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

[Etrurian emperor]

20 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Elibe still left some areas undercooked.

• Lycia is fully cooked being central to both games. 10/10- Relative to FE's standards for world building.
• Sacae gives a strong, distinctive cultural impression, I'd like more detail. 9/10
• Nabata is overwhelmingly desert outside of Arcadia, so it doesn't need a whole lot of building. This said, the question of dragon kind in Arcadia is a bit of a hit. 8/10
• Ilia looks pretty, but I want to know more about the decentralized government topped by a guild system. And I need more on its preference for men at home and women working outside of it. 7/10
• Western Isles has that yellowed landscape, which I like to imagine indicates poor quality soil, so agriculture is weak. The good mines nearby relegate it to the Cerro Potosi of Elibe. The Western Isles has something of a "Wild West" feel judging from its inhabitants, and it ends up in confederacy after FE6. But I wish to know more about its society. 6.5/10
• Bern is mountainous, a superpower, has wyverns and the Dragon Temple, but what else? 4/10
• Etruria is a superpower, the end. 2/10

I won't say it isn't a better world by FE world-building standards, but I'd like to get more. 

True. Not every region got equal attention but overall it struck among the best balances I feel. 

I wouldn't say Etruria is a superpower, ''the end''. Aside from having the church and a slight magic focus its also a colonial power while having a severe corruption problem. Its essentially a recycled Granvelle. Its not the most developed example of that national archetype(that one being Begnion) but its good enough. 

Edited January 13, 2021 by Etrurian emperor

[Interdimensional Observer]

10 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

There are four deployment slots, but unless you do the Anna DLC or bring an amiibo or bond unit (friendship babies as I like to call them), you only have three units to deploy.

Or, provided you do a few battles to grind, you choose to grind Azura or your servant and get a supremely early Shigure or Kana. -Assuming they're available this early, I almost always delay on babies until much later, so I wouldn't know.

And, this map is why I greatly prefer Forrin for Rev, Jakob's Str adds another damage dealer to speed things up. (I wed him to Kagero afterwards for early Replicate + Shurikenfaire fun.)

 

3 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I wouldn't say Etruria is a superpower, ''the end''. Aside from having the church and a slight magic focus its also a colonial power while having a severe corruption problem. Its essentially a recycled Granvelle. Its not the most developed example of that national archetype(that one being Begnion) but its good enough. 

Fair, the colonialism was a neat touch. I think I'd want most from Etruria is a great postcard image of it. One good visual impression. The nature of the general landscape, from which I can imagine hypothetical generalities about the national character and society at large.

[Axie]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Elibe still left some areas undercooked.

• Lycia is fully cooked being central to both games. 10/10- Relative to FE's standards for world building.
• Sacae gives a strong, distinctive cultural impression, I'd like more detail. 9/10
• Nabata is overwhelmingly desert outside of Arcadia, so it doesn't need a whole lot of building. This said, the question of dragon kind in Arcadia is a bit of a hit. 8/10
• Ilia looks pretty, but I want to know more about the decentralized government topped by a guild system. And I need more on its preference for men at home and women working outside of it. 7/10
• Western Isles has that yellowed landscape, which I like to imagine indicates poor quality soil, so agriculture is weak. The good mines nearby relegate it to the Cerro Potosi of Elibe. The Western Isles has something of a "Wild West" feel judging from its inhabitants, and it ends up in confederacy after FE6. But I wish to know more about its society. 6.5/10
• Bern is mountainous, a superpower, has wyverns and the Dragon Temple, but what else? 4/10
• Etruria is a superpower, the end. 2/10

I won't say it isn't a better world by FE world-building standards, but I'd like to get more. 

i actually think sacae and ilia are worse off than etruria, whose inner workings are very well explained in BinBla, plus across both games we get a sense of the way the eliminean religion influences etruria more heavily than its neighbours (with bern/biran standing out as secular in comparison). also, the etrurians we get in our roster are all usually super proud and patriotic. really, etruria is kind of the america of elibe? not the saviour it portrays itself as ("etrurian army"! the shit roy has to put up with!!!), hiding its flaws behind worship of god, wealthy as hell and putting its fingers in other people's pies. that's strong worldbuilding imo lol.

we have broad strokes of how sacae and ilia are but little of how they actually work as countries, and said little has some logical holes. sacae would actually be great if we actually saw more than tribes djute and kutolah (lyn's tribe of one in BlaBla doesn't count), but ilia is just lol. "we mercenaries because brrrr!" falls apart so quickly you'd think fates came up with it and not an otherwise well written game.

