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

[Jotari]

So Renault can't use purge from outside the magic seal range to attack Kishuna? Just another excuse to add reclassing to all these old games.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

So Renault can't use purge from outside the magic seal range to attack Kishuna? Just another excuse to add reclassing to all these old games.

Ten space radius, alas.

Also, while double-checking that, I just realized: they used the same CG for when Negal created Kishuna and when Nergal rejected Kishuna. Which "explains" why Kishuna is naked at the time.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Hello72207]

On 4/22/2020 at 3:00 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Speaking of which, I'd honestly say that Hector is the only one whose legendary weapon is worth using, and that's because he is built such that he can use it with minimal AS loss. Compare to Eliwood and Lyn, who cough up 7 and 8 AS hairballs respectively with Durandal and the Sol Katti. What the bloody fuck? All this trouble for a weapon that isn't even practical to use?  The Sol Katti is even worse because for how heavy it is, it's not even stronger than a Silver Sword.

I agree with FE7's legendary weapons being BS and luna is the only one you need, but I felt personally that Gleipnir from FE8 was BS also. No effective damage, weighs 20 so whoever uses it is gonna get flattened and doubled by everything, I think that the stat boost it gives you is 5 skill, which is unnecessary in FE8, and there aren't even good dark mages in FE8 to begin with. And only the 20 uses.

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

This is... surreal. I feel like I'm playing FE3 again, where half of the endgame enemies were berserkers with devil axes. Every single enemy on this map right now, besides Kishuna, is a berserker, which... is odd, because in the cutscene it was a much more diverse variety. And what's more, most of them have devil axes.

On Hector Normal, there is enemy variety- Generals, Snipers, Heroes, a Swordmaster, and Valkyries from the staircase near the start, not a single Berserker. HHM opted for an odd monoclass spam instead which you should you love- hi Kotaro-Kitsune-Hinoka 2!, with the Swordslayers to avoid making it entirely cake with a dodgy sword user.

 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also, while double-checking that, I just realized: they used the same CG for when Negal created Kishuna and when Nergal rejected Kishuna. Which "explains" why Kishuna is naked at the time.

There is this unused CG:

Could it have been intended for The Value of Life?

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

There is this unused CG:

Could it have been intended for The Value of Life?

That seems... way more fitting.

[Shadow Mir]

4 hours ago, Hello72207 said:

I agree with FE7's legendary weapons being BS and luna is the only one you need, but I felt personally that Gleipnir from FE8 was BS also. No effective damage, weighs 20 so whoever uses it is gonna get flattened and doubled by everything, I think that the stat boost it gives you is 5 skill, which is unnecessary in FE8, and there aren't even good dark mages in FE8 to begin with. And only the 20 uses.

I agree with that ten billion percent. It's right down there with the Crusher as one of the big contenders for worst legendary weapon in the series.

 

[Alastor15243]

Blazing Blade Day 35: Final Chapter

Quick note: Apparently, idiot that I am, I failed to notice that had I done this map as a bonus yesterday, I would've finished this LP on FE7's American birthday. I feel like a complete killjoy for missing the opportunity.

But there's no sense dwelling on that mistake. Let's keep moving.

Okay, is it explained why only the light magic tome specifically is effective against Nergal? I get the weapon triangle is a thing, but...

...Also, why is Athos talking about Durandal and Armads as if Hector and Eliwood have never seen them before? He mentions them with an air of “oh, and I brought these things for you, these are powerful weapons, use them well.”

And for Lyn... the Sol Katti.

Okay. Lemme see this fucking thing before I really tear into it.

I didn't get when I was younger why they didn't give Lyn a legendary weapon, until I realized this was a prequel with a pre-established world... at which point I still didn't get it. I mean, I get that they want to give her a weapon that she's guaranteed to be able to use, and she isn't guaranteed to be able to use bows, and the legendary sword was taken, but... really, this just makes her feel like a third wheel who doesn't belong here. They had to make up some kind of consolation prize for her while Eliwood and Hector got to use the established weapons.

Also, if this is a spirit-inhabited blade and the sister to the Mani Katti...

...Why did Athos just assume the Sol Katti spirits would accept Lyn too?

Okay, wait a fucking second.

Hector has made a habit of calling Athos “Graybeard”.

But now that Hector's talking to Dakota, he says “Athos Graybeard” like they were using Eliwood's version of this talk from Eliwood mode as a base and forgot to remove some of the words they replaced.

...But that would be an exceptionally weird thing to be true, given this was originally in Japanese and the writing team here was just translating existing text.

Well. This is infuriating. I want to get Canas and Renault's supports, and I also want to get Pent and Louise's talk in the last battle...

...But I just don't have the space.

I'll have to ditch one of the pairs. I guess I'll go with bringing Pent and Louise.

I'm also bringing Nino and Jaffar, not because Nino turned out to be some kind of badass (her magic average is way lower than I remember it being, and she's still only level 20/4), but because I wanna see if she has any pre-battle lines with the morphs of her adoptive family.

Okay, I'm doing preparations, and here's something I remember that annoys me: you can't see the map (meaning you also can't change formation), and most infuriating of all, when you talk to Nils for an augury on normal mode... he says something about having trouble seeing what's to come, and then says “you don't need an augury”.

Ugh. This... this serves no purpose other than to be annoying. Especially since to someone who resets... it means nothing but some wasted time.

I also remember that this map doesn't let you bring Merlinus, and that the S rank weapons show up in this map... disappointingly, outrageously too late to be any real fun to use. And they're also worth a frankly asinine amount of money that serves no purpose other than to punish your funds ranking for dropping any of them. Really, they're probably some of my least favorite S rank weapons in the series, since they might as well not even be obtainable. They're only really good for the arena.

But one thing that's better than I remember is Athos. Like I remember, he's the one carrying all the legendary weapons, but unlike how I remember, he's already here, on the preparation screen. I seemed to remember having to trade for the stuff as the battle started, but no, you can set that shit up in advance. Awesome.

I've outfitted everyone with 4 items, with the exception of Eliwood, who only has one because he's not seeing any combat, and his main job is going to be keeping everyone's inventory from getting too full and having to throw shit away. Nils will also be doing something similar, with only 3 items: Ninis's Grace, Filla's Might, and an elixir.

Every C staff mage has a restore staff, Athos (the only one in my army to have a full inventory) has restore, luna and fortify along with Forblaze and the almighty nipple of light...

I think I'm ready.

I've got the mandatory five of Hector, Eliwood, Lyn, Nils and Athos, and I've got Nino and Jaffar, Lowen (not Marcus, unfortunately; no space), Priscilla and Heath, and Pent and Louise.

Alright.

Let's finish this.

Hold on. Are they telling Merlinus to run off on his own when the big bad still isn't beaten?

I mean that's what it sounds like, but in fairness, all it would take to fix this would be to say “go back with the others. We've ordered everyone not advancing to head back to Fargus's ship and wait for us.”

Anyway, yeah. Time to face Nergal and have him show off that crazy scar.

Alright, so Nergal confirms that these morphs are made out of the quintessence of the people used to craft them. Which does confirm that Darin had some hefty fucking quintessence on him. Still, as others have pointed out: How long does quintessence hang around in the air for that they could reclaim Jerme and Kenneth's quintessence when Limstella, Sonia and Nergal were nowhere to be found at the time they died?

...Actually, that reminds me...

You don't actually have to kill to get quintessence, right? You can suck it right out of somebody, so it's not something that's specifically harvested through dying in combat, right?

...So hey, Nergal! Did you know? There was a much easier way you could've gotten all the quintessence you wanted! Wanna know what it is?

Why don't we tell him, boys and girls?

Let's stop and think. I'm sure it'll come to you all pretty swiftly, given the circumstance we're all in.

What's a better way for a wizard with extensive access to the dark arts to kill a ton of people on a wide scale, without having to resort to vast political conspiracies that involve manipulating 3 marquesses, a king, and the leader of the fucking Bernian League of Shadows?

All together now, boys and girls!

Say it with me:

MAKE A FUCKING PLAGUE!

Just brew up some evil magical plague in your fancy quintessence cauldron, and then let it run rampant across whatever poor country you decide to throw it at! Then have a couple dozen plauge-immune morphs wander around the plague-devastated city streets, sucking up all of the juicy quintessence in the air!

You don't care about body count, right? JUST DO IT!

Oh holy shit. Nergal actually mockingly offers to pull an Orson on Hector and make a morph of his dead brother.

Honestly, whenever this game tries to do a Kirk Summation against a big evil character... it always feels corny. It was kind of acceptable with Lundgren, but with Nino and Sonia, it was kind of ridiculous and unsatisfying, and here, it's just kind of goofy how Hector and Nergal are talking. From what I remember of Eliwood's version, it was just as bad.

Funny enough, Nergal's facial scar can't actually be seen that clearly, aside from the much more open eye, in the CG that reveals it. It's not until the portrait sprite is shown that you can clearly see all of the lines.

...And the second the turban goes off... his portrait sprites... go completely bonkers. It isn't just the exposed crazy eye. Cover that part of his face up, and he still looks crazy, because his normal eye is drifting downward and out of focus, giving him a completely unhinged expression that I don't think really suits him. It just serves to make him less impressive. You could argue that kind of worked for that one Zelda boss, but that worked because he wasn't actually the main bad guy. It was a fake-out. Here, this guy is the final (sentient) boss, and making him an unhinged weirdo in the final moments just kinda makes him less intimidating.

