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

[Ottservia]

58 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

..Though I think they don't actually get officially named Risen until next chapter, and Alexandria's actually going to express unfamiliarity with the term, so it can't have already been introduced to her offscreen. But we'll see.

This is actually addressed in the European versions of the game where instead of “risen” it’s “bandits”

 

58 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

But anyway, Frederick explains that “the council” (whatever the fuck that is) decided to call the zombies “Risen”. I wonder what that was like. What sorts of names did they throw in and throw out before settling on Risen? Seems like an amusingly petty thing for a royal council to be doing, which kinda makes me want to see it.

 

There’s actually a funny comic about this in the art book. Chrom initially wanted to call them “Hell’s missionaries” apparently.

 

57 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Man, the music in this game is just top fucking notch. I can't decide whether I prefer this soundtrack or Fates'. It's a really close call.

 

Hiroki Morishita is a goddamn genius honestly. There’s a reason Id purpose is probably my final boss theme in any video game I’ve played. It’s just that amazing not just for Fire Emblem but just for gaming as a whole. There’s also “don’t speak her name” and I don’t think I need to explain why that one’s a banger.

 

56 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Is that why Lucina interfered here? To save him? ...No, that can't be it. He can't die here, because he dies later in the bad future timeline. Would it have just been another grave injury, like the one Lucina later says Chrom was supposed to suffer during the assassination she stopped?

 

In the comic anthology it’s implied that she just wants to fight him to test herself. The reason she’s here at all was to make sure the gemstone was fine then she got caught so it’s like I guess it was more so “I’m here so why not” kinda thing at least that’s what the comic implies anyway. 
 

Also yeah Awakening’s cutscene work is goddamn stellar. Studio Anima are amazing with blending 3G cg animation with that stylized 2D anime aesthetic. The choreography in the fights are amazing too. Also the art style is also really faithful to Kozaki’s artsyle and it’s something I appreciate. Speaking of animation studios. Did you know Madhouse helped work on this game? Yeah they helped with the generic npc enemy and villager designs. I think they also did some armor designs too but I’m not 100% on that. Still, it’s a little interesting fact. But oh man if Madhouse were the ones to work on those cutscenes now that would’ve been a treat.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Ottservia

[Shadow Mir]

On 12/14/2020 at 5:18 PM, Alastor15243 said:

The game it seems everyone has an opinion on, and none of those opinions are neutral.

Uhhh, tbf, I think that could be said of quite a bit of the series.

[Samz707]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

We're finally at the point where we can start playing DLC chapters! If I decide to tomorrow. Which I probably will. If you want me to keep playing without any grinding at all though, just focusing on low-man cheesing the shit out of this, please make your case.

Stay safe, everyone!

I am curious as to how you're supposed to "legitimately" beat most of the early chapters/side-missions but then again I'm on hard and you're on Lunatic so Im not sure if the same style of play even remotely happens in most chapters.

[Ottservia]

1 minute ago, Samz707 said:

I am curious as to how you're supposed to "legitimately" beat most of the early chapters/side-missions but then again I'm on hard and you're on Lunatic so Im not sure if the same style of play even remotely happens in most chapters.

Well as Someone who exclusively plays Lunatic to get through the early chapter(before dlc grinding becomes available) you just kinda rely on Avatar and Frederick pair up to pretty much solo everything at least that’s what I do. Avatar solo is basically mandatory on no grind runs simply because using other units doesn’t end well. On hard I just kinda don’t really think about it cause awakening’s map design isn’t the most intricate thing in the world. Hell I hardly ever use pair up in the early game simply because it’s not that required at least on hard. 

[Benice]

8 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

I am curious as to how you're supposed to "legitimately" beat most of the early chapters/side-missions but then again I'm on hard and you're on Lunatic so Im not sure if the same style of play even remotely happens in most chapters.

