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

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

It isn't made clear from the conditions, but you have to defeat her.

Well I mean she's an enemy and it says rout, so once you figure out you can't talk to her, I think I would've assumed that.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

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

 

Could've been a really interesting challenge to require Niles to Capture Nina, in order to keep her alive. ...Because that's the whole point of that power. Not that Conquest, of all titles, is consistent about "people dying when they are killed."

 

I really wish they'd done that. It'd make for a very interesting chapter goal and would do at least a little to justify Capture being a skill exclusive to one mediocre unit.

[Alastor15243]

Conquest Day 27: Paralogue 22

Alright, fuck it, let's do Nina's paralogue. Niles's birthday is today, which seems as appropriate a time as any. With everyone assuring me it's not as bad as it looks? Okay.

My main plan is to have Niles unlock the northern door into the big room with Nina and all of the enemies, and then have Xander shelter him while Dakota comes in for backup. I've got Dwyer on standby to freeze Nina if she gets too close to either a staircase or an edge of the map that isn't a wall. But hopefully with her pathetic stats and Xander and Dakota, we'll be able to kill her obscenely quickly and then have the whoooooole rest of the map for training characters and raising support ranks.

...We'll still be in a hurry though, if we want to get all the treasure. I can't help but notice that these adventurers all have locktouch.

Alright, I've managed to break through the initial forces. Those generals were a massive time-sink, but I managed it. Nina will get taken out momentarily. The other treasures, though? They're not looking likely. The timeframe to secure them is insane, and it took all my heavy-hitters just to breach one area.

Okay, the treasures aren't too awesome. A shining bow, a partner seal, and 3,000 gold. I mean, I'd love to get them, but I don't think I'll be doing any crazy death-risking stunts for them.

Woo! Dwyer got rally resistance!

...And another shitty level up, but who cares? All he has to do is heal and rally!

Right, now to take out Nina.

…

...Why did the music cut out?

Why did it do a slow-motion of her defeat?

WHY IS THE UNIT DEATH MUSIC PLAYING!?

I know you guys told me I can kill her and she still joins, but...

THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN WITH PERCY.

Well... anyway... I got the goddess icon from her, and also I managed to break through the eastern wall to get the partner seal, and I might be able to get the 3,000 gold too if I hurry up, though the shining bow is almost certainly a lost cause. Not the end of the world, though. If it turns out someone could use it, I can always buy it.

I failed a spot check and didn't notice until it was nearly too late that the adventurer half of the two sorcerer-adventurer pairs that came as reinforcements... have pass. Thankfully I killed one of them with Shura (with Xander helping turn it into a dual-strike one-shot), so the other shouldn't be able to do too much damage to a bunch of full-health units.

...Aaaaaaand as soon as you take out the last treasure-stealing adventurer, all of the other units leave. I mean, that's awesome from a storytelling perspective, but uh... I can't say it isn't titanically disappointing from a gameplay perspective. All of those units I could have fed to Keaton and Laslow...

Well, at least I got certain blow on Arthur, rally resistance on Dwyer, some support points on Keaton and Laslow, and almost assuredly enough support points on Peri and Dakota that they'll A rank and I don't have to keep them paired anymore.

Guess that explains why they had to make Nina escaping a lose condition, because otherwise you could stand still and win, even if it would be mostly pointless.

So yeah, turns out Nina was right about the mansion owner, though that happens offscreen, rather disappointingly. And then... ah yes, then Nina suddenly reveals her fujoshi tendencies. Yeah, that's her gimmick. She aggressively fantasizes about gay relationships and reads really heavily into every interaction between two men. Which is... well I haven't seen her supports so I can't say for sure how I feel about how it's handled, but I do find it kinda ridiculous given this “hobby” of hers that she's only allowed to exist in realities where it will never happen.

But yeah, that's it for now. That took less time than I expected, but alas, it still took just long enough that doing another chapter today isn't likely. Let's check supports.

WOOOOOOOO!

HOLY SHIT YES THANK YOU!

KEATON AND LASLOW ARE A RANK, AND SO ARE PERI AND DAKOTA!

Let's do the family supports first though.

So Nina can tell when Niles is faking being sad. Either that or she's wrong. I'd have to assume the latter, given she's barely spent any time with her father at all, but this is Fates, and after recruitment they generally like to pretend that didn't happen.

