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

[Alastor15243]

27 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Long story short, I'm not going to bank on someone like Odin who I cannot trust to be good, especially knowing both his bases and growths are unimpressive, and especially with this game being as unforgiving as it is.

There's a Zoran vid for that!

 

2 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Just out of curiosity, do you plan on doing the Ophelia paralogue next, or going for the next story map?

I only plan to do paralogues if I either need the units or need the training. I've already got more units than I need at the moment, and I haven't managed to get Odin or Elise any skills Ophelia would find useful.

 

3 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Technically you can also run into your spouse in the hot-spring and the two of you have some small talk in there. Also option 4 sounds similar to what happens if you enter the hot-spring more than once before it restocks with new people, but it is hard to tell based on your description...

Ah yes, I remember hearing about that, though I've never seen it.

4 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Don't be dismissing the value of that arms scroll now.

I mean it'll be handy to get someone to S rank, but given that S rank staves can be achieved by just kidnapping a maid, there's only so many of those I'm going to need.

5 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I mean you could have brought and traded a more accurate Axe onto her...

Indeed I could have, but I'm not sure what my long-term plans for her are.

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I only plan to do paralogues if I either need the units or need the training. I've already got more units than I need at the moment, and I haven't managed to get Odin or Elise any skills Ophelia would find useful.

You might want to play it for the impressive loot available in Ophelia's paralogue. You can get a Calamity Gate, Horse Spirit, Lightning, and a Spirit Dust from it, which are some amazing useful for any tome wielders you are training...

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

You might want to play it for the impressive loot available in Ophelia's paralogue. You can get a Calamity Gate, Horse Spirit, Lightning, and a Spirit Dust from it, which are some amazing useful for any tome wielders you are training...

Shit, right. Though if I can't afford the slot for Ophelia, I'd basically be sacrificing her for it... hmm...

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

There's a Zoran vid for that!

 

Dude. You fell flat on your ass the first time you tried to make a case for Odin, so what possesses you to think doing this is not wasting your time - and mine??? Also, I hate few things more than units that get a lot of hype only to underdeliver.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

Dude. You fell flat on your ass the first time you tried to make a case for Odin, so what possesses you to think doing this is not wasting your time - and mine??? Also, I hate few things more than units that get a lot of hype only to underdeliver.

I didn't fall flat on my ass, I fell on deaf ears.

[Venger_06]

On 3/25/2021 at 1:02 PM, Alastor15243 said:

It's easily the least-transparent gimmick in the entire route.

Basically, you're in a courtyard that's absolutely covered in giant jars filled with either poison or medicine. Now, I know what you're thinking when you hear that after I say “least transparent”, and no, the game does in fact tell you which is which. That's not the problem. The non-transparent part is that poison and medicine can have one of many different effects, and while the effects are fixed for each jar and will be the same on every attempt in every playthrough, the game doesn't tell you what the specific effects are for each specific jar, and they can range from inconsequential to absolutely massive. The medicine jars can heal you and do things like massively buff specific stats for the rest of the map, whether surge-style or tonic-style. Poisons can do anything from status staff effects to flat HP damage to fucking hexing rods. And you have to be in range of their effects in order to break them, and tons of them are placed such that you have to break them to proceed. That makes the consequences of breaking jars absolutely unpredictable without looking up a guide that says what each effect is.

Oh, and did I mention that this mission is timed? You have to either defeat the boss or escape in 16 turns.

And the boss is Ryoma.

Wouldn't that decrease the game's ironman points?

On 3/25/2021 at 1:02 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Arthur and Mozu reached A, and in this one, Arthur's luck is so fantastically, pardon the term, “shitty”... that he wound up getting the field bombed by dragon dung. But, surprise surprise, dragon shit is extremely expensive fertilizer, and his bad luck just covered the whole field in the stuff. And Mozu even hopes that keeping him around will cause it to happen again.

...I'm really gonna have to see how dumb the S support is. I've totally wiped it from my memory.

What's special about Mozu! Percy besides aptitude? Quick Draw?

On 3/25/2021 at 1:02 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Laslow's running the dairy today, and I can't help but just wonder how outrageously creepy it would sound if Laslow said what Soleil says when she has dairy duty.

