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

[Interdimensional Observer]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

…Wait. Enemy Delthea is a witch in this game? Which means… ohhhhh noooo… can she warp?

She is in Echoes too I strongly recall. But since she only uses Aura there, if you do as you did above for the NES original and drop her HP low enough there so she can't Aura, then you can trap her and she'll never be able to attack again. She won't warp to a heal tile, only walk to one. I usually let her brother deal the hurt and take the agony in return.

But, I don't remember if Taharrah has Fortify there, or if he has a lackey that does. Or if that did anything to screw up containing Delthea. I don't think so.

[Shadow Mir]

17 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

She is in Echoes too I strongly recall. But since she only uses Aura there, if you do as you did above for the NES original and drop her HP low enough there so she can't Aura, then you can trap her and she'll never be able to attack again. She won't warp to a heal tile, only walk to one. I usually let her brother deal the hurt and take the agony in return.

But, I don't remember if Taharrah has Fortify there, or if he has a lackey that does. Or if that did anything to screw up containing Delthea. I don't think so.

She's only a mage in SoV, considering plot stuff about witches. But she retains the ability to teleport in said game.

 

[Punished Dayni]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

@Dayni Yes, I an well aware of that freudian slip. I knew it would happen eventually, you'll notice I commented on it earlier. Hopefully it'll stop now that I have more mages.

I just feel weird it's Kliff and not Luthier.

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I’m having a lot of fun. It’s certainly got a lot of hiccups, and I don’t care for several of its design elements, but the sheer contrast between this game and what I played before it is night and day. Like I said, I can’t say for sure if it was intentional or not, but the soon-to-be staple features the series abandoned in the name of experimenting with other stuff comes across as a very wise choice to take out everything that could be cool later, but which the hardware and the team’s talent level couldn’t handle yet. Abandoning and stripping down the inventory and shop system, turning all maps into rout maps against much smaller armies that (usually) come to you, these two decisions in particular just did so, so much to make the formula more enjoyable in these early days where they’re not quite sure what they’re doing yet.

 I’ve suffered undeserved bullshit deaths like in FE1. I barely have more control over unit placement here than I did in FE1. The stat formulas are still completely fucked like in FE1. And this game even has several problems FE1 didn’t have. But you know what? I’m having fun. And I’ve been having fun for a hell of a lot longer than I did for FE1, because there’s just so, so much less tedious busywork you have to do between the big moments of action. No infuriating stretches of individually moving sixteen soldiers one by one across empty maps, or juggling inventories while trying to buy shit, or managing a stash that would make a hoarder blush. And I’ve come to realize that really, that, above all else, had been the biggest problem with FE1. The sheer expansive number of boring things the game expects you to do in order to get to the next fun part. What I’m hoping that means is that from here on out, the rest of the games on this list, even FE3, are going to be just fine.

 Apparently I can put up with all sorts of weird, imbalanced, dated nonsense in a game as long as it doesn’t waste my time. I’m just hoping that playing FE1 first hasn’t fried my standards so that it’s hard to judge the subtle distinctions between how good the rest of the games are.

It's kind of the weird thing about this game: Despite all the crap, I still had quite a bit of fun with it.

It managed to not drive me insane with the annoying quirks of this game and it also feels paced faster, despite being an NES FE.

Hell, SoV ending up in my opinion the best FE game is part of the reason I'm going to keep reading this: because frankly I felt I needed a second opinion on the gameplay stuff which would help refine that list (Doesn't help I'd finished RD around the same time you started, leaving 3H (No Switch), MotE II (I probably should end it) and DD (I mean, you've played it. You understand why)).

[Jotari]

On 8/24/2019 at 9:29 AM, Interdimensional Observer said:

I'm not aware of what sources outright say this, but I have heard secondhand that FE was originally meant to be played ironman. Characters like the excessive cavaliers exist in case someone dies. Sure they'll be inferior to your first picks, but that is the price of your "stupidity" I suppose.

I just remembered the source. Iwata asks for New Mystery.

Iwata: By the way, Narihiro-san, looking at the development history of Fire Emblem, what kind of things have you done with the series?

Narihiro: Well, other than the hardware evolving, core elements of the game have also changed.

Iwata: I guess it’s granted that, along with improving hardware, graphics will be prettier, maps will be larger and the number of characters you get will increase. What else have you done with the series?

Narihiro: In a sense, the history of Fire Emblem has been about us thinking about what kind of ‘service’ we should provide this time, in order to express its “essence”.

Iwata: What kind of things do you mean?

Narihiro: For example, Genealogy of the Holy War for the Super NES was a very challenging project for us in many ways. As was previously discussed, this series is partly about the strategy system and partly about presenting a charming cast of characters and a fascinating world to the player. The games consist of these two elements blended together. I think Genealogy was a game where we decided to enlarge the portion of ‘service’ on the RPG side.

That’s why we decided to depict things like parent-child relations, love affairs and so on, so that the players would develop an even stronger emotional reaction to the game. Nevertheless, we also developed things on the game system side, strengthening it by inserting new elements. Because of this, in some aspects the game’s difficulty level might have become quite high.

Iwata: I have a feeling that around that time, the number of gamers who wanted a more challenging Fire Emblem had gradually started to increase. These are gamers who enjoy an intense feeling of accomplishment by overcoming the games in a harder, ‘super-stoic’ kind of play style.

Narihiro: Yes. (laughs) I think Thracia 776 ₍₁₀₎, the game which came afterwards, was the peak of that development. It was around then that doing ‘Perfect Plays’ had become popular.

Iwata: A ‘Perfect Play’ being, for example, even if you lose an ally by pure accident, you immediately press Reset and start the chapter from the beginning. You strive to complete the game without losing a single character.

_{(10) (Fire Emblem) Thracia 776: A strategy RPG game released in September 1999 for Nintendo Power, a download service using rewritable cartridges (it was later also sold as packaged software for the Super NES). The 6th game in the series.}

Narihiro: Indeed. However, we originally designed these games without considering such styles of play. That’s why we had provided plenty of extra units to the players.

