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


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29 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

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).

They do something even worse than getting rid of 0-mov flagging. They keep the "0 mov" thing... but make it so that on occasion, event flags can give them their movement back on enemy phase. So it's basically exactly like the pre-DS games in terms of how much you can trust it, except now the game's practically lying to you.

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Radiant Dawn Day 9: Chapter 1-8

Okay, so, it looks like... four or so battles have happened offscreen. We've won on-screenbattles in two key areas, and then the narration just mentions the Liberation Army's “victories in Talrega and other key locations”, and shows a total of six blue dots on the map.

...No, make that eight blue dots.

...No, make that ten.

We've done four times the country reclaiming offscreen than we've done onscreen.

Like, I get that these offscreen battles were basically doing the same thing storywise over and over, but... this kind of offscreen battle-skipping is almost unheard of in the series. It just feels so outrageously weird.

Also, enough time apparently seems to have passed that it's been deemed an appropriate time to reclaim Talrega, as the narrator mentioned.

Pity we couldn't have done that ourselves.

I mean, gee, wouldn't that have been interesting to see firsthand? Having Jill, a traitor to her country due to a conflict of conscience upon being exposed to the evils of racism in the last war, help reclaim her hometown from the horrors she was morally forced to doom it to? Jill had one of the biggest non-mandatory story arcs in the entire game last time! It would've been great to have some closure for it!

Hell, that could've been one of these chapters! There was no reason for Micaiah to have to say Talrega was “no good” during that initial scene. At least not Talrega specifically. A simple change of season or something during the writing process would have allowed us to go there last map, regardless of what PoR may have established as canon about Talrega's climate, and have some other place be the one that Micaiah rejected to BTFO Izuka earlier.

...Anyway...

So, looks like Numida is hoping that Lekain will be able to sweep the inspection team's findings under the rug. That... either Numida is being naive, or Sanaki isn't sending an inspection team that was very loyal to her.

...No, it seems that that's not the kind of sweeping under the rug they meant, since Jarod says that “If the inspection team and the rebel army ever cross paths...even the senate won't be able to hide the truth”. So what is Lekain supposed to be able to do? Help mislead the honest inspection team about what's going on, rather than bribing them to keep quiet? But why does Numida need Lekain to do that?

So, Micaiah is in a tent, using Sacrifice to heal the wounds of Daein soldiers, and like... you have healers, don't you? Best case scenario you could heal like one significantly-wounded soldier before you had to stop and be healed yourself by an actual proper healer. Unless they're just drastically over-selling how good the healing power is in cutscenes, and if so... I'm reminded of the times Fates constantly had Azura doing ridiculously heavy-duty fighting despite the fact that she's lucky to survive even a single round of combat outside of guard stance when you actually use her in-game.

Of course, the real point of this scene is to further solidify Micaiah's status as a messiah figure to the people due to her mysterious powers that they're all convinced are of divine origin. And I have to say, all execution questions aside, this is an extremely interesting concept. The idea of a character who is obsessively and unwillingly worshipped as a divine being, when in reality they're something that the people would be far more likely to burn at the stake if the people ever found out the truth... that is a fascinating, and above all else terrifying, premise. Micaiah basically has to run with her status as a messiah and later almost manipulate people like a fucking cult leader in order to not only save the country she loves, but also to keep the people from finding out what she really is and turning on her. But right now, from what I've seen so far... they aren't really leaning into this as much as they really should be to make it interesting. I'll have to see what they do in Part 3.

But anyway, then the trap Numida set is revealed, where the heroes are informed of the mass prisoner execution in the swamp in order to hide the bodies there and pretend there never were any labor camps.

Micaiah decides she needs to go, even though Izuka actually manages to finally have a good point for once and point out that this could obviously be a trap (since his network hasn't actually heard of any such plot, and also apparently neither has Micaiah's magical seer powers now that I think of it). So Micaiah decides to go on her own, with just her own personal forces (which apparently includes Zihark, even if it doesen't include Tauroneo or Jill), as a compromise. Also, Izuka expresses concerns to Pelleas that Micaiah's starting to run the army, which... I have to assume he's concerned about the authority of his puppet king to be being undermined. Either that or he's being hypocritical and hates how she's the one undermining the prince's authority instead of him.

Sorry if my playlogs recently seem... anemic, compared to the usual. I'm staying at a different house than usual, with less comfortable sleeping conditions due to covid safety measures, and haven't been managing to get all that much sleep. I feel a little out of it, honestly, but hopefully I'm still entertaining. I should be back to sorts by Monday.

Anyway, on to the base prep. Let's start with the info conversations.

We get a scene with Sothe and Micaiah talking about Micaiah's fears about how people will react if they find out she's branded. I wish she went into a bit more detail about her situation here, and how stressful it has to be to pretend to be some kind of messiah she doesn't want to be, simply because the alternative is worse. But I do like how we get a talk about how much she loves Daein's nationalist pride and its people's willingness to help complete strangers simply for being from the same homeland, and how the thought of losing the love of her fellow countrymen by being outed as a branded scares her.

Oh, yeah, here's another of my favorite lines from this game:

Micaiah: I suppose this isn't the time to worry about such things. If my power is needed to liberate Daein, I will stand my ground and fight.

Sothe: Well not to spoil your resolve... But if things get to hot, I'm just going to grab you and run.

It's just got this mix of sweetness, rudeness and humor that I just love.

Anyway, we get another talk, one with Tauroneo, and... he gives us a restore staff. That's going on Laura, because Micaiah's got that shit built into Sacrifice (it is so weird that that word is capitalized).

