Alastor plays and ranks the whole series! Mission Complete! ...For now.

[Emperor Hardin]

5 hours ago, Seazas said:

Well they did forget about Draug and Norne's relationship along with never giving Cain and Catria a proper interaction despite the the duos having support bonuses. Shadow Dragon brought forth interesting ideas that were forgotten about unfairly. Marth having a personal arc and being more realistic, Marth not needing to be spoonfed exposition because he says himself that he's the prince of his own country, Draug getting a love interest adding more to his pool of relations, etc. 

FE12 dropped a lot of things and fucked over/forgot good and established content. Castor's backstory is one out of many.

Thank god Echoes didn't have to suffer what Archanea had to deal with. Fuck Kris, lousy support hog.

It bugged me a fair bit that Norne's Heroes depiction only goes on about Kris and more Kris, rather than the far more unique connection she has with Draug.

[Alastor15243]

2 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

It bugged me a fair bit that Norne's Heroes depiction only goes on about Kris and more Kris, rather than the far more unique connection she has with Draug.

Jeez. Oh well. Guess I'm only allowed to have one avatar character I don't despise then.

[Seazas]

7 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

It bugged me a fair bit that Norne's Heroes depiction only goes on about Kris and more Kris, rather than the far more unique connection she has with Draug.

That was god awful, I'm still seething over that. I'm just glad to have discovered plenty of FE community members that recognize her relations with Draug than this wack Kris shit. I'm going to be so mad once Kris gets in Heroes and Norne/Kris suddenly gets a large following over Katarina and Draug for their respective characters.

[Alastor15243]

Mystery of the Emblem Day 21: Book 2, Chapter 6

So, this is our big showdown with Lang. In chapter 6.

Man, this is really, REAAAALLLY disappointingly early to be having a showdown with this fucker. Feels really rushed. Still though, I’m hoping he has some good lines here.

Anyway, this is a really cool-looking map. I think we’re fighting on a castle rooftop to get into the upper tower room that Lang is in.

Really sparsely populated though. Mostly just a bunch of knights that are begging to be fed to Marth and his two shards, a mage with Elfire, and then two sages with worm and physic.

Looks like this map only lets us bring 12 units and-

…I’ve only been allowed to bring 15 units this whole time, not 16. HOW THE FUCK DID I NOT NOTICE THAT SIXTEEN DIDN’T FIT NEATLY INTO ROWS OF THREE!?

Anyway, like I said, time to give the star shards to Marth so he can gain some levels and catch up. These knights are the perfect fodder, so it’s time for him to break out his rapier. Also, I just realized that since he has the Fire Emblem, Marth can only carry three shards, while everyone else can carry 4. Good to keep in mind.

It’s a shame they don’t reveal what’s inside Lang’s tower during his dialogue scene. It makes it look a bit awkward. I’m picturing his lines being said out loud, but muffled by the stone between him and the viewer.

FUCK. I TOTALLY FORGOT THAT “NAVARRE” WOULD BE ON THIS MAP. In fairness they did hint at that last map and I forgot since I did that yesterday, but also, fuck this game for hiding recruitable units on the map until after you already select your units. AND I WAS DEBATING ON WHETHER OR NOT TO BRING CAEDA AND DECIDED AGAINST IT. AND I DIDN’T BRING OGMA EITHER.

…Fuck it, fine. I’ll allow restarting before I move anyone. That’s probably going to be wise given how important first turn formations can be when ironmanning. I’ll restart, and I’ll bring Caeda.

Anyway, things go reasonably well, but while the game hasn’t yet placed ambush spawns in areas where the “ambush” part has done anything particularly horrible, it’s making me incredibly nervous that figuring out where they’re likely to spawn is more of an educated guess than the sure thing it usually is with stairs and forts.

On the plus side, I got the speed boosting star shard, Libra, which means it’s finally time to start training Draug once I have an opening.

Marth’s training with the star shards has been really successful! He got 2 for 3 on defense levels so far!

The reinforcements made me panic a bit at first, as it meant some pretty tricky strategizing had to be done to fight them all back without exposing anyone to major danger, especially since it took me a while to work out where the safe zones from new reinforcements would be. Eventually though I managed to stem the flow to just fight the reinforcements as they came, and that led to some great leveling opportunities for Marth.

NOPE! NEVERMIND! That’s an uncomfortable amount of reinforcements, and they forced me into a retreat again!

Fortunately, Marth started gaining an insane number of defense levels, and eventually we managed to stem the tide. Marth is currently sitting pretty at 11 Strength, 12 Skill, 10 Speed, 12 Luck, 9 Weapon Level, 11 Defense, and 27 HP, all at level 8. And I think that’s fine for now. Time to give the star shards to someone else.

Someone like Draug! Yep, seems like as good an opportunity as any, now that I have plenty of enemies to fight and no need to do it quickly. Especially since Draug’s now just barely fast enough to double 0AS enemies with a slim lance.

So, we finally recruited “Navarre”… or rather… SAMTO! Honestly, that was pretty funny, having someone impersonate another recruitable character. Would’ve been shitty if it turned out we needed someone else to recruit them though and it was a trap or something. I’ve looked at his stats though, he doesn’t seem that great. Not that that means much with the star shards, but he doesn’t seem like a worthwhile investment on that front.

More importantly though, we have his Aquarius shard. And now, with Taurus, Gemini, Libra and Aquarius combined, we can give anyone we like a bonus of…

-5% HP
+45% Strength
+15% Skill
+55% Speed
+15% Luck
+15% Weapon Level
+25% Defense
-5% Resistance

Those are some pretty kickass bonuses, even considering the slight penalty to HP and the total neutralization of everyone’s 3% resistance growth. If we want resistance though, we’ll get it later. There’ll be shards that can give it.

Holy shit, Lang is nasty. He’s got 19 defense, so clearly he’s been making use of that star shard he’s been carrying, and its FIFTY PERCENT DEFENSE GROWTH BONUS. JESUS CHRIST. IS THE GAME EVEN GOING TO BE HARD AFTER GETTING THIS THING!?

Well, it’s my job to find out, because if so, that’s gonna be a nasty mark against the game’s balance. So, time to take this fucker out with Linde!

And of course he’s a dirty, cowardly snake in his battle dialogue. Of course. Still think they dropped the ball big time with how early this happened. This guy is no Admiral Greyfield.

Anyway, Wendell explains that the star shards were created when the Starsphere was used to make starlight. Also, apparently these things are cosmic keystones in some sense, in that the world is utterly fucked if they stay broken for too long. I mean, that makes it a pretty cool plot point in hindsight that Gotoh considered defeating Medeus so important that he’d risk this, but then why didn’t Gotoh, I don’t know, task Marth with gathering the shards RIGHT FUCKING AWAY? RIGHT AFTER THE WAR!?

Looks like we’re taking a slight detour before reclaiming Altea, where we’re going to get some more star shards. Awesome!

Day 21 Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 7

Looks like this is yet another instance of a later-recruitable unit showing up as a currently-unrecruitable enemy you’re just supposed to avoid at all costs, while having to deal with thieves.

A LOT of fucking thieves. 16 in all.

Also, apparently the dancer wasn’t a new addition to FE12, and yes, we get our first ever dancer in this game! That’ll be handy, because we’ve gotta send all of our fliers to take out these guys before they run away with all of the cool shit they have, including several promotion items we could really use. Namely a Dragon Whip and an Orion’s Bolt.

Ooh! Feena the dancer comes with a rapier! Apparently dancers can use rapiers too! Wait… does that mean it’s a class skill now, and that if I have Xane copy Marth, he’ll be able to use rapiers too? Questions for later. For now, gotta use her and Navarre to take out these thieves as they try to make a break for it!

Hmmm… which do I prioritize…? Angel Robe, or Dragon Whip?

Given that I have a level 20 pegasus knight right now, obviously the dragon whip.