Iwata: Should you happen to lose an ally, new ones are provided to you, one after another. Even if you make big mistakes and lose units, the game is designed in such a way that you should still be able to finish it without a problem.

Narihiro: That’s right. Even so, the number of ‘super-stoic’ players increased; people who absolutely wouldn’t lose characters they had developed a powerful emotional attachment to. I am very happy that there are so many people who love Fire Emblem to such an extent. However…

Iwata: I understand. When such a style of play becomes common, and when the structure of the game expands, the difficulty level of the game starts to rise rapidly.

Narihiro: That’s why, when we began making the first game for the GameBoy Advance, while also adapting in order to make our first handheld game, we decided to shift the weight of the gameplay to create a more easily enjoyable experience. We wanted the players to enjoy a simpler, purer strategy RPG experience. When it came to the graphics, in that area too, we decided to aim at expressing a lighter, less serious world.

After that we came out with a game for the GameCube ₍₁₁₎ and another one for the Wii ₍₁₂₎. Again, with those games, we wanted to offer a different kind of ‘service’ to the customers; things we couldn’t have offered on a handheld including better graphics and FMV cut scenes. That being the case, if one were to look back on the history of the series and summarise it shortly, one could say that with each game, we have strove to mix up the ratio of the two basic elements, while molding the game to fit and bring out the special personality of the console or handheld in question.

 

So the Kaga era was designed to be Ironmanned, but they've slowly changed it ever since the GBA days. That might be a bit older than one would expect. People see Casual mode and the Gaiden requirements in Shadow Dragon (whose design idea is to give extra units to people who are struggling, it was not a good idea, but that is the idea behind it) and assume it started in the DS era. I guess the fact that, remakes aside, they never brought back reviving methods after it was dropped in Thracia might be a sign they were going in a direction of "You're better off resetting." The exception being Fates Conquest (and Revelations?) which probably was designed more to be Ironmanned, at least in comparison to Birthright.

https://serenesforest.net/general/interviews/light-and-shadow/iwata-asks/page-2/

Edited September 7, 2019 by Jotari

[Shadow Mir]

On 8/30/2019 at 6:14 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Dear god, Michalis’s old portrait. This is the first time I've seen him in this game, and I'm so used to looking at his bishie modern design... but this...



  he actually seriously does look like somebody who would fuck his dragon horse.

XD

Man, these portraits were hilarious as fuck. Special mention to the Gordon brothers.

On 8/31/2019 at 12:28 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Usability: F. I was sorely tempted to just leave a continuous, paragraph-long string of uncontrollable laughter for this section, but no, this bears emphasizing: Just about every single aspect of this game feels wrong. It’s almost inconceivable to me that there used to be a time where the problems with an interface like this weren’t inherently obvious. It seems almost coldly calculated to waste as much of the player’s time as humanly possible in basically every way imaginable. Inventory management is hair-pullingly convoluted, buying from the store is a nightmare, keeping track of enemy movement ranges can go fuck itself with white-hot barbed poker, and I HAD TO HAVE A TEXT FILE HANDY THE ENTIRE GODDAMNED TIME JUST TO KEEP TRACK OF WEAPON STATS.

Reading this makes me want to laugh uncontrollably for some reason. Not that that's a bad thing.

On 9/6/2019 at 5:30 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Thanks for the interest! Yeah, upon reflection I suppose I misspoke. I guess it's more that getting a whole bunch of fliers that are good units is harder to manage.

Turns out I had misread - I thought you said four. As for games that have at least five fliers, I can think of the Archanea saga, Binding Blade, Blazing Blade (on Hector's story only because one of the fliers is exclusive to his story), and Tellius (disregarding Three Houses on account of the way classes are in that game and all games with reclassing).

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

Turns out I had misread - I thought you said four. As for games that have at least five fliers, I can think of the Archanea saga, Binding Blade, Blazing Blade (on Hector's story only because one of the fliers is exclusive to his story), and Tellius (disregarding Three Houses on account of the way classes are in that game and all games with reclassing).

You may have misread, or you may have read it before I corrected myself. I did initially say four.

[Alastor15243]

Gaiden Day 7: That fucking desert map

I just got to Celica’s first chapter 3 fight and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST CATRIA HAS AN ANGEL RING. That thing is insane in this game, it brings your luck right up to the cap of 40 while equipped, and DOUBLES your level ups! Either by doubling your growth rates or doubling the stat gains when they proc, I’ve gotten conflicting information. That is totally going on Celica, and she is keeping that on for the rest of the game.

And then there’s Palla, who comes with something that’s also pretty nice, a javelin. Or as this translation calls it… a hand lance.

…I am instantly reminded of that graphical glitch I discovered in Three Houses recently where the short spear is treated like a hand axe for its throwing animation.

Anyway, thankfully starting formations let me bottleneck the two important bridges. The one bridge in the middle I can’t bottleneck, the one that lets all the central pirates get to the island I only have three units on, won’t have any enemies fully cross it for another turn.

Mae is officially worthless now. I tried to get her to cast thunder to finish off an archer, but not only did she miss, and not only did she get doubled, but to top it all off she got one-rounded. The rest of the game is just going to be a struggle to keep her alive.

It just occurred to me that we’re still doing the exact same kinds of maps as the previous Celica chapter: a large number of enemies separated from you by a bottleneck. Honestly, I don’t think I like Celica’s route’s map design so far. And from what I remember of the rest of her route… I don’t think that’s going to change. There’s always some weird, poorly-executed gimmick that’s extremely prevalent in every chapter. Boats in chapter 2, sand in chapter 3, and toxic mires in chapter 4.

Genny’s pretty devastating with seraphim. Fifteen power is no joke.

And neither is Saber. He’s got 11 power, 11 speed and 8 defense, and the holy sword brings that power up to 14. Promoting him to Myrmidon is barely gonna do much, but I’m still gonna do it obviously for the better levels.

