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


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9 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Fair, but I'm thinking more in the context of what happens in the prologue - It was supposed to be an assassination attempt, but the one who almost gets killed is the one who ordered the hit. That's a serious fundamental failure, on par with the trick play the Colts tried - and failed - to pull against the Patriots

This is the kind of crap I'd sooner expect from a rookie assassin than someone who's trying to rule Fodlan, tbh...

I think the implication there is that Claude and the unnamed teacher ruined Edelgard's plans by doing something unexpected which ended up with Edelgard somehow getting stranded in the forest with Claude and Dimitri. What exact chain of events could possibly cause that when she orchestraed the whole thing will only ever be explained in fanfiction, but basically we can deduce that the plan is already awry before Byleth shows up (though still, Edelgard could have specified to Kostas to not go after the heir to the empire, or even just not to kill any of the women that were present, if they had a line where she admonishes Kostas for doing that then it would serve to make her less stupid about the whole thing while simultaneously providing a more subtle clue to her identity).

But man, what a hilarious ending to the whole story that would be if Byleth didn't show up and Edelgard received that axe to the face Byleth saved her from. Thales would just be like "Well fuck, that was unexpected. We put a lot of effort into her. Oh well, back to the drawing board." Meanwhile everyone else would be completely clueless that disaster had just been diverted (at least for how ever many years it takes for the Agarthans to come up with something else). Also somewhat strangely, with Ionis's only heir dying and him being sickly without any political power, the Empire would probably cease to be an empire and would become an Oligarchy lead by the Seven, probably ending up pretty similar to the federation style of government that the Alliance has.

Edited by Jotari
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4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Ah yes, the infamous Chapter 13. A chapter that, from everything I've heard, is a strong contender for worst chapter in the game when you play on Maddening mode.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

You don't get any control whatsoever over who takes part.

Your students from your house, and only from your house, will gradually show up in groups of two, scattered all over the map. Meaning that failing to train any of them will turn them into a major liability. What's more, Dimitri isn't a wyvern lord anymore, he's been forcibly reclassed into his new personal class of high lord.

I have heard horror stories about the shit people have wound up having to put up with when playing this on maddening. Thankfully, I am not. So let's do this.

Ah softlock by daybreak...Thankfully the Maddening update hadn't dropped before I started my second run, or else I might have ran into a literal softlock, as I went a bit overboard with out of house recruitment on that run, which made this chapter unpleasant to play through (admittedly having a free turn one flier in Claude's did help)

I really despise this chapter thanks to the long shadow it lays on a lot of classic FE challenge runs...

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

We all made a promise on this very day five years ago”.

...Did an entire day pass between when I first met Dimitri and when we rooted out the bandits? Or am I completely misremembering and they made the promise to reunite the day before the festival?

The mission and chapter names are Hunting by Daybreak, and Reunion at Dawn, which makes its sound like the battle is taking place during those last moment of night before the millennium day dawns. My guess is you awaken on the evening before, and the events before the battle are the night before (with no sleep to be had for our sleeping beauty of a Byleth)

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

[Cornelia] is a mage who has served the royal family for more than 20 years.”

What, did she start when she was eight? Whose blood is she bathing in to still look that young? Because I looked it up and did the math, and you need to kill like two dozen people just to fill one fucking tub.

A reference to the legends about one of the more prolific serial killers of olden times (the 1600s for her), Elizabeth Bathory, that was said to bath in the blood of her young victims to maintain her youth. There is no evidence she actually did bath in the blood of her victims, but when she was arrested they did find a mutilated dead girl, and another that was still alive, but had already undergone rounds of torture/mutilation. She was convicted of around 80 murders (although there were allegations that she had 650 victims), and due to how high in the ranks of nobility she was, she was confined to house arrest until her death instead of being executed.

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I question whether the chapter really can provide a softlock (well other than the potential for any Fire Emblem game to do so by discarding all your weapons and gold or having an untrained lord who is forced to fight). Like, it's by no means good design to force deploy a bunch of characters you might not have trained, but as for actually functionally finishing the chapter, it should still be possible even with a full team of untrained students. The students might die on mass, but provided you've trained Byleth and your lord reasonably well, actually finishing the chapter should be possible. Byleth can survive the first few turns against the enemies in the centre of the map, as the students don't even arrive on time to deal with that threat (and it is a difficult and sizeable threat). I'm sure if you take it slow, use your gambits well, are willing to pull back a bit and use students as meat shields and decoys, it should be more than possible to finish the map. Healing will probably be a bitch if you haven't stacked enough vulnaries/elixirs, but there are heal tiles in the north and south, and there's no time limit to completing the map before Palladro shows up for real.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

The students might die on mass, but provided you've trained Byleth and your lord reasonably well, actually finishing the chapter should be possible.

