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1 minute ago, Etrurian emperor said:

To Shadow Dragon's credit its at least an interesting scenario for the lord's campaign to actually end in failure and forces them to retreat. I think only really Radiant Dawn and maybe Azure Moon try to pull that off too. Of course Shadow Dragon being Shadow Dragon makes it less impactfull then it should be. In Radiant Dawn Ike's army gets defeated by Zelgius who both shows the intellect to see Skrimir as the weak link and the martial power to defeat him in combat. But no one really defeats Marth. Neither Camus nor Michalis came to defeat Marth who is instead defeated by random Grust soldiers without much more said on the matter then ''Sir its too dangerous to stay here! Lets invade that neutral kingdom over there!'' 

Marth again is forced to flee into the desert after Hardin shows up personally in Mystery of the Emblem.

Sigurd...yeah his entire campaign definitely fails in the end. But even before chapter 5, Chapter 3 is an utter failure for Sigurd personally with Agustria getting subjugated entirely and Sigurd himself being branded a traitor. Of course for Sigurd those are political failures more than military failures. Forturenately for Jugdral we also have-

Leif, who might as well have the game Failure 776. Because that kids fails hard and often. He gets kidnap in the first handful of chapters, has his mother killed, tries to save all his friends at Tara only to have it conquered and force him to flee again, then finally reclaims his castle and tries to kick Bloom out of his country only to lose his mentor and put his army at risk. Tries to defend his own castle from attack but can't hold them off on his own and has to be bailed out by his cousin. The only real military success that Leif has in the long term is at the very end of the game.

Roy's initial campaign ends in success, but in the inverse of Sigurd's situation it's political success with military failure. He outright can't defeat Bern by himself and has to depend on his connections with Etruria. Nonetheless it is a moment of victory for him.

Eliwood fails to save his father. I don't really have much to say beyond that.

Ephraim's initial attempt to fight back against Grado fails off screen in Sacred Stones. Bit mitigated by him taking a castle with three soldiers though. Eirika fares a bit better when it comes to failure, failing to really rescue Ephraim and getting caught in a trap where she needs him to bail her out. Then, while she does eventually get to Rausten it is a bit of a failure as she gets waylaid so much Ephraim has conquered the entirety of Grado in the meantime so their help in that becomes a bit moot.

You've already mentioned Ike in Radiant Dawn, but Micaiah too faces a situation where, while it's never resolved, she faces a situation where she has absolutely no hope of success without dues ex machina. Path of Radiance is pretty traditional though. Can't think of any real failures there for Ike. Even Greil dying can't be laid at Ike's feet at all.

Awakening...Hmm well Lucina certainly failed to save her future. I think they get pushed back a little bit during the Valm arc too. Emmeryn's death is a bit of a failure too even though it helps them win the war.

Fates we have failing to save a parent again. Can't think of anything in terms of military though.

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On 10/15/2020 at 2:41 AM, Shadow Mir said:

Honestly, I can't quite agree with Genealogy having better balance than RD - for what it's worth, RD does manage to avoid mount domination, while most of the infantry units are all but invalidated in Genealogy because the bloated maps pretty much ensure the foot units can consider themselves lucky to contribute in a remotely meaningful fashion. And that's not even getting into the laughable weapon balance, or Pursuit, or even Holy Blood.

You may have a point. The weapon balance in Genealogy is genuinely stonk bonkers, as are the skills, definitely worse than Radiant Dawn there. But Radiant Dawn probably has unequivocally the worst-balanced cast in the entire series, with only Revelation being a possible exception. no games but those can really compete when it comes to the sheer number of units that are nigh-unusable garbage. But given that Binding Blade's not-as-bad-but-still-unfortunate cast balance wasn't enough to stop me from praising the stuff it did well, I'm trying to gauge whether this judgment is being consistent.

 

Shadow Dragon Day 11: Chapter 10

Man, the worst part about losing a key unit in an ironman is when you start thinking about how it happened and wonder if you could have saved them.

I realized shortly after posting yesterday that when I realized Sedgar was in peril, I still had Lena available to warp (I distinctly remember wondering whether her physic could help; it couldn't), and I'm wondering if it would've been possible to block off one of the hammer users from Sedgar with a more expendable unit in exchange for his life. Maybe Jeorge (though he wound out pulling a surprising amount of weight with that silver bow). Or maybe I couldn't do that without risking both him and Sedgar. Alas, I don't have a photographic memory, so I guess that question will just have to haunt me forever. But I'll keep it in mind as an option if anything ever goes catastrophically wrong again.

Anyway, re-reading old entries made me remember that cool thing in FE7 where clicking on a shop during battle prep will tell you what you can buy there. This doesn't have that, sadly. I just checked.

Looks like this chapter had a lot of its enemy and player placement altered to make it more interesting. Most notably... you start waaaaaay closer to the entrance of the building in this one. In the original your army was clustered towards the north of the eastern wall of the building, and you had to spend several turns running towards it before anything notable happened. Here, however, you start clustered towards the south of it.

Still though, gotta hurry. Not sure how Minerva's gonna behave in this one, so I've gotta recruit Maria quickly and then talk to her as soon as I possibly can.

Alright, turn 2, and I have my first taste of the apparently extremely popular tactic of trading a forged ridersbane around to one-shot a bunch of cavalry. Works pretty well! Of course that's just the warmup. The real danger is the troop of fliers coming, with the dracoknights coming first. My plan is to have Jagen bait them in and then kill them with Merric and Jeorge. Meanwhile, everyone else is rushing in to get to the prison room before Minerva arrives.

Merric miraculously has exactly enough HP to survive both of the pegasus knights bringing up the rear, which I made sure to check before coming up with the above plan, so he'll be fine. Jeorge is significantly bulkier and will obviously survive too.

Seems like enemy thieves in this game are programmed to only open one chest each. Curious, but good to know. I suspected that was the case, and I didn't want to waste a warp staff to kill to thief early. Yes, that would've guaranteed whatever was in the chest, but I didn't know if it'd be worth it, and I'd have been depriving myself of useful information to judge how fair the game is with regards to treasure.