Having only played Awakening's earlygame thus far, (Up until ch. 7 or 8, I think?) I can say that I've found it to be a breeze on Hard. I haven't yet used Frederick other than as a pair-up bot, didn't use Sumia or Cordelia, am using Donnel and haven't done any grinding, so I'm not quite sure what's making it so difficult for you. The biggest problem I had was with saving Ricken and Maribelle, and even that wasn't too tough with Vaike+Lon'qu. What boon/bane did you give your Robin?

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

The only support of his I remember is his one with Miriel, where she does an in-depth, statistical analysis of his mediocrity, and... holy shit that love confession was pure cringe.

Stahl: There's one thing I'll never be average at, Miriel! Know what it is? Being in love with you!

Chriiiiiist.

And yet, her "slightly faster than every other male support" is with him. Which shouldn't be taken as "canon", but it is a tiny tiny tiny tiny nudge towards that.

[Samz707]

11 minutes ago, Benice said:

Having only played Awakening's earlygame thus far, (Up until ch. 7 or 8, I think?) I can say that I've found it to be a breeze on Hard. I haven't yet used Frederick other than as a pair-up bot, didn't use Sumia or Cordelia, am using Donnel and haven't done any grinding, so I'm not quite sure what's making it so difficult for you. The biggest problem I had was with saving Ricken and Maribelle, and even that wasn't too tough with Vaike+Lon'qu. What boon/bane did you give your Robin?

Can't remember my boon/bane.

I am actually trying to refrain from Abusing Robin (not that Robin isn't high level) and mostly use my non Robin/Frederick units. (Which required grinding, as for some reason enemies love to go and suicide on Frederick unless it's a healer, even if that healer is Libra with a Killer Axe, I have no idea how enemy agro works, for some reason on certain turns they just all dogpile Frederick and die on the same turn even though they'd do better against well, most of my army that's in range so 3-5-ish enemies would all target Frederick and die despite the rest of my army being in range, which ment Frederick got most of the EXP, since well I presumed the AI wouldn't try to dogpile the Jaigen, which did me no favours on any map where the enemy comes from more than one direction.)

I have gotten past that hurdle thanks to just waiting and grinding now though so it's actually smooth sailing at the moment.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Samz707

[Benice]

4 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

as for some reason enemies love to go and suicide on Frederick unless it's a healer

Wait, why not just pair him up so that enemies can't attack him? I think he gives +4 or 5 defense to everyone too, so he's a real asset even as a backpack.

[Samz707]

8 minutes ago, Benice said:

Wait, why not just pair him up so that enemies can't attack him? I think he gives +4 or 5 defense to everyone too, so he's a real asset even as a backpack.

I found myself needing him as my only unit that could consistently getting a quick-kill if I needed him to and the only durable one for a good while. (and it didn't occur to me to use the switch function at the time since I figured it'd be like separate and use up my turn..)

I sat down and waited for map spawns so my units are good now.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Samz707

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Yep, Alexandria didn't know what the term Risen means before this scene. So... probably could've timed that Lissa support better. They're usually better about this stuff.

They do the same sort of thing if you go after the Donnel paralogue at the first opportunity you have, where he laments the state of a war that doesn't actually start until that next story chapter.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Anyway though... time to empty out some of Alexandria's inventory into Frederick's so that when we get the iron sword and iron lance in a second, we won't have to drop them. Because apparently not having a battle preparations menu means that Chrom just doesn't have a convoy right now. Ugh.

Wow, do they really force you to drop items like tha-...wait a minute, does that mean you can force a reset if you have full inventory on the people that would get the door key drops, and decide to drop the keys?

[Alastor15243]

7 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Wow, do they really force you to drop items like tha-...wait a minute, does that mean you can force a reset if you have full inventory on the people that would get the door key drops, and decide to drop the keys?

Well combat prep starts in the chapter with the door keys, so I'm pretty sure you're able to use the convoy by then. Didn't check though.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh man that's still funny. Lissa holds Alexandria's nose to wake her up, and when she gets up she's all “RISEN! WOLVES! RISEN RIDING WOLVES!”

...Though I think they don't actually get officially named Risen until next chapter, and Alexandria's actually going to express unfamiliarity with the term, so it can't have already been introduced to her offscreen. But we'll see.