And then the talk with Vika, and... yeah, she has this pretty extreme reflexive reaction to Micaiah. I could have sworn there was a part of this story that said this more explicitly, though, that laguz can sense branded. But it's weird that she's literally the only laguz in the story to have this reaction. No other laguz who spends any time around any branded at all, regardless of their knowledge of what branded are, gets that freaky feeling around her. Or at the very least, none of them show it.

...But then Vika says this line that gives me an entirely different theory of exactly what's going on with Vika here.

Oh, but please don't be sad! It's not you. It's me. I get...confused...sometimes. I really admire you, and then I get a bizarre feeling, and...

...Well, she wouldn't be the only lesbian in this game, that's for sure.

Anway, Vika says she hates that she feels like she has to avoid Micaiah “for some inexplicable reason”, so she...

...Nope, scratch the lesbian hypothesis. Now she's outright saying that the weird feeling she's getting is fear. ...Though her exact phrasing has a pause before she says it, like she's trying to find the right word, but... anyway, it seems like she feels guilty for treating Micaiah like she herself hates to be treated when she doesn't even get why she feels this way, so she wants to be friends.

So we get an Ashera icon from her, which is still probably the most useless of stat boosters. At least with secret books they can get you closer to capping skill to BEXP up more important stats, but here... luck doesn't have tier-based caps, so that ain't happening until the absolute endgame, if even then. I think I'll just sell it.

Jill isn't going to be available again until the final map of Part 1, so I wanna make sure she's promoted by then. So I use some of my bonus experience to get her from tier 1 level 19 to tier 2 level 1.

Also, Nolan and Zihark can finally reach C support! Yay double earth! Aran and Jill haven't quite made it to that double thunder support though.

OOH! The shops have blades, greatlances and poleaxes now! Sweet! I finally get to... to...

...And the balance for these things is completely stonk bonkers.

Iron blade versus steel sword: +1 might, -15 hit, +2 weight.

Iron greatlance versus steel lance: +1 might, -5 hit, +1 weight, -320 gold.

Iron poleaxe versus steel axe: +1 might, -10 hit, +1 weight, -240 gold.

...Does anyone else notice blades getting completely fucked over here for some reason?

Hell, that's just when you compare them to their previous iterations in their own fields!

Iron greatlances are objectively better than iron blades. One more might, five more hit for some fucking reason, just one more weight, and 160 gold cheaper.

It feels like they got something backwards here. With every other lance counterpart to every other sword, the lances have 5 less hit than swords. Which is still a pathetic advantage, but at least it was an advantage.

And holy shit, how did I not notice how fucked the stats are for the 1-2 range weapons!?

Here I thought sword users were finally being treated with dignity here, oh fucking no! This is even worse from a balancing perspective than the tome weights in Genealogy!

Wind edges have 6 might, 60 hit, and 10 weight, and they cost 700 gold.

Javelins have 7 might, 65 hit, 11 weight, and cost 600 gold.

Hand axes have 9 might, 70 hit, 12 weight, and cost 625 gold.

What the fuck is this!? Hand axes are the strongest and most accurate ones, and wind edges are the weakest, least accurate, and most expensive!?

Who came up with these numbers!?

...Speaking of expensive, the fortune skill apparently can be sold for 3000 gold, which is... kinda ridiculous. That's three times more than either savior or beastfoe!

And speaking of skills, I messed around with some. I gave Zihark paragon and Nolan resolve, and took celerity off of Tormod and gave it to Micaiah for now. Seems like a unit I'll want to be able to move out of the way quickly when needed.

Anyway...

Let's be off, then.

So, as is revealed now, there actually is something of a prisoner execution going on. I have to assume the falseness of the rumor is simply the scale of it. So, they spring the reinforcements and plan to kill Micaiah, when...

...Micaiah reveals her trump card. Because she's brought some friends of her own. Not just Tormod's group, but also...

Rafiel, and fucking Nailah.

I like how they put Volug and Nailah in perfect formation to be refreshed by Rafiel so that he can show off his powers too in this cutscene.

...Okay, so weirdly, the soldiers of Begnion instantly recognize these wolves as “sub-humans”, and not literal attack wolves like was assumed when it was just Volug. How much does Tellius know about the wolf laguz if “they're laguz” is the most plausible explanation to them?

Also, it's been, like, months, right? Did Nailah already go off to visit Crimea? If not, why has she hung around for so long? Has she been traveling with us and just not helping before now?

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Chapter 1-8 Continued

...But yeah, most of this map is pre-deployed, with our laguz allies having their pre-determined positions from the cutscenes, and Jill, Tauroneo, and infuriatingly Fiona (just to cement her impossibility to train) are all unavailable due to being part of Daein's official army that Micaiah isn't bringing. I have enough deployment space to bring everyone else that I want to, at least. Not much to do here then, but deploy.

There are some villagers stuck in the swamp that we need to save at least one of, and will get more bonus experience if we save more.

But also, by the way, just to reiterate, fucking Nailah. We get to use the fucking wolf queen herself. The laguz royals in this game are even more disgusting than they were in the previous game, except now you get to use them for more than one map (or on hard mode and up's case, basically just one enemy). She's damned near at max level and has endgame stats. When transformed (which she can be all the time since she's a royal), she has 34 strength, 46 skill, 38 speed, 32 defense, and 26 res. She is absolutely insane, and that goes quintuple for the stage of the game we're in. But where she's currently positioned, she's mostly just a “kill one enemy per player phase” button, because there's no way any enemies are going to target her if Volug or Rafiel are nearby.

