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

[Axie]

hey please don't judge my baaaaasic birthright castle/units it's the only save i could help you out from rofl

also i have literally never been able to baby rinkah into usefulness, be it birthright or revelation. her stat spread is such a mess lol. i don't mind fates not having such growth disparity between units, though i could never do it if i were in charge. i'd totally be like "EVERY UNPROMOTED UNIT GETS BASICALLY THE SAME TOTAL #COMMUNISM #GLORYTOARSTOTZKA".

edit: never made much use of the prison feature either. guess it would be useful for drafts that allow it, though.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Axie

[Alastor15243]

5 minutes ago, Axie said:

hey please don't judge my baaaaasic birthright castle/units it's the only save i could help you out from rofl

Haha, no worries I promise.

[Samz707]

51 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

You throw them in jail in My Castle and then try to convince them to join you through persuasion and bribery. They don't have great growth rates generally, though the named bosses generally have better ones. But they can have some awesome skills and utility (just keep in mind any Lunatic-only skills won't be there when you recruit them).

While it sounds kinda out of character for what I know about Corrin, it seems like a cool feature, generics that are playable is actually what I wished Batallions were in 3h.

[Jotari]

12 hours ago, Maof06 said:

If only it were that simple. 3DS games downloaded by eshop are encrypted, so you have to install custom firmware on your 3DS if you want to do all of that. If it is already hacked, great, if not, you will have to hack. The process is simple (and free) and you will be able to do a lot of cool things with your 3DS, so I recommend it, but if you are afraid of bans or something, you can just buy a flashcard. Or if all of this is still a hassle for you, you can do nothing and leave Alastor's dreams unfulfilled.

This might be the only reasonable choice. Though given we're expecting to lose 3DS support sometime this year, hacking it now or never seems like it might be sensible.

Quote

The problem is that I distinctly remember that in all three routes, whether the map was only done in a cutscene or if it was actually fought... they were always climbing up.

Huh, this is a really good point. And a major shame they somehow managed to forget it. Because as far as reusing maps go, having the party start in the opposite side oft he map is a very cheap and easy way to provide a different experience, though for a chapter like this where ledges aren't a gameplay feature ala Radiant Dawn it wouldn't make a tonne of difference in terms of gameplay, just moving down as opposed to up would give a different visual flair to the level.

Quote

Yeah, when I played Birthright, it really looked like the wind tribe had a ridiculously cavalier attitude towards life and death, and I justified this in Dakota's War Journal by having the Wind Tribe turn out to have reincarnational immortality. But this is just... cartoonishly dumb. You can't really hand-wave this as non-lethal sparring when you're fully capable of electrocuting, freezing, or immolating your enemies. This feels like the stupid “friendly sparring wars” that happened in Advance Wars all the time, and it's only slightly less ridiculous here. Which isn't even remotely less ridiculous enough.

Well militaries do have war game training exercises. So I actually find it more believable in something like Advanced Wars where the combat less directly features characters visibly doing things (though they could change the sprites to show them shooting flour and peas or something). For Fire Emblem where you can much more visiually see one unit slicing another apart as opposed to cartoony soldiers firing on each other and vanishing, yeah, there's more of a disconnect here. And even ignoring how silly it makes the story,  Fire Emblem has never once used it's non lethal combat as some kind of gameplay gimmick. The closest would be Three Houses having two casual mode chapters even if you play on classic. Why not force the player to use training weapons for a chapter here? Especially in Fates where the weapons are less of a resource due to no durability. Actually I guess they did have the sense to do this in the beach DLC chapters which have them use the gimmick weapons, but there's no real gameplay difference there. It's just an aesthetic choice (since those joke weapons can actually be pretty useful). What I would like to see is something like Sheema's recruitment chapter only with enemies that aggro you and you are given specific non lethal weapons to deal with them. But you also have lethal weapons too and soldiers you are expect to kill amongst the mix making it a challenge to spare the appropriate people.

10 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, when I played Birthright, it really looked like the wind tribe had a ridiculously cavalier attitude towards life and death, and I justified this in Dakota's War Journal by having the Wind Tribe turn out to have reincarnational immortality. But this is just... cartoonishly dumb. You can't really hand-wave this as non-lethal sparring when you're fully capable of electrocuting, freezing, or immolating your enemies. This feels like the stupid “friendly sparring wars” that happened in Advance Wars all the time, and it's only slightly less ridiculous here. Which isn't even remotely less ridiculous enough.