Curious that Louise says “no matter what happens, I'll be at Lord Pent's side”, when I'm pretty sure you can bring her without Pent.

Wow. Uhai is pretty damned impressive. He's the first one revealed, and he can't actually be doubled by anyone due to his speed.

That ridiculously powerful bow he's carrying can't actually do brave attacks, which makes me wonder why the hell the description says it can.

Oh wow. Even the basic enemies have the minor boss theme playing here. I didn't notice that until now!

Anyway, Heath managed to kill Uhai with a brave lance crit after some help from Priscilla to soften him up and Louise to kill the sniper keeping him from getting further into the room (in case Lowen, who was further away, had to finish him off),

Curious how the morphs regain their color and have a look of “I am at peace” when they're killed, when they're supposed to just look like those people and have their abilities.

Man, Athos is badass. I basically operated on the instincts of my childhood self, that first turn of my repeated attempts to clear this map basically drilled into me forever. I always sent Athos up to that northwestern chamber to clear out all those magic users when that door opened, and it was just as effective here as I remember it being back then. He routed the whole thing thanks to a crit against Kenneth (whose presence always confused the hell out of me until I saw him on later playthroughs).

It just occurred to me as the S ranked tomes in that room land in Athos's waiting inventory after Eliwood took some stuff off his hands... that I don't have a single magic user aside from Athos who can use S rank tomes. All of them either didn't do enough combat, or maxed staves first...

...Except for Nino.

Well, Nino. Wanna play with Excalibur?

Anyway, I had Priscilla and Heath bait out Brendan Reed, though I'm hoping to give Nino the kill. He should survive Priscilla unless she scores 2 30% crits.

Just as I hoped, exactly one critical, meaning she only did 60 damage out of his ludicrous 75 HP. She also dodged both him and the warrior with him, not that that really matters. She only needed to dodge one of them, the second was ludicrously unlikely, and I've got elite ranged healing coming out of my ears here.

I've also got Nino and Jaffar waiting for Ursula's door to open, along with Lowen, and Nils helped Athos get there too. I'll have Nino stop by Brendan to fight him, just in case, but then Nino will send her back to help Jaffar with Ursula.

And Nino tearfully promises to put her father out of her misery... and them immediately scores a badass crit on him. Holy shit. Pure cinema right there.

And then Brendan smiles before he dies, almost like he's proud of his daughter, before she gets an awesome level up that gives her both magic and defense.

Anyway, Hector moves into position to fight Darin, but unfortunately he's not quite fast enough to double Darin with Armads, which is... profoundly disappointing. So instead, he'll be using his trusty Wolf Beil, or rather the replica he found in a cave.

I just killed Ursula with Jaffar and Lowen, and now Nino gets to play with Excalibur! Thanks to the body rings she's wearing, she only loses 5 speed in exchange for a ludicrously powerful tome. Pity there are precious few enemies left she can use it on though.

Alright, Lyn. Might as well. Let's see that Sol Katti animation. The remaining general surprisingly isn't doing that much damage to you. Guess all that berserker grinding really helped her bulk.

Okay, this makes me really disappointed that the Sol Katti sucks so much, because that animation for her looks so badass. I actually really like this design of it more than the ones that Awakening and Heroes went with. It's this ridiculously long-ass fencing rapier, and she looks so cool using it. Both in her critical and in her basic animation. Her default pose with it just screams “bring it”.

Curious. I think this map just changed the basic combat music to always be overridden by boss or legendary weapon music, because when Athos went to use fortify with his ridiculous 15 range, the basic boss theme started playing.

Lyn, with 29 luck and an A support with Hector, is completely immune even to Lloyd's 40% crit rate. I'm frankly amazed I managed to make her so good when she was struggling for so long.

She also just barely has enough speed to not get doubled when she's using her Mani Katti. Nobody can double him.

But Hector's the one who finishes him off, with a swordslayer. Lyn takes out Linus... after Nino fights him first with Nils's help.

Nope, scratch that, Lyn failed to crit with the killer bow, so it's gonna have to be Priscilla.

Alright. The northern doors opened. I'm ready for the berserk staff user with 3 full restore staves, and the generals to the south who I'm pretty sure will show up at the end of next turn... well, somebody'll deal with them.

That somebody turned out to be Priscilla, as usual. The only enemy-phase unit I have who can reliably kill any physical unit. Holy shit do I regret never training this girl as a kid.

However, one of them does survive, due to a crazily wide stat variance giving him enough bulk to tank 2 regular hits. He won't last long though.

Now to have Athos fight Nergal with Aureola. He doesn't even need to kill the other dark mages after cleaning out the first two, his magical bulk is just that insane.

Honestly, Aureola's attack animation, while super cool... yeah, it's kind of hilariously ridiculous how long it is. Though in fairness... it's not quite as long as I remember it being.

I don't even need to heal him, he's that bulky, but I'm going to anyway, just in case.

One nice thing about getting all of these limited use weapons at the very end is that you don't really even notice how limited-use they are. It's ridiculously unlikely you'll actually run out of any of them unless you try to solo with someone.

Aaaaand Nergal is... down!

Pity I didn't unlock his secret death quote, but ah well. The knowledge I gained about the game's ironmannability is more valuable, I feel.

...Wait...

...Wait...

...He's...

...He's saying the line anyway.

Part of it, anyway. He asks himself why he wanted power, which I don't remember him saying before.

Well... anyway...

Alright then! Time for the final battle!

Curious how the scene after Nergal's death takes place with the (closed) dragon's gate backdrop in the background... despite them not being at the literal gate yet, and the gate having been open since earlier.

Okay, so...

Nergal opened up the gate before all of this, and then with his last breath he summoned dragons though.

What exactly does that entail?

Like I said, the dragon's gate is just a portal to a church on a planet in an alternate dimension. If he can make dragons come through it, why is that not already “controlling” them? These aren't feral monsters, these are sapient creatures with their own civilization, their own buildings and culture, and yet aside from Nils and Ninian, every single dragon we see come through that portal seems to be completely fucking feral.

You could argue being in Elibe drives them mad due to the change in nature, but no, that's how it works in Archanea, not Elibe. Here, it just makes them incapable of sustaining their form, like what happened to Nils and Ninian until, I assume, Nergal pumped enough quintessence into Ninian's dragonstone that she could assume her dragon form temporarily.

What exactly is making those fire dragons act like animals?

Oh shit. Athos takes all three on at once with his magic. Holy shit. No way he can do that in gameplay. Maybe this is what makes him die in the end?

Yeah, this game... really seems to make dragons way, way more powerful than they were in FE6. Granted, those weren't pure-blood dragons, but still...

...granted, the legendary weapons also weren't as strong in FE6 as they were in ancient times, so maybe dragons really were this insanely strong back in the old days too... but then how can they be this strong now!? If it really does involve Nergal giving them the Quintessence to survive in our world, you'd think he'd have mentioned that, like, ever, instead of worrying they'd be too dangerous to control if he didn't have enough quintessence to control them? Surely if they were too much of a hassle, he could just stop feeding them quintessence?

...Wait...

...No... wasn't his plan not to use dragons to rule the world, but to use dragons and suck their souls out so he could have even more power to rule the world?

Which means there's no way he was feeding quintessence into them at all.

Meaning these dragons are inexplicably at full, pre-ending-winter power with no given explanation at all.

...And now Brammimond shows up for a deus ex machina. Where he uses everyone's energy like a damned spirit bomb, to... bring Ninian back from the dead. With enough power to kill two fire dragons in a single hit.

Is “ice dragon” a mistranslation of “divine dragon” or something? If so, that would explain several things, like where the divine dragons “disappeared” to when they abandoned the other dragons to their war (though that doesn't explain why they took some fire dragons with them through the portal)...

...and if not, why are ice dragons this powerful? Are fire dragons just this weak to cold?

Yeah, Ninian even says she can't really use her power in this world, until this weird ritual gives her enough to use it briefly, without even becoming a dragon...

Yeah, that really makes it feel like ice dragons are divine dragons.

Yeah, this scene... I don't know how I didn't find this scene weird as a kid.

...Actually... I think I did find this scene weird as a kid. It just didn't register to me that it was bad.

Alright, time to whip out the anti-dragon weapon.

Not Forblaze.

Not Aureola.

Not Durandal.

Not Armads.

I'm talking the real legendary anti-dragon weapon here:

LUNA.

Glad I brought this thing and HOLY SHIT HE SCORED A CRITICAL AND NOW THE DRAGON WILL DIE IN A SECOND HIT EXACTLY.

HOLY FUCK.

WE'RE ONE TURNING THIS SHIT, BABY! NILS! COME OVER HERE!

Wait! Before I forget! Gotta get that Pent and Louise convo!

...They're... amazingly calm about the dragon. I'm talking about “parodies of British unflappability” calm.

I mean in fairness, she does say she's trembling, but the way they speak is amazingly calm.

Pent finally gives us the first indication of why humans started the war with dragons. They were so outrageously, terrifyingly powerful that “[dragons'] mere existence must have felt like a threat.”

...Okay. Yeah, seeing how their power is depicted here, I can buy that.