I used Vika to bait in the southeastern wyvern before he could start trashing the prisoners. Tormod should be able to finish him off next turn. Vika's my only flier thanks to Jill being unavailable, and it looks like being attacked while untransformed isn't helping nearly as much as I hoped it would to boost her and Muarim's transformation gauges. I could've sworn that boosted your gauge a lot.

I just triggered what passes for a “support conversation” in this game. It's basically just... you know those random conversations that characters will have during event tiles and the like in Awakening and Fates? Those canned call-and-response pairs where they each have a line for when they're initiating and responding to the two-line conversation, and it's just a generic thing that doesn't change no matter who they're talking to most of the time?

It's literally just that, except even worse, because there's only three two-line conversations to be had here. One for each tier of support, which can each be summed up as follows:

C conversation: Yo, what's up? (Cue one sentence smalltalk)

B conversation: Yo, let's team up together this battle!

A conversation: Yo, don't you go dying on me, okay? You've become important to me!

...Of course, since the upside of this is that you can pair basically anyone with anyone (hence the fun shit you can do with double earth supports and the like), they did actually... account... for some of the insanely weird pairings you could do, by sheer necessity.

I moved Vika northeast after the wyvern rider fell to Tormod's magic, so she can run a little interference to protect the three villagers there. Vika still isn't close to being able to transform and fight this swamp-wading bandit off, but since he can only move one tile per turn through the swamp, she can still do some stuff to indefinitely impede their movement, so that's nice. Move her right, and she'll always be able to keep him from getting close enough to attack. As long as she tanks the blows herself, which thanks to her healing supplies, she can. I wonder what this is like on Hard Mode though. Of course on Hard Mode I'd have probably bought that olivi grass Aimee got her hands on.

Amusingly, Muarim's so tough that he can take on four bandits at once even when untransformed and still be able to mostly sustain himself with vulneraries. Of course, it probably helps that these guys have relatively weak venin axes.

Weirdly, now Muarim's transformation gauge is skyrocketing. Apparently it only increases if the laguz can't counterattack. And now that they can defend against melee attacks with punches and kicks, that exclusively means getting attacked from range. Oh well. Lesson learned, and now Muarim can transform.

Apparently venin axes don't say “no damage” when they do no damage, probably because they still apply a poison effect.

The boss has a rather uncomfortable above-zero crit rate (and also moved on his own, which took me off guard), so I'll have Vika take the kill. Because if the boss crits Vika, well... gameplaywise, who the fuck cares?

He doesn't though, and now the boss is down.

...Okay, yeah, now the whole “Micaiah is the messiah” aspect is reaching fever pitch, with everyone dubbing her the Priestess of Dawn, but... honestly, I don't think this is a problem with Micaiah. I think it's just a problem of the rushed pacing. If this had been a slow development over the course of the game, and we had more time to dwell on how she feels about it, I think this would be fine. But the rushed pace... does make it feel kind of ridiculous and unwarranted.

But now, we get to the scene where Muarim's been drugged with the feral drug, and nearly succumbs before Rafiel saves him.

Speaking of which, it sounds like one of the lyrics to the heron galdr is “Sanaki”. Does “Sanaki” mean something in Heron language?

HAHAHAHAHA!

I paused to write stuff down after the song started, so when I finally pressed A again, it resulted in this really long awkward silence as Muarim's feral “aura” dissipated in complete silence as opposed to with Rafiel's singing behind it.

I like how Micaiah apparently reacts oddly to the Galdr of Rebirth. But I can't tell whether it's resonating with her heron blood... or rejecting her apparent affinity for chaos and her pseudo-possession by Yune via that bird.

Funny how Sothe can call the previous war the “Mad King's War” so casually in a Daein war conference. Is that the official name that even Daein accepts?

Anyway, Sothe was describing the horrifying experiments Ike's army discovered at that tower in Chapter 28 of PoR, and then Izuka just outright admits to being the one responsible for both inventing feral ones and drugging Muarim.

They all just completely go off on the fucker, but Pelleas begs them to have mercy and apologizes on Izuka's behalf... completely undermined by Izuka's complete lack of remorse, causing Tormod to bail.

Then we get a scene at the Begnion capital where Lekain and Numida have apparently decided on a last-minute Plan B. I'm not concerned about how they got here so soon after Plan A failed. Rewarp staves are a thing, as Lekain will demonstrate, so I'm just going to assume that. So they're basically throwing Jarod under the bus and claiming that the cruelties of the Daein occupation were done without Numida's knowledge or permission. The plan is to have Lekain lead the inspection team and slaughter the entire occupation army in the name of “exacting harsh justice” before they can defend themselves to Sanaki, but Sanaki is having none of it and demands to hear their side first, so she appoints Sephiran to lead the team.

Odd. I felt like I was doing this map fairly quickly, but I apparently could have routed this map much more quickly if the bonus exp I got from the turn bonus is any indication. Oh well, I still got a decent amount, and I'm not even in need of any at the moment.

But with that... we're done for the day.

Tomorrow I'll probably be doing two chapters given how short one of them is... assuming I make it through Chapter 1-9 without incident. Which probably won't happen, because it's one of the most ironman-obnoxious chapters in Fire Emblem history.

Stay safe, everyone.

Edited by Alastor15243
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8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I used Vika to bait in the southeastern wyvern before he could start trashing the prisoners. Tormod should be able to finish him off next turn. Vika's my only flier thanks to Jill being unavailable, and it looks like being attacked while untransformed isn't helping nearly as much as I hoped it would to boost her and Muarim's transformation gauges. I could've sworn that boosted your gauge a lot.

