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

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

On a random side note have you been keeping an eye on Lief's leadership stars?

I understand that he can have 0, 1 or 2 depending on whether Augustus and... that other guy I can't quite remember the name of who you meet later... is in your party?

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

I understand that he can have 0, 1 or 2 depending on whether Augustus and... that other guy I can't quite remember the name of who you meet later... is in your party?

Yeah, that was what I was hinting at, just wanted to make sure you noticed without making it too obvious what is going on.

[Jotari]

15 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Probably because it will.

 

Against what exactly? Enemies on terrain? Sure, but more often than not I'd be better off having them engage me on my terms, as opposed to engaging them on theirs.

Which is probably an extremely niche option, as far more often than not, having your mages get up close to whatever they're trying to attack is ill advised. It doesn't help that mages only have 4 move for most of the game, either. And that's assuming they even get their weapon ranks high enough to use them in the first place, which is kinda iffy as they're C (Levin Sword, Arrow of Indra) or B (Bolt Axe, Magic Bow) rank. Not to mention that out of the C rank weapons, one of them is only available on one route (as in, you get to use it for more than one chapter). Out of four. And I'd say my argument about magic weapons being redundant on mages still stands. Anyway, having mages use combat arts with magic weapons sounds a hell of a lot less practical than just using spells to attack (UNLESS you run out of spells, and at the point of the game where that's most likely to be a concern, you don't even have access to magic weapons in the first place).

That's true. And not what I was contesting.

Except if you ask anyone, they'll tell you to have your physical units master Brigand for Death Blow.  That aside, the only units who I'd consider magic weapons on are Ingrid and Manuela (who, on paper, is built towards being a mage, but is hindered by a weakness in Reason), and Anna, off the top of my head.

I believe I can (easily) counter all these points, but like I said, if you want to talk more about this, make a thread and at me. It has nothing to do with Thracia.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Jotari

[Flere210]

In another thread someone posted screenshots of annette oneshotting red units on the dread chapter 13 maddening. If that was not good enought to persuade him, nothing is.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Flere210

[Shadow Mir]

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And to cap off this moderately successful chapter, Leif gains a point of defense, bringing his defense up to ten. Something tells me his late promotion isn't going to stop Leif from being really useful. Granted, I did use two stat rings and two crusader scrolls, but still, at least he can be made good, unlike the lord of the next game if his reputation is any indication.

Speaking of which, what difficulty were you planning on playing Binding Blade on?

[Alastor15243]

Thracia Day 8: Chapter 5

Alright, here we are. If memory serves, this is the second to last chapter before we reunite with my old party. And it's a doozy. I remember restarting this countless times when I first played it, largely due to something incredibly annoying with the series: there are no consistent rules between or sometimes even within games for when characters won't attack units they care about.

This will become relevant in a moment, if you don't already know what I'm referring to.

This map is basically a circular hallway surrounding a massive central arena, while Eyvel and Nanna are trapped, fighting for their lives against a general, a warrior, and a hero.

The hero sprite strikes me as a bit odd. The way he's holding his sword brings me more to mind of that double-dagger fighting stance that Pit and Zidane use.

Since Nanna can still heal on foot, and since there's a bottleneck by the locked entrance to the arena that's going to be the evac point once Leif and company arrive to get them out, this isn't going to be a problem as long as I don't get absurdly unlucky with staff misses. However, things are going to get a good deal messier soon.

My immediate priority, as I said last chapter, is getting some more gear. As there are two sword armors and two mages immediately by my starting location, they seem like the best place to start. I have Brighton position himself to severely weaken the first sword armor.

Also, I took a glimpse at Raydrik's equipment. The fucker has something called the Loptian Fang, which is basically the Loptous tome in sword form. +20 to magic, and just like Loptous, halves all damage before subtracting defensive stats. According to the sword list, there's a sword that can negate that damage-halving effect similar to the Book of Naga.

Hmmm... That's a curious thing for Leif to obtain in his adventures and not bring up in FE4. I mean, if the Loptian Fang is strong enough that not even Forseti can pierce its dark powers, then it stands to reason that it's on a level with the Loptous tome itself. Which would suggest that anything capable of cutting through it could cut through the Loptous tome as well.

That would have been a very handy sword to have in Genealogy's endgame, Leif. Thank you so very much for telling us about it.

Brighton yet again misses a wrath crit first strike, which causes my attempt to steal his sword to fail catastrophically. Fergus winds up killing him with a crit when I was just trying to soften him up for Dalsim to attack. It doesn't help that I only really have two high con fighters on my team, and one of them has terrible accuracy.

Miraculously, Brighton's terrible luck saves the day by giving me a second chance at capturing a longsword bearing knight when he whiffs a mid 80s hit on counterattack.

...Aaaaaaaand I have to start over. I thought I was being clever. I had Eyvel heavily wounded and surrounded by three fighters, two of them critically wounded. If she fought all three there was a very good chance she would die. So I had her trade her weapon to Nanna to keep her from killing anyone until she could heal up.

