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

[Icelerate]

19 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Isn't this guy supposed to be the fucking general of the entire Daein Occupation Army? What the fuck is this guy's job description that he just happens to have business to take care of literally everywhere the Dawn Brigade fucking goes?

I mean, okay, at least in this case Begnion appears to be fully aware of the Daein army's approach, so it makes sense he'd be here to lead, but, like... this guy has still been way too omnipresent among the unimportant, rank-and-file soldiers so far to really make sense.

 

I like that he''s actually active instead of sitting in one location. It shows he takes his job seriously and makes him more threatening to boot. I do agree the script should have explained what he was doing in that manor in chapter 1-2 though but I don't see his presence in and of itself being a problem. Do you prefer main villains who only show up in the final chapter when they are supposed to be killed?

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Where we're just casually stopping by in a grassy, non-desert town along the way, confirming that the army isn't staying out of Daein during the trip by traveling along the edge of the Desert of Death or anything. We are then instantly recognized by the peasantfolk and yet not harried by Begnion soldiers in any way whatsoever, proving my point of just how fucking ridiculously Begnion has to behave for any of this to work.

 

You're assuming that Begnion soldiers were present in that village at that moment. Do you even know how military occupations work? Take Afghanistan for example, at no point did every single town and village in that country or even close to that number have the presence of troops.   

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Terin and Talrega are basically across the fucking country from us.

How the fuck are either of these the best targets for our first attack!?

We're passing by numerous cities and the fucking capital to get there, right after Izuka has just very deliberately stripped us of the element of surprise!

 

I like how they discuss which of those two towns to attack but do you expect them to go over all the numerous cities and explain why all the others are unfeasible to attack? You expect way more from the script than what makes sense in any FE game. 

Terin was probably the best because victory over there would also give them control over Marado which would explain Micaiah's vision of having more luck in Marado than anywhere else. 

Also, it's a small army so they shouldn't have problems sneaking in the countryside to get to their location. 

Spoiler

Begnion Soldier:
“A small troop approaches from the east! It appears to be the Daein Liberation Army!”

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Okay, so, the Begnion army knew we were coming. They knew specifically that we were going to Terin, and not any of the numerous towns along the way, which is why they laid the trap for us here. How? Did Izuka broadcast that too? I know Izuka's a traitor working for Sephiran and/or Begnion, but the plan still involves Daein “winning” this war, so why would he do anything that would help Begnion win it?

 

Not sure if they actually knew about it. The trap doesn't require them knowing when and where the army was coming. It only requires that they will eventually meet on the battlefield while having hostages. 

And even if they knew, it wouldn't mean Izuka was the one who told them. 

[Alastor15243]

15 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Do you prefer main villains who only show up in the final chapter when they are supposed to be killed?

Not particularly, it's more that most of his early appearances feel like they're done entirely by accident, which feels weird, like he just has random comparatively-menial tasks he's responsible for.

15 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

You're assuming that Begnion soldiers were present in that village at that moment. Do you even know how military occupations work? Take Afghanistan for example, at no point did every single town and village in that country or even close to that number have the presence of troops.   

Like I said before that quoted paragraph, Begnion knows where the Daein Liberation Army is and where it's headed. It's utterly bizarre to me that they can just wander around not as a small group of freedom fighters, but as a full-on army, and still not meet any resistance from the enemy army that knows where they are and where they're going.

15 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

I like how they discuss which of those two towns to attack but do you expect them to go over all the numerous cities and explain why all the others are unfeasible to attack? You expect way more from the script than what makes sense in any FE game. 

No, I just feel the starting destination should have been closer to the desert, because it feels utterly bizarre that their best ideal target is so far away. There was absolutely no need to make their first destination Terin. They could have picked any closer area and the script would barely have to change.

15 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Not sure if they actually knew about it. The trap doesn't require them knowing when and where the army was coming. It only requires that they will eventually meet on the battlefield while having hostages. 

And even if they knew, it wouldn't mean Izuka was the one who told them. 

Yeah, I don't think it's likely Izuka, which is why I'm so confused because he's the only one with a semblance of a motive to rat the liberation army out. But unless it's just a crazy coincidence that Jarod personally ordered Fiona to be mobilized, and she wound up deployed to the same location that the Dawn Brigade wound up going to, the script seems to be giving every indication that Begnion knew they were coming here with their talk of traps and Jarod knowing the Daein army is "on the move".

 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Shadow Mir]

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Which reminds me that Kurthnaga has seen Pelleas, obviously knows what Almedha is due to being related to her, and yet hasn't realized that Pelleas couldn't possibly be her son, meaning that he, a full-blooded, full-power, black dragon laguz, apparently can't sniff out branded. Was he never once educated as to what the fuck branded are and how they make laguz feel? He's a prince! And how can so few laguz know what branded are and what that feeling means, if that feeling is what's supposed to make it so impossible for branded to function around laguz?

Given that Goldoa has been isolated since Ashunera knows when... that's kinda to be expected.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I brought Leonardo to take control of the ballista just in case, but unfortunately, the Radiance games decided to be complete dickbags and make all ballistae only operate in one direction. Meaning that all the ballistae you “reclaim” from the enemy are damned near useless to you, since they're pointed at your army, not the enemy's. Great. And here I thought I was gonna have some fun with Leonardo for once.

About the only time the player gets any real mileage out of ballistae in Tellius is in 3-5, where you're defending, and 3-P to an extent, since there are ballistae pointed at the laguz army for you to steal before the enemy has the chance to man them.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I've gotta make sure Tauroneo isn't the one to kill the boss. He's insanely useful right now, but the issue is that... well... he has some of the worst availability in the game.

See, Radiant Dawn has this unfortunate tendency to, since it shifts from so many perspectives, constantly take units in and out of your army. Tauroneo is playable in this chapter... and no other chapter of Part 1. So if he kills the boss, he gets the paragon scroll, and it's entirely possible, if I remember correctly, that this means the paragon scroll just stays with him until Part 3. It's possible he's still in the party but unusable after this chapter, but I don't wanna take that chance with this thing.

You think that's bad? Next chapter has a recruit with even worse availability. Three of them, in fact.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

You think that's bad? Next chapter has a recruit with even worse availability. Three of them, in fact.

Yep, those three were definitely in mind when I made my choice of words. I haven't actually done the math to see who has the literal worst availability, aside from the obvious ones like the endgame characters, but I'm confident Tauroneo is at least one of the worst.

[Icelerate]

23 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Like I said before that quoted paragraph, Begnion knows where the Daein Liberation Army is and where it's headed. It's utterly bizarre to me that they can just wander around not as a small group of freedom fighters, but as a full-on army, and still not meet any resistance from the enemy army that knows where they are and where they're going.