That's a fairly significant "provided", though. Like, sure, most players will train up Teach and their Lord, but it's not guaranteed. Their stats get boosted, yes (via the Enlightened One and High Lord promotions, respectively), but it's not by enough to even survive against the enemies on Maddening. I might be doing an "Ashen Wolves Only" playthrough, for instance, in which case chapter 13 just turns out to be a hard wall.

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1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

That's a fairly significant "provided", though. Like, sure, most players will train up Teach and their Lord, but it's not guaranteed. Their stats get boosted, yes (via the Enlightened One and High Lord promotions, respectively), but it's not by enough to even survive against the enemies on Maddening. I might be doing an "Ashen Wolves Only" playthrough, for instance, in which case chapter 13 just turns out to be a hard wall.

Well then you could say Ike vs the Black Knight or Corrin vs Ryoma is a soft lock. It's theoretically possible, but if you get soft locked in those scenarios you're probably intentionally ignoring the lord for that exact purpose.

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8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well then you could say Ike vs the Black Knight or Corrin vs Ryoma is a soft lock. It's theoretically possible, but if you get soft locked in those scenarios you're probably intentionally ignoring the lord for that exact purpose.

In both of those cases you have a clear out though.

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5 hours ago, Jotari said:

Also somewhat strangely, with Ionis's only heir dying and him being sickly without any political power, the Empire would probably cease to be an empire and would become an Oligarchy lead by the Seven, probably ending up pretty similar to the federation style of government that the Alliance has.

Its also possible that house Aegir would just end up as the new imperial house. They're seem the second highest house of the bunch with them already producing the prime minister. 

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2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Ike vs the Black Knight

Path of Radiance or Radiant Dawn version? The former, of course, has an out. As for the latter... yeah, it's softlock fodder. Most folks playing casually won't have an issue, but it definitely can become one, especially on niche challenge runs. See also - Alm going through those Trials in the Temple of Duma (not exactly a softlock, since you can grind, but it does inhibit challenge runs).

Like, I recognize that one-on-one (or multiple) fights can be great for storytelling. But I don't think they work especially well in light of Fire Emblem's gameplay style. Either the boss is made weak enough that they can be beaten by a bases Lord (thus rendering them pathetic to a well-trained Lord), or the boss is strong enough to threaten a well-trained Lord (thus presenting a "stat-check" for a singular unit that never happened beforehand). The way you may have been playing the game (i.e. all-armorknight-run in Echoes) suddenly stops working, often without advanced notice.

2 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Its also possible that house Aegir would just end up as the new imperial house. They're seem the second highest house of the bunch with them already producing the prime minister. 

Duke Aegir is a fairly reasonable candidate for running a hypothetical post-Imperial Adrestia. He might function like Duke Riegan in the Alliance, decentralizing power.

Another one I would mention is Arundel. As the brother-in-law of the dying Ionius, he could make some claim to ruling as "Regent". Meanwhile, the Slithers look for a body from one of the Imperial branch families to take over and set upon the throne.

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On 10/18/2021 at 12:39 PM, Alastor15243 said:

.Wait, that means Dimitri never fights the people who actually killed his parents in-game, doesn't it? There's no fight in Shambhala in Blue Lions, right?

Like in Crimson Flower, its probably safe to say the fight against TWSID happens off screen. His ending with Hapi confirms it actually :

 

Dimitri, Savior King & Hapi, Freed Spirit
After his coronation, Dimitri assumed the throne of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. He focused first and foremost on the restoration of the Kingdom but at the same time worked to expose the schemes of Cornelia and of those who conspired to bring about the Tragedy of Duscur. Always by his side was Hapi, who relentlessly pursued those who slither in the dark and, with Dimitri's help, discovered a magic spell to rid herself of her condition. Once all had settled down, the pair was known to have tea together often in the capital. It is said that Dimitri's tendency to discuss politics during tea time frequently moved Hapi to smirk, shake her head, and sigh.