The dancer’s theme is… oddly familiar. I have a feeling I’ve heard it somewhere before in Fire Emblem. Maybe in a medley without recognizing it?

Apparently I never noticed all of this time, but you can in fact check a weapon’s specific stats by pressing X whenever you’re selecting weapons. I could have sworn I tried that when messing around with the equip menu when starting book 1.

Palla just promoted after some trading, and she’s an absolute menace. Capped strength, 18 skill and 17 speed, with 14 defense. This game’s really, really schizophrenic with its difficulty, isn’t it?

Anyway, I got the Orion’s Bolt just as reinforcements start showing up, but I’m not gonna promote Castor juuuuust yet. I wanna try out that little tip Jotari told me about how promoting hunters indoors lets them ride their horse for that map. And given that we’re about to seize a castle, I think I feel an indoor map may be coming. Just in case it is, I’ll wait. Especially since he won’t be able to contribute much this map anyway.

This map is sending wave after wave of nasty knight and mage reinforcements, so many that I’m starting to think I’m supposed to escape.

BUT FUCK THAT! I’VE GOT SIX FUCKING STAR SHARDS AND A DRAUG WHO’S ABOUT TO SNOWBALL.

Still, wouldn’t hurt to get Marth ready to retreat in case something goes horribly wrong. So I’ll do that.

Okay, the thief getting indignant about being stolen from was a little funny.

And his death quote just being “Murderer.” was HILARIOUS.

But that post-victory mid-conversation segue into a story of the lore of Naga was… super dumb.

“They destroyed the whole temple with their vile ways, Prince Marth! This is an unspeakable atrocity! Even Naga would be furious!”

“You know about Naga? Tell me about him please, Jagen!”

Okay, so the Fire Emblem and Falchion were apparently originally used by a “giant warrior”. How giant could he be? The sword and shield are perfectly usable by humans, so…

Anyway, this is interesting. I think I heard something about this, but apparently Naga being female was a retcon, and originally Naga was viewed as distinctly male.

Wait a second, so there’s a fucking holy book, one which Jagen seems to take for granted that Marth has read like it's common knowledge, and yet Marth still doesn’t know anything about the divine figure described in it? That’s like reading the Bible without knowing who God is!

Anyway though, Draug is an absolute menace now. I probably don’t even need to give him the star shards for the rest of the game, honestly, though he probably won’t cap defense without it despite how high I’ve gotten his def to now. But at any rate, at least for now, I think it’s time to give the shards to somebody ELSE I can make into a monster.

Day 21 Bonus Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 8

So, this map could be dangerous depending on where I spawn. Almost reminiscent of Genealogy (though given this came first maybe reminiscent isn't the right word), you can still see part of last map at the bottom of the new map. And that part is the part where Astram’s heroes are.

And they’re still there.

This may very well be a map where I have to run from advancing silver sword heroes, which would be terrifying. So I’m not gonna stick around too much to feed kills to the new sharder, Rody, but I will of course take any opportunities I can get.

Okay, so, I’m very scared right now. Jeorge is guarding the fort I have to seize to win, and I’m worried I may have to fight him because recruiting him requires moon logic or something. And on top of that, the mercenaries are advancing, and I’m gonna have to run away from them. But there’s also the village I’m honor-bound to try to access, but to do that I have to go backwards, wasting time I need to escape, and likely risking getting intercepted by Astram. I may very well have to use yet another rescue charge, and I’ve been told I really want to keep some of those for later.

And to top it off, we get a look at Hardin’s stats and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. SOLID TWENTIES IN EVERYTHING AN ENEMY UNIT IS ALLOWED TO HAVE. GRADIVUS. THE DARKSPHERE, WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT DOES. PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT MOVE, HARDIN. STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE IN YOUR LITTLE CORNER OF THE MAP.

Plus side: We got Cain! And he’s pretty good! In fact he only has one less base defense than Sirius! So that’s a plus I suppose! I’ll definitely be using him!

A thief is trying to run off with another star shard, but thanks to the flexibility afforded by having a dancer, I can sic Palla on him with ease.

Also, by trading my current star shards of choice around (Gemini, Cancer, Libra and Aquarius), I managed to score three empowered level ups in a row! Go me!

Holy shit am I glad I chose to visit that village. Bantu was in it. And would I ever have been upset if that turned out to be how I had to recruit Tiki again!

…FUCK. I completely miscalculated how much damage Sirius could take, and he died.

…And he’s one of the four guys I have to keep alive to rescue the healers at some point, isn’t he? Because Nyna is one of them.

…Fuck. I’m sorry guys, I really wish I could do an ironman run of this, but given that this is a game with bad endings, I don’t want to know what the consequences will be for losing this guy. I’ve got to restart.

…And just as it occurred to me that I could probably just ask the thread if it’s possible to reach the final level without Sirius, I already restarted. Fuck. Well, that means this run isn’t ironman anymore.

…I really want to be able to do one of these completely no-reset ironman. But it looks like this isn’t going to be the one. Maybe Genealogy? I could give that a shot.

…Man, I gotta say, there are few worse feelings while playing Fire Emblem than pussing out of an ironman run. It’s making everything I do after it feel kind of empty, honestly. Hopefully the feeling will pass. I just hope that keeping Sirius alive was worth it for my assessment of the game.

Fortunately, it turns out that at least for now, Astram isn’t advancing, nor are his silver sword heroes. But we are getting the same reinforcements as last time, one mage and 3 knights a turn.

Looks like I can’t recruit Jeorge. Fortunately, judging by the fact that he has a star shard in his death inventory but not in his normal one, I’m starting to think that I’m supposed to fight and defeat him here, and then recruit him later after he retreats.

…No. He… died. I just looked it up. I’m supposed to recruit him with Gordin. GORDIN. HOW THE FUCK WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT? No dialogue hints, not even an established connection between the two… no, I’m not restarting for that. And apparently I need him to recruit Astram, but fuck that. Fuck it, I don’t care if it’s not perfect anymore, I’m doing this ironman again. I want to see how well this goes. With all the ways I can break this game, it’s not gonna be fun if I don’t do it ironman.

Oh. So the game DID give me a hint. Talk to a villager at the very end of the map and she’ll say “It seems the relations between two archers should be good”.

Really? That’s what you’re going to do, game? That outrageously dumb villager hint that’s completely useless information unless I’ve brought Gordin anyway? Yep, no way I’m restarting now. Recruiting Jeorge is clearly not something you’re supposed to do on your first playthrough.

Anyway, before I move on… you know what strikes me as odd? This is the same map as a chapter that was cut from Book 1. Which begs the question of why it was cut in the first place. They weren’t saving any money by cutting it, were they?

Day 21 Bonus Bonus Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 9

So, fun fact: the intro implies that Gotoh hates humans because after he opened a big magic school to teach them, they used his teachings for war and capitalism. I’m sorry, was there anything else we were supposed to do with magic? If the worldbuilding of this game gave any suggestion that Gotoh taught humanity how to do anything other than throw shit at people, I must have missed it. What the hell did he EXPECT people to do with the kinds of magic we see in the game?

Okay, so, to make up for my ironman cowardice, I won’t be using Sirius anymore. Not for anything other than saving Nyna when the time comes. For now, he’s out of my party. Just in time to be replaced with Cain!

So we’ve got a desert map, which means two things: mages and fliers. The fliers especially, since this map is once again full of thieves I have to take out before it’s too late. But as for mages, this is going to be a great opportunity to give Linde some exp now that I have the star shards necessary to make her strength and defense snowball. Especially since we get a Guiding Ring this chapter by killing the boss!

Hmmm… this Michalis backstory is pretty interesting. For those who haven’t played, basically he sided with Dolhr in a bid to take over Archanea, but planned to betray Dolhr with Camus later down the line. Not sure exactly if Camus was aware of this plan of his, or if he’d even agree if he was, but the important thing is that he survived because Maria took care of him. Not sure how she managed that when she was in our party for the whole time he would be in the most critical condition (not that I used her, so who knows?), but now he wants to repay her kindness by saving her.