We've got another silver bow for Jeorge, and he hasn't even gotten halfway through the first one.

Aaaaaaand here come the reinforcements. Horsemen, cavalry and knights from the northeast corner.

I'm missing Sedgar already.

I'm sending Wolf over to help defend the bottleneck, but in the meantime I'm having Abel wall off the south entrance until he can arrive, with Lena and Wendell helping out with healing. I'm also having Jeorge do some chip damage on the horseman as a head start, because he can.

Oh shit, Minerva's moving because I just recruited Maria. I'm hoping she doesn't attack, but just in case, I've gotta get this sorted out quick. Time to do something a bit dangerous.

I'm gonna bane-chain this entire conga line of cavalry that formed after I blocked the entrance with Wolf.

Really, only the horsemen had enough evasion to make this even slightly scary. The cavalry, with their swords, don't stand a chance.

Hardin and Cain both level from it, gaining some much-needed speed.

...There's a second wave coming. Jesus.

Hopefully Minerva won't attack, but I've got things set up so nothing catastrophic will happen if she does, so I might as well find out.

Yep, she doesn't attack, she just gets as close as she can.

Alright, she's been recruited, and I'm setting up bane-chain number two. However... by the sounds of it, the Whitewings won't join you if you didn't recruit Minerva, and, like... that seems... I mean obviously storywise it makes sense, but do you really wanna gate 2/3 of the player's potential air force (which is 5 fliers in total plus one reclass to a flier) behind a single event?

Just to be safe (and to get Marth some much-needed promoted unit experience), I have Marth take down the wounded horseman with his much-more-accurate rapier, rather than gambling on an 83% attack that could ruin the entire bane-chain. Incidentally, I checked earlier this chapter and didn't think to mention this but really should: forging cost is based on the cost of a weapon when it's full. Forging a half-broken weapon doesn't give you a discount. Good to know.

This chapter has almost single-handedly brought my forged ridersbane down to half durability. Honestly, given how much it cost and how deadly it is, it's probably a big candidate for hammerne use when I finally get that thing, so I'm gonna save it. Same goes for any other weapons I forge.

Also, I got our second physic from the second chest, and that reminds me: we get our first master seal here. We've got a couple of candidates at the moment, the biggest being Lena, Merric and Caeda. Caeda would get ludicrous power and bulk boosts while Lena would gain the ability to actually use tomes with her pretty decent offensive stats. Merric would conversely gain staff utility, which would be a great thing to work on sooner. Of them, only Lena has reached the ideal level of 15 (the point where, in this game, leveling after promotion is actually faster than leveling before), but the other two are close enough that I might be able to get one of them there by the end of the level.

Alright, so, I'm sending Wolf towards the shops, to, well, shop. Just in case those forts...

...Those... forts?

I could've sworn there were forts there in FE1, and that they had reinforcements.

...Yes. There was one fort on the western half of the map in FE1. It's been removed, leaving only the one to the east that hasn't done anything yet and shows no signs of doing anything ever. I guess to add in the more challenging but also more out-of-the-way reinforcements we got instead? And maybe to be less of a paranoia-inducing asshole?

...Honestly, aside from Chapter 7, the game's been surprisingly good so far about not forcing you to go near ambush spawn locations before they trigger. Chapter 7's really the only one that's actively tried to ambush me. And like... y'know... that's really my only complaint about ambush spawns, when they spawn in range of your units. So if this keeps up... I think this might get a really good ironmannability rating, shock of all shocks!

...Okay, well, I'm still sending Wolf down to go shopping.

I'm having Caeda take the rest of the exp for this chapter, what little remains, in the hopes that it gets her close enough to level 15 for my liking. If the next chapter looks like I'll need to make her do something dangerous, I won't wait the level or two to make it optimal, I'll just promote her on the prep screen. I've learned my lesson from Erk in Blazing Blade.

I got Wolf another level up with some chip damage on the boss, and for the first time ever, he failed to level up defense. Still, he's like 2 blessed in the stat, so I'm good. I'd like to keep it up though. Might be worth swapping him into general at this point to ensure it stays up there. Depends on what it makes his speed, and I guess what I need him to do.

...He might not need to keep his defense particularly high, though, given his crazy HP growth is giving him an insane amount of bulk to begin with.

Alright, Caeda got to level 14 with 65 experience. Like I said, I'll judge whether or not I should promote her next chapter.

Now let's seize.

Yet again, Marth only talks here because he talked in the original. That Manakete discussion seems to be the only exception so far.

...I also notice they got rid of the whole “Linde was sold to slave traders” thing. Guess they thought that was too dark for our sensitive minds.

Well, that's the end of the chapter. We'll pick this up tomorrow, then, and then I think we'll be having some weekend updates too! It definitely feels good going through a Fire Emblem game quickly.

Stay safe, everyone!

Edited by Alastor15243
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7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

You may have a point. The weapon balance in Genealogy is genuinely stonk bonkers, as are the skills, definitely worse than Radiant Dawn there. But Radiant Dawn probably has unequivocally the worst-balanced cast in the entire series, with only Revelation being a possible exception. no games but those can really compete when it comes to the sheer number of units that are nigh-unusable garbage. But given that Binding Blade's not-as-bad-but-still-unfortunate cast balance wasn't enough to stop me from praising the stuff it did well, I'm trying to gauge whether this judgment is being consistent.

I don't think Radiant Dawn's cast balance is really that terrible. Sure if you analyze it from the perspective of "What units are viable for the tower" a lot of them fall by the way side, but if it's "What units can positively contribute to the overall game" then a lot of them pass because of all the army splits. The likes of Danved and Meg might aren't great units, but they're free deployments who can be useful on those maps. Even if only as meat shields and shove bots. The only real units that get lost in the shuffle are the beast units in early part 3 when you have plenty of quality units to deploy already.

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Alright, she's been recruited, and I'm setting up bane-chain number two. However... by the sounds of it, the Whitewings won't join you if you didn't recruit Minerva, and, like... that seems... I mean obviously storywise it makes sense, but do you really wanna gate 2/3 of the player's potential air force (which is 5 fliers in total plus one reclass to a flier) behind a single event?