It only works if either you couldn't counter, or if you did no damage or missed. Of course, after a certain point, exposing laguz untransformed is pretty much a death sentence, because their untransformed stats are PATHETIC.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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23 hours ago, Jotari said:

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

 

 

8 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

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!

Ah, I see I am not alone then.

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13 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

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

Except there's that once scene with Ashunera and Lehran at the end, that is assumed to take place long after the events of this game.

On 8/5/2020 at 10:02 PM, 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!?

Maybe they are soldiers who been hiding from the occupation force for three years and have only recently been found and captured. That would explain why they are soldiers and not generic villagers.

Edited by NinjaMonkey
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24 minutes ago, NinjaMonkey said:

Except there's that once scene with Ashunera and Lehran at the end, that is assumed to take place long after the events of this game.

 

I don't know what you really mean here. Ashura was a world threatening god that needed to be taken down. And in essence, as an individual, you can even say she was killed. That she survived as Ashunera doesn't really have anything to do with the initial point.

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3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I don't know what you really mean here. Ashura was a world threatening god that needed to be taken down. And in essence, as an individual, you can even say she was killed. That she survived as Ashunera doesn't really have anything to do with the initial point.

My point is that she's not dead, like the initial point claimed.

Edited by NinjaMonkey
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1 minute ago, NinjaMonkey said:

My point is that she's not dead, like the initial point claimed.

In fairness I did also say that Idunn was killed, I was kinda just generalizing for humor due to how many times that general phrase applies.

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6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

OOH! The shops have blades, greatlances and poleaxes now! Sweet! I finally get to... to...

...And the balance for these things is completely stonk bonkers

Wait until you get the Silver Greatlance. It has 50 hit, while both the Silver Blade and Poleax have 60 hit. I never notice enemies with Iron "Heavies" - they seem to be too similar to Steel weapons. The Steel Heavies are the only ones I get much use of; honestly I wish more games would feature the "stronger and cheaper than silver, but less accurate and heavier" weapons.

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Like, I get that these offscreen battles were basically doing the same thing storywise over and over, but... this kind of offscreen battle-skipping is almost unheard of in the series. It just feels so outrageously weird.

The one other scenario that comes to mind is between chapters 9 and 10 of Genealogy. After conquering Thracia, they fight to take Peruluke Castle in Miletos... offscreen. It stands out in a game where you normally start in the last castle you conquered - the one prior exception is Chapter 4, but that's explained by you fleeing Orgahill to a friendly Silesse.

I can see them not wanting to stuff any more into Part I - it's a long game as-is. At the same time, I wouldn't object to adding another Dawn Brigade chapter. I like the Talrega proposal - could even reuse part of the Shiharam map from PoR, and give Jill an interesting base conversation.

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh, but please don't be sad! It's not you. It's me. I get...confused...sometimes. I really admire you, and then I get a bizarre feeling, and...

...Well, she wouldn't be the only lesbian in this game, that's for sure.

Hell, I'd ship it. Tellius has great character designs, but even among them, Micaiah and Vika are some of my favorite designs in the game. Plus, we know Micaiah has a dark affinity, and a close relationship with a bird... actually, scratch that. Yune would get jealous and peck Vika's eyes out.

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

.Of course, since the upside of this is that you can pair basically anyone with anyone (hence the fun shit you can do with double earth supports and the like), they did actually... account... for some of the insanely weird pairings you could do, by sheer necessity.

I remember supporting Rhys with Zihark in part 4, and Zihark told Rhys to "keep his blade sharp". Stay classy, RD supports.

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2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

In fairness I did also say that Idunn was killed, I was kinda just generalizing for humor due to how many times that general phrase applies.

 

2 hours ago, NinjaMonkey said:

My point is that she's not dead, like the initial point claimed.

Hey even then the post is just saying what they need to do, not what actually happens. And I maintain Ashera as an individual entity did die by being reverted back to Ashunera. But all of that is completely unhelpful nitpicking of a subject we're all, presumably, rather educated on.

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2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

 

I remember supporting Rhys with Zihark in part 4, and Zihark told Rhys to "keep his blade sharp". Stay classy, RD supports.

Supporting Volug with anyone except Leanne is fantastic. Apparently everyone speaks the old tongue.

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8 hours ago, Jotari said:

Ah, I see I am not alone then.

I also used an Alondite Mist in my last Radiant Dawn run. It was entertaining to have her using the companion blade of her brothers, but gameplay-wise I don't think it was worth the effort (then again it was certainly not the worst decision I made on that run...)

 

15 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

And holy shit, how did I not notice how fucked the stats are for the 1-2 range weapons!?

Here I thought sword users were finally being treated with dignity here, oh fucking no! This is even worse from a balancing perspective than the tome weights in Genealogy!

Wind edges have 6 might, 60 hit, and 10 weight, and they cost 700 gold.

Javelins have 7 might, 65 hit, 11 weight, and cost 600 gold.

Hand axes have 9 might, 70 hit, 12 weight, and cost 625 gold.

What the fuck is this!? Hand axes are the strongest and most accurate ones, and wind edges are the weakest, least accurate, and most expensive!?

Who came up with these numbers!?

The forging availability makes this even worse, as you have the option to forge Javelins and Handaxes in part 3 and beyond, but you never have the option to forge Wind Edges. Swords are better off than in the GBA days, but they are still the worst weapon type of the 3 in the physical triangle.