 

Where was it stated or implied that Begnion knows where the Daein liberation army currently is? The only thing Jarod knows is that they are on the move but that's because Izuka's operatives have started spreading rumours about the insurrection, not the current location of the Daein army. 

Spoiler

Jarod:
“Lady Fiona. The self-proclaimed Liberation Army is on the march. Marado’s army has been ordered to deploy with us.”

 

Spoiler

Izuka:
“Well, well! The rumors that my… operatives started have spread like wildfire through all of Daein! Late King Ashnard’s orphan surfaces! Silver-Haired Maiden at Prince Pelleas’s side! Now that we have the people’s attention…we snag their hearts! We’ll just extol the savior, fan the rebellion, go to battle…and conquer the enemy in a blaze of glory!”

 

33 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Izuka:
“Well, well! The rumors that my… operatives started have spread like wildfire through all of Daein! Late King Ashnard’s orphan surfaces! Silver-Haired Maiden at Prince Pelleas’s side! Now that we have the people’s attention…we snag their hearts! We’ll just extol the savior, fan the rebellion, go to battle…and conquer the enemy in a blaze of glory!”

Fair enough but this plan was because of a vision that sent her to Terin so I let this one slide. And I don't think visions in moderation are bad writing but we'll see. 

35 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, I don't think it's likely Izuka, which is why I'm so confused because he's the only one with a semblance of a motive to rat the liberation army out. But unless it's just a crazy coincidence that Jarod personally ordered Fiona to be mobilized, and she wound up deployed to the same location that the Dawn Brigade wound up going to, the script seems to be giving every indication that Begnion knew they were coming here with their talk of traps and Jarod knowing the Daein army is "on the move".

 

I think what happened is that the Begnion forces started preparing to defend key territories which is why they had troops from Marado deploy to Terin but Yune saw this as a good opportunity to attack Terin due to anticipating getting the support of Marado. So it may seem like a complete coincidence but makes sense when you realize that Begnion deploying the Marado army there would cause Daein to intervene there due to a vision. 

So the causal chain is:

1. Begnion deploying Marado Army in Terin

2. Micaiah sees a vision about how striking Terin will give good fortune. 

3. Daein army attacks Terin despite Begnion already being prepared, yet not knowing where exactly Daein will strike next. 

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 hours ago, Icelerate said:

The OP of that thread ended up contradicting themselves. They said RD does too much tell and tell instead of show and tell but then praised PoR for only talking about Daein's subjugation instead of showing like RD does. 

This feels a bit taken out of context. He has a lot to say about how what they show of the subjugation of Daein is so over the top as to take him out of the experience, where as Path of Radiance showed that telling would have worked better with this topic. Meanwhile his whole rant about telling was when the game was telling us about the enemy harrying the Daein forces, and the liberation of all the other important targets, both of which could have (and at least some of that should have) been shown to as gameplay. As I said before his salty ranting really undermined his points numerous times, and his tell, tell, tell bit was one of those, but he is clearly trying to express the issues he has with the plot.

 

2 hours ago, Icelerate said:

 

Would you say that the liberation of Isaac was too rushed? It's much faster than the liberation of Daein but one could argue that Isaac is too minor of a country to focus a liberation struggle on when in reality it was Grannvale that needs to be liberated. However, that logic implies that Thracia 776 was a waste of time because you only focus on a smaller country instead of the entire Empire. . 

I don't feel like the Isaac liberation was too rushed. We see the entire liberation of Isaac in a section of gameplay, and the plot points they want to conclude in the chapter were small enough in scale that they had sufficient buildup. Thraica is more fleshed out than the others, and it tries for more ambitious plot points than the Isaac liberation with enough buildup to make the payoffs feel earned, and takes the time to flesh out the logic behind people's locations, movements, and actions, and even take the time to show the encounters they have while reaching their next targets. Radiant Dawn skips over a lot of the logic, and those encounters between place that the story needs to feel fleshed out, with quite a few moments where it feels like gameplay should happen but instead we are told about it, plus Radiant Dawn has some plot points as ambitious (if not more so) as Thracia, but without the same time to get the buildup they need for the payoff. If they gave a little more time to part 1 it could have been great, but as is it feels rushed.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh hey! This is a kill boss map! Sweet! That means I can do this super quickly if I play my cards right! And hey! The boss has a drop-when-killed paragon scroll! SCORE

The skill point cost of the paragon scroll is such a troll...for those that don't remember its cost is too high for any tier one unit to equip (other than Micaiah, maybe?)

 

1 hour ago, Icelerate said:

I agree that the plan is dumb. How would you improve it? Keep the civilians hostage for longer but have Fiona get tired of the nonsense and take matters into her own hands? I think that makes more sense. 

I think the change that would work best is after the Dawn brigade surrenders have the boss then demand that Fiona and the Marado soldiers be the one to kill off the Dawn brigade to prove her/their loyalty, and have her balk at that (and be offended by the implication of treachery), only for the boss to then try to pull the same hostage threat on Fiona, triggering her and her soldiers to rescue them away from his grasps.

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Given that Goldoa has been isolated since Ashunera knows when... that's kinda to be expected.

About the only time the player gets any real mileage out of ballistae in Tellius is in 3-5, where you're defending, and 3-P to an extent, since there are ballistae pointed at the laguz army for you to steal before the enemy has the chance to man them.

You think that's bad? Next chapter has a recruit with even worse availability. Three of them, in fact.

3-12 has useable ballista too if I remember, of course that's also a defense map. It is a bit weird that these sort of seige weapons are more effective in defense maps when they kind of were offensive wepoanry. I do kind of like that they only point in one direction. Feels more realistic or something. Some kind of turn option where you give up your turn to move it or have reduced accuracy on your turning shot might have been nice thoughl

[Shadow Mir]

23 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yep, those three were definitely in mind when I made my choice of words. I haven't actually done the math to see who has the literal worst availability, aside from the obvious ones like the endgame characters, but I'm confident Tauroneo is at least one of the worst.

True enough. Anyway, outside of part 4 characters, the one unit with the worst availability is Lucia (who at least has the excuse of having been massively overleveled [level 14 second tier] in her one chapter).

Edited August 5, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Alastor15243]

Radiant Dawn Day 8: Chapter 1-7

Yeah, like Jotari said... wow, it's kinda crazy that we literally have two battles left before a tiny barely-a-map and then the final battle of Part 1. This war... progresses extremely fast. Of course, we aren't even the ones responsible for dealing the finishing blow. Daein's freedom is assured before the final battle even happens, due to events done by characters not in our control.

...Pretty anticlimactic when I put it like that. But we'll see.

The intro narration says that there's a vast number of mercenaries that Begnion's hired (with Daein's money), and I'm wondering where they came from. Begnion? Not from Daein, certainly, unless this is an evil amazon brigade since all the Daein men of fighting age are in labor camps. If betraying Daein were an easy way out, I think we'd have heard about it.