You made me curious and I went to look at Soleil's speech. I regret.

17 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Brace yourself, people.

Odin and Elise got their S support.

It's really not that bad. Try to get Vantage for Odin to pass to Ophelia. Calamity Gate will be useful for Ninja Hell.

[Alastor15243]

33 minutes ago, Maof06 said:

Wouldn't that decrease the game's ironman points?

Not enough to make a difference of a tier, but yes, a hypothetical game that didn't have this gimmick but was like Conquest in every other way would score higher in the tier. The fact that it tells you which are good and which are bad, and tells you the variety of effects the good and bad ones can have, is enough to save it from being a real ironman hazard.

33 minutes ago, Maof06 said:

What's special about Mozu! Percy besides aptitude? Quick Draw?

Well usually if you don't make Elise a wyvern rider you can get Mozu!Percy psychotically early, almost as early as Corrin and Jakob's kids. That plus aptitude makes him really useful.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Shadow Mir]

23 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I didn't fall flat on my ass, I fell on deaf ears.

Okay, how about this? I don't think Odin is good because he's a generalist (or to be more accurate, a Master of None). What can he do that nobody else can do better??? Because between his unimpressive bases (level 5... with bases that are marginally better than what Corrin had at level 1; considering that the recruits from the prior chapter all had 10+ in an offensive stat at base, this looks even worse) and his growth spread (having your best growths as HP, skill and luck, most of which many players consider lesser stats [and I'm sure both of us are included in that], does not exactly scream "I'm worth investing in!", if you ask me), I find it hard to justify investing in him when I could have invested in a better unit.

13 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Not enough to make a difference of a tier, but yes, a hypothetical game that didn't have this gimmick but was like Conquest in every other way would score higher in the tier. The fact that it tells you which are good and which are bad, and tells you the variety of effects the good and bad ones can have, is enough to save it from being a real ironman hazard.

Well usually if you don't make Elise a wyvern rider you can get Mozu!Percy psychotically early, almost as early as Corrin and Jakob's kids. That plus aptitude makes him really useful.

I would beg to differ, if only because you HAVE to use a guide to know the EXACT effects of the pots. The game is nice enough to state the POSSIBLE effects of the pots, and which ones are poison or medicine, but that's not enough for me to not consider it a hazard to ironman runs, especially knowing that the Hexing Rod effect is among the possible effects, which is something I consider especially egregious.

You gotta admit, who would do that (referring to Wyvern Elise) short of a challenge?

Edited March 28, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Eltosian Kadath]

15 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

What can he do that nobody else can do better??? 

Nosferatu tanking...haven't you been paying attention? Its his big niche, that his otherwise weird stat spread lets him excel at despite the nerfs to Nosferatu...

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Shadow Mir said:

I would beg to differ, if only because you HAVE to use a guide to know the exact effects of the pots. The game is nice enough to state the POSSIBLE effects of the pots, and which ones are poison or medicine, but that's not enough for me to not consider it a hazard to ironman runs, especially knowing that the Hexing Rod effect is among the possible effects, which is especially egregious.

I didn't look up what the pots did and I still came up with a strategy that let me reliably deal with the poison jars, simply by designating units to take one for the team. And the map provides you with two of them.

[Venger_06]

16 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Well usually if you don't make Elise a wyvern rider you can get Mozu!Percy psychotically early, almost as early as Corrin and Jakob's kids. That plus aptitude makes him really useful.

Is there a lot of difference between him and Effie!Percy?

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Maof06 said:

Is there a lot of difference between him and Effie!Percy?

I haven't thoroughly tested that, in fairness. I don't know if he's better, I just know he's really good.

[Venger_06]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

I haven't thoroughly tested that, in fairness. I don't know if he's better, I just know he's really good.

It's because you can also get it early with Effie, probably sooner than with Mozu, and the STR that Effie gives him is great.

[Alastor15243]

Conquest Day 11: Chapter 14

I realized shortly after posting on Friday:

Not having Azura means that Chapter 15 is gonna just have two units.

I'm gonna have to take the easy way out. Man, I hope the treasure on the other side isn't too awesome.

But for now, the focus is Chapter 14. So let's check it out and then make plans for how to deal with it.

