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26 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

To be precise...:

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Medeus:

  • 12 base Def
  • 23 Def from Earth Dragonstone
  • Negates magic?

35 Def total

0 Attack Speed due to 10 Spd - 10 Wt. Doubling Medeus is all but guaranteed.

 

Player weapon options that break 35 Atk with 20 Str:

  • Fire Dragonstone- 36 Atk
  • Devil Sword- 37 Atk
  • Parthia- 37 Atk
  • Mercurius- 38 Atk
  • Pachyderm- 38 Atk
  • Gradivus- 40 Atk
  • Devil Axe- 40 Atk
  • Falchion- 50 Atk

 

So Marth with just 5 Str procs (10 Str) on a 50% growth is able to match the Devil Axe with 5x2. At max, he cleanly and exactly kills Medeus on the count of three, or one amazing Crit.

Medeus is still hard to scratch in Mystery, since Atk-halving does that. Atk-halving is so strong, that its readily apparently why FE dumped it after Thracia, settling on high Def alone, or in the case of Awakening-Fates, damage-halving.

In SD and NM make it much easier to hurt Medeus. He only has 27 Def in both remakes with the Throne's +2. And, they raised stat caps on the player side, so it's possible to negate that entire 27 with just Str alone. SD Medeus is the worst with base Tikicide being a viable avenue to victory. Though he is still menacing on the offense.

He also has a healing factor from the throne. Scratching him with Devil Swords and Parthia is not going to kill him anytime soon when he heals most of the damage. To the extent that the weapons might eventually break.

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Dark Dragon Day 19: Chapter 23

I love the implication that Gharnef just let the storage guys set up shop in his own evil lair, and made no effort to raid them and steal my shit. What the fuck kinds of tricks does that storage guy have up his sleeve that even Gharnef is afraid to fuck with him?

Speaking of which… Oh goodie. A secret shop map where I’m only allowed to bring 12 units. Well, considering I just beat two maps with like six units total being needed, I suppose it’s not that big a deal.

The game seems to be very inconsistent about whether choosing to not bring a unit for the previous map sends them to the top or the bottom of the rest of the pages.

On the plus side, it looks like the secret shop location just might be blatantly obvious again! There’s yet another conspicuous door right above the throne.

Oh shit right, this is the game where only one of the Gharnefs is real and has Falchion. …Except in this game, unlike the remake, it looks like the game gives it away because only one of them actually has Imhullu equipped.

Anyway, of my twelve unit army, the only actual useful units I brought were Marth, Xane, Lena, Merric, Wendell, and Tiki. Everyone else is here to carry stuff from the secret shop. Honestly though, I’m not worried. This isn’t one of the games where you actually need lots of units, you just need strong ones.

This is a problem the series is going to have for a long, long time, but at least here it makes things less annoying.

Merric used the dracoshield and now has the defense stat of a fresh dragon rider. This is important, because he’s gonna have to do a lot of enemy phase work this chapter against mostly mages, but still a few physical fighters.

Something weird I’ve noticed: the enemy healers sometimes use their long-range staves even if no enemies have taken damage yet. I wonder what causes that.

That’s… utterly bizarre. Merric only has 7 resistance, but priests with tomes that do way more than that are just flat out ignoring Merric and refusing to attack him.

Is this some thing about the priests refusing to attack Merric because of the time he spent in Khadein? Or is the AI here just utterly bizarre and impossible to get a handle on? That would actually be awesome... if it made the AI do scary things instead of dumb things.

…Huh. So apparently the reason you have a separate command for chests that doesn’t involve selecting the lockpick… is because thieves can open chests for free, and it’s only doors that they need the lockpick for.

Of course. Carry on, game.

And I got a second talisman. That would be overkill on Merric and would destroy his purpose as an enemy-phase mage counterer, so I’m probably going to put it on Marth since magic is one of the few things that will be able to hurt him apparently once he gets the Falchion.

Alright. It seems like Wendell has officially stopped being useful. Literally every enemy on the map is doubling him. I was hoping he’d be able to plug up a gap while Xane retreated to re-transform, but no such luck. He got slaughtered in a single round.

Restarting.

I have to say, whatever the reason, the mages’ refusal to attack Merric even when they can damage him is complicating things a bit. Thankfully, using walls and angled positioning, I managed to make a situation where there were only two valid spaces to attack Marth from, and once one of the mages took the two range one, all the remaining ones rushed him in Melee.

You know what really confuses me? Why the squares that have units on them turn solid green. If you select a unit, suddenly it shows both the sprite and the tile behind it just fine, and the same goes for when it’s moving across the map. And hell, pretty much every other game on the NES demonstrates it has the technology to overlay sprites with transparent backgrounds. So what gives?

It occurs to me that the extra units I brought for stuff are probably unnecessary. If I remember correctly, this is the promotion secret shop, and I only need two dragon whips. Hell, I only need one person and one trip for that.

Fuck. I totally forgot that one of these guys has Thoron. Please don’t crit please don’t crit please don’t crit…

…He critted. FUUUUUUCK.