Anyway, Niles tells her she's not allowed to steal, even for a good cause, Nina calls her a hypocrite since he used to steal all the time in his youth, and he tells her he did it to survive, and she counters that she's doing it to help people. I wonder how they're going to settle this dispute. I'll have to read the supports later (because I know I'm ever seeing the rest of this naturally). Personally, I think that while obviously there comes a point where respect for the law is meaningless when the law ceases to serve anyone but the people running it and obeying it objectively comes at the price human suffering... you have to be very, very careful about your thresholds for that, or else you're going to fill the heads of immature, self-righteous zealots the world over with astonishingly terrible ideas about when it's acceptable to break the law.

Now for Effie... While I like that they noticed how out-of-character it would be for Effie to go out of her way to do something like cleaning her daughter's room and thus they gave her at least an attempt at a justification (it was dusty, and “dust is terrible for your cardiovascular endurance, dear”)... I still don't like this whole “squeezing every parent into the same behavioral mold” thing. It gets pretty jarring with certain parents.

But anyway, Nina is rightly horrified at the invasion of privacy and mortified at the idea that she might have read any of Nina's private diaries, which is pretty hilarious.

I got a support with Ophelia randomly, and she talks about Dakota getting a contaminated aura and this ritual she has to do to fix it, and Dakota seems to take it fairly seriously, at east to the degree that it's either that or she's really tactful about humoring people. Also, Dakota says “You're an odd duck, but I'm glad you're here with us”, and Ophelia replies with “As one who loves both ducks and oddities, I will take that as high praise!”. Bit too clunky to work very well, honestly.

Alright, now for Dakota and Peri's A support. Ugh. It's about as bad as you'd expect, focusing on Peri's “good sides”, namely her “kindness” and her skill at cooking. Jeez. But no matter! Now Dakota can be a paladin and get some great skills, and I never have to deploy Peri again.

As for Keaton and Laslow, well... Keaton gives Laslow a broken pot lid which is... basically described as being shaped like one of those frisbees with a hole in it. So... they play fetch, which is pretty hilarious.

Which means now it's time to reclass Laslow into a berserker! And now there's absolutely nothing but experience keeping him away from getting Rally Strength and replicate. And as a berserker, he has 39 attack power if I let him borrow Snake Eyes. And he also has darting blow thanks to being a falcon knight, and also he has quick riposte to make him more powerful as a mechanist. This is another thing I love about training up Laslow. He gets little things like this that make training him up further easier. Of course, it's usually even easier than this, because usually I have Azura to help him do two attacks a turn and train his support rank with Keaton while he trains his support rank with Azura... but really, I'm pretty confident about this guy.

In fact, if I do Kana's paralogue now, I'll definitely get rally strength, which I really need, and I might even be able to get him close to replicate! He's got an internal level that's 4 less than it should be, meaning he only needs to get to the internal level that Xander's at now in order to hit replicate. If I can't make that happen in the next map or two, I will be very surprised.

Oh yeah I also made a +3 forged dagger for him called the ladykiller. 4,000 gold might seem like a bit of an investment for a class he's only gonna spend four levels in, but I might be able to make Soleil a master ninja, which could be awesome.

...Just for the hell of it, I thought I'd check out Kana's paralogue and see how Laslow fares against the enemies. Unfortunately, even with a +speed meal and a speed tonic, and a +5 speed support from Selena... he's just barely too slow to double an uncomfortable number of the enemies on this map. Which I take as a sign that I might not want to do this right now.

...Yep, looking at things, the endless stairway is looking like the better choice. If I change this mag-spd-def meal to str-spd-def, then Laslow can just barely one-round these guys on enemy-phase, and Xander will also just barely be able to hit that damage threshold I was talking about to take out the golems in two turns if I tonic him up too. And I've got plenty of milk, meat and wheat to gamble for that combination.

...Yep, only took a couple of tries. Awesome.

Alright, so the eternal stairway it is. I'm kinda relieved, honestly. Kana's map is prime training material, and I wanted to save it if at all possible. But with Laslow being able to one-round any faceless that doesn't have axebreaker, this will be an experience goldmine for him. He'll definitely be able to breeze to level 11 and rally strength, and his internal level will at this point still be lower than that of these enemies. Honestly, promoting early for skills is a lot more viable than I expected it to be, especially for units where by the end of the game, having these skills constitutes the entirety of their job.

