit, but it's still a very potent tome that immediately elevates Julia to asskicker status.

To help that along, I sent her through the Arena with the Elite Ring, since she's a bit underleveled.

Julia: 5 levels- +5 MHP, +2 Skl, +2 Luk, +1 Def

Thanks, Julia.

Everyone was in need of some serious repairs, so we went to the blacksmith one last time. Remember that horrendous facial hair and treasure it in your hearts...

For we have a Holy War to win. Let's see what Manfroy cooked up to defend his little Dark Prince and the dragon god living inside him.

Eins- er, sorry, Mus is basically the same as before. He exists to be borderline unkillable unless you've got Naga's Grace, at which point he becomes merely kinda tough. Of course, the Blaggi Sword cuts through him effortlessly.

Another familiar face is Bovis, also the same as he once was. He's got his absurd Galzus skillset ready to hit fast and hard.

New to us is Tigris, whose main claim to fame is the Tomahawk + Wrath to turn him into a little baby-Johan.

Lepus has abandoned her healing arts altogether to become a Silence-using Aura-wielding Prayer-having pain in the ass. That's Recover in her skills list, by the way, meaning any damage you do to her gets totally nullified on her turn. Getting her off the field is gonna be tricky.

Draco is another repeat customer, and has gotten a second Gatling Bow to replace the one we stole from her. Like before, she's here to hit many many times and hope to get a crit at least once.

Anguilla is another Wrath user who's got the dreaded Dime Thunder tome in her cold dead hands, giving her double the chances to crit somebody to ash. A prime candidate for Silence.

Since Lepus has spurned her healing duties, Equus picks up the slack. That's pretty much his only defining feature, since he's otherwise pretty tame compared to everyone else. He can still hit hard with Hellfire, though.

Someone who the word "tame" simply doesn't apply to is Ovis, with the lethal Excalibur tome and the stats and skills to make it even deadlier. Recover too, of course, meaning you've gotta take him out in one turn. Another good candidate for Silence.

Possibly the most frightening opponent is Simia, with a skillset that is genuinely ridiculous and pretty much requires Awareness to deal with, and that horrible Recover skill that means you must kill her ASAP. Sleep might be required depending on your formation.

Gallus is basically trying to be Manfroy, with the horrid Maph tome and higher stats, but falls just a bit shy due to a slightly less absurd skillset. Still a guy to watch out for, of course, and definitely a good pick for a status staff provided you can get around his Mdf.

Canis here grabbed herself a promotion, and has abandoned the ways of light to cast dark magic like her Dark Bishop brethren. Sleep can be a pain in the ass as always, and Luna does allow her to get around your magic tanks, but she's a relatively low priority threat thanks to her lack of scary skills or absurd weapons.

Porcus here went from arguably the worst Deadlord to basically a mini-Simia, and with his Aether skill and Hero Sword he's ready to kill all sorts of units. Another unit where use of Awareness might be prudent, but Sleep probably won't be necessary.

Watch all of this unfold is Julius, who's gotten an upgrade since we last saw him and has transformed into a completely horrible monster. He's grabbed Awareness since we last saw him so you can't just cheese him with skills, and the addition of bigger boosts and Great Shield to his tome make him a real terror to deal with. Julia is still your greatest weapon against him, but will definitely need backup to handle fighting him. It's best you get the Deadlords away from him so he can't boost them with Charisma, as well as pelting you with Meteors all day.

One need little thing I discovered; in addition to Anguilla and Equus having Tordo and Fala blood like they always did...

As well as Ovis having Holsety blood like he always did...

Draco and Bovis have also gained a holy heritage. Given that in FE5 they were made from Eveyl/Briggid and Galzus, respectively, this makes sense, and is a rather nice touch.

A bit more inexplicably, Simia has gotten some Odo blood too. Not quite sure I understand the rationale behind that, but fine, do as you will.

Since I don't feel like dealing with Julius and the Deadlords at once, I let Julius rain fiery death on yet another hapless dragon rider.

This really ticks off the Deadlords, who immediately go into attack mode and abandon their duty of protecting the prince.

Next time, we make the Deadlords a little deader and take out that punk kid who's been calling all the shots this whole time. Hope you're as excited as I am!

[BrightBow]

Well, I hope Areone will be a bit smarter then the members of Lachesis' Suicide Squadron.

Edited October 8, 2016 by BrightBow

[Miacis]

Well, shit, you brought your entire army against Manfroy and the Heimpostor, I guess you didn't need the luck.

RIP Luke and Vergil

I feel like this is a reference to something but I'm a sentient cave bear who doesn't get it.

The localized deadlords are named after the Chinese zodiac animals, but with Latin names. The legend goes that, in the race to make it into the zodiac, the cat (Felis) was tricked by the rat (Mus) and lost his place and now that's why all cats chase rats.