I’m not sure how I feel about him as a character. This backstory, while interesting, seems a bit rushed, and could have done with some flashbacks. I’ll have to see how FE12 handles it. But that’s a looooong time away. For now, let’s focus on this mission.

Ooh! Not just new enemy phase music, but new player phase music! Honestly, I don’t like it as much as the first one, but it is really nice to have multiple map themes!

And yet again a village tells me how to recruit a character after the map starts. It’s like the game is mocking me. If the games really were initially meant to be done ironman, what the hell is the point of telling me these things precisely when it’s too late to do anything with the information? Hell, even if the game ISN’T supposed to be done ironman, where does the game get off making me restart because of information I couldn’t possibly have known at the time? Oh well. Let’s hope I don’t have to recruit him to get some cool item or something. Whenever he shows up.

Actually, this is why I liked the fortune telling feature of FE7 so much. The fact that it let you know what you needed to do to recruit a character while you can actually decide who to bring.

Since the game says we’re in a hurry before reinforcements show up, I decide to break out Linde’s special tome I’ve been saving up: Nosferatu! With this and her current stats, she’s basically invincible for as long as it lasts. And I think it would be wise to use it for at least a turn to cut through these mages and dragon riders.

Something tells me though, that the reinforcements are going to show up no matter what, if I want to make the trek to recruit Minerva.

Just got the Capricorn star shard, which seems like the most useless as it focuses mostly on HP and Weapon Level at the cost of skill and speed. It does boost defense a bit, but for the most part it seems like filler.

Atually, that mage guy the villager said I can recruit with Wendell hasn’t shown up, so hey, maybe the game was being nice and this is a guy I recruit inside!

Well, I found the reinforcements. Let’s see if I can distract them into the desert rather than having them chase after Doga. Holy shit am I glad I backtracked on my plan to let Doga sit on a fort right where the reinforcements would be.

I’m gonna need to distract them because if I don’t, I won’t have time to recruit Minerva, and that would SUUUUCK. Especially since I can only assume I need her to save Maria.

Honestly, I think I like this mechanic of having ludicrously powerful enemies chase after you, pushing you forward. Even though by this point Doga’s really just a promotion away from being able to slaughter all of them.

So according to the conversation between Marth and Minerva at the village, canonically Minverva was the one to defeat Michalis, Not my team of Hardin and Cain. They should’ve established that earlier if they wanted to make it a “twist” that she didn’t have it in her to finish him off.

Anyway, these reinforcements aren’t as bad as I thought they were. Or maybe my army’s just ludicrously powerful. Either way, They shouldn’t pose too much of a risk to my team.

Minerva’s okay, but aside from defense, Palla has her beat in everything. I should be able to patch her up with star shards though! But then, I can do that for everyone.

Oh shit, just think of the air force I could make in this game.

Anyway, Linde’s promoted, and she’s got 12 strength, 12 defense, and capped everything else but resistance and HP.

Well, unless something else comes up, I think that’s enough for today. Four chapters is plenty. Holy shit am I on a roll though. I still can’t decide how much of it is enjoying the game and how much of it is really, really wanting to get to Fire Emblem 4.

[Eltosian Kadath]

21 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Oh and FE4's minor female bosses, the only game with multiple minor female bosses.

The head of the all female mercenary crew (I think her name is Lamia) probably deserves to be in the list, as one of the few things we learn about her is her ruthless reputation. 

I am guessing @Alastor15243 didn't read my spoiler tag. Although then again going the long way around is still safer, andit sounds like you are trying to iron man. 

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

…And just as it occurred to me that I could probably just ask the thread if it’s possible to reach the final level without Sirius, I already restarted. Fuck. Well, that means this run isn’t ironman anymore.

Yes, the final battle can be reached without Sirius and the other members of the quartet. All you need them for is 100% recruitment. Getting the true ending will become a no-brainer in time. And, the conditions for it right now will certainly not pass you by. This isn't anything terribly obscure. It's even less hidden than FE6's.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hell, even if the game ISN’T supposed to be done ironman, where does the game get off making me restart because of information I couldn’t possibly have known at the time?

Well, FE12 will fix this. I can say that. But I feel it might be a little too Captain Obvious. Is it wrong for them to not say it entirely outright?

And for specifically Jeorge, oddly, FE12 lets Marth do the convincing too.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Well, FE12 will fix this. I can say that. But I feel it might be a little too Captain Obvious. Is it wrong for them to not say it entirely outright?

My issue is more that they give you no clues whatsoever until you already start the map, and then they basically straight up tell you, and putting the information there instead of before the preparation screen serves no purpose other than to make the player go "fuck, gotta restart". Though in the second instance of that happening it was in advance of the map where it was relevant, thankfully.

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

My issue is more that they give you no clues whatsoever until you already start the map, and then they basically straight up tell you, and putting the information there instead of before the preparation screen serves no purpose other than to make the player go "fuck, gotta restart". Though in the second instance of that happening it was in advance of the map where it was relevant, thankfully.

You're more than halfway through the recruitments thankfully, much more I think. FE3 is very top-heavy with its recruitments, most coming early.

 

And did you miss the Physics by the cave in Chapter 7? And the Silver Axe in the sands in Chapter 9? Or listen to villager who warned you about shops?

Edited October 20, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And did you miss the Physics by the cave in Chapter 7? And the Silver Axe in the sands in Chapter 9? Or listen to villager who warned you about shops?

I got the last one, yes. I'm not looking up treasures. The game's getting easy enough with all these crazy stat-boosting star shards. I wonder what the endgame is gonna be like. I already have units who could have easily contributed to the final chapter of book 1.

[Jotari]

Huh? I thought Jeorge wasn't recruitable in FE3. Only 12. But if there's a villager suggesting it then I must have just missed him.

[Emperor Hardin]

21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Holy shit, Lang is nasty. He’s got 19 defense, so clearly he’s been making use of that star shard he’s been carrying, and its FIFTY PERCENT DEFENSE GROWTH BONUS. JESUS CHRIST. IS THE GAME EVEN GOING TO BE HARD AFTER GETTING THIS THING!?

For reasons, I don't understand the DS remakes lowered all the enemy defense even on Lunatic(barring two major antagonists), so Lang's defense is lowered to a mere 13 on all difficulties, when the General base defense is 15.

21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And of course he’s a dirty, cowardly snake in his battle dialogue. Of course. Still think they dropped the ball big time with how early this happened. This guy is no Admiral Greyfield.

Hey Advance wars reference. Anyone notice the Beast and Hyman/FE bandit similarities.

21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ooh! Feena the dancer comes with a rapier! Apparently dancers can use rapiers too! Wait… does that mean it’s a class skill now, and that if I have Xane copy Marth, he’ll be able to use rapiers too? Questions for later. For now, gotta use her and Navarre to take out these thieves as they try to make a break for it!

Q2: Why can Feena equip the Rapier?

Comments: In the world of Fire Emblem, Rapiers are used by royalty. The fact that Feena can equip it implies something about her heritage.

From an interview with Kaga.

21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I mean, that makes it a pretty cool plot point in hindsight that Gotoh considered defeating Medeus so important that he’d risk this, but then why didn’t Gotoh, I don’t know, task Marth with gathering the shards RIGHT FUCKING AWAY? RIGHT AFTER THE WAR!?

Good question!

21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay, the thief getting indignant about being stolen from was a little funny.

And his death quote just being “Murderer.” was HILARIOUS.

Gotta love Dahl, a Japanese hack of Fe3 even made him a recurring boss.

21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But that post-victory mid-conversation segue into a story of the lore of Naga was… super dumb.

“They destroyed the whole temple with their vile ways, Prince Marth! This is an unspeakable atrocity! Even Naga would be furious!”

“You know about Naga? Tell me about him please, Jagen!”