Edited January 13, 2021 by Axie

[Venger_06]

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Or, provided you do a few battles to grind, you choose to grind Azura or your servant and get a supremely early Shigure or Kana. -Assuming they're available this early, I almost always delay on babies until much later, so I wouldn't know.

Can't do that, child paralogues only open after this chapter.

[ping]

2 hours ago, Axie said:

i actually think sacae and ilia are worse off than etruria, whose inner workings are very well explained in BinBla, plus across both games we get a sense of the way the eliminean religion influences etruria more heavily than its neighbours (with bern/biran standing out as secular in comparison). also, the etrurians we get in our roster are all usually super proud and patriotic. really, etruria is kind of the america of elibe? not the saviour it portrays itself as ("etrurian army"! the shit roy has to put up with!!!), hiding its flaws behind worship of god, wealthy as hell and putting its fingers in other people's pies. that's strong worldbuilding imo lol.

+1

We're somewhat limited to seeing the higher classes of the country - I think all Etrurians we meet are nobility, high-ranking military, or clergy, right? Maybe Dorothy is Etrurian, but I'm not sure if her home country is ever brought up - but that's not too surprising given how FE6's plot is structured.

[Interdimensional Observer]

3 hours ago, Axie said:

i actually think sacae and ilia are worse off than etruria, whose inner workings are very well explained in BinBla, plus across both games we get a sense of the way the eliminean religion influences etruria more heavily than its neighbours (with bern/biran standing out as secular in comparison).

I can see this criticism, I was likely leaning too heavily on the outward exoticism of Ilia and Sacae, which is vibrant. Whereas politically, you're right that Etruria is built upon more.

[Eltosian Kadath]

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

The Wind Tribe appears to be mostly desert - a large area, yes, but not a large population (or army). As for Kohga, I'm pretty sure that one was supposed to be a microstate too - even in its prime, likely smaller than Mokushu. And if Mokushu were, say, bigger than Hoshido, then Kotaro probably would have tried to conquer Hoshido, without needing to team up with Nohr for help.

Mokushu would have to pass through the wind tribe to reach Hoshido (and possibly Izumo too...), and might need the Nohrian help to break through both (or all 3) of them, and as for the wind tribe's population, they were able to field an army 2-4.5 time the size that your Nohr army does in the map you face them. Also I will point out that the wind tribe having a large territory, and Mokushu being small are both things the two of us have to guessing at, as Fate's world building fails to tell us...

 

7 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

For what its worth I think the worldbuilding of Fates at least had potential as a concept, and its not uniquely bad by Fire Emblem standards. There have been similarly lifeless continents before Fates. Its an easy target thanks to the lack of a name, but Ylisse and Magvel are hardly any more developed. 

At least Magvel showed us where each kingdom's territories was, and gave a vague indication of what each nation was about. Even in Ylisse, the way the map works gives you get a strong sense of where Ylisse, Plegia, or Regna Ferox are (although Valm has a bit of an issue with the nations it conquered being important due to the rebellion, but with no information at all about most of them...), which is again more than I can really say about Fates.

 

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Felicia has... a curious motivation. She's (according to the game anyway) a brilliant natural fighter, but she'd much rather just be a maid, because she likes cooking and cleaning and sewing and the like.

If you get her some means of attacking with her magic stat, she is a solid fighter. You should have access to Felicia's plate from the reward box at this point, so you should be able to start using her for some combat...

 

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

The game doesn't seem to be telling me that anyone visited since last night, even though I heard from people who said they already did. Lemme know if something's going wrong!

I remember those having a fair bit of delay with updating who visited...

 

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'll use amiibo, I'll do some DLC, I'll take the path bonuses, I'll buy from other people's shops, and use all the other random reward shit this game throws at me. Might as well.