And then Louise casually drops at the end that she's pregnant. Awwww.

Gotta say, before Athos kills this guy... holy shit is that a cool battle sprite for dragons. The sheer implied scale of the fucking thing always terrified me as a kid (especially since I lost the first time I got to him by foolishly having my underleveled Eliwood with Durandal fight him). That thing is massive, and the background is just engulfed in the flames that this creature's mere existence fills the area with.

...And then the game has Hector ask Eliwood if he's alright. Honestly, I've never fought the final dragon with Eliwood since that one time mentioned above. Hell, I don't recall ever doing it with anyone other than Athos (though never with Luna until now).

Fuck. I accidentally pressed B and skipped some dialogue because the text is in a weird “I won't let you force the text to auto-complete with A, you have to watch it spell itself out slowly” thing for this part. Which is weird because it's not in auto-scrolling mode for some reason, just some weird hybrid where you can't auto-complete lines by pressing A. Lemme check what I missed:

...Weirdly I apparently only missed a couple of lines before the game goes into full auto-scrolling mode.

Athos dies, lamenting that the dark conflict he sees in the future will be too late for him or Brammimond to help with. But alas, he doesn't say anything that would allow any of the heroes to prepare for it.

And Ninian also says something suggesting she can see this future too for some reason.

Ninian also suggests the fire dragons just wanted to see their homeland again, just like she did. Were they just acting on violent, vengeful rage against the humans they saw on the other end of the gate, and were sane this whole time? If so, why did they keep their powers when Ninian did not?

Did the act of going through the gate without it being opened on the other end do it? Is that why Nils and Ninian lose their strength when the other dragons didn't? Is that why Nergal needed the dragonstone and a dragon to open the gate on this end? So that he could bring full-strength dragons forward? But then why do dragons still need dragonstones!?

This really feels like something the game should have explained on its own, given how pivotal it is to Nergal's whole plan.

So, wait...

Ninian says if the gate remains open, other dragons will pass through. But at the beginning of the final chapter, Nergal said the gate was already open, and the dragons were just waiting to be called-

...Fuck it. I give up.

This shit makes no sense at all.

Waaaaait a second.

Right.

Ninian dies young in this ending because she stays in Elibe, and Nils tells her that it's because of the changes in the air wrought by the scouring.

...but...

But Arcadia! Arcadia has dragons! They've lived with humans for centuries, and they're fine in Elibe's atmosphere!

So is every other fucking dragon we've seen in the story!

WHAT THE FUCK MAKES NINIAN SO ESPECIALLY SICKLY!?

This feels like the writers didn't even care to stay consistent!

UGH!

I hate this! I hate having to hate so much about a game that is so dear to my heart, especially when so much else of it still holds up!

And part of me is kind of annoyed that Eliwood doesn't even bring up the fact that apparently Ninian's going to die because she's the going giving up her world for them to be together, and not the other way around. If they truly love each other so much, enough to abandon literally everything else in their entire lives, surely he should be the one following her through the gate, so that they can be together for the rest of his long life rather than the rest of her short one?

I get why he can't do that, both the Watsonian reasons (he's got an entire territory to run and nobody else he can give the job to) and the Doylist reasons (he's in the damned sequel, which would make this entire thing non-canon). But storywise, the fact that he isn't even offering feels... pretty dark. I mean, he did hear Nils saying she's going to die in a few years, right!?

“Live as long and be as happy as you can, for as long as you can.”

...Thank you, Redundant Nils the Redundant.

Oooh! I get a special CG of Hector grabbing Lyn in a one-handed hug from behind! I'm sure that's not nearly as romantic as it could have been for her if he were wearing something softer than full plate armor.

...Also, there's no text to go along with it for some reason.

Alright, now for the epilogue.

...Wait... this “one year later” thing makes no sense with what Hector says right after. Dakota apparently hasn't seen Hector in over a year, and visits him a year later... to say goodbye? And Hector's let the throne be unoccupied for a whole fucking year, while hiding news of Uther's death, which has only just recently gotten out to the public, who aren't furious with their government for hiding that for so long!?

Well, looks like we get a scene with Hector and Lyn as a couple! Curious that even after all this time, Lyn still hasn't changed clothes.

Lyn apparently wants Dakota to be Lilina's godmother. A bit annoying that they say “godparent”, given that Dakota has a defined gender here.

Hahahah. Hector insisting that his child's going to be a boy is hilarious. He insists that “he” and Roy will take up their parents' rivalries, and Lyn's all “This is all he ever talks about.”

Man, this conversation is pretty sad, knowing that the next time we see Hector in the story, he'll be dying and covered with blood.

Hector's asking Dakota to help him when the day Athos talked about comes.

...a promise that she won't keep.

She won't come back for him.

He's going to die alone, wondering where Dakota went. She won't help him, or his children, and we'll never know why.

...Alright. Let's see the ending credits, and how I did.

HOLY SHIT THESE TURN RANKINGS ARE MOVING FAST.

It was initially too fast to keep up. With other games, I always checked the screen, then clicked away to copy down what I saw while the emulator was frozen because it was in the background. But this time, they scrolled so fast I couldn't absorb the information on screen in time, and I missed chapter 2's info before I got the idea to actually press the emulator's pause button to check these slowly. I had to replay this after writing my initial thoughts in order to fill in the data for Chapter 2.

Prologue: 7 turns.

Chapter 1: 8 turns.

Chapter 2: 8 turns.

Chapter 3: 6 turns.

Chapter 4: 8 turns.

Chapter 5: 7 turns.

Chapter 6: 6 turns.

Chapter 7: 9 turns.

Chapter 7x: 7 turns.

Chapter 8: 8 turns.

Chapter 9: 20 turns.

Chapter 10: 21 turns.

Chapter 11: 15 turns.

Chapter 12: 7 turns.

Chapter 13: 13 turns.

Chapter 13x: 8 turns.

Chapter 14: 16 turns.

Chapter 15: 8 turns.

Chapter 16: 23 turns.

Chapter 17: 20 turns.

Chapter 17x: 82 turns.

Chapter 18: 12 turns.

Chapter 19: 23 turns.

Chapter 20: 26 turns.

Chapter 21: 16 turns.

Chapter 22: 11 turns.

Chapter 23: 26 turns.

Chapter 23x: 25 turns.

Chapter 24: 11 turns.

Chapter 25: 57 turns.

Chapter 26: 12 turns.

Chapter 27: 40 turns.

Chapter 28: 16 turns.

Chapter 28x: 36 turns.

Chapter 29: 31 turns.

Chapter 30: 27 turns.

Chapter 31: 12 turns.

Chapter 31x: 6 turns.

Chapter 32: 19 turns.

Chapter 32x: 50 turns.

Final Chapter: 11 turns.

Holy cow that's a lot of chapters. I think in terms of chapters, this may be the longest game so far, though it's questionable how much each Lyn Mode chapter counts.

Anyway,

Total: 774 turns.

Character records:

Matthew: B19 W6 L0.

Oswin: B53 W20 L0.

Serra: B6 W0 L0.

Marcus: B290 W186 L2. Yeah. Holy shit I used this guy a lot. But then, I wonder what the records for the other big guns are gonna look like.

Lowen: B522 W314 L0. Well I guess that answers my question. Funny enough, he actually lived up to his weird title of “swift knight” in this run. He apparently replaced Marcus as the most famous knight in all of Pherae, which is... something I can very, very easily believe.

Rebecca: B11 W2 L0.

Dorcas: B7 W2 L0.

Bartre: B78 W28 L0. Holy shit, was he a hassle, but still strangely satisfying, especially with how insanely clutch the last-minute victory was.

Guy: B6 W6 L0. Wow. Every single battle he was in was a one-round. I don't think I've ever seen that before. Apparently he gets called the saint of swords too, for some reason? Not just late-life Karel?

Erk: B83 W58 L1. Died at Living Legend. Rest in peace, Erk.

Priscilla: B205 W133 L0. Weird. Did the game not register her death in that gaiden when I reset?

...Oh, no, wait... that's Heath's record, isn't it? My bad. For paired endings their records seem to be listed vertically from their names for some reason, even though they're listed horizontally from them for single endings.

Priscilla: B219 W170 L1.

Heath: B205 W133 L0.

And of course, the game pulls the rug out from under this happy couple, which is even sadder considering the man she could have been happy with was listed as dead right before this. It does say Heath promised to someday return, but... well, it doesn't follow up on that.

Florina: B24 W11 L0. Kind of annoying that it reveals Lyn abdicated through Florina's ending first, rather than letting her own ending bring it up. The game also inexplicably says that Florina's shyness “has made her strong within”, which... fucked if I know what that's supposed to mean.

Kent: B4 W2 L1. Died at Noble Lady of Caelin. That pretty resoundingly confirms that these records are for Hector Mode only, ignoring what characters do in Lyn Mode.

Sain: B11 W4 L0.

Wil: B3 W1 L0.

Raven: B1 W0 L0. I'm kind of surprised I never really used the guy. I guess there was no real point. I had too many good 1-2 range units by the time he showed up.

Lucius: B0 W0 L0. Wait... is this game implying that Lucius is the priest who took care of Lugh and Raigh? It has to be, right? Running an orphanage in Araphen? Damn. That would actually be really, really sad if Lucius and Nino had become close friends. I just checked though, and he can't support with either Nino or Jaffar. Even so though, to know you used to know their mother and father...