I always tried to capture the generic bosses. Though I never used them much, except that one early Conquest boss every one recommends because he nets you Rally Defense way earlier than you should get it. It's a shame that basically no story line bosses are capturable (it's basically all child paralogue units). I captured both the Bandit Twins in Kana's paralogue and was really excited to have an opportunity to play as them after all these games, but was quite dissapointed when I saw they didn't have supports with each other. There's few enough capturable bosses that I think they could have put a support or two on each of them, not make them like full characters marriable to Corrin, but like give them a single support or two with the other capturable bosses to give some kind of semblance that these are actual units in the game and that this is the way you recruit them. It's inordinate, but it'd be cool. I also wouldn't have objected at all if this was a way you could recruit the likes of Benny in Birthright and other such playable characters that aren't of any plot significance.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Jotari

[Eltosian Kadath]

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

The problem is that I distinctly remember that in all three routes, whether the map was only done in a cutscene or if it was actually fought... they were always climbing up.

If the Eternal Staircase is going over a mountain (or down and out of a valley) it would have an uphill and downhill section in each directions...but I think the occum's razor answer, that the writers didn't care enough to get the details right on all routes is more likely.

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Apparently the people they're talking about didn't actually die though. What? Are these separate people or did Dakota's victims actually survive? Couldn't he try explaining to them before coming back to the village? What the fuck is going on!?

This is such an infuriatingly dumb plot point. Even if they had some means of non-fatal combat, why would Corrin's crew use it against enemies they believe are Faceless?

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Anyway... okay, so a lot of people hate the Conquest version of this map, while I love it. The Revelation one, however... is just fucking annoying. Same problem as last map: nobody's gonna move unless you get close. Which means all of these dang gusts of wind... only serve to waste your time rather than serve as a perpetual terrifying risk of being blown to your death.

I find the maps gimmick annoying on both versions. So many turns of movement spent wasting time to compensate for a bad wind pattern, or wait on a good one...

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Yeah, I... I have a bad track record with Rinkah. I tried to use her before, but... this game has a nasty habit, like I said, of taking the Hoshidan units who are the first to buck the now-broken gender restrictions (the first female “fighter”, the first male “pegasus knight”, even if they aren't called those things)... and make them terrible at the thing their class is supposed to be good at. Rinkah has a personal strength growth of 25% (becomes 45% when an oni savage), and Subaki has a personal speed growth of 20% (becomes 35% when a sky knight). Charlotte fares much better and is actually genuinely strong, which is cool, so I don't get why they did this with the Hoshidan units.

The only time I bothered bringing Rinkah into the late game was on a Female only Lunatic Birthright run, and she was a worse Oboro. Her only value was having the 2nd-3rd highest physical bulk of the Birthright women.

 

10 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

And then there's Charlotte; while she can hit hard, unlike Rinkah, she's pigeonholed into a glass cannon role, which is not exactly appealing in this game.

The "glass canon" with health in 60s...in the low health environment of Fates....because apparently health is not a part of a character's bulk...

 

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

Also, if you're planning to Capture enemies, good luck getting Orochi... she died to a Ninja, turn one, in my playthrough.

If you know about it before hand you can go after that Ninja in particular to prevent it, but it is a really noticeable moment of bad map design in Revelation...this is really giving me flashbacks to my Lunatic Revelation PMU Lets Play I did on this site...

 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'm usually not that huge on capturing enemies. Usually because I've gotten bad luck with Niles' growth rates, causing him to never stay useful for long despite all the talk I've heard about him being good. He's one of the two guys in Nohr I've never gotten married to anyone for that reason, the other being Odin. I'm gonna try and change that. I'd like to get as many of the children as I can between the three playlogs.

Oh wow, you have never used the best mage of Fates, the legendary Ophelia? This could get interesting.

 

2 hours ago, Samz707 said:

While it sounds kinda out of character for what I know about Corrin, it seems like a cool feature, generics that are playable is actually what I wished Batallions were in 3h.