So yeah, we're in Cyrkensia in the kingdom of Nestra (I can never remember which is the kingdom and which is the town), visiting an opera. Ah yes, and this results in a moment so unintentionally hilarious that it almost feels like it was intentional, but then that would be an amazingly ill-timed placement of levity at the expense of the avatar's character, which is already deep in the red.

Ah yes, and Dakota reveals she's just putting up a happy front due to the whole massacre thing that I totally forgot happened.

Yeah, and Garon apparently believes Hans that Dakota joined in on the Cheve massacre. Not sure why Hans said that in the first place, I guess because the story needed to yet again save Dakota from the consequences of being moral under the rule of Skeletor-with-a-face.

And then we get the scene where Azura sings Lost in Thoughts All Alone while “disguised” in the single worst disguise in the history of the human race. She didn't even change her outfit! She changed her outfit's color and put on a sheer veil over her mouth! And yet that was literally all it took for nobody to recognize Azura's appearance, outfit, necklace, or voice.

That said, I like this one the most of the two opera scenes. Better song, even though it has the usual issues with syllable emphasis.

ON THAT FUCKING SUBJECT...

I joined Pokemon tabletop game with some friends yesterday, and inspired by all of my crushed dreams upon learning that a Fire Emblem x Pokemon crossover was almost a thing, I made a Don Quixote style character who travels across the land as a knight errant, riding and wielding Pokemon as his mount and weapon, righting wrongs big and small, and doing it all while speaking exclusively in iambic pentameter because that sounded like fun to me. Granted, the whole thing is text-based rather than voice chat, so I have a good deal more room to breathe, but the iambic pentameter thing has barely slowed me down at all, no matter what the subject matter I need my character to speak about or what sentiment I want them to express.

So let's just say I've even less respect

for localizers who cannot be arsed

to put the slightest effort in the work

so emphasis and rhythm are as one.

Of course then Azura induces some sort of memetically bizarre anti-orgasm in Garon that causes him to groan like a monster, with the subtitles “(Groans of increasing discomfort)”. But then she manages to single-handedly run off and then completely coincidentally, a Hoshidan invasion force wholly detached from the operation we ran in Birthright shows up to take advantage of the situation.

Dakota: You intend to buy peace with death? That's madness!

Dakota, shut the flaming fuck up.

...That's...

...I seem to remember a scene of Azura running up to Dakota and Leo, but... the game seems to have skipped it.

...Oh right. I guess because Azura's dead.

Well it still shows her lines.

Azura: Sorry I'm late. I wasn't feeling well, so I went outside to get some air. Why are there Hoshidan soldiers here?

Dakota: They've come to kill Father. They used some strange song to incapacitate him. Oh! While you were outside, did you see a strange woman fleeing the opera house?

Azura: ...No. I did not.

MY FUCKING SIDES.

...Okay, this map is pretty nasty. Thankfully the only enemies who can seriously get the drop on us are the fliers, who we have plenty of means to deal with.

The main problem here is Keaton. Without Azura, I have no means to get to him on turn 1, and unless the AI is deliberately gimped to...

...Oh, actually, looking at it closer and highlighting attack ranges, the enemy has no chance of killing him on turn one. Not even close. The edges of the boats can't be stood on even by fliers, though they can fly through them. So only one archer can actually attack him on enemy phase 1.

Okay, first thing: I'm gonna use one of my two new heart seals (for some reason I thought the second tier shop only added one) to make Odin a samurai. He's at 96 experience, so he only really needs to gain one real level up to gain vantage, and that'll be great to have. Plus, now that Elise finally has a magic weapon, having a speed boost partner could potentially make her pretty devastating against the right enemies.

Of course, bringing him back to dark mage would take the other heart seal, and yeah, that's a bit too crazy of an investment at this point in the game.

Honestly, as I stand here making preps and being generally terrified, I find that generally the hardest part of every Conquest playlog entry is just mustering the courage to press the start button. Given that I generally do just fine at every map I fret a lot over though, that feels like a personal problem.

The main fear I have here is twofold: one, those danged status staff users, especially the hexing rod shrine maiden. Two, the kinshi knight reinforcements I know for a fact will come from the rear at some point. Thankfully the most vulnerable units have free reign over the map, and I have two bow users, three if I can afford to add Niles...