Canas: B73 W44 L0. And of course, infamously, this rather unceremoniously says he dies trying to stop a snowstorm. Pretty depressing ending to his character.

Dart: B3 W0 L1. Died at The Dread Isle.

Fiora: B1 W1 L0.

Legault: B19 W5 L1. Ah yes, one of the many casualties of 23x before I quit. He was the last straw, after I realized Hector couldn't block berserk Lowen's path and Legault got smashed into a fine paste.

Nils: B0 W0 L0. Huh. Apparently Nils was never targeted by a single attack in Hector Mode. I know Ninian was though. I guess they have separate records? But more importantly, his ending reminds me: one more infuriating niggle with the plot. If him closing it was enough to stop any more dragons coming through... how were Nils and Ninian able to come through in the first place? Why can't others just open it again from their side?

Isadora: B11 W3 L1. Yet another of the 23x casualties.

Rath: B4 W3 L0. His ending confirms his father is Dayan, which makes me wonder what the hell happened to him. He must have died, otherwise why would his no-doubt-in-his-fifties-at-the-youngest father be fighting and not him?

Hawkeye: B13 W5 L0. Yep, as I already knew, he's Igrene's dad.

Farina: B66 W37 L0. Apparently she still worked as a mercenary even as the commander of the pegasus knights of Ilia? Also, is Anna writing these endings or something? Her ending says “Her skill earned her great fame, as well as high prices!”. With an exclamation point. That's... kind of out of place.

Pent: B23 W17 L0.

Louise: B16 W10 L0. Yep, this seems to confirm that the layout for win records for paired characters is just changed spontaneously for no fucking reason, confusing the shit out of me.

Harken: B43 W27 L0.

Nino: B74 W46 L0.

Jaffar: B37 W17 L0. Wait... their ending implies they're still alive! Jaffar abandoned his family to protect them from bounty hunters who came after him, and Nino went looking for him. I mean, on one hand, that's great that they didn't die and that Lugh and Raigh might see them again, but... on the other, what the fuck, Nino? You don't just throw your kids in an orphanage like that! I mean, I guess since they knew Lucius, it's more like leaving them with their uncle for a while, but still...

Vaida: B42 W25 L0. Two conflicting rumors about what happened to her. Either she died, or she now serves Zephiel. How fucking long after the fact are these things being written that you don't know which one it is, ending-writing historian!?

Karla: B0 W0 L0. Just like Canas, the ending casually mentions she dies.

Renault: B6 W3 L0. Man, I really wish I got to know this guy more, because holy shit is this guy and his story fascinating. I remember reading all of his supports a while back and being shocked at the amount of effort they put into this minor, last-minute character. Honestly, I wish they'd do that more often, it's really cool.

Athos: B13 W9 L0. Funny how this is the only “where are they now” narration that doesn't describe anything we didn't already see firsthand, because we saw his ending.

Merlinus: B19 W0 L3. His ending says his shop in Ostia was forced to close, but he plans on reopening with some help from Eliwood. Why would he go to Eliwood for help in reopening a shop in Ostia?

Eliwood: B74 W28 L0.

Ninian: B6 W0 L0. Yep, looks like Nils and Ninian have separate records. Strangely, remember how a few lines back I asked when the hell these are supposed to have been written? Well, we get something of an answer: before the events of FE6, because the “historian” writing these says that Roy will fight to save the continent. So in that short period of time a decade and a half at most, the world became completely unsure whether Vaida works for the prince or if she's dead. What the fuck is she doing? I remember the fangame Elibian Nights made it so she helped Zephiel open the dragon's gate, which implies she's some kind of elite black ops soldier, which would help this make way more sense.

Hector: B336 W151 L1

Lyn: B159 W90 L2

Dakota – Famed Genius: “The tactician vanished after the final battle. Bern, Lycia and Etruria all sought those famed skills, but none ever found the tactician.”

Nice. Looks like I did well enough to get a good ending. The ending when you do terribly is kind of hilarious, where the game suddenly shits on you and says that historians puzzled for ages trying to figure out how your incomprehensible tactics ever brought victory.

Curiously though, this implies that the exploits of the heroes were old about, and believed, all over the world, despite no witnesses. I mean, I guess the queen of Bern would add some legitimacy to the stories in Bern, and... Pent in Etruria I guess? Fine, game, I'll let this slide.

Now for the final epilogue!

Seeing their older sprites was quite a fun treat at the end of the game when I was a kid. Of course, not as great as seeing Eliwood call the name “Roy” and realize that's why they look so similar.

But they apparently haven't seen each other in 15 years? Not since Uther's funeral? Wow. That's... kinda sad. Also, curious that they waited something like 8 ish years after getting married before having children. Why the wait? In medieval times?

I feel a bit sad when I see Roy react to being told to say hi to Hector with “Y-yes, sir!”. Eliwood doesn't strike me as a particularly harsh or strict parent.

Seeing little Roy and little Lilina interact is pretty fun though. I always thought they were cute, even before I played their game. Makes me kinda wish I used Lilina in FE6.

The game kind of implies Hector pushes the shy Lilina in front of him in order to encourage her to play, which is pretty cute.

Now, given that I heard about this game series through Smash Bros, I obviously knew that there wasn't going to be a sequel to this game that told Roy's story. Obviously I assumed Roy's game had already been made, even if I didn't understand the details of how the games before this worked. So the fact that this ended on a rather ominous cliffhanger like this, with the disturbance in Bern, and Zephiel suddenly being all evil and terrifying... it didn't exactly excite me, but it didn't annoy me either. I knew his game was out there somewhere, and I was confident I'd play it someday. At least, that's what I remember of my feelings.

But when I first saw this, I did initially think, based on the fact that Desmond “died in an assassination attempt on Zephiel”, that that meant he turned over a new leaf and died trying to save him.

Oh how wrong I was.

Awww, Lilina has a pony. Wouldn't it have been great if she got to use it in FE6?

Ah yes. I remember why I thought “dragon” was some kind of trigger word, and that Zephiel had been brainwashed. That weird sound effect and the red glow as he makes an evil smile.

Unfortunately, I can't see what my final ranking was, because the save file I downloaded to pre-unlock Hector Hard Mode seems to have been hacked to get perfect or near-perfect rankings in basically everything, and we can't see the results on a per-file basis. But last I saw my ranking, it was 1 for speed, 1 for experience, 5 for combat, 3 for survival, and 3 for funds.

...Alright. That's... that's the end of the game.

Now I'm going to go get something to eat, and think about where I'm going to place this game in the rankings.

...Okay, I'm back.

 

Difficulty: Fittingly, this is about as easy to decide as the game is to play. This game drastically emphasizes enemy quantity over enemy quality, and the enemies are hilariously easy to defeat and pose practically no threat for most of the game. Hector Hard Mode does have a few tricks up its sleeve, but barely any of them are any good. This game is a ridiculous enemy-phase-fest, and once the ironman was over, nearly all intelligent thought I put into my actions basically went out the window, and I still pretty handily won. Binding Blade had the best difficulty overall (though not without its significant flaws), Thracia came closely behind due to being one of the only games in the marathon so far to make a serious effort to even try to be hard however flawed the execution was, and Book 2 came third for a couple of things at the beginning and end. Everything after that is just various gradations of mediocrity and mindlessness, and Blazing Blade is very decidedly going somewhere in there.

Genealogy may have ridiculous aura stacking, but Blazing Blade's enemies are so weak it might as well have it, and for all of the ways I was able to cheese Genealogy, its game design still had me constantly appreciating each member of my army for completely different reasons, due to all the different roles they could fill. Meanwhile my frontline fighters in Blazing Blade were almost entirely interchangeable with vary rare exceptions, and Marcus found himself consistently contributing the whole game through despite his stats being terrible in comparison to Lowen by the end. So down below Genealogy it goes.

Gaiden had... assorted stuff going on that made it so that enemy-phase combat with one unit was pretty much never the answer. There was a lot more to think about basically at all times. So down below Gaiden it goes too.

Ugh. Book 1 is kind of... a total blur. I really don't remember that much about it or its difficulty anymore. I just remember it being FE1 with all of the searing agony replaced with meh. But on looking back at what I said for the ratings (Jesus Christ, was that really half a year ago? I've been doing so much writing on this that... you know that feeling when something you wrote feels so long ago that you feel like a completely different person who's lost the right to take credit for your previous work? I'm feeling that way after just six months, and it's surreal and slightly depressing)... this game had literally no difficulty at all, and it only beat FE1 because all of that game's difficulty was for the wrong reasons and thus a detriment to its rating rather than a benefit. I don' think I'd go that far with Blazing Blade, to say that it's completely devoid of difficulty. So I guess I'll go with:

1: Binding Blade

2: Thracia 776

3: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

4: Genealogy

5: Gaiden

6: Blazing Blade

7: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

8: Dark Dragon

 

Ironmannability: Before I begin, I feel I have to revise an earlier ranking. I'm bringing Binding Blade down one notch, because I feel the stuff it pulls in Sacae makes it worse than Book 1 from an ironmanning perspective. Book 1 just has ambush spawns. They may be in inconvenient places, but they're nothing like the shit 18B pulls.