 

If I remember correctly, the European version (which was released several months later than the USA version and almost a year after the Japanese, much to my supreme agony) changes this line from Risen to Bandits for exactly this reason.

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

If I remember correctly, the European version (which was released several months later than the USA version and almost a year after the Japanese, much to my supreme agony) changes this line from Risen to Bandits for exactly this reason.

Smart move, though "Risen Riding Wolves" has more of a ring to it to me.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Oh, speaking of which, I just got access to the bonus box and renown awards! This is basically a bunch of free shit, and a bunch of shit you get by increasing your cumulative “score” in the game over multiple playthroughs, respectively. I've got 9,000 renown, granting me everything but the four most expensive prizes. This nets me... an unfathomable treasure trove of valuable items, and trust me. If you're tackling Lunatic+? You're gonna need them.

 

Ah, so unlike me, you haven't spent several hours buying and dismissing Wolt to grind up renown. What rewards are you missing from that? The highest one is the Emblem Emblem or something, but I think the second highest is boots which is pretty damn useful, especially right at the start of the game (the main boots from the game you don't get until Pheros if my memory is right, which is super late, at least depending on how quick you are doing paralogues). Can't remember what the third and forth rewards are.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Ah, so unlike me, you haven't spent several hours buying and dismissing Wolt to grind up renown. What rewards are you missing from that? The highest one is the Emblem Emblem or something, but I think the second highest is boots which is pretty damn useful, especially right at the start of the game (the main boots from the game you don't get until Pheros if my memory is right, which is super late, at least depending on how quick you are doing paralogues). Can't remember what the third and forth rewards are.

Judging by the silhouettes, some A rank lance and Naga's tear.

 

...Man I wish I had the equivalent of renown maxed out in Fates. Part of me wants to put some online visiting or battling thing in the playlog just to see if I can get that up more.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Judging by the silhouettes, some A rank lance and Naga's tear.

Hopping over to the wiki page instead of just expecting the universe to answer my questions, I see that that lance is Gradivus, as one might expect.

[Interdimensional Observer]

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Man I wish I had the equivalent of renown maxed out in Fates. Part of me wants to put some online visiting or battling thing in the playlog just to see if I can get that up more.

It might make things a wee too easy there. My only, incomplete, Conquest Lunatic Classic run used BP/VP rewards up to... 2000 maybe? I know I didn't get enough for that, much earlier than otherwise, Dragonstone+. For me, at first they were necessary due to stuff like Chapter 10, but later, maaaaybe it was cheating. So much good free stuff, including things like a Dual Yumi for Niles that you'd never get access to normally on CQ.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

It might make things a wee too easy there. My only, incomplete, Conquest Lunatic Classic run used BP/VP rewards up to... 2000 maybe? I know I didn't get enough for that, much earlier than otherwise, Dragonstone+. For me, at first they were necessary due to stuff like Chapter 10, but later, maaaaybe it made things too easy. So much good free stuff, including things like a Dual Yumi for Niles that you'd never get access to normally on CQ.

Still, it would be nice to have access to it for fun. But it seems only people who were big on youtube when Fates came out had any chance of getting max VP and BP without a ridiculous amount of grinding. Though I did get a pretty great amount from the people visiting due to Dakota's War Journal...

Edited December 16, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Alastor15243]

Awakening Day 3: Champions of Yore 1

Okay, so, here's the deal: I don't want to keep up my pace of doing three chapters a day, obviously. That would be utterly ridiculous, and probably burn me out of this game at an astonishing pace. But I can't just play this game with just Miriel and the royal family. So the plan remains to try to do that DLC idea to train up some other units and see if that makes the game slightly more interesting. Obviously Chrom and Alexandria aren't ever going to die, but keeping everyone else alive might be an interesting challenge once I've trained some more guys up.

Okay, so let's check out this leftover story scene from after I got the save prompt.

...Ah yes. This is where Phila tells Chrom and Emmeryn that...