Okay, so the Fire Emblem and Falchion were apparently originally used by a “giant warrior”. How giant could he be? The sword and shield are perfectly usable by humans, so…

Anyway, this is interesting. I think I heard something about this, but apparently Naga being female was a retcon, and originally Naga was viewed as distinctly male.

Wait a second, so there’s a fucking holy book, one which Jagen seems to take for granted that Marth has read like it's common knowledge, and yet Marth still doesn’t know anything about the divine figure described in it? That’s like reading the Bible without knowing who God is!

This is a good point, I'd wager Marth just isn't religious, but really they just wanted an excuse to exposition.

You see a tapestry with a depiction of Giant God Naga in the intro if you leave the game on titlescreen long enough.

21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

This may very well be a map where I have to run from advancing silver sword heroes, which would be terrifying. So I’m not gonna stick around too much to feed kills to the new sharder, Rody, but I will of course take any opportunities I can get.

Okay, so, I’m very scared right now. Jeorge is guarding the fort I have to seize to win, and I’m worried I may have to fight him because recruiting him requires moon logic or something. And on top of that, the mercenaries are advancing, and I’m gonna have to run away from them. But there’s also the village I’m honor-bound to try to access, but to do that I have to go backwards, wasting time I need to escape, and likely risking getting intercepted by Astram. I may very well have to use yet another rescue charge, and I’ve been told I really want to keep some of those for later.

And to top it off, we get a look at Hardin’s stats and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. SOLID TWENTIES IN EVERYTHING AN ENEMY UNIT IS ALLOWED TO HAVE. GRADIVUS. THE DARKSPHERE, WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT DOES. PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT MOVE, HARDIN. STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE IN YOUR LITTLE CORNER OF THE MAP.

I really love how much FE3 keeps the player on the run with stuff like Emperor Hardin and those encroaching Hero units.

21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

…And just as it occurred to me that I could probably just ask the thread if it’s possible to reach the final level without Sirius, I already restarted. Fuck. Well, that means this run isn’t ironman anymore.

…I really want to be able to do one of these completely no-reset ironman. But it looks like this isn’t going to be the one. Maybe Genealogy? I could give that a shot.

…Man, I gotta say, there are few worse feelings while playing Fire Emblem than pussing out of an ironman run. It’s making everything I do after it feel kind of empty, honestly. Hopefully the feeling will pass. I just hope that keeping Sirius alive was worth it for my assessment of the game.

Don't worry about it.

21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Anyway, before I move on… you know what strikes me as odd? This is the same map as a chapter that was cut from Book 1. Which begs the question of why it was cut in the first place. They weren’t saving any money by cutting it, were they?

Space perhaps, I still wonder why they cut Roger as unlike Wrys, Jake, Beck and Darros, his class was still in the game playable, and unlike Gotoh, he didn't wield any enemy exclusive equipment.

21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hmmm… this Michalis backstory is pretty interesting. For those who haven’t played, basically he sided with Dolhr in a bid to take over Archanea, but planned to betray Dolhr with Camus later down the line. Not sure exactly if Camus was aware of this plan of his, or if he’d even agree if he was, but the important thing is that he survived because Maria took care of him. Not sure how she managed that when she was in our party for the whole time he would be in the most critical condition (not that I used her, so who knows?), but now he wants to repay her kindness by saving her.

I’m not sure how I feel about him as a character. This backstory, while interesting, seems a bit rushed, and could have done with some flashbacks. I’ll have to see how FE12 handles it. But that’s a looooong time away. For now, let’s focus on this mission.

Kaga and the timeline expands a bit: when Macedon was in a famine, Osmond kept waiting for supplies for Archanea rather then taking it by force and when Dolhr invaded, Osmond was expecting reinforcements from Archanea that didn't arrive, whilst Nyna's father was a good dad he was notably incompetent as a King as noted by Camus in BS FE. Finally Michalis murdered him after hearing false rumors of Osmond disinheriting him in favor of Minerva.

 

 

[Alastor15243]

Mystery of the Emblem Day 22: Book 2, Chapter 10

First thing I notice about this level is that there are a hell of a lot of chests with no clearly visible pathway to get to them. Either there’s something to this I’m not getting, or I literally have to use the thief staff I got last chapter to get those treasures.

Second thing I notice: they actually have enemy clerics! I wonder why?

Anyway, this map doesn’t look too complicated, apart from the nasty Worm mages literally right at the starting point. But since Marth can cross water, he can take those out pretty quickly. I’ll just pass him the star shards real quick and-

…Merric starts out in the middle of the belly of the beast, surrounded by monsters and in attack range of the recruitable boss, Ellerean.

…SO.

I’M GOING TO TAKE A SHOT IN THE DARK AND ASSUME THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN SAVING MY RESCUE CHARGES FOR.

So obviously my first order of business is to 1: take out at least one of the worm users with someone who can cross the indoor river, and 2: rescue Merric. I do both of these flawlessly, thanks to the single silver sword I had good sense to buy (though in hindsight maybe if I had searched his convoy for a steel sword that might have worked too). Now all that remains is to see what the enemy does in terms of advancing, and how to abuse it.

…Apparently nobody moves but the boss unless you provoke them. That… is utterly bizarre. But works for me! The main issue is figuring out how to defeat the second worm mage without getting in the boss’s range.

So I was hoping to pull a trick I’ve enjoyed doing since Fates: abusing terrain access to trick charging enemies into going the long way around and back continuously. I was hoping to do that in order to keep the boss away long enough to take out the second worm sage. Unfortunately, the recruitable boss heads down towards where the worm sage is… and he just keeps on going. So it looks like I won’t be able to kill this guy without risking either killing him or dying to a 4% crit. So… looks like we’ll have to just run.

Actually, for some reason, despite nothing I can identify changing, the boss started going around the long way, even when Marth crossed the indoor river again.

So I recruited their leader and…

…Everyone else just stops attacking. I mean that makes sense, but… I was really looking forward to the free exp for training Merric!

Ultimately, I let them go because I feel like a total dick for fighting them. My army’s powerful enough that I’m willing to forego the easy exp.

Anyway, not too much interesting about the post-map cutscene except that the music playing is… I recognize it! It’s what was eventually remixed in Awakening into “You Have Power Like Mine”! Fascinating getting to hear the original!

Day 22 Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 11

Alright, I saw that intro text, game! This is a buried treasure desert map. Alright, I’ll be bringing thieves for that.

And the map is just nothing but sand. Well. Guess that makes it a good excuse to train up Merric! I’ve got him already loaded up with the star shards, so I don’t think this map is gonna have much in the way of strategy. Which given how tied my hands are… that’s probably a good thing.

“The Death Desert of Marmotord”. I can’t decide whether that name is impressively high-fantasy or stupid.

Oh dear god, that exposition was… terribly positioned. Waaaaaay too much at one time. And really? The game’s just gonna flat-out describe the gameplay effects of Medeus’s dragon breath in-universe? “Medeus’s dark breath was of tremendous power and halved the enemy’s strength”. Really?

Okay, this map is insanely boring. None of the enemies advance towards me, it’s just a matter of baiting them in and feeding them to the increasingly-deadly Merric magic machine. And to top it all off, it’s a seize map, so I have to bring Marth across all of these sands for basically no reason.

And suddenly I notice this badass rocking the fucking master sword, which in this game is a killing edge except even better. So they made two enemy-exclusive classes, just for aesthetics of desert fighters, the axe-wielding barbarians and the sword-wielding berserkers? Holy shit does the berserker sprite look awesome. I really, really, REALLY want one. Alas. I suspect it is not to be.

After trekking halfway across the map, I finally found a hidden treasure. An angel robe. I’m gonna try to find more once the map is clear, but holy shit is it taking a while.

Yeah, I think these things must be like single-space treasures, because how the fuck did I only manage to find one of them going three spaces at a time in a path through the map?

So we clear the map and… TIKI! TIKI IS BACK! YAAAAAY TIKI!

