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

[Femboy Advance SP]

After watching Zoran's playlist you linked I'd be surprised not to see you do the hyper mode ophelia build, as risky as it is.     Definitely looking forward to wyvern Elise and nos tanking Odin!

Also wouldn't it be more worthwhile and cost effective to recruit rallyman instead of investing so much into rallybot Laslow?    Imo Selena can do the job just fine with just rally speed + defense until rallyman but we'll see how wrong I am.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Femboy Advance SP said:

After watching Zoran's playlist you linked I'd be surprised not to see you do the hyper mode ophelia build, as risky as it is.     Definitely looking forward to wyvern Elise and nos tanking Odin!

From what I can tell it seems rather too risky for ironman, and also not that fun. Not really my style.

2 minutes ago, Femboy Advance SP said:

Also wouldn't it be more worthwhile and cost effective to recruit rallyman instead of investing so much into rallybot Laslow?    Imo Selena can do the job just fine with just rally speed + defense until rallyman but we'll see how wrong I am.

The thing with Laslow isn't just the +1 strength and speed, it's the fact that he has innate replicate access allowing him to spread his offensive rallies over a much wider area than rallyman can, as well as Laslow just contributing earlier and for longer. We'll see how it goes though, as you said.

[lenticular]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, take that mounting fear an span it out over the course of a year and a half, and you have my trepidation now. I've been writing a lot of fucking checks with Conquest's name, and I haven't checked the damned bank balance in more than two years.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

If you've got any questions for me today, I'd be happy to answer them.

What score are you hoping/expecting you'll be giving to Conquest when this is over?

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, lenticular said:

What score are you hoping/expecting you'll be giving to Conquest when this is over?

46. +12 difficulty, +9 ironmannability, +9 usability, +7 depth, +3 balance, +5 pacing, -5 writing, +6 music.

[Shadow Mir]

21 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

46. +12 difficulty, +9 ironmannability, +9 usability, +7 depth, +3 balance, +5 pacing, -5 writing, +6 music.

I wonder how many of that is actually deserved, as opposed to raging fanboyism...

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Shadow Mir said:

I wonder how many of that is actually deserved, as opposed to raging fanboyism...

That's how I remember the game is all. We'll see how much that stands up.

[lenticular]

21 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That's how I remember the game is all. We'll see how much that stands up.

It'll be a fun ride either way.

[Punished Dayni]

And here we are, the moment you've been building up to for a while.

Looking forward to your response to some of the story moments this game provides.

Any wild plans for the royals or Effie?

Edited March 15, 2021 by Dayni

[Alastor15243]

23 minutes ago, Dayni said:

Any wild plans for the royals or Effie?

Effie is gonna be Mozu's BFF and be a bowfaire kinshi knight. She'll be absurdly overpowering with her +12 damage stack between bowfaire, quick draw and puissance. Elise is gonna be a wyvern rider because that sounds fun as hell. Xander's getting shurikenfaire and maybe trample if he somehow needs it. Camilla's going dark knight for malefic aura probably at some point, but she'll be another malig.

[Punished Dayni]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Effie is gonna be Mozu's BFF and be a bowfaire kinshi knight. She'll be absurdly overpowering with her +12 damage stack between bowfaire, quick draw and puissance. Elise is gonna be a wyvern rider because that sounds fun as hell. Xander's getting shurikenfaire and maybe trample if he somehow needs it. Camilla's going dark knight for malefic aura probably at some point, but she'll be another malig.

I've seen visual proof of Elise working, it's a fair amount to invest but the results are surprisingly good. So you're going for Camilla having hybrid combat, hence not WL? Are you considering Lifetaker for her too?  Does Xander end up a Bow Knight with this plan?

[Alastor15243]

11 minutes ago, Dayni said:

Does Xander end up a Bow Knight with this plan?

Temporarily. I'll send him back to paladin afterward.

12 minutes ago, Dayni said:

So you're going for Camilla having hybrid combat, hence not WL?

Yeah, Malig Camilla's turned out pretty great when I've actually put the effort into making her magic work.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Effie is gonna be Mozu's BFF and be a bowfaire kinshi knight. She'll be absurdly overpowering with her +12 damage stack between bowfaire, quick draw and puissance. Elise is gonna be a wyvern rider because that sounds fun as hell. Xander's getting shurikenfaire and maybe trample if he somehow needs it. Camilla's going dark knight for malefic aura probably at some point, but she'll be another malig.

Good luck trying to make Elise work in a melee class with inaccurate weapons. You. Are Gonna. Need It. Also, no Leo?

[Alastor15243]

5 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Also, no Leo?

No, I'm using Leo, it's just I don't have anything crazy planned for him.

[Venger_06]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

No, I'm using Leo, it's just I don't have anything crazy planned for him.

Make him a Dark Falcon.