One thing I'm gonna want to do now is make sure to make more use of Leo and Camilla with Felicia and Keaton respectively, because 1, they're good units, but 2, that's also two more paralogues between them that I'd really like to have access to in case of emergencies. I'll have to see if I can squeeze Leo in, but Camilla will definitely be seeing action next map.

...Hilariously, it looks like preparing for what I'm going to do tomorrow took up more than half of this entry. Well, at least I managed to pad out something that was originally gonna be uneventful.

I'll see you tomorrow then, when I take on... the eteeeeernal staaaaiiiirrrwayyyyyy.

Stay safe, everyone!

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Well... anyway... I got the goddess icon from her, and also I managed to break through the eastern wall to get the partner seal, and I might be able to get the 3,000 gold too if I hurry up, though the shining bow is almost certainly a lost cause. Not the end of the world, though. If it turns out someone could use it, I can always buy it.

Yeah that shining bow is tough to reach if you don't split your army in the beginning, although I managed to grab it once by lunging over the wall to reach it.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Xander will also just barely be able to hit that damage threshold I was talking about to take out the golems in two turns if I tonic him up too. And I've got plenty of milk, meat and wheat to gamble for that combination.

I guess that is one way to deal with them. I always one round the golems with a lightning mage personally.

[Jotari]

 

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also, Dakota says “You're an odd duck, but I'm glad you're here with us”, and Ophelia replies with “As one who loves both ducks and oddities, I will take that as high praise!”. Bit too clunky to work very well, honestly.

 

 

[Shadow Mir]

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Right, now to take out Nina.

…

...Why did the music cut out?

Why did it do a slow-motion of her defeat?

WHY IS THE UNIT DEATH MUSIC PLAYING!?

I know you guys told me I can kill her and she still joins, but...

THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN WITH PERCY.

I'd chalk it up to the devs goofing.

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Xander will also just barely be able to hit that damage threshold I was talking about to take out the golems in two turns if I tonic him up too. And I've got plenty of milk, meat and wheat to gamble for that combination.

Is that factoring in Renewal?

Edited April 22, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Alastor15243]

35 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Is that factoring in Renewal?

...Shit, they do in fact have renewal, forgot about that. Okay, so Camilla will help out too. But that was already the plan for later. So not much has changed. Xander can still take out one of them within two turns, and the other will be badly wounded, more than enough for Camilla to finish off.

[Alastor15243]

Conquest Day 28: Chapter 21

FUCK!

I left my game in sleep mode all last night so that I could do this for the playlog. Selena wanted an accessory and I wanted to show off her reaction to the Emblem Shield. But I fucked up and gave her an arena shield!

Ah yes, and as a result, here's Dakota's support with Selena, the one about her yukata, implied to be the hot spring festival one. Well, I'm pretty sure I've already talked about this one.

...Nope, I don't believe I have, actually. So yeah, Dakota questions why she has a Hoshidan dress if she's from Nohr, and she says:

“Why does it matter where I'm from? I can wear whatever I want.”

I'm frankly amazed Twitter didn't get angry about this line.

Weirdly enough, apparently the avatar's response to this changes depending on gender in the most pointless way.

Male Avatar: No argument there. If the shoe fits...

Female Avatar: No argument there. If the dress fits...

...Yeah, female avatar's support was totally written first here. Not that the context makes “if the dress fits” weird, but the only way they could have conceivably felt the need to change this line is if they thought male Corrin saying “if the dress fits” was weird. If they started with the male one, no way in hell they'd feel the need to change it from “shoe” to “dress”.

...Wait, I did talk about this one! I distinctly remember questioning Dakota's surprise at “only” being Selena's third-best friend. Weird, guess I found more to talk about. Maybe I shouldn't skip over these then. Pity it's mostly too late.

Ooh! Well at least I managed to get Laslow's response to the Emblem Shield! He's like “why are you giving this to me!? I won't be able to perform the awakening!”

Does that mean he's canonically not Chrom's son?

Anyway, I did most of the prep yesterday, so let's jump right into Chapter 21.

I'm bringing Laslow/Selena, Dakota/Gunter, Xander/Percy (yet another reason why I normally prefer Selena as Xander's wife, that fly utility comes built in), Camilla/Keaton, Leo/Felicia, Dwyer, Arthur, Effie and Ophelia. Mozu's sitting this out because she's fairly high level and doesn't have as much exp to gain like Arthur and Ophelia do, or supports to gain like Effie and Arthur do with each other (not to mention Leo and Camilla with their partners).