 

Don't forget Mercurius too. IN fact, it's even worse than not getting them if you don't recruit Maria and Minerva, if Minerva is dead they don't show up at all either! At least in the original Dark Dragon and the Blade of Light. Lost my bloody Mercurius because I didn't care enough to save Minerva in one chapter. Not recruiting them if Minerva didn't join you makes some sense, but if she's dead it's kind of stupid. She's already committed to Marth's cause. Do it in her name girls! I assume this was fixed in Shadow Dragon though, as I've done a playthrough of Shadow Dragon where I killed everyone for the sheer irony of Marth saying he couldn't have done it without his friends at the end of the game.

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Also, I got our second physic from the second chest, and that reminds me: we get our first master seal here. We've got a couple of candidates at the moment, the biggest being Lena, Merric and Caeda. Caeda would get ludicrous power and bulk boosts while Lena would gain the ability to actually use tomes with her pretty decent offensive stats. Merric would conversely gain staff utility, which would be a great thing to work on sooner. Of them, only Lena has reached the ideal level of 15 (the point where, in this game, leveling after promotion is actually faster than leveling before), but the other two are close enough that I might be able to get one of them there by the end of the level.

 

Not going to get that special internet to buy an Elysian Whip then?

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Just now, Alastor15243 said:

Hahahahahaha no.

I'm hoping to use it to buy other stuff, but seriously, especially for Caeda, I see almost no reason to not go draco.

I find novelty a perfectly acceptable reason. Though I question, is it possible to promote with an Elysian Whip and then class change to draco knight? How does that work?

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17 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I find novelty a perfectly acceptable reason. Though I question, is it possible to promote with an Elysian Whip and then class change to draco knight? How does that work?

I'd like to know that too. I can imagine multiple options:

1: It's like Fates and the item permanently adds Falcoknight to your reclass list.

2: It permanently replaces dracoknight with falcoknight on your reclass list.

3: You need to use the item every time you want to reclass back to Falcoknight.

4: After using it you can never reclass again.

 

The first two I consider far more likely than the last two.

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13 hours ago, Jotari said:

Marth again is forced to flee into the desert after Hardin shows up personally in Mystery of the Emblem.

Sigurd...yeah his entire campaign definitely fails in the end. But even before chapter 5, Chapter 3 is an utter failure for Sigurd personally with Agustria getting subjugated entirely and Sigurd himself being branded a traitor. Of course for Sigurd those are political failures more than military failures. Forturenately for Jugdral we also have-

Leif, who might as well have the game Failure 776. Because that kids fails hard and often. He gets kidnap in the first handful of chapters, has his mother killed, tries to save all his friends at Tara only to have it conquered and force him to flee again, then finally reclaims his castle and tries to kick Bloom out of his country only to lose his mentor and put his army at risk. Tries to defend his own castle from attack but can't hold them off on his own and has to be bailed out by his cousin. The only real military success that Leif has in the long term is at the very end of the game.

Roy's initial campaign ends in success, but in the inverse of Sigurd's situation it's political success with military failure. He outright can't defeat Bern by himself and has to depend on his connections with Etruria. Nonetheless it is a moment of victory for him.

Eliwood fails to save his father. I don't really have much to say beyond that.

Ephraim's initial attempt to fight back against Grado fails off screen in Sacred Stones. Bit mitigated by him taking a castle with three soldiers though. Eirika fares a bit better when it comes to failure, failing to really rescue Ephraim and getting caught in a trap where she needs him to bail her out. Then, while she does eventually get to Rausten it is a bit of a failure as she gets waylaid so much Ephraim has conquered the entirety of Grado in the meantime so their help in that becomes a bit moot.

You've already mentioned Ike in Radiant Dawn, but Micaiah too faces a situation where, while it's never resolved, she faces a situation where she has absolutely no hope of success without dues ex machina. Path of Radiance is pretty traditional though. Can't think of any real failures there for Ike. Even Greil dying can't be laid at Ike's feet at all.

Awakening...Hmm well Lucina certainly failed to save her future. I think they get pushed back a little bit during the Valm arc too. Emmeryn's death is a bit of a failure too even though it helps them win the war.

Fates we have failing to save a parent again. Can't think of anything in terms of military though.

Its not quite the same. I'm not necessarily talking about the lords facing setbacks but in particular about their military campaign failing. With Marth and Ike their armies are defeated and they are forced to retreat. Its painted as a real defeat. Ephraim's little venture into Grado isn't depicted as that. Sure he goes to Frelia but he also takes a castle with three men, defeats Valter's trap and saves Eirika. Even if his campaign halts its still depicted as just another part of Ephraims completely uninterrupted victory march. We're not supposed to think he's defeated, we're supposed to think he's amazing. 

Leif definitely got defeated in battle numerous time. Its seems to even be the trend rather than the exception. Poor guy. 

Its no wonder that you can't think of much in terms of military as far as Fates goes. Aside from Conquest the military side of things is barely present. In the other two routes Corrin and the Hoshidans can just go on a wild adventure while Nohr is still trampling all over Hoshido. Yukimura, the last named character who stuck around to defend Hoshido even goes ''Lol I let the capitol be defended by puppets'' when he joins. 

 

Edited by Etrurian emperor
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1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'd like to know that too. I can imagine multiple options:

1: It's like Fates and the item permanently adds Falcoknight to your reclass list.

2: It permanently replaces dracoknight with falcoknight on your reclass list.

3: You need to use the item every time you want to reclass back to Falcoknight.

4: After using it you can never reclass again.

 

The first two I consider far more likely than the last two.

Another question is does the new Falco Knight contribute to your number of wyvern knights in the army? Or by promoting a pegasus knight can you get a free extra promoted flier for other units to reclass to? Reclassing is done by "Number of characters you'd have of this class +1" So I assume every unit's default class is recorded, so if Shiida moves away from that class via promotion instead of reclass does it leave Falco Knight open? My base assumption is that the answer is number 2 and that for the purpose of reclassing other units, Falcon Knights and Wyvern Knights are one and the same. It's still a bit weird that they had this sort of singular DLC exclusive class (is DLC the right term? It is online but it's sort of free in terms of real money). Would have been cool if we got some other branched options for other classes like Dread Fighter for Myrmidon or something.