...hang on...

...where's Alexandria?

Isn't she the POV character?

...No, shit, wait, they have taken the POV away from her before. Like for that crazy forest explosion scene. And also of course for scenes in enemy bases... but doesn't Alexandria later imply she sees these cutscenes as prophetic dreams unknowingly drawn from Grima's memories? I mean you could argue why she'd see scenes with, say, Aversa or Validar in them thanks to Grima... but why would Grima see Walhart talking to Excellus, for example?

I guess I'll have to see what when it happens.

But yeah, anyway, Gangrel kidnapped Maribelle and lied about her invading Plegia. And... yeah, I think I'm gonna have some criticisms about how utterly useless and terrible a ruler Emmeryn is if I remember things correctly. Right now Emmeryn is so focused on avoiding subjecting her people to the horrors of war that she's letting Plegia constantly terrorize her people with impunity.

Oh man, Phila's “Please reconsider” is... not the best voice performance, honestly. For some reason it always stuck out to me like a sore thumb.

Ah yes, and now Ricken shows up, and Chrom tells him he's too young to be a Shepherd yet. Oh, so now you have standards for who gets to join, Chrom?

Ricken: “Be good”? Gods, how old does he think I am?

Ricken, I don't even know how old I think you are.

Weirdly, there's a green flash when the pink outrealm gate opens up. Weird, did they not even bother making a third type of “new location” flash for this?

But yeah, anyway, the DLC gate is open.

Ah yes, and now the barracks open up. It's basically “How's Everyone”, but with better visual effects, and characters can gain support points with people other than the avatar. Big improvement. But yeah, they have pre-set call-and-response lines for every part of multiple questions and answers they can say to each other, and while this was incredibly annoying in Radiant Dawn when that was all the entire support system was, here I actually find it kind of cute because there's a whole fleshed-out support system accompanying it, and also they sometimes have some pretty amusing lines.

Though Lon'qu and Cherche's “lovers” dialogue is unintentionally hysterical.

Lon'qu: I love you, Cherche. ...Don't make me say it twice.

Cherche: I love you, too. ...Now say that again.

Okay, one thing I find annoying about the barracks that I totally forgot is how long they make you wait between “events”. You have to wait for them to slowly walk on and slowly walk off. Let's see if I can press start to skip it.

...Oh yes, I forgot. Sometimes an event can give you nothing, and they'll just say something to themselves.

...Nope, can't press start to skip that walking. Damn it. Okay, I probably won't be coming here very often. What a shame.

But I do like the randomized person on the bottom screen saying hi to you depending on what time of day it is.

...Ah yes.

And so it begins.

Chrom and Alexandria's support chain.

Oh sweet Jesus is this just peak animu mediocrity. It's just Alexandria suddenly being a violent tsundere for three consecutive conversations, throwing shit Chrom in every support, first for saying he's never thought of her as a woman and then proceeding to shove his foot deeper into his mouth, then for accidentally seeing her naked, then for her accidentally seeing him naked.

Yes. She's the one who walks in on him, and she's the one who starts throwing shit anyway.

I'm not even going to discuss this fucking support chain. The support between Chrom and the male avatar is so much better written, because it's completely different. They replaced an actually interesting conversation about Chrom's philosophy of who to trust... with ecchi anime hijinks.

Hey, genuine question for any female viewers who played this game and instantly saw Chrom as their hazubando and wanted to marry him:

...Did this conversation feel like it was even trying to pander to you? Because this feels like pandering... but not to women. I'm open to the possibility that I'm completely wrong owing to the whole “not being into dick” thing, but to me... it reads more like Chrom is the player avatar and the support's trying to pander to the male viewers for whom Robin is their waifu. I mean, you'd think, if this were going to be cliché anime pandering... it'd be cliché shoujo anime pandering. And hey, I've never consumed shoujo in my life, so for all I know this is a trope there too, but I dunno...

...something tells me that very few ladies' romantic fantasies with their dream guy involve throwing sharp objects at him.