Anyway, I’ve got Palla and Catria now. Funny. If they leave you in the event that you try to head to the temple of Mila in this game, they didn’t exactly make it as clear here. Anyway, time to give Celica that tasty angel ring and get moving!

Palla and Catria are pretty dang good. Wish we had more than one lance for them though, to get Catria’s attack power up a tad. Maybe I can send one of Alm’s.

Anyway, on to the graveyard fight, and…

…apparently zombies aren’t slowed by grave tiles. That… makes sense.

Catria is gaining a ludicrously high amount of exp from these zombies. Thirty just for fighting them, not even for killing them. And I have no idea why.

OHHHHH. These aren’t zombies she’s fighting, they’re MUMMIES. I remember them from SoV. They give a ridiculous amount of EXP. Gotta feed at least one of them to Celica so she can level up and start catching up on those terrible gains she had for the first 7 levels. Hope it’s not too late and they won't just suicide on Palla or Catria. Not that that would be the worst thing in the world, getting my new pegasus knights some more exp.

Celica’s first level with the angel ring… still didn’t get her any speed, but it got her 2 power, luck and defense each, which is nuts. It means the defense drop from giving up the leather shield is basically already gone.

I just got Atlas. He’s utter garbage in Echoes, or he would be if he didn’t have one really good stat and access to the best class in the game. But apparently that's because he was apparently the only character in the entire remake whose stats weren't buffed. I mean he’s not as bad as Tobin. He’ll make an okay mercenary, which is exactly what I’m going to make him. Only problem is that he’s a good bit behind the others at the moment and will probably be a class behind for the whole game. But if I decide to abuse dread fighter looping to see just how absurdly broken it is… Who knows?

Anyway, speaking of broken, I’m kind of annoyed by this mandatory, unskippable grinding opportunity at a crucial intersection that I have to pass by every time I want to go between the village, the shrine, and Grieth’s fortress. Especially since in this game, the mummies aren’t even more dangerous than the zombies! Yeah, that’s one of the things that really annoyed me about SoV, just how absolutely aggressively the game throws grinding “opportunities” at you that are unskippable inconveniences for any kind of challenge run. But here it’s even worse because you can’t even run past the dungeon enemies. I have a feeling that this game is just gonna get easier and easier, and I’m not sure I like it.

Speaking of getting easier, Celica just gained 2 speed and learned to heal. I think I might be creating a monster here.

Well, I have to head back to the sea shrine to get some promotions, but this will be the last time I go there until I beat Grieth. Every time I go just means more ridiculous mummy exp.

And just after getting all of my shiny new promotions, I get attacked by one of the various reinforcements Grieth’s been sending out. And due to the inconvenient location by a village, I miscalculated what I needed to do to camp for them and got ambush attacked. Thankfully… they weren’t that strong.

Also, strange observation: I think that ambushes might limit you to the top 10 units, the ones you’re allowed to bring into dungeons. Also also, this game, and I think this is different than SoV, lets you promote units at dungeon shrines even if they aren’t among your active dungeon party, which is handy. It was probably changed because in SoV they aren’t with you, since you left them behind at the entrance at unit select, while here, they’re still with you and can be freely switched out on your unit list at will outside of battle.

Went through the graveyard for a third time, but this time it was a bunch of bonewalkers, rather than a group of zombies with some mummies.

It suddenly occurs to me that Alm can’t use the angel ring. Not without giving up the royal sword or Falchion. Which means that it’s very possible that Celica is going to be much, much stronger than Alm by the end of the game, especially since Alm’s side doesn’t get an Angel ring until we fight Rudolf, at which point it’s probably going to Kliff, whose promotion I juuuust might put off to make the best use of that thing. Or not. But given his growths and lack of a need for a weapon he’d be the best candidate. This is such an amazingly, awesomely stupid ability to give an item, I’m completely unsurprised that even Echoes, which KEPT THE DREAD FIGHTER LOOP, got rid of this.

…Should I be bringing up the differences between this and SoV so much? On the one hand, it’s a relevant comparison for the modern player reading this, but on the other hand, I’m going to be playing SoV too eventually, and perhaps those comparisons would fit better there. What do you guys think?

Anyway, Atlas is actually pretty damned good. He has comparable attack power to my two myrmidons, who, mind you, are armed. While he isn’t.

Random thought: Since levels are reasonably slow, maybe I should keep trading the angel ring around to anyone who’s about to level up?

I tried this with Atlas. His first level up got him only speed, but that means he got two speed, which is fantastic.

Yeah, I think I’ll do this whenever I have the opportunity, but I won’t fuss over it.

Anyway, onto…

…Good god. The worst desert map in Fire Emblem history. The one where not even mages can move quickly on it, and fliers are basically forced to stay out of the action by a fort full of archers and a sniper with a 1-5 range steel bow. Thankfully we have an infinite-range, infinite-ammo Genny, but this will still probably be a nightmare. I’m kinda tempted to just cheese it with Celica. Only issue being that she’s too slow to double the myrmidons at the entrance.

But you know who isn’t, thanks to a recent +2 speed level up?

Atlas.

Alright, so I’ll send in Atlas, backed up by Palla and Catria to hopefully get the drop on those mages before they can ruin him.

…

…

ONE. SPACE. PER TURN. THAT IS HOW FAST UNITS CAN GO ACROSS SAND IN THIS GAME IF THEY DON’T HAVE WINGS. ONE. FUCKING. SPACE. PER. FUCKING. TURN.

And I don’t even have warp. This… who thought this was a good idea?

Also, this map makes it really unclear sometimes what spaces are plains and which are desert, which, when you can’t check enemy movement range or even just get a label when you hover over a tile, makes it really really fucking difficult to plan shit out.

Palla thankfully managed to take out the mages pretty quickly without getting into archer range. But the myrmidons seem to be fully aware that it’s in their best interest to not advance into the sands. Because they aren't. They’re just waiting for Atlas and Celica to get into bow range, and it pisses me off because this would be good enemy AI if the game were just a little bit better in some key ways! But now it just makes them super annoying because they’re just darting back and forth and making sure that absolutely nothing interesting happens until I make the dozen-turn-long trek across the desert!