Anyway, this feels bad, because it got so close to being another ideal ironmanning game until some endgame maps completely fucked it up. But alas, I have to put this pretty damned low on the list, for the sheer fact that it has some chapters that it's possible to fuck up through no fault of your own, simply if the neutral AI makes the wrong move or the enemies get too lucky. Not as low as Dark Dragon or Gaiden, mind, which have impossible-to-resist crit rates that all but have the same net result, or Thracia, a game so ridiculously full of beginner traps and denial-of-information fake difficulty that the idea of ironmanning it blind is basically a joke... but unfortunately 23, 23x and 28 just barely ruin all of the goodwill it built up with its mostly-nonexistent ambush spawns.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

3: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

4: Binding Blade

5: Blazing Blade

6: Dark Dragon

7: Gaiden

8: Thracia 776

 

Usability: A few simple, but important upgrades to the GBA engine that Binding Blade created mean it wins second place handily, only losing out to Genealogy due to the annoying ill-organized menu screens with weapon calculations and base stats on separate windows (which would have gotten annoying if I had needed to consult them more often).

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Blazing Blade

3: Binding Blade

4: Mystery of the Emblem

5: Thracia 776

6: Gaiden

7: Dark Dragon

 

Depth: It's like Binding Blade, except worse. Binding Blade was simplistic, but it also managed to carve out important niches for a wide variety of unit types, including ones that have almost never seen greatness in the series. Blazing Blade... is just a drastically more easy Binding Blade, and thus it goes below it. Not below Mystery of the Emblem or Dark Dragon though.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Thracia 776

3: Gaiden

4: Binding Blade

5: Blazing Blade

6: Mystery of the Emblem

7: Dark Dragon

 

Balance: Okay, I've been working on the final chapter and this writeup for a combined total of somewhere around 5 hours now, with no rests to do anything but eat and take care of the pets. I actually nearly melted my brain trying to figure out what the fuck to do here. But after clearing my head with some nice homemade pizza, I think I can give an answer.

It's blatantly obvious that this game prioritizes people who are good at enemy-phase combat, and it does it to a ridiculous degree. Really, you just need a good mix of bulk, power and speed, and you can wipe the floor with basically anything. Which, of course, means mounted units are absolutely king here. They frequently are, to be fair, and it's not nearly as bad as Genealogy, but this just is not a game that even for one moment demands something that mounted units don't have.

Honestly, I think I'll have to put this just above Book 2. At least this game full of ridiculous, thoughtless powerhouses has more than one weapon type capable of reliable 1-2 range enemy-phase sweeping. In Book 2, mages were king for this reason, and there was little reason to invest your star shards in basically anyone else. At least here there's a wider variety of mindlessly overpowered units here.

1: Binding Blade

2: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

3: Gaiden

4: Blazing Blade

5: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

6: Thracia 776

7: Genealogy of the Holy War

8: Dark Dragon

 

Pacing: Honestly, this game made me worry I may be doing a disservice to this marathon by using the turbo button on my emulator. That wasn't there when these games were first made available, and I may have completely glossed over the sheer time-sink that the abundance of enemy-phase combat could be. But still, this is, I think, the first game in the series where the amount of time I spent performing tedious busywork in order to complete a level with nothing to do at the time, through no fault of my own, was actually a resounding nil. The only exception was the Nils grinding that was technically mandatory for the best ending, but that's not even close to some of the white noise that some map design in the series has been. So I guess I have to give this the new top ranking. Actually, I'm concerned that beyond this grade, ranking these games is gonna be difficult, because this is something I'm awarding for what a game doesn't have, and plenty of games in the series don't have these things from here on out. We'll see, though.

1: Blazing Blade

2: Binding Blade

3: Thracia 776

4: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

5: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

6: Gaiden

7: Dark Dragon

8: Genealogy of the Holy War

 

Writing: Oh god. This one physically hurts to do. It stands at the gates of the afterlife, and as I, the god of judgment, weigh its good writing versus its bad writing, the little metal bar connecting the two weighing platforms on the scale simply snaps in half due to the strain.

On one hand, this game fucking revolutionized Fire Emblem writing. This is the first game in the series, apart from Genealogy, where it feels like an actual story is being told here. And even with Genealogy, it was just the same bare-bones narrative as usual, just with a really, really good first half sending it skyrocketing over the top. Here, gone is the old mainstay of the hero, his advisors, and nothing else. Instead, we have an actual main cast, three heroes who stand as equals and have conversations fueled by their well-fleshed-out personalities. We have scenes and character writing that's the best this marathon has seen so far by a country fucking mile. We have a borderline magical tutorial story that makes me wish from the bottom of my heart that we could see something like that again.

...And then on the other hand, the story is poop.

I just can't sugarcoat this. While the writing, character moments, and attempts to tug at the heart strings are frankly astonishing considering what came before... the actual story that ties it all together is a massive tangle of nonsense, bullshit, and canon violation.

So... the only question is... when I weigh these together... what comes out on top?

Well, let's check the others on the list.

Gaiden: Bad writing, and a story that rapidly devolves into complete and utter nonsense. Definitely worse than Blazing Blade.

Dark Dragon: Bad writing, not enough story to even be considered bad. Also very much definitely worse than Blazing Blade.

Mystery of the Emblem: The first thing that resembles a genuine story, but with writing that largely just amounts to exposition with very limited actual emotion or things of interest, and numerous plotholes in said story or, at best, things that were very poorly explained in the actual game. Worse than Blazing Blade.

Binding Blade: Essentially a rehash of the core premise of the most boring story in the series, and most of the actual twists were only revealed in one of the worst exposition vehicles I've seen in the series thus far. ...Worse than Blazing Blade, but now we're getting into the territory where I don't feel as confident about saying it.

Thracia 776: A story that's slightly better than FE4's second half, but nowhere near as good as its first, and really nothing mind-blowing. But it was largely devoid of plotholes as far as I can tell, and most of the annoyance came from things the translators added, and not the original game. ...Worse... than Blazing... Blade? ...Yes, Lyn Mode brings it over the top.

...Which brings us to Genealogy. This is... this is very hard. Genealogy's first half is probably the best story the series has ever told, but it's not exactly fantastic about telling it, and as I discovered in my marathon runthrough, it wasn't exactly devoid of stupidity both in the plot and in an unclear and inconsistent timescale. Meanwhile Blazing Blade's story is much better told, but the story itself isn't that great (with the exception of Lyn Mode), and it also makes shockingly little sense (with the exception of Lyn Mode).

...Honestly, if Lyn Mode were the story for the entire game, I think it might have been one of my favorite stories in the whole series. If they were brave enough to build an entire game around that narrative rather than making it just the introduction, I think I'd adore that. But of course they couldn't do that if they were going to set this in Elibe. The FE6 fans rightly would have none of that.

...But... yeah, I'm afraid that Genealogy's amazing premise and comparative lack of plotholes and nonsense means it still wins out over Blazing Sword's superior storytelling but shit story to tell.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Blazing Blade

3: Thracia 776

4: Binding Blade

5: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

6: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

7: Dark Dragon

8: Gaiden

 

Music: The GBA instruments hold it back from competing with the sheer greatness of the latter two SNES games, but unlike Binding Blade, it's good enough to beat Gaiden. While the songs in this game have fallen off of my favorite music lists the more new games have come out, it's still got a pretty well-balanced mix of serviceable tracks.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Thracia 776

3: Blazing Blade

4: Gaiden

5: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

6: Binding Blade

7: Dark Dragon

8: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

 

Presentation: Slam dunk for Blazing Blade. Binding Blade was the old winner, and visually, Blazing Blade is just an objective improvement. The color palette looks nicer, the sound effects sound better or are just plain there where they weren't before, the new custom assets like the lords and dragons look way nicer than the lord and dragons from Binding Blade, and those Cgs were just an excellent addition to improve visual storytelling. Also, actually showing the intro before preparations was a fantastic and long overdue improvement. New winner: Blazing Blade.

1: Blazing Blade

2: Binding Blade

3: Thracia 776

4: Genealogy of the Holy War

5: Mystery of the Emblem

6: Gaiden

7: Dark Dragon

 

Replayability: While the extra mode they added really doesn't add nearly as much as it sounded like it would, it still is an extra mode with more chapters and story elements. Also, there are some alternate versions of chapters, better supports than Binding Blade's, the whole Renault story you can unpack over several playthroughs...

...Assuming you find the gameplay of Binding Blade and Blazing Blade to be equally fun (which is a big if, but necessary for this section), I think there are slightly more reasons to play Blazing Blade again than there are for Binding Blade.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Blazing Blade

3: Binding Blade

4: Thracia 776

5: Gaiden

6: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

7: Dark Dragon

8: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

 

So... where does that leave us?

Let's do the thing we did for Thracia, just to be safe, though to make it a bit easier, instead of awarding points, I'll just do golf rules, and add up all of the numerical totals of their places in each category. The lower the number, the better.

Dark Dragon: 71

Gaiden: 53

Mystery of the Emblem Book 1: 51

Mystery of the Emblem Book 2: 48

Thracia 776: 38

Blazing Blade: 31

Binding Blade: 30

Genealogy of the Holy War: 29

Holy shit, is it really that down to the wire for the top three spots? And wait, does that mean that Binding Blade and Genealogy were tied by that metric until I took off an ironmannability point for Binding Blade here?