Alright, first step: have Dwyer activate the dragon vein, and have Xander fly right into the range of both of the stoneborn at once so he can fight one, counter both, kill the one further from death on the next player-phase, and have Camilla finish off the one who's only still alive because of renewal.

Alright, let's go.

...Oh no. I may have made a grave miscalculation.

The stoneborn can't actually hurt Xander when he's paired up with Percy. Which means they might outright ignore him.

Bright side: Xander got a lucky crit on one. Which means Camilla should be able to help take the other down on schedule anyway. But this will call for some adjustments to my plans in the future.

I just got HP+5 on Laslow, and for a second I was terrified I'd have to have Laslow deal with gamble for the whole map once he gets it. But then I remembered: he has a full skill list! He doesn't have to keep the skills he gets!

Oh SHIT.

Wow, this is cool. Apparently the rear reinforcements come with some pretty dang nasty skills that even further discourage actually fighting the things! Wary fighter and grisly wound? Wow.

Okay, this is rough. Not scary, just... okay, so I can easily take out these guys with Xander... eventually... but I'll be wasting so much experience I want to funnel into Laslow. I unfortunately don't quite have the firepower to take them out in time without using another dragon vein, and I just don't have enough of those things to use more than one for every step.

Also, healing is being spread really thin here, and it's concerning. Especially since Dakota's taking some major grisly wound damage dealing with these rear faceless all on her own.

OKAY THANK GOODNESS, Xander scored a crit on one of the stoneborn. Okay. Now that I've got Dakota free and thus have her helping Xander out (without the dragon veins keeping the faceless off her back, Camilla's not quite bulky enough to fight the stoneborn), I should be able to mow through these remaining faceless without much issue.

Man, thank goodness the enemy AI will still attack Xander despite doing 0 damage thanks to the fact that they have savage blow. Clearing out the void curse faceless to the north would be a nightmare otherwise, given the stoneborn covering fire.

Okay, awesome. I managed to feed some kills into Laslow, and he's now level 11 and has rally strength. I'll try to feed him some more kills, but as a mechanist he won't have the firepower to one-round faceless I'm pretty sure. Just as well, because he's not bulky enough to send into the range of these damned stoneborn. But yeah, he's still gaining levels obscenely quickly. He'll have replicate by the end of the next map, no matter what I decide the next map is.

Alright. I've got Dakota/Gunter, Xander/Percy and Felicia/Leo up front taking care of the main enemies (Felicia/Leo is just there for the healing), while everyone else is in back holding these damned rear faceless off while trying to gain all the support points they can, because much like with DLC on Conquest, void curse only prevents exp gain, not support point gain. Camilla fights on enemy phase, then the next turn everyone finishes them off while Dwyer heals Camilla over two turns to ready her for the next one.

One kinda nice thing about this map is that, for the most part, 1-2 range isn't really all that useful. Everything's either meleelocked or has 1-5 range, so 1-2 range really only gives you some more options when you freeze the stoneborn, or gives you more options with your player-phase offensives.

I very, very nearly did a turn-ending thumb fumble when moving my cursor around. I could see my life flashing before my eyes when I did that. I had Dwyer and Arthur in range of the incoming rear faceless, and either one of them could have easily died.

But at any rate, I'm having my rear guard retreat now. We're getting close to the exit.

Dakota and Xander are a much better stoneborn-killing team than Camilla and Xander. Once you get past the initial parts where you really need to fly around, I mean. Turn 1: Dakota baits in the stoneborn and draconic hexes them. Turn 2: Xander attacks, Dakota kills. Easy peasy.

And now Dakota has elbow room! Useless here, with all the stairs, but one more level and she'll have defender!

I accidentally clicked escape instead of attack with Effie while fighting the frontal reinforcements, something I was worried would happen, but thankfully, in this game, unlike in Thracia, the game actually asks you to confirm. Crisis averted!

But yeah, I've successfully purged this map of everything that has exp to offer, so now it's time to retreat.

Ah yes. Ah yes. This scene.

Personally I have more “affection” for the one in Birthright, but this one is still priceless.

Azura tells Dakota the faceless are concentrating their attacks on her (her being Dakota, damn the English language making saying Dakota again feel awkward), and Azura and Xander tell her to run for it and leave them behind. Which is such a comically stupid plan that I can't even...