Anyway, time to get my 90 dollars worth with this game and play the 50 bucks of DLC.

...In fairness, that's way, way less than I paid for Path of Radiance.

Alright, and now we're introduced to Old Hubba, the creepy old pervert who was somehow left responsible for the cards containing the imprints of the souls of spacetime's most celebrated heroes. I'm not gonna make any more comment about him unless he says something funny.

...Which he probably will. Because this is Awakening.

So, the theme of this appears to be “boys vs. girls”. We've got Marth, Alm and Ike on my side, fighting against all the various leading ladies of the previous games, whether they be main characters like Micaiah, Lyn and Celica, supporting protagonists like Elincia, the male leads' love interests like Nanna and Caeda...

...Or sexy lamps like Eirika.

Anyway, let's check out how strong these enemies are so we can gauge what to do aaaaaaaaand these guys are way too strong to be training beginning units on holy shit. Not even Alexandria can take these fuckers yet.

 

Day 3 New Plan: Paralogue 1

Yeah, so fuck that. Champions of Yore isn't nearly as easy as I remember. Looks like we won't be doing that quite yet.

I'm just gonna do the paralogue and have that be it for today.

Oh, also, Alexandria has a second seal. If this were Lunatic+, I'd be using it right away to reclass her into Mercenary and then bow knight to make sure she can get bowbreaker for her to use as a dark flier. But since we're not doing Lunatic+, but Lunatic ironman... that's not nearly as tempting of a decision. Instead, I'm going to give her the next master seal I get and then immediately reclass her into dark flier. Hopefully I get that master seal soon though. When is the first master seal...?

...Oh dear, Chapter 8? I mean that's pretty close by Fire Emblem standards, but... not close enough.

...I'll check out how tough the enemies are in the next few chapters and see how badly I need Alexandria to keep gaining stats.

Anyway, on to the paralogue.

...Yep, just as was pointed out in the thread. Chrom talks about a war that hasn't officially happened yet in this conversation with Donnel, the game's resident Est. This game started the tradition of giving the Ests the skill aptitude to make sure you know they have amazing growth rates, and having them join really early, though still starting off way worse than the rest of your army.

While it's nice that they spell out that their growths are amazing, it would be nice if they gave us a way to work out what everyone's growths are without consulting a guide? Please?

But anyway, apparently the boss of this map killed Donnel's father. Which is weird, because he doesn't seem to know that, even though it happened... well actually they don't say when the bandits were last in this village, so maybe it happened when Donnel was really young, but assuming it makes sense for him to not know...

...I actually kind of like this trope. It doesn't have a page on TV Tropes, but it's what I like to call the Oblivious Avenger. Somebody who winds up getting revenge on someone who wronged them without even realizing how personal the fight was. Like when Tarzan kills Sabor to save his people without even knowing she was the one who killed his human parents and his adoptive family's original child.

Anyway, Donnel sucks now, but if we can get him going, he'll be absolutely ridiculous and totally worth it on any difficulty other than Lunatic+. On that difficult he's sadly almost totally worthless due to the increased difficulty of babying him and also the horrible things counter will do to him and his lack of options for countering other Lunatic+ skills (namely pavise).

...Alright, so, main priority here is training up some weaker units. And if I want to recruit Donnel, I have to get him at least one level up. This is trivially easy, because there's an archer guarding the treasure room, and you can just back him into a corner and have Donnel give him death by a thousand cuts.

I'm gonna rush upwards to take out these three enemies by my starting location, then I'm gonna work out what to do with the rest. There's a thief who will make a break for the treasure room, but he won't steal the treasure I actually need, so I'm not going out of my way to do this quickly. There's valuable experience to be gained here.

Okay, so, turn one, I have Frederick use Sigurd's Lance on the thief. Then Miriel uses Celica's Gale on the barbarian, and Alexandria uses thunder on the archer. Sumia was standing by in the event that either of the latter two failed to finish them off, which turned out to be necessary for the archer because Chrom didn't dual strike once despite a 40% chance each time. Sumia gained HP, magic, skill, speed and defense. The speed and defense are greatly appreciated at this point in the game.

