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

[Eltosian Kadath]

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

So anyway, I go to the bargains, check out the stats of the ellight tome, and yet again the series makes the flagrantly idiotic claim that only “those dedicated to serve good” can wield light magic, despite literally every game with light magic except Genealogy and maybe Thracia having a light magic user who was a piece of shit.

This is also the world where the "good" deity decides mass genocide is a good thing to do, so take anything considered "good" in this universe with a grain of salt...

 

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

On the plus side, healing staves seem to explicitly tell you exactly how much they heal, which is awesome.

shame this quality of life feature didn't stick around for the DS games.

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Oh hey! Look!

It's literally the only villainous laguz characters in the entire Tellius canon now that Naesala's been confirmed a victim of hostage-taking all along!

 

So we're just going to ignore the main villain of the duology? The one behind pretty much everything? Is it because he can't transform? Pretty sure that's slut shaming or something.

[Alastor15243]

44 minutes ago, Jotari said:

So we're just going to ignore the main villain of the duology? The one behind pretty much everything? Is it because he can't transform? Pretty sure that's slut shaming or something.

I actually did forget he was a laguz when I said that. Wow. I suppose it still stands that they're the only villainous laguz in the whole series who don't get redeemed, but yes.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Icelerate]

I like how the tome Lekain is wielding says only those who are dedicated to serve good can wield it just because of the irony. 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Ooooooh, FE10 time!

I'll carefully read this thread.

Part 1 is definitely the most interesting part of the game for the gameplay aspect because it feels a bit like David vs. Goliath.

[Alastor15243]

6 hours ago, Julian Teehee said:

Ooooooh, FE10 time!

I'll carefully read this thread.

Part 1 is definitely the most interesting part of the game for the gameplay aspect because it feels a bit like David vs. Goliath.

Hope you enjoy! And hopefully I'll hear more from you in the future!

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I will mainly post gameplay related things for now.

Storywise it's too early imo since the plot twist will be part 3 for sure.

 

I completed FE10 more than 200 times (not without reason my favorite videogame of all time), so I know the one thing or two. It's mainly because of its the variety of mission objectives and the multiple groups which fascinate me over and over again, especially part 1 which is my favorite part by far because the Dawn Brigade chapters are the most challenging ones in the game and in terms of difficulty perfect for me.

[Alastor15243]

Well, I was just about to post the part, but then I realized that my attempt to enter a special character (a music note) into the text wound up causing everything beneath it to be pasted in times new roman, because the Serenes Forest text box is a piece of junk that simultaneously doesn't allow you to change the font of your text but will also sometimes arbitrarily paste in the font of the document you're copy-pasting from unless you literally don't touch the font setting or copy-paste from any other source or apparently even just use weird characters even once. I could convert it to plain text, but then I lose the italics, and also I'd lose the italics for lierally the entire rest of Radiant Dawn because the entire rest of that text document would be like that.

Which means that I have to take everything I typed from that point onward, cut it out, paste it into a separate document... and then just re-type it in by hand.

So there will be a slight delay with the posting of the next part. I'll start getting right on that in... a little over an hour. I've got some stuff to do.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Alastor15243]

Radiant Dawn Day 5: Chapter 1-5

“The history of Tellius is a history of warfare, or so the troubadours sing.”

I love it when Fire Emblem is forced to take one of the words they criminally misuse to name classes, and then use it in its actual context. Fun fact: troubadours are men. The until-Fates-female-exclusive troubadour class should have been called the trobairitz. Anyway, the narrator does a quick summary of the history of racial tension and violence that plagues the continent, and then wonders whether the crazy meeting with Rafiel and the wolves was “chance, or a sign of things to come”.

Then it gets to the actual chapter story proper, and Micaiah says they have to go back to the desert. I'm now very curious to wonder what that conversation with Nailah is gonna be like, when they wind up ditching her after agreeing to help bring her to Crimea.

Let's find out! Info conversation ahoy!

Yeah, so... they just flat-out tell her that they changed their mind and have to go back into the desert. This... this feels so weird and clumsy. It's almost like...

...Okay, it feels like something I would have been forced to do when I was writing Dakota's War Journal, if I had made a really stupid mistake. Since I was playing the entire thing by ear, improvising in reaction to the game I was riffing on, and posting every part as I finished it, every time I made a plothole by mistake, or every time the game threw me a curveball I wasn't expecting, I had to roll with it anyway. Because the stuff I already wrote was published canon now, so I had to conjure some roundabout reasoning in the next chapter to justify how that could still be true while the story is still going in the way I want and the maps demand. Of course eventually I reached a point where I had to retcon these things anyway because the project became such a mess due to me worldbuilding parts of a story whose plot I didn't yet fully grasp.

Yeah, uh... there were multiple reasons I found myself unable to finish that thing. Not just that Revelation sucks ass.