Its really fun in Conquest, where the enemies can get really interesting skills on those generics. Also its kinda useless late into Revelations due to you not being able to capture Valla enemies...

 

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Well militaries do have war game training exercises. So I actually find it more believable in something like Advanced Wars where the combat less directly features characters visibly doing things (though they could change the sprites to show them shooting flour and peas or something). For Fire Emblem where you can much more visiually see one unit slicing another apart as opposed to cartoony soldiers firing on each other and vanishing, yeah, there's more of a disconnect here. And even ignoring how silly it makes the story,  Fire Emblem has never once used it's non lethal combat as some kind of gameplay gimmick. The closest would be Three Houses having two casual mode chapters even if you play on classic. Why not force the player to use training weapons for a chapter here? Especially in Fates where the weapons are less of a resource due to no durability. Actually I guess they did have the sense to do this in the beach DLC chapters which have them use the gimmick weapons, but there's no real gameplay difference there. It's just an aesthetic choice (since those joke weapons can actually be pretty useful). What I would like to see is something like Sheema's recruitment chapter only with enemies that aggro you and you are given specific non lethal weapons to deal with them. But you also have lethal weapons too and soldiers you are expect to kill amongst the mix making it a challenge to spare the appropriate people.

Thracia's capture mechanic is a non-lethal form of combat in FE games. I think it works rather well, with the halving of stats being a way to show how much harder it is to subdue an enemy trying to kill you, non-lethally. Another fun fact, the weapons used in the Path of Radiance prologue are called training weapons, and have the added feature of not being able to crit.

 

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I always tried to capture the generic bosses. Though I never used them much, except that one early Conquest boss every one recommends because he nets you Rally Defense way earlier than you should get it. It's a shame that basically no story line bosses are capturable (it's basically all child paralogue units). I captured both the Bandit Twins in Kana's paralogue and was really excited to have an opportunity to play as them after all these games, but was quite dissapointed when I saw they didn't have supports with each other. There's few enough capturable bosses that I think they could have put a support or two on each of them, not make them like full characters marriable to Corrin, but like give them a single support or two with the other capturable bosses to give some kind of semblance that these are actual units in the game and that this is the way you recruit them. It's inordinate, but it'd be cool. I also wouldn't have objected at all if this was a way you could recruit the likes of Benny in Birthright and other such playable characters that aren't of any plot significance.

On a related note, its kinda disappointed that the game doesn't have any extra dialogue if you deploy Gazak in Percy's paralogue, where Arthur is mistaken for Gazak due to their shared distinctive chin.

[Jotari]

10 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

 

Thracia's capture mechanic is a non-lethal form of combat in FE games. I think it works rather well, with the halving of stats being a way to show how much harder it is to subdue an enemy trying to kill you, non-lethally. Another fun fact, the weapons used in the Path of Radiance prologue are called training weapons, and have the added feature of not being able to crit.

Indeed Thracia does have a form of non lethal combat. Though you're never required to use it, they never blend it with the plot. Well except that one chapter where you're trying to recruit Xavier, that's a bit like I was just saying I wanted.

 

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

Indeed Thracia does have a form of non lethal combat. Though you're never required to use it, they never blend it with the plot. Well except that one chapter where you're trying to recruit Xavier, that's a bit like I was just saying I wanted.

There are a few other places, like in chapter 8, where capturing the boss lets you interrogate them, and enter chapter 8x as a result, and there are a few time where capturing bosses leads to slight changes in the script, the most notable being if you capture Largo, where the ending changes from a discussion with Augustus about the worrying fact that Olwen is bringing news of their attack to the enemy, to a discussion with Dorias about the knightly honor shown by the commanders and knights of both sides of the conflict; plus almost every named enemy has a unique release quote about being spared...

[Shadow Mir]

43 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The "glass canon" with health in 60s...in the low health environment of Fates....because apparently health is not a part of a character's bulk...

Because high health makes up for piss-poor defenses, right? Oh, wait, no it doesn't. Having high health only does you so much good when your defenses are the equivalent of wet toilet paper, and thus enemy attacks can make that high health disappear in a hurry. So I would say "glass cannon" fits Charlotte to a T.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Alastor15243]

18 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Especially when she can't hit the broad side of a barn if her life depended on it.