Curious. Well, I think I'm gonna go with it. I'll still put Gaiden ahead of Book 1 though.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Binding Blade

3: Blazing Blade

4: Thracia 776

5: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

6: Gaiden

7: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

8: Dark Dragon

...It always feels weird when I score a game highly after dunking on so many aspects of it, but I have to remind myself that a little over a third of this list is still mediocre-to-trash.

Go ahead and enjoy it Blazing Blade. You've earned it.

For now.

...I guess that means that Sacred Stones is next! And we'll be picking that up tomorrow! I'll be ironmanning that one, obviously, since there's basically no reason not to, but the same rules apply as before. If I ever get a game over, lose all of my healers, lose all of my thieves, or lose a total of units equal to or greater than half of the chapter number, it's back to the resetting slums for me.

Yeah. Like that's gonna happen with Sacred Stones.

[Boomhauer007]

Couple random questions:

1. Did you play genealogy on the new patch? I've only played the old one and did a double take seeing it on top of usability. I never knew what any weapon did off those descriptions, so I assume that's fixed now. 

2. What's the plan for SS? Both routes 1-20, one route, make a save at the split and do both from there, etc. 

3. Will you be able to turbo PoR / RD? Those EP/AP phases oh god

Also realized when you said half a year that three houses could take almost that long by itself

Edited April 27, 2020 by Boomhauer007

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Boomhauer007 said:

Couple random questions:

1. Did you play genealogy on the new patch? I've only played the old one and did a double take seeing it on top of usability. I never knew what any weapon did off those descriptions, so I assume that's fixed now. 

I don't remember any issue with that. The main thing is that it has a ton of quality of life features its predecessors don't have, technically has formation selection before Binding Blade invented it, and unlike the GBA games, doesn't have three pages for all of the unit info.

2 minutes ago, Boomhauer007 said:

2. What's the plan for SS? Both routes 1-20, one route, make a save at the split and do both from there, etc. 

Originally the plan was just Ephraim mode, since I did Eirika mode relatively recently. But given that FE9 is still loaned to a friend, I may need to buy some time for him to finish it and send it back. I'll keep it in mind. Either way though, Ephraim Mode will be how we finish the game.

4 minutes ago, Boomhauer007 said:

Also realized when you said half a year that three houses could take almost that long by itself

Doing Three Houses is going to be my personal hell, and I plan to soften the blow by making it just a playthrough of Azure Moon. I'm hoping I'll recover some semblance of a will to play 3H and finish Silver Snow by the time that's ready to happen, so I'll have played all the other routes beforehand.

[Jotari]

Hold the phone a second. Okay so the morphs were made from dead quintessence, ignoring how Nergal got his hands on half of that, what the hell happened to Jerme/Kenneth when you don't fight them? Did Nergal just randomly decide to kill his own minion and make a clone of him instead of just using him as normal? If so why even bloody bother to have humans working for him in the black fang to begin with when he could just convert them all to morphs.

 

Also Athos is blatantly wrong when he says the fire dragon could eradicate humanity in a month. No way that's true. Humans were the ones winning against the dragons during the scouring before the clones Vs arms race. Even if we say humans also suck compared to what they were like back then I'm sure the collective armies of humanity could take out a single dragon should Eliwood and company fail (and of course this is all ignoring the whole different environment which should make the Fire Dragon weaker). My only conclusion, the Fire Dragon was only pissed at Nergal and meant no harm to humanity as a whole. Athos just insisted on killing it because he's racist.

[Alastor15243]

5 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Hold the phone a second. Okay so the morphs were made from dead quintessence, ignoring how Nergal got his hands on half of that, what the hell happened to Jerme/Kenneth when you don't fight them? Did Nergal just randomly decide to kill his own minion and make a clone of him instead of just using him as normal? If so why even bloody bother to have humans working for him in the black fang to begin with when he could just convert them all to morphs.

 

Also Athos is blatantly wrong when he says the fire dragon could eradicate humanity in a month. No way that's true. Humans were the ones winning against the dragons during the scouring before the clones Vs arms race. Even if we say humans also suck compared to what they were like back then I'm sure the collective armies of humanity could take out a single dragon should Eliwood and company fail (and of course this is all ignoring the whole different environment which should make the Fire Dragon weaker). My only conclusion, the Fire Dragon was only pissed at Nergal and meant no harm to humanity as a whole. Athos just insisted on killing it because he's racist.

Yeah, the Fire Dragon power level in this game frankly makes no sense at all. FE6's was much more consistent. From everything we know in FE6 those dragons should not he able to exist in that form.

As for morphs, in fairness, Nergal has slowly been replacing the black fang with morphs for ages, as Sonia reveals to Brendan. That could actually be EXACTLY what he's doing, just slowly and choosing not to make them have the same face.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, the Fire Dragon power level in this game frankly makes no sense at all. FE6's was much more consistent. From everything we know in FE6 those dragons should not he able to exist in that form.

As for morphs, in fairness, Nergal has slowly been replacing the black fang with morphs for ages, as Sonia reveals to Brendan. That could actually be EXACTLY what he's doing, just slowly and choosing not to make them have the same face.

Still bloody weird Jerme/Kenneth are randomly killed off screen (at that exact time frame) for the sole purpose of being reintroduced in manner that a blind player wouldn't understand at all. It's not your younger self's fault you were confused by Kenneth's existence, he's a zombie that comes out of bloody nowhere. Why didn't they pull a full Lloyd-Linus and have you kill the other one somewhere else?

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

Still bloody weird Jerme/Kenneth are randomly killed off screen (at that exact time frame) for the sole purpose of being reintroduced in manner that a blind player wouldn't understand at all. It's not your younger self's fault you were confused by Kenneth's existence, he's a zombie that comes out of bloody nowhere. Why didn't they pull a full Lloyd-Linus and have you kill the other one somewhere else?

Hmmm... Good idea, but which chapter would you put them in? And if not an existing chapter, where would you add in a chapter they'd go in?

[AnonymousSpeed]

24 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, the Fire Dragon power level in this game frankly makes no sense at all. FE6's was much more consistent. From everything we know in FE6 those dragons should not he able to exist in that form.

FE7 bad plot.

Next game has an above average plot for FE standards though.

Get ready for Fire Emblem: Sethcred Stones

'Cause my boy Seth he can rhyme like the meth, that'll be on the test.

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Guy: B6 W6 L0. Wow. Every single battle he was in was a one-round. I don't think I've ever seen that before. Apparently he gets called the saint of swords too, for some reason? Not just late-life Karel?

A minor mistranslation. He doesn't become the Sword Saint, he becomes able to rival the Sword Saint.

His ending title of "Mounted Swordsman" is wrong too, a literal translation is "galloping swordsman", but non-literally means "progressing, advancing, up-and-coming". The literal doesn't make much sense here, since Guy doesn't ride a horse.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Farina: B66 W37 L0. Apparently she still worked as a mercenary even as the commander of the pegasus knights of Ilia? Also, is Anna writing these endings or something? Her ending says “Her skill earned her great fame, as well as high prices!”. With an exclamation point. That's... kind of out of place.

Farina loves money remember. Though I see your point, any humor in character endings should be stated in a more muted tone, no exclamation points. I don't recall even Fates using any, even though it hadn't an issue with Felicia's ending among others adding a little laugh.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Dakota – Famed Genius: “The tactician vanished after the final battle. Bern, Lycia and Etruria all sought those famed skills, but none ever found the tactician.”

Nice. Looks like I did well enough to get a good ending. The ending when you do terribly is kind of hilarious, where the game suddenly shits on you and says that historians puzzled for ages trying to figure out how your incomprehensible tactics ever brought victory.

The middle-of-the-road one is what you got. The best says Bern and Etruria went to war over over having the Tactician. You can learn more in Fire Emblem: Three Fateful Isles- the midquel of Elibe, set in the Western Isles to minimize interfering with canonizing or decanonizing any character pairing, with additional, limited visits to Ilia and Sacae- but noooooo seeing anyone from those places except Guy and Canas. Options to side with Bern for a lovely look into Zephiel's screwed up teens or Etruria to see what Elffin's father actually looked like are included. Experience the secret war over the greatest strategist since Hartmut. 

 

Also, this is the ending CG you're treated to if you went to A Glimpse in Time:

I'm pretty sure it's the picture described here:

Lyn:
“There’s a library filled with ancient books inside. She’s been in there, staring at a picture. I can’t get her to move.”

Eliwood:
“What kind of picture?”

Lyn:
“A picture of a dragon and a human.”

Hector:
“From the Scouring? We’ve got a lot of those in Castle Ostia.”

Lyn:
“No, it’s not a picture of the actual fighting. It shows a single human and a single dragon. …It’s a very eerie picture.”

Eliwood:
“…It must have belonged to the dark sorcerer who used to live here.”

Lyn:
“I wonder what kind of person that magic user was…”

Teodor said told them about the sorcerer.

On a related note, I find it touching, if unexplained that Nils cries right after Nergal dies- subconscious recognition of his father. It'd be safe to imagine that he thought after hundreds of years his human father- if he even remembers he's only half-dragon and had a human dad- that his father would've been long dead. 

-A happy, sloppy, barbecue saucy mess might describe FE7's narrative, but personal bias says thats better than a straight and clean saltine. Although I have tastily snacked on saltines in the past. Call it an FE RomCom?