On the bright side, the enemy has a steel bow, which means Leon will FINALLY get a weapon.

Alright, I think together Celica and Atlas can pretty handily rout this map. Unfortunately the angel ring hasn’t been doing much for Atlas after the lucky doubled speed proc last map. Two consecutive levels of doubled HP and skill procs, and then a third level that’s just doubled HP. Still, he’s nearly ready to promote to myrmidon… though I won’t be going back for that. It’ll have to wait unfortunately.

…And Celica died. I KNOW that Celica has more speed than that archer, which means, apparently, I have learned too late that when an archer attacks Celica at range, even when it’s too far away for fire to reach, they use fire, and thus get weighed down by three, which was literally exactly enough to take her from doubling to being doubled. Which meant she took enough damage, despite her 9 defense, to get chipped to death by the remaining archers.

…Okay. I’m… I’m not up to repeating this map just now. I think I’m gonna have to call it a day for today.

On the plus side, there wasn’t a single level up from Atlas I’m going to miss, and I get a chance to do them all over again.

On the other hand…

TEN FUCKING TURNS OF WALKING ACROSS SAND.

…See you tomorrow folks.

[Jotari]

For what it's worth, I think the default 3 range bow doesn't deal effective damage to fliers. Obviously you still need to watch out for the sniper who is by far the most dangerous, but the others archers aren't quite as big a threat.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

For what it's worth, I think the default 3 range bow doesn't deal effective damage to fliers. Obviously you still need to watch out for the sniper who is by far the most dangerous, but the others archers aren't quite as big a threat.

Yep. Just didn't want to risk aggroing that guy, and really he's all it takes to keep Palla and Catria out of that fort.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Espurrhoodie]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

ONE. SPACE. PER TURN. THAT IS HOW FAST UNITS CAN GO ACROSS SAND IN THIS GAME IF THEY DON’T HAVE WINGS. ONE. FUCKING. SPACE. PER. FUCKING. TURN.

Holy shit, the desert maps were even more painful? My ADHD ass can't even make it through them in SoV without taking a break or something like that.

[Mukmuk]

2 hours ago, Espurrhoodie said:

 Holy shit, the desert maps were even more painful? My ADHD ass can't even make it through them in SoV without taking a break or something like that.

Yeah....

Sand is painful. Literally all your units that aren't pegasi are clones of Anakin.

"I hate sand its coarse and rough and gets everywhere" 

Yeah but 1 mov is pretty sad. You just have to suck it up in Gaiden. 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

On the other hand…

 TEN FUCKING TURNS OF WALKING ACROSS SAND.

…See you tomorrow folks.

Good luck man. Luckily there are only like around four or five desert chapters. (I think. My memory's decent.) 

[Interdimensional Observer]

*Looks at SF terrain data* It puts it at a movement cost of 2 for Mages, is that accurate? That makes them, relatively less impeded, but I can still see that hurting real bad.

At least the last battle in the desert is the easiest, since the sands delay only for the first couple turns there.

But, that requires getting past Deen or Sonya first, and on paper not knowing how the NES Gaiden fights actually play out, I think I know who you'd want.

[Jotari]

Turbo button is your friend.

[Punished Dayni]

18 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I just got to Celica’s first chapter 3 fight and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST CATRIA HAS AN ANGEL RING. That thing is insane in this game, it brings your luck right up to the cap of 40 while equipped, and DOUBLES your level ups! Either by doubling your growth rates or doubling the stat gains when they proc, I’ve gotten conflicting information. That is totally going on Celica, and she is keeping that on for the rest of the game.

Definitely procs.

As you saw.

18 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, so I’ll send in Atlas, backed up by Palla and Catria to hopefully get the drop on those mages before they can ruin him.

…

…

ONE. SPACE. PER TURN. THAT IS HOW FAST UNITS CAN GO ACROSS SAND IN THIS GAME IF THEY DON’T HAVE WINGS. ONE. FUCKING. SPACE. PER. FUCKING. TURN.

And I don’t even have warp. This… who thought this was a good idea?

Did... did I forget this is worse than Distortions?

Honestly I still think the Deen/Sonya maps are worse.

[Alastor15243]

1 hour ago, Dayni said:

Definitely procs.

As you saw.

Yep, I write these thoughts as they happen, so I didn't know that when I wrote it.

1 hour ago, Dayni said:

Did... did I forget this is worse than Distortions?

Honestly I still think the Deen/Sonya maps are worse.

You'd have a reasonable case to make there. But I think what makes this desert fort map worse for me is that the AI is clearly designed to make you come to the enemy, and then also makes all of the units who could get there in a remotely reasonable timeframe just get completely creamed by the boss if they try to enter the fort. In Deen and Sonya's maps, the enemy at least comes to you, so even while the game balance of those encounters is... really unfair, at least it isn't quite as much of a tedious slog.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Punished Dayni]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

You'd have a reasonable case to make there. But I think what make this desert fort map worse for me is that the AI is clearly designed to make you come to the enemy, and then also makes all of the units who could get there in a remotely reasonable timeframe just get completely creamed by the boss if they try to enter the fort. In Deen and Sonya's maps, the enemy at least comes to you, so even while the game balance of those encounters is... really unfair, at least it isn't quite as much of a tedious slog.

I'd personally think it's more tedious the way the latter handles things and of course one is built to double you constantly and the other has the unpredictability of warpers, both of which I considered more of an issue than the unpredictable archers.

Course, it also helps in SoV that I'm pretty sure you can make more movement (unless I'm forgetting everything) and in Gaiden I can just speed up the whole damm game. Also that I actually had more capable mages from the grindstone. The generic archers also can't just 1-shot your fliers in Gaiden (thanks Hard Mode SoV?) which makes things somewhat easier.