Anyway, so I checked the bonus exp requirements, and it seems that the turn reward is peanuts compared to the prisoner escape reward, so I'll be taking this map slow to train my units and make sure every prisoner escapes.

But back to the story, Izuka has apparently told Pelleas to stop coming to the strategy meetings, and now he's revealing his plan to poison a lake in order to kill the guards of a prison camp... a plan that everyone obviously thinks is completely ridiculous. ...Ugh. I get that this guy's evil, but he's just so hilariously easily shut down that he's less of an antagonistic force and more of just a strawman punching bag to make Micaiah look better. In other stories with characters like this, they eventually get into an infuriatingly undeserved position of power over the heroes to up the drama. Like, say, Dolores Umbridge. Here... well, like I already said: strawman punching bag. He storms out, and now we have to come up with a better plan, which we proceed to do... offscreen.

Time to prep.

Damn it, Nolan and Zihark don't have a support together. I could have sworn they got it in time for this chapter! Is this not chapter-based like in Path of Radiance? Did I need to keep them together more?

Anyway, Aran gains 3 speed between bonus experience level ups and promotion. Not enough to double, but that's going to change shortly. He's going to cap strength, skill and speed hilariously quickly into his promoted tier, meaning that I'll be able to buff up his other stats to psychotic levels through bonus experience, which we'll have plenty of by the time we next see the Dawn Brigade again. That is going to make it annoying to use him in actual combat though, once he reaches the point where non-bexp levels are essentially wasted.

Ike is going to suffer from a similar problem.

I used most of my remaining bonus experience to promote Nolan, because that way I can equip paragon on him. That skill is going to be used mainly on him and Zihark, swapped back and forth to whoever most needs it, while the other one will get resolve, which, yes, I just managed to get off of Tauroneo.

...It's kind of ridiculous that it's chapter 7, 9 maps in, and I already have a mostly-promoted army. Man, the experience gain of the Dawn Brigade is ruuuushed.

You can't sell master seals in this game. Pity. Was that the case in the Japanese version too? I seem to remember hearing that you needed these items to promote in the Japanese version of this game.

Alright, let's do info conversations.

Oooh! This is the one with Meg and Zihark!

HAHAHAHA! I didn't realize until just now that Zihark says that Meg looks exactly like her father. Holy shit. That is a roast to throw at a poor girl if I ever heard one, but neither one seems to notice the implications.

...However... this conversation is rather frustratingly ambiguous as to whether or not Brom sent Meg or if Meg went without his permission. If it's the former... holy shit Brom, what is wrong with you? Unless of course it's somehow some insanely well-kept secret just how fucked up Daein is.

Alright, now we get a talk with Pelleas.

So, basically, Pelleas is incredibly grateful to Izuka for “reuniting” him with his “mother” and also for putting him in the position he is in now. Also, apparently there were some Daein senators that Pelleas mentions Izuka getting into contact with, and, well... my reaction to that is...

...Daein has a senate?

I'm sorry, are you trying to tell me that Daein is a constitutional monarchy?

Was the Mad King's War what Ashnard was capable of when he was acting with checks and balances?

And if Ashnard got rid of said checks and balances, these “senators” have to either be useless puppet stooges, or people who haven't been senators for twenty-three goddamned years. Either way, how useful could they possibly be to granting Pelleas legitimacy?

Quick aside: something similar was mentioned in the last game, with underground noble houses secretly lending the Crimean resistance support from in hiding. Is that a thing that happened in real life? Did noble houses really just “go underground”, so to speak, hiding from the new regime and supporting the resistance from the shadows?

Pelleas then calls Micaiah “amazing” and praises her all-seeing powers for... doing some extremely basic inferences from what Pelleas pretty clearly spelled out for her, which is kind of ridiculous.

Ah yes, this is when the game reveals that Pelleas is a spirit charmer. And then when Micaiah asks what the mark is, Pelleas explains what it is before ridiculing himself for lecturing her on something she has to already know, since he things she is one herself. Yep, he saw, but misunderstood, her brand.

But this does confirm that you usually enter pacts with spirits personally. As Pelleas then explains, if you're a spirit charmer and don't know it, it's because the spirit bonded itself to you on its own, seeing vast potential in you as an infant.

So while Pelleas all but outright states that this was indeed not the case for him, this does confirm it is at least plausible that baby Soren's brand could have been passed off as the “Spirit's Protection” to anyone in Daein who saw it. Still though... I don't think we get any confirmation of anyone besides Almedha who this mark was intended to fool. If there were other people who who knew that Ashnard's son had a mark on his forehead like Pelleas apparently does (implied by that being where Soren's is and also the fact that it's exposed when he wipes his brow in this conversation), and if these other people were important to securing Pelleas's legitimacy... we never hear of them. Of course, if Almedha was really well-known (and also not known to be a dragon), it's conceivable that she could have eventually blown Izuka's story if she had been kept out of the loop and hadn't been convinced this was indeed her son, but...

...let's move on.

…

…

...Well.

This is infuriating.

Apparently, while beorc and laguz aren't capitalized, “Branded” is. No, fuck that, I'm not doing that. I'm never going to be able to remember that, so I'm just gonna keep doing it lower-case.

Curious. Pelleas initially uses the word “laguz”, and then later says “sub-human” in the next sentence. But isn't laguz described as a word that's almost unthinkable for anyone racist against the laguz to say? At bare minimum that seems to be the case in Daein. Merely saying the word as opposed to “sub-human” is treated multiple times in Path of Radiance like a huge deal for people who come from Daein. Shiharam is told he might be accused of being a traitor for even using the word “laguz” instead of “sub-human”. And yet here, Pelleas, who's willing to use the word “sub-human”, uses the word “laguz” too.

At any rate though, he says that he's been “terribly mistreated” by people who thought he was branded, which would imply that being branded is more well-known than being a spirit charmer. But then we have that old man that Soren mentioned raising him, who didn't even seem to entertain the idea that Soren was a branded. He saw that mark and just assumed he was a spirit charmer.

Anyway, we get a brave sword for our trouble. Insanely early, funny enough.

And it's B rank, which in a game where the top rank is SS, is hilariously low.

Now, fun little tip I came up with last time I played: If you use Mist, get her to B rank swords if you can. That way, in the final gauntlet, when everyone gets to equip their one weapon to be blessed with infinite durability and mantle-piercing, Mist, who has no business swordfighting in the endgame, can equip the brave sword, and then she can give it to someone else.

So yeah, I'll be saving this thing. Gotta make sure it doesn't break by the end of the game.

...Yep, looks like Radiant Dawn ditches the “be in the same chapter” system in favor of combining that with some proto-Awakening support system. Meaning I'm behind on getting Zihark and Nolan to that crucial double-earth support they're going to need for the best chances of surviving Part 3.