Yep, and Miriel, with Lon'qu's help for the speed bonus, kills the barbarian with Celica's Gale. Fun fact about brave weapons in this game: dual strikes can proc on either of the two brave attacks. And if your dual strike partner has a brave weapon... they attack twice for their dual strikes.

Meaning that if you have two units paired up with brave weapons... you can attack a total of twelve fucking times in a single round of combat. Four from the main unit, and eight from the rear unit.

Anyway, Miriel got HP, magic, skill, defense and resistance. She's getting a surprising amount of defense, honestly. And after that dracoshield, she might actually reach the point where she can take two hits eventually!

I've been managing to get Sumia some more chip kills, and I'm hoping to get her up to at least one-rounding capacity soon.

...I really wish I took that javelin off Kellam and gave it to Sumia. It would be so useful here.

Anyway, I have Sumia ferry Frederick through the trees to snipe the lower thief with Sigurd's Lance again so we don't have to worry about what aggros him, and we get a chest key. The archer in the treasure room has the other one. The one we'll want to back into a corner.

...Oh shit.

I totally misread where a forest tile was.

I just switched back to Sumia when she was in range of an archer.

...Man, and the rescue staff is just in that treasure room.

And of course this game didn't bring back many of the FE5-FE10 features that the Archanea remakes threw out, so right now I have no means to get Sumia out of the way after she's already moved.

...I only have one option to save Sumia, and it might not even work: have Sully sacrifice herself. Take Sumia's lances away, give them to Sully, and then have Donnel drop her on the forest. If the barbarian attacks first, then he'll see Sully as a more tempting target because she has less avoid, and then the archer will also see the now-wounded Sully as the more tempting target to try a one-hit kill on...

...except that Sully can't take even one hit from the barbarian before snuffing it without equipping a sword, and that'd give her more avoid than Sumia against this axe wielder, meaning he'd definitely go for Sumia and then the archer would have no reason to go for Sully instead of Sumia...

...Nothing else for it. All I can do is hope for a dodge or a dual guard.

...Yep, that would've killed Sully in vain, because the archer is attacking first.

FUUUUUUCK.

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

OH MY GOD.

SHE DODGED.

HOLY SHIT!

91% HIT RATE, 98.47% TRUE HIT, AND SHE DODGED.

1.53% CHANCE.

I DO NOT DESERVE THIS, BUT I AM ROLLING WITH IT.

LEVEL UP. HP. MAGIC. SPEED. LUCK. DAMN RIGHT YOU'RE LUCKY SUMIA, AND SO AM I!

...Yeah, uh... about what just happened...

...that's one complaint I have about the 3D games. It's very hard to tell sometimes where forests and mountains are, especially on maps set at night.

Also, while it's of no consequences to me since he only ran off with a killer lance, I wish it were clearer where exactly the thief was trying to get to to escape.

Anyway, I plan on feeding the rest of this map, except for the one archer in the corner, to Sumia, because her life's been bought with my dignity, and intend to get my dignity's worth.

Sumia gets another level: HP, strength, skill and defense! Awesome, she needs that stuff and she needs it now. Pretty soon she'll be able to start one-rounding things.

...Aaaand I just remembered this game has ambush spawns, and that they're getting introduced next fucking chapter. Man, my army is screeeeeewed.

OOOH! We got a catharsis from an event tile! That's a more powerful version of a physic staff, just with fewer uses! I'll wanna put that on Lissa as soon as she has the weapon rank.

Alright, Donnel's got this in the bag. He's pinned the archer with some help from Sumia and Frederick, and now he's fighting him all on his own.

Donnel gets his level up, getting HP, strength, skill, speed and luck. Hardly the best that I've seen from him, but that's all he's getting for now, and possibly ever, because holy shit is he terrible in his base class, and unlike Mozu, we can't reclass him until level 10.

But after getting the chest key, he gets the vitally-important rescue staff, and Alexandria kills the boss, because his attack is so ludicrously high that nobody but Alexandria or Frederick stands a chance.