Seeing as I mentioned it, Distortions also infuriates me due to decreased movement, to the point that as this didn't drive me demented I'd consider it worse (I talked a bunch about it already when I was logging a Tellius playthrough.).

[Alastor15243]

Gaiden Day 8: In which we defeat Grieth and, also, reach nadir Gaiden map design. I hope.

Alright, I think I have a good system here. A system where, barring criticals (very dangerous words there), Atlas can’t be killed, but he can still get most of the kills on the map and gain as much from that angel ring as possible.

I have Atlas stand right below the stairway to the fort, with Celica two spaces below him. Celica’s purpose is to keep the archers from attacking Atlas at point blank range, possibly getting killed by his high crit rate with that angel ring, and making room for more. And also to provide thunder chip damage when necessary.

Unfortunately the archers aren’t moving in to make this work, which means it’s almost inevitable that it’ll go on long enough for a critical to happen. So I have to be a bit more aggressive and hope for the best.

I do manage to bait the others in, but I’ve basically kicked a hornet’s nest and Atlas takes more damage than Genny can heal. He has to retreat to get healed by Celica.

Good news: I’ve pretty much won. Bad news: it was because a lot of the archers decided to suicide into Celica’s fireball range, and also the sniper boss made it to the lonely forest tile right outside the fort, and I had to do a really risky magical attack with Celica to kill him.

Incidentally, while yes, mages can move two spaces to everyone’s one (so generous), clerics and sisters cannot, despite sisters having a higher move stat.

Anyway, I won, and got Leon his steel bow, but immediately afterwards I got ambush-attacked by incoming reinforcements, which is… whyyyyyyy?

Plus side: We’re in the fort and they can’t make it to us in time to hurt us.

Downside: That’s because they’re on the other side of the FUCKING DESERT AND I HAVE TO GO OVER THERE TO KILL THEM BY HAND WHY.

Palla, Catria, you’re up. I’m not trekking through that desert again.

Thankfully I remember to give the angel ring back to Catria before doing this. She’s definitely going to level up at least once, looking at her exp.

Unfortunately that level is just skill and HP. The same as the ones I’d been getting for Atlas, levels that the retry DID NOT IMPROVE UPON.

And when I give the ring to Palla for her level up, she also rolls snake eyes. FUCK.

Catria gets a second try, and once again rolls skill and HP. Whyyyyyyyyyy.

Okay, well, we still beat that map and got Jesse. And… his explanation of Sonya and Deen… sucked. “They both hate Grieth, but they won’t betray him while the other one’s alive.”

No explanation there? If there’s any logic behind that other than excuse plot bullshit, Jesse, it must be FASCINATING.

But nope. That’s all we’re given. Just an explanation of how gameplay works and that we have to kill one and will be able to recruit the other later. I’m obviously gonna kill Deen, but I’m going to check to make sure Sonya’s as terrifying in this game as she becomes in SoV.

Also, the fort had a steel lance, so now Catria can do some more damage.

Oh that’s just dandy. Desert reinforcements decided to side with Deen. Not that that’d make me want to fight Sonya if it’s like in SoV, but it’s still a pain. Speaking of which, time to see just how bad Sonya-

…

…They’re witches.

THEY’RE ALL FUCKING WITCHES.

TEN FUCKING TELE FUCKING PORTING FUCKING WITCHES ON A FUCKING DESERT MAP ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?

…So yeah, my answer is that Gaiden somehow managed to make this encounter even worse.

At any rate, I have only one unit who can survive a single round of combat with Sonya, so… fuck no. Later, witches.

Deen, on the other hand, is… holy shit. Are those his bases when he joins?

…THEY ARE. HOLY SHIT. He starts with 13 strength, 17 speed and 9 defense. Granted, he looked a lot scarier before I remembered he had a “brave” sword that was buffing his attack, but still… alas, his growths are, as usual, terrible, so these bases aren’t going to last very long. Then again, with the luck I’ve had with growth rates NOOOOOOOOOOOOPE I AM NOT FIGHTING SONYA AND THE WITCH BITCH BRIGADE.

Still though, this guy is gonna be tough. Like with Sonya, combat with him is basically going to be death, but at least in his case he’s locked to 1 range so it's not just Mae, Celica and Leon who can attack him with impunity. I’m gonna have to rely as much as I can on ranged attacks. Thankfully I do at least have two good mages with the powerful seraphim spell.

I should be able to kill him as long as they both connect their 90% hits and then somebody else manages to land a potshot on him.

The extra reinforcements shouldn’t be too much of a pain. I’m sending out the pegasus knights to fight them, making sure they have the angel ring between them, hoping they get some good doubled procs. Meanwhile I’ll prep the rest of my team for when Deen finally arrives.

Unfortunately, and ironically, this map doesn’t quite have as much desert as I’d like, and Deen’s gonna get to the main force really, really quickly, and have way too many buddies with him for me to attempt the ballsy player phase tactics I’m gonna need to kill him. So I’m trying to herd and distract them with Palla and Catria. See if I can keep them away from the main force until all of them are dead but Deen. Or at least most of them.

Anyway, everything was going absolutely fantastic… until a mercenary got a lucky crit that just barely made the difference between Catria’s death and survival.

FORTY LUCK. NO DODGE. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!?

On the plus side, Catria managed to get a doubled defense proc on attempt number two.

Alright, it’s time. Catria will take care of the last three mercenaries, but I noticed that Deen had gotten himself separated from the pack and I took the opportunity to lure him deep into the desert. With both of them being limited to one space of movement per turn, I should be able to repeatedly snipe him with thunder without any fear of consequence.

…Nope, he ignored the Palla bait and went right back onto green grassland after Catria. I’ll have to take another stab at this.

Success! Celica managed to kill him with thunder attacks. Excellent. Now Sonya’s retreated, which means I can finally face off against Grieth!

This is going to be pretty nasty. Grieth is all but immune to magic, has stupid high speed, strength AND defense, and basically I’m going to have to give my best swordfighter the brave sword and hope I get a crit before he does.