You should make a Witch a member of the team, as the warp skill hilariously breaks one of the Revelation maps...

 

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

The entire map except for the area you're in is pitch black. You have to go to the absolute limits of the revealed map in order to reveal the next area... at which point enemies will promptly spawn on your turn. And also, half of the paths you take (the ones that don't have live plants growing in or near the tunnels) will just teleport you back to the previous room rather than reveal a new area.

I like to think of this as the light switch map...

 

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But that doesn't make it any more fun or strategic when it's just one unit you've got who can fight.

I get the funny feeling you forgot to grab Felicia's plate from the rewards box. Its not the best weapon, but it lets Felicia use her magic, which makes her combat far less embarrassing....

 

[Alastor15243]

9 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I get the funny feeling you forgot to grab Felicia's plate from the rewards box. Its not the best weapon, but it lets Felicia use her magic, which makes her combat far less embarrassing....

I forgot that was a thing in the rewards box. In my defense there is sooooooooo much shit they give you. Easy to lose track of what your options are. At any rate, Felicia's time as a maid is going to be... short lived, shall we say.

10 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

You should make a Witch a member of the team, as the warp skill hilariously breaks one of the Revelation maps...

Don't I know it. I abused that like hell in my Dakota's War Journal Revelation run. The crazy thing is that you don't even need it to be on the main attacker of a pair. Just slap it on a guard stance bot and it's like the frontliner has it.

 

[Shadow Mir]

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

Mozu into Archer comes to mind, if you're trying to use her. I've heard great things about Paladin Jakob, though I've not used him yet. I often like to reclass Corrin, too, though that depends on your willingness to give up Dragonstones. There are a couple other niche ones: Samurai Odin, if you want to use his strength; or Outlaw Nyx, if you want the extra move from pair-up. And for what it's worth, I like putting CQ!Gunther in Wyvern Lord when he comes back.

For my part, I was totally satisfied with Malig Knight Camilla in my latest Rev playthrough. But, I suppose it couldn't hurt to put her in Wyvern Lord one of these days. That said, reviewing the options, it strikes me how balanced the class system feels in Fates. Very few must-have reclasses, but also few totally trash ones (Troubadour Effie notwithstanding).

Well, I consider Mozu too much effort for not enough benefit, and Jakob is dependent on playing as a girl to be good.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I forgot that was a thing in the rewards box. In my defense there is sooooooooo much shit they give you. Easy to lose track of what your options are. At any rate, Felicia's time as a maid is going to be... short lived, shall we say.

What's the plan?

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

What's the plan?

You'll find out tomorrow.

[Jotari]

Chest and door keys being chapter exclusive is a way to ensure you don't soft lock the game, as every key can be tailored for every chest, rather than being able to stumble upon a door or chest you can't get because you do t have the keys. I still wouldn't say it's better in terms of gameplay, but it's different. It turns something that was previously resource based into a chapter goal.

 

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

Chest and door keys being chapter exclusive is a way to ensure you don't soft lock the game, as every key can be tailored for every chest, rather than being able to stumble upon a door or chest you can't get because you do t have the keys. I still wouldn't say it's better in terms of gameplay, but it's different. It turns something that was previously resource based into a chapter goal.

I´d assume it to be highly unlikely that a player doesn´t have at least one unit with locktouch (granted REV chapter 7 is an excepton). And even then, a lot of the chapters have or spawn enemies that´ll try to steal loot so you should be able to just off them after they filled their pockets.

Especially when you consider that CQ gives you like what, 3 or 5 keys in total, for some ~20 chests?

Edited January 14, 2021 by Imuabicus

[Alastor15243]

Revelation Day 4: Chapter 8

Alright, what's on the docket for today?

(Reminder comes up on phone: “Defend Fates' business model”)

...Well, okay, guess we'll start with that.

Honestly, my only real complaint about the whole “Three routes you buy separately” thing is that it kills the actual act of choosing a side and undermines what is otherwise an incontestably superior handling of the concept of a route split to Three Houses'. If you decide you actually want to pick a different route for story reasons after seeing the prologue, you're shit out of luck unless you wanna cough up another 20 bucks.