…

…

…

...Nope, too many units I want to use have fallen behind. I think it's time to whip out a paralogue. But what can I do? I have three available right now, and I don't want to cripple any of them by recruiting them before I'm ready to use them, either due to not having enough space for Kana and Dwyer, or not having vantage yet for Ophelia! What can I...

...Wait.

I'm being a titanic dumbass.

I can afford to put one of these three on my team now.

I can afford to put a fucking generic NPC on my team if she does the job Dwyer can do.

Fuck it.

I'll recruit Dwyer and make him my new staffbot, and use the opportunity to train up the units I've been neglecting, namely Effie and Silas, and maybe get Effie closer to becoming an archer, which desperately needs to happen for her to stay useful.

 

Day 11 Change of Plans: Paralogue 4

The opening dialogue is, par for the course in paralogues, barely worth mentioning. Except that apparently these people can afford to give Dwyer a fucking mansion in another dimension, complete with servants. And Jakob somehow thought this was good parenting. Jakob. The guy who's unfailingly stern and strict to everyone but Dakota. Frankly it's a miracle he winds up having the work ethic he does.

Gameplaywise, however, the biggest issue with this map is that dang trio of ninja at the start. They have locktouch, and I do not trust those guys not to use it. So I always wind up baiting them in for suicide at the start of every attempt at this map. I never tested on a non-ironman run what their behavior is upon unlocking the door right next to our starting position. What I'm gonna do is bait them in with Camilla, who will team up with Jakob to do absolutely astronomical amounts of attack stance damage. Her high defense means she stands no risk of dying even if she misses and gets doubled. Which she probably won't, due to attack stance accuracy bonuses and WTA.

Fuck it, I've spent nearly two hours deciding what to do today. If I didn't have most of the day off that would be a disaster. I've gotta go forward with what I've got.

Let's go.

Awesome, just as I hoped, the master ninja attacked first since he was the only one who stood a chance of doing damage before a shuriken nerfed Camilla's defense. All three ninja unmade themselves on Camilla's axe.

...All but one, actually. Last minute miss. Thankfully, Elise's new bolt axe finished the job.

The AI is so dumb that it's decided to use Dwyer's precious sun festal... in melee range. When he has a mend staff he just used. Thankfully, Jakob's arrived to recruit Dwyer, so we'll have no more of that nonsense.

Ah yes, and weirdly, this line really tickles me:

Dwyer: Father! What a surprise! I'd fetch you a glass of my finest whatever. That is, if I wasn't busy with my other uninvited guests.

I dunno, maybe I just have a soft spot for Fates kids sassing their unbelievably shitty parents.

And Jakob's such a shitty parent that he's actually trying to instill noncombatant angst in his son, who has absolutely no shame whatsoever about being a support unit. Good for him!

Ah yes, by the way, I gave the newly samurized Odin a forged +2 bronze sword called Bronze Wagon. He just used it to take out a samurai, and he's now just one level away from getting vantage. But he's only there so quickly because he was riding with Laslow, the only one other than Jakob and Camilla mobile enough to breach the danger zone the ninja threatened depending on their action choices. Everyone else is pairing up and drop-abusing to get there ASAP.

I managed to get a spear master kill onto Odin, meaning he's close to leveling up again and getting vantage.

Okay, so, like I remember, after the race to get to Dwyer, the map really comes down to handling small but very powerful groups of enemies one at a time. The oni chieftain in particular was horrifically nasty, but I managed to come up with a strategy despite forgetting yet again that Jakob has savage blow-

FUCK!

I MOVED MY UNITS TOO FAR!

Both Dwyer and Selena are in range of these fucking archers, and Selena's hurt!

The only units I have left to move who are close enough to do anything about it are Dakoa, Silas, Arthur and Mozu! All four of which can get to safety, but I have both Dwyer and Selena both freshly moved straight into the range of a fucking 40 attack sniper and an archer who can hit all of the same places. There's a green unit one of them might kill instead, but I've stared at this shit for ages and I can't see any way to get out of this at this point without somebody dying.