 

14 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Okay, yeah, now the whole “Micaiah is the messiah” aspect is reaching fever pitch, with everyone dubbing her the Priestess of Dawn, but... honestly, I don't think this is a problem with Micaiah. I think it's just a problem of the rushed pacing. If this had been a slow development over the course of the game, and we had more time to dwell on how she feels about it, I think this would be fine. But the rushed pace... does make it feel kind of ridiculous and unwarranted.

I really feel this is one of the big missed opportunities of Radiant Dawn. Its an interesting idea to explore, and they tried so hard to give this the buildup it needed, with multiple scene interspersed throughout part 1, but there are simply not enough chapters in part 1 to pull it off. They really need 2 more scenes minimum to make this work, although more would be better. I am thinking a scene where we start to see this fanaticism grow (with a few whispers of the Priestess of Dawn) in the ranks, and have the chance to see how the characters feel about it, and what they want to do about it while it is still small, second a scene where we see what effect their actions have, and how their opinions are changing before it has cascaded out of control like the scene this chapter shows.

 

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Are we talking making Radiant Dawn longer? Because like...

All for that. Sign me up.

I do think it's pretty fair to say that a lot of RD's problems come from the team being a bit too ambitious in terms of what they wanted to do with it. However I admire them for the effort and feel like they managed to pull the majority of their efforts off very well. Of course I do know several people who already think RD is pushing on being too long so I can only imagine making the game longer would further divide people.

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1 hour ago, Silver-Haired Maiden said:

Are we talking making Radiant Dawn longer? Because like...

All for that. Sign me up.

I do think it's pretty fair to say that a lot of RD's problems come from the team being a bit too ambitious in terms of what they wanted to do with it. However I admire them for the effort and feel like they managed to pull the majority of their efforts off very well. Of course I do know several people who already think RD is pushing on being too long so I can only imagine making the game longer would further divide people.

Oh heavens no. Radiant Dawn is already quite the lengthy play. The solution is to make Tellius a trilogy.

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8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

How would you divide it up then?

If it were me, I'd make the liberation of Daein the whole second game, to remove the overwhelming focus on Ike that the duology has in it's current iteration. Make parts 2-4 of RD the third game, with time to expand the Crimean civil war due to axing Part 1 from the third game, and split part 3 more evenly between the GMs and Daein. Keep the two sides of the same conflict and the finale for ambitious scale, but give Micaiah and the Daein liberation the time they need to match the Mad King's War.

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Radiant Dawn Day 10: Chapter 1-9

Interesting, it looks like there's this brown smoke coming from the edges of the world map on Tellius. I hadn't noticed that before. And it's not a general narration screen border effect either, it's just when you reach the limits of what the people of Tellius deem the “world map”.

Yeah, yet again the game has the narration screen gloss over numerous battles that sound like they could have been very interesting fights. How did I not notice not even two years ago how weird all of this is? I can only assume playing the whole series in a row has given me some kind of new perspective.

Hopefully I haven't completely ruined myself when it comes to enjoying new Fire Emblem stories.

Anyway, yeah, after that narration hyping us up for a big battle to storm the capital, we're informed that we've already won, and that the occupation army has been ordered not to fight anymore. ...Weird, to say the least, and fairly disappointing, honestly.

But I do like this moment where Tormod doesn't want to spread the good news with Sothe and Micaiah because he doesn't want to be around Izuka.

Anyway, Jarod's informed that Numida threw him under the bus, and like... okay, how stupid does Numida think Sanaki is? How the fuck are you even doing your job as a ruler of a country if you don't know what your military is doing to its people? Even if Numida were telling the truth, he should probably be thrown in jail for gross negligence anyway. But Jarod isn't even going to try to defend himself. He's confident he'd be “silenced” in some way, and... okay, I wish they actually went into more detail about this, because the way I see it, Sanaki seems pretty damned determined to hear the military's side of the story, and with so much unanimous testimony... it seems like it would be impossible for Numida to maintain his innocence, and yet Jarod seems absolutely convinced he's in a hopeless situation where he doesn't even have the chance to bring Numida down with him.

Assuming he is in a hopeless situation, however, his actions as a result do make him a rather interesting villain, I have to say. Especially with the speech I know he gives in the next chapter.

But for now, he's planning on making a last-ditch effort to assassinate Micaiah, because he... blames her for what's happening to him, inexplicably. She didn't have anything to do with the inspection team. Sure, her army kinda did, but that's for reasons he can't possibly know about.

...I guess it's thanks to her that the rebellion wasn't crushed and this couldn't have just been swept under the rug, so... alright, fair enough, in his warped view of the world.

So we get an info conversation further highlighting Pelleas's crippling lack of self-esteem and unwillingness to assert authority in any way, where he can't bring himself to talk to Micaiah when she's surrounded by soldiers he is in every position to be able to send off so he can talk to his vice general.

Nooooooot a very good quality for a ruler, gotta say. Anyway, he gives us a bunch of gold, saying it's our war funds, but since the war's nearly over, basically we should just divide it up amongst the troops. Sothe says (after Pelleas leaves abruptly) that Pelleas really should be the one to give out the gold, and I really see what Sothe means. It's almost like Pelleas doesn't even want to try to take the spotlight and get credit even for the good he does do.

Next we get one with Jill, and...

...Huh. I can't remember what the ending of Path of Radiance said Haar was doing, but apparently he and Jill run some kind of delivery service in Daein, and then Haar made a trip to Begnion and just... never came back. Meaning that Haar is in Begnion now, which hopefully means that so is Marcia, and Chapter 2-P happens in Begnion skies. However... I kinda got the impression that he was more responsible than this when it came to important matters. But Jill makes him out to be some kind of compulsively lazy ass who would abandon Jill to an oppressive war zone, and she doesn't even seem mad about it.