...Yeah. I forgot what enemies can do to unarmed units, regardless of stats. She got captured and promptly turned to stone, leaving Nanna exposed, without even getting to see what comes next in the arena.

I had to restart again because I yet again got super unlucky with the opening gambit, and I suspect I will not be able to complete this level if I don't get some more weapons from at least one of these sword armors. It didn't help that the random stat fluctuations on enemies gave this sword armor an insane amount of attack speed (Six! On a knight!) that made him basically impossible to non-lethally deal with.

This feels really save-scummy, but I need to get these swords. My army is running really low on swords, and it's so close to the beginning of the map that, now that I've given up on ironmanning this because such would be lunacy without speedrunner levels of planning, it feels worthwhile. These sword armors and a miniboss halfway through are literally the only enemies on the entire map that have swords I can take, not counting the enemies in the arena.

Honestly, this entire game, especially this particular part of it, feels like an ironmanner's worst nightmare. The 1-99 accuracy boundaries. The fact that staves can miss. This pseudo-cinematic fight in the arena with pre-set units with a good chance of losing no matter what you do. The heavily fluctuating random stats of the enemies. The intensely limited size of your army and its supplies. All of these (okay, most of them) are interesting ideas on their own, but combined it means it's literally impossible to beat this part of the game in particular with pure skill. However unlikely it is, even if you are literally perfect at the game, it is technically always physically possible for you to lose through no fault of your own. I am utterly shocked that this is apparently part of the era where the games were meant to be ironmanned. It just seems ludicrous that anyone would play this game that way with all of these things that can go horribly wrong.

Anyway, yes, I did manage to get one of the longswords on my second try. The fact that this game literally gives you no means to not kill enemies on enemy phase if you're strong enough (aside from unequipping when you have really, really high con) can make capturing pretty annoying and also bizarrely disconnected from the story of the game.

Looks like I'll be getting plenty of tomes for Asbel though, so I think this is going to be his map to shine.

Oh shit. And now Mareeta's entered the arena with the cursed Shadow Sword. Storywise, it's a decently well-done scene, though I question the choice of words for Eyvel in this translation. When she discovers her daughter's been possessed by a cursed weapon, she turns to Raydrik and says “You trying to turn my Mareeta into one of your damned pitfighters with your little gift?”

That sounds... way too casual. I recognize Eyvel doesn't have the most refined vocabulary, but the missing “Are” from the beginning of that sentence generally only gets removed in casual discussions, even with people who tend to say that. Also... note the lack of an exclamation point. That is just completely bizarre how calm that line sounds. Her beloved adopted daughter has just had something horrible done to her and she only really sounds annoyed. Especially since right afterwards she's absolutely volcanic with rage, barely even able to find words for her anger.

“I'll rip that lying tongue right out of your mouth!” she says, after Raydrik pretends he didn't know the Shadow Sword is cursed. “How... How dare you do this to Mar-”

So, yeah, that... was a pretty bizarre line there. Really out of place in a pretty good script so far.

And here we come to the really annoying part of this map that it took me ages to figure out because it was so unthinkable I restarted every time before noticing: for the first time in Fire Emblem history, when an enemy loved one of a playable character attacks that character...

...they don't fight back.

It has been so engrained into me as a Fire Emblem player that no matter what, no matter who's fighting who, no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the hell they say about each other outside of battle, if you let an enemy attack someone who can fight back, that allied unit will murder them. The fact that the rules just arbitrarily change without warning here was super annoying when I figured it out.

And to make matters even worse, now we have a killing edge swordmaster coming, with a very real chance of slaughtering Eyvel with a very likely crit, when it's impossible to give her a crusader scroll to protect her. Whether or not Nanna survives is entirely a roll of the dice here. What the fuck am I even being challenged on here? I will allow for the possibility that I'm wrong, but I can't conceive of any way to get Nanna out of this that doesn't depend on luck.

On the other hand, upon discovering that in this game, skills that are granted by weapons are listed on a unit's skill list with a clear label saying it's from the weapon... that's a pretty cool change that saves just a little bit of work from calculating how an enemy phase attack will go.

OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE GAME, ANOTHER KILLER WEAPON USER!?

So, Eyvel is instantly slaughtered by the Berserker, literally just in time for me to get Leif over to unlock the door and clear out the incoming enemies. In the first run of genuinely good luck I've had all day, he lands a ridiculous number of crits, allowing room for Nanna to run for her life behind him. I'm assuming this has to happen eventually, hence the ridiculously dangerous enemies, but it's kind of absurd how luck-based your time limit to save Nanna is.

Anyway, Eyvel's promptly captured and turned to stone by Veld, as was always supposed to happen. And of course the game still expects me to deal with the heroes fighting her.

And upon unlocking the door, the game moves Leif in a conversation one space south. Which... was really inconvenient for my purposes, because if he stayed where he was, Nanna could have healed him without being exposed to attack on as many sides. Hopefully her earth sword will save her. Anyway, I hand him the Baldur scroll to protect him from the killer axe berserker and hope he can survive the turn, because I can't keep her in there with the berserker and hero.