Well, nothing to do but make sure they can start next chapter.

Let's go.

So the plan seems to have been to use all of the player characters for Dawn-Brigade-style guerilla warfare to assault the keep itself while Tauroneo distracts the main force. I don't know enough about the makeup of this camp to say if this is a good or bad idea, so fuck it, let's just play the map.

And thankfully, the game lets me deploy everyone I'd actually want to use, leaving leaving behind nobody but Leonardo, Edward, Meg and Fiona. And Tauroneo, who as the story explains, is busy doing other things. So at least they explain it. I didn't remember that being the case, but it seems I was wrong.

Aran seems to have finally found enemies other than weighed-down pegasus knights that he can double: armor knights! After he promoted to halberdier!

I gripe, but Aran's defense is absolutely ridiculous now. He's taking basically no damage from these armor knights. Literally no damage from the one with the javelin.

And now we see Tormod, and I love how Tormod hasn't grown out of his old boyish face nearly to the same degree that Sothe has.

Not sure if I already said this, but I don't like the new version of “Come, Join Us!” in this game. The old one in PoR was much better. This one feels... like a clumsy attempt to make it more intense, but it's just overwhelmed and busy.

So yeah, we just got Tormod, Muarim and Vika. Three great characters... ruined by absolutely abysmal availability. They're tier 2, like Sothe, Zihark, and now Aran and Nolan, and you get them for the rest of Part 1.

And then they disappear for the rest of the game.

It's not until Part 4 that get them back, at the same level you left them, two chapters before endgame. After Ike and Sothe's story promotions to tier 3.

I'll use them when I need to, but I'm really hoping I don't have to make too much use of them, because I sure as hell ain't getting any return back on the investment.

Note to self: get celerity off of Tormod.

Anyway, so, we get a talk with Tormod, during which... the recruitment theme... plays again. Because it was playing prematurely last time. But anyway, Sothe and Tormod talk about the issue Sothe asked Tormod to look into. An issue he asked Tormod to look into so long ago, apparently, that Sothe's had time to have a growth spurt in the meantime and piss Tormod off with how tall he's gotten. Jeez, how long did this mission to figure out what's going on in Begnion take?

There are some enemies grouped by the back gate, and I'm using Muarim to approach them because Jill's bulk still isn't quite good enough for her to survive all four of them at once if they suddenly decide to rush in.

Good call on my part. They did in fact decide to all rush in immediately upon getting within all of their ranges.

...Nope, wait, they all still seem to be holding still except the actual armor knight guarding the door, who just bailed to attack Muarim. Wow. So he just left his post and let the doors swing open on their own.

Laguz don't suffer movement penalties indoors, and hey, also, bird laguz have canto now! Nice! Pity they're so heavily nerfed in other ways I don't quite feel like getting into yet.

These remaining guards are just refusing to move.

This is why I hate it when games add stationary groups of enemies with enough attack power to take out most of your units. Either you don't know they don't move, in which case it's absolutely terrifying to approach these groups, a terror that later is revealed to be you cowering at the shadow of a mouse...

...or you do know, in which case there's literally no strategy to taking them out at all.

That is why stationary enemies should be labeled, so that the fact that they don't move isn't some secret to exploit, but a known part of their AI you need to account for when making your strategies. Because when the game actually broadcasts that enemies won't move, they need to come up with better ideas than this to challenge you.

Yep, and of course they start moving the turn after one of them gets attacked. Thankfully by that point I had taken out enough of them that Jill's death was impossible.

Man, biorhythms can be a pain. It's utterly surreal to see Zihark having a 50 ish hit rate against an archer because some biorhythms synced up just wrong.

OH THANK GOODNESS.

Okay, so, I accidentally fucked up and put Zihark in death range if he ate another longbow attack and a mage went in. Not having a healer nearby except Micaiah (who would die if she used sacrifice and then got hit), I had no choice but to bait the longbowman with Micaiah and pray he'd take the bait.

It worked. And it also turned out to be totally pointless, because those mages don't seem to be moving for any reason. I suspected that might be the case when I learned they wouldn't go down the ledges to attack Aran earlier, but... I didn't want to bet anyone's life on that. At least not any more than I already had to.

Also, apparently the Daein prisoners kept here... are in soldier gear. You have generic villager portraits in this game, do you not? Why are these ex-soldiers in their armor!?

Good on this game for not having the B button do anything on its own, by the way. Given that it's nearly on the bottom of the controller, that prevented a great many accidental presses when laying the wiimote down somewhere.

Yet again we have a bunch of enemies with really high attack ranges and worrying attack power, kept in check only by their refusal to move for reasons I cannot see. Christ, these things shave years off my life when I play ironman.

I like how all of these old PoR characters have conversations with each other in this chapter. I can't tell whether or not Muarim's decision to call Sothe “Sir Sothe” is mocking him or genuinely misguidedly trying to be respectful. The “I suppose I have to respect your manly pride now” comment suggests the former, while the “I could never speak so familiarly to my little one's friend” comment suggests the latter.

...Ugh. This is a Japanese honorifics thing that translated horribly, I just know it.

...Man, Djur has a pretty badass battle quote:

“Errrrrrgh...! Blundering through like a bull in a china shop... Come closer, so I can shatter your ambition like glass! I will beat into your very bones just who rules this land!”

...Not gonna lie, right now, if I made a top ten list of lines I was looking forward to hearing voiced in a remake? Pretty sure that'd be on it.

I thought he'd be a pansy when he said at the start he'd elect to keep most of the elite guards with him, but now it's starting to feel he's a genuinely competent man who saw the possibility that this was a trick and kept the best men with him to fight them off just in case.

Anyway, prisoners are escaping, boss is just about dead, we're pretty set here. Just gotta finish up and then seize.

Yep, done.

Oh yes, this scene, where Izuka learns about Sothe's laguz friends, and decides that they absolutely have to let them fight, and plans to silence any racist backlash with “the proper punishment”. And then comes one of my favorite exchanges in Fire Emblem history:

Izuka: But laguz... they're powerful! (An expendable...) Just what we need. By all means, invite them to join!

Sothe: They're good friends. I'll sure they'll agree to help if I ask (you mumbling creep).

Okay, next scene and... I'm already confused.

Sothe asks Tormod how he got there... “so soon”. Implying the investigation was really fast. I guess I'm just gonna have to assume that Sothe and Tormod didn't meet in person when Sothe asked him to investigate how much Sanaki knows, because there's no way this mission actually took long enough for Sothe to grow “too tall” for Tormod's liking.

Also, Micaiah expresses annoyance when Tormod mentions that he's an old war friend of Sothe and brings up Ike, when, like... I wish they'd just come out and say how Micaiah actually feels about the Mad King's war. She said something to Fiona that indicated she didn't blame Lanvega for not helping Ashnard, since he was just protecting his countrymen, so I think we can assume she doesn't believe Ashnard was in the right... but like... what is she annoyed at Sothe about? For the mere fact that he's a walking reminder that Daein was in the wrong?