…What? She… is she… please tell me this is just possessive little sister jealousy she seems to be displaying-

…Someone please explain to me how “I love you heart three” happened. Did the fan translation originally have her say “I love you <3”, only to realize they could do the actual heart symbol and then forgot to replace the three too?

…Oh. It was Xane. That… makes it marginally less creepy. Still creepy as fuck that he thought hitting on a teenage boy by using a little girl’s body was an amusing prank instead of FUCKING TERRIFYING. But hey, I guess this demonstrates that he can transform into dragons’ human forms at least, if not their dragon forms.

Shame I only managed to find one treasure naturally. On the plus side, Merric’s insanely strong now and level 20! What did I miss…?

Ah, just a couple of stat boosters. Not like there’s much demand for those right now, hahaha!

Anyway… let’s get going.

Day 22 Bonus Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 12

So… this is a flaming lava pit full of dragons, indoors, with only 12 units. I hope this map is gonna be hard again, because holy shit were the last two snoozefests. At any rate, now that Merric is capped, I think I’m gonna try to get one of my cavaliers promoted at least. Probably Rody since he’s in greater danger of being made harder to train. So I’ll whip out the dragon sword and kill me some dragons. Right now I’m going with the big standby of Cancer, Gemini, Leo and Virgo, focusing on buffing the three hardest-to-boost stats: strength, defense and resistance. I might switch to focus some on speed later if Rody’s speed doesn’t keep up. But for now, I’m focusing on making him big and beefy.

I have slightly more than 8 dragons to deal with, so the dragon killer sword probably won’t be able to take out all of them. But thankfully, I have two overpowered mages who can handle it if it comes to that.

Battle starts, and I’ve developed a reflexive cringe every single time Marth asks people to go into expodump mode, which he seems to do every other chapter now. It’s infuriating. This is an obnoxiously inorganic way of giving exposition.

Okay, so, yeah, this is the degeneration thing I heard about before. But I didn’t know they also stopped being able to give birth. That explains why their numbers faded even as manaketes, now that I think about it.

Still don’t see why people argue Medeus was in the right, but I suppose that’s gonna come later.

Those forts behind my army are making me nervous. I wanna get, say… 14 spaces away from those fuckers as soon as I can, on the off chance they’re hiding flying dragons.

Speaking of which, looks like this will be at least a little difficult, as I’ve got three flying dragons incoming, and nobody with the HP to take more than one of them on. I’ll have to player-phase them.

Actually, no! I decided instead to give Merric an angel robe, heal him, and have him fight them to soften them up for player phase!

The un-softened one, however, can only be attacked from one space at range. Thankfully, I have a dancer, but I didn’t even need to use her, because flying dragons are weak to arrows like usual.

Turns out it isn’t flying dragons coming out of those forts, but fire dragons and devil axe fire tribesmen barbarians. Not quite as bad, but still pretty irksome. Thankfully, it did provide for a really, really good training exercise, and hey, I won’t complain about a challenge!

We got Pisces, which is a general star shard that boosts HP, Luck, Def and Res growths by 10%. A pretty good filler, I’ll keep it in mind.

Strangely, the reinforcements subsided for a while, but then suddenly came back right when I reached the boss.

If I had to guess, they’re programmed to come for a while, stop, and then come back once you reach the boss, then stop once you kill them. That’s the only thing that seems to make sense from what happened.

But anyway, operation “Make Rody a Badass” was a resounding success: He’s now got 17 strength, 12 skill, 15 speed, 9 luck, 16 weapon level, 14 defense, and 3 resistance, with 32 HP, at level 17. By the time I promote him, he shouldn’t need the big beefy shards anymore, and I can give him the less important ones, focusing on his luck and skill. Then I’ll let Cecil use the beefy ones to catch up to him next map. Speaking of…

Alright. More dragon lore. So the dragons lost their mind, attacked humans, and Naga intervened to protect them. Still not seeing where humans were in the wrong. At all. I’m assuming they’re waiting for later to say, but why hasn’t Xane told me already? Doesn’t he generally hate humanity like Gotoh?

Also, while this was pretty obvious considering the fact that he clearly doesn’t consider himself a human, this chapter explicitly reveals that Gotoh is a dragon. A divine dragon to be precise.

Well, on to the next map!

Day 22 Bonus Bonus Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 13

Alright, we’re finally at the ice dragon castle, and…

…Why do ice dragons look like burrowing snagrets?

I’m sorry, I just can’t unsee this! They look like pink long-necked birds poking out of the ground. And given the pile of freshly-dug dirt at the bases of their necks, I’m assuming that yes, they are burrowing underground.

Anyway, this seems pretty straightforward. First map I’ve seen with outdoor chests though. Interesting.

Still limited to deploying 12 units, though that shouldn’t be a problem.

Okay. First clue about what the humans did wrong. “They scorned the manaketes even though they had lost their power, and treated them like filth”.

And then once the humans gained the ability to do so, they started fighting back against manaketes, killing even the ones that lived in peace.

Oh. Oh I see. You’re going to have to do better than that game, if you want to justify Medeus’s motives. Need I remind you that they lived in terror of these godlike beings for most of their lives, before being terrorized by their insane brethren as they went feral and destroyed their homes, and that the one dragon who made any real effort to help humanity didn’t even do it in dragon form, giving them no idea there was any nuance in this situation at all? How much of this is based on human racism and how much of it is based on a massive tragic miscommunication? And also, need I remind this game that this is based on a THOUSAND FUCKING YEAR GRUDGE? Fuck how humans treated dragons thousands of years ago, I want to know how they treat them NOW.

Anyway, battle starts, and the only really interesting thing about this snowy, winding path to the castle is that ice dragons can go through water pretty easily. And a batch of 5 of them are coming towards my party. Thankfully they aren’t faster than my party, so Merric and Linde should be able to take care of them. I’m really starting to wish I saved that guiding ring for Merric, honestly. I hope I get another one soon. I’ve found myself forced to waste a lot of exp using him to fight dragons.

I temporarily gave the defense and attack shards to Linde so that she could stop wasting levels gaining basically nothing as she fights all of these ice dragons using hit and run tactics. She can’t take more than one hit and survive, and even though their attacks are really inaccurate, I obviously can’t risk it.

You know what I’m finding I really like about this game? The ambush spawns aren’t really all that ambush-y. They move the same turn they spawn, but they seem to be intentionally placed so that they’re extremely unlikely to actually be in range of your troops when they arrive, either way ahead of where they could possibly be, or back where your party started, spawning halfway through the map. I like it. It would be better if they didn’t move the same turn they spawned at all and just arrived a turn earlier, but effectively there’s very little difference right now.

On the negative side though, after the initial scare of the six ice dragons (which wasn’t even that big of a scare), this is yet another instance of a woefully underpopulated level I have to send my army across over many tedious turns.

Okay, I was going to brush this off as a fluke, but it’s happened three times in a row, and yes, SF confirms it: Feena’s growth rates are absolutely bonkers. She’d make a crazy good swordfighter if she weren’t way more useful as a dancer and if I didn’t already have a ludicrous supply of ways to make anyone a badass.

Rody finally got enough exp to promote this chapter, and, as usual, I’ve created a monster. 20 strength, 16 skill, 20 speed, 18 weapon level, 18 defense, and 10 resistance. Only real weak spot is that 10 luck, but that’s nothing that Aries can’t fix. I don’t think he’ll be needing star shards for the rest of the game, so it’s time to pass the baton to Cecil.

Also, we finally found the boots! As usual, Marth’s getting those.

Okay, so, yet another expodump and hooooooooold the FUCKING phone. “The darksphere was given to Hardin by Gharnef”?

WHEN THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN? ISN’T GHARNEF DEAD? WHEN DID GHARNEF GIVE HARDIN ANYTHING!?

MARTH!? WHY AREN’T YOU ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS!?

MARTH!?

HELLO!?