...Except apparently I can.

...Because immediately after Eyvel is stoned... everyone else just leaves Nanna alone and retreats.

...Okay. I recognize that Raydrik said his orders were to let her flee since it'll be fun watching her struggle to escape the castle.

But you know what would have been a fantastic way to convey that that included the summoned pitfighters?

By having the pitfighters leave in the fucking cutscene when everyone else does.

Raydrik leaves. Veld leaves. Mareeta leaves. The pitfighters stay. What kind of conclusion am I supposed to draw from their conspicuous continued presence?

Jesus Christ, game, the fuck was the point of keeping them there in the first place if they're just going to leave Nanna alone!? Why not have them walk away when Mareeta and Veld and Raydrik warp away!?

Why do you expect me to assume the game won't fuck me when you spend every waking moment of the game threatening to fuck me!?

...So apparently all of that panic was for nothing because Nanna was never in any danger of being killed, and the game was just terrible at making me understand that. Hell, I would have been better off not resetting! If I just traded away Eyvel's weapon and let her get captured, apparently I'd just have another sword I'm in desperate need of instead of losing it! Nanna was completely safe, it just completely failed to prove it by any means I was capable of seeing without just waiting to see if she'd die.

I recognize that the game hasn't actually thrown me into anything genuinely unfair, but... it still feels terribly designed. Like, things were just communicated terribly, to the point that it goes against basically every single instinct half lifetime of playing Fire Emblem has drilled into me, and that annoys the hell out of me.

I just... do not like how this was handled at all. It just barely looks like it isn't going to be a hopeless fight you're supposed to lose, while still being scary enough that it seems outrageously luck-based and giving you no clear indication that you aren't doing anything wrong and that this is what's supposed to happen. This is just... a complete failure of game design from the standpoint of a blind player.

But thankfully, the chaos outside of the arena has been weathered as well. Lithis has been stealing tomes at every opportunity he's gotten, which means Asbel is easily my most well-armed fighter at the moment. I've been proactive in swiping heal staves from enemies (not that it's hard, since a lot of them are basically free captures), so now my limited healing issues are over. Now I just need to be careful and cautious with the rest of this map and not fuck anything up.

Jesus Christ this map feels like it's taken forever already.

I bait out as many of the archers as I can bait one at a time to train Asbel, before having Leif tank the brunt once the remaining ones can't be tackled without aggroing more than one. Then I player-phase the remaining enemies, letting Nanna get the kill on the general miniboss with her earth sword at range. Karin is then briefly reunited with Hermes the pegasus when she runs outside with the chest key to grab that... treasure chest... that's just... lying... out in the open... on the ground... outside.

I fail to see the logic in this chest placement, storywise or gameplaywise. But whatever, it'll be mine soon.

I'm not keen on risking rushing the meteor mage up ahead in order to steal his shit, when I have so few good capturing units/weapons, so I'm gonna have him waste his uses on Asbel (I already have a meteor tome at home anyway) and then feed the enemies to Asbel.

Okay, that's annoying. Apparently support bonuses are factored into your sats on the menu, but the Charm skill is not. I would be perfectly fine with all of them being factored in or none of them being factored in (though I'd prefer all of them), but having it be some but not others is just a pain in the ass to remember and is a perfect recipe for miscalculations.

...Wait, what? Is that not true? I know I saw it before, but now suddenly it's showing his evade counting Charm. What's going on here?

Speaking of which, apparently, instead of assuming melee when displaying stats, the stats displayed on the unit menu for Nanna using the earth sword are for when she's attacking magically, at range. Curious.

Fun fact: In contrast to weapons, which get super heavy when broken, once a tome is broken, it apparently weighs nothing and can be stolen with impunity. Not that I have any use for the thing unless I'm willing to use a hammerne staff use on this broken meteor tome, but hey, free exp for my thieves!

Also, despite being turned to stone, Eyvel's leadership stars are apparently still working. It seems she's still in my party, I just have to abandon her because I can't get her to the exit.

And I'm done! I had to use the magic water in order to kill the remaining enemies without using Grafcalibur or risking the enemy healer using (and using up) his physic staff, but with that utterly insane +7 boost to both magical defense and magical attack, I managed to get one of the two physic staves untouched, and then got everyone (except Eyvel) out without incident.

Leif's light brand has taken a serious beating through the last few chapters though. It's down to 11 uses. Maybe I should have taken the fire sword with Leif too, but hey, it was worth it. Right now Leif is easily my best all-around fighter, and the light brand was super useful to avoid being overwhelmed. Now there's just one more chapter left before I'm reunited with the rest of my army.

I'm frankly surprised this chapter didn't have reinforcements. After the chaotic clusterfuck that was the first half (even if a lot of that was self-inflicted due to not trusting a game that in my defense has given me very little reason to trust it), the second half was really easy, if tedious.

I liked Leif's escape quote though. I like how pathetic he clearly feels he is, how he can't even finish his sentence when he's promising to come back for the petrified Eyvel after having to run away. It's actually pretty sad. Sadder than any actual line could be.

