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

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That is an astonishingly pathetic motivation for those removed chapters, and yet it sounds so plausible. Is there a source for that?

No, that's just my assumption. I guess the general excuse would be limitations of the SNES, Books 1 and 2 combined have about 40 chapters, which is quite a bit...but then a large part of those Book 2 chapters are fought on maps that are identical to Book 1 (something that really annoys me and I will rant about later). And that includes one of the chapters removed from Book 1. Data limits might have played some part, but I can't really see that as an excuse for why "The Sable Order" (otherwise known as that chapter with the big bridge) was removed from Book 1. If you already use it in book 2 it should be as simple as loading it up in book 1, sticking enemies and a script on it. There's no real point in reusing assets if they're not actually saving you memory.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

No, that's just my assumption. I guess the general excuse would be limitations of the SNES, Books 1 and 2 combined have about 40 chapters, which is quite a bit...but then a large part of those Book 2 chapters are fought on maps that are identical to Book 1 (something that really annoys me and I will rant about later). And that includes one of the chapters removed from Book 1. Data limits might have played some part, but I can't really see that as an excuse for why "The Sable Order" (otherwise known as that chapter with the big bridge) was removed from Book 1. If you already use it in book 2 it should be as simple as loading it up in book 1, sticking enemies and a script on it. There's no real point in reusing assets if they're not actually saving you memory.

Maybe people would notice they bullshitted a castle out of thin air in the Book 2 version? I'm at that map right now in my H4 replay and I couldn't help but notice that castle you're supposed to escape to just flat-out isn't there.

[Interdimensional Observer]

7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh dear. Well, I'm ironmanning, so I'll have to be prepared to cut my losses if I can't recruit some of them. Come to think of it, are Caesar and Radd better in this game, or was I likely just being obsessively completionist in wanting them alive?

Radd and Caesar should be better, but most units (Sedgar, Wolf, Caeda, Wendel, Lena, Maria, Elice, and Jake and Beck are exceptions that come to mind) should be better in New Mystery than Shadow Dragon. Everyone, looking at this data, got a significant boost in their total growths.:

SD:

Spoiler

SD Personal Growth Rate Totals: (includes negatives)

Marth: 222 Frey: 195 Abel: 155 Cain: 175 Jagen: 70

Gordin: 120 Draug: 100 Norne: 125 Caeda: 195 Wrys: 80

Ogma: 135 Barst: 100 Bord: 100 Cord: 115 Darros: 100

Castor: 100 Julian: 237 Lena: 100 Navarre: 155 Merric: 180

Matthis: 140 Hardin: 140 Wolf: 435 Sedgar: 435 Roshea: 125

Vyland: 100 Wendell: 80 Rickard: 227 Athena: 120 Bantu: -15

Caesar: 130 Radd: 150 Roger: 150 Jeorge: 80 Maria: 110

Minerva: 125 Linde: 145 Jake: 105 Midia: 140 Dolph: 105

Macellan: 85 Tomas: 105 Boah: 20 Horace: 70 Beck: 110

Astram: 140 Palla: 160 Catria: 225 Arran: 130 Samson: 105

Xane: 47 Etzel: 105 Est: 190 Tiki: 292 Lorenz: 160 Ymir: 85

Elice: 225 Nagi: 292 Gotoh: 200

NM:

Spoiler

NM Personal Growth Rate Totals:

Marth: 305 Luke: 235 Rody: 260 Cecil: 265 Gordin: 170

Ryan: 235 Draug: 200 Arran: 10 Malliesia: 195 Catria: 295

Warren: 215 Cord: 190 Linde: 260 Palla: 225 Bord: 175

Julian: 305 Matthis: 195 Wrys: 140 Ogma: 240 Yumina: 200

Yubello: 200 Sirius: 295 Castor: 175 Caeda: 295 Barst: 195

Rickard: 185 Frey: 270 Norne: 200 Samto: 160 Wendell: 150

Caesar: 190 Radd: 195 Navarre: 250 Feena: 295 Cain: 280

Bantu: -5 Roger: 240 Jeorge: 190 Minerva: 240 Etzel: 255

Merric: 260 Ellerean: 200 Dice: 160 Maris: 210 Horace: 260

Jake: 320 Darros: 180 Robert: 235 Belf: 190 Leiden: 200

Beck: 235 Athena: 250 Xane: 125 Tiki: 305 Est: 325

Dolph: 205 Abel: 265 Macellan: 280 Astram: 205 

Katarina: 310 Tomas: 260 Sheema: 290 Samson: 190 

Frost: 295 Roshea: 275 Vyland: 245 Sedgar: 280 Wolf: 285

Midia: 230 Ymir: 195 Michalis: 240 Nagi: 305 Lena: 175

Maria: 185 Nyna: 190 Elice: 280

I think class growths remained the same between games. Each class gives a net (meaning including the Mag & Res negatives most physical classes get and the Str & Def negatives magic classes have) growths boost between 95 (Mage, Curate/Cleric) and 145 (Fighter/Warrior, Pirate/Berserker)

[Jotari]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

Maybe people would notice they bullshitted a castle out of thin air in the Book 2 version? I'm at that map right now in my H4 replay and I couldn't help but notice that castle you're supposed to escape to just flat-out isn't there.