And BTW, you mentioned that you were annoyed that how the game doesn't say anything about how Edelgard declares war on the entire continent, that is untrue. Granted, Edelgard herself never actually directly says that, but its heavily implied Faerghus and Lecister as inferior. At the beginning, should you choose to say Adrestia, she will mention despite the loss of power, Adrestia is still superior to other regions, which obviously includes the Kingdom and Alliance. Also, in her speech at Enbarr, she calls out the church for aiding in the Alliance and Kingdom's separation from the empire, which is a grossly simplified ideal. Even if she doesn't state it, she is truthfully a nationalist at the very least. And besides, declaring war on the church is more or less declaring war on the continent due to the political power the church posseses over Fódlan. Especially for the Kingdom: If you read the text in the library, it states that the Church helped mediate a peace treaty that led to the Faerghus's independence from the Empire. Because of this, its very safe to say that many of the Kingdom's nobility are pious supporters of the church, hence its a big factor in why Dimitri grants Rhea and the church asylum in the Crimson Flower route. 

On 10/20/2021 at 5:25 PM, Jotari said:

with the crest stones being useless

The game implies that Crest Stones are required to create Demonic Beasts used in the Empire's army, as supported by Miklan's transformation and Hanneman pondering the very same possibility. 

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9 hours ago, Jotari said:

I question whether the chapter really can provide a softlock (well other than the potential for any Fire Emblem game to do so by discarding all your weapons and gold or having an untrained lord who is forced to fight). Like, it's by no means good design to force deploy a bunch of characters you might not have trained, but as for actually functionally finishing the chapter, it should still be possible even with a full team of untrained students. The students might die on mass, but provided you've trained Byleth and your lord reasonably well, actually finishing the chapter should be possible. Byleth can survive the first few turns against the enemies in the centre of the map, as the students don't even arrive on time to deal with that threat (and it is a difficult and sizeable threat). I'm sure if you take it slow, use your gambits well, are willing to pull back a bit and use students as meat shields and decoys, it should be more than possible to finish the map. Healing will probably be a bitch if you haven't stacked enough vulnaries/elixirs, but there are heal tiles in the north and south, and there's no time limit to completing the map before Palladro shows up for real.

Reasonably well trained is a bit of an understatement, thanks to Maddening stat inflation and more restrictive experience curve, plus terrible luck with growths is a thing, although mitigated by how class change works in this game. Additionally you are underestimating the penalty of the missing preps menu. If Byleth was in a class to grind class mastery on chapter 12 instead of the kind of class they want to practically solo a map, you are stuck with that. If equipping a skill would help you clear this mess, then you are fresh out of luck. Its hard to use your gambits well when you lack the prep screen you need to actually get them onto the units that are on this map. I guess the gambits on the battalions that appear on the lords tend to be fairly good, so that is at least 2 good gambit uses for the map. If you do have some units that are usable, they might not have the items, and weapons they need to hit the key benchmarks of the map (not to mention the class/battalion issue they may have as well). Although to the maps credit, there are quite a few droppable concoctions for healing supplies.

People talk about this map softlocking maddening runs for a reason. Honestly, if you could access even just the part of the preps that didn't involve deployment/repositioning I don't think it would have the reputation it does. There are lots of resources (like gambit, or accessories, or relics, or...) that could help swing things, even with units with little training or terrible stats, but where those resources need to be on chapter 13 isn't easy to determine before you start chapter 12 (and god forbid you need them on chapter 12 itself).

Edit: @Shanty Pete's 1st Mate

Quote

Path of Radiance or Radiant Dawn version? The former, of course, has an out. As for the latter... yeah, it's softlock fodder.

In the latter you are fine as long as you have a hammer, and let the BK come to you.

Edited by Eltosian Kadath
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5 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Path of Radiance or Radiant Dawn version? The former, of course, has an out. As for the latter... yeah, it's softlock fodder. Most folks playing casually won't have an issue, but it definitely can become one, especially on niche challenge runs. See also - Alm going through those Trials in the Temple of Duma (not exactly a softlock, since you can grind, but it does inhibit challenge runs).

Like, I recognize that one-on-one (or multiple) fights can be great for storytelling. But I don't think they work especially well in light of Fire Emblem's gameplay style. Either the boss is made weak enough that they can be beaten by a bases Lord (thus rendering them pathetic to a well-trained Lord), or the boss is strong enough to threaten a well-trained Lord (thus presenting a "stat-check" for a singular unit that never happened beforehand). The way you may have been playing the game (i.e. all-armorknight-run in Echoes) suddenly stops working, often without advanced notice.