Actually though, the game does at least let you beat Chapter 6 without buying a new path apparently, and only makes you pay money to continue after that, so it's not shaking you down for money at the literal branch of fate.

Personally, as I said earlier in the thread, I would've released the pre-split part as a free demo on the eshop so that nobody feels shaken down for extra money when it's time to make their decision, because the decision of which game to buy becomes that decision, and you've already got all the story information you need to choose which game.

Beyond that? I mean seriously. I can't agree with the people who think it's a ripoff, or that it all should've been released as one game for one price. Do you have any idea how much content is in these games? Birthright and Conquest are easily worth the $40 3DS game price tag, and that's not even the price they're being sold at! You get two 3DS games for 60 bucks, each one with an entire full 21-chapter Fire Emblem game's worth of content, and that's ignoring the prologue chapters and paralogues. Sure, a couple of maps are recycled. Seven, by my count, between Conquest and Birthright. But each one feels radically different to play on due to different starting locations, different dragon veins, and different enemy formations. And again, you're getting the second game at half price.

Alright, down to business for the day.

First off, time to actually clean up Lower Dakota. Since Revelation gives you access to the structures of both nations, I like to put all the Hoshidan stuff on the eastern side and all the Nohrian stuff on the western side, for aesthetic purposes.

...There, this looks a lot less shitty now. Especially now that I've bothered to switch to my favorite castle style, Nestrian. The water is super useful for forming proper defensive walls and giving my more vulnerable units a place to hide when necessary. Especially once I erect all three indestructible buildings at the bottom to block off the widest entrance to the central area.

Doing my daily rounds, and... ooh! Yeah, that's a cute touch, that they had Dakota put his childhood lion car toy in his bedroom in the corner. Curious how the hell he got it into the castle though...

...Anyway, looks like that goal of getting anywhere close to maxing out my BP or VP is probably a pipe dream. I just don't have that many viewers who still actively play Fates, which I guess makes sense. Back when I did Dakota's War Journal, that was when the game just came out. Makes sense that I barely even have a shadow of my former visitor numbers. Still gonna keep my promises if it happens, but it's not looking likely.

...I do have one visitor today though! Somebody named Ishtar. Heya! Thanks for the milk! Enjoy a nice creepy prison mask for your troubles!

If anyone else does show up to visit (address is in my signature now for convenience), I'll be sure to visit you back, and maybe do some more fun dumb shit once I have something resembling a passable army.

Alright, let's get ready for next map. First off: Felicia's getting a reclass! I'm using the path bonus, the ebon wing, to turn Felicia into a dark falcon, which is this game's rename of the dark flier.

I love how this game has different variations of the promotion theme for Hoshidan and Nohrian classes.

Next, I give her my arms scroll so she's not quite so limited with her weapon access, and give her a horse spirit and disrobing gale. Man, the “raider” archetype is amazing, and a really lucky find if one of your units finds one in the early game. It's an E rank weapon that's not only still capable of critting and proccing damage abilities, but it also only requires a speed advantage of 2 to double. Horse spirit is also an amazing early-game tome (scroll, actually, since it's Hoshidan). It gives you twelve points of stat boosts when equipped. Plus three to skill, speed, defense and resistance. The Omega Yato only gives four more total.

Alright, time to start buying some shit. I have a personal policy with Fates to generally save half of the money I gain, and keep track of that. I have 10,000 now, so I'm gonna press home, open up the handy dandy game notes app, and write down that my minimum gold is 5k. I can't bring myself below that except for emergencies. Good way to help me keep track of things for big purchases later or save my ass if I run into money troubles for some reason.

With that out of the way, time to buy a heart seal for Dakota so that he can once again ride his beloved mount Gigi and start gaining some more skills. Having fliers is gonna be nice for a lot of these fucking frustrating maps in Revelation, so I'm glad I've gotten myself two of them now.

...And since I've gotten rid of my healer, I've kinda locked myself into completing Chapter 8 to get Sakura before my initial stock of vulneraries runs out and I start having to burn precious cash getting more.

Oh yeah, sure, great idea, let's have fun just making a casual visit to Fort Jinya.

Dakota is acting like a veritable Disney princess, hoping that speaking from the heart will make the Hoshidans listen to him when he can't even explain the truth about what's going on.