[Shadow Mir]

14 hours ago, Flere210 said:

In another thread someone posted screenshots of annette oneshotting red units on the dread chapter 13 maddening. If that was not good enought to persuade him, nothing is.

Because, to be blunt, I find the cons to far outweigh the pros. Speaking of, I at least am willing to look at both the pros and cons of something when I'm analyzing it. I don't just buy into the hype for something hook, line and sinker. How can I consider Wyvern Annette to be as good as the proponents are saying when it has severe drawbacks (like iffy hit with her main weapon of choice, for example) that the defenders are apparently willing to downplay or even go so far as to completely ignore outright? I'm not saying those drawbacks cannot be worked around, but I don't want them just being swept under the rug. Also, I feel the proponents are just not willing to look at opportunity costs and negatives/tradeoffs, either because they don't want it to look bad or don't want to hurt their argument. I won't go into any more detail here, because I'd rather not derail the thread, so I'll leave it at that.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Eltosian Kadath]

33 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Aaaaaaaand I have to start over. I thought I was being clever. I had Eyvel heavily wounded and surrounded by three fighters, two of them critically wounded. If she fought all three there was a very good chance she would die. So I had her trade her weapon to Nanna to keep her from killing anyone until she could heal up.

...Yeah. I forgot what enemies can do to unarmed units, regardless of stats. She got captured and promptly turned to stone, leaving Nanna exposed, without even getting to see what comes next in the arena.

...This is one of those you have to know Thracia things going on. Until she is turned to stone Eyvel has an invincibility flag that makes every lethal blow miss. Unequipping her is about the only thing that puts her in danger, as she can still be captured, but without that foreknowledge what you did made sense.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

All of these (okay, most of them) are interesting ideas on their own, but combined it means it's literally impossible to beat this part of the game in particular with pure skill.

There are some fairly reliable way of handling the Manster arc with skill, but you are going into this blind, without knowledge of what to expect, or of some key Thracia strats that would help (for example strategic use of capture bait can make things a lot easier). Mekkkah has covered an extremely reliable way of handling chapter 4 in an Ironman setting, which keeps the party fairly well stocked, chapter 4x is a bit risky in the early phases, but once you reach Ced, he can be strategically dropped to trivialize the rest of it, and with Eyvel invincible, and far more resources to work with chapter 5 is far more manageable.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I am utterly shocked that this is apparently part of the era where the games were meant to be ironmanned. It just seems ludicrous that anyone would play this game that way with all of these things that can go horribly wrong.

Part of the mentality of the era was that you were going to lose people, and have to find some units or ways to replace them, the idea being by the end you had a party, and experience that was uniquely your own. In the more modern era the idea of playing through the games perfectly has become the norm.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

It has been so engrained into me as a Fire Emblem player that no matter what, no matter who's fighting who, no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the hell they say about each other outside of battle, if you let an enemy attack someone who can fight back, that allied unit will murder them. The fact that the rules just arbitrarily change without warning here was super annoying when I figured it out.

I seem to remember Radiant Dawn had some similar mechanics where certain characters will not attack/counter units they are particularly close to. Sephiran being incapable of attacking/countering Micaiah is one example I particularly remember.

 

One question as well, did you kill enough of the gladiators for Galzus to show up?

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

...This is one of those you have to know Thracia things going on. Until she is turned to stone Eyvel has an invincibility flag that makes every lethal blow miss.

Wait, she does? When does that wear off? Because that berserker critted the fuck out of her.

[Shadow Mir]

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Wait, she does? When does that wear off? Because that berserker critted the fuck out of her.

Did you attack that Berserker? Berserkers have Wrath as a class skill.

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Shadow Mir said:

Did you attack that Berserker? Berserkers have Wrath as a class skill.

Nope, I did not. Eyvel couldn't even move, she was standing between them and Nanna.

[Eltosian Kadath]

6 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Wait, she does? When does that wear off? Because that berserker critted the fuck out of her.

As far as I know she is invincible until she is turned to stone. Enemies are able to capture units the hard way, but seeing it happen is rather rare, but the Berserker might have had the build and stats to try for the capture.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

As far as I know she is invincible until she is turned to stone. Enemies are able to capture units the hard way, but seeing it happen is rather rare, but the Berserker might have had the build and stats to try for the capture.

Oh, so that was actual capturing? The enemy had halved stats and everything and he still got a lucky crit? I assumed that she was just supposed to inevitably get defeated, and that she just gets captured even though the enemy was fighting at full strength.

[Eltosian Kadath]

4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh, so that was actual capturing? The enemy had halved stats and everything and he still got a lucky crit? I assumed that she was just supposed to inevitably get defeated, and that she just gets captured even though the enemy was fighting at full strength.

There are a few ways this scene can turn out, and I found a compilation of them (although it is from the old translation).

 

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

There are a few ways this scene can turn out, and I found a compilation of them (although it is from the old translation).