I don't really have an issue with them. I think Radiant Dawn's Black Knight ha s a stat threshold that's easy enough to reach (in fact it tends to make the chapter something of a race to get the Wishblade before Ike accidentally kills the Black Knight or dies himself). Like your lord is forced deployed on every map they're available. So you're sort of walking yourself into the trap of the soft lock if you're intentionally not training them. And virtually every Fire Emblem game can be soft locked in every chapter by discarding all your weapons and throwing away all your money. It's not something a player will do accidentally, but likewise I don't think outright ignoring Ike or Corrin is something a player is likely to do accidentally either. If we are considering 1 on 1 fights from a softlock potential perspective though, then Path of Radiance kind of does it perfectly by having a gameplay ability to just lose the fight without much changing in the plot.

4 hours ago, ZeManaphy said:

The game implies that Crest Stones are required to create Demonic Beasts used in the Empire's army, as supported by Miklan's transformation and Hanneman pondering the very same possibility. 

Yeah, I know that. I was the first one in the thread to say it, I think. What I mean by useless is that it's a useless plot element. As no matter what happens, the fact that Edelgard is trying to get crest stones, or that she either succeeds or fails to do so, is irrelevant to the story as a whole. They're just an excuse to reveal herself in the tomb, because the plot requires Edelgard to reveal herself in some way at this point. It could just as well have been an assassination attempt on Rhea and nothing would change.

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Reasonably well trained is a bit of an understatement, thanks to Maddening stat inflation and more restrictive experience curve, plus terrible luck with growths is a thing, although mitigated by how class change works in this game. Additionally you are underestimating the penalty of the missing preps menu. If Byleth was in a class to grind class mastery on chapter 12 instead of the kind of class they want to practically solo a map, you are stuck with that. If equipping a skill would help you clear this mess, then you are fresh out of luck. Its hard to use your gambits well when you lack the prep screen you need to actually get them onto the units that are on this map. I guess the gambits on the battalions that appear on the lords tend to be fairly good, so that is at least 2 good gambit uses for the map. If you do have some units that are usable, they might not have the items, and weapons they need to hit the key benchmarks of the map (not to mention the class/battalion issue they may have as well). Although to the maps credit, there are quite a few droppable concoctions for healing supplies.

People talk about this map softlocking maddening runs for a reason. Honestly, if you could access even just the part of the preps that didn't involve deployment/repositioning I don't think it would have the reputation it does. There are lots of resources (like gambit, or accessories, or relics, or...) that could help swing things, even with units with little training or terrible stats, but where those resources need to be on chapter 13 isn't easy to determine before you start chapter 12 (and god forbid you need them on chapter 12 itself).

Edit: @Shanty Pete's 1st Mate

In the latter you are fine as long as you have a hammer, and let the BK come to you.

I think just making the map  much easier would be better than a prep menu (though it is a bit of a why not both situation, at least for Byleth and the lord). It's a nice idea for a map from a story perspective, you get to see all your students show up in their new outfits one by one across the map (or rather two by two). The issue is that sense of excitement is lost with a sense of frustration instead as you burn through divine pulses trying to keep them alive. If the chapter was designed to just be a plain easy one, then it would have worked better. And really the game could do with an easy chapter as the first one in Part 2, it's basically a reset into a new prologue. I do think Maddening was untested in this regard (and normal itself even could have been made easier), I just question if it really is a soft lock, or if players are just unwilling to let their units die, even the ones they've trained, to clear the chapter.

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3 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

In the latter you are fine as long as you have a hammer, and let the BK come to you.

True enough. But there's no guarantee you've bought or saved a Hammer for the occasion.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

don't really have an issue with them. I think Radiant Dawn's Black Knight ha s a stat threshold that's easy enough to reach (in fact it tends to make the chapter something of a race to get the Wishblade before Ike accidentally kills the Black Knight or dies himself). Like your lord is forced deployed on every map they're available. So you're sort of walking yourself into the trap of the soft lock if you're intentionally not training them. And virtually every Fire Emblem game can be soft locked in every chapter by discarding all your weapons and throwing away all your money. It's not something a player will do accidentally, but likewise I don't think outright ignoring Ike or Corrin is something a player is likely to do accidentally either. If we are considering 1 on 1 fights from a softlock potential perspective though, then Path of Radiance kind of does it perfectly by having a gameplay ability to just lose the fight without much changing in the plot.

There's a substantial difference between doing something that's obviously shooting yourself in the foot (i.e. throwing out all your items), and doing something you have no reason to believe will backfire (i.e. not training a particular unit). Ike is a great unit, to be sure, but every prior chapter can be beaten without using him. The game establishes no standard in which a well-trained Ike is needed to complete the chapter. And it does so toward the very end of the game. If there were prior chapters featuring an Ike "grudge match", thus establishing a trained Ike as a continuous requirement in advance, this design would be more forgivable.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

think just making the map  much easier would be better than a prep menu (though it is a bit of a why not both situation, at least for Byleth and the lord).