...Or is she just jealous of all the new friends Sothe made while she was away, given how she's in love with him? Is it that she isn't even sure herself why hearing him gush about Ike makes her so mad?

Also, I'm sorry, did the game just have Tormod say that Sanaki was already “investigating on her own”? How fucking hard can it be for the apostle to have some of her loyal soldiers just visit another country? The place is such a veritable shithole right now that it would be nigh impossible to hide how badly Numida is running things!

Of course, now Micaiah kind of... just bares her soul to Muarim, this total stranger to her, about how she's never seen Sothe this relaxed despite having “taken care of him for so long”, and Muarim just flat-out tells her that if she talks like that, she'll just be giving away that she's a branded. And then he just warns her that there are those among the laguz who call people like her the “parentless” and, like Stefan said last game, “deny [branded] any laguz heritage, honor, or dignity”.

...But he doesn't mention anything about being able to sense branded. Did I just... did my memory just make that up? I could've sworn somebody said that in-game before Vika's conversation where she gets the heebie-jeebies around Micaiah. And I'm almost positive that somebody said that eventually. Did... wow, if that's not true, then several of my complaints with branded lore... are gonna have to be revised.

...But the chapter's over. We got a cool 3008 bonus experience, got everyone out alive (despite several frustrations), and now everyone in our proper army is promoted except Micaiah, Jill, and I guess Ilyana. I think that's a good day.

So that's where I'll leave off until tomorrow!

Stay safe, everyone!

[Icelerate]

34 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

But back to the story, Izuka has apparently told Pelleas to stop coming to the strategy meetings, and now he's revealing his plan to poison a lake in order to kill the guards of a prison camp... a plan that everyone obviously thinks is completely ridiculous. ...Ugh. I get that this guy's evil, but he's just so hilariously easily shut down that he's less of an antagonistic force and more of just a strawman punching bag to make Micaiah look better. In other stories with characters like this, they eventually get into an infuriatingly undeserved position of power over the heroes to up the drama. Like, say, Dolores Umbridge. Here... well, like I already said: strawman punching bag. He storms out, and now we have to come up with a better plan, which we proceed to do... offscreen.

 

So does this make Micaiah a mary sue?

As for the plan being made offscreen, do you think this is lazy writing or smart writing? In this case, since the plan is actually shown to us, it builds suspense to keep it a secret from the audience. Furthermore, it's a good example of show don't tell. It's not like you need exposition to understand this particular plan. 

37 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Daein has a senate?

I'm sorry, are you trying to tell me that Daein is a constitutional monarchy?

Was the Mad King's War what Ashnard was capable of when he was acting with checks and balances?

And if Ashnard got rid of said checks and balances, these “senators” have to either be useless puppet stooges, or people who haven't been senators for twenty-three goddamned years. Either way, how useful could they possibly be to granting Pelleas legitimacy?

 

My interpretation of beorc politics is that Daein is a militaristic monarchy where high ranking military members have far more power than senators. This is the opposite of Begnion where respected military generals have little power compared to senators as you'll see in part 3. Crimea is a cross between Daein and Begnion. 

This is supported by the fact that in both games, senators and nobles are irrelevant except those in the military such as BK and Petrine in PoR and Micaiah/Tauroneo in RD. It's also why the population of Daein doesn't respect Pelleas compared to Micaiah and even Ashnard because those two are actual military leaders unlike Pelleas. This is in contrast to Crimea where regular citizens of Crimea seem to respect both Elincia and Ike nigh equally. 

43 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, like Jotari said... wow, it's kinda crazy that we literally have two battles left before a tiny barely-a-map and then the final battle of Part 1. This war... progresses extremely fast. Of course, we aren't even the ones responsible for dealing the finishing blow. Daein's freedom is assured before the final battle even happens, due to events done by characters not in our control.

...Pretty anticlimactic when I put it like that. But we'll see.

What is anticlimactic? 

A. Freedom being won before final chapter?

B. Not enough chapters before freedom?

C. All of the above. 

[Alastor15243]

31 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

So does this make Micaiah a mary sue?

As for the plan being made offscreen, do you think this is lazy writing or smart writing? In this case, since the plan is actually shown to us, it builds suspense to keep it a secret from the audience. Furthermore, it's a good example of show don't tell. It's not like you need exposition to understand this particular plan.

Yeah, the "unspoken plan guarantee" is a trope for a reason. If you explain the plan and it goes off without a hitch, that's boring. That was more of a (poorly-worded I suppose) expression of annoyance at the abrupt cut to the base menu. I remember these having more flow to them in PoR. And as for Micaiah being a Mary Sue... I would argue she definitely comes closest to it in terms of every main character so far, in that I can definitely see a lot of the tropes common in bad fan fiction that must have spurred that accusation to begin with.

31 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

My interpretation of beorc politics is that Daein is a militaristic monarchy where high ranking military members have far more power than senators. This is the opposite of Begnion where respected military generals have little power compared to senators as you'll see in part 3. Crimea is a cross between Daein and Begnion. 

This is supported by the fact that in both games, senators and nobles are irrelevant except those in the military such as BK and Petrine in PoR and Micaiah/Tauroneo in RD. It's also why the population of Daein doesn't respect Pelleas compared to Micaiah and even Ashnard because those two are actual military leaders unlike Pelleas. This is in contrast to Crimea where regular citizens of Crimea seem to respect both Elincia and Ike nigh equally. 

Oooh, a third interpretation of that discrepancy between Pelleas and Elincia! Certainly sounds like something that could be true, but it's definitely an interpretation, given that as far as I can tell, we don't actually see many details of what kinds of politicians specifically win Daein people's respect.

31 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

What is anticlimactic? 

A. Freedom being won before final chapter?

B. Not enough chapters before freedom?

C. All of the above. 

More the fact that it wasn't really even our doing that Daein won its independence. If I remember correctly, it's almost entirely Sanaki's doing, and we just stop Jarod's final suicidal blaze of glory before he can be executed as a scapegoat. The Daein Liberation army barely even gets its country-reclaiming momentum before it's settled through boring politics. We didn't even control the people who got Sanaki's attention, it all happened outside of our control, like we're just playing around at solving a conflict that would have been resolved eventually without almost anything that Micaiah does.

Edited August 5, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Icelerate]

5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, the "unspoken plan guarantee" is a trope for a reason. If you explain the plan and it goes off without a hitch, that's boring. That was more of a (poorly-worded I suppose) expression of annoyance at the abrupt cut to the base menu. I remember these having more flow to them in PoR. And as for Micaiah being a Mary Sue... I would argue she definitely comes closest to it in terms of every main character so far, in that I can definitely see a lot of the tropes common in bad fan fiction that must have spurred that accusation to begin with.