Day 22 Bonus Bonus Bonus Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 14

Okay, so, aside from that massive confusing cliffhanger that I’m morally certain somebody’s going to explain in the comments (possibly having to do with me missing something), now we’re raiding the ice castle. And what do I spy among the countless thieves? Two things: a warp staff, and a guiding ring! How helpful! Here’s the plan: kill the thief outside of the castle, warp in with Merric, have him kill the guiding ring thief, promote him, and have him team up with Linde to take out this whole damned castle full of dragons. If we find anything other than dragons and thieves here, we’ll give someone else a chance to fight them, but for now, it’s too dangerous.

Okay wait… so they’re explaining “The Tragedy of Anri the Wise” and all, how he died alone and unmarried because the love of his life was forced for political reasons to marry the leader of the liberation army instead of Anri, and talking about the curse of the Fire Emblem… but… Anri didn’t have the Fire Emblem. It was the guy Artemis wound up marrying, the liberation army leader, who had the Fire Emblem. So it’s weird to talk about the curse of the Fire Emblem like that. The curse wasn’t that Anri didn’t get to be with the woman he loved, it was that the liberation army leader, who we must therefore presume genuinely loved Artemis, lost her in childbirth shortly afterwards. Technically it’s the liberation army leader’s tragedy, not Anri’s. The shit that happened to Anri, save for Artemis's death, had nothing to do with the Fire Emblem. Bit of a nitpick, but it’s still really weirdly phrased.

Anyway, Xane joins us now, with just barely enough HP to be one-shot by every single goddamned dragon on this map. Thanks for nothing, asshole.

I fucked up. I forgot to dance for Merric before warping him in to kill the guiding ring thief, and he’s not even armed with fire magic so he needs a crit to kill the two ice dragons who are going to attack him. And that’s assuming I’m right that the devil sword thieves will ignore him.

…Fuck it. I’m not gambling with Merric’s life, I’m rescuing him. So now only have one rescue use left. I better make it count and not fuck up like this again.

Thankfully, the thieves are coming to me. So warping Merric in was totally pointless.

Little matter though, because Merric’s promoted now, and now nothing stands between him and Linde and total godhood.

…And that makes this map really disappointing. I’ve got this big, awesome-looking ice castle full of nasty dragons, and the game won’t even have the courtesy to send them after me? No? Just let them stand still until I come to them to slaughter them? Really?

Alright, all the enemies are gone… now… how to get in? There don’t appear to be any doors… I guess I’ll just get close, and if nothing happens, try to see if…

No, let’s try out the unlock staff.

…No?

Oh, that only works at 1-2 range? Then what’s the fucking point of the thing? Alright, let’s move in.

I tried the watch staff, but it only briefly exposes it. But it looks like the insides of the buildings are safe. Let’s move in and see if thieves work.

…Nope, thieves don’t work either.

Oh, okay, moving Marth in had Gotoh really weirdly pop in briefly to explain that he has to stand in front of the wall.

Alright, so, I think I might have made a mistake in going to that wall first. I’m getting serious vibes of this being an end of chapter conversation. I’ve got the Starsphere now, meaning I can’t take advantage of the insane individual growths anymore, but it also means I got a global +30% for one inventory slot, and the infinite weapon usage! I just really hope this isn’t about to end the map before I can get all the chests…

Nope, I can still access the other rooms. However, this puts Cecil in a tight spot. Her stats aren’t terrible, but I was hoping to give her defense a little more special attention before downgrading that specific growth rate to the 30% of the Starsphere. Oh well. She’ll definitely get Starsphere focus at the next opportunity. I can only assume that we have until we get all five spheres before we lose access to the Starsphere.

Okay, in particular, the conversation with Tiki in the next room has convinced me I want to see FE12’s version of this game’s writing, because, with apologies to whoever made the patch, the dialogue is just too literal and boring here. I wanna see it like in Shadow Dragon.

…But then I remember that FE12 never came to America, and I’ll be relying on a fan translation for that too…

…Oh well. Such is my lot in life.

I’m really beginning to question the sanity of the map designers. There aren’t any more enemies in these rooms. I’m just running across a huge map, from room to room, opening them in order and getting the presents inside. Why couldn’t I just get all of this at once?

Holy shit. The Again staff. I’ve heard about this. Apparently it’s a fucking MAP-WIDE DANCE EFFECT. As if my army weren't already overpowered, I basically have Eagle’s Lightning Strike from Advance Wars for three uses. Yeah, that totally sounds like something I’m not going to hoard.

But then, that’s the beauty of ironman: you never know what you’re going to find yourself forced to use.

Honestly, that’s a big part of why ironmannability is its own score. I think these games are at their best when they’re done ironman. So many aspects of gameplay just completely lose their bite when you can restart a level. The risk assessment, the frantic debates of what you’re willing to risk to get out of a bad situation, and emergency staves like warp, rescue, physic and again, they all just fade into the background, either partially or completely, whenever you have the option to retry something infinitely. I’ve never had more fun playing Fire Emblem games than I have when I play them ironman, and when a game forces me to play the game with restarts in order to realistically enjoy it, that is a big red flag for me that I’m going to have less fun unless the game does something major to make up for it.

The fact that this is the first time in the series where ironmanning has felt realistic but still reasonably dangerous is a big point in this game’s favor. And all of a sudden I feel a bit less guilty about putting this above Gaiden.

But yeah, now onto the real ending dialogue. Gotoh brings up Gharnef again, and…

Oh! So NOW you ask the obvious “but isn’t Gharnef dead!?” question! I was wondering when you were gonna do that! How did it not raise alarm bells before!?

Oh, so Gharnef was destroyed, but he’s using the Darksphere as some kind of soul jar? Then that still doesn’t explain how Gharnef “gave” the Darksphere to Hardin!

What’s that? No explanation for that? Fine, game. Have it your way.

Day 22 Bonus Bonus Bonus Bonus Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 15

Alright, so, we’re back to that spiraling map from Book 1 Chapter 13 that used to be a blocky mess. Remember that one? Anyway, while this seems to be a big step up in terms of enemy forces, we are well past the point where they’d truly be threatening. The only major gripe is that the opportunities to train Marth and Cecil appear… limited.

Ooh! But look! Abel’s here! …As an enemy. Because Est is held hostage. Alright. Est can survive one round of combat from within that cage, so I’ll hold off on trying to us the rescue staff on her just in case the dialogue is correct and they won’t attack her immediately despite her being blue and her prison guard red. I only have one rescue use left after all, thanks to my little fuck-up with Merric back in the last chapter. But Merric should be able to wipe the floor with the army stationed to guard her, so recruiting Abel with Est (which is what I’m assuming must be done) should be a piece of cake.

In other news… new music! And I like this one a lot! Great player phase map theme! And the enemy phase one… I KNOW I heard this thing playing in FE4. Weird to re-use a song just one game later, don’t you think? But anyway, I like it too!

…Well. Things went south pretty damned fast.

First off, I didn’t see the worm magic user when I was calculating how long Est could survive. Thankfully the knight still didn’t attack so she’s okay. For now. But probably not for much longer. Better rescue her now, except…

When assessing the risk of the ballisticians, I failed to notice their frankly obscene crit rates. Rates that procced. Killing Yumina and costing me one of my healers, the watch staff, and the last use of the rescue staff. Given the psychotically low attack power of this type of ballista, it’s like it was tailor-made to only be dangerous to tier-one healers. And it succeeded.

Thankfully, I didn't lose the warp staff. That is still safely with Malleisia. And it looks like I’m gonna have to use it now if I want to ensure Est’s survival. Which I do.

Solving a very complicated positioning puzzle, a moment that makes me really wish I had the time to screenshot my playthroughs, I managed to warp both someone who could kill the worm user, and a second person who, just to be absolutely, full-paranoid sure, killed the general and can now heal the injured Est. As a result, Linde is in the prison with Est, about to tend to her wounds, and Caeda is now in the southeast corner of the map, her silver lance awash in worm-user blood and ready to retreat to the sea should anything dangerous come her way while she’s all alone and exposed.