I give Micaiah four bonus experience levels, and three of them give Micaiah speed. She had magic capped from the start, and she capped resistance on the second to last, so that's still insanely good luck for her speed growth. Micaiah has sixteen speed now. Hell, with any luck, I might actually be able to make her usable this time! Fingers crossed!

Speaking of which, Micaiah's all alone for this map. Nobody else is in the party, even at base. Gotta say, that's kinda ominous. I wish I remembered how I felt about this when I first played the map.

Master seals apparently go for 10,000 gold when buying them, even though you can't sell them. I think that makes it just about the worst deal I've ever heard of. Speaking of the bargain section though, some of the stat boosters being sold can be tempting, but the 8k price tag always makes it ridiculous unless it's one of the really good ones like speedwings and dracoshields, and I've seen neither yet.

Anyway, not really much else I can do to prepare for this fascinating and entertaining, but utterly broken shitshow.

Let's go.

Micaiah rests out in the woods, comments on how odd Yune is for being able to fly around flawlessly at night, and... gets ambushed by Jarod and his men.

And we're instantly sent to the prep screen. Nothing we can do. No repositioning. No picking who to deploy. Nothing but swapping items. We're all alone, and it's actually a rather interesting choice, to give us the prep screen basically for no other reason than to make us feel more helpless for all the shit we can't actually do in this situation.

Micaiah, the most fragile lord in Fire Emblem history, is all alone, without any of her massively powerful defenders, or even a healer.

She's utterly fucked.

Nothing we can do but press start and begin.

Jarod announces his plans to kill Micaiah, correctly deducing that her death will cripple the spirit of Daein far more than the death of the prince would.

And then he charges, and...

...Okay, so, please, permit me to go on a tangent. I promise, it'll be relevant.

When I was a teenager, I tried to create a massive limerick poem summarizing the entirety of the Tellius saga.

I failed, massively, but there are two verses I still remember vividly. The first was when I realized:

Me: Oh shit, limericks use a DAdadaDAdada rhythm, and you can't say the word “MERceNAries” in that rhythm without putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable somewhere! I have to choose between saying MERcenaRIES, merCEnaries, or merceNAries! How the fuck am I going to talk about the Greil Mercenaries!?

Teenage me's solution?

Now I'd say this group's name, but it's less

good in limerick form, I confess.

So I'll simply say G-

R-E-I-L M-E-

R-C-E-N-A-R-I-E-S.”

I was so fucking proud of myself for that.

The other one I vividly remember? The one about this scene here.

This utterly legendary scene that I guarantee made absolutely everyone lose their fucking shit when they first saw it back in the day.

And just as you're thinking 'Oh, shite,

there's no way that I'm winning this fight!',

all alone and afraid,

who should come to your aid,

BUT THE ONE AND THE ONLY BLACK KNIGHT!?”


 

YES!

THE BLACK FUCKING KNIGHT ARRIVES!

AND WE'RE DAEIN!

SO HE'S ON OUR SIDE!

He warns Jarod that Jarod does not want mess with him, and Jarod, totally unphased by this fucker teleporting in and decking him right in the face, assumes he's just some chump impostor since the Black Knight “died in the war”.

The Black Knight's badass response?

Then have at me... and learn your folly.”

Yeah, as a kid, this was fucking awesome. Having the legendarily badass enemy from the last game be actually fucking playable, and having his iconic battle theme play every time he fought in combat, was the biggest power trip in Fire Emblem history at the time, and honestly, probably still to this day.

The problem... is that once you get past that...

...the map itself is kinda shit.

So, we've got two units for this tiny map. This tiny... fog of war map. One of them is the motherfucking Black Knight, with stats so high that he's literally unkillable, but the other one is... Micaiah. Who is... slightly more mortal, shall we say.

Surrounded in all directions by enemies dangerously close to being able to one-round her, further away from her than the fog of war could possibly let her see coming, with her only defense being a single unit who can't possibly cover her from all directions unless you know in advance where specifically he needs to be.

This map is an absolute nightmare to do blind.

Especially because the developers just decided that Micaiah will refuse to be rescued by the Black Knight for this fight. She makes some stupid comment about “don't worry about me”. I can't remember specifically and I don't want to check in case it forces me to make a permanent move.

I'm trying to survive this by having Micaiah hide in the thicket in the absolute bottom right corner while the Black Knight stands a 1-space northwest diagonal from her. She's not completely blocked off, but she's blocked off enough that my chances are improved, especially since her bulk is decent enough that she should be able to take at least one hit, her speed is good enough that she shouldn't be getting doubled by anyone, and her evasion is pretty good too, especially on a thicket. But jesus christ, why did this have to be fog of war? And why couldn't the Black Knight have brought a goddamned torch!?

...It seems like the strategy has worked for the first 7 turns. Every enemy has attacked the Black Knight. Not a single enemy had the good luck to land in that sweetspot where they're outside of my fog of war vision range but close enough to attack Micaiah the next turn. And every other turn, a reinforcement shows up one space above Micaiah, and is swiftly dispatched by the Black Knight.

I moved up two spaces just in case Jarod starts charging, and that didn't have any negative consequences, but I needed to move back to take out another one of those reinforcements.