...Okay.

This reminded me of something I should have brought up ages ago.

There's... there's a rule about gameplay and story integration. Something that this game breaks all over the place, but especially here. A golden rule, so transparently obvious that it generally just goes completely unspoken:

Never, ever, ever ever ever ever ever characterize the player character as fundamentally incapable of what the player character makes them do.

It's just basic common sense. It's just one of those things you don't do, at least if you're trying to make both the gameplay and story get taken seriously, because when you do it, they just... don't feel like they belong together at all. You don't make the player character of an action game a comically inept weakling pussy, and you don't make the player character of a strategy game an idiot.

“We're surrounded by faceless. Go on ahead without us, alone, while we hold them off!”

NO! THAT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA! THAT IS A TERRIBLE IDEA! THIS MAP IN FACT DOES A SPECTACULAR JOB OF MAKING SURE THAT ANYONE WHO WOULD CONSIDER THAT A REMOTELY REASONABLE IDEA CAN NEVER FUCKING MAKE IT TO THIS CUTSCENE UNTIL THEY GET A CLUE.

If there are still tons of faceless blocking your way out, then Dakota's gonna get slaughtered! If there aren't still tons of faceless blocking your way out, then JUST FUCKING RUN FOR IT.

They are proposing a strategy that, by the very logic of the map we just fucking finished, is beyond catastrophic lunacy.

And let's ignore the fact that Xander is simultaneously pulling rank on Dakota to boss her around while declaring her the leader of the army they can't function without.

Ah yes, and then of course Azura blocks an attack to save Dakota with no consequences.

God, knowing what's coming just makes everything they're doing so obvious and so idiotic.

They're blatantly and shamelessly pulling contrivances out of their ass in order to make it so that Dakota is somehow all alone, so that Lilith can die to save her. Couldn't they just, I dunno, have a faceless attack her and push her off a cliff where she breaks a leg? Wouldn't that suffice to make her alone and defenseless!?

But no. Instead the game tries to pretend it isn't blatant lunacy for Dakota to abandon her whole army to go off into Hoshido fucking alone, and then a single faceless, who we're supposed to believe is a match for her in a straight up fight, is the threat that Lilith dies to save her from. Even though immediately after this, Dakota one-shots the fucker.

Oh god, and then the single most melodramatic line in the whole game, nay, the whole franchise happens:

“Why does someone as pure as Lilith have to die, that I might live?”

I can just picture her doing melodramatic shakespearian gestures on her knees in the middle of a stage spotlight while holding Lilith's head in one hand when she says that. What the fuck even is that line!?

And then almost immediately after, Xander comes into save Dakota's precious little cavalry-thonged ass.

This is the laziest death scene I have seen in fucking ages.

There's potential for something interesting here. Dakota being stranded with just one of her closest allies and surrounded by enemies, only for her friend to give her life to save her, tragically mere moments before help arrives to save the day. That's a great premise for a part of the story. It could have been amazing.

But not if you set it up and resolve it in the span of sixty fucking seconds!

Oooooooh my fucking god.

Dakota, please, shut the fuck up with your whining, this scene is beyond artificial.

And of course we get to see this from an angle where Dakota's bethonged as is on display, just like with the Birthright Lilith death scene. Ordinarily I'd be laughing. But apparently I still have some hatred left in my heart for this game's story.

Also, Xander says “There's the smile Lilith wanted to see”, and, uh... she isn't smiling, Xander. Not when you say that at least!

Oh yeah, and they don't even bother to carry her out to bury her. They just leave her to rot on the eternal stairway amongst the dozens of other corpses. Classy, Dakota.

I don't have enough time today to cover supports or anything. I'll do that next entry and just really quickly proofread this.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ooh! Well at least I managed to get Laslow's response to the Emblem Shield! He's like “why are you giving this to me!? I won't be able to perform the awakening!”

Does that mean he's canonically not Chrom's son?

Well, his father in Fates!canon must have had gray hair, right?

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

.Oh no. I may have made a grave miscalculation.

The stoneborn can't actually hurt Xander when he's paired up with Percy. Which means they might outright ignore him.

suffering_from_success.jpg

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

There's potential for something interesting here. Dakota being stranded with just one of her closest allies and surrounded by enemies, only for her friend to give her life to save her, tragically mere moments before help arrives to save the day. That's a great premise for a part of the story. It could have been amazing.