But getting back to my point... somehow, that's what this feels like to me. It feels like the writer was in a situation where they were just writing by the seat of their pants, improvising the whole thing, and then rendered Chapter 4 in some published and immutable state, but then the writer said “oh shit, wait, I just remembered the entire reason they were in the desert in the first place, fuck”, and then had to clumsily have the characters just... immediately change their mind from what they just said they would do.

Yeah, it's... kind of hilarious and ridiculous how much Nailah wants to help Micaiah after they just met. They haven't even done anything to help them aside from just give them some fucking directions and then immediately change their mind about taking them there. Unless she's just secretly that grateful for them letting Rafiel know his family is alive. Well... I mean... there is a reason people ship those two.

But anyway, they decide to help us out by having Volug travel with us, permanently half-shifted, because that's a skill now instead of being a function of the demi and laguz bands, which have been retconned out of existence. And I can only assume that's because there's no longer a separate inventory for items and they didn't want to program the ability to equip two things in the same category of inventory or something.

That's really the closest thing I have to a guess as to why this happened. It's so confusing. And also it retcons away something that indicated that laguz societies are capable of performing the magic/alchemy/whatever necessary to create those magical artifacts, which would have been an interesting aspect of their culture. As would literally anything we could possibly learn from a prolonged period of time spent within laguz society.

...Yeah, that reminds me... doesn't it seem like kind of a waste to not have a laguz lord in this game? Not in the sense of laguz royalty, which we have by the boatload, but more like... an actual laguz protagonist. Like, think about it: we've got three main story POVs in this game. Two from beorc, and one from a branded, which is basically just a beorc with weird superpowers. Even when laguz are crucially intertwined into the story of the game... we never actually get to properly, fully play as one. We never get to spend a part of the story playing through the eyes of a laguz, seeing a laguz world, assembling an army of laguz warriors to solve a laguz conflict. Every single conflict in this story is seen through the eyes of beorc or branded, even the one that centrally revolves around the laguz declaring war on the country that caused the Serenes massacre. The only time a laguz leads a player character army is when Tibarn leads one of the three teams in Part 4, and that's... more of a technicality. He's not really what I'd call a POV character there, from what I can remember.

And I have to assume this is because the developers assumed a laguz-centric campaign would be boring. Which, I mean... the way the game's world is set up? It sure as fuck would be. Because all of the laguz live in ethnostates for no clearly explained reason, despite all of their populations originating from the exact same country. Any story that took place in Gallia would have only three playable classes unless they wrote in some visitors from other countries, whether they be hawk, beorc or, least likely of all, dragon.

I still wish they tried. Not only because it would have been really interesting to finally get to properly explore a laguz society, but because it almost certainly would have resulted in the laguz being more interesting gameplaywise, or better balanced, simply because they'd have to acknowledge the problems with laguz gameplay if the gameplay temporarily became nothing but laguz.

...And as I write this, forced to stare at the same screen on my TV for like half an hour... I just realized how freakishly huge people's feet are on the map models. Everyone's feet look about halfway between those of a normal person and Sideshow Bob.

But anyway, yeah, Volug's masquerading as our “pet dog” now, so he can help us. And holy shit is he gonna help us. His stats are amazing... for this part of the game, at least. Now, as ridiculous as it is that anyone would think Volug was a pet dog (as Micaiah rather amusingly points out), this does at least make sense because nobody thinks that canine laguz even exist, so nobody would suspect a thing no matter how freakishly huge Volug is.

We also get gold from selling treasures, just like I remembered. Specifically, we get 10,000. Awesome.

Then we get a talk between Aran and Laura that's... mildly interesting. But knowing what Ashera's really like does make Laura thanking the goddess for sparing her church from Begnion's wrath when nearly every other church had its priests excommunicated and imprisoned... even more hilariously dark than that usual selective god-thanking tends to be.

And then there's a joke about Laura constantly referring to the Dawn Brigade as “bandits”, and I'm wondering what the original terminology of this joke was in Japanese, and... I mean, it's kind of funny? But she runs the joke into the ground by repeating it for like three sentences in different ways.

Okay, I finally went to look at the massive library of characters, and I can only hope that the only reason this character relation chart is completely filled in is because this is a clear data file. Because otherwise it just outright spoils who the Black Knight and Bertram are.

Speaking of, if you played Fire Emblem Heroes before playing the Tellius games...

...You have my most profound sympathies.

I do notice that it says that Shinon mourns Greil just like Titania does. Nice touch to add a bit to his character.

Also, I checked out Volug. His offense and overall bulk (but not defense) are better than Sothe's, but he can't use 1-2 range. Even with that downside though, he's still gonna be insanely useful until I can get Aran, Nolan and the others off the ground.

Curious. Volug is in this conversation. What happens if you don't do his info conversation to get him as a character?

...Apparently Micaiah can speak wolf too, not just bird.

Aaaanyway...

We get to the battle, and it's Zihark and Jill! Oh, and Tauroneo too, but mostly Zihark and Jill! And they've got those awesome stat boosts I worked so hard to give them! Jill's stats aren't looking particularly impressive from how I remember her, but she'll get back to that point eventually. Especially with +2 to her strength, skill, speed and defense. And her growths in this game are, in general, even better than they were in the last game. The only real issue I see is her terrible HP of 24, but I've got some items that can help her out with that, and also by the end of the game she gets close to capping her HP at around 55 anyway.