Her skill and luck growths are nearly identical to Corrin's.

[Axie]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Her skill and luck growths are nearly identical to Corrin's.

she also joins with 10 skl and 9 luck at level 10 unpromoted, which is perfectly average and acceptable (the problem being actually that level 10 is kind of low for her join time in both of her games). in revelation, she can also easily use clubs for +5 hit over an equivalent axe. seems to be another case of shadow mir's axe prejudice.

if anything, my main grievance with charlotte is that she reclasses to troubadour. absolutely useless to her. they really did her and effie dirty with that.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Axie

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

17 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Wheres the Flame Tribe Chieftain with awesome stats?

Kumagera? I don´t know if he´s Flame Tribe, but he´s certainly no pushover.

13 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Usually because I've gotten bad luck with Niles' growth rates, causing him to never stay useful for long despite all the talk I've heard about him being good.

Orochi is Niles polar opposite - she will hit hard exactly once and do so while being pretty darn accurate, but she will not, under any circumstances, double anything. Though her start chapter is pretty shit for a Mage, what with all the Ninjas.

11 minutes ago, Axie said:

if anything, my main grievance with charlotte is that she reclasses to troubadour. absolutely useless to her. they really did her and effie dirty with that.

Charlotte i get - imagine the possibilities of her having lessay Archer or Ninja as a secondary class line, but like Effie? She who 1HKO´s with a Steel Lance? I think Armor Knight plays perfectly to her strengths, pun not intended.

[Alastor15243]

15 minutes ago, Axie said:

if anything, my main grievance with charlotte is that she reclasses to troubadour. absolutely useless to her. they really did her and effie dirty with that.

Maid Effie is pretty dang fun. I tried it once in a draft.

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Her skill and luck growths are nearly identical to Corrin's.

This ignores the fact that her weapon of choice is much less accurate than Corrin's.

1 hour ago, Axie said:

she also joins with 10 skl and 9 luck at level 10 unpromoted, which is perfectly average and acceptable (the problem being actually that level 10 is kind of low for her join time in both of her games). in revelation, she can also easily use clubs for +5 hit over an equivalent axe. seems to be another case of shadow mir's axe prejudice.

if anything, my main grievance with charlotte is that she reclasses to troubadour. absolutely useless to her. they really did her and effie dirty with that.

You make it sound like my axe prejudice is not justified when it is. Most foot axes suck, so I have no reason to expect Charlotte and her vomit tier accuracy to not suck. Of course, it does not help her already flimsy case that if I have access to her, I also have the infinitely superior Camilla available. 

[Axie]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

You make it sound like my axe prejudice is not justified when it is. Most foot axes suck, so I have no reason to expect Charlotte and her vomit tier accuracy to not suck. Of course, it does not help her already flimsy case that if I have access to her, I also have the infinitely superior Camilla available.

clubs have literally 5 less hit than lances/naginatas lol. if playing conquest, even the iron axe without forges has 70 hit, which is usable (or you can forge - are we still pretending gems don't exist without visiting other castles?). with her skill and luck not even being bad, she does not have "vomit tier" accuracy at all, even with this game not having the "luxury" of a true 2RN hit (PS: another thing fates did entirely right and then was abandoned, sigh). gonzalez she is not.

camilla is indeed infinitely superior to her, but also to everyone else (except azura maybe?), and should not be used as an argument.

[Alastor15243]

Hey, I just did my daily castle visiting, and I wanted to thank everyone who's been visiting and, particularly, battling me! I actually just got a new battle reward for reaching 750: spirit dust! At this rate I'm almost definitely going to reach at least that first 1000-BP benchmark promise I made to you guys by the time I'm finished with Revelation, and I'll spend a whole day pitting my endgame Rev team against my readers!

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, Axie said:

clubs have literally 5 less hit than lances/naginatas lol. if playing conquest, even the iron axe without forges has 70 hit, which is usable (or you can forge - are we still pretending gems don't exist without visiting other castles?). with her skill and luck not even being bad, she does not have "vomit tier" accuracy at all, even with this game not having the "luxury" of a true 2RN hit (PS: another thing fates did entirely right and then was abandoned, sigh). gonzalez she is not.

camilla is indeed infinitely superior to her, but also to everyone else (except azura maybe?), and should not be used as an argument.