...I have no guarantee of keeping any specific units alive, but what I can do is use one particularly underleveled unit I don't have much confidence I can bring up to speed, and use him as a human shield to protect either Dwyer or Selena.

...Christ, I'm gonna have to give up on Rally bot Laslow, aren't I?

...Yeah. Yeah, since I didn't bring up Suzume, I'll have no healer for the final stretch of this map if I let Dwyer die. I'll have to have Silas shelter Dwyer.

OH MY GOD.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU SO MUCH GAME.

THE SNIPER WENT FOR THE KNIGHT INSTEAD OF SELENA! AND THUS NOT EVEN SILAS COULD BE KILLED!

NOBODY DIED!

HOLY SHIT AM I LUCKY!

Okay, Odin managed to get vantage from a combination of the sniper kill putting him at 99 and then dual guarding with Camilla. So we're all set to get Ophelia whenever we want, but at the cost of losing nostank Odin, at least for the time being. In fact, as a samurai he's basically useless right now except as a pair-up bot for Elise. Thankfully he's also level 18, so we can afford to leave him alone for a little while.

...Alright. I've finally dealt with all the enemies.

This map was way tougher than I expected it to be. Something tells me that doing this map right as the strongest enemies started promoting when I didn't have a promoted army yet wasn't wise. But while it was messy, everyone's come out of this alive.

Provided we don't screw up royally against the boss.

No such misfortune. Boss goes down.

Thankfully enough servants survived that we got a friendship seal and talisman at least. Not sure what you're supposed to get for keeping all of them alive.

Holy shit though. That was terrifying. Let's just do supports and finish up.

...We've got a lot of supports.

Okay, first, Elise and Dakota reached A.

Ah yes, we've already seen this one. Next.

Dakota and Dwyer.

...They're just talking about coffee and how Jakob would probably be jealous if he knew Dwyer's better at it than him. Next.

Jakob and Dwyer.

...It's... the exact same situation. Holy shit, why did they think unlocking both of these simultaneously wouldn't be repetitive?

Jakob and Elise's B support is pretty cute, ignoring the fact that it's even creepier that Jakob can fuck Elise than it is with Odin.

Oh god, Odin and Camilla. Let's see how this goes down.

...The conversation somehow got onto the idea of Odin crossdressing in Camilla's armor. Briefly, before going back to the main point that Odin wants to know Camilla's armor's name. And... she decides it's his job to come up with one.

Weird, I seem to remember this conversation going completely differently. Maybe it was Charlotte I'm thinking of? I could've sworn there's some conversation Odin has with one of the fanservice women in the game where he just kinda goes into full chuunibyou overdrive at her mere presence, with a hint of “begone thot” thrown in for good measure. I'm sure I'm not making this up.

Ah yes. Selena and Laslow's infamous B support. Oh god. I've seen this once and I'm already bracing myself for cringe.

Selena basically gets so pissed off at Laslow... that she shows him what he's doing by... hitting on him right back.

But while she does at least admit this to be true in the A support, so it's not infuriating like it is with Soleil... Selena's efforts are far more overt, bordering on sexual harassment, especially the “lemme feel those arms” comment.

Alright, finally, Effie and Niles. He manages to avoid getting attacked for apparently continuing to teach Elise bad habits by... changing the subject to Elise and Effie's friendship and asking how she knows how to get Elise the right gift. And he finds this interesting for some reason. I'm guessing this is going to have some far more innocent punchline in the A support.

Well, I just finished the post-map castle maintenance, so... that's it for today.

Man was this embarrassing. Just one mistake, but it gave me such a fucking scare.

Alright. We'll pick this up tomorrow.

Stay safe, everyone.

[lenticular]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I realized shortly after posting on Friday:

Not having Azura means that Chapter 15 is gonna just have two units.

I'm gonna have to take the easy way out. Man, I hope the treasure on the other side isn't too awesome.