Also, they get past the infamous outer fortifications seen in Conquest and just... what, waltz on in to the central fortress? Getting past those outer walls was the entire battle in Conquest!

…

…

And the game almost lampshades this by having Dakota wonder if the fort's been abandoned because it's so quiet.

Yep, and Yukimura is just as cold as I remember. He wasn't this much of an asshole to me even when I directly sided with Nohr. So he basically attacks them on sight, not even giving him a chance to listen and make an ass of himself trying to talk around the magic dissolvey word.

This map is a joke. The enemy AI is the most laughable thing ever, at least on hard mode. Let's see if they mix things up on Lunatic. What I do notice though is that the enemy stats are completely nuts. I could slap some dragon herbs on Dakota to help, but... yeah, let's see how we fare without them before resorting to that.

Let's go.

Yeah, so, just as I feared. Literally the only enemies who move from the start of the map are the enemies outside of the fort, the spear fighters and sky knights. Everyone else is going to stay exactly where they are until they're approached, and they're not remotely arranged in any kind of formation to make that interesting. Hell, aside from the named ones up north, none of them even have skills!

...Welcome to basically the entire early game. I don't remember if it changes once we get to Valla, but holy shit is this gonna be the new normal while we're in Fateslandia.

On to happier news! So, Felicia, due to having an internal level that's like 20 lower than her actual level, was level 29 when she reclassed to dark falcon. Meaning that she only has 6 levels to gain to get galeforce, and she just got the first one, netting speed+2! Since she has the lower internal level between her and Dakota, I'm focusing on training her whenever possible. Dakota's basically getting no experience from anything here.

Having no healing staves anymore, sheep spirit is really useful in the early game. It's basically an infinite vulnerary for anyone who can use tomes.

…

This is fucking ridiculous.

Not only will the enemies not aggro until approached, but if you aggro them and then leave their attack range... they stop chasing you.

They do literally nothing unless somebody's directly in their attacking range, no matter the circumstances!

This is why I gave up on Book 3 of Dakota's War Journal. You just can't make this seem intense. I had to push the narrative stakes even higher after Conquest, and this is what I had to work with every time it got to an actual fight.

Words cannot describe how mindless this is, baiting in enemies one at a time to kill. If you were LTCing I guess this might begin to resemble something interesting, but I doubt it.

Alright, closest thing to a challenge here: both of my main fighters are fliers, and I have two archers layered on top of each other. However, the solution is just to take Gunter and have him bait the archer in. Problem solved.

...Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention about the raider weapons. As you might have been able to guess by the fact that the tome one is called “disrobing gale”... if you have WTA on your opponent... their clothes explode and they're left in their underwear for the rest of the map. Yeah, uh... Fates is horny. Fates is really, really horny.

Dakota finally gains a single level against the boss and gets his first wyvern rider skill, strength+2. Much appreciated given the crazy bulk of these Lunatic Revelation enemies.

And then when Dakota spares them and then asks for their help to stop the true enemy, without even getting to the “I can't say who the true enemy is” part... they just yell at him and then Saizo...

...decides to...

...well his map sprite catches fire, not sure if that's literal or metaphorical, but he starts preparing to blow himself up before Kaze and Sakura arrive to stop him. I really wish this scene were model-animated. Model-animated action scenes in this game are beyond hilarious.

And then Sakura brings up one of the dumbest things about Fates' writing by pointing out that none of the soldiers at the fort were killed. Yes, in the magical realm of Fateslandia, combat doesn't result in death unless you want it to. You can non-lethally incapacitate people with swords and axes and fucking fireballs and it doesn't take any added effort whatsoever.

Ah yes.

So.

This scene.

So Dakota and Sakura have a chat by a lake. And in a transparent bid to preserve cutscene resources (since Sakura's cutscene is here), it allegedly takes place at the same lake where we got the cutscene of meeting Azura.

The lake that Dakota got to during his stroll around the castle grounds.

This continent really must be fucking tiny, because either the game's trying to tell me that Dakota's stroll around the castle grounds wound up taking him to Fort Jinya, or Dakota and Sakura just casually wandered even deeper into the country that still thinks he's a traitor, into the grounds of the fucking castle, for no reason but for sightseeing apparently. When their next destination is in the other fucking direction.