Last I checked, a forged weapon isn't gonna turn her from "blind as a Zubat" to "hawkeye", thanks to the way forge boosts work in this game. To get a noteworthy accuracy increase of a weapon that can crit, like an iron axe for example, you'd need to go up to +5, which is very impractical. Also, I would say she's still closer to Gonzalez than Nolan in terms of unit quality, which is to say, she's garbage.

Maybe, but as it is, the other axe users are so much worse, I'm ten billion percent better off having Camilla as my sole axe unit.

[ping]

nice selective reading you're doing there

[Axie]

37 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Last I checked, a forged weapon isn't gonna turn her from "blind as a Zubat" to "hawkeye", thanks to the way forge boosts work in this game. To get a noteworthy accuracy increase of a weapon that can crit, like an iron axe for example, you'd need to go up to +5, which is very impractical. Also, I would say she's still closer to Gonzalez than Nolan in terms of unit quality, which is to say, she's garbage.

why did you ignore the part about clubs, or the part where i explicitly argued she is not, as you put it, "blind as a zubat"?

in conquest, peri joins one chapter earlier with the same bases (actually one LESS skl), so the only reason she'd not be "blind as a zubat" is because she uses swords and lances, and therefore you think axes are an irredeemable weapon because of lower hit. but wait, you don't think so because you say camilla is superior, even though her higher skill and luck bases don't actually entirely cover the sword vs axe hit gap against base peri. hit rates at base with D rank weapons:

camilla: 103.5 (iron axe), 108.5 (thunder)

peri: 108 (iron sword), 98 (iron lance)

charlotte: 94.5 (iron axe)

sure, they decided to be assholes and make charlotte join with a stupid steel axe in both games, but just give her the iron axe and her hit is within 10% of the best unit in the game at base, and doesn't have bad growth. that difference does not make her "blind as a zubat" and your claim is just post-truth narrative shoehorning at this point lol.

[Shadow Mir]

Just now, Axie said:

why did you ignore the part about clubs, or the part where i explicitly argued she is not, as you put it, "blind as a zubat"?

in conquest, peri joins one chapter earlier with the same bases (actually one LESS skl), so the only reason she'd not be "blind as a zubat" is because she uses swords and lances, and therefore you think axes are an irredeemable weapon because of lower hit. but wait, you don't think so because you say camilla is superior, even though her higher skill and luck bases don't actually entirely cover the sword vs axe hit gap against base peri. hit rates at base with D rank weapons:

camilla: 103.5 (iron axe), 108.5 (thunder)

peri: 108 (iron sword), 98 (iron lance)

charlotte: 94.5 (iron axe)

sure, they decided to be assholes and make charlotte join with a stupid steel axe in both games, but just give her the iron axe and her hit is within 10% of the best unit in the game at base, and doesn't have bad growth. that difference does not make her "blind as a zubat" and your claim is just post-truth narrative shoehorning at this point lol.

I don't know about you, but 5 hit (the hit difference between a steel axe and an iron axe, as well as the difference in hit between a club and an axe of the same tier) doesn't sound like it'll make much of a difference, if you ask me. Especially when she has Gamble, which cuts more hit than she would get by switching to an iron axe. In any instance, low skill is much easier to overlook when you don't use the least accurate weapon type in the game. Given your favorite FE game is one that's notorious for accuracy problems, I would think you'd know this lol.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Especially when she has Gamble, which cuts more hit than she would get by switching to an iron axe.

Um... you remove it. After her joining chapter. Until you get her hit up to levels where you can afford it.

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

In any instance, low skill is much easier to overlook when you don't use the least accurate weapon type in the game.

Again, Charlotte does not have low skill.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Alastor15243

[ping]

On the plus side, I now have the mental image of Charlotte constantly screaming during battle for echolocation.

[Axie]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

I don't know about you, but 5 hit (the hit difference between a steel axe and an iron axe, as well as the difference in hit between a club and an axe of the same tier) doesn't sound like it'll make much of a difference, if you ask me. Especially when she has Gamble, which cuts more hit than she would get by switching to an iron axe. In any instance, low skill is much easier to overlook when you don't use the least accurate weapon type in the game. Given your favorite FE game is one that's notorious for accuracy problems, I would think you'd know this lol.