Why would other units have the same weapon, class, and skills setup from five years ago? That's the least believable part of it. The "prep" could manifest as whatever changes they made over the five years. Alternatively, give each returning unit a fixed build (i.e. Annette as a level 25 Warlock with Kingdom Mages, Ashe as a level 25 Sniper with Kingdom Archers), with units granted particular base stats. This way, each difficulty level could be balanced around the units provided.

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1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

True enough. But there's no guarantee you've bought or saved a Hammer for the occasion.

There's a substantial difference between doing something that's obviously shooting yourself in the foot (i.e. throwing out all your items), and doing something you have no reason to believe will backfire (i.e. not training a particular unit). Ike is a great unit, to be sure, but every prior chapter can be beaten without using him. The game establishes no standard in which a well-trained Ike is needed to complete the chapter. And it does so toward the very end of the game. If there were prior chapters featuring an Ike "grudge match", thus establishing a trained Ike as a continuous requirement in advance, this design would be more forgivable.

Why would other units have the same weapon, class, and skills setup from five years ago? That's the least believable part of it. The "prep" could manifest as whatever changes they made over the five years. Alternatively, give each returning unit a fixed build (i.e. Annette as a level 25 Warlock with Kingdom Mages, Ashe as a level 25 Sniper with Kingdom Archers), with units granted particular base stats. This way, each difficulty level could be balanced around the units provided.

I think they do bump up each character by five levels if they're below a cap, but that doesn't do much if they're all level 5 or 6. Raising them to a cap would definitely make it so the levels actually tailored to be beaten with the tools it provides.

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The weird thing is that on Normal difficulty, all units are set to level 20 minimum post timeskip if their standard amount of timeskip level-ups wouldn't get them to that point. But on higher difficulties they removed it.

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Three Houses Day 50: Chapter 14 Week 1

...Now that I see the monthly pictures cast in dramatic flames, I have a sneaking suspicion that part of the reason Part 1 has so many chapters in it is because they wanted to do that intro thing for all twelve months of the year specifically in part 1. Now that space they originally devoted to describing the seasonal changes that objectively weren't actually happening... is being used as a Radiant Dawn style narration thing, but Jeralt's voice actor is no better suited to this task than he was to describing the seasons.

And now we get the Knights of Seiros back, along with the teachers.

So they talk about their decision to use Garreg Mach as their base of operations, and Gilbert justifies this by saying it's essentially beneath the Empire's notice at the moment. But I don't buy it. It's the game making idiotic excuses to justify why they're keeping the school system. They couldn't defend this place when the Church was at the height of its fucking power. There is no conceivable way they're going to be able to defend this thing from the current strength of the Empire the second they realize we're flies worth swatting. We need to be stealthy and on the move, but the game's too in love with its huge explorable Monastery to let us ever set our base anywhere else.

We're not allowed to have any substantial objections to the plan however, aside from the option of “gathering resources would be difficult”.

But it's becoming readily apparent that a huge part of Gilbert's purpose here is to allow Dimitri to act fundamentally differently from the other three “leader” characters, Edelgard, Seteth and Claude. Gilbert's filling that role of being the one to talk to you about strategies and doing all the intellectual heavy lifting, so that Dimitri can instead be a batshit insane antisocial murderhobo. On the one hand, I appreciate that they're actually doing something different here, but on the other hand, the fact that it only happens on Blue Lions demonstrates how Blue-Lions-Centric the overall story really is (as if the focus on the Kingdom in Part 1 weren't already enough), and the fact that they still felt the need to have someone take all of [Insert House Leader Here]'s lines and ideas makes me strongly suspect Blue Lions isn't going to be as different from the other routes as I might hope.

Gilbert: Please calm yourself, your highness. We are not your enemies.

Dimitri: My enemies say the same.

...Okay. That's a pretty good line.

But then Felix... reacts with surprise. “What happened to him?” quoth Felix. “It's like he's a completely different person”.

I don't see how he's acting substantially different from the “boar” Felix kept saying he always knew Dimitri was.

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Day 50 Continued:

Sorry, for some reason the game gave me the "fill in this captcha" warning they always give me when I'm about to post something the site has decided it isn't going to let me edit later, so I had to split this despite it being pretty short.

...Alright, we got a support with Mercedes.