Alright, new plan: Get Marth the talisman IMMEDIATELY so that he and Xane can enjoy its effects here.

Great, now that that’s settled, I now have three units who can safely fight thoron priests. Excellent.

…Okay… I think I’m seeing a pattern here. It’s not just Merric. It’s Marth and Xane now too. So even if they can still do enough damage to hurt you, if you have the amount of resistance a talisman gets you… mages just won’t fight you, even if they have literally no other options.

This AI is weird.

Anyway, everything went off without a hitch, and Falchion is now mine! Time to buy two dragon whips and get the hell out of here.

Day 19 Bonus: Chapter 24

Now… I could do this the old fashioned way, figure out where the secret shop is, and level my entire army up into demigods all for the sake of one final map…

…Or I could copy my save file, warp skip the map, see what the final battle is like and if I can’t just warp skip it too, and then be done with this game for good.

Fuck it, you already know what my answer to that question is.

Incidentally, holy shit they really pulled out all the stops for the Falchion attack animation. It looks fucking badass. I feel like I’m looking at Melee Marth when I look at it!

Incidentally, for some weird reason, these enemies DO attack Marth even if they can’t do any damage. Weird. This can’t be because of Falchion’s damage negation, because the description says that manaketes can still hurt him. And yes, another dragon attacking him and doing damage confirmed it. Okay, so this game just doesn’t make any sense at all. Got it.

The Falchion also does disappointingly little damage to these guys. Funny how it’s only effective against one specific dragon.

Weird little glitch. “Trouble” starts playing when you seize, but is then promptly overridden by the boss theme for some reason.

Day 19 Bonus Bonus: FINAL BATTLE

Wow, we actually get a final battle map theme? Niiiice. I thought that might be beyond budget for this game. Right. Time to cheese. Given how utterly scattered my troops are, doing this normally seems like an absolute boring pain.

AND THE ENEMY PHASE GETS ITS OWN FINAL MAP THEME TOO!? AWESOME!

Okay, that was a shitshow. The enemies are really strong, but really the only reason I lost a few units was because half the time I forgot to move them and because I had no control over placement of them. But I still managed to eventually kill the dragon guarding Medeus and then Medeus himself after losing… I’d say three people. I wanna feel bad, but this game doesn’t even acknowledge who lives or dies beyond Caeda. Hell, damnedest thing, they do list the whole cast, but… it’s just a list of names. Not even divided up into who lived or died… it’s just listing all the units in the game like some sort of ending credits list. I’m half-picturing “as himself” appearing by most of these, it’s just too bizarre.

What it does do, however, is tell you how many turns you took for each chapter, which is nice.

Apparently the longest I took on a chapter was 45 turns, and the shortest I took was the last one, 4. I took a total of 399 turns.

Oh shit, nevermind, it does have a “where are they now” epilogue of sorts. Makes me feel bad about letting some of my party die, sort of.

Not enough to care though. I am long past being invested in this game.

At any rate, they’re super bare bones. Usually it’s only a single sentence. Sometimes that sentence is only three words. And sometimes that sentence isn’t even translated at all.

 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Alright, here it is. Now as this is the first in the marathon, I can’t really set up a ranking, but I will summarize my thoughts on how the game does on each of the categories:

Difficulty: F. The game started off okay, but around halfway through it becomes blatantly apparent that the only thing you need to do to beat this game is have a high tolerance for boredom and tedium. There’s no clever map design, no fun challenges, pretty much everything about this represents rock bottom for the whole series. Which is fortunate, since it’s the first one and that means it’s only been improved upon.

Ironmannability: C-. The game gets a D- in honor between its ambush spawns and the complete inability to neutralize critical hits, but in terms of your ability to recover from losing units, it gets an acceptable B. The new recruits start to reeeallly fall off compared to the units you’ve been using the whole time by the end of the game, but it’s definitely better than some games I can name that barely give you new late-game units at all.

Usability: F. I was sorely tempted to just leave a continuous, paragraph-long string of uncontrollable laughter for this section, but no, this bears emphasizing: Just about every single aspect of this game feels wrong. It’s almost inconceivable to me that there used to be a time where the problems with an interface like this weren’t inherently obvious. It seems almost coldly calculated to waste as much of the player’s time as humanly possible in basically every way imaginable. Inventory management is hair-pullingly convoluted, buying from the store is a nightmare, keeping track of enemy movement ranges can go fuck itself with white-hot barbed poker, and I HAD TO HAVE A TEXT FILE HANDY THE ENTIRE GODDAMNED TIME JUST TO KEEP TRACK OF WEAPON STATS.

Depth: F, but to be fair this is basically by default. This is the absolute basic package, the bare-bones framework upon which all the other games build. I can hardly blame it for getting this rating, but get this rating it does.