Oooh, a third interpretation of that discrepancy between Pelleas and Elincia! Certainly sounds like something that could be true, but it's definitely an interpretation, given that as far as I can tell, we don't actually see many details of what kinds of politicians specifically win Daein people's respect.

More the fact that it wasn't really even our doing that Daein won its independence. If I remember correctly, it's almost entirely Sanaki's doing, and we just stop Jarod's final suicidal blaze of glory before he can be executed as a scapegoat. The Daein Liberation army barely even gets its country-reclaiming momentum before it's settled through boring politics. We didn't even control the people who got Sanaki's attention, it all happened outside of our control, like we're just playing around at solving a conflict that would have been resolved eventually without almost anything that Micaiah does.

Wouldn't the accusation be fallacious? Just because a trope is used in bad fanfictions doesn't mean the trope is bad in general. Would you say Micaiah is the worst written lord as of your playthroughs or is being closest to a mary sue not necessarily the worst written? 

Nice to see you like my interpretation!

I actually think forcing the leadership to withdraw troops and end occupation through politics is actually very realistic and in line with real world politics. For example, the American army wasn't militarily forced to withdraw from either Vietnam or Afghanistan but through political considerations was forced to do so. Same as the Begnion occupation. 

I do think some of the battles that are glossed over should actually be playable and I'm sure you will strongly agree with that. 

The Daein liberation army simply has to create enough noise to force attention to the mistreatment of Daein, not necessarily defeat a far stronger force. 

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Now, fun little tip I came up with last time I played: If you use Mist, get her to B rank swords if you can. That way, in the final gauntlet, when everyone gets to equip their one weapon to be blessed with infinite durability and mantle-piercing, Mist, who has no business swordfighting in the endgame, can equip the brave sword, and then she can give it to someone else.

 

So am I the only one who grinds mist up to SS to give her Alondite then?

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Daein has a senate?

I'm sorry, are you trying to tell me that Daein is a constitutional monarchy?

Was the Mad King's War what Ashnard was capable of when he was acting with checks and balances?

And if Ashnard got rid of said checks and balances, these “senators” have to either be useless puppet stooges, or people who haven't been senators for twenty-three goddamned years. Either way, how useful could they possibly be to granting Pelleas legitimacy?

 

You assume the senate, regardless of how powerful they were, wasn't entirely behind Ashnard's actions.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, the "unspoken plan guarantee" is a trope for a reason. If you explain the plan and it goes off without a hitch, that's boring. That was more of a (poorly-worded I suppose) expression of annoyance at the abrupt cut to the base menu. I remember these having more flow to them in PoR. And as for Micaiah being a Mary Sue... I would argue she definitely comes closest to it in terms of every main character so far, in that I can definitely see a lot of the tropes common in bad fan fiction that must have spurred that accusation to begin with.

 

I feel that trope is a little less justified in video games, and especially strategy video games, where it's not guaranteed and you actively have to work to make it happen. Though if I remember correctly the plan here is more just have Tauroneo be undeployable and sneak in the back door. 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

More the fact that it wasn't really even our doing that Daein won its independence. If I remember correctly, it's almost entirely Sanaki's doing, and we just stop Jarod's final suicidal blaze of glory before he can be executed as a scapegoat. The Daein Liberation army barely even gets its country-reclaiming momentum before it's settled through boring politics. We didn't even control the people who got Sanaki's attention, it all happened outside of our control, like we're just playing around at solving a conflict that would have been resolved eventually without almost anything that Micaiah does.

I'm not sure Sanaki would have ever found out if not for all the fuss the liberation army were causing though.

 

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

I'm not sure Sanaki would have ever found out if not for all the fuss the liberation army were causing though.

 

Even so, to have the rug basically pulled out from under us and get informed that what we've already accomplished turned out to be all we needed to accomplish is pretty pretty disappointing. We never actually had a mission where victory actually was in the balance as far as the narrative stakes were concerned. Imagine if, in any other game, the player had been informed close to the final battle that their actions so far were already enough to save the day?

[Icelerate]

53 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Even so, to have the rug basically pulled out from under us and get informed that what we've already accomplished turned out to be all we needed to accomplish is pretty pretty disappointing. We never actually had a mission where victory actually was in the balance as far as the narrative stakes were concerned. Imagine if, in any other game, the player had been informed close to the final battle that their actions so far were already enough to save the day?

What do you think about the fact that despite having won their freedom, they actually have not? Ignoring the specifics of the blood pact for a second and focusing on the fact that Daein is still under Begnion control. 

I've heard people criticize part one for essentially not accomplishing anything. 

[Alastor15243]

7 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

What do you think about the fact that despite having won their freedom, they actually have not? Ignoring the specifics of the blood pact for a second and focusing on the fact that Daein is still under Begnion control. 

I've heard people criticize part one for essentially not accomplishing anything. 

I can't say anything about the blood pact yet, because I just know my opinions are gonna change when I actually see it, as so often happens in this marathon.

[Icelerate]

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I can't say anything about the blood pact yet, because I just know my opinions are gonna change when I actually see it, as so often happens in this marathon.

I meant the concept of Daein not actually being free ignoring the blood pact for a second. 

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Even so, to have the rug basically pulled out from under us and get informed that what we've already accomplished turned out to be all we needed to accomplish is pretty pretty disappointing. We never actually had a mission where victory actually was in the balance as far as the narrative stakes were concerned. Imagine if, in any other game, the player had been informed close to the final battle that their actions so far were already enough to save the day?

I don't think it's bad in concept. It just doesn't feel like the players are the ones that actually did it. I think you'd be more charitable if there was say a chapter where Begnion officals were visiting Daein and the goal of the chapter was to intercept them while Numuida tries to cover the chaos up. Then when it's made explicitly clear that the Daein army is causing a ruckus and even kidnapping the agents to inform them of the reasoning before letting them go. Then it's something the player actually did rather then, well boring realism. 

[lenticular]

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ah yes, this is when the game reveals that Pelleas is a spirit charmer. And then when Micaiah asks what the mark is, Pelleas explains what it is before ridiculing himself for lecturing her on something she has to already know, since he things she is one herself. Yep, he saw, but misunderstood, her brand.

But this does confirm that you usually enter pacts with spirits personally. As Pelleas then explains, if you're a spirit charmer and don't know it, it's because the spirit bonded itself to you on its own, seeing vast potential in you as an infant.