So yeah, then Sakura's retainers show up, pissed off that she planned to leave with Dakota without telling them.

They are useless. Subaki's not that great to begin with due to his terrible speed growth for a sky knight (yay on this game for getting rid of gender-locked classes and everything, but a lot of the Hoshidan characters to first buck these gender trends are terrible in the stats they should be great at), but Hana truly begins Revelation's proud penchant for inexplicably nerfing all of the retainers. Usually by giving them an atrocious level for their join time, but since Hana joins about the same time she showed up in Birthright, the devs actively made the decision to take away 2 points of strength and skill from her.

They chose to do that. You could try to explain all the other examples by them being titanically lazy, but they actively chose to make Hana identical to her Birthright counterpart except two points of strength and skill weaker.

That suggests that the fact that damned near every retainer sucks... was an active decision on their part.

Hahaha, yeah, uh, this is sounding like -6 balance territory. “You start wondering what drugs the developers were on when they designed this shit”. Yyyyyyyep. Sounds about right.

Alright, time for the A support between Felicia and Dakota. I don't want to marry her, since I'm actually going to try to use her as a frontliner, but... might as well get the A support at least.

Yeah, so, that wasn't much. Shame.

Yeah, so, to give you an idea of how useless our new recruits are... let's take a look at their attack power.

Dakota has 22, for context, with a raider axe, a 7 might axe. Only 1 point better than a bronze one. Felicia, with the horse spirit, has 19 magic attack power.

Hana and Kaze both have thirteen, And Subaki's only one better.

Yeah, these guys aren't gonna see much action at all. We need a backup plan to get another fighter out here.

And I have one. But first... a little redecorating.

So, I've unlocked buildings like the prison and lottery shop, and... holy shit is this dumb.

So. we have two buildings.

One is a den of gambling.

One is a place where prisoners are locked up where they can't escape.

Guess which one is indestructible, and guess which one gives you a boost to your crit rate during castle battles.

If your answer follows any line of logic whatsoever... you're wrong.

Right, let's move on to Mozu's paralogue.

 

Day 4 Bonus: Paralogue 1

Yeah, Mozu is this game's Donnel, except with a more tragic backstory. But of course since Fates is dumb as hell, I like to take the piss out of it. My Dakota's War Journal headcanon was that watching her mother get murdered in front of her drove her to become a dread fighter and basically become an even more edgy version of Batman that I almost constantly played for laughs.

And that's what we're doing today. Recruiting the Dread Mozu.

The cool (but also really dumb) thing about the DLC classes is that they have the base stats of promoted classes... but don't actually require promotion to access. You can use a dread scroll or an ebon wing or any other one of those items, and it'll be like you used a master seal without sacrificing any levels. It's a great way to make Mozu get good fast. Again, it's cool, but I wish they were less broken so I could feel less guilty about using them during proper challenge runs. If I use them in Conquest, it'll be banned for any unit that hasn't promoted.

Anyway, this is gonna be pretty simple. We rush to Mozu, save her, and then give her the dread scroll and a raider knife so she can start training herself on these enemies. It's gonna be a bit of a slog, but it's the best option we have available to us to get another strong fighter, and I hate this situation where I can count my usable combat units on one hand.

Yep, so, Mozu gains crazy 2-3 stat boosts in everything but luck, which is -2, and resistance, which is +9. Adding in her crazy growth rates, and... Oh yeah. We can work with this.

She's still really weak at first due to being level one, but she's gonna get good super quick, and taking a lot of hits to kill enemies just means more chip exp while that's still good.

First level: strength, skill, speed, defense and resistance. Awesome start.

Second level up: literally everything. Even with a nerfed aptitude, Mozu tends to level like crazy.

Hell, I could easily give her a +atk pair-up partner, but this is getting her more exp, so she might as well do multiple combat rounds per turn while it lasts.

Man, it's so nice to be able to rely on dual guards. Mozu's not quite yet at the point where she can take more than one hit, but thanks to how many attacks she's doing, I can send her into the fray against two guys a lot of the time anyway.