 

...Wow. Looks like I just got outrageously unlucky then. Curious that they made her invincible to combat but not to capturing. Why would that be? An oversight?

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

Why would that be? An oversight?

There is dialogue for her being captured, so I don't think its an oversight. I guess its that the game designers wanted to have that story beat and still maintain the permanency of death. If a character is captured they can still be saved, but if they die...

[Jotari]

Funny thing about the Lopt Sword (or Loyptian Fang as it seems we're calling it now) is that you can actually obtain it using a method the developers clearly didn't anticipate. You have to get him to unequip it and then use the thief staff (which takes magic into account when stealing, not con, the massive magic boost it gives him stops it from being stolen this way normally). He doesn't come with any other weapons though, so you have to have a thief attempt to steal from him and then give him a bow, which is something you can do as stealing is treated just like trading with the enemy. Then make him attack using the bow by waiting at two range. Viola, Lopt Sword unequipped, magic boost gone and ripe for stealing. As I said the developers probably didn't intend for this to be possible at all, though they at least had the foresight to make it a prf weapon for him so even once you have it you can't actually use it (disappointingly, it'd be sweet to unintentionally use the power of Lopt for a chapter or two). Still, it's fun to steal.

[Alastor15243]

13 hours ago, Jotari said:

Funny thing about the Lopt Sword (or Loyptian Fang as it seems we're calling it now) is that you can actually obtain it using a method the developers clearly didn't anticipate. You have to get him to unequip it and then use the thief staff (which takes magic into account when stealing, not con, the massive magic boost it gives him stops it from being stolen this way normally). He doesn't come with any other weapons though, so you have to have a thief attempt to steal from him and then give him a bow, which is something you can do as stealing is treated just like trading with the enemy. Then make him attack using the bow by waiting at two range. Viola, Lopt Sword unequipped, magic boost gone and ripe for stealing. As I said the developers probably didn't intend for this to be possible at all, though they at least had the foresight to make it a prf weapon for him so even once you have it you can't actually use it (disappointingly, it'd be sweet to unintentionally use the power of Lopt for a chapter or two). Still, it's fun to steal.

Thaaaaaat sounds like an insanely useful thing to keep in mind. But also kind of exploit-y. Not sure if I'll use it.

On 12/18/2019 at 1:07 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Speaking of which, what difficulty were you planning on playing Binding Blade on?

Hard, probably. But once "hard" stops being the hardest difficulty in these games, choosing which difficulty to play to best assess a game's "difficulty" score is going to be annoying, especially since in some cases, the hardest difficulty mode wasn't exactly the best-designed one. Also, I was into Awakening for long enough that I know full well how to break the game in half even on non-plus Lunatic difficulty, but the idea of grading the game on Lunatic+ sounds both utterly insane and also likely to make certain other categories of the game suffer.

It's a puzzle, and I'd love feedback from people on what I could do.

Thracia Day 9: Chapter 6

It's curious that Leif blames the empire for his parents' deaths, and not Trabant and South Thracia.

...Also, what's with this translation, having Leif talk about how much he hates the empire and then having Augustus do a fucking “what's that Lassie?” in response. He goes “Lady Eyvel was turned to stone by some foul magic, you say?” despite Leif never mentioning that. It's like we're supposed to assume the game skipped over a few seconds of the conversation with no visible break or fade-out.

Hooooooly shit. The Loptian Order and the Empire have been burning so many dissidents at the stake that the sky has actually become clouded black!? Is that what Augustus is saying!? I can't tell whether that's hilariously over-the-top or terrifying.

Hahahaha. Wow. So Karin actually tries to justify why Hermes, a pegasus who supposedly can't stand men riding on him, is willing to rescue men and carry them. But the fact that they say it's because of these dire circumstances just raises the question of why it's okay the rest of the time too. Like, when Sumia saves Chrom and he's clearly riding on the pegasus's back, why is the pegasus okay with that?

Anyway, they say that going through the central town is going to be dangerous and that I could stealth my way through this, but the way they described it sounds tedious, and since I'm not doing ironman, there's really no harm in seeing how bad it gets when you get the main army's attention. Plus, there's a bunch of houses down there that I can get rewards from.

In other news, all four of my riders' mounts were waiting for them right at the front gates inexplicably, as they can all mount again, giving Fergus, Brighton, Karin and Nanna slight boots to their stats, but more importantly giving them 20 capture/rescue con and ludicrously improved mobility.

...Which is gonna come in real handy in a second, because the moment I got too close when baiting in the siege tome users, the whole army of mages and armor knights started charging, and I've gotta take them out while doing hit-and-runs and possibly some bottlenecking. I have Lithis open the gate to the item shop ahead of us. Thankfully I already sorted out giving Fergus the brave sword, since he can use it and he kind of needs it to contribute due to being so underleveled. I really haven't been able to make good use of him indoors. That's gonna have to change now that he's on a horse.

Ooh, look, cutscene! Galzus... I've heard about him! And this guy is... Saias, right? I've heard some spoilers about him, but I'll keep those to myself until the game is ready to share.