5 hit from an iron club puts base charlotte above base peri with an iron lance lol. if charlotte sucks, so does peri, and actually a bunch of other people (keaton joins later with barely 10 hit over base charlotte!). 5 hit is also the difference between base charlotte with an iron club and base camilla with an iron axe (actually, 4 hit), so if it's not much of a difference, certainly she's not "blind as a zubat". unless you're saying camilla has trouble hitting now? at any point of her life?

also she has 50% skl/luck growths as a fighter and averages 17 skl/12 luck as a 20/1 berserker, 19 skl/15 luck as a 20/1 hero. it's perfectly acceptable.

1 hour ago, ping said:

On the plus side, I now have the mental image of Charlotte constantly screaming during battle for echolocation.

charlotte is this vine now

 

Edited January 17, 2021 by Axie

[Alastor15243]

Revelation Day 6: Chapter 10

Oh god. Here it is. The big one. The horrible one. The most infamous and hated chapter in this infamous and hated game.

Chapter 10: Voice of a God.

Words can't describe what I'm about to experience, but... I'll do my best.

First, I get all my castle maintenance out of the way. It's really quick. I have to say, My Castle is a way better feature than Garreg Mach. Pretty much the same amount of content, but with way less of your time wasted.

Oh, incidentally, I've discovered that Dakota is some kind of reverse Zoolander and can't turn right. Notice that he faces to the left when standing still in My Castle, and if you go from standing still to moving straight up... for some reason he'll do a full counterclockwise spin, down, then right, then forward, in order to move north.

Anyway... I finally forged Mozu her Mozurang. The original from Dakota's War Journal was a knife, but since I have shuriken access, might as well. +2 speed is way better than +5 hit. Not sure what the devs were thinking.

...That said, I do like the concept of having Hoshido have its own weapons that aren't just a pure re-skin. Really helps the atmosphere and helps make the two main routes really feel different in theme. Though personally, I would've preferred they go further with what they did with e rank. Instead of bronze, the lowest Hoshidan weapons are made out of brass. Maybe the silver weapons could've been made out of something different too? I mean it's not like silver is very practical to begin with, so doing something different for flavor doesn't really have much risk of being dumber.

Alright, visiting time. I opened the accessory shop, and my free gift is the only thing I know for a fact I haven't already given to anyone... so fuck it! NINJA MASKS FOR EVERYONE!

Looks like the treehouse visit unlocked a support with Kaze. It's... I mean it's kinda funny that he doesn't understand he's being hit on by all of these women from town. Not much to say beyond that though. Not really finding anything to say anything profound about, or over-analyze.

Right, off to Izumo, for our first encounter with Izana, who's being impersonated by a Nohrian mage called Zola. Izana's antics and the eventual reveal that yes, he really is like that, are genuinely funny, but... not funny enough for me to still laugh at it after playing through multiple times.

Anyway, Zola “fires the ice bomb”, and...

...The whole battlefield is covered in more than ten feet of snow. And... they expect us to clear it.

By hand.

All of the snow is breakable, and every time you break it, it comes apart in 3x3 sets. This map is 23 by 18. Meaning there are roughly 42 patches of ice to destroy. And they expect you to destroy all of it. Not just to get all of the experience from the enemies. If it were just that, maybe it wouldn't be so bad, because there'd be no reason not to rush the boss. No, it expects you to shovel all of the snow out of the city streets in order to get the veritable Monty Haul of treasure hidden beneath it. Because every single fucking enemy hidden in the ice has a droppable item, including an entire fucking set of stat boosters.

This map... is fucking monotonous as hell. Every turn is the same thing. Smash a patch of ice with your first action. If it exposes enemies, destroy them. If not, reposition to destroy the next patch, and end your turn. Repeat until done. And if you don't wanna do it? If you just wanna cut a path straight to the boss you can clearly see at the end? You lose out on sooooooooooooo much shit.

And even setting that aside... there's no difficulty here. The enemies can't break the ice themselves obviously (that would make this even worse, in all honesty), which means that you get the drop on them every time. And there's only so many enemies there can be in a 3x3 patch of snow, so there's literally no challenge here until a sort of nasty surprise I remember being towards the end.