Balance: F. In case you haven’t been paying attention to these last few entries, the balance in this game is completely fucked in every way imaginable. It’s way too easy to break in so many ways, stat boost items are absolutely ludicrous, and warp staves… see the fuck above, man. A third of classes can’t promote, healers can’t even LEVEL by healing, promotion gains for the classes that do promote are utterly bizarre to the point where the dragon rider’s ones are the only ones that actually fucking matter… I could write an entire college thesis about everything in this game that doesn’t feel like it was intentionally designed by a human being.

Pacing: D. This game can be agonizingly slow at times, but I know for a fact it isn’t the worst game in this regard, and a lot of the issues here are the fault of usability, so I’ll refrain from giving it an F.

Writing: F. It was funny at times, but really, the writing here is an absolute joke. I regularly watched shit with more engaging writing on Boomerang growing up.

Music: D. While I adore the player phase theme, and not even having to hear it for 24 maps could change that, the music in this game is heavily marred by how much of it cuts out whenever you do basically anything, and it’s not really the most elegantly-constructed chiptune work anyway.

Note: I might not do these letter grades again from here on out, once I actually start comparing games. It might not be necessary and might get restrictive and annoying.

So… that’s it for Dark Dragon!

DAYS TAKEN: 19

TOTAL DAYS: 19

Check back later this weekend (or maybe later tonight) and I’ll get started on Gaiden!

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5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Music: D. While I adore the player phase theme, and not even having to hear it for 24 maps could change that, the music in this game is heavily marred by how much of it cuts out whenever you do basically anything, and it’s not really the most elegantly-constructed chiptune work anyway.

Unfortunately, that's just an artifact of how the NES works. It has 4 channels for sound, period, so if a song uses 4 channels (like a lot of the NES FE music) if you do anything that has any other sound effect, it'll cut over it. 
(You see stuff like this in the early Mega Man games, where it's even more of a shame with the wonderful chiptune work.) 
(Also, yes, that means you'll be having the same problem in Gaiden. Enjoy!)

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10 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That’s… utterly bizarre. Merric only has 7 resistance, but priests with tomes that do way more than that are just flat out ignoring Merric and refusing to attack him.

IIRC, 7 is the cap for resistance in this game.

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2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

IIRC, 7 is the cap for resistance in this game.

Yeah, but my point was that the mages can still hurt him, but having resistance seems to make them choose not to, completely at odds with how they respond to defense.

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1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, but my point was that the mages can still hurt him, but having resistance seems to make them choose not to, completely at odds with how they respond to defense.

It is weird alright (I was just commenting on the only part of the quote). I'm not sure why. The few melee enemies left in the game have AI that can still target and attack Marth when he's holding the Falchion, even though they can't actually attack them. And by that I don't mean they miss or do zero damage, they literally engage in combat and getting a message like "Falchion seals the attack" or something and then Marth counters.

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1 minute ago, Jotari said:

It is weird alright (I was just commenting on the only part of the quote). I'm not sure why. The few melee enemies left in the game have AI that can still target and attack Marth when he's holding the Falchion, even though they can't actually attack them. And by that I don't mean they miss or do zero damage, they literally engage in combat and getting a message like "Falchion seals the attack" or something and then Marth counters.

Honestly by the end of the game I just gave up on figuring out what the fuck the rules for the enemy AI were. Here's hoping Gaiden is more fun. It should be. It at least has a semblance of a story.

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2 hours ago, 0 Def Cleric said:

Unfortunately, that's just an artifact of how the NES works. It has 4 channels for sound, period, so if a song uses 4 channels (like a lot of the NES FE music) if you do anything that has any other sound effect, it'll cut over it. 
(You see stuff like this in the early Mega Man games, where it's even more of a shame with the wonderful chiptune work.) 
(Also, yes, that means you'll be having the same problem in Gaiden. Enjoy!)

Oh yes, I am well aware of that. But it might have been a good idea to make the cursor silent. I'm not sure if that would work as well as I'm thinking, but an upside would be the music getting interrupted way, way less often.

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22 minutes ago, Eryon said:

Oh boy. If you're going to play Gaiden I recommend you save the best snark for Rudolf's Master Plan. Trust me, it deserves it.

Are you telling me that the Rudolph they put in Echoes was their best effort to salvage something that was even worse?

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More or less. If anything, it called how to mind how poorly thought-out Vanilla Gaiden's attempt at doing the "big villain really had kind intentions all along" twist was since the remake didn't really address how big of a fluke Rudolph's plan was (namely, since the remake introduced Mila unsealing Falchion).

Edited by Eryon
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1 minute ago, Eryon said:

More or less. If anything, it called how to mind how poorly thought-out Vanilla Gaiden's attempt at doing the "big villain really had kind intentions all along" twist was since the remake didn't really address how big of a fluke Rudolph's plan (namely, since the remake introduced Mila unsealing Falchion).

Oh dear. This I've gotta see. I'll brace myself.

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I'd honestly debate if the Usability should be somehow lower.

Considering I've never been able to convince myself to finish this because if it.

I have finished all but MotE BII. I just haven't come back to that yet, DD will not be returned to.