[Eltosian Kadath]

On 3/12/2021 at 9:17 AM, Alastor15243 said:

 

FINAL SCORE

1: Birthright (25)

2: Shadow Dragon (15)

3: Path of Radiance (11)

4: Revelation (6)

5: Genealogy of the Holy War (5)

6: New Mystery (4)

7: Blazing Blade (1)

8: Binding Blade (0)

9: Sacred Stones (-3)

10: Radiant Dawn (-5)

11/12: Awakening / Thracia (-9)

13: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 (-22)

14: Gaiden (-27)

15: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (-31)

16: Dark Dragon (-54)

Jesus Christ it's a slaughter. Make no mistake, it definitely deserves to be high on the list, but maybe not that high. I'm thinking I may have numerically undervalued just how much difficulty matters to my gut feelings. I think I'll be updating that when I have time.

Which isn't fucking now.

Oh wow, yeah Birthright is winning by a lot, which does seem a little weird. I was expecting it to be high up there, just not winning by a solid 10 points...

 

On 3/12/2021 at 11:49 PM, lenticular said:

 

Of course, you absolutely can play and complete the game without any of this stuff. You can beat the game without even building the smithy or the mess hall. And if it was just the mess hall, then I wouldn't think of it as that big a loss. But forging? Being limited on forging sucks. Both because it's been a core game mechanic in the series since Path of Radiance and because of how important forged weapons are in a game where most of the supposedly high-end weapons come with substantial drawbacks. It's not absolutely vital, but I'd definitely say that it is meaningful.

The only game where forging has ever really been an important or core mechanic is Shadow Dragon (and mostly due to some really questionable design decisions that make forged effective weapons so potent). I rarely bother with it in most of the games where it is available, unless I want to just goof around. As for Fates in particular, its most useful when you are really messing around with class changes, and need some forged bronzes to keep from suffering from getting stuck in an E rank in new classes.

 

On 3/13/2021 at 5:44 AM, Axie said:

 

with that said, i think birthright is being a bit undersold on difficulty here. it seems appropriate to rank it with radiant dawn - a game that, in its hard mode, is harder than birthright when it's not GM chapters - but blazing blade is definitely easier when it's not doing fog of war or kishuna shenaningans for example. maybe +2 and -2 tiers for difficulty would be good if you want to value it more, even if you keep birthright at 0 - it seems 0 and -4 are a bit crowded right now.

I think you are underestimating the difficulty of some of the HHM maps, especially when you are playing like you might ironman it. You should try a soft ironman of HHM, and see how you feel about it then. Plus I think a part of the Birthright difficulty rating is taking the notion that you can grind if you need to into account (whereas you can't with blazing blade...)

 

[Alastor15243]

Conquest Day 2: Chapter 3 to Chapter 6

So I turned my laptop off last night because it insisted on running even when closed for some reason. That was new. But by the time it properly booted up this morning and I could access this document to do the playlog, I had already breezed through Chapter 3 and most of Chapter 4. So I guess we'll be doing Chapter 5 for the playlog today.

...Nope, this is going too quickly with too little to comment on. I mean, every chapter but 2 in the pre-split part of the game is basically like clockwork to me. I guess I'll see you guys at Chapter 6.

One thing I did want to mention though: it's weird, I can't quite put my finger on it, but for some reason despite how dumb the battle animations look in cutscenes... in actual gameplay they don't bother me at all and can sometimes look pretty damned cool. Why is that? Camera angles? Music choices? My habit of keeping my thumb on the fast forward button at basically all times during combat?

Alright, Chapter 6 time. And I don't know why, but whenever I get to this moment, I get this intense nervousness and pit in my stomach when reading the story. The story is completely stupid trash, and yet my gut is just twisting in knots when I watch the buildup to the choice.

And yet.

I've made my decision.

CONQUEST IS A GO!

EMBRACE THE DARK, BABY!

Okay, I will say, I like how the route you picked tints the dialogue boxes different colors depending on whether you're in pre-route/Rev, Birthright or Conquest. They do that for the save files too, which is a nice touch to make it easy to tell which save files are which. Speaking of, having 9 save files is really nice, though I wonder how much space a save file really takes and whether or not they could have just given us more.

I dunno why, but I love Xander's reply to Ryoma telling Xander that Garon tried to kill Dakota:

Xander: Explain yourself. Swiftly.

So yeah, Xander asks if this is true, and Dakota says it is, but she wants to hear Garon's side of the story. Of course, Garon's side of the story is feigning ignorance and then ordering Dakota's execution for asking for more information, and of course I've already spoken recently about how idiotic and uninteresting Xander's blind loyalty to Garon has become, and some of the stuff that happens in early Conquest only makes that more absurd. But let's keep going.

It's weird, Ryoma talks to Dakota like he thinks she's just a flat-out traitor, but he talks to Xander like he thinks Dakota's been brainwashed by Nohr. I mean, not that I expect even something as basic as line-to-line consistency from this game, but still.

So they don't flee because... they want to prove they aren't cowards and also that Dakota chose them of her own volition. That's... pretty damned dickish. Surely they have to realize that the implications here are that they're forcing Dakota to beat up her blood family. Even though she's chosen Nohr over Hoshido, surely they see that's a shitty thing to do to their sister?

So, this is a unique objective where we don't have to rout or kill the boss, but instead beat four of the five enemies on the map. Which in practice means the objective is “Figure out how to beat Ryoma or else you'll have to make Sakura cry”.

Yeah, uh... for those who haven't seen it... Dakota's battle conversation with Sakura is pretty brutal and heartbreaking.