Aaaand the boss is down. And with that, the map is over. That's it for today, everyone. Like I said, I want to avoid pushing myself too hard for too long, so I'll stop at one today.

Stay safe, everyone!

[Shadow Mir]

On 12/15/2020 at 6:11 AM, Alastor15243 said:

The thing about Awakening is that more than any other game, beating the higher difficulties is less about coming up with good battle tactics, and more about knowing how to cheese it. I guarantee that if you did what I described doing, you'd have very little issue with Awakening Lunatic beyond the first two turns. So sure, try it, if it sounds interesting to you.

Also, I hold Lunatic+ in a simultaneously high and low regard. I'm very torn about it and I wish it were remotely realistic to playlog doing it so I could show you guys what it's like. It actually gets kind of cool after a while.

I don't know about you, but when you HAVE to cheese the game to have a ghost of a chance, I take that as a sign that the difficulty is poorly balanced, which Lunatic is, to say nothing of Lunatic+, which sounds like what you'd get when a pregnant mother drinks, smokes, and huffs paint during the pregnancy.

25 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

FUUUUUUCK.

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

OH MY GOD.

SHE DODGED.

HOLY SHIT!

91% HIT RATE, 98.47% TRUE HIT, AND SHE DODGED.

1.53% CHANCE.

I DO NOT DESERVE THIS, BUT I AM ROLLING WITH IT.

LEVEL UP. HP. MAGIC. SPEED. LUCK. DAMN RIGHT YOU'RE LUCKY SUMIA, AND SO AM I!

Oh my gah! That is mega lucky!

Edited December 16, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Ottservia]

32 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

it'd be cliché shoujo anime pandering. And hey, I've never consumed shoujo in my life, so for all I know this is a trope there too, but I dunno...

It kind of is actually. This trope of “guy walks in on naked girl who’s bathing” is about as old as anime itself. You see it a lot even in shoujo anime/manga. especially older ones. I think this trope is used even in things like Sailor Moon and Inuyasha both stories made by a female mangaka. It might even be in fma but I haven’t seen fma. 

 

37 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

No, shit, wait, they have taken the POV away from her before. Like for that crazy forest explosion scene. And also of course for scenes in enemy bases... but doesn't Alexandria later imply she sees these cutscenes as prophetic dreams unknowingly drawn from Grima's memories? I mean you could argue why she'd see scenes with, say, Aversa or Validar in them thanks to Grima... but why would Grima see Walhart talking to Excellus, for example?

This a video game with a visual novel esque presentation. PoV is not nearly as important here. It’s like complaining about the perspective shifts in movies or TV shows. I think it’s assumed in these cases that the PoV is third person omniscient.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

This a video game with a visual novel esque presentation. PoV is not nearly as important here. It’s like complaining about the perspective shifts in movies or TV shows. I think it’s assumed in these cases that the PoV is third person omniscient.

Yeah, but when it happens with a scene you'd think Robin would be in, it gets kinda jarring. Fair enough though.

 

[Silver-Haired Maiden]

57 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hey, genuine question for any female viewers who played this game and instantly saw Chrom as their hazubando and wanted to marry him:

...Did this conversation feel like it was even trying to pander to you? Because this feels like pandering... but not to women. I'm open to the possibility that I'm completely wrong owing to the whole “not being into dick” thing, but to me... it reads more like Chrom is the player avatar and the support's trying to pander to the male viewers for whom Robin is their waifu. I mean, you'd think, if this were going to be cliché anime pandering... it'd be cliché shoujo anime pandering. And hey, I've never consumed shoujo in my life, so for all I know this is a trope there too, but I dunno...

...something tells me that very few ladies' romantic fantasies with their dream guy involve throwing sharp objects at him.

Don't have a "hazubando" but I did play the female Robin and marry Chrom when I played through and it was just as bad to me as it was to you friend. No genuine connection happens, it's ridiculous, and just... bad.