Anyway, I went back to buy a forge and the bargain wind sword, realizing Zihark's gonna need all the wind swords he can get. The forge is for Aran though. And in honor of Mageknight404's let's play I watched a while back when I didn't have the game anymore... let's call this lance Stabbity.

Weirdly, after you're done making the forge, Daniel goes “Thanks a lot...”, with ellipses that make it seem like he's being sarcastic or annoyed.

But anyway... holy shit does this map have a lot of enemies. I'm glad I took the time to train up Nolan and Aran, because they're gonna need to take a lot of hits. I basically have four units who can take even the slightest amount of punishment: Aran, Nolan, Sothe and Volug. Well, not much I can do to plan here, because of the obnoxious terrain and the fact that the game won't let you see how far your units can move from their starting positions.

So I'm just pressing start.

It doesn't seem so bad. The desert terrain actually makes it mostly safe to player-phase these starting enemies as long as I can take them all out. The nearby enemies aren't nearly as nearby as they look, something I probably should have checked.

But anyway, I have Volug rush ahead to take out the furthest fighter, while Sothe climbs up onto the central platform to kill and block off the myrmidon and soldier up there respectively. Micaiah, Ilyana and Aran each get a kill (Micaiah can easily one-shot certain enemies. But Aran got a terrible single-stat level up, which is... so disappointing. At least that one stat was his titanic defense, and not, say, luck. Ilyana was supposed to just soften an enemy up for Nolan, but she critted. So instead Nolan climbed up on top of the central platform to fight the soldier on it with his trusty hand axe while hiding behind Sothe.

Sothe's just barely able to one-round these enemies with a bronze knife, making me concerned he won't be able to do that much longer. Shame. He's still easily gonna be the bulkiest member of my team until Nolan and Aran promote though. Or until I give Jill a seraph robe.

Yeah, Sothe can't one-round these soldiers with a bronze knife. Shame. But hey, at least this means 1-2 range isn't overpowered here.

Few of the enemies decide to pick on the green units, which works for me, and thanks to Jill's stat boosts, she one-rounded the enemy she fought on her phase.

And now Sothe realizes he recognizes the guys guarding the defense point. I'm gonna have him talk with them, for the hell of it.

Also, after the first turn... things have calmed down dramatically. Now it's just a matter of fighting these enemies as they come. And having the high ground at the center of the map means it's pretty much over. Just as long as I don't underestimate the enemy's power.

One thing I like about this game is the fact that units with shields on their models... actually use the shields to block attacks instead of dodging. It's a cool aesthetic touch. It didn't really catch on, but since the 3DS era every class has had a similar “blocking” animation for when attacks do no damage at all, or the minimum of 1 depending on the game. So that's nice.

Alright, last turn. The boss had a shine barrier I could have stolen if I had been more aggressive, but it's not that important.

Oh, and Micaiah now has 5 strength at level 14. She also just capped magic, meaning she'll barely get better level ups than she would with bonus exp from here on out. Meaning now I've gotta start focusing on getting bonus exp objectives now that bonus exp time is starting to approach.

Wystan's boss quote says that “Daein isn't known for winning its wars”... I mean... hasn't it only lost once? I can't quite remember what the history of that territory war with Begnion was, but like... they've been kicking a lot of ass for most of their history, and also won their FUCK IT I CAN'T TALK ABOUT WITH THIS WITH THE OBNOXIOUSLY REPETITIVE PRE-BOSS-BATTLE MUSIC PLAYING HOLY SHIT THIS IS DIGGING INTO MY FUCKING EARS. It's just a ridiculously repetitive prelude to the proper boss theme, Battle of Pride. Which isn't as good as Contest of Pride from Fates, but... still pretty nice.

Anyway, with that... the defense map is over. Without literally any dialogue whatsoever to explain why defending for six turns was enough. No dialogue of the enemy retreating, no scene showing reinforcements pouring in to save us... the story just moves on, with the enemy instantly, magically gone.

Hey, y'know what they say! Cutting corners makes well-rounded products!

I'm not sure how much more I can rant about the general laziness of this sort of thing. All I can say right now is that I literally can't remember the last time a Fire Emblem game has skimped on cause-and-effect dialogue like this. I can't think of a single specific instance of games 1-3 doing it (though I'm reasonably confident they did), and I'm 95% positive games 4-9 didn't do anything like this even once.

I am including Sacred Stones when I say that.

I am describing a way in which the writing of a Tellius game is inferior to that of Sacred Stones.

...Moving on...

...However the enemies wound up being dispatched, now Sothe is catching up with his three war buddies, and then who should pop up... but Izuka.