In other news, mercifully, it seems witches have some kind of limit where only one gets to warp per turn. Or at least it seems that way, because one warped in to try and kill Valbar, but thankfully she missed one attack and wouldn’t have gotten a kill even if she hadn’t, and to my immense relief the others didn’t gang up on him to finish the job. I’m gonna have to kill that witch now and then get Valbar back up to full health immediately. Not that he’s remotely useful, I just don’t like getting my soldiers killed.

Unfortunately I then remembered that I left the brave sword in the convoy, which I can’t access in battle. Restart.

Did… did the sand just fuck with the witch AI? She teleported somewhere from which she couldn’t hurt anyone! Just one space shy of being able to attack Valbar, her obvious target.

Anyway, this map is… a lot smaller than I remember it being. I seem to remember there being some kind of additional thing you had to do to get from the first hallway to Grieth’s attacking range. He’s an absolute menace, and I can’t get rid of his skeleton reinforcements (which can’t really hurt Saber, but are annoying and constricting as hell) without getting in his range.

And now units are getting decent level ups now that they DON’T have the angel ring. Lovely. Honestly I may just be sticking to my original plan to keep in on Celica.

Okay, so… Dread Fighters are scary. Also, their animations are badass. They seem to just take the mercenary jumping animation to a ludicrous extreme, to basically Final Fantasy dragoon levels. But more importantly, they're scary. And since I wound up aggroing him to take care of a fleeing mage… we’re in some shit.

…Especially since that sorcerer at the way back has FUCKING FORTIFY. I’m gonna have to hold off that bastard and pray I don’t get critted until my two pegs can fight off hordes of skeletons and assassinate fortify guy. FUCK.

I just don’t have enough healers to keep this up for long. I’ll have to do what I can, but I think I may just be prolonging the inevitable here. And I can't even give Saber the brave sword due to it being impossible to do without compromising my high healing needs or exposing somebody much weaker to Grieth's wrath.

Good news: giving the leather shield to Kamui means that the enemies are all focusing their attacks on Saber, who can still take it, thus drastically reducing the number of individuals I need to heal per turn and giving me some breathing room to heal my fliers.

…This sorcerer with fortify seems to have an unusual taste for combat. I think I might be able to turn this to my advantage. If I can trick him to using his HP-costly slime ability enough now that he’s off of the HP tile and all the HP tiles are clogged… I might be able to assassinate him eventually with Palla and Catria.

...Shit. Slime isn't HP-expensive at all. But the plan still stands.

Alright. Three consecutive misses meant I failed to assassinate the fortify guy, but I did manage to get him down to 1 health, meaning he can’t use magic until a heal tile opens up, which depending on movement order might not be until next turn. I also managed to get rid of the archer and sorcerer on the right flank behind the wall finally. We’re still no closer to getting Grieth from 36 to dead, but we’re closer to the point where that’s physically possible to attempt.

THE SORCERER FUCKING DODGED TWICE AGAIN. AND THIS TIME PALLA CAN’T HELP BECAUSE SHE’S SURROUNDED BY SKELETONS FROM BLOCKING THE HEAL TILE.

Miraculously, I get a third fucking chance due to AI placement stupidity forcing the sorcerer to hold still.

I was utterly fucking terrified when the first attack was YET ANOTHER FAILED 70% HIT.

But thankfully the second one did indeed do ol’ Fortisorc in… giving Catria an HPsauce level. Grieth has no protectors now. It’s just down to him, Saber, and my infinite supply of healing.

Thankfully, with Catria’s job complete, she was able to carve out an opening for Palla to escape to the fortress wall, so now neither pegasus knight should get pinned in by skeletons again.

…But Grieth’s being a pussy and runs away. So I have to chase after him while blocking off the heal tiles. Which means once again one of the pegasus knights needs to get swarmed by skeletons.

SCRATCH THAT! YES! THANK YOU ANNA! SABER SCORES A CRIT AND JUST BARELY KILLS HIM AS HE RUNS AWAY!

…And now I have to fight through that horde of skeletons to kill their summoner. Who’s on a heal tile.

Okay it’s official. Celica’s side just sucks. It’s pure shit. It’s not as bad as FE1, but it seems like Celica’s side is an amalgamation of every terrible, annoying, tedious experimental idea they had. Boat maps, desert maps, marsh maps,  enemies with ludicrously high crit rates on desert maps, witches on desert maps, summoners on rout maps… I’m just having way, way, WAY less fun on these maps than I was on Alm’s route.

…Fuck. I just accidentally triggered Celica’s promotion. I thought that didn’t happen until the temple of Mila! …Damn it. And I don’t think I even got any stat bonuses. Ah well. I guess she’ll just have to keep the angel ring on forever then.

Anyway, we got Sonya now, which means we finally have a good mage! We also have Est, which is also nice, though she doesn’t come with a fancy shield this time. I’ll have to test these two out in combat later, but for now, time to sign off. Next time I’ll make a quick pit stop at the seaside shrine to promote my mercenaries to myrmidons, and then I’ll head off to finish Celica’s route and hopefully have some slightly more fun maps.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Did… did the sand just fuck with the witch AI? She teleported somewhere from which she couldn’t hurt anyone! Just one space shy of being able to attack Valbar, her obvious target.

Having recently played TRS and seen its Witches, the sand probably did nothing to the AI. I had a Witch in TRS who on the final map warped to the far north of the map, in room where the door was locked, and everyone else was tens of spaces away though she had only 3 Move.

The power of broken movement gets counterbalanced by an AI that is utterly erratic, a "fair" tradeoff. I wish Witches had hard rules and fixed patterns that weren't overly malicious, but for some reason, it was easier to program utter randomness I guess.

If it is possible to crack into the AI and see the coding that goes into its thought processes, the Witch AI would be a prime target to hack open and inspect.

 

May Celica in the marshes of madness be not so bad. Falcoknights if you get your promotions in time I would think would make them much easier.