“What did I ever do to you? All I wanted was to l-love you!”

But yeah, this is... while I still like the Birthright version of Chapter 6, I think the Conquest version is definitely better. It's got way fewer enemies, but the enemies are trickier, especially Hinoka/Takumi and Ryoma. At least if you don't want to just have Xander run around behind enemy lines and take out both Yukimura and Sakura. But I won't be doing that, because while the story is comically dumb, I weirdly still have some emotional investment in the cast.

I'm baiting Takumi with Leo, since Leo has WTA and can do good damage. As long as we stay at the edge of their range, Hinoka with her darting blow and 15 speed can't attack until we're ready for her.

Well, Takumi and Hinoka have retreated for now so Sakura can heal them, so let's focus on Ryoma, since my plan with him has come into effect. My mainstay plan with him is to have Camilla ferry Xander over the river, then lure him to step into the river, netting -10 evade. Then we combine that with Elise's freeze staff and he's suddenly way, way easier to hit. Even after duelist's blow, Xander still gets 73% hit rates on him. So he goes down on the enemy phase after two attacks from Xander.

And with that, we've got the whole Nohrian family free to help us take out Takumi and Hinoka. Honestly, I think what I like most about this map is just that: having the whole Nohrian family work together here. There's something weirdly nice about having them and nobody else but Jakob.

A magicsauce level from Dakota reminds me to tell you guys that other than that level, Dakota's been doing pretty well. By the time of Chapter 3, she was already able to double my previous avatar in the state she was in before she got converted to a promoted pair-up bot.

But after taking down Ryoma, Hinoka and Takumi, there's not much to comment on. All that remains is to take out Yukimura, ideally with someone who can actually gain EXP.

...Nope, I tried to soften him up with Xander since I didn't want debuffs on the unit I killed him with, but alas, he critted. Ah well, it's just one enemy.

But yeah, now we're in My Castle, which I'll soon be naming West Dakota.

Looks like our resources are milk and onyx. Speed and knives. Alright, I can work with that. Especially since I'll have castle visits.

Alright, I got the Dakota and Jakob C support again. Now to start working to build them up to S as soon as possible. I've got some fun stuff I can do with that, and even if Jakob crashes and burns, he's arguably an even better backpack for Dakota than Dakota was for Ryoma. +3 def/res is no joke.

Thankfully, one of the upsides of only having Jakob as an ally right now is that I get a guaranteed support boost with him today at the treehouse.

Yep, I just started doing my visits for the day (really late in the morning, so unfortunately I'll have to skip tomorrow probably), and I do indeed have the accessories people sent to East Dakota! Everyone gets a chef's hat today, so I hope you enjoy!

Alright, so, here's the thing. I was planning on stopping here, buuuuuut...

...yeah no, I wanna do the next chapter. I'm too excited.

But first off... now that I have the DVP for it... time to get both a bronze axe and a heart seal for Elise!

That's really all the prep we can do, and thank goodness I still have enough money for the tonics I wanna buy for next chapter. Alright, let's do this.

 

Day 2 Bonus: Chapter 7

Let's goooooooooo!

...Oh shit. Right. The story.

So yeah, we show back up at Castle Krakenburg, and somehow Garon hasn't been informed that Dakota is returning with us. Apparently the rules of Nohrian court allow that to happen somehow, setting aside the question of what the fuck Iago's been doing. And hilariously, Garon's just as confused as we are about how mind-bogglingly stupid Dakota was to come home.

Also, Garon's not even pretending to look at Dakota like he's remotely happy she came back, or hell, like she's anything other than the scum on his boots. Like I said before! No trying to save face! No emotional manipulation! No charisma! He's just being an unabashed, shameless, grumpy shithead!

Oh god, I get weirdly uncomfortable watching Dakota backtrack from calling Mikoto “Mother”.

So yeah, while Dakota's really more accusatory than she should have been about her question regarding ganglari... Garon's response is to... order Xander to kill Dakota right then and there.

And then Garon consults the great ceiling dragon Anankos, and even Iago openly questions whether Garon's feeling alright, which tells me he knows nothing about Valla or any of that shit. Which begs the question of how he can act like brainwashing Takumi was his doing. ...He does act like that, doesn't he?

And yeah, this is goofy as shit. Especially with Garon's grumpy look on his face combined with his eyes spread out like some kind of megachurch pastor.

But yeah, apparently the plan is to just send Dakota on a suicide mission in order to not risk Xander's betrayal by forcing Xander to kill her himself? Because, like, a single person can't beat Chapter 8. Maybe if you reclassed to dread fighter, but other than that...

But yeah, weirdest of all, even Dakota seems to genuinely still see Garon as a father figure, which makes this all the more comical since she clearly doesn't believe Garon when he says he had nothing to do with the explosion. The Nohrvatar is a fucking sheep, as basically everyone is well aware, and it can get hilarious how stupid they can be.

But then, of course, when he thinks nobody's listening, Garon laughs maniacally about his plan to revel in Dakota's slow, painful and humiliating death.

Which Xander overhears.

And while this motivates Xander to mobilize troops to save her... it doesn't convince him, somehow, that his father has to be stopped.