So while Pelleas all but outright states that this was indeed not the case for him, this does confirm it is at least plausible that baby Soren's brand could have been passed off as the “Spirit's Protection” to anyone in Daein who saw it. Still though... I don't think we get any confirmation of anyone besides Almedha who this mark was intended to fool. If there were other people who who knew that Ashnard's son had a mark on his forehead like Pelleas apparently does (implied by that being where Soren's is and also the fact that it's exposed when he wipes his brow in this conversation), and if these other people were important to securing Pelleas's legitimacy... we never hear of them. Of course, if Almedha was really well-known (and also not known to be a dragon), it's conceivable that she could have eventually blown Izuka's story if she had been kept out of the loop and hadn't been convinced this was indeed her son, but...

Is it ever explained why spirit charmers and branded end up with marks that are basically indistinguishable even to experts? Or is it left as something we're supposed to accept as being a coincidence that doesn't need any explanation? I can imagine a few plausible explanations (maybe spirits take exceptional interest in branded and it's that that causes the brand rather than the mixed heritage itself; or maybe the laguz races have some inate connection with spirits that beorc generally don't) but I don't recall anything like that actually being in the game. If it is supposed to be just a coincidence then it's a really weird one that two completely different things would both manifest physically in exactly the same way.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Even so, to have the rug basically pulled out from under us and get informed that what we've already accomplished turned out to be all we needed to accomplish is pretty pretty disappointing. We never actually had a mission where victory actually was in the balance as far as the narrative stakes were concerned. Imagine if, in any other game, the player had been informed close to the final battle that their actions so far were already enough to save the day?

(When is Serenes going to start letting me edits posts again! Grr)

This is something I actually have some mild issues with a lot of other games in the series. In that namely exactly that happens yet it's never acknowledged. In a typical Fire Emblem game the route to victory involves beating back the entire enemy army, subduing their entire nation and then assaulting the capital for the final battle. Maybe people can cite historical precedent here, but it seems rather ridiculous to me. By the time the capital is being assaulted, the war has already been won. There's actually not that much of a need. The enemy king is fighting a battle to the bitter end that they really don't have any reasonable chance of winning with how many military losses they've incurred to get to the point where the enemy is right on their doorstep ready to invade at their leisure, yet the game always styles it as if this is the all or nothing battle in which victory must be obtained when it's usually not. Sometimes there's some magical explanation, like I guess Medeus as an individual is just too powerful to be left alone and he's still regaining his strength, but usually it's just the enemy is far too obsessive to consider surrendering and more mundane but eminently safer siege tactics aren't considered an option. It's always storm the capital and you win! Hell none of the enemy rulers ever even try to flee and go into hiding to preserve their own life or even the military campaign, well with the exception of Idoun, ironically probably the antagonist with the lowest level of self interest.

[Alastor15243]

On 8/6/2020 at 1:52 AM, Jotari said:

(When is Serenes going to start letting me edits posts again! Grr)

This is something I actually have some mild issues with a lot of other games in the series. In that namely exactly that happens yet it's never acknowledged. In a typical Fire Emblem game the route to victory involves beating back the entire enemy army, subduing their entire nation and then assaulting the capital for the final battle. Maybe people can cite historical precedent here, but it seems rather ridiculous to me. By the time the capital is being assaulted, the war has already been won. There's actually not that much of a need. The enemy king is fighting a battle to the bitter end that they really don't have any reasonable chance of winning with how many military losses they've incurred to get to the point where the enemy is right on their doorstep ready to invade at their leisure, yet the game always styles it as if this is the all or nothing battle in which victory must be obtained when it's usually not. Sometimes there's some magical explanation, like I guess Medeus as an individual is just too powerful to be left alone and he's still regaining his strength, but usually it's just the enemy is far too obsessive to consider surrendering and more mundane but eminently safer siege tactics aren't considered an option. It's always storm the capital and you win! Hell none of the enemy rulers ever even try to flee and go into hiding to preserve their own life or even the military campaign, well with the exception of Idoun, ironically probably the antagonist with the lowest level of self interest.

Unless you aren't specifically talking about Final Bosses, this is almost entirely untrue. There seem to always be damned good reasons the final enemy castle needs to be stormed.

Near as I can tell:

1: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary.

2: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening god. Necessary.

3: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary.

4: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening avatar of a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary.

5: Side story about a smaller part of a much larger war that hadn't yet been won. Not necessary except to rescue the child hostages and bring Eyvel back, so pretty necessary to Leif.

6: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary.

7 Lyn Mode: Saving Lyn's grandfather before his brother can kill him. Necessary in the sense that that was the entire reason Lyn was fighting.

7: Hector/Eliwood Mode: Stopping an evil sorcerer from summoning dragons to take over the world. Necessary.

8: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening god. Necessary.

9: Finishing off the remnants of a mostly-conquered army's military to get back the dangerous, world-threatening medallion in the evil king's possession. Necessary.

10.1: Stopping the casualties of Jarod's suicidal blaze of glory. Not necessary, just heroic. Larger battle already won.

10.2: Fighting off a coup force that threatened to kill Elincia and take over the country. Necessary.

10.3: Does not conclude a story arc, not applicable.

10.4: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening god. Necessary.

13: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary.

14B: Killing the king of the invading nation so that the bulk of his troops threatening to conquer Hoshido surrender. Necessary, permitting the usual ridiculous messenger speed nonsense.

14C: Making all of the needless violence and suffering you've aided and abetted have even a semblance of a point by finally exposing the king as a literal monster to your siblings so he can finally be stopped. Necessary.

14R: Destroying the mad dragon god sending unlimited supplies of shadowy monster forces to undermine both kingdoms. Probably a good idea even though killing Garon would probably have solved the larger problem once the Nohr siblings learned the truth.

16: From what I've played? Granted. Neither of the final bosses I've seen are exactly threatening the world if they aren't finished off, though Edelgard probably has damned strong personal reasons for wanting her final boss to die.

 

Edited January 17, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Unless you aren't specifically talking about Final Bosses, this is almost entirely untrue. There seem to always be damned good reasons the final enemy castle needs to be stormed.

Near as I can tell:

1: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary.

2: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening god. Necessary.

3: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary.

4: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening avatar of a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary.

5: Side story about a smaller part of a much larger war that hadn't yet been won. Not necessary except to rescue the child hostages and bring Eyvel back, so pretty necessary to Leif.

6: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary.

7 Lyn Mode: Saving Lyn's grandfather before his brother can kill him. Necessary in the sense that that was the entire reason Lyn was fighting.

7: Hector/Eliwood Mode: Stopping an evil sorcerer from summoning dragons to take over the world. Necessary.

8: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening god. Necessary.

9: Finishing off the remnants of a mostly-conquered army's military to get back the dangerous, world-threatening medallion in the evil king's possession. Necessary.

10.1: Stopping the casualties of Jarod'a suicidal blaze of glory. Not necessary, just heroic. Larger battle already won.

10.2: Fighting off a coup force that threatened to kill Elincia and take over the country. Necessary.

10.3: Does not conclude a story arc, not applicable.

10.4: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening god. Necessary.