...I think those two might have saved Mareeta. That would be awesome if I don't have to wait until the endgame to free her from that sword's grip. I'd love to get Mareeta soon!

Oh wait, this isn't the item shop, it's the storage house!

...You know, now that we're rebel freedom fighters darting about the boot of an oppressive imperial regime, everything I said in FE1 about how bizarre the logistics are for a series of buildings whose contents follow you everywhere... well everything I said there is quintupled here. What the fuck is going on with this building? How is it following us? How does it have the resources to do so, and operate out in the open, without getting taken over and compromised by the empire?

...Something tells me I'm never going to get an answer to that question.

So anyway, I managed to get past the initial armor knights and mages pretty easily, and managed to get some heftier lances for Karin (that she apparently can't use because she has a lance rank of E, damn her), before cavalry reinforcements showed up the second I baited in the first lance armor in town. Thankfully these guys aren't all that powerful and not much of a threat to Leif or Dalsin. Especially not with all this bottleneck-y terrain we can use to hide behind.

...Oh shit.

Galzus hasn't left the building. He's still here.

And on Raydrik's payroll.

And whatever his oh-so-mysterious reasons for saving Mareeta turn out to be, he seems to be willing to hunt us down and gut us like fish in the streets. Maybe I shouldn't have taken so long milking these bottlenecks. Because holy shit is this guy a menace. Half of his stats are capped, and everything else is within 5 ish points of capping, save for magic, which is still a very impressive (for this point in the game) 9. Not only that, but he has the Master Sword, which is a goddamned brave weapon (though strangely overall worse than an actual brave sword), basically guaranteeing that anyone I send to try to hold him off is going to wind up reduced to a fine red mist.

Fortunately, however, I think I can still do this. I'll have to ditch some of the treasures in the village, but I should have just enough time to get everyone to the exit.

...As long as one of his FIVE MOVEMENT STARS DOESN'T ACTIVATE JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I'M FUCKED.

...No, no, I need to calm down. I can still deal with this guy. I just need to do what I always do with enemies like this:

...Take my flier and bait him around a piece of terrain on a perpetual back-and-forth wild goose chase. Abuse terrain so that Karin is always the closest to Galzus, but she can always fly away to another location where she's still the closest but also remains out of Galzus's reach.

...Okay. That's strange. He isn't moving. He moved one turn, and now he's stopped. Well, I'm going to take advantage of the extra time I've been given, but I'm not going to assume he's staying there for good. Time to put my backup plan into action.

YEP! HE'S MOVING! AND THANK GOODNESS I ACCOUNTED FOR THOSE DAMNED MOVEMENT STARS.

Galzus made a beeline for Karin, and with unshakeable faith in my flawless leadership, she stood there and smiled as Galzus's sword stopped an inch before her nose after a 14-movement sprint. Good thing there's a limit of one activation of movement stars per turn, or this would still have been an insane gamble.

Bizarrely, he procced his movement stars again on the next turn, but didn't actually move again afterwards. Oh well. Mission accomplished. I now have all the time in the world, as Galzus is busy chasing Karin back and forth around a wall, always just out of his maximum potential reach.

I love doing this.

Anyway, with Galzus safely neutralized by my brilliant strategic cowardice, all of the houses full of people grateful for all the children I rescued are mine to visit at my leisure, as long as I make sure Karin's always the closest unit to Galzus at any time.

...Except no, Galzus just arbitrarily decides that he's not going to chase Karin anymore, and makes a beeline for my main force. Meaning I'm fucked.

...But no, wait, if he changed his mind for no reason once, maybe he can do it again! So I tried again, and yes, he ran after Karin again. I had to put her in his movement star range to do it, but thankfully it paid off when that didn't activate. I can't get complacent, but I can get everyone out of here alive. Especially since apparently one of my rewards for saving the civilians was that they opened the southern door for me without a key.

Galzus's movement seems to be entirely random. There seems to be some RNG in place as to whether or not he'll even move at all. But now he's in a position where even if he refuses to be baited and activates all the movement stars in the world forever, I can get everyone out, with all the treasures, before he can touch us. And we get a master seal, a vial of holy water (that the dialogue strangely suggests has more than one use even though it doesn't), a new axe knight named Hicks, a paragon manual, a rapier and the Odo Scroll (here strangely called the “Od's Scroll”, which I think is a really dumb name).

Now let's get the fuck out of here.

So it seems that Galzus is Shanan's cousin, and if so, holy shit did the main branch of the Isaachian royal family lose out on physical fitness genetics. Galzus looks like a way better unit than Shanan. In addition to having more well-rounded stats, he has viable 1-2 range with both axes and magic swords. And having capped strength, skill and speed... I can scarcely visualize the carnage that would ensue if this fucker got his hands on the Balmung.

Also, in a pretty interesting part of the conversation, it seems that Raydrik is well aware that there's something a little shady about Galzus's loyalties, but needs Galzus's strength too much to risk calling him out on the fact that he likely killed Mareeta's guards and helped her escape. They're keeping that to themselves... for now.

