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

[Eltosian Kadath]

17 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I don't agree with your suggestion that I should've known better than to chase after that thief.

I meant that your lose scenario relies on you really bungling your moves with Marth...

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I meant that your lose scenario relies on you really bungling your moves with Marth...

But that's the point: It's not even "bungling". There's not even the tiniest hint of a suggestion that you need to get the hell out of that area immediately, and death could result from something as innocuous as a turn 1 visit to the village and a turn 2 visit to a house.

[Eltosian Kadath]

13 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

death could result from something as innocuous as a turn 1 visit to the village and a turn 2 visit to a house.

Visiting a house with Marth that gets you further away from the next village he has to reach sounds like a bit of a bungle. Marth still has thing he needs to do, and wasting his turns visiting houses that are out of the way is silly.

[Alastor15243]

12 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Visiting a house with Marth that gets you further away from the next village he has to reach sounds like a bit of a bungle. Marth still has thing he needs to do, and wasting his turns visiting houses that are out of the way is silly.

That's not the same as "not being careful" though. Though honestly, before we get any further, to avoid talking past each other we should problably work this out: what's your argument about this ambush spawn? And also, just for the record and context, what is your opinion on this game's general use and placement of them?

Edited December 3, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That's not the same as "not being careful" though. Though honestly, before we get any further, to avoid talking past each other, what is the argument you're attempting to make about this ambush spawn?

Mostly that them being a ironman losing scenario from the ambush move is rather unlikely. They are triggered by pushing for the time based objectives in one direction, and the only way this is an ironman loss scenario is if the player also is actively not pushing the time based objective that require Marth in the other direction at the same time. To push this even further into the unlikely department, to even get to that scenario you need to either play well enough to make that sorta inconsistent style of play unlikely, or have grinded up a tanky enough Marth that it wouldn't be a loss scenario.

 

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

And also, just for the record and context, what is your opinion on this game's general use and placement of them?

Generally that they are well telegraphed by context clues on the map. Take this map for instance, there are save points just before both location based reinforcement triggers, to tip the player off to when in the map they need to be wary of reinforcements. I have tried to point out the importance of save points locations before, but they simply seem to be a design feature that most people don't pay attention to, and tend to be one of the big tip-offs for reinforcements in this game. To be fair they can also be used to indicate other things, and some maps use other clues, like dialogue for instance, to tip them off instead.

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Generally that they are well telegraphed by context clues on the map. Take this map for instance, there are save points just before both location based reinforcement triggers, to tip the player off to when in the map they need to be wary of reinforcements. I have tried to point out the importance of save points locations before, but they simply seem to be a design feature that most people don't pay attention to, and tend to be one of the big tip-offs for reinforcements in this game. To be fair they can also be used to indicate other things, and some maps use other clues, like dialogue for instance, to tip them off instead.

I've seen you mention this a few other times, and I apologize because I don't think I ever directly replied to it or even touched on the subject of save point placement at all. It's an interesting idea, but one I don't agree with. First of all because, as you said, they can indeed be used to point out other things, an in fact that is what they do 90% of the time. Their general placement seems to be in order to break the map into gaiden-sized chunks based on either reinforcements, aggro points, or just groups of enemies. Dividing the map up into easily-repeatable "mini-challenges". This is further evidenced by the fact that, as far as I can tell, not a single gaiden chapter in the game so far has had a save tile. And many times the placement of them seems arbitrary. I caught several times where they were just placed on opposite sides of a roughly-equivalent fork in the road where players are likely to gain access to both tiles at the same time, and at other times you're basically given one at the very start of the map. If you were to use these things as a "watch out for ambush spawns" flag, there would be a hair-whiteningly stressful number of false alarms.

And that's really the number one thing I hate about ambush spawns: the needless paranoia it inspires. It's not so much the instances of losing a unit through no fault of your own that infuriates me, it's more the fact that it establishes as a precedent that this can happen at any time. You have nothing but your increasingly strained faith in the designer's goodwill that you aren't going to be fucked over at any given moment of any given map, and it will cause a blind player, not even just ironmanning, maybe just not looking forward to having to do a map over, to play in comically unnecessarily cautious ways that really drain the fun out of the whole experience because they've been burned one too many times. But it's not going to be until Three Houses that I can really drive home just how much I hate the psychological chilling effect those kinds of dirty tricks have.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Okay, by the sounds of it, it seems that everything this narrative is describing... has happened since Hardin invaded Altea, and not in the past. And it seems Gra's pretty fanatically thirsty for “revenge” on Altea, which begs the question of what the fuck the... ugh... “Gra-i” narrative is.