...Yeah, wow, this strategy seems to be absorbing literally all of the enemies. Not one of them has gone for Micaiah yet. As long as the Black Knight kills the reinforcements, this strategy seems to last for the entire time that reinforcements spawn.

Anyway, Micaiah has a talk option with ol' BK, and she asks the pertinent question of how the hell he knew Micaiah was in danger. He says “That's not important right now”, and I'm pretty sure neither she nor we ever get an answer.

Also, he says “Maiden, stay by me. I will not let them harm you”, and all I can think when I read that line is just how fucking impossible it would be for that to sound anything but creepy if he still had his PoR cutscene voice.

Anyway, I started heading north and looping around the tiny map once the reinforcements stopped showing up. Now I'm hunting down Jarod.

We finally tracked down Jarod, and he was... right where we were hanging out. Guess he spawned once we killed all of the enemies, including a stationary one I found in the top left corner.

Alright, so, now that it's safe, I check the dialogue for attempting to rescue her, and she just says “Don't fear for me, Sir Knight. I will fight beside you”, and I have to say, having her say that with that big-anime-eyed look on her face gave me Eirika flashbacks of screaming “You suicidal dumbfuck”.

...Which makes me realize how much Micaiah hasn't pissed me off when compared to Eirika, despite having a very similar design in terms of neutral expression. Really reminds me of just how terrible Eirika was, and makes me question how much giving her more facial expressions like the lords in FE7 really would have helped. Well, we won't know until we see a remake, at any rate.

Wow, Jarod actually tanks a hit from BK! BK actually needed to use his second attack! Of course, Jarod still couldn't so much as scratch the Black Knight, but still, it was amusing to finally run into an enemy who just barely couldn't be one-shot without eclipse.

But Alder, Jarod's right-hand man, takes the final blow for him, in a bizarrely touching moment, and Micaiah lets him go. What I find weird is that after Alder took the hit, BK didn't seem eager to finish Jarod off, saying “My sword is not made for killing those who will not raise their weapons”. And yet he seems surprised when Micaiah simply lets Jarod go. I suppose imprisoning him was also an option (an option that probably would have at least slightly helped Jarod in the long run, if it got Sanaki to be able to talk to him). But anyway, killing him certainly wasn't the right call when not in the heat of battle, so I agree at least with Micaiah's decision not to kill him, if not her decision to let him run away. Having him alive would make a better impression to Sanaki anyway, and Micaiah says something similar (that it's out of their hands, and that it's Sanaki's place to pass judgment on him now), so good on her.

Anyway, it's hilarious how the Black Knight's menacing theme keeps playing while he's playing the role of the hero, the danger has passed, and he's talking with a friendly face.

Sothe then shows up and, obviously recognizing the Black Knight, tells Micaiah to run. And Micaiah, amusingly, almost has to remind him that they're fighting for Daein, and that the Black Knight is thus on his side. Sothe still doesn't like this though, and of course, he's completely right to feel that way, though how much reason he has to think that with the information he has is... questionable. The Black Knight did always seem vaguely honorable, but he also willingly sided with Ashnard. Of course, if Ike eventually opened up to telling his army about his experiences with the Black Knight, and revealed that he threatened to torture Mist... yeah, I could buy Sothe's attitude here. “Fuck this guy. I don't trust him as far as I can shove him, and I don't have the fucking weight.”

...Anyway, Micaiah gets a vision that she dun fucked up by letting Jarod get away, and that something horrible is going to happen. Or at least she thinks so. This is where she starts getting “prophecy fatigue”, her visions start becoming hazier, and she starts getting worried she's losing her powers, when in reality she's just drastically over-working herself. I guess she inherited the herons' poor stamina? Or I suppose it has been a lot longer than it feels like with all of those timeskips.

Looks like my 20 turns completely failed to get any bonus exp but the 2000 clear bonus. I could complain, but fuck it, I'm just grateful this terrifying, terribly-designed chapter didn't ruin my ironman run.

...Yeah, sorry, I'm still feeling kind of exhausted. I think I'm gonna have to leave things here for today. We'll have to leave the finale of Part 1 for another day.

Stay safe, everyone.

Edited by Alastor15243
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1 hour ago, Ether said:

If it were me, I'd make the liberation of Daein the whole second game, to remove the overwhelming focus on Ike that the duology has in it's current iteration. Make parts 2-4 of RD the third game, with time to expand the Crimean civil war due to axing Part 1 from the third game, and split part 3 more evenly between the GMs and Daein. Keep the two sides of the same conflict and the finale for ambitious scale, but give Micaiah and the Daein liberation the time they need to match the Mad King's War.

Yes. Pretty much exactly this. Ike isn't stealing Micaiah's spotlight if they both have games to themselves (though that doesn't stop Yune coming in and making Micaiah the equivalent of a microphone as a character).

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Okay, so on the subject of this chapter, sure in practice it's pretty poorply designed with an easily achieved lose state. But I question, how could it be done better? If we agree that in terms of plot, having a chapter like this to introduce the Black Knight in a moment of vulnarability is pretty damn great, how can we do that without axing the chapter entirely? If it was done without fog of war then it would be ridiculously mind numbingly easy as you could just position the Black Knight in a position that pretty much guarantees Micaiah will never be attacked.

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21 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Okay, so on the subject of this chapter, sure in practice it's pretty poorply designed with an easily achieved lose state. But I question, how could it be done better? If we agree that in terms of plot, having a chapter like this to introduce the Black Knight in a moment of vulnarability is pretty damn great, how can we do that without axing the chapter entirely? If it was done without fog of war then it would be ridiculously mind numbingly easy as you could just position the Black Knight in a position that pretty much guarantees Micaiah will never be attacked.