...That was really mindless, but pardon the pun, I didn't really “mind” doing it. It's pretty easy to feed Mozu her whole paralogue whether you make her a dread fighter or an archer, and she'll be useful and handy for the rest of the game. I always make sure to train her. One chapter and we've gotten her to level 9, which is around the level curve of the rest of the usable party even though we did Chapter 8 first.

...Alright, I think that's enough for today. We'll tackle the next story chapter tomorrow. Honestly, I could probably easily do 2 chapters a day from here on out I think. Unless something radically changes about playlogging in the lategame that I'm not properly predicting. Well, we'll see. For now, I'll just leave it here. Tomorrow we'll tackle the infinitely inferior little brother of Fuga's Wild Ride, and possibly also Mokushu.

Stay safe, everyone!

Edited January 15, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

20 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

We rush to Mozu, save her, and then give her the dread scroll and a raider knife so she can start training herself on these enemies.

🤨

Using a Dread Scroll, or other not-Ballista DLC class item, on an unpromoted unit is cheating! Instantaneous large stat bonuses without sacrificing long term stat gain is too good.

But, this is Revelation, not peak Fates gameplay. And even if it was, nothing wrong with customizing the difficulty to your own specifications in various ways, which is a strength of Fates. But don't use BP/VP rewards on Conquest, even I can win Lunatic Classic CQ with those, I expect you to be better than me.😜

Edited January 14, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Alastor15243]

15 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

🤨

Using a Dread Scroll, or other not-Ballista DLC class item, on an unpromoted unit is cheating! Instantaneous large stat bonuses without sacrificing long term stat gain is too good.

But, this is Revelation, not peak Fates gameplay. And even if it was, no wrong with customizing the difficulty to your own specifications in various ways, which is a strength of Fates. But don't use BP/VP rewards on Conquest, even I can win Lunatic Classic CQ with those, I expect you to be better than me.😜

Count on it, I won't do it for Conquest. But might as well meme while strategy doesn't matter. Also DLC totally breaks Conquest. Imagine having a ballistician during Chapter 25.

Edited January 14, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Samz707]

39 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention about the raider weapons. As you might have been able to guess by the fact that the tome one is called “disrobing gale”... if you have WTA on your opponent... their clothes explode and they're left in their underwear for the rest of the map. Yeah, uh... Fates is horny. Fates is really, really horny.

....Please tell me that Tome doesn't work on Lissa and other clearly underage characters when you fight them in the other routes.

Also, why does it exist? 

 

[Sunwoo]

5 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

....Please tell me that Tome doesn't work on Lissa and other clearly underage characters when you fight them in the other routes.

Also, why does it exist? 

It gets worse ... unless my memory fails me I'm pretty sure there's a child character whose personal skill is making their opponents' clothes explode upon landing a hit.

[Alastor15243]

10 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

....Please tell me that Tome doesn't work on Lissa and other clearly underage characters when you fight them in the other routes.

Also, why does it exist? 

 

You can't use it on Lissa because she never shows up as an enemy, only an NPC in DLC. As for other underage characters... never tried.

[Shadow Mir]

39 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

It gets worse ... unless my memory fails me I'm pretty sure there's a child character whose personal skill is making their opponents' clothes explode upon landing a hit.

Only when she initiates combat.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...That was really mindless, but pardon the pun, I didn't really “mind” doing it. It's pretty easy to feed Mozu her whole paralogue whether you make her a dread fighter or an archer, and she'll be useful and handy for the rest of the game. I always make sure to train her. One chapter and we've gotten her to level 9, which is around the level curve of the rest of the usable party even though we did Chapter 8 first.

Whilst her situation is different from Donnel, I still find Mozu to be "awesome, but impractical", for most of the same reasons Donnel sucked.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

So yeah, then Sakura's retainers show up, pissed off that she planned to leave with Dakota without telling them.

They are useless. Subaki's not that great to begin with due to his terrible speed growth for a sky knight (yay on this game for getting rid of gender-locked classes and everything, but a lot of the Hoshidan characters to first buck these gender trends are terrible in the stats they should be great at), but Hana truly begins Revelation's proud penchant for inexplicably nerfing all of the retainers. Usually by giving them an atrocious level for their join time, but since Hana joins about the same time she showed up in Birthright, the devs actively made the decision to take away 2 points of strength and skill from her.