...Yeah, there are some country names where I just get the feeling the devs didn't even think about the associated words to describe their people. “Gra” is one of them.

 

The developers didn't have to. In Japanese they'd simply be Grajin. Jin being the suffix for people. You've probably heard some sub fanatics referring to Super Sayian as Super Sayiajin. Sayian is actually a perfectly reasonable translation to convey what the original word is saying. Any nationality or group of people would simply be "Their origin"+"Jin". So Americajin, Spanishjin etc. Much more convenient than English which bounces around between -ian, -ish, -eese, -er and more with no rhyme or reason. Japanese also uses a different suffix (-go) for language where in English we refer to a language and a people with the same term (well unless the language has a wildly different name like Mandarin). That's not usually confusing, but I do like seperate words better.

So anyway long story short it'd be up to the localisers not the developers to come up with a good English suffix for Gra. Either that or change the name of the country entirely for this reason. I'd probably go with Graians myself.

Edited December 4, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

The developers didn't have to. In Japanese they'd simply be Grajin. Jin being the suffix for people. You've probably heard some sub fanatics referring to Super Sayian as Super Sayiajin. Sayian is actually a perfectly reasonable translation to convey what the original word is saying. Any nationality or group of people would simply be "Their origin"+"Jin". So Americajin, Spanishjin etc. Much more convenient than English which bounces around between -ian, -ish, -eese, -er and more with no rhyme or reason. Japanese also uses a different suffix (-go) for language where in English we refer to a language and a people with the same term (well unless the language has a wildly different name like Mandarin). That's not usually confusing, but I do like seperate words better.

...Right, riiiiiiight, that explains a lot. I totally forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me! That explains why a lot of these games games never bothered to use words like that to make it clear for readers, because in their native language it wasn't necessary.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Some who has played the game and doesn't like it? I've never touched it, but this is interesting, considering all the encomia around it.

I wouldn't say I hate it, but I played through Undertale once and honestly I wasn't that entranced with it (and playing through it once is like playing only 20% of what the game has to offer). Felt really hard like it was trying to emmulate Mother and, well, I've already played all the Mother games.

Also I'd like to see the last Archanea chronicles map and the DLC maps played through. At least the last Archanean Chronicnles map to see the Samble Knights in their actual role in the story.

Edited December 4, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Also I'd like to see the last Archanea chronicles map and the DLC maps played through. At least the last Archanean Chronicnles map to see the Samble Knights in their actual role in the story.

I'll see what I can do. I feel bad about not finishing those. Maybe if I devote whole days to single episodes it might feel less "I don't want to play this" frustrating.

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

The developers didn't have to. In Japanese they'd simply be Grajin. Jin being the suffix for people. You've probably heard some sub fanatics referring to Super Sayian as Super Sayiajin. Sayian is actually a perfectly reasonable translation to convey what the original word is saying. Any nationality or group of people would simply be "Their origin"+"Jin". So Americajin, Spanishjin etc. Much more convenient than English which bounces around between -ian, -ish, -eese, -er and more with no rhyme or reason. Japanese also uses a different suffix (-go) for language where in English we refer to a language and a people with the same term (well unless the language has a wildly different name like Mandarin). That's not usually confusing, but I do like seperate words better.

So anyway long story short it'd be up to the localisers not the developers to come up with a good English suffix for Gra. Either that or change the name of the country entirely for this reason. I'd probably go with Graians myself.

Interesting. I like learning the unique traits of languages, providing said traits don't require a specialized degree to understand.

And, I'm thinking I'd go out into left field and invent "Grates". Yes, you don't pronounce the first three letters the same way as you would the country's name, but it's a one clear syllable word. "Graians" could leave greater ambiguity of pronunciation, "Graite" and "Graish" are disyllabic, and "Grans" sounds too much like an abbreviation of "Grannvale".

[Eltosian Kadath]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Their general placement seems to be in order to break the map into gaiden-sized chunks based on either reinforcements, aggro points, or just groups of enemies. Dividing the map up into easily-repeatable "mini-challenges".

I think I will agree with the dividing the map idea, and with the general idea that they are usually indicating reinforcements, aggro points, or groups of enemies, but the question is which are they indicating. When you see a save point, you should ask the question, what is the challenge for this save point, and if nothing is jumping out to you, you should start thinking about reinforcements.