That's the issue: I'm not actually sure a genuinely strategically engaging version of this chapter could exist. Having a chapter with only two characters be interesting is already hard enough, but then they went and made it so that one of those two characters is flat-out invincible and instantly slaughters everything he fights, while the other is so weak that she can barely accomplish anything on their own. You basically only have, at best, one and a half meaningful decisions to make every turn. And the worst part is that Micaiah isn't even guaranteed to be able to do any fighting of her own, or even to survive a single hit, what with it not being a mandatory player action to train her. I don't think it would be the worst thing in the world if this were just a short, fun, dumb power trip though. Certainly better than being purely trial and error.

Edited by Alastor15243
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7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That's the issue: I'm not actually sure a genuinely strategically engaging version of this chapter could exist. Having a chapter with only two characters be interesting is already hard enough, but then they went and made it so that one of those two characters is flat-out invincible and instantly slaughters everything he fights, while the other is so weak that she can barely accomplish anything on their own. You basically only have, at best, one and a half meaningful decisions to make every turn. And the worst part is that Micaiah isn't even guaranteed to be able to do any fighting of her own, or even to survive a single hit, what with it not being a mandatory player action to train her.

From a design perspective, I think it's reasonable for them to design the game with the assumption that the player will have been training Micaiah. Sure, it isn't mandatory, but she's the centre of the game's narative and is a forced deploy in every chapter up to that point and she gets a strong personal weapon in chapter 2. I think it will be fairly obvious to most people that you're meant to train her, and if people do realise that and then decide not to, I'm not sure I can see that as a fault in design. Of course, even within that basic framework, there's going to be a ton of variation in exactly how much training people have given her. And for that matter, a ton of variation in how well her level ups turned out. Normally it isn't too much of a problem if one of your units turns out terribly, because you can lean on other units instead. But for a level with only one deployment? I'm not sure how it's possible to make that balanced/fun/interesting for all possible Micaiahs.

I wonder if it would have been possible to have it be something of a risk/reward situation in the same way as Ike's fight with the Black Knight in Path of Radiance? Make it so the Black Knight can rescue Micaiah, but set things up so that he has to be carrying something else, and if he picks up Micaiah then he has to drop the whatever it is and it's lost to the player forever. Basically, let the player decide whether to risk it or not. Ironman players would probably choose not to risk it most of the time, completionist players could reset as many times as they want to find the perfect strategy, and everyone is at least content?

I also wouldn't mind if it had been a fairly brainless level. Becuse, honestly, to me, this level is already entirely worth it. I'm generally a story-over-mechanics kind of person. Obviously, in the ideal circumstances, I want both to be amazing, but if I have to choose between them, I'd take story as first preference. And in terms of story, this level delivers, no question. To me, this is a great and memorable level that significantly improves the game. So I don't think it's necessary to aim for a strategically engaging version of the level. If it could be improved mechanically up to "not actively hostile to some playstyles" then I think that's enough. Grea for some people and mediocre for others is a way bigger win than great for some people and horrible for others.

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5 hours ago, Jotari said:

Oh heavens no. Radiant Dawn is already quite the lengthy play. The solution is to make Tellius a trilogy.

A counter argument to part one being its own game would be that it would end up being less epic than PoR. Consider how in PoR you go from Crimea, to Galia, to the sea, to Begnion, to Daein and back to Crimea, the entire world is explored while in part one, only Daein gets explored. 

You can argue that Thracia is also this to Geneology but Thracia is also a lot less popular than Geneology. 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But Alder, Jarod's right-hand man, takes the final blow for him, in a bizarrely touching moment, and Micaiah lets him go. What I find weird is that after Alder took the hit, BK didn't seem eager to finish Jarod off, saying “My sword is not made for killing those who will not raise their weapons”. And yet he seems surprised when Micaiah simply lets Jarod go. I suppose imprisoning him was also an option (an option that probably would have at least slightly helped Jarod in the long run, if it got Sanaki to be able to talk to him). But anyway, killing him certainly wasn't the right call when not in the heat of battle, so I agree at least with Micaiah's decision not to kill him, if not her decision to let him run away. Having him alive would make a better impression to Sanaki anyway, and Micaiah says something similar (that it's out of their hands, and that it's Sanaki's place to pass judgment on him now), so good on her.

 

I was thinking you were going to go on about how idiotic Micaiah is and how it makes you angry because that's what a lot of people do but I actually agree with your thoughts. 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But for now, he's planning on making a last-ditch effort to assassinate Micaiah, because he... blames her for what's happening to him, inexplicably. She didn't have anything to do with the inspection team. Sure, her army kinda did, but that's for reasons he can't possibly know about.

...I guess it's thanks to her that the rebellion wasn't crushed and this couldn't have just been swept under the rug, so... alright, fair enough, in his warped view of the world.

 

Jarod is a victim blamer which makes him easy to hate so he does a good job at being the villain towards the end of part one. 

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8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

How would you divide it up then?

PoR would be the first part, of course, and part 1 of RD should be its own game.

While part 2 of RD is a bit disconnected from the rest of the story, it is still very well-written and does something that no other game really ever bothers to tackle. So I think that it should stay ... as a prologue/tutorial to the last part of the Tellius trilogy. Parts 3 and 4 can be expanded more to form the rest of the game proper. Also, the game should either give the player the choice to side with Ike or Micaiah solely throughout the part 3 chapters, or it should give Micaiah the same number of chapters as Ike so you play as them equally.

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