That's basically what Radiant Dawn does, but for the enemies. When Alder dies in Jarod's stead.

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

We're surrounded by faceless. Go on ahead without us, alone, while we hold them off!”

NO! THAT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA! THAT IS A TERRIBLE IDEA! THIS MAP IN FACT DOES A SPECTACULAR JOB OF MAKING SURE THAT ANYONE WHO WOULD CONSIDER THAT A REMOTELY REASONABLE IDEA CAN NEVER FUCKING MAKE IT TO THIS CUTSCENE UNTIL THEY GET A CLUE.

Yeah this makes no sense. If they're actually surrounded, then a) the army minus Corrin can't actually hold them off, as some of the Faceless will just split off and follow Corrin; and b) there shouldn't even be a clear avenue of escape for Corrin. This might have made remote sense if the Faceless were just on one side of them, but that's not the scenario depicted. And of course, that would prevent them from doing the emotionally manipulative sacrifice scene.

[Venger_06]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ooh! Well at least I managed to get Laslow's response to the Emblem Shield! He's like “why are you giving this to me!? I won't be able to perform the awakening!”

Does that mean he's canonically not Chrom's son?

Inigo's whole shtick is that he's insecure. He thinks he can't measure up to his father or sister.

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Well, his father in Fates!canon must have had gray hair, right?

 

Their hair colour was changed by Anankos to disguise them...when they traveled to a different world where no one knew their identity to begin with. I'm not making that up.

[Shadow Mir]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Their hair colour was changed by Anankos to disguise them...when they traveled to a different world where no one knew their identity to begin with. I'm not making that up.

I said this before, but this is silly as all hell. What is the point of disguising yourself when no one where you're going will know who you are anyway???

Edited April 23, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Acacia Sgt]

4 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I said this before, but this is silly as all hell. What is the point of this???

To not stablish canonicity. Since if they showed up with other hair colors, specially those that matched with Awakening males, people would complain they're giving them canon fathers and the like.

On that subject, it would've been neat if their hair colors did changed if you had Awakening save data. I like when games do that, checking save data from other games

[Jotari]

34 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

To not stablish canonicity. Since if they showed up with other hair colors, specially those that matched with Awakening males, people would complain they're giving them canon fathers and the like.

On that subject, it would've been neat if their hair colors did changed if you had Awakening save data. I like when games do that, checking save data from other games

I don't think that would have been possible on the 3DS since it doesn't have a memory card system. The data is stored on the cartridge. Might have worked if your version of Awakening was downloaded directly onto the DS, but then that would sort of suck for people bought it physically and got unknowingly punished for that a few years later. Maybe it would have been possible by ejecting the cartridge mid play and inserting an Awakening cartridge mid play like changing discs, not sure if the 3DS supported that kind of feature though.

[Acacia Sgt]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I don't think that would have been possible on the 3DS since it doesn't have a memory card system. The data is stored on the cartridge. Might have worked if your version of Awakening was downloaded directly onto the DS, but then that would sort of suck for people bought it physically and got unknowingly punished for that a few years later. Maybe it would have been possible by ejecting the cartridge mid play and inserting an Awakening cartridge mid play like changing discs, not sure if the 3DS supported that kind of feature though.

Maybe for those cases a feature to also save certain data on the SD Card? It's not like it would be hard to make that distinction.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Maybe for those cases a feature to also save certain data on the SD Card? It's not like it would be hard to make that distinction.

I suppose that'd be possible, but they would have needed to patch the feature into Awakening to tell it to copy the data to the SD card and they were pretty much finished working on that game at the time. They were also trying to shill Amiibos at the time for unlocking extra features. The game has stuff to let you fight Chrom, Robin and Lucina, it would have been cool if they used an interconectivity feature to let you fight your versions of Robin, Chrom and Lucina, but they'd rather sell Amiibos for an event like that. All in all it would be possible to do, it just took more effort than they determined it would be worth.

[lenticular]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

The stoneborn can't actually hurt Xander when he's paired up with Percy. Which means they might outright ignore him.