And with that... we're done! That was a pretty fun chapter! True, revealing that there's a time limit a mere handful of turns before time is up was a somewhat shitty move, but hey, I managed to buy myself infinite time using nothing but sheer strategy, so I personally wouldn't consider it unfair for someone who knows what they're doing at least. In hindsight, I think that strange behavior where Galzus briefly gave up on Karin might have had to do with where I placed her on the wall, and that it might not have been arbitrary after all. I think this strategy might be repeatable!

So yeah, I like this chapter! It was especially fun to finally get to use the mounts of the four riders I first got to know on foot.

...I just have to make sure I never forget how much it limited their use indoors, because that's always going to be looming over their heads.

Man I hate what the dismount system does to final chapters.

[Eltosian Kadath]

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

It's curious that Leif blames the empire for his parents' deaths, and not Trabant and South Thracia.

I wonder if this is a case of the Japanese implying parental figures, and not the actual parents themselves, as the nobles that shelter him prior to reaching Fiana were killed by the empire.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hooooooly shit. The Loptian Order and the Empire have been burning so many dissidents at the stake that the sky has actually become clouded black!? Is that what Augustus is saying!? I can't tell whether that's hilariously over-the-top or terrifying.

Huh, I do not remember them foreshadowing the Welken Rosen (I want to say they were the Schwarzen Rosen in the old translation) like that...

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Thankfully I already sorted out giving Fergus the brave sword, since he can use it and he kind of needs it to contribute due to being so underleveled. I really haven't been able to make good use of him indoors. That's gonna have to change now that he's on a horse.

That seems a little odd, as he tends to be one of the better riders for indoor maps, but I guess he starts in a less than ideal position.

 

59 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Galzus hasn't left the building. He's still here.

And on Raydrik's payroll.

And whatever his oh-so-mysterious reasons for saving Mareeta turn out to be, he seems to be willing to hunt us down and gut us like fish in the streets. Maybe I shouldn't have taken so long milking these bottlenecks. Because holy shit is this guy a menace. Half of his stats are capped, and everything else is within 5 ish points of capping, save for magic, which is still a very impressive (for this point in the game) 9. Not only that, but he has the Master Sword, which is a goddamned brave weapon (though strangely overall worse than an actual brave sword), basically guaranteeing that anyone I send to try to hold him off is going to wind up reduced to a fine red mist.

Fun fact, if you kill enough of the gladiators on the last chapter Galzus will appear. I want to say he is the 6th and final gladiator that can spawn. Also of note there are strats for trying to capture Galzus on this chapter, mostly involving having a character with low con and no equipment be in his range so he captures them and halves his stats to make dealing with him more manageable on player phase. I doubt I would risk it on an ironman run (unless I have a very blessed and overleveled Fergus with the brave sword).

 

34 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

(here strangely called the “Od's Scroll”, which I think is a really dumb name).

You got Fire Emblem Heroes to blame for that one, as one of Ayra's level up quotes had that as the "official" translation of Odo.

 

[Alastor15243]

20 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

 

I wonder if this is a case of the Japanese implying parental figures, and not the actual parents themselves, as the nobles that shelter him prior to reaching Fiana were killed by the empire.

Nah, I'm pretty sure when he said that he described watching Eyvel turning to stone as being like losing his mother all over again, so I think he was talking about Quan and Ethlin.

20 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

That seems a little odd, as he tends to be one of the better riders for indoor maps, but I guess he starts in a less than ideal position.

I found there were way too many armor knights for him to make himself useful with his mediocre attack without relying on Karin to bolster his PCC crit rate. He only has an attack of like 11 with an iron sword. Getting to keep the same weapon rank between indoors and outdoors sounds like it'll be handy, though.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

You managed to distract Galzus? Interesting, I didn't think that was possible and hurried to the escape in a tight but enjoyable fashion, with everything obtained. 

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So it seems that Galzus is Shanan's cousin, and if so, holy shit did the main branch of the Isaachian royal family lose out on physical fitness genetics. Galzus looks like a way better unit than Shanan. In addition to having more well-rounded stats, he has viable 1-2 range with both axes and magic swords. And having capped strength, skill and speed... I can scarcely visualize the carnage that would ensue if this fucker got his hands on the Balmung.

I forget how much is said in Thracia itself, but Galzus is the son of Ayra's unnamed elder half-sister. The fact he bears a brand means he is in fact a Major Odo to boot, as you seem to understand.

Rivough, Galzus's domain, was the "kingdom" within the greater Kingdom of Issach that I believe was actually responsible for the desecration of Darna that led to the Issach Campaign that kicked off FE4. Perhaps it was only in response to the Darna attack that Manaan, before he got assassinated that he attacked Rivough. Of course, Manfroy didn't want to the truth to come to light, and nobody knows if he actually manipulated Rivough into the Darna attack in the first place, sounds possible to me without any evidence though.