Edited by Dayni
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37 minutes ago, Dayni said:

I'd honestly debate if the Usability should be somehow lower.

Considering I've never been able to convince myself to finish this because if it.

I have finished all but MotE BII. I just haven't come back to that yet, DD will not be returned to.

Oh it's a fucking nightmare by modern standards, but I'm reserving F minuses for the off chance that some game somehow manages to succeed in being lower than one of Dark Dragon's "F"s.

 

Anyway, I did the obligatory "Day 0" first impressions before starting an actual fight for real:

 

Gaiden Day 0: Testing The Waters

Alright, so, since this is going to have a significantly greater attempt at a story, or at least I think it will, I decided to check for general impressions of the best available translation patch, and chose the one by someone called Artemis. I boot up the game, see the full intro, and holy shit it just feels deeply wrong that that sword isn’t lined up with the middle of that shield. Why.

Huh. So Valentia isn’t referred to as a continent in this game, it’s referred to as a “remote island”. That would certainly explain how small it feels and how easily it’s traversed, but that seems to conflict with Awakening. I dunno, maybe it’s a mistranslation?

There’s a strange bluntness to Lukas saying “We formed a liberation force, but it’s not good enough.”

Also, it’s pretty jarring going back to the original Lukas after seeing his quiet, soft-spoken, unfailingly polite Echoes version. Here he looks… pretty rough and tumble. And he’s certainly ruder, outright calling Mycen a coward for refusing to fight. Though I remember him being a lot more rude and crass in the translation I initially played in college. I’m fairly certain this translation wasn’t made after Echoes came out… I dunno, maybe the one I played before was just a bad translation and it wasn’t as huge of a change as I previously thought. We’ll see.

I just dipped my toes into the first battle just to get a feel for what I’m going to deal with, and I notice a few small improvements I’m going to appreciate, but it also looks like some shit’s staying uncomfortably the same. While it seems we still haven’t reached the point of the innovation of the combat window, the removal of weapon inventory might actually drastically simplify things for now. I’ll probably still need the text file, but depending on how things go, I might need to consult it far less, which might be nice. I’ll still have to look things up for accuracy, but as long as I assume everything hits I may be able to use the game itself for enemy damage calculations, as long as the equipped weapon affects the displayed attack stat. Which I hope it does.

Edited by Alastor15243
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2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, so, since this is going to have a significantly greater attempt at a story, or at least I think it will, I decided to check for general impressions of the best available translation patch, and chose the one by someone called Artemis. I boot up the game, see the full intro, and holy shit it just feels deeply wrong that that sword isn’t lined up with the middle of that shield. Why.

Huh. So Valentia isn’t referred to as a continent in this game, it’s referred to as a “remote island”. That would certainly explain how small it feels and how easily it’s traversed, but that seems to conflict with Awakening. I dunno, maybe it’s a mistranslation?

There’s a strange bluntness to Lukas saying “We formed a liberation force, but it’s not good enough.”

Also, it’s pretty jarring going back to the original Lukas after seeing his quiet, soft-spoken, unfailingly polite Echoes version. Here he looks… pretty rough and tumble. And he’s certainly ruder, outright calling Mycen a coward for refusing to fight. Though I remember him being a lot more rude and crass in the translation I initially played in college. I’m fairly certain this translation wasn’t made after Echoes came out… I dunno, maybe the one I played before was just a bad translation and it wasn’t as huge of a change as I previously thought. We’ll see.

I just dipped my toes into the first battle just to get a feel for what I’m going to deal with, and I notice a few small improvements I’m going to appreciate, but it also looks like some shit’s staying uncomfortably the same. While it seems we still haven’t reached the point of the innovation of the combat window, the removal of weapon inventory might actually drastically simplify things for now. I’ll probably still need the text file, but depending on how things go, I might need to consult it far less, which might be nice. I’ll still have to look things up for accuracy, but as long as I assume everything hits I may be able to use the game itself for enemy damage calculations, as long as the equipped weapon affects the displayed attack stat. Which I hope it does.

Yeah, Artemis is more complete but it also came out before SoV. I say this as someone who initially played it before SoV even existed in the public's eye and finished it before SoV came out.

I don't think it being a remote island's a mistranslation. I mean, just because it's remote doesn't mean it's small either but clearly this has been retconned in future.

This game will do a lot of changes in character for SoV. See the picture in Jotari's sig. Or what Alm will say in the finale.

Don't assume anything bow or magic related will hit.

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Congrats on finishing the primal ancestor! Onto the ancient black sheep you go! And remember, after Gaiden, it's only a boring but better abridged remake, before you get to its combo plate of the first truly delicious FE. Don't give up this early.

 

It wouldn't take very long for someone to reexamine the Japanese in NES Gaiden and check for this patch's accuracy. The price to retranslate wouldn't be more than a few sixpacks of beer and a weekend or two.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

You know what really confuses me? Why the squares that have units on them turn solid green. If you select a unit, suddenly it shows both the sprite and the tile behind it just fine, and the same goes for when it’s moving across the map. And hell, pretty much every other game on the NES demonstrates it has the technology to overlay sprites with transparent backgrounds. So what gives?