How do people generally feel about this mechanic whereby the AI will ignore anyone they can't hurt? For me, it's one of those "good in theory, annoying in practice" things. I like the idea of making the AI slightly less stupidly suicidal. That seems like a good thing. But in practice, it just ended up feeling like yet more annoying bookkeeping. If the enemy deals exactly 1 damage then that's scarcely any more threatening or less suicidal than when they deal 0 damage, but they'll still make those attacks without hesitation. Which means that you often have the tedious task of a Price Is Right style challenge of trying to get your defense up to the enemy's damage but without going over. I am fully expecting most people to like this, since most of y'all seem to enjoy the stuff that I think of as tedious bookkeeping, but I am interested to hear thoughts on it even so.

And speaking of things that I like in theory but not so much in practice: this level. My big problem with it was the Stoneborn, and how their ranged attacks can make any non-combat units or frail player phase units feel like an absolute liability. I am generally not a huge fan of long-range enemy units in Fire Emblem, because of how much they distort how you play the level. Which is typically either "use your two or three best units who can tank everything" or "carefully dance around everything without getting into range until you have killed everything else". I don't mind if it happens once or twice per game, but with the combination of Stoneborn, offensive staves, and siege weapons, there are just too many of them in this game for my tastes. I like the idea of having the infinite no-experience reinforcements spanwing behind you to hurry you along, but it just didn't work all that well for me in practice.

[Jotari]

7 minutes ago, lenticular said:

How do people generally feel about this mechanic whereby the AI will ignore anyone they can't hurt? For me, it's one of those "good in theory, annoying in practice" things. I like the idea of making the AI slightly less stupidly suicidal. That seems like a good thing. But in practice, it just ended up feeling like yet more annoying bookkeeping. If the enemy deals exactly 1 damage then that's scarcely any more threatening or less suicidal than when they deal 0 damage, but they'll still make those attacks without hesitation. Which means that you often have the tedious task of a Price Is Right style challenge of trying to get your defense up to the enemy's damage but without going over. I am fully expecting most people to like this, since most of y'all seem to enjoy the stuff that I think of as tedious bookkeeping, but I am interested to hear thoughts on it even so.

I liked Gaiden and Shadows of Valentia's minimum damage cap of 1 as a solution to this issue. Like you said it's not exactly less suicidal, but it does make it feel like the enemies are at least doing something to try and weaken you.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 minute ago, lenticular said:

How do people generally feel about this mechanic whereby the AI will ignore anyone they can't hurt? For me, it's one of those "good in theory, annoying in practice" things. I like the idea of making the AI slightly less stupidly suicidal. That seems like a good thing. But in practice, it just ended up feeling like yet more annoying bookkeeping. If the enemy deals exactly 1 damage then that's scarcely any more threatening or less suicidal than when they deal 0 damage, but they'll still make those attacks without hesitation. Which means that you often have the tedious task of a Price Is Right style challenge of trying to get your defense up to the enemy's damage but without going over. I am fully expecting most people to like this, since most of y'all seem to enjoy the stuff that I think of as tedious bookkeeping, but I am interested to hear thoughts on it even so.

There's something of a paradox here - you want to build up your defense as high as possible, but not too high, or else enemies will ignore you. When the whole purpose of having high defense is to take lots of hits.

Interestingly, the bolded part leans on one way to "fix" this paradox - returning to an "all attacks deal at least 1 damage", like we saw in Genealogy and Echoes. A similar "hit floor" of 1 (a la Thracia) could be used to ensure that your dodgetanks aren't so dodgy that they fail to bait out the enemy.

Just now, Jotari said:

liked Gaiden and Shadows of Valentia's minimum damage cap of 1 as a solution to this issue. Like you said it's not exactly less suicidal, but it does make it feel like the enemies are at least doing something to try and weaken you.

Screw you Jotari, you beat me to the punch.

[lenticular]

58 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I liked Gaiden and Shadows of Valentia's minimum damage cap of 1 as a solution to this issue. Like you said it's not exactly less suicidal, but it does make it feel like the enemies are at least doing something to try and weaken you.

Yeah, I liked that way of doing it as well. It felt very natural, and solved the problem without really creating a new one. I also found it pretty intuitive to pick up on "huh? why did that enemy hit me for 1 rather than 0? Oh, because 1 is the minimum damage. OK!" It did seem particularly well suited to the legions of summons that SoV throws at you, but I don't see why it owuldn't also work in other games.

[Alastor15243]

Honestly? Minimum of one damage would've been interesting here, because Xander might have been in serious trouble at points if that had been the case. He was really relying on the fact that nobody was doing any damage to survive mountains upon mountains of faceless. When a swordbreaker faceless got him to 14 HP with savage blow, man he would've been in a bind if all those guys did one damage.