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5 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Its not quite the same. I'm not necessarily talking about the lords facing setbacks but in particular about their military campaign failing. With Marth and Ike their armies are defeated and they are forced to retreat. Its painted as a real defeat. Ephraim's little venture into Grado isn't depicted as that. Sure he goes to Frelia but he also takes a castle with three men, defeats Valter's trap and saves Eirika. Even if his campaign halts its still depicted as just another part of Ephraims completely uninterrupted victory march. We're not supposed to think he's defeated, we're supposed to think he's amazing. 

Oh I know. That's why I said his defeat is a bit mitigated by his four man squad and saving Eirika. In universe it definitely is a defeat though, but in narrative it's more "Look how awesome Ephraim is!" And I wasn't really trying to say you're wrong or anything by listing Marth and Ike as the only ones who were defeated, just examining how defeat is handled in each game with each lord (Roy and Sigurd being opposites is a particularly interesting dichotomy I stumbled on). 

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19 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'd like to know that too. I can imagine multiple options:

1: It's like Fates and the item permanently adds Falcoknight to your reclass list.

2: It permanently replaces dracoknight with falcoknight on your reclass list.

3: You need to use the item every time you want to reclass back to Falcoknight.

4: After using it you can never reclass again.

 

The first two I consider far more likely than the last two.

I'm fairly certain it's option 2. Also, whenever you don't get a recruitable unit, even if you didn't even go to their chapter in the case of the gaiden units, you still get their reclass slot, so you can still have 6 fliers even if you missed Minerva.

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Just now, Stones said:

I'm fairly certain it's option 2. Also, whenever you don't get a recruitable unit, even if you didn't even go to their chapter in the case of the gaiden units, you still get their reclass slot, so you can still have 6 fliers even if you missed Minerva.

Oh wow, that's... actually a huge improvement this game made then!

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6 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh wow, that's... actually a huge improvement this game made then!

Well...it's not really an improvement if no game before it had a feature where it was dependent on recruited unit.

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1 minute ago, Jotari said:

Well...it's not really an improvement if no game before it had a feature where it was dependent on recruited unit.

This change means that unlike FE1 and FE3B1, this game no longer locks 4/5 of your fliers behind a single recruitment.

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1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

This change means that unlike FE1 and FE3B1, this game no longer locks 4/5 of your fliers behind a single recruitment.

Ah, yeah from that perspective. Maybe one of the reasons they decided to implement class changing even.

2 hours ago, Stones said:

I'm fairly certain it's option 2. Also, whenever you don't get a recruitable unit, even if you didn't even go to their chapter in the case of the gaiden units, you still get their reclass slot, so you can still have 6 fliers even if you missed Minerva.

I assume the count doesn't go down if you get a unit killed then. Otherwise not recruiting would be better than recruiting. So then how does that work with Frey? Do you get an extra Paladin to play with in normal mode? Or in other modes is Frey (and I guess Norne?) counted from the start and your archers and cavaliers are essentially x+2 where x is the number you could theoretically have?

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24 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I assume the count doesn't go down if you get a unit killed then. Otherwise not recruiting would be better to recruiting. So then how does that work with Frey? Do you get an extra Paladin to play with in normal mode? Or in other modes is Frey (and I guess Norne?) counted from the start and your archers and cavaliers are essentially x+2 where x is the number you could theoretically have?

Yeah I just checked now and even if a unit dies you still keep their slot. As for Frey and Norne, you definitely get their slots on Normal which is the difficulty I just checked, but again I think you get them even on the other difficulties.

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13 minutes ago, Stones said:

Yeah I just checked now and even if a unit dies you still keep their slot. As for Frey and Norne, you definitely get their slots on Normal which is the difficulty I just checked, but again I think you get them even on the other difficulties.

I don't think you get theirs on hard. I only have two cav slots free after I made Jagen a dracoknight.

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Shadow Dragon Day 12: Chapter 11

Alright, so after noting that you can tap the map in the intro narration to advance the text (since this game has novelty touch-screen controls), I take a look at the map, and... two things:

1: Caeda can't safely get into Jake's range to recruit him without getting hit by his arrowspate shots... unless she has the extra mov afforded by dracoknights.

2: That fucking ominous circle of forts still gives me the heebie-jeebies even though it was a false alarm in the original since the reinforcements came out in the beginning.

3: There's a fuckton of mercenaries guarding that town. Not one of them was turned into a myrmidon, which makes me question if there's a single non-recruitable enemy myrmidon in the entire game.

Actually, that brings up an interesting point... In basically every other continuity that has them, myrmidons are characterized as being warriors native to this one specific place. In Jugdral it's Isaac, in Elibe it's Sacae, in Magvel it's Jehanna, in Awakening's Disneyland version of Archanea it's Chon'sin, and in Fateslandia it's Hoshido. Tellius, Archanea and... Owain are basically the only exceptions I can think of. I can't quite remember if any country was associated with them in Three Houses.

Anyway, this map is gonna be tricky. I remember the fliers that are gonna come in, so the plan is to have most of my army stand their ground in the southwest corner rather than try the utterly stupid move of trying to make a break for it through the northeast-diagonal mountain pass that won't actually get us any further away from the fuckers for several turns. My fliers and cavalry, who can actually make it, will go on ahead and try to deal with the enemies that'll be coming down the hill, and I'll try to get Caeda a level or two on these mercenaries and then promote her in time to recruit Jake.

Also, I notice that this game is the first to introduce the “merge” feature, where you can take two damaged items and add their durability together to make one better one, which means no more needing to sell a bunch of 3 or 6 use javelins!

Okay, so, I've decided that since Jagen is about to go from my toughest flier to my most fragile, I need to step up my game. So I've retired Jagen as my dracoknight and I'm putting him back in paladin and benching him. In his place... the 8 strength, 17 speed, and 12 defense badass... that is Wendell.