 

Nice to Blazing Sword is done, it's a bit sad though that even Hector Hard Mode becomes too easy in time. FE obviously should've never left Japan and then they never would've watered the challenge down. Alas, eventual remake, fix this. Though current FE super-difficulties can tend to rely too much on stat inflation, so who knows if it'd be fun?

Ephraim Mode should be good fun for SS. No more NPC playables to generally protect, removing one-two bellyache chapters of FE7, Phantom Ship L'Arachel exists no loss, she is so underleveled, but that aside all will be better on that front. From that, Phantom Ship is partly the worst aspect of FE7 too- too much enemy phase too easy barring death-by-thousand-cuts- though the rest of the game? You'll have to judge for yourself.

Personally, the map design of Ephraim's chapters beats Eirika's for me, even if the reasons for every playable showing up are better, and I prefer Eph!Lyon much more than Eir!Lyon.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

45 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hmmm... Good idea, but which chapter would you put them in? And if not an existing chapter, where would you add in a chapter they'd go in?

I guess in the Denning chapter. But then we'd lose Denning. And that is absolutely unreasonable as a demand. The most sense plotwise would be as a second boss backing up Llyod or Linus in the final battle with the Black Fang. Which would actually result in four different possible incarnations of that map.

While we're on the subject of Nergal's morphs, why didn't he make a morph of Elbert? He threatened to do that with Hector's brother, but unlike Uther Elbert was an actual person Nergal knew and, more importantly, had his quintessence right there at the drgaon's gate. It would have really fucked Eliwood up if Nergal made him fight his zombie father and Nergal is just the type that would do it.

21 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

The middle-of-the-road one is what you got. The best says Bern and Etruria went to war over over having the Tactician. You can learn more in Fire Emblem: Three Fateful Isles- the midquel of Elibe, set in the Western Isles to minimize interfering with canonizing or decanonizing any character pairing, with additional, limited visits to Ilia and Sacae- but noooooo seeing anyone from those places except Guy and Canas. Options to side with Bern for a lovely look into Zephiel's screwed up teens or Etruria to see what Elffin's father actually looked like are included. Experience the secret war over the greatest strategist since Hartmut. .

Are you just joking or is that an actual fan game? Because it sounds pretty cool.

[Interdimensional Observer]

23 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Are you just joking or is that an actual fan game? Because it sounds pretty cool.

The name "Three Fateful Isles" and mention of no stepping on shippings should've made that apparent I was joking. It was me lightly reflecting on the notion of fighting a war over an avatar character, it can't be looked at the same way today as it could've been back then. It's a little cringey actually when I think about about, and only partially because I've envisioned young Zephiel running cheerfully in an open field with the tactician they've come to love following close behind them, as though he were Elise. Wars should not be waged over skilled individuals. Even if real wars have been fought over less- see the War of Jenkins's Ear.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

The name "Three Fateful Isles" and mention of no stepping on shippings should've made that apparent I was joking. It was me lightly reflecting on the notion of fighting a war over an avatar character, it can't be looked at the same way today as it could've been back then. It's a little cringey actually when I think about about, and only partially because I've envisioned young Zephiel running cheerfully in an open field with the tactician they've come to love following close behind them, as though he were Elise. Wars should not be waged over skilled individuals. Even if real wars have been fought over less- see the War of Jenkins's Ear.

True, but something of the sort could conceivably depict said nebulous conflict while also being about something else. Elibe as nominally been at peace for a long time, yet at the same time the Western Isles have been a hotbed for conflict for sometime as far as I remember so something like you described being set there with it's limited canon damaging impact as you describe actually does sound like an idea with potential to me.

[Eltosian Kadath]

11 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

I'm also bringing Nino and Jaffar, not because Nino turned out to be some kind of badass (her magic average is way lower than I remember it being, and she's still only level 20/4), but because I wanna see if she has any pre-battle lines with the morphs of her adoptive family.

She has a lot of them. Oddly enough Legault has a lot of battle quotes as well, having one with all three of the Reeds and Uhai as well (actually Legault mentions Uhai a couple times in earlier boss quotes as well, so I guess its not that surprising).

 

30 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...And then the game has Hector ask Eliwood if he's alright. Honestly, I've never fought the final dragon with Eliwood since that one time mentioned above. Hell, I don't recall ever doing it with anyone other than Athos (though never with Luna until now).

I know the first time couple times (I want to say two, but its been forever since this game was new) I played as a kid it never dawned on me how amazing Luna would be on Athos, which makes endgame harder, and made that last confrontation all about the Lords vs the dragon.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

But Arcadia! Arcadia has dragons! They've lived with humans for centuries, and they're fine in Elibe's atmosphere!

I will point out Fae is described as the last real dragon of Arcadia.

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Kent: B4 W2 L1. Died at Noble Lady of Caelin. That pretty resoundingly confirms that these records are for Hector Mode only, ignoring what characters do in Lyn Mode.

They did have a sequence just like this at the end of Lyn mode showing off all their records...

 

Good Luck in Sacred Stones. I get the feeling I will have little interesting to say about the blandula twin's game, but here are three small pieces of advice for ironmaning Ephraim mode if you want them

Spoiler

First, the phantom ship is really easy to ironman if you spawn block the boss (preferably with pirate Ross). On a related note be warned that a lot of the terrain that borders sea tile can't be crossed by water walking, so either pay attention to terrain, and don't be surprised if rescue drop into the sea is the only way to get there. Finally make sure you grind up at least two (and preferably three) staff ranks to C for chapter 14, as those berserk staffs really like to target healer the turn after they restore people.

 

4 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

no loss, she is so underleveled,

You loss a lot of gold if she dies and can't recruit Rennac for free...

[Alastor15243]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

While we're on the subject of Nergal's morphs, why didn't he make a morph of Elbert? He threatened to do that with Hector's brother, but unlike Uther Elbert was an actual person Nergal knew and, more importantly, had his quintessence right there at the drgaon's gate. It would have really fucked Eliwood up if Nergal made him fight his zombie father and Nergal is just the type that would do it.

Well, he didn't have his quintessence anymore. He used it up trying to summon dragons.

I find it interesting that that kind of implies he took Uther's quintessence after his death by illness, kind of like my plague idea...

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Well, he didn't have his quintessence anymore. He used it up trying to summon dragons.

I find it interesting that that kind of implies he took Uther's quintessence after his death by illness, kind of like my plague idea...

I might be misremembering, but doesn't Elbert stab Nergal after the whole dragon summoning moment? Pretty sure Nergal witnesses his plans twarted and then is forced to flee afterwards. Does that mean Elbert lost all his quintessence while he was still alive? That seems to be contrary to the whole idea of quintessence is. Unless Nergal could take most of Elbert's quintessence but not all of it for...reasons.

Also your idea of an artificial plague is good idea for a continent level threat that isn't yet another war, and, uh, its particular resonant right now.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

5 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I might be misremembering, but doesn't Elbert stab Nergal after the whole dragon summoning moment? Pretty sure Nergal witnesses his plans twarted and then is forced to flee afterwards. Does that mean Elbert lost all his quintessence while he was still alive?

 

[Shadow Mir]

8 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Next game has an above average plot for FE standards though.

Get ready for Fire Emblem: Sethcred Stones

HA HA HA HAHA.... I've seen better Excuse Plots than the shitfest that is Sacred Stones's story. Just.... Be ready for me to tear it a new one.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

HA HA HA HAHA.... I've seen better Excuse Plots than the shitfest that is Sacred Stones's story. Just.... Be ready for me to tear it a new one.

Eirika might hold the idiot ball pretty tightly in that one scene, and Ephraim's success level might be quite unreasonable, but I find Blazing Blade to have far more of an excuse plot than Sacred Stones by a country mile.  Most of my complaints with Sacred Stones would be about how basic it is along with how rushed the ending feels.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

Sacred Stones Day 1: Prologue

Alright. I'll level with you guys.

That writeup yesterday...

...I started at 10:00 AM...

...I didn't do anything else except feed myself and the pets...

...and I didn't finish until around 9 at night.

That, combined with the fact that I'm... kinda stalling for time here to give my friend time to finish FE9 and send it back to me... means I'm really not in the mood to do too much writing today. So to give myself a major break... we're just doing the prologue.

Hopefully first-entry observations will be enough to make this a sufficiently meaty entry. If not, I apologize.

Okay. So. Sacred Stones.

Back before the days of FE9, I was furiously debating to myself whether I liked FE7 or FE8 better. It was a moot point though, because I had lost my FE7 cartridge and thus FE8 was all I had to play. The way I remember it, I liked the characters of FE7 more overall, but I also liked the postgame of FE8 better, and all the cool stuff you could do like the dungeon crawling and the super trainee units that I initially thought were a super cool glitch that was on my game cart and my game cart alone. I also really loved the branching promotions, even though, to my infinite shame, and I shit you not...

...I genuinely thought the mounted promotions like mage knight were pointless, and that move was a dump stat, because “You can't move in the link arena”.

Jesus Christ, the things you think when you're 13.