I'm having Gunter break the ice (he's standing by for when we need to put Mozu in guard stance) and then having my other fighters take care of any enemies who show up in order from lowest level to highest for maximum experience. But so far that means only Mozu's been doing any fighting because we've only found one enemy per patch.

Holy shit this is even worse than I remember. They aren't pre-arranged chunks of ice. It's just a 3x3 patch in front of you from the direction you attack from... which means that if you're up against a wall, or a building's in the way... you uncover even fucking less.

I refuse to believe that human beings playtested this. I refuse to believe that these devs got feedback that people actually enjoyed this. Actually, apparently I have to! I've seen this map be praised! By people! By someone with a youtube channel that has subscribers! I won't say who, because he seems like a nice person and I don't want to risk using what little clout I have to brigade him for his opinion on a fucking video game, however impossible I find it to understand... but my point is that I've seen somebody go on record saying he doesn't think Revelation has a single bad map, that he thinks it has the best map design of the three Fates games, and that this is one of his favorites.

I don't understand! I don't think I can ever understand! How can anyone enjoy doing this!?

...Turn 24. I am approximately halfway done shoveling the snow. I don't know how much more of this I can take. Christ, I feel like I'm playing Three Houses again. I feel like marking the game down an extra tier in pacing for this map alone.

Turn 27. JESUS FUCK I WAS GIVING THIS MAP TOO MUCH CREDIT! THE SNOW ONLY COMES OFF IN 3X2 CHUNKS AT MOST!

Turn 31. AND OF COURSE, OF COURSE, IF YOU HAPPEN TO BREAK ICE FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF A WALL WHERE THE NEWLY-RELEASED ENEMIES AREN'T IN RANGE OF YOU, THEY DON'T CHASE AFTER YOU BECAUSE FUCK YOU, THIS IS REVELATION AI.

Turn kill me. MY UNITS ARE GETTING ALMOST NO EXPERIENCE FROM THIS.

Turn 48. Area around Zola neutralized from over the wall. STILL A QUARTER OF THE MAP TO CLEAR.

Turn 49. Turns out you can make the snow-shoveling go a bit faster, the full 3x3 area, if you attack a snow tile at range so that all of the spaces around it are snow. I'm having Mozu do that now, with a Gunter pair-up. Incidentally, I just realized that Gunter says “watch your back, child!” to people other than Corrin. Does he even say that to Fuga? Also, the “nasty surprise” turned out to be three enemies, one a mage with mjölnir. Piece of cake for Mozu and Felicia.

Turn 60. Between the ludicrous dearth of actual enemies and the pathetically low exp gain, I wasn't sure if Felicia would be gaining a level at all this map, but she did. She's level 34 now, so she's only one level away from getting galeforce. Combining that with a lightning tome is going to give her some crazy player-phase potential I'll be more than happy to make use of.

Turn 67. I am finally done shoveling the snow. Time to kill Zola and GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS MAP FOREVER. I AM NEVER PLAYING THIS STUPID FUCKING GAME AGAIN AFTER THIS PLAYLOG. I WAS WRONG, OKAY!? FOREIGN LAND AND SKY ISN'T THE WORST MAP IN FIRE EMBLEM HISTORY. THIS IS.

So while chasing Zola down, we somehow managed to leave Sakura in grabbing range of him, so now he's got a hostage, and this is where Leo shows up to save the day despite the fact that he still hates us.

…

Um...

...I just realized.

Doesn't Azura still have that crystal ball that can reveal the truth to either Dakota or Leo? Why doesn't she give it to Leo here? Did the writers just completely forget about it?

...So Takumi went missing... in Izumo? ...Okay, in fairness, I can see him as the sort of person to not report visiting another country, hence why nobody in Hoshido knows where he is...

...but why did Takumi not fall into the Bottomless Canyon this time? He did it in both other routes, which one of my actions caused him to not do it this time?

...And this is where the game inexplicably decides some playable characters need to be killed off and rendered unusable. Was there some kind of playable unit limit they were trying to avoid reaching? Isn't this supposed to be the golden route or something? Why contrive this ridiculous prophecy thing that costs Izana his life?