Is not having Azura that huge of an impediment to completing the lower half of the map? Replizura isn't particularly useful anyway, since she can't sing. Though I can definitely see that the increased difficulty of the top half might hurt resources (healing items and turns, mainly) enough to not want to touch the lower side. Not that I've ever tried the map on Lunatic or without Azura, mind.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I joined Pokemon tabletop game with some friends yesterday, and inspired by all of my crushed dreams upon learning that a Fire Emblem x Pokemon crossover was almost a thing, I made a Don Quixote style character who travels across the land as a knight errant, riding and wielding Pokemon as his mount and weapon, righting wrongs big and small, and doing it all while speaking exclusively in iambic pentameter because that sounded like fun to me. Granted, the whole thing is text-based rather than voice chat, so I have a good deal more room to breathe, but the iambic pentameter thing has barely slowed me down at all, no matter what the subject matter I need my character to speak about or what sentiment I want them to express.

So let's just say I've even less respect

for localizers who cannot be arsed

to put the slightest effort in the work

so emphasis and rhythm are as one.

Iambic pentameter is a poetic meter that is specifically chosen for works in English because it matches well with the natural rhythm and stress pattern of the English language. Whereas a translation of a Japanese song like Lost In Thoughts All Alone (or The Edge of Dawn, or anything else) is working with the rhythms and stress patterns of Japanese. It's not necessarily impossible to write English lyrics that fit the meter of Lost In Thoughts All Alone, but it is way harder than writing in iambic pentameter.

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I realized shortly after posting on Friday:

Not having Azura means that Chapter 15 is gonna just have two units.

I'm gonna have to take the easy way out. Man, I hope the treasure on the other side isn't too awesome.

They got statboosters on the other side, most important of all a Speedwing on the boss (the other stat boosters are a Spirit Dust and a Goddess Icon).

Edited March 29, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Alastor15243]

19 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Iambic pentameter is a poetic meter that is specifically chosen for works in English because it matches well with the natural rhythm and stress pattern of the English language. Whereas a translation of a Japanese song like Lost In Thoughts All Alone (or The Edge of Dawn, or anything else) is working with the rhythms and stress patterns of Japanese. It's not necessarily impossible to write English lyrics that fit the meter of Lost In Thoughts All Alone, but it is way harder than writing in iambic pentameter.

Honestly, I don't think that matters much. You can look on YouTube and find countless instances of people writing lyrics for songs that were never intended to have any lyrics in any language at all. Just look at Brentalfloss's work. The fact that the musical rhythm was written with the Japanese language in mind doesn't do anything at all to convince me that it's so hard to write a fitting English translation of said song's original lyrics that professionals who are paid to do it should be forgiven for throwing their hands in the air and saying "Fuck it".

Also:

In the white light

A hand reaches through

A double-edged blade cuts your heart in two.

Most of that is already in the alternating emphasis that English is so suited to, and they still butchered it.

[Venger_06]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Weird, I seem to remember this conversation going completely differently. Maybe it was Charlotte I'm thinking of? I could've sworn there's some conversation Odin has with one of the fanservice women in the game where he just kinda goes into full chuunibyou overdrive at her mere presence, with a hint of “begone thot” thrown in for good measure. I'm sure I'm not making this up.

Odin and Charlotte's C support:

• Odin: And know this: your villainous "tees" and nefarious "hees" have no effect on me!
• Charlotte: What?
• Odin: Your deceptive charms are wasted on one whose very blood is a truth potion!
• Charlotte: Deceptive...? I'm afraid I don't really understand what you meeeean...
• Odin: Don't understand? Of course—you must always play the fool in your silken motley. But I've been watching you. Your personality goes through more change than a moneylender over a day. You choose which of your painted masks to wear depending on who you're talking to.
• Charlotte: Wh-whaaaaat?!
• Odin: There is no use denying it. My truth shines out like a beacon in the fog of your lies!
• Charlotte: Well, I'm sure I don't know WHAT you mean. My personality doesn't change!
• Odin: You may have blinded the others, but I see everything... My third eye, Truth Strahl, the organ of my sacred sight, aches, stirs...and hungers! That is all I will tell you for today. If you wish to know more, ask me another time.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Dwyer: Father! What a surprise! I'd fetch you a glass of my finest whatever. That is, if I wasn't busy with my other uninvited guests.

I dunno, maybe I just have a soft spot for Fates kids sassing their unbelievably shitty parents.

And Jakob's such a shitty parent that he's actually trying to instill noncombatant angst in his son, who has absolutely no shame whatsoever about being a support unit. Good for him!