Ah yes, and here's Lilith's one line in Conquest before Conquest's version of her infamous death scene: a simple ahem, reminding Dakota that she isn't all alone on her journey. Gee, it would be nice if you'd actually fight with us, Lilith. Just a thought.

Oh my god, Lilith looks so dumb with her gaping mouth slowly flapping open when she turns to notice the faceless.

YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT LILITH, JUST RUN AWAY LIKE A LITTLE BITCH WITH YOUR LITTLE SPACETIME WATER DIVE ANIMATION.

This is a really dumb scene with a lot of Dakota talking to herself. She apparently doesn't have time to transform into a dragon, but she does have time to voice all of her own thoughts.

So apparently Flora and Felicia are covering for Jakob while he's gone.

Hahaha. Yeah. About Flora...

But no time to ponder such things, because we have Resolve (Dark) to listen to!

Oh shit, just listen to that jaunty flute! I adore this song.

Hello, Conquest.

I'm home.

Let's do this.

Okay, so, we're in the swamp, with a bunch of small landmasses connected by narrow bridges, both natural and artificial. And we're in the middle, with faceless coming at us from all directions except east.

There are plenty of ways to tackle this, but my favorite is to rush the southern section so that you can form a defensive wall against everyone but the southern enemies. Typically I use Effie for this, but I'm gonna see if I can do something a bit more creative with more units.

First off though, gotta take the fight to some of these enemies early to take the pressure off.

Let's go. Not much I can do for prep.

Few items, two units, Dakota and Jakob only, first preparation.

Let's go.

Hopefully I can get myself into the mindset that enemies have skills, and fast. Because holy shit do you need to pay attention to the skills here. Thankfully, as I've said tons of times, the 3DS era is the best for making skills easy to pay attention to thanks to the bottom screen info.

I've spent the first two turns taking out the two faceless immediately south of us. But as you can probably imagine, they're not gonna make you do the whole chapter with just two units, so naturally, at the end of turn 2, Silas and Elise show up. I think it's pretty dumb that Silas does his whole backstory spiel in the middle of battle here, when it should wait until the end like it did in Birthright.

Elise has a rather adorable moment of dumb hypocrisy, and... it's our turn again. Turn 3.

And right away, Jakob passes the heart seal and bronze axe to Elise, and... wyvern Elise is a go!

And after having her bait an enemy in for an easy kill next turn... Arthur and Effie show up! Effie's a unit I haven't gotten much use out of, but really that's because I wasn't imaginative with reclassing before. While knight suits her well enough in the early game, she really shines if you can get her out of it into something more interesting.

Arthur is... yeah I haven't had nearly as much luck, pun not intended, getting him to work. Funny enough that has almost nothing to do with his actual abysmal luck stat and as more to do with his mediocre speed. But I'm gonna try to get him to work, because Percy is just too good with Mozu as his mom. And it would be nice to get a third kinshi knight after Mozu and Effie.

Feeding kills to Elise is taking some getting used to, but thankfully I managed to evacuate everyone to the south before the enemies from the rest of the map closed in. Now to eliminate the remaining enemies down south so we can take out the rest at our leisure.

Effie's first level amusingly does not have strength, but it's skill, speed, luck, defense and resistance, so fuck it, no complaints here!

Alright, Elise just got her first level, which got her HP, strength, magic and luck. Also, the skill strength+2, which is going to be invaluable to making sure she does damage. I managed to get the boss kill on her with the help of a bunch of dual strikes, and my life flashed before my eyes when one of the two chances to one-shot him backfired. Thankfully Effie pulled through with the dual strike, and my wounded Dakota didn't wind up getting killed on the subsequent enemy phase on account of two simultaneous 80% hit failures.. Not the wisest call, but I'm better off now for having done it, so... few regrets. But with that, everything on our side of the great wall of Effie is now dead, so we can start to heal up and relax.

Effie's gotten enough kills, so I'm switching to her guard stance partner Silas so he can take some while Elise flies across the pond to try and fight some of the faceless piling up behind the blockade.

...Weirdly, the game didn't have one of the faceless come in for a dual strike. He in fact waited until the end of the turn before moving to the dual strike space. I wonder why.

Alright, I've got it set up so that Silas wounds them, then Arthur and Elise do a hand axe dual strike for the kill hopefully.

Jakob got strength and defense. Good. He'll need them.

...Nope, better idea: I can just have Elise pair up with Effie and tank the enemies herself! She has 10 defense at base, she can do that!

...It's amusing that Iago shows up as a green unit despite openly admitting to the audience that he just tried to assassinate Dakota.

But that's it for Chapter 7! Let's see if we got any supports!

Awesome, Dakota and Jakob got support level B right on schedule, and...

Elise and Effie got a support! I don't remember if I've ever seen this one! Let's see...

...Oh no, I have seen this one. I guess I just repressed it from my memory because it's basically nothing but a big “Haha Effie eats a lot” joke.

Apparently Effie eats so much that she actually somehow becomes too heavy to walk despite how strong she is. That is just absolutely ridiculous. And with the whole “You can just roll me on my side” thing... how big are they implying she's gotten by eating? Because they seem to be implying inflation fetish levels.

Alright, Silas and Effie.