I always thought that was charming. Especially in Chapter 1 where you see a small group of pirates crossing the ocean toward you. And the ocean turns to land under their feet as they cross. There's something biblical about that, wouldn't you say, Cain and Abel?

Anyway, nice work on FE1. I can genuinely say its jank was the most fun I ever had in an archanea game in my 10+ years of Fire Emblem. And I rated it a 3.9 out of 10. I found it to be a pretty impressive showcase of the strategy genre on NES with all the various classes, mechanics, and weapons. And besides enemy AI, I think all of it works as intended. Not to beat up an unrelated game but half of Final Fantasy 1's stats don't work, rendering them useless. 

By the way, I've heard of an easy mode in Gaiden accessible from the main menu. I'm told that difficulty setting and making your emulator set the game speed to x2 does wonders for the game's playability if you'd consider these options.

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An interesting difference between Rudolf's plan in Gaiden and Shadows of Valentia is that there's no prophecy in Gaiden (though the birth mark is still there). Rudolf's plan isn't Alm specific. He just expects that if he pushes Sofia into a corner, a hero of some sort will inevitably fight back and force the country to give up it's hedonistic ways. He gives Alm to Mycen hoping his son can fill that roll, but if Alm can't and say Clive does, then it's no biggie. His plan still works. Of course the massive plot hole of why he doesn't just kill Duma himself does kind of ruin that bit of nuance. Perhaps giving Sofia a dose of corporal punishment is just a bigger priority than killing the mad dragon god in his basement.

6 hours ago, Eryon said:

More or less. If anything, it called how to mind how poorly thought-out Vanilla Gaiden's attempt at doing the "big villain really had kind intentions all along" twist was since the remake didn't really address how big of a fluke Rudolph's plan was (namely, since the remake introduced Mila unsealing Falchion).

I don't think Rudolf's plan was ever meant to be viewed as kind. At best it was necessary. Kindness is the antithesis of what Rigel is meant to stand for. Even after Alm finds out Rudolf is his father he calls him a despicable man. Though judging from Mycen's dialogue he still breaks down a bit over the whole patricide. It also helps that Rudolf's original Gaiden design looks distinctly  more villainous than the kindly grandfather look they gave him in Echoes.

Rudolf

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Huh. So Valentia isn’t referred to as a continent in this game, it’s referred to as a “remote island”. That would certainly explain how small it feels and how easily it’s traversed, but that seems to conflict with Awakening. I dunno, maybe it’s a mistranslation?

 

At last someone else notices.

Edited by Jotari
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Gaiden Day 1: Setting Out

So I went over some stuff on Serenes Forest, and I noticed some weird things about the game’s mechanics. For one thing, if Serenes is correct, weapon weight slows you down for attacks and for evasion, but not for dodging magic. The formula for physical avoid is terrain bonus + speed - weapon’s weight, while magical avoid is just speed + luck, with no weapon weight penalty applied.

Some other fun things I noticed: apparently dread fighters are immune to the devil sword. As are enemies. And the user's first attack of the combat round can’t backfire ever. Useful to know. Also, it looks like this game is the one that introduces faster leveling for lower level units… but it treats a level 1 cavalier and a level 1 paladin as the same level, so yes, just like in Echoes, this game actively encourages early promotion. It is, I would argue, one of the few games in the entire series where this is a good idea. And yes, I have seen Mekkah’s pitfalls video on late promotion, but I still disagree, and also there were some things he said in that video to support his arguments that were factually incorrect. But I won’t get into that here. Not unless someone in the thread demands it.

Moving on, it also looks like this game lets mages add their own magic power to their attacks! Awesome! Far more scarily, however, it looks like effective damage isn’t just the weapon’s might times three. It’s the entire fully calculated attack power times three. If you have 30 strength and a monster-slaying sword with 15 might, you don’t do 75 damage to monsters. YOU DO ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE.

Except probably not, because this game apparently puts a hard limit of 60 on how much damage an attack can do, and a hard limit of 1 on how little it can do (the latter I recognize from Echoes and a few other games in the series, and honestly I think it’s a good idea). I’m curious about that maximum of 60 damage though. Are there enemies with more than 60 HP where that would actually be relevant, or is this some sort of trivia they just happened to find in the game’s code for some reason?

And the triangle attack damage is… wait… wait what the fuck… you add five to the damage you would have done… and then you TRIPLE IT!?

And don’t pegasus knights promote to a class that has inherent effective damage YES THEY DO WE ARE TALKING PSYCHOTIC LEVELS OF EXTRA DAMAGE HERE WHAT THE FUCK.

Alright, back to the actual game. I just walked into the first battle of the game, right outside of the gates, and the stats seem identical to what they were in SoV, so my same strategy for feeding Kliff kills should work. Bait a thief in with Kliff, have Alm damage them, then have Kliff finish the thief off.