Now, had I somehow played this game for the marathon before playing PoR again, I probably would have been pissed off that Sothe doesn't recognize the horrific war criminal standing before him... but now I know better. Nobody in Ike's army even saw Izuka. Though Tauroneo not knowing is a bit more questionable... but hey, he wasn't one of the Four Riders when Ashnard ordered those experiments, and even then, we don't know what kind of intelligence the Four Riders were even privy to normally.

…

...Hey, remember when I praised Path of Radiance for having its mid-battle talks not step on the toes of conversations that happen at the end of the chapter? Like how Titania said “I'll scold you later, focus on the fight for now” in Chaper 2, and how they generally avoided giving characters information they're going to hear later anyway? Yeah, not so in this game! During one of those mid-battle conversations I said I'd have Sothe do, Sothe already heard from Jill that the prince is in fact in the building. But now he's being told this information again and he's acting like it's the first time he's heard it.

…

Sothe: Still, I can't believe we ran into you three—of all people—guarding the prince. What a lucky coincidence.

(Internal groaning)

I love Izuka's theme though. It just adds to both the creepiness and humor of this pathetic, despicable man.

...What I'm curious about now is how and when exactly Izuka betrayed Daein for Begnion. I get that he doesn't have a loyal bone in his body and all that, but when specifically did this turncoating happen? He wasn't on Begnion's side during the Mad King's War, after all. Right?

I know they explain a bit more about why Pelleas is so loyal to Izuka and keeps him around, so I'll have to keep an eye out for that dialogue when it comes. Maybe that'll also shed some more light on this.

Tauroneo: Goddess help me, that man could try the patience of a stone.

...I have this really weird soft spot for Izuka. He is just, like, the perfect hateable character. Literally everyone else is a straight man to his creepy, bizarre, idiotic antics, and there are some moments of comedic gold that result from people having to put up with this amazing sack of shit.

...Also, yet another thing that pausing for a prolonged period of time has made me notice about these map model cutscenes... they didn't even bother programming an idle animation for Jill when she's unmounted. She's just standing there, completely motionless, while everyone else is bobbing and swaying. Upon initial further inspection I thought I was mistaken, and that she was moving after all... but then I realized that this was an optical illusion caused by Tauroneo's body swaying right next to her. I got right up in front of the TV, I put my hand right against the screen to block out the parts of Tauroneo overlapping with her... and now I can indeed confirm that the pixels making up Jill's model on the screen are not budging a fucking inch.

...I probably shouldn't have put my hands right on the TV, but hey, I had to be sure. At any rate, I got one of those screen wipes, so it's fine.

Next scene.

I like Pelleas's theme. The harpsichord vaguely reminds me of Ashnard. ...Did Ashnard's scenes have harpsichord music in them? If not, no clue why those opening harpsichord notes are reminding me of him.

...Okay, I just checked Ashnard's song again, and I'm not sure what part of Pelleas's song reminds me of Ashnard. But it does. And I do really get the musical impression of this being a meek and mild man living in the shadow of his great father.

“Terrible, yes... but great.”

And we also meet Almedha, Ashnard's de-powered dragon laguz “wife”. I wish we could see her ears. Sephiran's appearance confirms that the parents of branded lose their pointy ears too, but it would be nice to get another confirmation.

...Okay, so Izuka found Pelleas. Which implies that Izuka was working for Begnion half a year ago, when he “found” Pelleas.

I am very confused.

So, Izuka is going to betray Pelleas by convincing him to sign the blood pact and lying to him about what it said. This is part of the senate's plan to make Pelleas a puppet leader controlled by the senate, but... it's also part of Sephiran's conspiracy to end the world. So who does Izuka work for?

Does Izuka work specifically for Sephiran, and only pretends to work for the senate?

Or did Sephiran manipulate the senate into thinking it was a good idea to have Izuka conspire to have some poor sap... become the puppet ruler... of a country... that Begnion already... fully... controlled?

...Was this an elaborate scheme by the senate in order to secure control of Daein in the long-term, knowing that Sanaki would figure out how fucked up their rule of Daein was eventually?

If so, and if Izuka doesn't work directly for Sephiran, what role did Sephiran have in manipulating the Begnion senate into doing this? Considering Sephiran promptly gets thrown in prison later, they don't exactly seem particularly receptive to Sephiran's advice. In what sense and by what means did Sephiran play chessmaster here?

And also, what exactly did Izuka have to gain in the first place by taking a king who was genuinely loyal to him, and turning him into a puppet king controlled by people who aren't?

...Moving on...

Okay, so, yet again, I am a bit confused here. So, Almedha is being all obsessively doting with her “sweet, sweet son, Prince Pelleas”.

Now, as the game will eventually reveal if I do everything right, Soren is the real son of Almedha and Ashnard. So... is Pelleas what Almedha named her child? Is Soren's real name Pelleas? Did Pelleas originally go by another name as an orphan peasant spirit charmer before “learning” what his “true” name was? Or is Almedha completely content to call her “precious baby boy” whatever name he came to be called as an orphan peasant, and not the name she gave him at birth? Given how blatantly desperate Almedha seems to be to believe that Pelleas is her son, you'd think she'd be a bit more obsessed about that original name, especially when speaking about him in such an overbearingly motherly way, and maybe say something like “you'll always be my precious sweet Mikhail to me” or whatever the fuck Soren's birth name was.