Silas: I see. You think I'm some kind of mercenary?

...Well you can be, Silas.

...But yeah, that talk was kinda boring.

Ooh! We got a disrobing gale! That'll be handy for Odin, for sure!

...But yeah, I think that's enough for today. No way in hell am I tackling Chapter 8 today too.

Stay safe, everyone!

[Punished Dayni]

28 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

And with that, we've got the whole Nohrian family free to help us take out Takumi and Hinoka. Honestly, I think what I like most about this map is just that: having the whole Nohrian family work together here. There's something weirdly nice about having them and nobody else but Jakob.

I'm curious if it's much slower to ensure you deal with Ryoma rather than just running south and taking out the rest.

30 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

And then Garon consults the great ceiling dragon Anankos

It just sounds silly when you put it like that.

I am here for insulting the worst character in the series though, so don't mind me.

32 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hello, Conquest.

I'm home.

I am just feeling this energy:

34 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Weirdly, the game didn't have one of the faceless come in for a dual strike. He in fact waited until the end of the turn before moving to the dual strike space. I wonder why.

Weird that they didn't move immediately to do so, any way they were different compared to the other faceless?

36 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Because they seem to be implying inflation fetish levels.

Fates to horny jail?

[Jotari]

Re Iago not knowing about Anankos, it is possible he learned about him at a later time off screen in Birthright. His Takumi stuff is a lot later in the game...still just because it's physically possible doesn't mean it's not bad writing for alternating why characters no about to zero benefit.

[lenticular]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

while the story is comically dumb, I weirdly still have some emotional investment in the cast.

That is weird. Genuinely. Or, at least, I find it weird. I had zero emotional investment in any of them.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I've spent the first two turns taking out the two faceless immediately south of us. But as you can probably imagine, they're not gonna make you do the whole chapter with just two units, so naturally, at the end of turn 2, Silas and Elise show up.

Conquest really loves to do this. I think that of all the FE games that I've played, it's the one that has the most friendly new recruits arriving mid-battle. Elise, Silas, Arthur, Effie, Niles, Odin, Camilla, Beruka, Selena, Benny and Charlotte all show up that way (in 5 waves across 4 levels), and it annoys me. Partly because of how overplayed it is, and partly because it makes it that much harder to plan for each level before starting it.

[Eltosian Kadath]

52 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

. My mainstay plan with him is to have Camilla ferry Xander over the river, then lure him to step into the river, netting -10 evade. Then we combine that with Elise's freeze staff and he's suddenly way, way easier to hit. Even after duelist's blow, Xander still gets 73% hit rates on him. So he goes down on the enemy phase after two attacks from Xander.

Luring him into the water for the evade drop is rather clever. If I bother with Ryoma I tend to active the dragon vein so I can lure him close enough to grab the kill with Corrin, although I can see why you wouldn't risk trying to pull that off in an ironman.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

And while this motivates Xander to mobilize troops to save her... it doesn't convince him, somehow, that his father has to be stopped.

I think Xander gets a little too much flack for his unwillingness to kill or depose his father. Those are some extreme acts that are hard to take against a loved one, even if they do deserve it.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

And right away, Jakob passes the heart seal and bronze axe to Elise, and... wyvern Elise is a go!

If you are going for the Maligknight Elise this is the way to do it...this is going to be an interesting run, as Maligknight Elise is fun to use.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 Effie's a unit I haven't gotten much use out of, but really that's because I wasn't imaginative with reclassing before. While knight suits her well enough in the early game, she really shines if you can get her out of it into something more interesting.

I find she works rather well as a Great Knight even latter into the game.

[Shadow Mir]

13 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Apparently Effie eats so much that she actually somehow becomes too heavy to walk despite how strong she is. That is just absolutely ridiculous. And with the whole “You can just roll me on my side” thing... how big are they implying she's gotten by eating? Because they seem to be implying inflation fetish levels.

This is beyond ridiculous, considering she wears heavy armor. The worst I've seen from overeating in terms of fictional characters is a balloon belly. Which wouldn't exactly be feasible when you wear heavy armor. I think the peeps who worked on this watched too much shonen anime or something... Or gotten frustrated by Vesperia's waiter minigame (which has people ordering craploads of food such that you might just go WTF at their order).

Edited March 17, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Alastor15243]

Conquest Day 3: Chapter 8

My heart jumped when I saw Elise get a stat surge, but it was just skill and res. Oh well. +6 hit is something I guess. And there are mages on this map.

Lilith gave me a gold bar, which is great, because that's two more tonics I can buy today. Alright, let's check out the map and see what we need to do to prepare.

No, first, gotta build some shit. I've got the lottery shop and the mess hall now, and both are important, but thankfully I have the DVP for both thanks to visits. Pity I didn't have the foresight to do that last night so Jakob could be running the mess hall though. Shit.

Nice, I got a bronze bow! That'll be for Mozu when I get her after Chapter 9. It's gonna be a bit weird and disorienting getting her this late. I'm used to having her for Chapters 8 and 9, but especially 8. Well, let's see what it looks like.