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And many times the placement of them seems arbitrary.

All right, this might be a bit of a tangent, but I want to do a quick look through of the maps so far, and look at the reasoning I see behind the save point locations:

Spoiler

Chapter 1: First one is just before a clear aggro point, second is just before Lorenz, to give players ease of mind that they wont loss progress to a game over if they talk to Lorenz with Marth.

Chapter 2:  The one on the right is where you will clash either turn 3 with the moving lancers with infantry, and turn 4 with the cavalry, a deceptive aggro point, until you see the map in motion, whereas the other one is just out of the enemy Dracoknigt's aggro range.

Chapter 3: The first can be reached by Palla turn one, and hint at the fact that she is in immediate danger from the fort reinforcements. The second is right before facing the boss, in this funny safe space between the boss's ranged attacks, and the ballista's attack range (once the cavalier's have moved)

Chapter 4: There is the one in the middle of a group of enemies, although by the time you reach it, it tends to function more as a pre boss save. The other one, your infantry will roughly reach turn 5 (assuming that they spend about a turn dealing with the enemies between the starting point and there), or reached turn two with a flier moving as fast as they can, and reinforcements showup turn 6 on normal mode, and turn 2 enemy phase on Lunatic mode. When you reach that save point that seems to serve no purpose its cuing you into the reinforcement's timing.

Chapter 5: There is one near the aggro point on the bridge, although the other I don't think works very well on all difficulties...

Chapter 6: You are warned about reinforcements coming from the rear in the dialogue, and the save point is showing you what is just outside their ambush range. The second is a split one like you mentioned, both for the aggro point of the boss room, no matter which path you took.

Chapter 7: You should reach the save point in the forest turn 2 (and close enough to those forts to start thinking about them) and reinforcements start turn 3, then there is another just before fighting the boss.

Chapter 8: One just before a major aggro point on the bridge, and a second right next to the boss. Also you are given dialogue warning about the reinforcements.

Chpater 9:  There is one in the desert near the boss, the other is out of the way for anyone other than a Marth or Minerva, and looks like it serves no purpose, until you look at the timing of when you reach it. If Marth stops off at it before Minerva, you reach it either turn 5, or 8, or Minerva reaches them turn 6, or 9, with the Astram reinforcements showing up turn 7 on Lunatic, and turn 10 in normal...

Chapter 10:  its another split one for taking on the group of enemies surrounding the boss.

Chapter 11:  Two are tied to enemy groups, and the last one is at a clear aggro point. No reinforcements on Wyvern hell thankfully.

Chapter 12: The first save point is right before the location trigger for reinforcement, now its close to an aggro point too, but the back forts are a clear red flag to begin with, and as long as your troops are together, they aren't close enough to be hit by the ambush (and end up creating the best enemy pincer attack in the whole series). By the time you reach the second save point it no longer looks like it serves a purpose, as all the enemies near it have moved and died, and its cluing you into the fact that the reinforcements aren't over, there is another trigger just ahead (if the forts that failed to spew out reinforcements wasn't hint enough...)

Chapter 13: This chapter is all about using the save points to ratchet up the paranoia enough for you to catch on to the trap. The two save point are both just before the bridge into the next ring of land, and neither of them make sense; then you get to the last bridge, which has a very clear aggro point just ahead. Clearly a save point should be there for the aggro point, and for the pattern they established for the save points in the chapter, but it isn't. So I start thinking why? Because that aggro point is more than it appears, its a trap, and there are forts surrounding that island that spew forth dragons the turn you step forth onto the island. One of the most inspired uses of save points in this game for the way it intentionally creates a pattern that it breaks, to clue you into the next aggro point being more than it appears. I really appreciated this on my first playthrough (as I first noticed this save point trick on chapter 12, and was really thinking about their purpose when I got to this one).

Chapter 14: the one save point is just before the trigger to open the next part of the map, that has enemies that move.

Chapter 15: The first is really clearly to let you experiment with linked villages, so you can make a more informed decision about the loot you get. The second is for the final aggro point. One of the worst at showing the timing of reinforcements, but you are a fool if you look at those 4 unoccupied forts, the area based trigger is on the other side of the map from them, and parallel timing based trigger for those reinforcements on the higher difficulty comes about 2-3 turns after you reach the save point for the village (if you don't ignore that side of the map), which gives you just enough time to block the villages if you need to.

Chapter 16: You are warned about the reinforcement beforehand in dialogue, and one is in a group of enemies that is just before the loot room that triggers the reinforcements, the other is near the aggro point of the door.