Also... why is Almedha so important to this plan? Like, Izuka made absolutely sure to pick a spirit charmer so that he could be mistaken for a branded, but... how many people actually know that Ashnard's son is a dragon branded? How many other than Ashnard's wife? Would the people of Daein really accept a dragon branded as their king if that were actually common knowledge? It's not like they'd know he's a spirit charmer... I think. Do we ever get confirmation of when exactly spirit charmers become spirit charmers? Is it at birth? And if not, then who, other than Almedha, would that mark be needed to fool? And wouldn't the fact that Pelleas openly admits to being a spirit charmer make her even a little suspicious of the odds of a branded spirit charmer being a thing?

Are they even a thing? Would a branded spirit charmer have two brands?

And wouldn't she have told him that no, he's really a half-dragon branded, and he's mistaken about thinking that mark was because he was a spirit charmer? Or at least that he's a branded too, and not just a spirit charmer (since he clearly is a spirit charmer)? Does she have no issues at all with the fact that her own son freely uses the term sub-human, as a later scene will show?

But back to my point, it seems like getting a spirit charmer was exclusively to fool Almedha. Why is that important for anything other than the plot? If Almedha were a well-known figure needed to lend credence to Pelleas's birthright, then it would be common knowledge that Ashnard fucked a dragon, and that any son he had with that woman would be “quarter-breed mongrel trash”. And also... Almedha has to know how branded age, right? Micaiah and Soren demonstrate that branded don't look as mature as Pelleas does by the time they're a teenager or even in their twenties.

...I am... I am extremely confused here. If anyone has more info I'm forgetting... or never saw... please, for the love of god, enlighten me.

Okay, so, Micaiah is immediately elected vice-general, which normally would be a textbook Mary Sue moment, but they're using a trope that I really like for getting young and inexperienced protagonists into positions that they can't realistically get by birthright or merit: making them a cynically-appointed figurehead, initially there for no other reason than to improve morale and PR until they can prove themselves through actual work.

Intelligent systems actually went on to do this once again in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin a year or so later, with much more sympathetic (but still extremely cynical) in-story motives. I won't spoil the details though, because that's a fucking fantastic game that you owe it to yourself to play if you're remotely a fan of strategy. If you were one of the Advance Wars fans who saw the game, took one look at its darker-and-edgier aesthetics and plot as opposed to the lighthearted games that came before, and decided the series had jumped the shark... fucking play it. It is dark, yes, but not that dark, and it is very well written. Not only that, but in its copious moments of levity, it is funnier than the first three Advance Wars games combined.

Aaaaanyway, my point is, everyone knows that this isn't the wisest idea from a pure military skill perspective, since Micaiah's war experience is... limited at best. But that's not why she's being appointed. She's appointed because she's pretty much a religious figure now, some kind of supposed demigod messiah that the people of Daein almost fanatically look to as a symbol of hope due to her mysterious and holy-seeming powers.

That's another thing I like about how Micaiah is written that, at least the way I remember, helps mitigate her borderline Sue-ish qualities: her insane popularity, once we actually leave the confines of Part 1 and even towards the end of that part too, is actually portrayed as creepy religious zealotry by basically everyone who discusses it, which includes several people we respect. I'll have to take another look at how well that's pulled off, but from what I remember, she isn't actually being depicted as being that sublimely wonderful. She's an unwilling messiah figure in a story with very heavy themes of the dangers of religious zealotry.

Also, I love that Izuka is completely shameless about his ulterior motives for using Micaiah as vice-general.

Micaiah: Wait a moment! I appreciate the offer, Izuka, but I'm afraid I cannot accept. I have no war experience and no knowledge of battle tactics. Daein needs a general with both.

Izuka: Are you not a member of the heroic Dawn Brigade, whose conquests precede them!? Do you not want to save the people of Daein!? Serve the prince, and you can step out of the shadows and face the empire boldly, without shame! Why hesitate?

Sothe: This is a thinly-veiled scheme... and I see right through it. You just want Micaiah to serve as a figurehead for your revolution.

Izuka: Is that a problem?

HAHAHAHAHAHA! WOW! He does not skip a fucking beat, does he?

Anyway, Pelleas steps in and convinces Micaiah to accept the position by pointing out that she's not the only inexperienced person here, and that Pelleas is also doing what he can for his country despite having absolutely no confidence he's the best person for the job, simply because he has to. Apparently, his heartfelt plea is enough to win Micaiah over, because she... rather abruptly says she will take the job when he asks. To Sothe's rather amusing shock.

But then Sothe clarifies that his shock is because Micaiah knows full well that they can't live in the public eye like this would demand. They don't exactly reveal why yet, but it's because she's a branded whose slow aging will out her as such eventually. But Micaiah says that during the war, she changed from her experiences just like Sothe did, and now she desperately wants to protect her country and its people.