Well the other option aside from axing it entirely would be to unify things and actually put the castle there in Book 1. Which could you imagine how intriguing that would be for players who played the NES version. They'd all be like "Huh, I don't remember there being a castle there on this map. Why did they add that? Are there going to be enemies attacking me from behind? Huh, no. That's sort of weird. I wonder why they added a castle." *Half a game later* "Oh wow, so that's why they added that castle!" Really even if they never had any plans to remake Mystery of the Emblem, they could have at least put a fortress there in Shadow Dragon in reference to the castle. Also having a look at the two maps now (in their DS incarnations), it looks like the northern headland extends further west in Shadow Dragon...which is really weird as that's the version without a castle, so there's just way more empty space...which they later replaced with ocean. Seems kind of pointless. Maybe the tide is in during New Mystery or something.

3 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Yeah, my memory is fuzzy. Honestly, I'm lucky if I can remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, so it's entirely likely I'm conflating memories of different games here. I do remember it definitely being a problem at some point, but maybe that wasn't in Shadow Dragon, since that had way fewer mechanics so less need to look up additional details.

Yep. It really makes me appreciate the Switch though. Having all the series that Nintendo shunted off onto handhelds for a while finally be back on home console is very welcome.

I wonder if difficulty level has anything to do with that. I think that I played through Shadow Dragon on Normal, because I'm not normally an ironman player but wanted to make an exception for Shadow Dragon given how much it's pushed there, and was wary of over-taxing myself. I probably would have been better served by a harder difficulty level, though, that would have kept me more engaged. I definitely played at something below H3, because there is absolutely no way I'd have sat through the early-game boss nonsense. I'd assume that the higher the difficulty level, the longer it takes to clear each level, whereas the time doing errands with Marth probably stays fairly constant.

And as I read back what I wrote, I realise it also ties into what you were saying about the existence of casual mode. Casual mode isn't at all appealing to me, but I'm generally a reset-when-anyone-dies sort of player, and I kinda did exactly what you were talking about by being more scared of permadeath than I actually should have been and making the game worse for myself as a result. It's not the same as people who play on casual and complete every level trivially by throwing bodies at it, but I do think it's related. So my wish for Fire Emblem difficulty is this: it should always be possible to change between difficulty levels in the middle of a run. I'm sure it would introduce a few weirdnesses here and there, but I doubt it would be anything too serious. I definitly think it would be worth it, though. I'd be more eager to try harder difficulties if I didn't fear being locked into something too hard and having to restart halfway through.

Based on my experience with GBA hacking, this would be trivially easy to do. As hard mode is already a flag you can turn on or off in those games (though utilized) and most hard mode features are either a stat wide increase to every enemy (hence how hard mode bonuses become a thing) or a flag to check if hard mode (or the tutorial) is currently on and then loading new or different enemies as a result. So basically it's all based on a single flag that can easily be toggled on or off. Doing that on the fly wouldn't be hard at all and now that you've brought it up it sounds like it'd be a great choice for Fire Emblem.

[Alastor15243]

  

13 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I wonder if difficulty level has anything to do with that. I think that I played through Shadow Dragon on Normal, because I'm not normally an ironman player but wanted to make an exception for Shadow Dragon given how much it's pushed there, and was wary of over-taxing myself. I probably would have been better served by a harder difficulty level, though, that would have kept me more engaged. I definitely played at something below H3, because there is absolutely no way I'd have sat through the early-game boss nonsense. I'd assume that the higher the difficulty level, the longer it takes to clear each level, whereas the time doing errands with Marth probably stays fairly constant.

Interesting thought! Yeah, I suppose it would really help if you're playing at a difficulty level where you can't go on auto-pilot and start just wanting things to be over.

As an aside, I've actually found the first three bosses taking less time with repeats. This time I discovered that Ogma is a way better user of the killing edge than Navarre for fighting Hyman, since he has more strength and can wield it without being doubled and does more damage.