So, literally one day after the conversation where they officially decide to set up shop at the Monastery, Mercedes is talking about how a letter from her father “just arrived”. How the flaming fuck would her father already know to send mail to her here?

...So... Mercedes's adoptive father... was a “roving merchant”... who wanted to exploit Mercedes for her crest... to marry into the nobility.

...Tell me... why was Dorothea the one Ingrid had that paralogue with, again?

But Mercedes... “can't see any way around” accepting the latest marriage arrangement, because she doesn't want to “let go of the life [she's] made for [herself]”. ...So why would she suggest Ingrid run away when a similar thing happened to her?

She's also talking about how her decision to enter this war was the first thing she ever freely chose to do, and uh... well... she's talking about how she apparently discussed this with her adoptive father, and like, that's not fucking possible in this timeframe.

Okay, back to gameplay. I'm checking the “personal history” tab of Leonie... and it says “1185: remembers the promise made five years ago and returns to Garreg Mach”.

She wasn't fucking there when that promise was made.

Anyway, seeing the crazy attack power on the King of Lions corps that Dimitri can't use in the air, I've decided that as soon as Felix reaches C authority, that shit's going on him.

Alright, back to Garreg Mach, and I can't even leave my room before I get a support invitation from Constance.

Ah yes, and here we get the first instance of something that's going to be frankly omnipresent in these post-timeskip supports: things picking up like five fucking years didn't just fucking pass since the last one.

Problems will not be solved for five fucking years.

Petty disputes will last for five fucking years.

Hilda will be so titanically, unspeakably lazy that it'll take her five fucking years to make a goddamned necklace.

And here, we're just picking up with those experiments Constance talked about five fucking years ago.

I did like the three resigned options of “I see” “sure” and “of course” in response to her nonsense though.

Alright, and now I've run into a support with Ingrid. Which... magically happens in a pocket dimension where it's suddenly night time.

Something tells me there were some communication errors between departments. That or they just didn't care.

I like when she talks about how much her father sacrificed for her, and how wracked with guilt she feels over her dream because she feels she's failing a man who has sacrificed and done more than she ever has or will have to. It's an interesting topic to be sure, and they handle it decently.

And then I run into Felix.

He tells Professr that he realizes that the thing that's been driving him to get so strong is his past determination to beat Glenn just once, something he never managed before Glenn died. His line about “spending all of those years training for a duel with a ghost” was pretty great.

I go with Leonie into the sauna, and she skyrockets ahead of Professr so I can only get her the normal boost unfortunately.

Oh yes and of course, like I said before, everything's as it was, including the crops planted in the greenhouse. All that seems to have changed over the years are unit levels (they gained a whopping 3 levels without me) and motivation.

Speaking of, let's do these other supports before doing meals. See who actually needs the motivation.

Sylvain's is nothing we haven't seen before, it's just more talk about his upbringing and how bearing a crest impacted it.

Annette's... taking a day off to try and cut back her workaholic tendencies... five years after I suggested she try that... and she's bored beyond belief because she isn't working.

...Uh...

...Is that... a gray streak in Annette's hair? Just behind her bangs?

...Is that... is “orange with streaks of gray” actually just the natural hair color in her family? It's not in her portrait, just on her model...

You have two suggestions for how she can relax, and you can suggest either tea or candy. Cut to her doing both no matter what you say.

...So she basically just accepts that not doing her best just isn't her style, and she needs to accept herself for who she is. But... that doesn't address the problems she was having that prompted this whole business in the first place.

Alright, so, that's over with. Now, let's see how many of these quests we can do today...

Okay, a supply run with Gilbert, and then...

...Two battle quests...

...Oh, looks like Anna just asks me again about the trade secrets, instead of the quest carrying over for 5 years. Funny that.

...It's funny, Anna's still recruitable. I think she's the only recruitable unit at the Monastery who stays at the Monastery in part 2 even when not recruited.

...A fishing quest. Christ do I not want to go fishing again.

...Dimitri won't talk to me for unexplained but pretty easy-to-guess reasons.

And advanced drills are just barely enough to get me a support with Seteth.

...No, wait, it's Gilbert. Must've happened during cooking.

...Gilbert... seems to feel he doesn't deserve to smile.

And apparently it's not for the reasons you might think.

Okay. Moving on.

...Oh, yeah, I think I heard something about this. Dimitri isn't taking part in our “strategy meetings” (the thin new coat of paint they put over study sessions). Thankfully I've already got him where I want him to be classwise. Now, let's see if we can get Felix to C-rank authority for that +7 attack battalion of Dimitri's...