I gotta say... I kinda like Micaiah and Sothe's relationship in scenes like this. They often have a likable dynamic. I know a lot of people feel that he's grown to revolve almost entirely around Micaiah, but... like... that was always the case. It isn't just something that this game did. The entire reason he ran into Ike in Path of Radiance at all was because he was searching for her. And I haven't seen his supports in Path of Radiance, but... given my track record with Path of Radiance supports, I'm willing to bet that there wasn't some rich complexity to his character that's been lost here. All of his info conversations in PoR seemed to be building up to his role in Radiant Dawn, and I didn't see any aspect of his character that was lost in this game. If I'm wrong though, by all means, lemme know, and I will read those conversations and be prepared to eat crow.

...But at any rate... chapter over! Next week we'll finally get to play around with some transfer units! Can't wait! Might even do some chapters on the weekend!

Stay safe, everyone!

Edited July 31, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And I haven't seen his supports in Path of Radiance, but... given my track record with Path of Radiance supports, I'm willing to bet that there wasn't some rich complexity to his character that's been lost here.

Don't feel like chiming in too much right now, I got exhausted chiming in all I did on PoR

But, there wasn't anything major you missed in Sothe's two PoR supports. The Astrid might not be great, but it's not bad as I see it. The Tormod has Sothe being plain antisocial through the very short first two parts, but the A does have one good line:

Sothe: "He’s (Muarim) like a father to you. I understand why you don’t want to cause him grief. I also have…someone…who is like a parent to me."

When I read this, I realized a conversation yet to happen for you in RD might be quietly referencing this, a slight "parents talk" shall we say?

[Silver-Haired Maiden]

You've mentioned several times feeling that the writing in this game was rushed but in all the many times I've played RD it's never felt that way to me. Perhaps it's because I enjoy a fast paced story and so the speed here is more comfortable to me, but many other FE games (especially PoR) felt very much like they just dragged on and on. I found myself wishing other games would just get to the point already and RD never gave me that feeling.

As for the spirit charmer stuff, that's explained in Part 4 if you recruit Pelleas.

[Icelerate]

1 minute ago, Silver-Haired Maiden said:

You've mentioned several times feeling that the writing in this game was rushed but in all the many times I've played RD it's never felt that way to me. Perhaps it's because I enjoy a fast paced story and so the speed here is more comfortable to me, but many other FE games (especially PoR) felt very much like they just dragged on and on. I found myself wishing other games would just get to the point already and RD never gave me that feeling.

As for the spirit charmer stuff, that's explained in Part 4 if you recruit Pelleas.

My opinion was that RD's writing is too fast paced, especially in the Micaiah parts, even before reading Alastor's arguments but now I'm even more convinced. Deltre also pointed out this flaw of RD's writing in his LP when juxtaposed with PoR.  I think these are good arguments for why PoR has a better story than RD. Unfortunately the common argument is that blood pact sucks so PoR is automatically better but that's a reductive argument.

However, I'm not the biggest fan of PoR's writing because I felt it was too slow paced when I first played through it but it's been a long time when I played it so I might change my mind.  

[Silver-Haired Maiden]

41 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

My opinion was that RD's writing is too fast paced, especially in the Micaiah parts, even before reading Alastor's arguments but now I'm even more convinced. Deltre also pointed out this flaw of RD's writing in his LP when juxtaposed with PoR.  I think these are good arguments for why PoR has a better story than RD. Unfortunately the common argument is that blood pact sucks so PoR is automatically better but that's a reductive argument.

However, I'm not the biggest fan of PoR's writing because I felt it was too slow paced when I first played through it but it's been a long time when I played it so I might change my mind.  

I mean that's fine, but I played PoR as recently as a year ago and RD just a week and a half ago and I still hold that opinion. To me it feels appropriately paced, especially since the plot does canonically take place in a rather condensed time frame. I'd like some padding for purely logistical reasons if it gets a remake (mostly to more organically gain levels for the DB) but the plot itself? I don't feel like it needs to be slowed down.

[Alastor15243]

Hey, speaking of pacing and too long or too short...

I've never thought to ask this before: do you guys prefer longer or shorter entries? Do you prefer having more to read, or do you find yourselves overwhelmed if I talk too much about one chapter in one day? Like, the length of my entries during the early parts of Path of Radiance. Was that too much for one day?

Edited August 1, 2020 by Alastor15243

[lenticular]

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But anyway, yeah, Volug's masquerading as our “pet dog” now, so he can help us. And holy shit is he gonna help us. His stats are amazing... for this part of the game, at least. Now, as ridiculous as it is that anyone would think Volug was a pet dog (as Micaiah rather amusingly points out), this does at least make sense because nobody thinks that canine laguz even exist, so nobody would suspect a thing no matter how freakishly huge Volug is.