Holy shit was it wise of me to send a flier to kill the worm sage. Abel’s on the march. Gotta keep him occupied until I can get Est free to recruit him. Caeda is going to bait him in, flee into the ocean so he tries for the next closest target, then go back onto land, and repeat the process to make Abel go back and forth, going nowhere.

So I rescue Est with ease, have Julian open both doors, and position Est just as Abel is baited back towards the prison, and recruit Abel…

…With text that hasn’t been translated. Goodie.

But I still recruit Abel just fine all the same! And he’s got pretty good stats in everything but luck. His HP is also kinda mediocre, but I can think of plenty of use I can get out of him.

Oh shoot. The villages are still in the midst of their rivalry and I forgot to check all the houses for indications of what gives what before going. I got a power ring. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the other gives a dracoshield, which is much better, but honestly at this point my army has plenty in terms of both strength and defense. I’m sure I’ll manage. Anyway, I think it’s kinda… not sure what the right word is, something between funny and cute, but it’s that word that when the villager tries to explain the village rivalry, Marth’s like “Yes, I remember… but… you know… you should really work on fixing that, don’t you think?”

Thieves spawn, but with no doors to unlock and no villages to ransack, they just… stay there. Well, free exp for Marth once I give him the Starsphere back!

I find it hilarious that a village tried to warn me about thieves coming from forts. Thieves armed with IRON SWORDS. Thieves that instinctively RUN AWAY FROM EVERYTHING.

Still, better to warn about nothing than not warn about something.

Wow, you get the physic staff WAY later in this game than you do in Book 1. Though I suppose there was that secret physic staff I missed, but they were way more plentiful in general in Book 1.

But anyway, I fed all of the kills on the central island, including all the cowardly thieves, to Marth, resulting in a lot of lucky defense levels for only having a 50% growth. He’s now at level 17 with 16 defense, and most of his other stats are sitting pretty too. I’ve had him fight in like two maps and both times he’s made insane progress.

But after a disturbingly Corrin-esque bit of self-doubt followed by retainer-induced ego stroking, it’s finally time to reclaim Altea!

…Tomorrow. I’ve been playing all day, it’s like 7:30 PM, I’m calling it quits for now before my power of judgment starts to suffer.

See ya tomorrow!

[Emperor Hardin]

11 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

…Everyone else just stops attacking. I mean that makes sense, but… I was really looking forward to the free exp for training Merric!

I'll do a full response on your progress later, but for now I'll say that the remake altered this chapter really weirdly: All of Ellerean's troops start trying to kill him after he's recruited except the clerics, the game now punishes you for killing the clerics, and weirdest of all Jagen says they've "rescued the clerics kidnapped by Ellerean" if you complete the clerics without killing any. 

What makes it really weird is that there's no mention anyone elsewhere in the remake about Khadein's clerics being kidnapped and why Ellerean would kidnap them? The original makes so far more sense, I like being able to complete the mission with minimal bloodshed and it makes no sense that Khadein would try to kill their leader instead of standing down. Your opinion on this change?

Edited October 21, 2019 by Emperor Hardin

[Flere210]

In this case i just turn my moral of and just go ful Dimitri lol. I am a terrible person

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

I'll do a full response on your progress later, but for now I'll say that the remake altered this chapter really weirdly: All of Ellerean's troops start trying to kill him after he's recruited except the clerics, the game now punishes you for killing the clerics, and weirdest of all Jagen says they've "rescued the clerics kidnapped by Ellerean" if you complete the clerics without killing any. 

What makes it really weird is that there's no mention anyone elsewhere in the remake about Khadein's clerics being kidnapped and why Ellerean would kidnap them? The original makes so far more sense, I like being able to complete the mission with minimal bloodshed and it makes no sense that Khadein would try to kill their leader instead of standing down. Your opinion on this change?

The removal of the surrender? Bad. You're right that it doesn't really make sense lore-wise, but I'll have to see how they handle it.

The "don't kill the clerics" thing and the implication that they were kidnapped? I mean, in theory side objectives are nice, but there really isn't any challenge to not killing these healers, unlike the similar chapter in PoR. So yeah I think in practice that would be a mistake too.

Personally though I would have liked them to come up with something that doesn't make victory as simple as "bring Wendell and use rescue". So I can understand the desire to change it in some way. That just sounds like they didn't go about it the right way.

Edited October 21, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Shadow Mir]

Did you find the boots and make Marth the marathon man again?

[Interdimensional Observer]

37 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ah, just a couple of stat boosters. Not like there’s much demand for those right now, hahaha!

And a Secret Shop! Three of them actually. One Chapter 11, one in Chapter 13, one accessible only via Warp in Chapter 14.

You could have bought: Rapiers, Armorslayers, Wyrmslayers, Ridersbanes, Silver Swords and Bows, Killer Lances and Bows, Bolganone, Shaver, Ward, Physics, Firestones, Magestones, Icestones, and Flying Dragonstones.

 

37 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh, so Gharnef was destroyed, but he’s using the Darksphere as some kind of soul jar? Then that still doesn’t explain how Gharnef “gave” the Darksphere to Hardin!

FE12, in a free DLC battle, invented an excuse. Gharnef's surviving followers near Khadein spun together a magic circle to bring back his body.

Might seem weird when Aum is supposed to be so special. But if it could only bring back a body, and Gharnef's soul was specifically saved by the Darksphere, then it might make sense.

 

37 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Turns out it isn’t flying dragons coming out of those forts, but fire dragons and devil axe fire tribesmen barbarians. Not quite as bad, but still pretty irksome. Thankfully, it did provide for a really, really good training exercise, and hey, I won’t complain about a challenge!

I chose to leave them unblocked and tried to get Marth to seize before they caught up to me, it added a pinch of fun pressure.

Edited October 21, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Alastor15243]

9 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And a Secret Shop! Three of them actually. One Chapter 11, one in Chapter 13, one accessible only via Warp in Chapter 14.

You could have bought: Rapiers, Armorslayers, Wyrmslayers, Ridersbanes, Silver Swords and Bows, Killer Lances and Bows, Bolganone, Shaver, Ward, Physics, Firestones, Magestones, Icestones, and Flying Dragonstones.

I only felt regret at that list when you got to the stones. Why would they gate so much of Tiki's content behind a secret shop like that? Anyway, looking up the secrets to every map kind of takes the fun out of doing a blind ironman, which is why I still kind of don't regret not looking those up. Also, really, I should be judging the game by how it plays normally, not by how it plays with a strategy guide. For the most part. I do make some exceptions.

 

@Shadow Mir Sure did! Pretty sure I put that in the post.

Edited October 21, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

21 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I only felt regret at that list when you got to the stones. Why would they gate so much of Tiki's content behind a secret shop like that?

Honestly though, Tiki's other stones aren't really needed.

• You can have two Firestones: one from a Thief in Chapter 8, and another from a dragon that spawns in Chapter 7 near the cave if you got close enough to it. The Fires + Divine is enough for Tiki. Or even just the Divine.
• Statwise, the Ice Dragon is hardly different from the Fire.
• Flying would be cool for the massive Move. But the lower Def, Divine having flight already (and anti-everything Dragon breath), and the inability to prematurely shift back to pick something better for combat, makes it not so great.
• I did buy a Magestone for Tiki, but it wasn't as useful as I'd thought it'd be. The 20 Res stops magic enemies from attacking her altogether, and since she can't double, this makes the Magestone not so great for slaughtering mages.

A little sad that in practice there isn't much effective variety. But I do like the idea.

 

And as for Medeus, I consider him tragic in principle. That is different from being felt as tragic. On paper is entirely different from the perceived reality. I give him a little pity for never getting the chance to have more than principle.

Edited October 21, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Emperor Hardin]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Day 22 Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 11

…Someone please explain to me how “I love you heart three” happened. Did the fan translation originally have her say “I love you <3”, only to realize they could do the actual heart symbol and then forgot to replace the three too?