Or, you know, cats simply weren't introduced to China until after they had formed their zodiac.

[Tetragrammaton]

If you don't mind, could you please upload your save file after you finish this LP?

[epilepsyduck]

Well, I hope Areone will be a bit smarter then the members of Lachesis' Suicide Squadron.

He doesn't need to be smart, he's got a Holy Weapon! His little buddies could've stood to have a few more brain cells, though.

Well, shit, you brought your entire army against Manfroy and the Heimpostor, I guess you didn't need the luck.

RIP Luke and Vergil

My tendency to bring everyone everywhere may cost me a ton of time, but it makes everything marginally easier!

That was honestly a really lucky run regardless though. It usually takes forever to get rid of Manfroy and that dickish High Priest.

If you don't mind, could you please upload your save file after you finish this LP?

Here ya go! The only file on it is right before the fight with Julius.

After many vicious battles and desperate struggles, we reach Belhalla once again, defended by a baker's dozen of unholy abominations. Let's use our newfound magic nuke to annihilate them and be done with FEBinary's utter lunacy.

Final Chapter Part 7: I still didn't explain dismounting

My dimwitted green friends have helped lure out the Deadlords away from Julius's Charisma + Leadership range.

Given how dangerous Porcus and Simia can be on enemy phase, I took extra pains to keep everyone out of their range.

The dragon knights are real go-getters, it's true, but they can't be called reliable in any respect.

Areone is a whole other story, though, and manages to kill Porcus outright! I honestly didn't expect him to do anything useful, but here he is proving me wrong.

Simia isn't happy with these developments, and takes her frustrations out on an innocent generic.

While Porcus was the first to fall, Tigris was the first slain my my own army. A tag-team of Julia and Fee was all it took.

Nanna's OP Astra + Luna combo made short work of Simia. Guess we didn't need Sleep after all!

We do need Silence, though, and anyone using Maph is a prime target for that.

It actually took a few people (and a reset or two from unlucky crits) to bring Ovis down, so maybe he would've been a better Silence candidate, but oh well. He's deader than ever!

Leen danced for Nanna and a couple other folks, but it was Nanna who unleashed yet another flurry of armor-piercing attacks to knock Bovis off the map.

Corple patches everyone up.

Yet more ineffectual attempts at fighting are made by the generic Thracians, but to no avail. Even Areone doesn't do a whole lot this turn.

Anguilla makes it abundantly clear that they should've just stayed home.

A little combat between Barons produces no real results.

Draco's Gatling Bow is a scary thing, but not so scary when your target is completely surrounded by such Charismatic individuals.

I don't know why people love Silencing Nanna so much. Of all the magic-using units I've got, her Magic score is among the lowest and she's probably the worst healer I have!

I feel like there's some irony in my status-effect guy getting Sleep'd.

Julius takes a worrying interest in Hannibal, and nearly mops the floor with him. Great Shield ultimately saves the day.

Wakey wakey, Ced. There are better places to take a nap than Belhalla you know.

If Anguilla has a bit of Tordo blood in her, it only seemed right to unleash the Tordo kids on her.

The Isaach twins kill Mus and Draco, and continue to prove that Holy Weapons are overrated and they don't need them to be unstoppable.

Gallus was done in by none other than my precious heavily-armored staffbot Corple! I think that's the only non-Arena kill he's gotten.

Canis wasn't too much trouble against a guy with very little Resistance anyway. A higher level Dark tome might've helped you more.

Johan mercilessly slew the adorable pink Lepus. He will feast well tonight.

Since the only opponent who's vulnerable to Silence is Equus, I figured why not use it.

Leif gets incredibly lucky with the Master Bow and kills him outright. Now all that's left is Julius himself.

More healing so Julius doesn't start deleting people instantly.

Hannibal is super dodgy for an armor-like unit.

There poor fellas not so much.

Since Naga's Grace will let Celice damage Julius, let's have the two of them duel to the death!

Certainly better than using some Shaman-come-lately with her OP tome to do the deed.

Or we could just do nothing of consequence, I guess. That's cool too.

Eh, fuck it, Julia's better at this anyway.

Even with the Charisma Zone and the Book of Naga, taking Julius down is slow going.

Keeping our girl patched up is, in hindsight, not terribly necessary, but who cares? Not like we'll need these staves again!

Come on, just die already! We know how this is gonna play out!

Julia manages to level up from all this, nabbing +1 MHP, +1 Luk. A bit late for that, don't you think, babe?

Julia finally slays her evil brother once and for all.

+1 MHP, +1 Luk, +1 Def. I'm glad you've got a sense of humor, given that there's no one to use that on anymore.

You all know how this goes from here; dead dragon.

Exposition.

Ending cutscene. It doesn't take weird pairs like Sibling x Sibling or Altenna x Anyone into account, though, at least not as far as I can tell.