These kids are gonna need a lot of therapy after the war. First they get abandoned in pocket dimensions, and then they get dragged into war by parents who are barely older than them. Heck, one of them thinks herself a dog.

Actually, if having an Avatar is now a given for new FE games, maybe the next one could be the army's therapist? It would give everyone in the army a reason/obligation to talk to them, open up about their past, etc. On the flip side, S-supports get even weirder.

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Honestly, I don't think that matters much. You can look on YouTube and find countless instances of people writing lyrics for songs that were never intended to have any lyrics in any language at all. Just look at Brentalfloss's work. The fact that the musical rhythm was written with the Japanese language in mind doesn't do anything at all to convince me that it's so hard to write a fitting English translation of said song's original lyrics that professionals who are paid to do it should be forgiven for throwing their hands in the air and saying "Fuck it".

Adding lyrics to an instrumental piece is generally easier than translating from one language to another. When you're writing new lyrics, you have complete free rein over your choice of words, since they can mean whatever you want them to. In a translation, you need to pick words that convey a similar meaning or message to the original and you have to have them fit to the rhythm of the song. Basically, you have all of the difficulties of translation and all the difficulties of lyric writing at the same time, which makes a final task which is much harder than either one.

As for whether paid professionals ought to be able to do a better job, regardless of the difficulty... well, maybe? In the ideal circumstances with translators who specialised in translating songs, and who were given enough time to do a good job, etc. then yes, ideally we'd end up with some sort of poetic masterpiece. But game development rarely sees ideal circumstances and often ends up with cut corners and the art of "good enough". So I'm more inclined to suspect a project managment problem than a translation problem. If you want to say that Lost In Thoughts All Alone is sufficiently integral to Fates as a whole that it should have had more resources put into it even at the cost of other parts of the game, then I could get behind that. Or alternatively, that it was a bad idea to have a song be so front and centre in a game that was always planned to be translated from its inception.

[Eltosian Kadath]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Not having Azura means that Chapter 15 is gonna just have two units.

I'm gonna have to take the easy way out. Man, I hope the treasure on the other side isn't too awesome.

Unless your Corrin or Azura has warp, Azura isn't much help on the treasure side due to replicas not being able to dance. She helps a little in that the stat buffs from dancing a unit on the other path apples to the treasure side as well, and potentially as a backpack, but it isn't much.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

This map was way tougher than I expected it to be. Something tells me that doing this map right as the strongest enemies started promoting when I didn't have a promoted army yet wasn't wise. But while it was messy, everyone's come out of this alive.

Those enemies are always promoted on this map, which makes that one kinda dangerous when you do it early. Although the promoted enemies don't start scaling until chapter 16, and stop scaling thanks to the level cap around chapter 25.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Thankfully enough servants survived that we got a friendship seal and talisman at least. Not sure what you're supposed to get for keeping all of them alive.

That actually is the best reward. They have a one unit buffer for the best reward, and having small buffers like that is kinda common for Fates.

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

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

These kids are gonna need a lot of therapy after the war.

Assuming they didn't go misanthrope and ally with Zephiel instead, asking him once they've racked up 20 successful battles in his name, if they could take a leave of absence with a few regiments so as to sort out "family matters".

 

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

Actually, if having an Avatar is now a given for new FE games, maybe the next one could be the army's therapist? It would give everyone in the army a reason/obligation to talk to them, open up about their past, etc. On the flip side, S-supports get even weirder.

A better idea- Fire Emblem: Wars of the Soul. The heroes, through the use of an ancient ritual bestowed on mankind by the god Ym, are able to delve into the psyches of other people. As it turns out, the increased cases of insanity and homicide reported across the continent, are the result of an evil cult's brainjacking, their first target being the Empire. Lead your horses into people's minds and joust out the armies of the manipulative cultists lurking within people!

 

---

I know I haven't been commenting a whole lot lately, but I have been enjoying this still. To be fair, as early as Chapter 7 with Palakob, I found myself overwhelmed despite using all my BP/VP rewards. And Chapter 10 I had no idea how I'd have gotten through it without the bonus weapons, the fliers demanded everything of me. I've never tried killing Ryoma in pot-land, and although things with the rewards became too easy at Izumo, things were still enjoyably challenging but fair.