And apparently... literally the only reason he gave his life was for the light show. He doesn't actually allow Takumi to see the vision or anything, he just... prophesies harder, I guess. He clearly knows what's going on, so while he's dying... why doesn't he just demonstrate to Takumi what's going to happen if Dakota tries to explain himself... by saying the word that would kill his already-dying ass?

This is so stupid. And this one isn't even funny like so many of the other deaths are.

...Oh, this isn't what kills him. Still though, once he speaks directly with the gods at the cost of his life, saying the forbidden word and dissolving would've been helpful.

…

...Really?

That's what Izana gave his life for?

“Go meet the dragon”!?

Okay though, in fairness... Izana's lines here while he's dying are pretty funny actually.

“After all, I think I may—owww ow ow... Yup, definitely gave my life for the message.”

And when Takumi still hesitates to help Dakota...

“What, you're still not willing? I'm dying here, and you're still unsure? Listen, if you don't... I'll come back as a ghost and haunt you. All the time. Boo.”

So yeah, now we get Hinata and Oboro, and... we're done. I'm not doing more today, sorry. This map completely exhausted my capacity to give a shit.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Interdimensional Observer]

50 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Maybe the silver weapons could've been made out of something different too? I mean it's not like silver is very practical to begin with, so doing something different for flavor doesn't really have much risk of being dumber.

How about gold, the other highly impractical for war precious metal? You could then build this into the national armor aesthetics, red and gold vs. purple and silver.

Although, I will add that during the 1500s, Japan contributed a great deal of the international silver output (although not as much as Spanish South America, and I forget South/Southeast Asia's output, beyond silver being worth more than gold in some locations therein). I don't have an exact number off the top of my head, but it was in the tens of percentage points, could be a quarter. Europeans liked this, because China was stingy with what they'd accept in exchange for silk and tea and the other Chinese luxuries that Europe so badly wanted, silver was one of the few things China was willing to trade for. With Japan off the coast relatively close, you could get some silver, go west and trade it for silk, and then maybe head east again and trade some of that silk in Japan for more silver. By the end of Sengoku and start of the Tokugawa Shogunate, concerns that the country's silver mines were running dry, made Ieyasu & successors wary of exporting any more for fears of domestic fiscal policy- precious metals being the basis of high-value currency. For a brief time, Japan swapped over to exporting gold coins, before settling on copper, which was useful for day to day money (you'd buy a bowl of rice with it, but a house is bought in silver) throughout the East Asia region.

 

50 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

And even setting that aside... there's no difficulty here. The enemies can't break the ice themselves obviously (that would make this even worse, in all honesty), which means that you get the drop on them every time. And there's only so many enemies there can be in a 3x3 patch of snow, so there's literally no challenge here until a sort of nasty surprise I remember being towards the end.

Agreed on the monotony, disagreed on the "no nasty surprises until the very end". Imagine this:

• You bring Azura, a healer, maybe some other squishy units in your super-limited deployment slots.
• You have Azura dance one of your few durable units after having them all take their actions. 
• The refreshed unit smashes more snow, because you want this map to go by faster. 
• The snow shoveling reveals enemies, enemies that notice low-durability Azura is nearby and exposed.
• ⚰️ your one and only refresher. 

I believe this has happened to me. It forces me to take this molasses map even more slowly, otherwise this map would take even longer if I didn't because reset.

If only this snow were perfectly transparent ice, imagine that, being able to see every enemy and examine their stats and inventories before you free them. That'd reduce the tedium slightly, and I won't mention all the instances in gaming where "enemies trapped in transparent ice" has happened.

 

Edited January 18, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Agreed on the monotony, disagreed on the "no nasty surprises until the very end". Imagine this:

• You bring Azura, a healer, maybe some other squishy units in your super-limited deployment slots.
• What were to happen if you had Azura dance one of your few durable units after having them all take their actions. 
• The refreshed unit smashes more snow, because you want this map to go by faster. 
• The snow shoveling reveals enemies, enemies that notice low-durability Azura is nearby and exposed.
• ⚰️ your one and only refresher. 

That's not danger or a nasty surprise though, that's just more tedium. This game does almost everything in its power to encourage the most boring playstyle possible where you only ever break a sheet of ice with the first action of your turn. The fact that I have to be that careful is another part of why I hate this map so damned much.

Thanks for the history lesson about silver, by the way!