Chapter 17: Both are right before reinforcement triggers...

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by Eltosian Kadath
Accidently skipped one chapter, and mislabeled the chapters following.

[Jotari]

33 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Interesting. I like learning the unique traits of languages, providing said traits don't require a specialized degree to understand.

And, I'm thinking I'd go out into left field and invent "Grates". Yes, you don't pronounce the first three letters the same way as you would the country's name, but it's a one clear syllable word. "Graians" could leave greater ambiguity of pronunciation, "Graite" and "Graish" are disyllabic, and "Grans" sounds too much like an abbreviation of "Grannvale".

Grates sounds silly to me. Sounds like Crates. Graenese?

[Alastor15243]

@Eltosian Kadath Quick question: When you first played the game blind, did you see every single trap coming using nothing but inferences from save point locations?

Edited December 4, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Axie]

posting just to observe that i have started reading this (from genealogy onwards because my memories of the original archanea games are mostly lost to dark haze of faraway memories of a more primitive time and i pay dust to them since the remakes, and i plan on getting my hands on echoes soon so i kind of want to forget gaiden for now lol) and it's most enlightening and fun and has made me want to replay most games again! i mean, i don't think i have disagreed more with someone on the writing of both blazing blade AND sacred stones, but still it's all incredibly well put and i hope you keep it going until the end because i NEED to be here when this gets to fates (which of the three has the worst written storyline?? valid arguments for all three, even if conquest is the worst premise with the least potential)

currently reading radiant dawn and once again my long exile from the fandom is playing tricks on my dinosaur mind. i thought it was mostly agreed mia was pretty great in this game? you gave her no chance and nobody seemed to even mention it so far (i am at 3-5 in the playlog i think?)

Edited December 4, 2020 by Axie

[Alastor15243]

Great to finally hear from you, Axie!

 

8 minutes ago, Axie said:

i mean, i don't think i have disagreed more with someone on the writing of both blazing blade AND sacred stones, but still it's all incredibly well put and i hope you keep it going until the end because i NEED to be here when this gets to fates (which of the three has the worst written storyline?? valid arguments for all three, even if conquest is the worst premise with the least potential)

Glad to hear it's still a good read for you even if you disagree! As for Fates, I honestly have no idea which is gonna be the dumbest. Birthright FEELS the least awful, but it was also the story I examined the least critically. Conquest I know pissed me off the most, and has the worst Corrin, but... I'll have to see!

 

10 minutes ago, Axie said:

currently reading radiant dawn and once again my long exile from the fandom is playing tricks on my dinosaur mind. i thought it was mostly agreed mia was pretty great in this game? you gave her no chance and nobody seemed to even mention it so far (i am at 3-5 in the playlog i think?)

I have heard people say that since then, and the arguments sounded convincing. I don't really update old entries with disclaimers or new opinions though, I keep them as-is for posterity. If I catch a spelling or grammar error in an old entry though, I will fix that.

[Axie]

18 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

 

Glad to hear it's still a good read for you even if you disagree! As for Fates, I honestly have no idea which is gonna be the dumbest. Birthright FEELS the least awful, but it was also the story I examined the least critically. Conquest I know pissed me off the most, and has the worst Corrin, but... I'll have to see!

 

the thing with conquest is that, as i said, it has the worst premise, and it starts terrible basically from chapter 7, so you kind of just expect to be frustrated throughout, and while revelations actually has more of a reason to exist story-wise, it's convoluted enough that you also expect to have some "why are you like this???????" breakdowns.

but birthright? it was supposed to be the straightforward one. good guys defeat bad guys. how did they manage to fuck that up so badly and insert so many ham-fisted moments that amount to nothing and still end up with plotholes (if you ignore the other two storylines)? it's frankly shocking. it plays out like a parody of one of the simpler fire emblem games after chapter 17 or so. it definitely has an argument for worst storyline of the whole franchise too (even though, conversely, i think its gameplay gets unfairly shat on - it's harder to break than awakening and harder than the easier FEs if you decide to not break it).

Edited December 4, 2020 by Axie

[Alastor15243]

19 minutes ago, Axie said:

(even though, conversely, i think its gameplay gets unfairly shat on - it's harder to break than awakening and harder than the easier FEs if you decide to not break it).

Hard agree there. Birthright is a pretty great game from what I remember, though admittedly it's been more than a year, probably two, since I've played it. Fates is just a really, really good "core" to build a game around, and only Rev truly managed to fuck that up. I'll go into the details of why when I get to Fates though, which should be pretty soon. After Awakening, which should be like within a week or two.