The fuck have you been up to, old man, that an aged wizard makes a better dracoknight than an aged paladin?

No, fuck that, how is he all-around better than Minerva save for a single point of strength and three points in luck?

That's definitely not gonna stay the case forever, but it's certainly embarrassing now.

Anyway, after un-deploying Jagen for this map I'm bringing back Wrys, and hopefully once we get some more master seals (we apparently get 2 next chapter), Merric and Lena will start picking up Wendell's magic-and-staff slack. And if we need him back sooner? Well, we can get him back sooner!

So now we get a new conversation between Marth and Nyna, where she talks about the public execution of her parents. This is... man, I wish the game had more of this. Like, there's easily the potential for this to be a great Fire Emblem story, but it's as if talented and passionate people are working on it, but they're not allowed to add more than minimal additions to the story.

Okay, so, mission accomplished. I took out the fliers (at least the initial ones; reinforcements haven't shown up yet), took out the mercenaries, and got Caeda to level 15, whereupon she capped luck in addition to her early-capped speed, and I promoted her. Her stats are now:

25 HP

11 Strength

0 Magic

15 Skill

20 Speed

20 Luck

13 Defense

3 Resistance

10 Movement

Among my army, only Barst has better strength than her now, hilariously enough. She ties with Abel and Wolf. She's one-rounding these mercenaries now, with a steel lance.

Dracoknight promotion gains are insane.

Anyway, I then managed to get everyone through the mountain pass without triggering any ambush spawns, which means it's up to Wolf to head in and see if any ambush spawns show up when you approach the inner circle. Because I want everything but Jake and the boss to be dead before I send in Caeda. She's way too awesome to lose now.

Anyway, Marth steps into town, and instead of being greeted by somebody who asks if he wants a slave, he's greeted by somebody who asks if he wants a broken nose. He then scares off the ruffians apparently “holding people hostage”, and... yeah, fuck this. What was so bad about the original version?

Anyway, Wolf's wearing down the thunderbolt ballistician and the horseman and killer bow sniper. He has enough bulk to just barely tank them as long as he's within the immobile ballistician's dead zone... though he might be in trouble even with physic and a vulnerary if the sniper crits multiple times in a row...

...But it's my only option. If things get bad he can just run, the forts will slow them down enough for him to get away.

...Nope, he's fine. Between physic, a vulnerary and the fort healing, he can heal to full even with a crit.

...And good thing, because this fucker keeps fucking critting.

Okay, Wolf leveled up, and yet again he whiffed defense (though he got everything else). He's still above-average in defense, but I was really hoping that his insane defense growth luck would keep up. Well at this point he's got like a 72% growth due to dynamic growths, so he'll probably get it next time.

And the killer bow sniper is finally down, netting us some spirit dust.

...Man, this is really frustrating. This is why I hate ambush spawns. Just the fact that the game has done it makes you see places where they could do it basically anywhere, even if the game abuses it just once.

Okay, I think I'm good. I've recruited Jake and I've got Marth in seize range. Now to take out this Manakete with Navarre and the wyrmslayer, get the energy drop, and then get out of here before I can tempt fate any further. And just in case, I've left the easily-killable boss alive to make sure any “post-boss-death” reinforcement triggers aren't tripped.

Alright, Merric finished off the wounded Manakete and got magic and speed for his level up. Now to fight the boss with Caeda and then finish him off with either Jake, or Wolf if Jake misses, and then seize.

Oh yeah, also, so begins the running gag where Jake talks about the secret shop and people comment on how... it's a terrible business model. Yeah, honestly, it really is.

Okay, so, chapter over. Sorry I don't have much of a writeup for this one. I took long enough that I'm not keen to do a second chapter today, but most of that was just taking this super slowly to avoid the risk of ambush spawns for as long as I possibly could. Don't worry though! There will be weekend updates!

Stay safe, everyone!

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1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Actually, that brings up an interesting point... In basically every other continuity that has them, myrmidons are characterized as being warriors native to this one specific place. In Jugdral it's Isaac, in Elibe it's Sacae, in Magvel it's Jehanna, in Awakening's Disneyland version of Archanea it's Chon'sin, and in Fateslandia it's Hoshido. Tellius, Archanea and... Owain are basically the only exceptions I can think of. I can't quite remember if any country was associated with them in Three Houses.

 

And considering Tellius sword of doesn't even have myrmidon's it's less of an exception and more out of the loop. Though of course when I say it doesn't have myrmidon's I really mean it doesn't have mercenaries (somewhat ironically) as the sword users in it do lean towards swordmasters in style. Point is though that it doesn't have two standard infantry sword classes much like the original Archanea (and Valentia). So Shadow Dragon and New Mystery are really the strange exceptions where there's two dominant sword styles without a cultural explanation.

And of course Owain.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

So now we get a new conversation between Marth and Nyna, where she talks about the public execution of her parents. This is... man, I wish the game had more of this. Like, there's easily the potential for this to be a great Fire Emblem story, but it's as if talented and passionate people are working on it, but they're not allowed to add more than minimal additions to the story.

 

So even if you're probably not going to do any of the Non Nagi gaidens, I suggest you at least look up the events that take place in them (maybe you've unlocked them already in your event library). You do seem to enjoy the writing here so it'd be a shame to completely skip over the bulk of the work that went into the script (exactly why the bulk of the script writing went into unrelated side stories instead of developing the main story will have to remain a riddle for the ages).

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Okay, so, chapter over. Sorry I don't have much of a writeup for this one. I took long enough that I'm not keen to do a second chapter today, but most of that was just taking this super slowly to avoid the risk of ambush spawns for as long as I possibly could. Don't worry though! There will be weekend updates!

Stay safe, everyone!

Great to hear you're enjoying it enough for weekend updates.

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9 minutes ago, Jotari said:

So even if you're probably not going to do any of the Non Nagi gaidens, I suggest you at least look up the events that take place in them (maybe you've unlocked them already in your event library). You do seem to enjoy the writing here so it'd be a shame to completely skip over the bulk of the work that went into the script (exactly why the bulk of the script writing went into unrelated side stories instead of developing the main story will have to remain a riddle for the ages).