13 minutes ago, lenticular said:

And as I read back what I wrote, I realise it also ties into what you were saying about the existence of casual mode. Casual mode isn't at all appealing to me, but I'm generally a reset-when-anyone-dies sort of player, and I kinda did exactly what you were talking about by being more scared of permadeath than I actually should have been and making the game worse for myself as a result. It's not the same as people who play on casual and complete every level trivially by throwing bodies at it, but I do think it's related. So my wish for Fire Emblem difficulty is this: it should always be possible to change between difficulty levels in the middle of a run. I'm sure it would introduce a few weirdnesses here and there, but I doubt it would be anything too serious. I definitly think it would be worth it, though. I'd be more eager to try harder difficulties if I didn't fear being locked into something too hard and having to restart halfway through.

I honestly don't think there's any shame in resetting when somebody you wanted to use dies. What I was saying was more that, whether you reset or not, the fact that you have to keep them alive if you want to keep using them is a crucial element of determining what strategies are valid or invalid. Resetting when someone dies may be a self-imposed fail state, but it's a fail state nonetheless for many players, and a perfectly acceptable thing to balance difficulty around. Meanwhile, a lot of the time, losing on casual mode is almost an achievement in and of itself.

2 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I think class growths remained the same between games. Each class gives a net (meaning including the Mag & Res negatives most physical classes get and the Str & Def negatives magic classes have) growths boost between 95 (Mage, Curate/Cleric) and 145 (Fighter/Warrior, Pirate/Berserker)

Well hopefully the fact that growth rates are generally higher means that this won't make characters quite as lopsided in classes other than their starting ones.

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well the other option aside from axing it entirely would be to unify things and actually put the castle there in Book 1. Which could you imagine how intriguing that would be for players who played the NES version. They'd all be like "Huh, I don't remember there being a castle there on this map. Why did they add that? Are there going to be enemies attacking me from behind? Huh, no. That's sort of weird. I wonder why they added a castle." *Half a game later* "Oh wow, so that's why they added that castle!" Really even if they never had any plans to remake Mystery of the Emblem, they could have at least put a fortress there in Shadow Dragon in reference to the castle. Also having a look at the two maps now (in their DS incarnations), it looks like the northern headland extends further west in Shadow Dragon...which is really weird as that's the version without a castle, so there's just way more empty space...which they later replaced with ocean. Seems kind of pointless. Maybe the tide is in during New Mystery or something.

Yeah, I agree that would've been a good idea. FE11 remake seems aggressively faithful to the original version of FE1 in every respect other than the player phase map theme for some inexplicable reason.

[Jotari]

4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

  

Interesting thought! Yeah, I suppose it would really help if you're playing at a difficulty level where you can't go on auto-pilot and start just wanting things to be over.

As an aside, I've actually found the first three bosses taking less time with repeats. This time I discovered that Ogma is a way better user of the killing edge than Navarre for fighting Hyman, since he has more strength and can wield it without being doubled and does more damage.

I honestly don't think there's any shame in resetting when somebody you wanted to use dies. What I was saying was more that, whether you reset or not, the fact that you have to keep them alive if you want to keep using them is a crucial element of determining what strategies are valid or invalid. Resetting when someone dies may be a self-imposed fail state, but it's a fail state nonetheless for many players, and a perfectly acceptable thing to balance difficulty around. Meanwhile, a lot of the time, losing on casual mode is almost an achievement in and of itself.

Well hopefully the fact that growth rates are generally higher means that this won't make characters quite as lopsided in classes other than their starting ones.

Yeah, I agree that would've been a good idea. FE11 remake seems aggressively faithful to the original version of FE1 in every respect other than the player phase map theme for some inexplicable reason.

Well at least they didn't go so far as to make half the classes unable to promote.

10 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Radd and Caesar should be better, but most units (Sedgar, Wolf, Caeda, Wendel, Lena, Maria, Elice, and Jake and Beck are exceptions that come to mind) should be better in New Mystery than Shadow Dragon. Everyone, looking at this data, got a significant boost in their total growths.:

SD:

  Reveal hidden contents

SD Personal Growth Rate Totals: (includes negatives)

Marth: 222 Frey: 195 Abel: 155 Cain: 175 Jagen: 70

Gordin: 120 Draug: 100 Norne: 125 Caeda: 195 Wrys: 80

Ogma: 135 Barst: 100 Bord: 100 Cord: 115 Darros: 100

Castor: 100 Julian: 237 Lena: 100 Navarre: 155 Merric: 180

Matthis: 140 Hardin: 140 Wolf: 435 Sedgar: 435 Roshea: 125

Vyland: 100 Wendell: 80 Rickard: 227 Athena: 120 Bantu: -15

Caesar: 130 Radd: 150 Roger: 150 Jeorge: 80 Maria: 110

Minerva: 125 Linde: 145 Jake: 105 Midia: 140 Dolph: 105

Macellan: 85 Tomas: 105 Boah: 20 Horace: 70 Beck: 110

Astram: 140 Palla: 160 Catria: 225 Arran: 130 Samson: 105

Xane: 47 Etzel: 105 Est: 190 Tiki: 292 Lorenz: 160 Ymir: 85

Elice: 225 Nagi: 292 Gotoh: 200

NM:

  Reveal hidden contents

NM Personal Growth Rate Totals:

Marth: 305 Luke: 235 Rody: 260 Cecil: 265 Gordin: 170

Ryan: 235 Draug: 200 Arran: 10 Malliesia: 195 Catria: 295

Warren: 215 Cord: 190 Linde: 260 Palla: 225 Bord: 175

Julian: 305 Matthis: 195 Wrys: 140 Ogma: 240 Yumina: 200

Yubello: 200 Sirius: 295 Castor: 175 Caeda: 295 Barst: 195

Rickard: 185 Frey: 270 Norne: 200 Samto: 160 Wendell: 150

Caesar: 190 Radd: 195 Navarre: 250 Feena: 295 Cain: 280

Bantu: -5 Roger: 240 Jeorge: 190 Minerva: 240 Etzel: 255

Merric: 260 Ellerean: 200 Dice: 160 Maris: 210 Horace: 260

Jake: 320 Darros: 180 Robert: 235 Belf: 190 Leiden: 200

Beck: 235 Athena: 250 Xane: 125 Tiki: 305 Est: 325

Dolph: 205 Abel: 265 Macellan: 280 Astram: 205 

Katarina: 310 Tomas: 260 Sheema: 290 Samson: 190 

Frost: 295 Roshea: 275 Vyland: 245 Sedgar: 280 Wolf: 285

Midia: 230 Ymir: 195 Michalis: 240 Nagi: 305 Lena: 175

Maria: 185 Nyna: 190 Elice: 280

I think class growths remained the same between games. Each class gives a net (meaning including the Mag & Res negatives most physical classes get and the Str & Def negatives magic classes have) growths boost between 95 (Mage, Curate/Cleric) and 145 (Fighter/Warrior, Pirate/Berserker)

Oh gee golly. It'd be really convenient if someone just recently made a calculator designed to compare the relative stats of units between games, adjusted for inflation. Oh wait! I did exactly that!

So let's have a look at Radd and Caesar.

Radd's 20/20 stats on a series average

HP

Str

Mag

Skl

Spd

Lck

Def

Res

Shadow Dragon

64

30

0

29

33

18

19

7

New Mystery

55

29

0

29

32

19

16

10

So as a result of the stat inflation we can see he's actually quite a bit better in Shadow Dragon with the only stat from New Mystery winning out is his pitiful RES.

Now let's see how Caesar measures up.

64

30

0

29

33

18

19

7

60

30

0

30

28

17

20

6

Once again better in Shadow Dragon, though a bit more comparable. The only thing he's really losing out on his speed compared to his three years ago self. He even has more defense which should be useful. All in all it seems both of these characters became worse in the sequel due to the stat inflation not inflating them enough.

 

[Alastor15243]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Speaking of paralogues, you never did read over the scripts of the missed paralogues in Shadow Dragon, did you?

I did not. I'll have to check those out sometime, but due to how hidden away they are, I don't think they'd affect my ranking anyway.

[Alastor15243]

New Mystery Day 2: Prologues III-IV

Okay! Let's keep going then!

Oh man, Cain looks cool aged up three years! You can see a big difference!

...And it's only now, as I remark on this, that I notice how fucking weirdly everyone's ears appear to be shaped. They're weirdly completely flat at the back, looking kinda elf-like.

Huh. Cain said something that implied I could have gotten someone other than Caeda here if my “ability” were lower or higher. Wonder what that's all about.

...Okay, this is kind of intimidating. These enemies are strong enough that all three of them can kill basically anyone in my army, including Dakota. Now, I can limit enemy facings with proper formation, but that still means that if anyone gets a crit (and Dakota has a 7% chance of that), someone dies. And once again, I can't go on the offensive, because then I'll be getting in to Caeda's range and I don't know if her AI's any different from Rody's aaaaaaaaaaaaand my keyboard made me press A twice and attack when I was just trying to test combat damage.

No, fuck it, I'm not letting that count. My computer's been wonky and weird for ages, and normal DSes aren't like that. I'm restarting (thankfully I didn't actually make any decisions that had to be repeated with possibly varying RNG) and from here on out I'm going to be playing this game exclusively using my usb Nintendo 64 controller.