I'm sure I got some really high ranks, though, right?

Yeah, that's about what I expected.

Well, I suppose now the only thing to do is look at our team's final stats and kill counts. We'll be starting with the unit with the least kills and continuing from there:

In a shocking turn of events, Leen never went anywhere near combat, which is definitely for the best. She's no Genealogy of Tordo Laylea, or even just regular Laylea. Still we needed her dancing many times, and she always gave us that.

Her brother Corple only got a single kill, which we just saw not that long ago, but he wasn't ever meant to be on the front lines anyway. He was a useful little staffbot whose life I didn't have to worry about once he promoted, and that's all he was ever really meant to be.

To be frank, Fin sucked. I know he'll always get overshadowed in Gen 2 anyway, but I seemed to get an especially useless Fin this time around, and he was completely useless by the Final Chapter. I hope he retires and takes up a less dangerous career than knighthood, because I fear for his fragile life otherwise.

I actually regret ordering this by killcount solely because it puts Lana so low on the list. She wasn't a great combat unit, sure, but she was indispensable from Turn 1. I wish all Priests got Light Magic before promotion, really; it made keeping her staves fresh a breeze.

Another unit whose main contribution was staff use, being Azel's kid maybe made Ced seem a bit weak compared to Arthur and Teeny, but there was plenty of need for a staff user with absurdly high Magic, and tearing Valflame from Arvis's cold dead hands gave us exactly that.

I don't think it's a surprise that Hannibal fell behind a bit with his dreadful 5 Move, hence only getting 10 kills, but at least when he did catch up he was a real terror in both physical and magical combat. Most of those deaths he suffered were from dealing with Amaldayas and her Meteor mages.

Shanan wasn't very good, if we're being honest, especially once Nanna stole his sword, but giving him the King Sword did give him reason to stick around, unlike Fin, and he was able to provide Lover Crits to Larcei and pull a few Triangle Attacks to make his presence a bit more meaningful.

It's a bit of a shame Julia has to miss out on an entire Chapter's worth of experience and items, and she's a headache and a half to deal with when she returns with her obnoxious Purge tome, but at least once you get her back on your side she's ready to throw dragon nukes everywhere and win the game for you. My biggest regret will be not getting her up to level 30 before the big fight with Julius; I think she's the only person who didn't hit the level cap.

Oifey was here to eat damage for other units, and he did that decently enough. The Hero Lance was maybe a bit wasted on him, but there wasn't much else I could do to make his combat relevant, and it did let him fight at least a little more competently than he normally would've. He did about as well as a crutch could hope to.

Our brave hero Celice ultimately spent more time boosting other people's combat instead of his own, but the Tyrfing gave him a nice secondary role as a magic tank. That Speed was just sad, though; even his mother could do better.

Altenna's low killcount is pretty much entirely by virtue of her late join time, because she was as useful as she always is. I guess that's what happens when a unit comes pre-built to be kickass, but still.

Once Teeny stole her cousin's tome, she become unstoppable, and was nearly as good as her brother. Even before then she helped keep Leif and co. alive during their pointless defense of a faraway castle in Chapter 8, and Leif forever owes her a debt for saving him from his own terrible ideas.

Another unit who pretty much always kicks ass regardless of what you do, even though I regret not throwing him into the Forrest Knight class. Sorry, buddy, Skasaher got it first and I hate having units with identical map sprites!

Patty got a little overshadowed right at the end, what with all the Holy Weapons and other legendaries being thrown around, but showed us that sometimes all you need his a trusty old sword that gives you Wrath + Ambush. She was a far better fighter than thieves have any right to be, and that's beautiful.

Despite a rocky start, I think Delmud did pretty well once he promoted, even if Nanna tended to outstrip him a bit thanks to her absurd weapon and skills. I probably should've tossed him some of Johan's axes once Johan got Helswath, but eh, he did just fine regardless.

Another unit who had a bit of a bad start, I honestly don't regret handing her the Balmung one bit. She was a perfect combination of her two bloodlines in every respect, and probably would've gotten a higher killcount if she hadn't had such a rough time of things during Chapters 7 and 8.

Tied for her in kills is the man she's supposed to marry, Leif, who had a similarly weak beginning before becoming absurdly good after promotion. He didn't even get a Holy Weapon, but he was one of the best regardless, even if a lot of his equipment were hand-me-downs.

Somehow I was under the impression Fee did a lot worse in terms of kills than she really did. I suppose being the only flying unit for a thousand years gave her time to rack up a high killcount from her crusade against bandits all over Jugdral. A shame about that low Strength, but she got her mom's high Defense and that's all I could really ask for.

Having Beowulf as a dad probably screwed poor Faval over a bit, and Yewfelle came just a bit too late to really make a difference. But hey, 38 kills, so clearly he wasn't that bad off.