...Oh yes. Oh yes, it's gonna happen by the end of next week at the latest.

Okay, I have a support with Flayn now.

...It was just an avatar dick-stroking session of no real value or merit. Moving on.

A Shamir talk I have no real comment on...

A Saint Seiros Day recital...

...Alright, that's the end of week 1. Christ, I almost forgot how tedious the Monastery is, and it hurts all the more now that it's come back full blast. I'll be doing those quest battles on Monday, and I'll see if I can't get myself ready to do the mission on Tuesday.

Stay safe, everyone.

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22 hours ago, Jotari said:

But man, what a hilarious ending to the whole story that would be if Byleth didn't show up and Edelgard received that axe to the face Byleth saved her from.

Talk about Fallen Edelgard. Get wrecked loser.

 

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4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Three Houses Day 50: Chapter 14 Week 1

...Now that I see the monthly pictures cast in dramatic flames, I have a sneaking suspicion that part of the reason Part 1 has so many chapters in it is because they wanted to do that intro thing for all twelve months of the year specifically in part 1. Now that space they originally devoted to describing the seasonal changes that objectively weren't actually happening... is being used as a Radiant Dawn style narration thing, but Jeralt's voice actor is no better suited to this task than he was to describing the seasons.

And now we get the Knights of Seiros back, along with the teachers.

So they talk about their decision to use Garreg Mach as their base of operations, and Gilbert justifies this by saying it's essentially beneath the Empire's notice at the moment. But I don't buy it. It's the game making idiotic excuses to justify why they're keeping the school system. They couldn't defend this place when the Church was at the height of its fucking power. There is no conceivable way they're going to be able to defend this thing from the current strength of the Empire the second they realize we're flies worth swatting. We need to be stealthy and on the move, but the game's too in love with its huge explorable Monastery to let us ever set our base anywhere else.

 

Well we do specifically have a monastery defense chapter at least. And I can buy that they're able to defend it. The attack in Part 1 was basically a surprise attack that happened too swiftly for the other nations to mobilize. In Part 2 circumstances are very different. Part 1 was also the Empire at the height of its power, but now they've been fighting a war of attrition for five years and have frontlines elsewhere on the continent. They can't commit to an all out attack on the monastery the same way as in Part 1 without the Kingdom or Alliance forces seizing empire territory in the meantime.

What I can't really justify is that such a central, culturally important location and, at least somewhat defensible, location for the continent would be just sitting their abandoned without some side taking control of it before now. That just doesn't make any sense to me and I suspect they only made it that way because they really liked the idea of the reunion scenes taking place in an empty monastery. Which fair enough, it's a bit of a plot hole, but if you can good theming and imagery out of it then it's not the biggest issue in the world. I'm only disappointed they didn't go any further with it and have you actually explore an empty monastery in gameplay. It would have had a really great affect to explore a night time version of the hub location that has always been full of npcs (and your pcs), not desolate and as ruined as the budget can afford to make it look; slowly checking all the areas until you find the goddess tower, the one place that had been blocked off from you in Part 1, where you then see your main lord amongst the wreckage.

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But it's becoming readily apparent that a huge part of Gilbert's purpose here is to allow Dimitri to act fundamentally differently from the other three “leader” characters, Edelgard, Seteth and Claude. Gilbert's filling that role of being the one to talk to you about strategies and doing all the intellectual heavy lifting, so that Dimitri can instead be a batshit insane antisocial murderhobo. On the one hand, I appreciate that they're actually doing something different here, but on the other hand, the fact that it only happens on Blue Lions demonstrates how Blue-Lions-Centric the overall story really is (as if the focus on the Kingdom in Part 1 weren't already enough), and the fact that they still felt the need to have someone take all of [Insert House Leader Here]'s lines and ideas makes me strongly suspect Blue Lions isn't going to be as different from the other routes as I might hope.

 

Yeah, that's basically what I voiced my disappointment in a few days ago (though maybe it was in the General Complaints thread and not here). With the exceptions of some scenes, Dimitri basically checks out of the first half of Part 2, and I feel that hurts his character's potential more than the others from the route cloning. Both because he actually has more potential to squander and because it just detracts from the focus of his arc by taking away his agency. With the exceptions of some threats in the next chapter, basically all of Dimitri's evil deeds come down to telling over showing.

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Gilbert: Please calm yourself, your highness. We are not your enemies.

Dimitri: My enemies say the same.

...Okay. That's a pretty good line.