So yeah, okay, here's a point against my “Corrin was female first” theory. This scene where the servant runs off ahead in the hopes of everyone staying warmer and winds up leaving the avatar behind... feels waaaaaaaaay more in-character with Felicia than with Jakob. As does not being bothered by the cold and knowing the way here in the previous chapter. All of these things felt like they were written with Felicia in mind first and then were shoehorned onto Jakob second.

Not that having Felicia would make this even remotely acceptable, mind. Having Dakota and Silas stranded in the snow, causing the skimpily-dressed and BAREFOOT Dakota to pass out due to the cold and wake up in the Ice Tribe, because Dakota's servant decided to run ahead without checking if Dakota was following, is so psychotically dumb that I can barely find words to describe it.

I know why they did it though. It was so that Kilma could initially think they're friendly without the precious pure avatar having to tell Kilma any lies. Instead, she was unconscious and either Silas told lies on her behalf or Kilma made his own assumptions, and now all the avatar has to do is keep her mouth shut about the truth now that the lie's been established for her rather than her having to directly lie to Kilma's face.

Ugh, something about this game and the word “gray”. I always get stirred into a rage when I hear it, whether it's due to bad song lyrics about gray waves, or ridiculous waffling about moral grayness in a game that was completely unwilling to actually give us any, so it just decided to keep saying it was morally gray and hope nobody noticed.

Yeah, Fates' refusal to actually give us a morally grey story is a big part of what makes Conquest so trash. Conquest was written with three mandatory priorities in mind:

1: Make Nohr objectively in the wrong.

2: Make the avatar side with Nohr and fight Hoshido.

3: Make the avatar not evil.

Any two of these could have been done with ease. 1 and 2? Sure, have an evil campaign. 1 and 3? Have Conquest be about an internal rebellion within Nohr, possibly getting Hoshido's help. 2 and 3? Just make Nohr be sympathetic enough that siding with them isn't an evil act!

But the writers, in their Babylonian hubris, wanted to do all three at the same damned time, and we all know what complete horseshit they had to pull out of their asses to make that work. Ah yes, the infamous plot device that magically transforms conquering Hoshido into a “heroic” act.

More on that in due fucking time.

But anyway, the ruse is swiftly foiled by Elise showing up and, not even understanding what “suppressing the rebellion” even means, actually blurting out their intentions right in front of Kilma. That is hilarious and completely adorable.

But it's also complete horseshit, because if she didn't even realize they needed to lie, how the fuck did she get into the village without blurting out who she is and why she's here? Am I to believe the reclusive Ice Tribe that only allowed Dakota in because she bore the sword of the legendary hero didn't ask Elise any questions?

Right, time for the battle. The main gimmick here is that two three-move soldiers will move towards the various villages, trying to get to them before you. This is bad for two reasons: 1, if you don't visit at least three of the villages by the end of the map, you don't get the full 10,000 gold, and 2, every time the soldiers visit a village, they summon a bunch of enemies from the village who will rush you next turn, which can be difficult to deal with. This always has me nervous because we don't have any really good combat units yet, and enemies start rushing us pretty fast. It's even worse now that I don't have Mozu with me, which I'm used to. Thankfully, I know a great way to take 90% of the pressure off, even on lunatic, and even without using DLC to promote early.

The main plan is to have Jakob, my only reliable 1-2 range unit, go over to the west with Dakota in his pocket. So let's work out the math for that.

Okay, so using “check defenses” back at My Castle, I can see what Jakob's stats will be when paired up with Dakota even though I can't control Dakota's starting position. He'll have 13 strength, 8 magic, 16 skill, 13 speed, 18 luck, 9 defense, and 10 resistance. That means he doesn't need tonics to double any of the enemies on the map but Flora. Thanks to Dakota's supportive skill, he'll also have effectively 15 strength, 11 defense and 12 resistance. And the when I tonic him up, he'll have 28 HP, 17 effective strength, 8 magic, 16 skill, 13 speed, 18 luck, 13 effective defense, and 14 effective resistance.

...This is actually too much resistance, I just realized, because now two of the dark mages to the west won't actually attack Jakob I'm pretty sure due to the loss of weapon rank bonuses just barely making them too weak. Shit. Well, I already used the tonics, so nothing I can do. Pity, but getting ignored is way, way better than getting killed.

NO WAIT! I CAN JUST UNEQUIP JAKOB'S RESISTANCE +2 SKILL! SCORE!

But as I was saying, the plan is to have Jakob and Dakota pair up and rush the west side of the map, split up when we get into Flora's freeze staff range so that whoever gets frozen can pair up with whoever didn't and then we can just keep going, and thus just barely make it to the upper western house in time to assassinate the soldier there. Boom, suddenly only one soldier's left, and he's nowhere near the southwestern two villages, allowing us to visit them with Jakob and Dakota at our leisure. If those fighters up by Flora make any funny moves, we'll use the dragon vein to... freeze them... by melting the river. But the plan is to avoid getting in their range by going around the other side of the southwesternmost house rather than going between the village and Flora. Yeah, okay, anyway, as for the rest of the battle, I can't prepare for that nearly as much because the enemies aren't on screen. Still though, like I said, this is gonna take a ton of the pressure off, so I guess I'll just look at the stats of the enemies that are on-screen and see if anyone could really use something to hit a threshold.