What I really want to know is how Volug and Nailah know what a pet dog is. It's conceivably possible that it's something that came up in conversation with Rafael at some point, when he was telling them about Beorc society back on his side of the desert, but given how casually and jokingly they talk about it, it does seem that they're familiar with the concept. Which... do the wolf laguz in Hatari keep pet dogs? Because that seems really weird to me. Do they shift into wolf form to better communicate with their pets? Do they run in packs together? Does this seem super weird to anyone else, or just me?

[Alastor15243]

20 minutes ago, lenticular said:

What I really want to know is how Volug and Nailah know what a pet dog is. It's conceivably possible that it's something that came up in conversation with Rafael at some point, when he was telling them about Beorc society back on his side of the desert, but given how casually and jokingly they talk about it, it does seem that they're familiar with the concept. Which... do the wolf laguz in Hatari keep pet dogs? Because that seems really weird to me. Do they shift into wolf form to better communicate with their pets? Do they run in packs together? Does this seem super weird to anyone else, or just me?

I mean, as long as they're familiar with the concept of pets in general, being told that there are creatures that look like wolves that beorc in Tellius keep as pets would probably be enough to spur that comical misunderstanding. And maybe the laguz of Hatari don't keep pets, but the beorc they live in harmony with might.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Icelerate]

2 hours ago, Silver-Haired Maiden said:

I mean that's fine, but I played PoR as recently as a year ago and RD just a week and a half ago and I still hold that opinion. To me it feels appropriately paced, especially since the plot does canonically take place in a rather condensed time frame. I'd like some padding for purely logistical reasons if it gets a remake (mostly to more organically gain levels for the DB) but the plot itself? I don't feel like it needs to be slowed down.

Would you have preferred if RD's story started with the formation of the Dawn Brigade? This way the events in the developer notes could have been shown instead of hidden away in some obscure notes. Furthermore, people will gain a stronger attachment to the DB if we see how they came to be from the very beginning instead of being thrown in the middle of their story. 

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

The only time a laguz leads a player character army is when Tibarn leads one of the three teams in Part 4, and that's... more of a technicality. He's not really what I'd call a POV character there, from what I can remember.

Tibarn is one of my favorite characters in Radiant Dawn, but that kind of actually annoyed me a bit. You give us three preceeding parts of the game focusing on Ike, Micaiah and Elincia before part 4, and then in part 4 you split the army up into Ike, Micaiah and Tibarn. Elincia should have been the lord of that army! They ruined a full circle dynamic they had going on there! I don't even care about the plot, call it the Hawk army in narration, whatever, but make Elincia the gameplay lord like she was (all of two maps) in Part 2.

That being said, you're right, this game should have had a laguz lord, but the plot would need to be restructued quite a bit for that. Actually fuck it no, don't restructure anything. Cut Ike out of Part 3 entirely and make Skimr the lord. Ike's show stealing the entire thing anyway. Maybe give him one chapter in Part 3 Geoffrey style where he's back in Daein pursuing the Black Knight or something so the resolution to that plotline doesn't come completely out of nowhere.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I mean Volug is sorta a Laguz Lord since he must not die before the final chapter of part 1.

 

That said the Game Over conditions of this game don't really make sense for me for most part.

I mean in the first four chapters it's probably made to be "beginner friendly" to let the player have enough unit power for the upcoming chapters.

 

But why musn't Volug after 1-5? 

He has no real story role after it aside of giving a water gem in 1-F.

He has a cutscene in 1-8 in the beginning, that's it.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Julian Teehee

[Sunwoo]

I feel like RD Ike was basically done as a character. He doesn't really have an arc in RD, aside from beating the Black Knight again ... but RD!Ike is presented less like a character who develops throughout the story and more a an idealistic hero in the flesh. He's like one of the legendary figures people talk about prior to the game having started ... except he's there as a major character, and it was a letdown.

Had Ike been absent for most of the game ... like, Mist was the leader of the Greil Mercenaries because Ike had taken off to do "things", and he only reappeared right at the beginning of endgame, that might've actually been better.

[Alastor15243]

I'm inclined to agree about Ike from what I remember, but I'll have to see for myself of course.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

20 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Tibarn is one of my favorite characters in Radiant Dawn, but that kind of actually annoyed me a bit. You give us three preceeding parts of the game focusing on Ike, Micaiah and Elincia before part 4, and then in part 4 you split the army up into Ike, Micaiah and Tibarn. Elincia should have been the lord of that army! They ruined a full circle dynamic they had going on there! I don't even care about the plot, call it the Hawk army in narration, whatever, but make Elincia the gameplay lord like she was (all of two maps) in Part 2.

I don't mind Tibarn leading the third group with Elincia, he gets a lot of time in Part 3, basically equal to Ike, Ranulf, and Skrimir. And Elincia only co-leading is fine, it's the subtle fruit of character growth if you ask me. PoR Elincia couldn't have done that, she was inexperienced and insecure, the same of herself prior to the Lucia "sacrifice" in RD. You can't say she has more experience than Tibarn, but she has gained enough confidence and engaged in actions that shows they aren't on different planets as national leaders go. 