Speaking of training Kliff…

I’m noticing that a great many units in this game have terrible, I’m talking 10% terrible, growths in all but one or two non-HP stats. This suggests to me that picking classes for my units and determining who to use is going to be a matter of meshing the right class bases with the right non-10% growths. Not Kliff though. Here he’s hands down the best of the three villagers once he gets the ball rolling, with his worst growths being 20, and only having two of those. Grey’s best non-HP growth is 30% strength and Tobin’s is 40% skill. They’re going to be depending on their bases a hell of a lot to succeed.

I’m gonna have Grey be a mercenary like tradition, but I’m torn between archer and cavalier for Tobin, since I know I want at least one of the villager three to be a mounted unit by the end of the game. Ultimately I decide to compare him to the competition in both classes.

This does not turn out well for Tobin.

Tobin’s “Growths”:

HP: 30%
Str: 10%
Skl: 40%
Spd: 15%
Lck: 30%
Def: 10%

Clive’s Growths:

HP: 40%
Str: 20%
Skl: 20%
Spd: 20%
Lck: 20%
Def: 20%

Python’s Growths:

HP: 40%
Str: 40%
Skl: 15%
Spd: 20%
Lck: 10%
Def: 15%

Clive beats him in literally everything but skill and luck, while Python… also beats him in literally everything but skill and luck. Ultimately I think archery is the right call, mostly because at least in archery he’s playing second best, while in cavalry he’d be playing fifth best, behind Zeke, Mathilda, Clive, and probably even Mycen. No, scratch that, DEFINITELY Mycen, his bases are actually fantastic in this game considering how generally trash growth rates are.

And at least with archery I can generally find a way for him to contribute at least a little with minimal risk. So archery it is.

Where was I…? Oh right! Training Kliff.

Gotta say, right off the bat, even ignoring how much more fleshed out the Echoes personalities are, I much prefer even the raw first impressions of the Echoes villagers to the Gaiden ones. Yes, even counting the addition of Faye. The designs are obviously better in SoV, as are their personalities.

Oh shit! I forgot that this game has a distant ancestor to bonus experience! Right, I seem to remember that being in Echoes as well. Yeah I definitely remember being compelled to top off levels to make sure the bonus wasn’t wasted when they hit 99 and couldn’t level up from it.

Also, while it’s cool that they added in a “cycle through unmoved units” button, it’s a little annoying that it’s the B button. The select button might have been better since it’s sometimes jarring to accidentally press B one too many times or for too long after backing out of stat checking and find the cursor on a different unit. Wait, speaking of… does select do anything?

…No, it’s identical to the A button, at least when pressed on an empty space in battle. So personally I would have gone with that for unit cycling. It feels like something a “select” button would be for.

Unfortunately my perfect plan to get Kliff enough damage to kill fails because Alm whiffs an attack.

And since this game doesn’t have the party start off carrying assorted farm produce, Kliff runs out of spare HP fast. I do manage to get him two kills from the map though before he has to sit the battle out. I’m hoping to level him up enough that he can double as a mage, but if not, just becoming a mage will make it way easier for him to contribute, and he’ll only get better from there.

I’m gonna try and figure out how exactly the group experience works. It looks like it might be applied after the battle without telling you, because I don’t remember Kliff having 90 exp at the end of last battle. I’ll keep track of how much he gains this turn to be sure.

Yep, it’s only applied after the battle, just like in SoV.

Kliff gained his first level, and unfortunately it was terrible, just HP and skill. No defense, and no speed. Damn it.

I’ve gotta say, the power difference between Alm and Kliff is staggering, even more so than I remember it being in SoV. Well, the game is old. And it does make Alm very cool. But I’m still determined to use Kliff in this game, I hear he’s way better here than in SoV where he’s just kinda mediocre.

Also, the combat animations in this game are awesome, I love them so far.

The AI of the enemies in these early maps, with their insistence on running away and never attacking whenever at low health, is pretty damned easy to abuse. And right now, I’m finding it fun to abuse it.

YES! Kliff got the single speed level up he needs in order to double enemies, and suddenly he’s way less useless! Plus he can promote now, so I technically don’t need to pour any more into him… but since he’s the only one with passable growth rates, there’s hardly any point in putting experience in any of the other villagers, now is there?

…And Alm’s first level up was a lucksauce level. That… is disappointing, but he’s still leagues better than most of my team, so… here’s hoping that isn’t a sign of things to come?

Yeah… I definitely prefer the more ominous and creepy SoV version of the dungeon theme, rather than this blaring, in your face repetitive mess.

And on to my first random battle. I’m really hoping that what I just experienced is the norm and it’s just one battle at the edge of every room. If I have to risk a random battle with every step I take through each of these rooms, that’s going to be annoying.

So I decide to advance into my first random battle by taking advantage of the new math against level 1 thieves. I have Alm and Lukas bait them in, knowing that any they manage to score two hits in will die to a single attack from Kliff. This goes well, and aside from two crits, one each from Lukas and Alm, the result is an enemy team perfectly set up to feed kills to Kliff on the enemy phase.