Oh I will definitely be doing that.

EDIT: Also, do the European versions of the Tellius games not call them myrmidons? Because the NA versions do.

Edited by Alastor15243
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On 10/15/2020 at 11:12 AM, Alastor15243 said:

You may have a point. The weapon balance in Genealogy is genuinely stonk bonkers, as are the skills, definitely worse than Radiant Dawn there. But Radiant Dawn probably has unequivocally the worst-balanced cast in the entire series, with only Revelation being a possible exception. no games but those can really compete when it comes to the sheer number of units that are nigh-unusable garbage. But given that Binding Blade's not-as-bad-but-still-unfortunate cast balance wasn't enough to stop me from praising the stuff it did well, I'm trying to gauge whether this judgment is being consistent.

tbf, I don't think RD is that bad on the balance front. Personally, I find Binding Blade to have more throwaway units than Radiant Dawn did, though that might have something to do with the latter's structuring (when you constantly switch perspectives, even some units that would otherwise be insta-bench material are likely to see some use, which is more than I can say of the likes of Sophia, Wendy, and the axe infantry). Incidentally, I think New Mystery is another candidate for most unbalanced FE game.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

3: There's a fuckton of mercenaries guarding that town. Not one of them was turned into a myrmidon, which makes me question if there's a single non-recruitable enemy myrmidon in the entire game.

Looking at the H5 enemy data SF has, no. Chapter 24x does have 4 Swordmasters, 2 Berserkers, 4 Warriors, and 2 Sorcerers. There isn't a single enemy Sage in the game, only Bishops. 

FE12 I distinctly remember made a few corrections. Looking at the Lunatic data there, Chapter 20 there has 4 Sages and 1 Warrior, Chapter 21 has 3 Swordmasters. And the new Chapter 6x has 6 Fighters.

 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay, so, I've decided that since Jagen is about to go from my toughest flier to my most fragile, I need to step up my game. So I've retired Jagen as my dracoknight and I'm putting him back in paladin and benching him. In his place... the 8 strength, 17 speed, and 12 defense badass... that is Wendell.

Wendel in FE3 B1 had 12 Spd at base as a Bishop, and it's these bases which he uses in SD. (If they used his FE1 self, he'd have 14 Spd as a Bishop and 8 Def instead of 5.) Because the Bishop class has only 4 Spd base in SD, for him to have 12 Spd when he joins, he needed a Spd base of 8.

Only Gotoh and Nagi have more absolute (classless) Spd than Wendel in the entirety of SD. Wendel's 2 absolute Def is the same as Minerva, and nobody except Gotoh has more than 5 absolute Def.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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4 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Only Gotoh and Nagi have more absolute (classless) Spd than Wendel in the entirety of SD. Wendel's 2 absolute Def is the same as Minerva, and nobody except Gotoh has more than 5 absolute Def.

I always thought prepromote bases were... ridiculously low in this game, but weirdly, only a few of my units are really managing to significantly surpass them even now.

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8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh I will definitely be doing that.

EDIT: Also, do the European versions of the Tellius games not call them myrmidons? Because the NA versions do.

Oh no they're called Myrmidons in Europe (though Sentinels are called Lancers). My point is that there is only one infantry sword class in Tellius ignoring Ike's personal classes, rather than two like in other games. This is something it shares with the original Archanea games.

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Shadow Dragon Day 13: Chapter 12

So apparently the three regalia... were all wielded by one person, the founder of Archanea, called Adrah.

...And thinking about the narration, it occurs to me that I really should be checking FE3B1 for how much of the script here was original, given that these narration things were introduced in that game.

Alright, so, this chapter seems pretty straightforward. But I'm gonna start cracking into my supply of stat boosters now that I have more of them and a better idea of what they'd be useful for. First off, Caeda gets the energy drop. She's easily the best physical unit unit in the game with a shitty strength growth, so that's no contest. The more strength she has, the better. I considered giving her the angelic robe too, but she'll be getting the second one, if we get a second one. Marth needs the first one just to make sure something horrible doesn't completely ruin the ironman.

This chapter is just as ridiculous as I remember it. They kept the changes that Book 1 made to this chapter, moving the party inside to distract you from the ridiculous “building within a building” nonsense nearly all indoor Book 1 maps had, meaning that you're actually between the thieves and their treasure and can off them on turn one.

...No wait, I just checked... Book 1 didn't do that. I could've sworn that happened with this chapter somewhere...

...Huh. So apparently the original had you ridiculously close, and it was Book 1 that fixed that...

...only for Shadow Dragon to go back to the original.

Jeez, you won't use the original's player-phase theme, but you'll use the original's version of this?

...Also, weirdly, the size and shape of the prison was altered in Book 1, and this one uses the original.

Yet again I'm forced to abandon some of my lower-level mainstays for this map due to the forced deployment of a bunch of unarmed deadweights I'm gonna have to save. I've got my three dracoknights, my three cavaliers, Lena, Merric, Julian, Wolf, and Marth. Which makes me wonder who I'd have dropped to bring Sedgar along if he were still alive.

I notice that the game has really stopped using “Trouble!” after the early game, which I find a huge shame, because it's one of my favorite pre-battle cutscene songs in the series.

Okay, so, really, this is kinda ridiculous on higher difficulties. I'd need a warp staff if I want to save all of these fuckers. Macellan's gonna die in 1-2 turns depending on where I place him, and everyone else will swiftly follow if exposed to the ranged fighters along the wall. There's thankfully enough space to save Midia and Boah, the only two who are even remotely worth rescuing, and the other knight has enough bulk and speed to survive long enough for us to rescue him probably, but if I want to save the others... I'm gonna need to use either physic or warp.

Nope, I'd have to use warp. And I'd have to use it now due to the freakishly high attack power of that elfire mage that I have to expose one of them to.

Yeah, no. No way. Saving these guys accomplishes absolutely nothing. I'm letting Macellan and Tomas (wow, another name re-use) die.

Okay, so, Merric, who can fight back, was considered a more tempting target than Dolph, who can resist more damage, by the archers. I wish I had a more reliable sense of what their priorities are.