 

20 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That being said, you're right, this game should have had a laguz lord, but the plot would need to be restructued quite a bit for that. Actually fuck it no, don't restructure anything. Cut Ike out of Part 3 entirely and make Skimr the lord. Ike's show stealing the entire thing anyway.

Skrimir already gets a character arc, one it took me years to notice, and it isn't anything revolutionary. But he does go from brash musclehead to calmer and willing to listen to strategy. Not shabby for a deuteragonist.

Ike sending away the GMs to help the LA but leaving on a personal independent mission, it'd be a fine idea. Though is it in Ike's character to put a personal mission over something for a greater good? Setting that aside, it'd give Titania more of a chance to show leadership, and Soren without Ike around would be... I'm not sure what, he's too cold to change that significantly (even though he perceptibly did after PoR), but it could affect him to a smaller extent.

Oh, and to make Ike less lonely, why not tie him up with Bastian a little? Bastian can't take forever to find Izuka, why not have him lend Ike his and Volke's investigative services a little for the BK?

Edited August 1, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

 

5 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I don't mind Tibarn leading the third group with Elincia, he gets a lot of time in Part 3, basically equal to Ike, Ranulf, and Skrimir. And Elincia only co-leading is fine, it's the subtle fruit of character growth if you ask me. PoR Elincia couldn't have done that, she was inexperienced and insecure, the same of herself prior to the Lucia "sacrifice" in RD. You can't say she has more experience than Tibarn, but she has gained enough confidence and engaged in actions that shows they aren't on different planets as national leaders go. 

 

Skrimir already gets a character arc, one it took me years to notice, and it isn't anything revolutionary. But he does go from brash musclehead to calmer and willing to listen to strategy. Not shabby for a deuteragonist.

Ike sending away the GMs to help the LA but leaving on a personal independent mission, it'd be a fine idea. Though is it in Ike's character to put a personal mission over something for a greater good? Setting that aside, it'd give Titania more of a chance to show leadership, and Soren without Ike around would be... I'm not sure what, he's too cold to change that significantly (even though he perceptibly did after PoR), but it could affect him to a smaller extent.

 If we have Ike off on his own doing his own thing in Part 3 then it could also be a way to much more naturally reintroduce Renning, Bastian and Volke into the story with Izuka. Because that feels so shoehorned in in Part 4. As for Ike doing his own thing inlieu of the greater good, Ike could actually disagree that the war is the greater good. The feelings of Gallia are understandable, but let's face it, they are the aggressors in that war and we have a medallion that will literally destroy the world if there's too much war. Ike could stand to be a little more concerned about that.

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also... why is Almedha so important to this plan? Like, Izuka made absolutely sure to pick a spirit charmer so that he could be mistaken for a branded, but... how many people actually know that Ashnard's son is a dragon branded? How many other than Ashnard's wife? Would the people of Daein really accept a dragon branded as their king if that were actually common knowledge? It's not like they'd know he's a spirit charmer... I think. Do we ever get confirmation of when exactly spirit charmers become spirit charmers? Is it at birth? And if not, then who, other than Almedha, would that mark be needed to fool? And wouldn't the fact that Pelleas openly admits to being a spirit charmer make her even a little suspicious of the odds of a branded spirit charmer being a thing?

Are they even a thing? Would a branded spirit charmer have two brands?

 

Yeah this really bothered me on my second palythrough of Radiant Dawn when I had the full context of things. It's so confusing I think I'd outright say its a plot hole. By all right Izuka should have found an actual branded to be Pelleas and Pelleas should have been aware of this. The scene with him and Micaiah later just makes no sense with who Pelleas is meant to think he is.

Also two other things, yes, I could actually believe Micaiah might be of the opinion that Ike shouldn't have won the war. Micaiah is a patriot as she expresses in this chapter and her burning oil scene later clearly shows her belief system is Daein ahead of any other countries. Given Ike winning the war has lead directly to this brutal occupation, thinking he was in the wrong does not seem out of character. Though I reckon they didn't want to lean into that aspect of her too much since it might make her unlikeable to not like Ike.

Izuka working for Sephiran is probably the best explanation, maybe even as early as Path of Radiance (Sephiran helping to create the feral drug to try and get the dragons involved?). At the very least it would help us believe Sephiran actually did something in this game aside from getting thrown in a prison cell.

[Sunwoo]

Ike could've set off to do his own thing long before RD started. Put the rumors of the Black Knight having survived sooner, and have Ike leave on his own searching for the truth there, and RD starts some time later.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I don't mind Tibarn leading the third group with Elincia, he gets a lot of time in Part 3, basically equal to Ike, Ranulf, and Skrimir.

 

Yeah, but imagine Skimir replacing Micaiah as the Part 4 army leader, that's what Tibarn replacing Elincia is like. As I said, it's not an issue of story but theme. It makes sense in universe for Tibarn to be the leader, but from a narrative sense Elincia would have worked better given she had a full section of the game dedicated to her.