…Which they don’t do.

As a matter of fact they don’t do anything.

…Are these thieves such massive pansies that when there isn’t a heal square to run off to when their health is low, they just curl up and wait for death?

…Jesus man, that’s… wow.

Nope, the thief moved next turn, just when I was considering feeding Tobin a kill to get him out of his capped 99 exp. So I should once again expect the enemy AI to act in weird ways that aren’t actually conducive to harder battles.

Alright, so I just experimented with enemy encounters, and as far as I can tell, they aren't random at all, but appear to be fixed at certain points and don’t respawn until you leave the dungeon. That’s very nice to know. But I guess since I had to leave to figure that out, I’m doing one more dungeon battle than normal. Lucky too, because I forgot Tobin wasn’t level 3 yet and it would sure be a shame to have to skip this shrine when Tobin’s 1 exp away from promoting. What a totally coincidental and not remotely decision-influencing coincidence.

Kliff gains a power and defense level, which is great, but I was really hoping for more speed before promotion. Oh well.

Anyway, Silque now joins us, no boss battle to get her in this game, and I get to the promotion statue. Which offers promotions at random that you have to turn down. Which seems kind of rude of us, honestly, given that we’re receiving celestial blessings here. But alas, I have plans for my team.

It took six tries to get everyone the promotions I wanted, and the first two tries had no positive matches at all.

Silque’s growth rates are actually pretty good by this game’s standards. A solid 30% in everything but defense and HP. But just in case this game once again makes it so that you don’t gain experience by healing, I’m giving Silque both the speed boosts from the fountain so she can double at base.

Oh wait, it was three speed boosts! Guess Kliff gets one.

And thus we leave the woods and get to my first battle with my promoted villagers.

Kliff has just enough speed to not be doubled by these bandits, but he’s going to need to get at least one more in this skirmish to keep up his momentum and start doubling these guys. I’ll be making Alm stay behind to deal with that mountain mercenary, then see if we can get Kliff and Silque back later to help deal with him.

Looks like this game still turns the square beneath a unit a solid color, though at least this game changes the color depending on the map, which allows for more varied scenery than open plains and buildings with hideous neon green floors.

Yeah, I’m definitely noticing a trend in this game towards smaller, shorter battles. The previous method of one battle per day isn't going to work here. I’ll just do as much as I feel comfortable with in a day, and right now, I feel fine with keeping up the momentum.

Grey and Tobin didn’t gain any defense from their promotions, which means that Kliff is going to be the sturdiest unit of the three for the foreseeable future, and possibly the rest of the game.

Looks like the devs still haven’t worked out the most efficient unit movement order for enemies. I see they’re still frequently blocking each other because the ones furthest ahead move last.

I underestimated Tobin’s impressive base speed, and he doubled a unit I was trying to feed to Kliff. Well, gotta keep that in mind, that speed could come in handy.

...Hey, remember when I said I'd give Silque enough of the speed fountain to double in case healing doesn't give you exp? As it turns out, that was a good call on my part. Once again, healers can only gain experience through combat. Well, at least in this game they CAN fight, even if their only spell for a while is going to be trash.

Looks like Kliff and Silque are my top priorities for feeding kills.

Speaking of which, the new healing song is a lot easier on the ears than the ridiculously loud and blaring music used in the previous game. It’s the same song, but much better instrumented.

Alright, I’ve gotten rid of everyone except the archer, who retreated to heal up, and the mercenary, who’s coming this way. Time to see what we can do now that he’s out of the mountains.

Man this is a slow final battle with the mercenary. I think I’m going to be very, very unhappy with the new magic evasion formula later in the game, given that while you can add your power to spells in this game, you can’t add your skill. So spells are just going to get less and less accurate from here on out, and it’s never going to be possible to guarantee a hit with magic. But I need to have at least one mage in my party for obvious reasons, and Kliff’s the best choice.

Oh shit that reminds me. What’s the crit formula in this game!?

…You still can’t reduce it in any way.

…FUCK.

Alright, well, finally beat the mercenary and got the leather shield. Time to rescue Clair.

Looks like shields in this game don’t reduce your attack speed at all. Which means I’m totally giving it to Kliff to give him 8 defense. For now. At least until I can get him into doubling speed and I need someone with even higher defense. Then I might give it to Alm. But for now, I need to get him some speed, and do it, well, speedily, because he’s behind. The lance knights here double him.

Silque gains a level, but once again no speed. I am just getting shitty level ups today, even with units with passable growths. I’m worried that’s going to be a trend.

NOPE! At least Kliff got a speed level up! Now he just needs one more and he’s going to be a doubling machine for the rest of the game! Probably!

I beat that annoying steel bow archer after something of a close call (that thing is super powerful, nearly killed Alm because I forgot about their melee range somehow), and then had Kliff deal with the last two enemies to get to level 3 and hopefully a speed of 7.

SUCCESS! Two for two, and Kliff is now officially at soldier doubling speed!