Edited April 23, 2021 by Alastor15243

[starburst]

4 hours ago, lenticular said:

And speaking of things that I like in theory but not so much in practice: this level. My big problem with it was the Stoneborn, and how their ranged attacks can make any non-combat units or frail player phase units feel like an absolute liability.

In Chapter 21 in particular, I think that one is not supposed to "tank" Golems, but to one-hit or one-round them while paralysed, either by the Dragon Veins or by Freeze. With ten units, no flyers, no royals, it takes about eight turns to clear (on Hard), killing the boss pair on your way.

I concede that I would not be able to do this on my first try, which ruins an Iron Man campaign, but it is perfectly reproducible with multiple set-ups once you have an idea about the map.

 

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

How do people generally feel about this mechanic whereby the AI will ignore anyone they can't hurt? For me, it's one of those "good in theory, annoying in practice" things. I like the idea of making the AI slightly less stupidly suicidal. That seems like a good thing. But in practice, it just ended up feeling like yet more annoying bookkeeping.

I would go even further and let enemies ignore me if they deal less than 10 % (of total HP) damage or so. It discourages baiting, which is the simplest way to play these games. And there is nothing to learn there. Conquest can also be played about 90 % on Player Phase, which, to me, makes it a more fun and more appealing puzzle.

For example, I enjoy Chapter 23 precisely because most of it can be wiped without letting the enemies engage in a single Enemy Phase. It is a thrilling march clearing areas at will. (Again, ten units, no royals, no backpacks.) Will enemies ignore me? I would not know; march and assault them anyway!

[Alastor15243]

Another thing about this level that only recently occurred to me...

...Lilith's death is Xander's fault.

Xander made an idiotic call that was even wrong in-universe, because the problem Xander told Dakota to escape from was resolved almost immediately after. Which means Lilith died for an order Xander gave, and that order was for nothing.

Xander made the wrong call. Dakota trusted Xander, and that trust was repaid with failure and the death of one of his closest friends.

Dakota should blame Xander for Lilith's death, or, better idea: Xander should blame himself.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Alastor15243

[lenticular]

10 minutes ago, starburst said:

I concede that I would not be able to do this on my first try, which ruins an Iron Man campaign, but it is perfectly reproducible with multiple set-ups once you have an idea about the map.

That's fair. For the vast majority of games, I'm much more interested in first-time experience and much less interested in replay-value. That's a personal preference thing, though, and I can definitely see how the experience could be different for people who prioritise the other way around.

7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Dakota should blame Xander for Lilith's death, or, better idea: Xander should blame himself.

That could have been cool. And the self-doubt that Xander would have got from that could be the catalyst that leads him to actually start questioning himself, listening to Corrin and therefore being willing to turn on Garron. Alas, this is Fates storytelling.

[Eltosian Kadath]

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

How do people generally feel about this mechanic whereby the AI will ignore anyone they can't hurt? For me, it's one of those "good in theory, annoying in practice" things. I like the idea of making the AI slightly less stupidly suicidal. That seems like a good thing. But in practice, it just ended up feeling like yet more annoying bookkeeping. If the enemy deals exactly 1 damage then that's scarcely any more threatening or less suicidal than when they deal 0 damage, but they'll still make those attacks without hesitation. Which means that you often have the tedious task of a Price Is Right style challenge of trying to get your defense up to the enemy's damage but without going over. I am fully expecting most people to like this, since most of y'all seem to enjoy the stuff that I think of as tedious bookkeeping, but I am interested to hear thoughts on it even so.

I think it works fine. Enemy Phasing is already all about the kind of bookkeeping you talking about, and checking defense and attack is a necessary part of enemy phasing, so no real extra work added. It helps that the game is robust enough that an issue in enemy phasing can generally be fixed with a more player phase focused strategy, as long as you recognize the issue at hand. Plus 1 point of damage is significant in a game like this, where out of combat damage can't kill, which makes 1 health units more of a possibility.

Although if I were to complain a bit about the not attacking behavior of the game, it is a little annoying that the game does not consider the +10 to hit attack stance bonus when checking if an enemy is capable of hitting (as enemies will not attack when they believe they have 0% hit as well...). Admittedly this feels more like an oversight than a design choice...