...I think this game might have made this mage's droppable thunder tome lose uses in sync with the non-droppable elfire tome he was actually using.

Anyway, reinforcements have arrived. Cavalry and a horseman from outside. And the mages and the paladin miniboss have mobilized too. No big deal. Wolf can easily wound the eastern cavalry enough that we won't even need the ridersbane to one-shot them with my own cavalry, and the mages will down easy to Caeda.

Wolf leveled up and got defense this time, but missed luck and speed. No big deal, he's easily my second-fastest unit anyway, and enemies would need 16 skill or a crit weapon to crit him with 8 luck.

Amusingly, the miniboss paladin has slightly less physical bulk than his mooks! Same defense, one less HP.

I tried to feed the paladin kill to Marth, but Caeda wound up critting unfortunately. Still, we've got the master seal. I'll use it on whichever candidate levels up next, because Lena's almost at level 20 and Merric's almost at level 15.

And it looks like it's gonna be Lena.

The outer reinforcements keep coming, but that's fine by me. I've got a pretty foolproof method of taking them out, so they're basically just free exp.

Yep, Lena leveled up first. And by the looks of it, she'll have some pretty good stats when promoted.

Aaaaand Wolf got another level up, everything but luck.

Alright, the reinforcements have finally subsided, just in time to promote Lena.

I didn't mention this last time, but it's a nice touch that the promotion theme has the fire emblem theme playing.

I just took out the general guarding the treasure room, so let's get that second master seal. Unless it's in that chest in the courtyard the miniboss was in.

Okay, so, we got an arms scroll, and...

...We've got a problem. The sniper has a crit rate of 12, and the only person in my army who can either not get crit or tank a crit from this sniper...

...is Lena, amusingly enough. Technically Caeda too, but... yeah no, obviously that silver bow would destroy her. Alright, guess I made the right call promoting her instead of Merric! Though maybe one of these chests still has the master seal in it without getting into his rang-

Yep! Alright, so we'd be golden either way. Regardless, Merric's promoting next turn, since he hit level 15 on that general boss.

He's got some pretty kickass promotion gains, including 3 strength so he won't be weighed down by basic tomes anymore, 2 to resistance, and six to HP! And the main four of magic, speed, skill and defense each went up by one, which is meh, but fuck it, this may very well solidify his ability to double medium-speed enemies finally!

Okay, we got 20k gold, a dragonpike, a silver sword, and maybe something else, but I forgot to write this shit down until I already got all of it.

Yeah, at this point, really, it's just cleanup. I'm having Wolf train up his sword rank so he can use the wyrmslayer, and I'm having Merric follow him around patching him up to train his new staff rank. Then I'm gonna fight the manakete with Wolf and Merric, and have Julian head off to grab the last chest before we seize.

Ah yes.

Julian: professional chest-grabber.

That's something to put on a business card.

Anyway, we have something like 13 warp uses at this point, and I'm really beginning to wonder when I'll start getting tempted to use them.

Aaaand the last chest contained boots! I totally forgot that was this chapter!

Alright, well, obviously those are going on...

...Actually, I'm not so sure I'm as tempted to put them on Marth this time. Keeping things moving quickly isn't nearly as much of an issue in this game, and it might be more tempting to put it on one of my juggernauts to make them even more useful.

12-Mov Caeda anyone?

This shop sells fancy swords, and killing edges aren't nearly as tempting in this game as they were in FE1 where they were basically the strongest 100 hit weapons around.

And Wolf finishes off the Manakete with a crit, after I let the guy waste his obtainable vulnerary for the sole purpose of keeping him alive long enough to get C swords for Wolf. I'm pretty sure he needs like one more hit to do it, judging by the meter. Fuck.

Well at least Merric has a D in staves now.

Oooooh! They're using the old FE1 “end of chapter, saving the game” theme! It's... honestly, I prefer the original. It had this sort of... tone, I guess, in chiptune that didn't really translate well to midi orchestra.

It's weird how they have stage directions on the bottom screen, like, the units move around and stuff, but the screen is deliberately darkened like “what's going on here doesn't matter, look at the top screen”, so I wonder why they even bothered.

Ooh, we've got Parthia! Maybe if I keep Jeorge around, he'll get some use out of it! Also, apparently, Gradivus and Mercurius were taken by “the enemy”, leaving only Parthia, because even the enemy AI apparently knows that bows are worthless garbage.

Alright, that's it for the map. And, y'know... I don't have anything to do today until 12, so sure! Let's do a double update!


 

Day 13 Bonus: Chapter 13

Oh shit. It's this map. The map revolving around a single class of enemy units... left almost completely unchanged after the enemies that inhabited it were radically altered to have an attack range of ten.

...Thankfully, it looks like a lot of these guys have been visibly instructed not to move under any circumstances, so at least we've got that going for us. If only we had thunderbolt, Jake would be able to help with this a lot. Alas... we don't have thunderbolt. Yet. I think Beck comes with it this map.

But we do have Wolf, an incredibly broken reclassing system, and some boots.

Alright.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Nez_ZRw8Q

Strategy time.

Alright, here's my plan. I take Wolf. Reclass him to general. Give him two vulneraries, a javelin, a forged steel lance with +3 might, and an iron bow. He's got enough defense to tank basically everything on this map except thunderbolt, which only does 10 damage, and he can handle that since there's only one of them near as I can tell. I'll heal him up periodically with vulneraries and some of Lena's 14 physic staff uses. He'll take out the ballistae with an iron bow (he's fast enough to double them even as a general thanks to ballistician's terrible base speed) so that Astram doesn't die fighting him in melee, and then when it's safe and the thieves are gone, he'll lure Astram back over to us so Midia can recruit him. Then we'll go back and take out the rest with Wolf until the enemy forces are thin enough that we can afford to send in the others. And to speed all of this up, I'll be giving Wolf the boots.

The +3 forged steel lance (cost about 4k) is so Wolf can one-shot one of the thieves if he absolutely has to. Equipping that thing for two enemy phases will get Astram killed, so we've only got one turn with it.