The rest of my army is infuriatingly close to being able to double the mages I can see, so I'll try and get a good speed meal.

Alright, well, that's better than nothing I guess. Elise is now fast enough to double the mages, and Jakob is now fast enough to double Flora if that becomes necessary. It probably won't.

I use the last of my tonic money to make Silas fast enough to double the mages too. Alright. I guess there's not much more I can do to prepare. Might as well dive in headfirst and get the shock over with.

...I swear when I started writing that sentence I was not trying to make a pun about cold.

And now Odin an Niles show up at the start of turn 2. I plan to use both of these guys, but I don't remember being able to find much use for them in this chapter in my usual runs of this map. Chapter 9 will give us a little more freedom for training, but I'll need to get started on it here, so I'll see what I can do.

Yeah, and here Odin complains about not getting to kill people, and yeah, fuck this completely, holy shit do I hate the writing of this game.

But yeah, everything's going according to plan on Jakob's end. Only concern is that my decisions with regards to class changing mean Jakob is my only healer, so for the first few turns I'll have to make do with a single vulnerary I've entrusted to Elise and whatever Niles and Odin come with. The single concoction use is with Jakob in case things go really sour with those fighters.

Alright, I've split Jakob and Dakota up in Flora's range, making sure to put the less-mobile Dakota in front so that either one can reach the soldier next turn to assassinate him. Normally you want to put the more mobile one in front when splitting up, or the one who will become more mobile after pair-up bonuses in some cases, but here, I want the less-mobile one in front.

The enemies thankfully aren't as aggressive as I expected, which means I may have this map relatively in the bag, but it's still gonna be one heck of a fight.

Success! I managed to bait in the incoming dark mages and fighters while damaging them by pairing up Odin with Effie and then using lily's poise, Elise's personal skill, from the back. And over to the west, yes, my calculations were in fact correct, Jakob can one-round this soldier with 100% accuracy. And he's down, and now there's no way in hell we won't hit the minimum village threshold. The villages are just there for the taking.

Elise just reached axe rank D, which means she should be getting C rank in no time. Dual strikes are definitely helping here. Learning to be a bit more daring with enemy-phase dual strikes rather than panicking and defaulting to guard stance when it isn't necessary is actually proving to help a lot.

Due to two groups of enemies charging at once, I had to split my army up to get everyone to safety. Silas and Effie fled westward towards Jakob and Dakota, while Niles, Elise, Odin and Arthur fled to the east so Niles could enemy-phase a mage with Elise's dual strike help. The great thing about giving Elise dual strikes for her weapon rank is that her personal skill makes that extremely helpful and not just a thing you inconvenience yourself with in order to improve Elise.

Alright, now that the pressure's off a bit, time to feed some kills into Odin. We'll start with the soldier... or “lancer” as they're called here, heading off to the last village. We've got it completely secured but I'm not visiting it yet, because as long as the lancer has the slightest shred of hope he can make it, I can lure the lancer over here without having to get in range of any other enemies.

Odin's first level is skill and luck. Not very encouraging, but I'll have to work with it. It's not like a single level was going to magically make him go from his bad start to amazing. Let's see if I can't get him another one.

Niles gets magic and skill. Also not very encouraging.

There's something I find oddly hilarious about Odin getting a crit, bringing the enemy down to one HP, and then having Elise finish him off while Odin goes “I was gonna do that!”.

Almost finished up. Actually, when the rest of the game is this challenging and exciting, I actually appreciate moments where I can just bait enemies in and feed them to my weak units. It feels like something of a break to give me room to breathe and plan my army, rather than a failure to make the game exciting.

That said, I do wish the enemies far away from the end of the level wouldn't stay put like that. Moving over to defeat them feels less like a lull in action and way more like actually cheesing.

Okay, so Odin at least got defense for this one. That's good, considering the nosferatu shenanigans he'll be getting up to.

Okay, in the game's defense, at least the game does something interesting with those enemies I left behind at the start by giving them linked AI. I managed to bait them in with an unequipped Jakob and then kill them off slowly while making my way back home, so it didn't cost me much time at all. I was fighting basically every turn.

Okay finally Odin gets a solid level up. HP, strength, magic, skill, speed and luck. Awesome. Elise levels up at the same time thanks to dual strikes and gets HP, strength, skill, luck, defense and resistance. Also awesome.

Alright. After a slight hiccup where Jakob forgot to re-equip his dagger after the whole linked AI baiting thing, the boss is down.

But yeah, this is the first instance of the game acting like non-lethally incapacitating people is just a simple matter of not wanting them to die. Frankly I think this is a comically irresponsible trope, especially when put in media aimed at the more impressionable. When faced with an opponent who is really, truly, genuinely trying to kill you, stopping them from doing so without killing them isn't just a matter of having non-lethal bullets in your gun. People tend to have ridiculously unrealistic ideas of what things like tasers, tranquilizer darts, blows to the head, and gunshots to the leg are capable of in practice, and I wouldn't be surprised if shit like this at least partially plays a role. And that's to say nothing of how much crazier it gets when we're just flat-out slashing people with swords, stabbing them with lances, arrows and knives, bashing them with axes, electrocuting them, or setting them on fucking fire, and somehow none of this is lethal.