[Jotari]

I don't see any issue with Jessie's explanation. Neither Dean nor Sonya like Grieth, but both are too wary of rebelling with him while he's too strong. Knock out one of the two generals however and that makes him week enough for them to risk abandoning him (even with one of the two of them dead, they don't actually rebel against Grieth, instead they just sit back and let Celica pick him off before joining up with her).

And yeah, they moved Celica's promotion for the remake to be more dramatic. Funny it tripped you up. But that's the way of it. Every blind player had it hit them that way too. By the by, Alm's promotion...
 

Spoiler

 

happens automatically in this game. In the remake Celica gives him the ability to promote at statues remotely, but in the original he outright promotes off screen. There is no fanfare about it at all (despite his promotion being better than Celica's, who basically just gets a level reset). It's really weird. So much so that I made a thread about it preEchoes release wondering if they'd keep that plot point.

 

 

[Alastor15243]

@Jotari I can't quite remember what the translation's exact phrasing was, but my issue was more it implied something it didn't really explain. Yes, something like what you said makes perfect sense, but from what I remember it didn't explain it like that.

[Alastor15243]

Gaiden Day 9: Local pegasisters trample everything.

So, Est is… tragically underleveled, as usual. I didn’t think it would be so bad until I got to that mandatory zombie encounter and realized that Palla and Catria are nearly eligible for promotion. Which is awesome, obviously, but it really shows how far behind Est is now. But she does have the absurdly broken triangle attack I can use to sneak her some kills.

On the plus side, Celica’s level 1 and has an angel ring, so let’s see what the cold and brutal RNG deigns to give her.

…Skill. It decides to give her skill.

…On the plus side the second one gave her speed.

Catria was literally 1 exp away from promoting, so I threw in the gargoyle fight in the shrine too just to get that one more level. Because holy fuck on a flaming duck, are falcon knights broken in this game. Base defense of twelve. TWELVE. AND TERROR SLAYING. INSTANT, SCREAMING DEATH TO EVERY TERROR THEY FIGHT WHY THE FUCK HOW.

Level up three gives Celica luck and defense, so okay maybe she isn’t ruined forever, at least not with the angel ring on her.

Est got her first level up and it was spectacular. That’s gonna be handy for training her to level 12, but really the bases for falcon knight are so utterly ridiculous in this game that it barely matters what her stats are before promoting. And I really don’t want to give up the angel ring on Celica.

Okay, on to the mountain map before the dragon shrine, and-

…

…Is this the same fucking map I did right after promoting Alm’s villagers? It looks almost completely identical!

But anyway, remember that shadow sword guy from Echoes? The one who was absolutely terrifying? I killed him on turn two. With Est. I just needed to soften him up a little with Catria, but given she did more than 10 damage and doubled, Est barely needed the ludicrous triangle attack bonuses to finish him off. I intend to feed at least one paladin to Est too.

Meanwhile, with four myrmidons, the rest of my army is no slouch either. Saber’s still clearly the best with his insane defense and good stats elsewhere (actually come to think of is his defense is still lower than the bases of falcon knight because fuck you this is Gaiden and balance is for nerds), but everyone else is still great. Honestly this will probably be over on turn three.

Honestly something tells me you were originally supposed to go to the temple of Mila first. Which makes sense since it’s literally Celica’s entire mission, and also because it’s weird to go so long without a shrine, and also because these enemies are ridiculously easy now.

Est once again leveled power and defense, and yes, I did indeed rout this map on turn three. Underwhelming, but I’ll take it over desert tedium any day.

Also, the reinforcements coming from the Temple of Mila are just three-paladin brigades. My army creams them, and it’ll barely be relevant if I wind up fighting them along with the Mila Temple boss.

Alright, so, I just killed the three dragons (who went down like chumps to angel and holy swords and falcon knights) and got to the revival shrines. Honestly, I think revival shrines are a bit… okay, while I get the idea of putting them late into the game to keep permadeath relevant, things like the Aum staff and other late-game revival things are often pointless, because anyone you revive missed out on experience in the time they were dead, and the earlier in the game they died, the slimmer the odds there’ll even be any point to bringing them back. And really they can only afford to be brought back a handful of chapters later, given how rapidly units usually grow.

That’s why my favorite revival item is the Bifrost, because it’s repurposed as a thing you do to recover from death immediately, in the middle of battle. My only complaint with that one is that it doesn’t let you choose who to revive if multiple people die in a battle.

How the fuck does Celica know who Mikhail is? When has she had the opportunity to do that when shut away on an island for most of her life?

But also, this seems to be an interesting change that SoV made. SoV had Celica be horrified and shocked that the temple was taken over by the Duma Faithful. Here she seems to be so thoroughly aware of it that she’s got detailed intel on who guards what.

Yeah, this map is… once again super dumb. Basically you have to climb around a cliffside and through a dense forest while bombarded by gargoyles summoned by the boss before you even get the chance to enter the building because there’s a locked door and keys don’t exist in this game. Thankfully I have two broken fliers and one soon-to-be-broken flier, so hopefully I can clear up some of this mess sooner.

Honestly at this point I may have been wrong about Sonya. It might not be worth training her, and there certainly haven’t been any opportunities to do so since I got her. Maps have either been too quickly over for her to catch up to the action or too dangerous for her to take part in. I’ll see if any opportunities come in chapter 4.

On the plus side though, basically everyone else is useful. The only units I regularly have no use for are Mae, Boey, Valbar and (sort of) Leon, though even he has uses and has managed to promote to the same tier as everyone else.

…An enemy phase triangle attack. The paladin was actually stupid enough to attack from the one space where an enemy space triangle attack would be valid. Holy shit that’s hilarious.

You know what? With that iron shield, Sonya’s defense is actually pretty okay, so I think I’m gonna try sending her into the front lines with my myrmidons. Goodness knows she’ll have plenty of time to get kills if this map is as tedious and summon-filled as SoV.

Also, Celica has excalibur, which is amazing.