I don't feel any guilt about giving Wolf the boots. He's a worthy user of them. He's easily my best all-around unit, and now he can either have good move as a general, or great move as a hero. Or, shit, technically, he can have amazing movement as a horseman if the situation somehow calls for that (though only 11, not 12, sadly).

At first I was planning on ditching all of my fliers for this map, but then I remembered that I could just turn all of the deadweight cavaliers I have into archers and then make the three of them paladins. They'll be responsible for dealing with the stragglers to the north, while everyone else retreats to the south where the ballistae don't move.

Alright, I think that's about as much good as planning's gonna do for me, so let's go.

You can stop the music now if you like.

Alright, we've got a new cutscene with a pretty funny joke that I'm guessing was added in by the localization about hopes and shoulders...

Okay, so, there's some new map music here that's... okay...

...But y'know... I think I've got a better idea for you guys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeWJmmChaz0

Since this chapter was remade for Fates DLC, seems fitting to treat you to this absolutely amazing music that plays for that map.

Let's kick some ass.

Alright, we've got a stroke of luck. The thieves are moving, but Astram is not. As long as we stay out of his range, I should be able to one-shot both of these thieves with the Black Wolf lance without endangering Astram.

Ballisticians apparently just can't counter-attack at all, as I learned when I put Jake in range of one of the ballisticians on turn one to try to get in some chip damage.

Alright, unfortunately, the thief managed to escape up the cliff before Wolf could kill him. Good news is the other one wasn't so lucky, and now I've killed all but one of the ballisticians who can snipe Marth if I warp him in to recruit Beck.

Which I'll be doing.

Wolf got everything but strength this time, which is a first. He's got like a 100% strength growth in hero. Guess he doesn't have one in general.

...Yeah, that was a fucking 5% chance there.

Well, moving on, let's recruit Beck.

Did so, and Beck's first action was to thunderbolt the ballistician still in range of Marth...

...and miss. Well, no matter, Marth's still gonna survive, and would've even without that angelic robe. But this way he'll be super safe in case something else really goes wrong.

Also, apparently ballista shots don't waste their uses if you miss. Awesome, but confusing beyond all comprehension.

And Marth killed the last thief after Wolf wounded it with his iron bow... and Marth got literally everything but magic. Yes, including resistance.

Marth has a 2% resistance growth.

This is the best level up it is physically possible for Marth to obtain.

Alright, now for Wolf to head in deeper to lure in Astram.

Also, hilariously, Beck's still stuck up here on this weird wooded plateau. They didn't fix that. But hey, at least this time he actually has the range to do shit up here.

Unlike the original.

So Astram seems to have some curious AI. He couldn't do damage to Wolf even with his silver sword thanks to Wolf's recent defense level, so he consciously chose to switch to his equally-useless wyrmslayer. Why? Does he consider the wyrmslayer more valuable and he's spiting me by wasting its uses, or is it less valuable, and he's actively choosing to at least conserve the net worth of his weapons while doing something utterly pointless?

Either way, I managed to recruit him.

Midia: Hello, my lover.

...Wow, that... I've never heard it phrased like that before. Usually you use “my love” in this context, don't you? Anyway, it was fairly amusing. Pretty cute conversation.

So, Wolf charged in to take out the thunderbolt ballistician, and from there, it's smooth sailing. The only really damaging threat is the boss, and I only had to stay in his range for one turn.

...Y'know, if I kept one flier, I would've had an opening to fly right into a mutual blind spot in all three southern ballisticians' ranges, but nah, I'm glad I didn't risk that. I wasn't sure how well this was going to go.

I got a talk with Astram and Marth, and... wow. Making it clear that he's only loyal to Nyna, and that he'll kill Marth if he finds out he's gotten his position in the army through deception... is this foreshadowing Astram siding with Hardin, by showing how loyal he is to Archanea?

Unfortunately, Jeorge and Astram don't have a chat, despite the former being able to recruit the latter in Book 2.

There's one fort on this map, and I'm making sure that someone stays on top of it at all times, in case it's got ambush spawns. I'd hate to lose someone after doing the rest of the map so spectacularly.

Alright, the boss will be down shortly. I just got my entire cavalry army in his range, so he'll go down next turn. He's super tough, but thankfully I have the Black Wolf.

And the kill goes to Hardin and his silver lance!

...Getting him a terrible skillsauce level.

Alright, stop the music.

That does it, I'm checking my cavalry's average stats. They've been getting terrible levels really consistently, and yet it feels like every time I've checked the averages for someone I get that impression with, they're actually right on the money for their averages. And yet here it just feels so wrong.

Hardin is... actually average or above-average, bizarrely. Cain is also average, except that he's absurdly blessed in luck, a whopping four points ahead of what he should have.

And Abel is... on the money as well. One point screwed in speed and skill, but two points blessed in strength.

So why do their level ups always feel so terrible?

We still haven't found an armory that sells ballistician weapons, and we've got both of our ballisticians now. I was hoping this one would have some, but no. We've gotta ration the handful we've got. Good thing I went and got the hoistflamme down south.

Huh. That's interesting. Marth mentions a villager you can talk to in this chapter, and I have to assume that happens even if you don't talk to her. Basically it's shaken him a bit because he never realized how much of Gra didn't want to fight Archanea, but was forced to by Grust. Which would imply that the decision to turn traitor happened during the war. And obviously if Gra had been taken over by Grust during the planning stage, Altea would have heard about that shit and not trusted Gra's soldiers with Altea's prince. But... okay, surely then the soldiers stationed to guard Marth in the prologue would have been genuinely loyal to Altea, right? Or at least more torn about their orders (which they would have to have gotten without anyone around them finding out) than the cackling, mustache-twirling assholes who tried to capture Marth in the first prologue map. So if the soldiers we fought in the castle weren't the ones originally sent to protect Marth... then what happened to them?

...Ugh. Alright, let's see here...

...Yeah, I think we're good for the day. I've got stuff to do in about an hour, I don't think I can do a third map today.

...Jesus, remember that one time in FE3B2 where I did six chapters in one day?

Well anyway, I'll see you tomorrow!

Stay safe, everyone!

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