I have to say, the fact that I don’t have to seize is really helping the pace of these early game maps too.

Wow. So Clair… basically looks like a cross between a short-haired Caeda and Catria. with a bizarrely-shaped chin. But more importantly, that means we have a pegasus knight now, and I get to see firsthand how good they are in this game. I’d really like a second shot at enjoying having an air force! Also, I got the levin sword, so now all three of the villagers have nifty items. A leather shield for Kliff, a steel bow for Tobin, and a levin sword for Grey.

And on that note, I think that’s a good place to call it a day! Check in tomorrow to see me storm the monster-infested Deliverance HQ!

Edited by Alastor15243
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Oh yeah, this game randomly offers you promotions instead of letting you choose. XD How clunky.

That magic accuracy formula is actually a major blessing. As you get into more maps with terrain it becomes you're only semi reliable method of hitting things.

Clair isn't actually all that great tbh. White Wings are all killers though.

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58 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I’m noticing that a great many units in this game have terrible, I’m talking 10% terrible, growths in all but one or two non-HP stats. This suggests to me that picking classes for my units and determining who to use is going to be a matter of meshing the right class bases with the right non-10% growths. Not Kliff though. Here he’s hands down the best of the three villagers once he gets the ball rolling, with his worst growths being 20, and only having two of those. Grey’s best non-HP growth is 30% strength and Tobin’s is 40% skill. They’re going to be depending on their bases a hell of a lot to succeed.

Gaiden has the lowest growths in all of not-Saga FE, nothing else compares. Though Gen 1 Genealogy is on the shabby side, its lowest Growth Rate Total is only 190, which is still better than the majority of NES Gaiden units.:

Spoiler

Alm: 205  Ruka: 145 Grey: 130 Robin: 135

Cliff: 220 Silk: 150 Clea: 200 Clerbe 140

Fols: 130 Paison: 150 Ryuto: 170 Machilda 170

Dute: 170 Teeta: 140 Zeke: 210 Mycen: 40 

 

Celica: 185 May: 120 Boey: 155 Jenny: 155

Sevr: 150 Valbo: 150 Kamui: 155 Leo: 140

Palla: 145 Catria: 170 Atlas: 125 Jessey: 190

Sonia: 180 Deen: 110 Est: 250 Norma: 70

If you're interested in seeing what happened in SoV to those Growth Rate Totals, here:

Spoiler

SoV Personal Growth Rate Totals:

Alm: 298 Lukas: 222 Gray: 195 Tobin: 205

Kliff: 230 Faye: 213 Silque: 252 Clair: 282

Clive: 212 Forsyth: 223 Python: 214 Luthier: 282

Mathilda: 279 Delthea: 254 Tatiana: 234 Zeke: 301

Mycen: 68

 

Celica: 294 Mae: 242 Boey: 256 Genny: 230

Saber: 230 Valbar: 246 Leon: 219 Kamui: 215 

Palla: 261 Catria: 247 Atlas: 200 Jesse: 245

Sonya: 244 Deen: 235 Est: 288 Nomah: 96

Conrad: 283

 

Emma: 275 Randal: 255 Yuzu: 282 Shade: 249

 

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10 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Gaiden has the lowest growths in all of not-Saga FE, nothing else compares. Though Gen 1 Genealogy is on the shabby side, its lowest Growth Rate Total is only 190, which is still better than the majority of NES Gaiden units.:

  Reveal hidden contents

Alm: 205  Ruka: 145 Grey: 130 Robin: 135

Cliff: 220 Silk: 150 Clea: 200 Clerbe 140

Fols: 130 Paison: 150 Ryuto: 170 Machilda 170

Dute: 170 Teeta: 140 Zeke: 210 Mycen: 40 

 

Celica: 185 May: 120 Boey: 155 Jenny: 155

Sevr: 150 Valbo: 150 Kamui: 155 Leo: 140

Palla: 145 Catria: 170 Atlas: 125 Jessey: 190

Sonia: 180 Deen: 110 Est: 250 Norma: 70

If you're interested in seeing what happened in SoV to those Growth Rate Totals, here:

  Reveal hidden contents

SoV Personal Growth Rate Totals:

Alm: 298 Lukas: 222 Gray: 195 Tobin: 205

Kliff: 230 Faye: 213 Silque: 252 Clair: 282

Clive: 212 Forsyth: 223 Python: 214 Luthier: 282

Mathilda: 279 Delthea: 254 Tatiana: 234 Zeke: 301

Mycen: 68

 

Celica: 294 Mae: 242 Boey: 256 Genny: 230

Saber: 230 Valbar: 246 Leon: 219 Kamui: 215 

Palla: 261 Catria: 247 Atlas: 200 Jesse: 245

Sonya: 244 Deen: 235 Est: 288 Nomah: 96

Conrad: 283

 

Emma: 275 Randal: 255 Yuzu: 282 Shade: 249

 

Jesus, poor Kliff. Hell, all the villagers in general were left in the dust in terms of growth rates.

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