Speaking of...

...I'm kinda torn on how I should tackle Awakening. As I've said before, it's just a really weird game in the context of the series, one that doesn't play like any other, and is kinda hard to properly judge one-to-one with the others. Its difficulty curve is... kinda like if a linear strategy RPG suddenly had an open-world RPG plastered on top of it, especially with the child paralogues that you can get access to waaaaay sooner than you can likely beat them. And that's to say nothing of the DLC.

Honestly, since I bought all the DLC, part of me wants to play Awakening by ironmanning on Lunatic, but playing every chapter and xenologue exactly once, for maximum content and to also try to get into the mindset of the "intended" way to play the game, constantly fucking around with grinding opportunities. Buuuuut... it also feels really weird to do. I know that story commentary is gonna prevent me from doing my original idea of just blazing through the entire game in a weekend, which I know can trivially be done on any difficulty below Lunatic+. The issue is that Awakening is gonna be the first game in the series that really, really muddies the concept of what the "intended" way to play the game is, so I'm gonna have to find some way to respond to that.

Edited December 4, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Whirlwind]

Sounds fun, can’t wait until I go in my fe run 

 

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Axie said:

posting just to observe that i have started reading this (from genealogy onwards because my memories of the original archanea games are mostly lost to dark haze of faraway memories of a more primitive time and i only pay dust to the remakes, and i plan on getting my hands on echoes soon so i kind of want to forget gaiden for now lol) and it's most enlightening and fun and has made me want to replay most games again! i mean, i don't think i have disagreed more with someone on the writing of both blazing blade AND sacred stones, but still it's all incredibly well put and i hope you keep it going until the end because i NEED to be here when this gets to fates (which of the three has the worst written storyline?? valid arguments for all three, even if conquest is the worst premise with the least potential)

currently reading radiant dawn and once again my long exile from the fandom is playing tricks on my dinosaur mind. i thought it was mostly agreed mia was pretty great in this game? you gave her no chance and nobody seemed to even mention it so far (i am at 3-5 in the playlog i think?)

Pretty sure it's COnquest. That whole crystal ball thing. *shudder* It's a crime to writing.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Pretty sure it's COnquest. That whole crystal ball thing. *shudder* It's a crime to writing.

That is my impression as well to be sure, I'm just hedging my bets because there isn't a single game in this marathon that I've come out of not noticing some new weird shit about the story.

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That is my impression as well to be sure, I'm just hedging my bets because there isn't a single game in this marathon that I've come out of not noticing some new weird shit about the story.

I know, but I struggle to imagine how something could be actually be worse than that. I'll not say contrived in fear of summoning Ottservia and starting a whole thing, buy it's just so incredibly and blatantly lazy as far as writing goes.

[Whirlwind]

Revelations is the most revealing while birthright is the most secretive. Conquest is in the middle where you learn about valla but it’s only 1 chapter and it’s unimportant For the rest of the game. I personally think birthright is the worst since valla isn’t even referenced and the invisible soldiers (slightly visible) aren’t explained. 

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Whirlwind said:

Revelations is the most revealing while birthright is the most secretive. Conquest is in the middle where you learn about valla but it’s only 1 chapter and it’s unimportant For the rest of the game. I personally think birthright is the worst since valla isn’t even referenced and the invisible soldiers (slightly visible) aren’t explained. 

Interesting way of seeing things, but given that they were always intended to be three parts of a whole, I can't really say that not explaining the whole word should be a mark against an individual game's story. What's really important to ask is whether the stories they tell are compelling and make sense. And from what I remember, while none of them were compelling, Birthright's at least came closest to making sense.

[Alastor15243]

New Mystery Day 30: Chapter 18

Alright, so... time to see the story and find out if this is the chapter I think it is.

Ah, so there's another talk about unit deaths, and now, since I've long since started losing units, Marth talks about the pain of losing comrades.

“How's Everyone” was literally just everyone training, no items or stat boosts or support bonuses or anything. Ah well. At least one of them was Marth.

...Yep. It's that chapter. The one that freaked me out so much with its ridiculous starting formation that I checked to make sure the lifesphere wasn't in that village to see if it would be safe to skip it, found out it was in that starting village, and that visiting the village causes all the northern soldiers to leave.

Let's see what the talk conversations have to say this time.