…Still no summons. What’s going on?

OHP! THERE WE GO! GARGOYLES AHOY!

For some inconceivable reason they all want to attack Saber, who’s the toughest and has the holy sword.

Also, Palla does just enough damage to the sorcerers that they’re left with 1 HP for Est to pick them off. Amazing. Honestly though, I should probably just give Est the javelin for now and have her bait them out and kill them.

…Curious. Pillars seem to slow down fliers. I didn’t realize there were terrain tiles that slowed fliers down before Fates added in those vortex tiles. I thought they flew over everything flawlessly except for solid indoor walls.

…Apparently it’s something called a horse stop, according to Serenes. I thought heroes invented that kind of tile. And apparently its magic is so psychotically potent that it can stop horses EVEN IF THEY HAVE WINGS.

The boss has stopped summoning gargoyles for some reason. He started again soon after, summoning a meager 1, but I don’t get what was up with him stopping for so many turns before then.

…And then he summons two batches in a row, practically flooding his room with gargoyles. What the fuck.

Not that it matters much. My myrmidons are more than a match for Mikhail’s magically-mustered monster military. But it was certainly weird of him.

Man, remember when gargoyles used to terrify me? Wow times have changed.

Anyway, Est finally soloed all the non-summons on the map after the paladins, and is now whittling down the boss’s HP. Palla and Catria are coming by to give her triangle attack power.

…You know, maybe I should have given Est the angel ring, considering the stat boosts she’s been getting. Oh well, she’ll be a falcon knight eventually.

Weird glitch I found in the Temple of Mila. NPCs standing at the top visible tile on screen are only visible from the waist-down.

Honestly, given that the floodgates need to be drained or else the whole island will be flooded, where the fuck does this NPC get off basically saying he won’t let it be drained without explicit orders from a royal family he doesn’t think is alive anymore?

Anyway, Celica orders the floodgate opened and then takes 3 power from the fountains, and then Alm opens the western floodgate and ends chapter 3.

But I still have some time today, so let’s keep going. First, how the hell do I get to that chest in Mila’s Temple…?

Thought I’d investigate the other side of the temple to see how that helped, but NOPE! I just walked straight into a battle.

Oh dear god the toxic swamps look borderline seizure inducing. Hideous.

AND IT LOOKS LIKE ALL DREAD FIGHTERS ARE GOING TO BE AS STRONG AS GRIETH. FAN FUCKING TASTIC.

Alright, it’s flier time. I’m gonna try and get Est to level 12 today. She’s only 3 levels away, and I want a full falcon knight team.

Thankfully, I managed to put the dread fighter in a position where I can lure him into a triangle attack. On the other hand, Dread Fighters’ movement is just nuts. They’re as fast as unpromoted cavalry, but even less obstructed by terrain than other infantry. If I had had a dread fighter on those sand chapters, he’d have been able to move three spaces a turn through the desert!

Oops, miscalculated, looks like there was another valid way he’d have enough movement points to reach Est. Thankfully she scores a critical, meaning victory is a triangle attack away.

Unfortunately, Catria gets the kill. But I’ll be sure to give the rest to Est.

Jesus christ this map has so many summoners. Zombies, skeletons and gargoyles, just getting pumped out all over.

I for some reason thought sisters were immune to damaging terrain. They are not, and I need to get Silque back onto dry land or she’ll eventually run out of HP from using physic so much. Her ring is just barely keeping her from losing HP from the bog.

I really, really, really want to have a chat with whoever thought falcon knights were balanced in this game. Especially when the number of archers who can actually hurt them can be counted on one hand.

Anyway, it was tedious due to the forest tiles the summoners were standing on, but I managed to get Est enough exp to promote and kill everyone afterward.

And honestly, I think that’s a good place to stop. I’ll promote Est tomorrow, get to the next fort, and then move on to Alm’s side.

[Kruggov]

There's a sort of secret passage in the basement of the temple, IIRC, Nomah is there, and so is the passage to that chest. So go get em?

[Punished Dayni]

23 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh that’s just dandy. Desert reinforcements decided to side with Deen. Not that that’d make me want to fight Sonya if it’s like in SoV, but it’s still a pain. Speaking of which, time to see just how bad Sonya-

…

…They’re witches.

THEY’RE ALL FUCKING WITCHES.

TEN FUCKING TELE FUCKING PORTING FUCKING WITCHES ON A FUCKING DESERT MAP ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?

…So yeah, my answer is that Gaiden somehow managed to make this encounter even worse.

#Justplaygaidenbro

Yeah, this and the Deen map are still worse than the desert fort imo.

23 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay it’s official. Celica’s side just sucks. It’s pure shit. It’s not as bad as FE1, but it seems like Celica’s side is an amalgamation of every terrible, annoying, tedious experimental idea they had. Boat maps, desert maps, marsh maps,  enemies with ludicrously high hit rates on desert maps, witches on desert maps, summoners on rout maps… I’m just having way, way, WAY less fun on these maps than I was on Alm’s route.

Yeah the tedium is frustrating.

23 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 …Fuck. I just accidentally triggered Celica’s promotion. I thought that didn’t happen until the temple of Mila! …Damn it. And I don’t think I even got any stat bonuses. Ah well. I guess she’ll just have to keep the angel ring on forever then.

To be honest I didn't see it coming when playing SoV.

Mages need grinding to be useful in this game honestly.

[Shadow Mir]

23 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

…Fuck. I just accidentally triggered Celica’s promotion. I thought that didn’t happen until the temple of Mila! …Damn it. And I don’t think I even got any stat bonuses. Ah well. I guess she’ll just have to keep the angel ring on forever then.

Oof. At least her promotion time made sense in SoV. Not so much here.

[Punished Dayni]

44 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Oof. At least her promotion time made sense in SoV. Not so much here.

In Gaiden it seems they went for her officially acknowledging her place after Greith's map and talking with the cleric who knew her mother.

I don't disagree that it makes more sense in SoV after she is crowned as princess in ceremony.