They chose to do that. You could try to explain all the other examples by them being titanically lazy, but they actively chose to make Hana identical to her Birthright counterpart except two points of strength and skill weaker.

That suggests that the fact that damned near every retainer sucks... was an active decision on their part.

Ironically, Subaki is actually better in Revelation, if only slightly (imho, anyway), because he is literally rendered obsolete after his joining chapter in Birthright. Also, Charlotte, for being the first female Fighter, doesn't make a good impression for Fighters, but Fighters in this game suck harder than Little Mac's recovery anyhow.

Edited January 14, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Interdimensional Observer]

31 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also DLC totally breaks Conquest. Imagine having a ballistician during Chapter 25.

I never tried the Ballistician class reading what I did of it, not buying the appropriate DLC, and opting for the Witch item instead on the one free chance for it. Long range non-fatal AoE? Besides helping with Ryoma and the Luninjas, maybe Oboro's wall squad, and weakening Hans's squad while the wall separating you and them is still up?

Given Izana and Flora for spare healbots, I'd think you could convert Shura into an easy and fairly usable Ballistician.

 

12 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

....Please tell me that Tome doesn't work on Lissa and other clearly underage characters when you fight them in the other routes.

Also, why does it exist? 

 

Silliness? I think everyone's bodies beneath are generic models. Fanservice too I suppose.

FEH has torn clothes on people's badly wounded artworks, but I think that peaked in extremeness with Female Corrin's summer alt back in the game's first year.

FEW had Broken Armor too, and it was fairly tasteful.:

https://imgur.com/a/5vRci

The above gallery is missing a few DLC characters.

 

6 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

It gets worse ... unless my memory fails me I'm pretty sure there's a child character whose personal skill is making their opponents' clothes explode upon landing a hit.

Silas's daughter, Sophie.

Edited January 14, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Icelerate]

Alastor, since you did enjoy the Crimean parts of RD a lot, I think you'll like this thread. 

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

FEW had Broken Armor too, and it was fairly tasteful.:

Unfortunately... the risk outweighs the reward imho, as it's much easier for you to get broken, which cuts your defenses, than the enemy.

Edited January 14, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Sunwoo]

43 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Silliness? I think everyone's bodies beneath are generic models. Fanservice too I suppose.

FEH has torn clothes on people's badly wounded artworks, but I think that peaked in extremeness with Female Corrin's summer alt back in the game's first year.

FEW had Broken Armor too, and it was fairly tasteful.:

https://imgur.com/a/5vRci

The above gallery is missing a few DLC characters.

In all fairness to FEH, the game doesn't feel like it's meant to be taken seriously. It's definitely fanservice first with some sad attempts at a serious story. Fates tried to take itself seriously, to the point of marketing how much better than Awakening its story was going to be, but just couldn't resist giving into fanservice in inappropriate places.

[Alastor15243]

16 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

In all fairness to FEH, the game doesn't feel like it's meant to be taken seriously. It's definitely fanservice first with some sad attempts at a serious story. Fates tried to take itself seriously, to the point of marketing how much better than Awakening its story was going to be, but just couldn't resist giving into fanservice in inappropriate places.

Also, the sheer hubris to think that in-game models were good enough to use for dramatic death scenes. Which is probably my favorite part of the story. The model death scenes are comedy platinum.

Edited January 14, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Samz707]

 

Quote

Silliness? I think everyone's bodies beneath are generic models. Fanservice too I suppose.

FEH has torn clothes on people's badly wounded artworks, but I think that peaked in extremeness with Female Corrin's summer alt back in the game's first year.

FEW had Broken Armor too, and it was fairly tasteful.:

https://imgur.com/a/5vRci

 

It's still mostly got a good few characters down to their underwear, which is gratitous fan-service to me. (People even make "FE WARRIORS ALL WOMEN UNDERWEAR" videos about that so it's clearly enough to...entertain certain people, again characters are just stripped down to their underwear rather than their armor breaking off.)

And the fact a few characters have it in Heroes was off-putting to me.

Edited January 14, 2021 by Samz707