[Samz707]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

But yeah, anyway, Gangrel kidnapped Maribelle and lied about her invading Plegia. And... yeah, I think I'm gonna have some criticisms about how utterly useless and terrible a ruler Emmeryn is if I remember things correctly. Right now Emmeryn is so focused on avoiding subjecting her people to the horrors of war that she's letting Plegia constantly terrorize her people with impunity.

Yeah Emmeryn is just IMO a very bad ruler, maybe there's a reason when she turns out to have survived splatting her brains over the rocks they just let Chrom remain ruler.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

and Chrom tells him he's too young to be a Shepherd yet. Oh, so now you have standards for who gets to join, Chrom?

 

Who knows, maybe if Ricken was a hot-anime waifu he'd have let her join up.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Ah yes, and now the barracks open up. It's basically “How's Everyone”, but with better visual effects, and characters can gain support points with people other than the avatar. Big improvement. But yeah, they have pre-set call-and-response lines for every part of multiple questions and answers they can say to each other, and while this was incredibly annoying in Radiant Dawn when that was all the entire support system was, here I actually find it kind of cute because there's a whole fleshed-out support system accompanying it, and also they sometimes have some pretty amusing lines.

Eh, I'm not the biggest fan, it just sorta comes off as highly robotic and doesn't quite work for me.

Doesn't help I tend to get repeating dialogue, alot, I got the one about "Vaike not having an off day" where he walks by himself twice in a row and I frequently get characters repeating dialogue they just said to someone in the previous event.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

I'm not even going to discuss this fucking support chain. The support between Chrom and the male avatar is so much better written, because it's completely different. They replaced an actually interesting conversation about Chrom's philosophy of who to trust... with ecchi anime hijinks.

Yeah I got Female-Robin/Chrom support right away on my first playthrough and well, it left a very negative impression on the support system as a whole for me,  I still think it's pretty terrible, I am a dude admittingly but I just really don't see how that leads to romance.(Same with Sumia and Chrom, I got them paired up to spare myself from the potential of getting shotgun-lance wedding'd to Chrom and Chrom basically sounds like he's only marrying her due to pie in their support conversation.)

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Yep, just as was pointed out in the thread. Chrom talks about a war that hasn't officially happened yet in this conversation with Donnel, the game's resident Est. This game started the tradition of giving the Ests the skill aptitude to make sure you know they have amazing growth rates, and having them join really early, though still starting off way worse than the rest of your army.

Ah yes, Donnel, I totally didn't get soft-locked on my first playthrough thinking he'd get good fast and not realizing I wouldn't be able to grind in that Arena.

Nope.

Honestly their recruitment convo just bothers me since Chrom equates harvesting (I think it was wheat? something you use a sickle for I'm fairly certain) to killing a dude, which isn't exactly true and it just sorta makes me wonder who's dumb, Chrom for actually believing what he's saying, or Donnel for believing what Chrom's saying. (And then they give him a lance anyway.)

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Samz707

[Ottservia]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

But yeah, anyway, Gangrel kidnapped Maribelle and lied about her invading Plegia. And... yeah, I think I'm gonna have some criticisms about how utterly useless and terrible a ruler Emmeryn is if I remember things correctly. Right now Emmeryn is so focused on avoiding subjecting her people to the horrors of war that she's letting Plegia constantly terrorize her people with impunity.

And that’s kinda the point. I mean like the story does acknowledge that she’s somewhat wrong for being so pacifistic. I mean she does die as a result of being so selfless after all. Sure her death ultimately leads to good things but the overall point being made here is that her inaction is what causes a lot of these problems and it’s only after she does take action(I.e. killing herself to save someone she cares about) that good things finally come of her ideals. Hell just before she jumps she says “No reaction, was I wrong then?” This is further compounded when Chrom kills Gangrel. He doesn’t kill Gangrel out of revenge or bitterness but rather as a prince in service to his nation. In the end he’s able to do what Emmeryn could not and that is fight on behalf of his people. Fight not out of bitterness or hate but because it is the right thing to do.