But really, compared to his cousin I think any archer would look bad. Midayle!Lester usually sucks as much as Midayle himself usually does, and it was wonderful to see both of them defy their mediocre growths and become insanely good.

Tying Lester for kills is Skasaher, who was an absolute monster from the first turn and never stopped being a ruthless killing machine. The Master Axe is such an insanely good item that it alone elevates the whole weapon class, nevermind all the other good Axes the hack gives you!

Two of those mighty axes are in The Final Johan's mighty grip. With Johan being so utterly insane from the second he appears and only getting more and more ridiculous as time goes on, I don't even know why the game gives you the option to recruit his crappy brother.

Arthur was a complete nuclear option the second he got Forseti, and was great long-range support before that with all those siege tomes and his tendency to put people to sleep with them. He may not have the raw stats of Levin!Ced, but the higher movement more than makes up for it. It's no wonder the dude ranks so damn high.

But I'm sure you've already guessed who got the highest kill count...

I think I might've broken the game a bit by pairing Ira and Lex together. Larcei went from being marginally worse than her brother to being the absolute best unit all the time for everything, and my only regret is that she couldn't bring the hurt to Julius thanks to his stupid Awareness skill. She deserved to be the one to end this whole thing, but oh well. She got to kill that weird fake Deadlord, and that's nearly as good.

I really hope you enjoyed reading this LP as much as I enjoyed writing it! I've got another post in the works soon-ish, but after that I'm done here.

[Merc Ee]

Maybe I'll try Binary someday (if only I wasn't so allergic to FE4), great LP, I was hyped for each episode so that's sure something.

[Miacis]

Yep, that was some good stuff. I knew about Binary's tricks, but it was very refreshing to get someone else's experience and tactics on it. (That final chapter in particular radically diverged from pretty much all I've ever done with it.) Kudos for enduring Binary's bullshit, bringing me back to the olden days and spurring me to get back to LPing... eventually... once I finish writing 6 more updates of backlog...

May the RNG deities smile upon your next creative endeavor.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Miacis

[epilepsyduck]

Maybe I'll try Binary someday (if only I wasn't so allergic to FE4), great LP, I was hyped for each episode so that's sure something.

Honestly, I'm so absurdly happy to hear people were excited to read my ramblings about this weird ROMhack and see all the silly mistakes I made. Thanks a lot!

Yep, that was some good stuff. I knew about Binary's tricks, but it was very refreshing to get someone else's experience and tactics on it. (That final chapter in particular radically diverged from pretty much all I've ever done with it.) Kudos for enduring Binary's bullshit, bringing me back to the olden days and spurring me to get back to LPing... eventually... once I finish writing 6 more updates of backlog...

May the RNG deities smile upon your next creative endeavor.

Thanks! Me reading your LP of this ridiculous thing was actually a contributing factor to me starting LPing at all. I'm glad you liked and commented on my crappy little LP, and showed off all the other weird shit FEBinary does that I didn't get to.

Speaking of my next "creative" endeavor...

The thing I'm (probably) doing next

I'm gonna be taking a week or two off from LPing, since I've been basically doing this non-stop since I started Partia 2 (okay, aside from the month where I didn't post anything). I've already got an idea for what my next stop is when I get back though. It's a land of...

Custom title screens!

Strange clones!

Huge defense missions!

Bad growths!

Earlygame superbosses!

Inexplicable bugs!

Once I stop being a lazy piece of crap, we'll be going into Fire Emblem: Sword of Heaven and Earth. Get ready!

Edited October 17, 2016 by whenbananasattack

[BluBlaDe]

That was an awesome let's play. We will forever remember the bunch of vicious rebellious murderers that were Final Johan and his genociders (obviously Celice was too slow so Final God Emperor Johan was the actual leader, hell this guy managed to netorare Leaf so hard he stole Nanna from him! Being childhood friends means nothing in front of pure muscle and manliness).

If this game had a reputation meter like Ogre Battle does the villagers would flee away in fear rather than want to be liberated by these incestuous fools. Cuan must be facepalming so hard up there.

Shit got so bad even Marth had to come into the game to try to stop them. Sadly it wasn't meant to be.

Here a pic of Final Johan and Balmung Nanna.

:

[Moblin Major General]

I'm not sure if I've heard of Sword of Heaven and Earth. Is it a hack of Binding Blade? Or a hack of the Japanese version of one of the other two GBA games?

[Tamanoir]

Hey, that growth didn't look that bad. 4 stats including Speed is pretty OK in my book.

Anyway, it's always a pleasure to read your LPs, so Hype!, I guess...

[SirNicee]

I'm not sure if I've heard of Sword of Heaven and Earth. Is it a hack of Binding Blade? Or a hack of the Japanese version of one of the other two GBA games?

Japanese version of FE7. That being said, it does take a lot of influence from FE6.