Yeah. I remember wishing I had my copy of FE7 back. Not because I wasn't having fun with FE8, mind you. I played the shit out of this game. I unlocked all of the creature campaign characters, I played the game multiple times to see all the supports I could, I think I promoted each of the trainees to all of their classes at least once. Man, I loved those characters. This was back before I actually paid any attention whatsoever to stats, so I just kind of assumed these guys were the greatest, Estiest Ests in all of Estdom, due to how much effort you had to put in to train them. I just naturally trusted the game that it punished taking the easy way out and rewarded training the little guys.

No, I wouldn't say I missed FE7 because I felt it was better. I simply missed playing FE7 due to... y'know... not having it. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. FE8 had way, way more content and an actual extant postgame... but I missed FE7's characters, its maps, and its...

...story.

Yeah. Okay. Enough about the reminiscing. That's all I can remember about my childhood playing this game right now.

Let's actually get to playing.

And of course, unlike FE7, we get that big white flashing health and safety screen. Did some new law pass that made that mandatory when it wasn't before? I remember FE9 at least had something similar, but I know modern FE games don't have that.

Honestly, the pre-menu opening to this game feels cheesier and lower-budget than the one for FE7. This one has way more visuals, but the way they were animated... has aged more poorly than the FE7 one. It's still better than the barebones FE6 one though.

It's weird that they have the eyes glowing in the dark... and then the dark disappears to reveal they're just disembodied eyes glowing against that rock in the background.

And then my emulator spontaneously loses all sound. Shit. Alright, let's fix this.

Alright, restarted my computer. For some reason, occasionally, really, really occasionally, my emulator will kill the audio for my whole computer and I have to restart.

First thing I see on the (I assume updated after you beat the game once) class roll is that Eirika's Great Lord class has... 3 base strength.

Oh joy.

Alright, we're starting, and we're starting on “difficult”, obviously. I like how “difficult” is available from the very beginning, but really, it's about as good as this game not having an extra hard mode you can unlock at the end of the game at all.

Well, we'll see.

I like the instrumentation of the Fire Emblem theme here, but I do prefer the FE7 one with intro riff.

“For players seeking a real challenge.”

...Yeah. Okay game. We'll see.

Alright, so, the Sacred Stones are divine artifacts that appear to have literally come from the heavens in mankind's darkest hour when the world was nearly overrun by darkness.

Really makes you wonder about that “willing and able to prevent evil” problem, huh?

But at any rate, that means there's a better case for the gods of Magvel actually existing compared to the gods of Elibe.

Anyway, what exactly can the sacred stones do, besides seal away Fomortiis's soul? They're never shown to have any kind of power against his minions. Why exactly did giving humanity five of them help, other than for redundancy in case the plot of this game happened?

That's curious. The music used for the opening doesn't appear to be timed for it, despite there being no “press A to proceed” things that would need it to be longer. The music just fades out mid-song. Shame, I was kinda getting into it.

And now we see the continent of Magvel, which I literally just realized looks like an upside-down Australia.

Okay, since “Grado” was the name of the leader of the champions who fought the demon king Fomortiis, I have to assume the other nations are named after heroes too.

...Which begs the question: did only five heroes exist? If so, why are there ten demon killing weapons? Was everyone in an Altina situation? If so, who dual-wielded something with Nidhogg? Or did half of the heroes die in the war and only the other five lived on to found countries?

Regardless, I'm glad that this game went the FE6 route with legendary weapons, making them things the heroes collect along the way and that anyone with an S rank can use. That's way more fun than having them be a last-minute thing you can only use in the last map, if even that.

I wonder what Jehanna was thinking, deciding to found her kingdom in a desert?

...Or since the continent was already inhabited before, was there already a civilization there that she re-consolidated into a new nation or something?

Ugh. I don't want to get into this so soon.

There's nothing glaringly contradictory here, so I'm gonna let the game slide here for now.

Curious that the game calls Mansel the Divine Emperor here, rather than the Pontifex that his class calls him.

Waaaaaaaait a sec...

Why is Grado an empire?

So, these countries were founded in the aftermath of the fall of the demon king, built on the legacy of the heroes and the stones.

An empire is “an extensive group of states or countries under a single supreme authority, formerly especially an emperor or empress”.

What formerly-independent nations did Grado take over in order to become an “empire”? That is a prerequisite, right? You can't just decide to be an empire by breaking up your own territory, or by having a bunch of equals agree to unite, right? Otherwise they'd be a republic or an alliance or something.

Is it an “empire” because Grado re-consolidated the territory of pre-existing ruined nations? Because, like... wouldn't all the countries on this continent be empires in that situation?

Or is that where the other legendary weapon wielders went? They founded their own countries, and Grado took over all of them some time in the 800 years between then and the start of the game? If so, then why would it only have two of the ten sacred twin weapons, if it were made up of the territory of more of the heroes than anyone else's country?

...Or did these people just want to call it an empire because it sounds impressive and evil?

...Moving on.

The game suggests that Carcino is the only country to have been founded after the drama 800 years ago, recently enough to describe it as “emerging”.

Right. Now we get to the meat of the plot, where Grado invades Renais for reasons unknown (to a first-time player). Of course, we as people who have already played the game (which, yet again, I'm assuming applies to you the reader, and I am profoundly flattered if this is not the case) know that this is a ploy by the Fomortiis-possessed prince and his necromantically-resurrected father-slave to destroy the sacred stones and allow for his full return to power.

Due to the color of the sprite (and what happens later in the chapter), I have to assume that's Valter with Selena and Vigarde on the map screen, and not Glenn. Isn't there a scene later where the old generals of Grado are introduced to the new ones though?

Ooh! For some reason everyone's blue here instead of green. I like the way blue soldiers look!

King Fado decides to remain in the castle while Eirika, Seth and Franz flee. His reasoning seems to be that he's completely at a loss as to why one of his close allies (not to mention a family friend) suddenly invaded and attacked. He's wondering if he somehow did something wrong.

...I mean, I get the whole “why the fuck is my friend attacking me” thing, and I get that with his kingdom basically fallen either way, maybe he's decided to go down with his ship... but on the other hand...

...Since when the fuck has a country ever been justified in invading another when the other country doesn't even know what the invading country's grievances are?

Fado is a massive, massive moral pussy if he's even entertaining the idea that the people who slaughtered his soldiers without provocation while cutting a bloody path to the capital might have been in the right even slightly. It's honestly hilariously pathetic. He's actually even more of a hippie than I remember his daughter being. It honestly begs the question of where the fuck Ephraim got his... everything from. I'm trying to picture what the fuck their mother must have been like in order for Ephraim to have resulted from this, and I'm picturing some kind of wild alcoholic bar brawler with a Scottish accent.

I've gotta say though, the moment when the enemy units just fucking pile up, making those two blue generals utterly pale in comparison... that's a pretty impressive way to wordlessly demonstrate the threat here, and how close Eirika came to dying if Seth hadn't carried her to safety.

I love Valter's opening line where he introduces himself, and then says “And you're just a corpse who does not know he is dead.”

Badass.

The ruined houses around the castle are a nice touch too.

Eirika is doing surprisingly little freaking out about her father's capture and possible death. She is concerned, but she's staying impressively calm in the situation. Her naivete may be frankly legendary in the fandom, but I don't think I gave her enough credit for her nerve.

That said, it could also be interpreted as her being so sheltered she doesn't fully understand the gravity of the situation, but... time will tell.

I like how the tutorial “move here” part is just turned into a map event before the chapter even begins proper when we're playing “difficult” mode. Speaking of which, though, I could've sworn it was called “hard” mode.

Something feels different about the info screen layout, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Lemme compare real quick...

Yep. Completely different background, and no blue square frame over the space where the majority of the information is listed.

It still frustrates me immensely that weapon stats and unit stats aren't on the same page, when there's clearly enough room if they just shuffled some things around, moving the battle record to another page and making the fit between sections a little tighter.

Anyway, this chapter is ridiculously straightforward. The map is a bottleneck mountain pass, the enemies are axe users, and on my side are two sword users, one of which is one of the best units in Fire Emblem history.

Curiously, with the exception of having much better luck, Seth's starting stats are actually pretty much on par with FE7 Marcus's, with slightly worse HP, strength and skill, but slightly better speed and defense, and equal resistance. Of course, his growths are drastically better. Seth has 25% more HP, 20% more strength, 20% more speed, 25% more defense, and only 5% less in skill, luck and resistance.

But given that this is an ironman, and right now this game is practically begging me to feed kills to Eirika, that's what I'm going to do. Eirika's never going to be good, given that she's completely swordlocked and has the durability of wet tissue paper when she isn't dodgetanking, but I refuse to let this girl be the death of an ironman run.

She gets speed, skill and defense for her first level after that combat too mindless to even comment on, a level which is perfectly acceptable.

Yeah, at least so far, Eirika is... just not nearly as interesting a main character as Hector, Lyn, or even Eliwood. It... actually feels kinda jarring, after the various scenes of tragedy in FE7, to see a character reacting so little to a massive amount of tragedy in their lives. And yeah, upon seeing the rest of the chapter... I really don't get the impression that it's because she's strong, so much as it's because she doesn't fully grasp the particulars of what's going on or how serious the situation is. Which feels... wrong, and yet it's what the story seems to be conveying with her lines.

But at any rate, that's all for today. Sorry I'm only doing the prologue, but it looks like I managed to get around 5 pages out of that, so hopefully you should be satisfied.

Until tomorrow, then!

Stay safe, everyone!