[Alastor15243]

18 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I know I haven't been commenting a whole lot lately, but I have been enjoying this still. To be fair, as early as Chapter 7 with Palakob, I found myself overwhelmed despite using all my BP/VP rewards. And Chapter 10 I had no idea how I'd have gotten through it without the bonus weapons, the fliers demanded everything of me. I've never tried killing Ryoma in pot-land, and although things with the rewards became too easy at Izumo, things were still enjoyably challenging but fair.

Yeah, uh, not using rewards has been quite the experience. I don't remember being as nervous at this stage of the game, or being this dependent on prepromotes for my strategies. It's definitely something else. I'm hoping I can get my army to take proper shape soon.

[Punished Dayni]

14 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, and Garon apparently believes Hans that Dakota joined in on the Cheve massacre. Not sure why Hans said that in the first place, I guess because the story needed to yet again save Dakota from the consequences of being moral under the rule of Skeletor-with-a-face.

Imagine if they'd actually taken the time to go into Hans's motive of becoming a nobleman, where this was him keeping someone from getting into trouble and asking for a favour further down the line because of their position in the royal family.

Sadly, there was no time to do stuff like that in this game, but there is time for the crystal.

14 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

The opening dialogue is, par for the course in paralogues, barely worth mentioning. Except that apparently these people can afford to give Dwyer a fucking mansion in another dimension, complete with servants. And Jakob somehow thought this was good parenting. Jakob. The guy who's unfailingly stern and strict to everyone but Dakota. Frankly it's a miracle he winds up having the work ethic he does.

He's constantly mad at Dwyer and trying to get him to be on his level.

The idea he got Dwyer a mansion to maintain it wouldn't be out of character, but how he got it's another question.

[Jotari]

17 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

These kids are gonna need a lot of therapy after the war. First they get abandoned in pocket dimensions, and then they get dragged into war by parents who are barely older than them. Heck, one of them thinks herself a dog.

Actually, if having an Avatar is now a given for new FE games, maybe the next one could be the army's therapist? It would give everyone in the army a reason/obligation to talk to them, open up about their past, etc. On the flip side, S-supports get even weirder.

That actually is a great idea for why every single people would randomly confess their heart and soul to the avatar. Would work especially well with another silent avatar. They managed to do a not entirely awful job of one sided conversations with Byleth, but it still was one character monologing at them. As for inappropriate romances? Well isn't that pretty much a staple of Fire Emblem by this point? Therapist is only a tier or so above teacher in the creep factor.

15 hours ago, lenticular said:

Adding lyrics to an instrumental piece is generally easier than translating from one language to another. When you're writing new lyrics, you have complete free rein over your choice of words, since they can mean whatever you want them to. In a translation, you need to pick words that convey a similar meaning or message to the original and you have to have them fit to the rhythm of the song. Basically, you have all of the difficulties of translation and all the difficulties of lyric writing at the same time, which makes a final task which is much harder than either one.

As for whether paid professionals ought to be able to do a better job, regardless of the difficulty... well, maybe? In the ideal circumstances with translators who specialised in translating songs, and who were given enough time to do a good job, etc. then yes, ideally we'd end up with some sort of poetic masterpiece. But game development rarely sees ideal circumstances and often ends up with cut corners and the art of "good enough". So I'm more inclined to suspect a project managment problem than a translation problem. If you want to say that Lost In Thoughts All Alone is sufficiently integral to Fates as a whole that it should have had more resources put into it even at the cost of other parts of the game, then I could get behind that. Or alternatively, that it was a bad idea to have a song be so front and centre in a game that was always planned to be translated from its inception.

I don't think you'd necessarily need to have a specialized song writing translator. Seems a case where two (or more) people could do the job better than a single combined specialist. The translator translates the lyrics in a way that's a little more transliteration than usual, the song writer takes those lyrics and uses synonyms to convert it into an appropriate foreign language lyric. The the translator reviews it to see if there's any loss of meaning resulted from the synonyms. Adds a higher risk of translation error than standard translation, but it doesn't seem like it'd be all that difficult for professionals.

Course another option would always be to leave the song in Japanese. Doubt anyone would really complain about that.

Edited March 30, 2021 by Jotari