But then Felix... reacts with surprise. “What happened to him?” quoth Felix. “It's like he's a completely different person”.

I don't see how he's acting substantially different from the “boar” Felix kept saying he always knew Dimitri was.

Probably a line that was written as "Student says: [line]", bad choice to make it Felix. Ingrid probably would have worked best.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So, literally one day after the conversation where they officially decide to set up shop at the Monastery, Mercedes is talking about how a letter from her father “just arrived”. How the flaming fuck would her father already know to send mail to her here?

We're back to weekend distances in Fodlan again. Postman probably sent it to the monastery using a slingshot from the Kingdom the places are so close together.

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...So... Mercedes's adoptive father... was a “roving merchant”... who wanted to exploit Mercedes for her crest... to marry into the nobility.

...Tell me... why was Dorothea the one Ingrid had that paralogue with, again?

 

That'd be because every student needs to have their own paralogue, and Mercedes has one that's plot relevant to her, so she can't be the focus of another one. It's a system that's nice in that it lets every character get focus in the plot, but it also means some characters are just dumped into paralogues that they have nothing to do with to fill out the roster (and, surprisingly, this even happens to Claude, whose paragraph I really feel shouldn't have been Verdant Wind exclusive).

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Okay, back to gameplay. I'm checking the “personal history” tab of Leonie... and it says “1185: remembers the promise made five years ago and returns to Garreg Mach”.

She wasn't fucking there when that promise was made.

Ha XD

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Anyway, seeing the crazy attack power on the King of Lions corps that Dimitri can't use in the air, I've decided that as soon as Felix reaches C authority, that shit's going on him.

 

Not sure it'd be best on him. You definitely want to use the Wave Attack gambit it brings and Felix might not be the most accurate with it.

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Alright, and now I've run into a support with Ingrid. Which... magically happens in a pocket dimension where it's suddenly night time.

Something tells me there were some communication errors between departments. That or they just didn't care.

Huh. That's weird. Usually the night time supports do pop up as prompts while the days pass during the week.

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Oh yes and of course, like I said before, everything's as it was, including the crops planted in the greenhouse. All that seems to have changed over the years are unit levels (they gained a whopping 3 levels without me) and motivation.

Well one that does change that it's somewhat annoying to remember about is that your weekly activity you've assigned two students to has been unassigned. So remember to get someone back in the stables or something as soon as possible.

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...It's funny, Anna's still recruitable. I think she's the only recruitable unit at the Monastery who stays at the Monastery in part 2 even when not recruited.

And funnily enough, I think that makes her literally the only playable character in the game, aside from Byleth themself, who you don't face as an enemy at some point (in fact, I think maybe every character is faced as an enemy at least twice, maybe Gilbert and Rodrigue are only faced once). Even the Ashen Wolves are fought as enemies in Cindered Shadows (though only once). Anna, the one character that will stay by Byleth's side no matter what, and also the one character who won't sleep with him/her.

4 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Talk about Fallen Edelgard. Get wrecked loser.

 

I actually have no clue what you're talking about.

Edited by Jotari
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5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Anyway, seeing the crazy attack power on the King of Lions corps that Dimitri can't use in the air, I've decided that as soon as Felix reaches C authority, that shit's going on him.

Is Felix going CAPTAIN FALCON, again?

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh yes and of course, like I said before, everything's as it was, including the crops planted in the greenhouse. All that seems to have changed over the years are unit levels (they gained a whopping 3 levels without me) and motivation.

That's dependent on the character, actually. Also of note, some characters actually don't gain any levels at all post-timeskip.

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4 hours ago, Jotari said:

I actually have no clue what you're talking about.

'Cause, y'know...she would've fallen. By getting killed. Felled in battle.

I actually pulled a Fallen Edelgard recently, but I'm not sure who to fodder her to. I refuse to her.

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2 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

'Cause, y'know...she would've fallen. By getting killed. Felled in battle.

I actually pulled a Fallen Edelgard recently, but I'm not sure who to fodder her to. I refuse to her.

Just like on principle because she's terrible designed broken ass unit, or just on principle because you oppose Edelgard entirely as a character  on principle? Well in either case, pretty much any armour unit is going to appreciate that C skill.

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4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Just like on principle because she's terrible designed broken ass unit, or just on principle because you oppose Edelgard entirely as a character on principle? Well in either case, pretty much any armour unit is going to appreciate that C skill.

On both principles. I have a few armors I'm looking to train up, maybe one of them. Maybe Felix or something, I'll have to look over my barracks.

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