…Oh. It was Xane. That… makes it marginally less creepy. Still creepy as fuck that he thought hitting on a teenage boy by using a little girl’s body was an amusing prank instead of FUCKING TERRIFYING. But hey, I guess this demonstrates that he can transform into dragons’ human forms at least, if not their dragon forms.

Shame I only managed to find one treasure naturally. On the plus side, Merric’s insanely strong now and level 20! What did I miss…?

Ah, just a couple of stat boosters. Not like there’s much demand for those right now, hahaha!

I never got why so many ship Tiki and Marth, personally.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Day 22 Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 11

Alright, we’re finally at the ice dragon castle, and…

…Why do ice dragons look like burrowing snagrets?

 

I’m sorry, I just can’t unsee this! They look like pink long-necked birds poking out of the ground. And given the pile of freshly-dug dirt at the bases of their necks, I’m assuming that yes, they are burrowing underground.

Ice Dragons are weak to fire, so Bantu and Mages can tear them apart with Fire Breath and the various fire tomes respectively. Fire Dragons are also weak to the lone ice tome. These traits were removed in the remake.

This is one of the reasons why Bantu isn't bad here along with Starsphere shards and dragon defense.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh. Oh I see. You’re going to have to do better than that game, if you want to justify Medeus’s motives. Need I remind you that they lived in terror of these godlike beings for most of their lives, before being terrorized by their insane brethren as they went feral and destroyed their homes, and that the one dragon who made any real effort to help humanity didn’t even do it in dragon form, giving them no idea there was any nuance in this situation at all? How much of this is based on human racism and how much of it is based on a massive tragic miscommunication? And also, need I remind this game that this is based on a THOUSAND FUCKING YEAR GRUDGE? Fuck how humans treated dragons thousands of years ago, I want to know how they treat them NOW.

Out of game material goes into this more. Humans tend to fear and hate Manaketes, bar the Divine Dragons. The nations of Archanea prevented the Dohr from obtaining resources and foods, in general keeping them in the bad lands and a state of poverty. They didn't enslave them or make them act as second class citizens like say the Beorc to the Laguz(humans reserved that for other humans), though. In general humans were greatly wary of dragons, constantly viewed them as a threat and ensured Manakete would be as deprived and as far away from humanity as possible to prevent another Dolhr uprising.

Ordwin the founder of Grust was the only hero of the liberation war who tried for peace with Manaketes, though the others didn't agree with them. Grust, in general, had the least hostile with Manaketes and thus worked the most closely with Dolhr out of their allies in the War of Shadows, though there was still plenty of tension even there.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I’m really beginning to question the sanity of the map designers. There aren’t any more enemies in these rooms. I’m just running across a huge map, from room to room, opening them in order and getting the presents inside. Why couldn’t I just get all of this at once?

This is a map that was improved by the remake which added more enemies including dark mages and filling those empty rooms with dragons.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

When assessing the risk of the ballisticians, I failed to notice their frankly obscene crit rates. Rates that procced. Killing Yumina and costing me one of my healers, the watch staff, and the last use of the rescue staff. Given the psychotically low attack power of this type of ballista, it’s like it was tailor-made to only be dangerous to tier-one healers. And it succeeded.

Wow its been a while, but I don't remember ever losing a unit to a ballistician, interesting. They must've used the Thunder cannon, right?

23 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Honestly though, Tiki's other stones aren't really needed.

• You can have two Firestones: one from a Thief in Chapter 8, and another from a dragon that spawns in Chapter 7 near the cave if you got close enough to it. The Fires + Divine is enough for Tiki. Or even just the Divine.
• Statwise, the Ice Dragon is hardly different from the Fire.
• Flying would be cool for the massive Move. But the lower Def, Divine having flight already (and anti-everything Dragon breath), and the inability to prematurely shift back to pick something better for combat, makes it not so great.
• I did buy a Magestone for Tiki, but it wasn't as useful as I'd thought it'd be. The 20 Res stops magic enemies from attacking her altogether, and since she can't double, this makes the Magestone not so great for slaughtering mages.

Going to disagree on some of those.

• The Icestone, whilst cool, is significantly weaker then the Firestone. It has less HP and Ice Breath has less might then Fire Breath. But the real danger of it is its weakness to fire, unlike with the ice weakness, fire is everywhere; there are tons of Fire, Elfires and Bolganons in the enemy army that were tear Ice Dragon Tiki, including the low level Mages. Actually I remember Ice Dragons also take extra damage from the Hoistflame(Flamethrower) and Pachyderm(cannon) ballistas, a 20 defense Ice Dragon Tiki was heavily damaged by one in chapter 19 in a play through of mine, actually that was a time a Ballistican was a threat.
• The Magestone is Tiki's best weapon. It gives her +15 defense, +10 Str, +40 HP, and +20 resistance; the perfect stat combination for a FE3 Dragon. The magic enemies in chapter 20 and beyond will attack Mage Dragon Tiki.

Do agree that the dragonstone secret shop is kinda of a novelty though. Tiki won't be able to finish most non dragon enemies in general; the majority of foes have just enough HP to survive an attack from her.

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Ice Dragons are weak to fire, so Bantu and Mages can tear them apart with Fire Breath and the various fire tomes respectively. Fire Dragons are also weak to the lone ice tome. These traits were removed in the remake.

I noticed! I've been making use of that a lot actually.

2 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Wow its been a while, but I don't remember ever losing a unit to a ballistician, interesting. They must've used the Thunder cannon, right?

Yyyyep. I was wondering what was special about it, given its low might and no effective damage. I was wondering if it was magic damage, but no, it just has a 20% crit rate, and it got lucky with Yumina.

[Emperor Hardin]

10 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I noticed! I've been making use of that a lot actually.

Yyyyep. I was wondering what was special about it, given its low might and no effective damage. I was wondering if it was magic damage, but no, it just has a 20% crit rate, and it got lucky with Yumina.

I imagine they also added a critical rate as otherwise there would be no purpose for the Thunder ballista in enemy hands as its original purpose was slaying other ballisticians.

Great, glad to see you've been making that use of that. I find it an interesting mechanic, its quite useful for the player, though not so much when Tiki is the Ice Dragon amusingly enough.

You've saved the Firestones, so don't worry about the Secret Shop.

Speaking of it, the Secret Shop in the remake only sells one of each dragon type, this hurts playable Manaketes a lot as the training grounds use up Dragonstones very fast. Bantu in particular is basically impossible to use, but Tiki isn't so great either IMO. I prefer FE3 Manaketes where they actually become a different dragon based class with 1-2 breath weapons over only transforming for a single 1 range attack.

Speaking of Dragonstones, what would you think if Dragonstones, instead of breaking or being unbreakable, could get "exhausted", but would regenerate in a map or two and could be repaired for money as well? I think that'd be the best way to handle Dragonstones and it'd come off as lore accurate.

Edited October 21, 2019 by Emperor Hardin

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Emperor Hardin said:

Speaking of Dragonstones, what would you think if Dragonstones, instead of breaking or being unbreakable, could get "exhausted", but would regenerate in a map or two and could be repaired for money as well? I think that'd be the best way to handle Dragonstones and it'd come off as lore accurate.

That kind of system, similar to the three houses magic system, is something I think would work well for a lot of un-purchasable items, stuff you can't replace. I'd like to see a game with something like that or the Sword of the Creator restoration system for legendary weapons.

[Emperor Hardin]

5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That kind of system, similar to the three houses magic system, is something I think would work well for a lot of un-purchasable items, stuff you can't replace. I'd like to see a game with something like that or the Sword of the Creator restoration system for legendary weapons.

I like that system as well.

Do you have any preference between Manakete transformation mechanics so far?

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Emperor Hardin said:

I like that system as well.

Do you have any preference between Manakete transformation mechanics so far?

While the fact that they can't double means I've rarely used manaketes in this game, I waaaaaay prefer this dragon system to basically all others. It's a massive pity it doesn't come back in 12.