A lot of Nohrrin fans like to argue that this shit makes Nohrrin a better person than... than Hoshidorrin, I guess is what you'd call it... Because Nohrrin goes out of their way to not kill their enemies, at least at the start, while Hoshidorrin shows no such mercy at basically any point, except for the Nohrian royals. But that's not Hoshidorrin being a worse person or more bloodthirsty. That's just Nohrrin being subject to terrible writing. And Birthright is already badly written, so just let that sink in.

Wait, so Flora doesn't know that Dakota isn't a true member of the Nohrian royal family? Wasn't she the one who cut Dakota off when she was talking about the confusing dream about those weird foreigners claiming she was their sister?

...She was! I always assumed that was her knowing what that was about and trying to awkwardly change the subject! Was that not the case, or did the writers just fuck up yet again with regards to consistency?

Aaaand we got the full 10,000! Awesome!

And we got a second disrobing gale that Odin just found. Honestly, “disrobing gale” sounds like the sort of name Odin would come up with if he were trying to dignify a tome intended to strip people to their underwear.

And all of that training of Odin with Elise backing him up has gotten Elise halfway to C rank. Oh hell yes. I think I'm gonna get C axes with her before I even get a bolt axe!

Oh right, it wouldn't have mattered if I did the mess hall last night, Jakob didn't have the chef's hat yet. Well he does now, so tomorrow we'll be getting the good stuff!

Now then, time for supports.

Odin with Elise, obviously.

Oh my god. If I had to quote the funny parts of this conversation, I'd have to quote the whole thing. I love this support. Odin's trying to pretend he was doing something more badass than sleeping, but Elise just keeps disarming him with innocent yet awkward questions about the lore of his chuunibyou delusions that he can't actually keep up with, forcing him to finally admit that yes, he was in fact just sleeping and snoring really loudly.

Silas and Jakob, we've already seen that...

Jakob and Dakota, awesome... and I don't think I've talked about this one. It's basically a conclusion of the whole tea incident, kinda cute, but kinda lukewarm. The C and B supports were better.

Oh, and Jakob and Elise have a support. Let's see...

So I do like that he offers to play chess with her and that likewise she's cool with it even though she wanted to play hide and seek, but I do notice that he seems to find her annoying once she's left, but he doesn't at all show it when he's around her like he usually does when he doesn't like other people. Curious. I wonder if I'll see the next support.

Not today though. For now I'm signing off.

Stay safe, everyone!

[Shadow Mir]

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Nice, I got a bronze bow! That'll be for Mozu when I get her after Chapter 9. It's gonna be a bit weird and disorienting getting her this late. I'm used to having her for Chapters 8 and 9, but especially 8. Well, let's see what it looks like.

Why the wait?

[Alastor15243]

11 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Why the wait?

Because I need to wait for the Chapter 9 heart seal.

[Eltosian Kadath]

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

This always has me nervous because we don't have any really good combat units yet, and enemies start rushing us pretty fast. It's even worse now that I don't have Mozu with me, which I'm used to. Thankfully, I know a great way to take 90% of the pressure off, even on lunatic, and even without using DLC to promote early.

The main plan is to have Jakob, my only reliable 1-2 range unit, go over to the west with Dakota in his pocket. So let's work out the math for that.

I am more nervous about sending Jakob on the offensive when he is the only one that can heal, and use the Freeze staff currently. Do you have a plan for getting a second healer?

 

13 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...This is actually too much resistance, I just realized, because now two of the dark mages to the west won't actually attack Jakob I'm pretty sure due to the loss of weapon rank bonuses just barely making them too weak. Shit. Well, I already used the tonics, so nothing I can do. Pity, but getting ignored is way, way better than getting killed.

NO WAIT! I CAN JUST UNEQUIP JAKOB'S RESISTANCE +2 SKILL! SCORE!

Good thing you tested that when you did, while you still had the chance to remove skills from him. With how careful you are being this run, I bet you are going to make it through this ironman (assuming you plan well for endgame itself...)

 

15 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

And now Odin an Niles show up at the start of turn 2. I plan to use both of these guys, but I don't remember being able to find much use for them in this chapter in my usual runs of this map. Chapter 9 will give us a little more freedom for training, but I'll need to get started on it here, so I'll see what I can do.

I find Niles does well against the mages on this map (although setting up a good enemy phase for him is a bit cumbersome).

 

17 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Elise just reached axe rank D, which means she should be getting C rank in no time. Dual strikes are definitely helping here. Learning to be a bit more daring with enemy-phase dual strikes rather than panicking and defaulting to guard stance when it isn't necessary is actually proving to help a lot.

Getting more comfortable using dual-strikes is a valuable skill to hone in Conquest.

 

23 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Oh my god. If I had to quote the funny parts of this conversation, I'd have to quote the whole thing. I love this support. Odin's trying to pretend he was doing something more badass than sleeping, but Elise just keeps disarming him with innocent yet awkward questions about the lore of his chuunibyou delusions that he can't actually keep up with, forcing him to finally admit that yes, he was in fact just sleeping and snoring really loudly.

They really do have a really fun support, barring the staggering awkwardness of the S support. Then again S supports with Elise are always uncomfortable...