...They don't say anything useful. Pity, I was looking forward to seeing some dumb rationalization for why they know they should go visit that village as soon as possible. All they say is that the Wolfguard is about as loyal to “Coyote” as Dakota is to Marth, so talking to them should be pretty much impossible.

But in the game's defense... that far more clearly seems to be intended route this time. I looked at my entry for the original Book 2 Chapter 18 for context, and compared to that, here my army is far less scattered, and the enemy units are placed far deeper into the mountains, further away. It's far more realistic to actually run away long enough to mount a decent defense. But still, I'm going to use a rescue staff to get Marth to the village on turn one, because the way he's positioned, he's actually just one space shy of being able to do it on turn 2, pushing it back to turn 3 without staff or dance assistance. And I want to know if that retreat event is still there as soon as possible, so I have time to mount a defense if something goes wrong.

Even if it turns out that defense winds up having to be “solo them with Dakota or Leiden”.

Anyway, there are no other talks, so I put my fliers in back, my mages in front, my speedy footsoldiers in the middle, and the two units who can one-round those two paladins by the village at the very front so that I can secure that area immediately.

Incidentally, there's only one save point on this map, and it's right at the start of the map. Now, I can't exactly try to infer anything from that save location, because I already know what it means: that you're supposed to come back to that area later in the map, meaning you should leave at the start. But I can't for the life of me say whether or not I'd figure that out without already knowing that's how the map works.

Let's go.

Oh wow, thank goodness. Apparently the game decided to have Jagen receive a message from King Aurelis wishing to parley with Marth at that village. So they make it clear from the get-go what the plan is supposed to be. That's actually a pretty reasonable explanation for why they'd know to go there, one I wasn't expecting when I mocked the idea earlier.

...But that still makes it a map where you're not fully told what the objective is until you've already prepared.

I apparently somehow misread Dakota's damage output, and he couldn't actually kill that paladin on turn one without a crit. Thankfully, the paladin isn't fast enough to kill Marth, so I can send Marth thanks to at least Caeda getting the job done with her wing spear.

Yep, okay, we have that conversation and it's pretty much exactly like before. The king of Aurelis gives you the Lifesphere and then orders the Aurelian troops to leave. The Aurelian troops haven't fled right away though, so... gotta assume they're gonna just flee like thieves on enemy phase, or just disappear in a cutscene. ...If it's the former, I really hope the enemy AI doesn't decide that attacking Etzel (who I had to trade the good rescue staff to Wendell with) is a more tempting action than obeying their king. But like, confidence isn't super high, what with the whole “Samson attacking Sheena” nonsense. Seriously, I can't believe that's a thing.

The weird thing here is why the king of Aurelis didn't send that message directly to the Aurelian army, or why talking at that village seemed to instantly send that message anyway.

Alright, that's over, now to get the treasure that's obviously in that cave, and then...

...Oh dear.

...This game is going to pull something, isn't it?

It's just occurred to me how mindlessly easy that was, and given this game's tendencies...

...Christ, better just huddle everyone up in the center of the map and send someone strong to fight the generals.

Alright, unarmed Dakota got the generals to move, so now I can retreat and fight them out of the range of the ballistae. I'm gonna need to soften some up with Dakota though, due to a whopping three of them being able to attack at the edge of their combined range. Pity that means some of them will inevitably die to his 27% crit rate.

He did crit some of them. In fact, he critted all three that he fought on the first attack. Oh well. I've still got four left to give to other units.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. I don't think Palla's gained a single point of speed since she promoted. She's still at 17, which is no longer enough to even double generals. What a shame, she was so amazing in the early-game.

...And just as I say this, she finally reaches 18 speed. Still not very good, but at least she's improving again.

There's a secret shop here, but it's just selling promotion items, and I don't need any more of those. So, since killing the boss was pretty uneventful, let's finish up here.

...I'm honestly surprised nothing crazy happened in the second half of the map. I was really expecting it to after last time. I guess maybe using that rescue staff made that confrontation easier than it normally would've been? But even then, Feena is a thing.

...Anyway, That's it for today, and thus for this week. I might, might do some stuff on the weekends to prep for finishing this by next Friday... because I fully intend to be done with this game by then. I really just wanna move on. We're almost to the 3DS era, and... hoo boy is that gonna be a trip and eleven tenths.

Speaking of which, for those who didn't see it, a few posts up I talked about my concerns for how to tackle Awakening. If you guys could read that and give me your thoughts, that'd be much appreciated.

Stay safe, everyone!