Assuming a politically arranged marriage instead of a love-based one for Ayra's half-sister, I wouldn't think Manaan would've destroyed Rivough if he didn't absolutely have to. You don't go handing your royal daughter to just anyone, you do it to secure alliances.

Also, don't forget Galzus has Astra and Luna, Ayra and Chulainn combined. The guy is insanely blessed.

 

Fun fact, Chapter 6 has a rather notable change if you didn't go to Chapter 4x.:

Ced and a generic Magi Squad shows up on turn 5 to help Leif escape, they'll fight until turn 9, at which point they'll start to flee, exit, the green arrow. So no help against the Cav reinforcements or Galzus.

-But this is totally not worth not getting Asbel unless you're a draft/LTC nut, even if magic swords can fill in him for him against the dreaded gates/thrones. Maybe it'd be more worth it if Ced kept Galzus from showing up- Forseti should be a match for him.

Ced and his generic soldier say only five lines total, and Leif none in response to this help. If Thracia ever gets remade, fix it so Ced always shows up here please, it sounds like a potentially dramatic addition. Difficulty won't be huge issue if he still leaves before the reinforcements arrive.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

Love your strategy for cheesing Galzus. The most common tactic I believe is to have him capture an unarmed unit, halving all his stats and then critting him with Grafcalibur. It's even possible to capture him this way. Though sadly that doesn't effect the story at all (killing him might though, not sure).

Galzus overall embodies one of the things I love most about Thracia. It is willing the play hardball with you. The game can and will send endgame level threats at you that you're meant to run away from but, if you play carefully you actually can deal with. It's not afraid of absolutely terrifying the player and putting them in a desperate situation. Galzus is the most evident example of this, but there often powerful promoted generics just hanging out on maps and a lot of bosses in defense maps you're simply not expected to kill (but can).

Also on why we were talking about before, I agree with you on the lore aspect of the lopt sword. It kind of stinks of rehash of the significantly more prominent lopt time and really muddles the power levels. Honestly I wish they just didn't include it. There's other ways to make Raydrik threatening. The Blagi sword isn't even a prf weapon for Leif, four characters can use it (and by all rights three more should be able to as well). Though it might come in useful if the ever but Delmud in Heroes with its "every character in the series must have a personal weapon" mandate.

[Alastor15243]

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

Love your strategy for cheesing Galzus. The most common tactic I believe is to have him capture an unarmed unit, halving all his stats and then critting him with Grafcalibur. It's even possible to capture him this way. Though sadly that doesn't effect the story at all (killing him might though, not sure).

Galzus overall embodies one of the things I love most about Thracia. It is willing the play hardball with you. The game can and will send endgame level threats at you that you're meant to run away from but, if you play carefully you actually can deal with. It's not afraid of absolutely terrifying the player and putting them in a desperate situation. Galzus is the most evident example of this, but there often powerful promoted generics just hanging out on maps and a lot of bosses in defense maps you're simply not expected to kill (but can).

Also on why we were talking about before, I agree with you on the lore aspect of the lopt sword. It kind of stinks of rehash of the significantly more prominent lopt time and really muddles the power levels. Honestly I wish they just didn't include it. There's other ways to make Raydrik threatening. The Blagi sword isn't even a prf weapon for Leif, four characters can use it (and by all rights three more should be able to as well). Though it might come in useful if the ever but Delmud in Heroes with its "every character in the series must have a personal weapon" mandate.

Yeah, I have to say it felt super satisfying to find a way to deal with Galzus. I might have tried the capture strategy, but I didn't know if that keeps him from being recruitable later. I see his name on the growth rates list and even if I hadn't, I've been spoiled on some things. So I figured trying to fight him was too big of a risk. Now though, I'm kind of wishing I managed to get my hands on that Master Sword.

As for the Loptian Fang, yeah. It's a really bizarre thing to put in, and honestly feels like an attempt to make Raydrik like Hardin unnecessarily.

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, I have to say it felt super satisfying to find a way to deal with Galzus. I might have tried the capture strategy, but I didn't know if that keeps him from being recruitable later. I see his name on the growth rates list and even if I hadn't, I've been spoiled on some things. So I figured trying to fight him was too big of a risk. Now though, I'm kind of wishing I managed to get my hands on that Master Sword.

As for the Loptian Fang, yeah. It's a really bizarre thing to put in, and honestly feels like an attempt to make Raydrik like Hardin unnecessarily.

Galzus is recruitable, but his growth rates are actually just pasted from another unit's as he's already level 20 promoted.

[Shadow Mir]

14 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hard, probably. But once "hard" stops being the hardest difficulty in these games, choosing which difficulty to play to best assess a game's "difficulty" score is going to be annoying, especially since in some cases, the hardest difficulty mode wasn't exactly the best-designed one. Also, I was into Awakening for long enough that I know full well how to break the game in half even on non-plus Lunatic difficulty, but the idea of grading the game on Lunatic+ sounds both utterly insane and also likely to make certain other categories of the game suffer.

I would say Binding Blade is one of those games where the hardest difficulty was not well-designed. But then again, I think Binding Blade in general wasn't well-designed...