13: Killing a dangerous, world-threatening dragon. Necessary.

14B: Killing the king of the invading nation so that the bulk of his troops threatening to conquer Hoshido surrender. Necessary, permitting the usual ridiculous messenger speed nonsense.

14C: Making all of the needless violence and suffering you've aided and abetted have even a semblance of a point by finally exposing the king as a literal monster to your siblings so he can finally be stopped. Necessary.

14R: Destroying the mad dragon god sending unlimited supplies of shadowy monster forces to undermine both kingdoms. Probably a good idea even though killing Garon would probably have solved the larger problem once the Nohr siblings learned the truth.

16: From what I've played? Granted. Neither of the final bosses I've seen are exactly threatening the world if they aren't finished off, though Edelgard probably has damned strong personal reasons for wanting her final boss to die.

 

Yes, I'm not necessarily talking about final bosses. I thought that would have been clear with my reference to how Idoun escaped in Binding Blade. Hardin in Mystery would be the example more than Medeus himself (though at least there they critically need the Dark Sphere to reforge the Binding Shield, not that they stress that as much of a reason, they don't even know Medeus is coming back until after Hardin is dead, though obviously long term Gotoh really wants that shield back to normal). I'm not going to address every single game, so here's just some more loose thoughts,

In Thracia Veld is ridiculously confident he can handle Leif without effort despite the fact that Leif has already seized most of his castle and Veld is stuck in the bloody basement. If there's anyone who should have fled it's him, and he absolutely has the capacity to do so considering he's having a chill talk with Manfroy just before the chapter starts. They both treat it as a no biggie then they've just lost two entire countries to these rebels.

Birthright has the opposite problem where it doesn't feel like you've actually invaded the country at all, instead it feels like a walk in assassination with an army. Which would solve it decently enough if you have a pro Hoshido heir on hand (which they kind of manage to get on route), but it's paced really weirdly and not framed as an assassination at all.

Path of Radiance manages to straddle both lines in a way. It's quite understandable that Crimeia really wants to take back their own capital, yet this is also the only game where the characters know increasing the violence is a really bad idea as it could destroy the world. Though on the other other hand Ashnard's personality itself is well known and established as the guy who's going to cause chaos for chaos's sake, so if they didn't bring the fight to him he probably would have pulled a Jarod.

You partitioned Radiant Dawn up but didn't really divide Awakening. The Gangrel arc has it's conclusion as a pitched battle which is pretty cool, but Whalhart goes full on seize the capital even though you've some how already managed to dismantle is ONE MILLION strong army. And of course Grima is a big scary world destroying dragon.

[Alastor15243]

17 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Yes, I'm not necessarily talking about final bosses. I thought that would have been clear with my reference to how Idoun escaped in Binding Blade. Hardin in Mystery would be the example more than Medeus himself (though at least there they critically need the Dark Sphere to reforge the Binding Shield, not that they stress that as much of a reason, they don't even know Medeus is coming back until after Hardin is dead, though obviously long term Gotoh really wants that shield back to normal). I'm not going to address every single game, so here's just some more loose thoughts,

In Thracia Veld is ridiculously confident he can handle Leif without effort despite the fact that Leif has already seized most of his castle and Veld is stuck in the bloody basement. If there's anyone who should have fled it's him, and he absolutely has the capacity to do so considering he's having a chill talk with Manfroy just before the chapter starts. They both treat it as a no biggie then they've just lost two entire countries to these rebels.

Birthright has the opposite problem where it doesn't feel like you've actually invaded the country at all, instead it feels like a walk in assassination with an army. Which would solve it decently enough if you have a pro Hoshido heir on hand (which they kind of manage to get on route), but it's paced really weirdly and not framed as an assassination at all.

Path of Radiance manages to straddle both lines in a way. It's quite understandable that Crimeia really wants to take back their own capital, yet this is also the only game where the characters know increasing the violence is a really bad idea as it could destroy the world. Though on the other other hand Ashnard's personality itself is well known and established as the guy who's going to cause chaos for chaos's sake, so if they didn't bring the fight to him he probably would have pulled a Jarod.

You partitioned Radiant Dawn up but didn't really divide Awakening. The Gangrel arc has it's conclusion as a pitched battle which is pretty cool, but Whalhart goes full on seize the capital even though you've some how already managed to dismantle is ONE MILLION strong army. And of course Grima is a big scary world destroying dragon.

Good point about Awakening and Thracia. Funny enough, this whole "you've already won, the rest is a formality" thing is actually an annoyance I have with a lot of Fire Emblem gameplaywise. I think that void curse reinforcements should be much more of a standard feature in the games, so that the pressure never dies off to the point where the remaining enemies waiting for you to approach aren't a threat.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

19 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Errrrrrgh...! Blundering through like a bull in a china shop... Come closer, so I can shatter your ambition like glass! I will beat into your very bones just who rules this land!”

...Not gonna lie, right now, if I made a top ten list of lines I was looking forward to hearing voiced in a remake? Pretty sure that'd be on it.

My favorite is from the boss of I-2:

Spoiler

Intruders, you say?! What with a full battalion stationed here? The gall! And the intrigue! Now, listen up, my men, catch ’em midstream and filet ’em like fish!

 

19 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

You can't sell master seals in this game. Pity. Was that the case in the Japanese version too? I seem to remember hearing that you needed these items to promote in the Japanese version of this game.

I believe you needed Master Crowns to reach tier 3 in the Japanese version. But tier 2 was accessible through leveling, like in PoR and international RD. Incidentally, you can find a lot more Master Crowns in the Japanese version.

19 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Now, fun little tip I came up with last time I played: If you use Mist, get her to B rank swords if you can. That way, in the final gauntlet, when everyone gets to equip their one weapon to be blessed with infinite durability and mantle-piercing, Mist, who has no business swordfighting in the endgame, can equip the brave sword, and then she can give it to someone else.

Me, an intellectual: Get Mist to SS swords so she can swing that fucking Alondite around. Take that, Zelgius, it's in your master's daughter's hands now!

19 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also, apparently the Daein prisoners kept here... are in soldier gear. You have generic villager portraits in this game, do you not? Why are these ex-soldiers in their armor!?

At least it's better than in Gaiden/Echoes.

Desaix: "Hwahaha, I have you now, Mathilda! Lock her up! But let her keep her armor. And lance. And horse. She deserves a sporting chance, after all!"

19 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

That is why stationary enemies should be labeled, so that the fact that they don't move isn't some secret to exploit, but a known part of their AI you need to account for when making your strategies. Because when the game actually broadcasts that enemies won't move, they need to come up with better ideas than this to challenge you.

Agreed. One of the good gameplay reforms of the 3DS games was denoting stationary enemies (typically bosses). They should keep that up going forward (I forget whether 3 Houses followed this, or not).