Alright. We're gonna have to go on the defensive. The enemies seem to prioritize the damage they can do, so I'm gonna put Luke on the northern fort, Dakota to the space immediately southeast of him, Rody on the space immediately east of that, and then Ryan on the space immediately, if you'll forgive the pun, north of Dakota. This should ensure that nobody has more than two enemy facings in range of the enemy, and Dakota is, along with Rody, the most tempting target. With any luck, one of the enemies who can attack either Rody or Dakota will go for Dakota, and thus get doubled and be put near enough to death to be taken down next turn. If not... we'll have to improvise.

Shit, I hate when I do something genius and can't take credit for it because the genius part didn't occur to me. Of course one of those two enemies who could attack Dakota or Rody was gonna prioritize Dakota! Rody has a lance, and the mercenary has a sword! Duh! Anyway, that means two enemies attacked Dakota (since one could only attack Dakota or Luke) and were prime for being picked off damage-free by Luke and Ryan, leaving only one of the three starting enemies left and both of my injured units free to heal up with vulneraries.

Alright, last enemy's been finished off, but Caeda ain't moving, so I'm gonna take the opportunity to heal up before facing her.

Huh. So Caeda's dialogue with your avatar changes apparently depending on what class you picked. But I'm guessing it's just “You're a [class], aren't you? Tee hee. This looks promising. Come, show me what you can do with your [weapon]!”

At any rate, Ryan shoots her down, gains nothing but luck, and we're done here.

So apparently the standards of the Altean knights are so amazingly lax that they not only allow for self-admitted incompetents to freeload on the success of their teammates, but they also just let random strangers help you out during your training exercises.

I'm starting to understand why Altea keeps getting invaded.

Okay, does Katarina actually do shit on normal mode? Is she the tutorial? Because on hard mode she seems to be literally completely useless right now, and it's kind of ridiculous. She's doing nothing. She's not fighting, she's not leading, she's just living in our barracks and watching the exercises from the sidelines, and literally nobody gives a shit.

Anyway, on to Prologue IV, and Luke starts moaning about his cleric fetish, and honestly, this is pretty funny. Luke talks about healers to Dakota and he's like “Yeah, okay, a healer would be pretty useful”, and then Katarina comes in and tells everyone that they actually are getting a healer, and Luke runs off to meet our new heal-y friend...

...And to Luke's near catatonic disappointment... it's Wrys.

Just looking at Luke's expression when Wrys introduces himself, it's priceless.

Also, Wrys is repeating a lot of his Shadow Dragon introduction, and I have to wonder if that was the fan translators faithfully repeating repeated text, or if they just did it for the memes.

Oh, and now we're facing off with Jeorge the sniper, and he actually mentions his relationship with Gordin as his instructor now. Gee, that's nice of the game to give some semblance of a hint about how he can be recruited this time!

Anyway, yet again we're dealing with a tiny, tiny map with a bunch of enemies in inescapable range of our starting location and covered by enemies we really don't want to immediately aggro. But this time we have walls, so I'm just gonna have Dakota soften these guys up while positioning Wrys to heal him and Ryan to snipe whatever enemy attacks from the east with his bow. All the while praying that Dakota doesn't crit and ruin everything, which really pisses me off about this opening from an ironmanning perspective.

And right on cue, Dakota shows off the fancy new crit flash and kills an enemy. Thankfully not the one on the space the remaining enemy was in range of though.

And now Dakota got a pretty mediocre level up that nevertheless made him strong enough to start one-rounding these enemies, which is... not good for his walling prospects.

And Jeorge has a crit rate on us. Seriously, this game is doing a really shitty job of making this ironman-friendly.

...Oh right, I can just surround the fucker with ease because he ended his turn against a wall.

Luke got basically everything I could ask him for but defense, which is great.

And Dakota gets a second mediocre level up, just HP, strength and luck. Damn it. Now he's officially below his averages on defense and speed I'm pretty sure.

I seem to remember something about you being able to choose between this fight and a fight with Athena. Is it really just totally random, or is there something like those FE7 splits used to determine it?

And apparently getting no casualties is enough to place us first among all the platoons.

So Dakota comments on the size of the castle compared to his house in his home town. Given that I chose rich kid, I would've expected some kind of comment about how it puts even his house to shame or something.

Anyway, I like the music that plays when Elice shows up. And basically she gives me this long-winded speech that essentially boils down to “Please protect Marth's smile”.

...And we're done.

Christ, we're going through these really fast... and I really want to save Prologue VIII for Halloween.

Okay, here's what we're going to do.

Let's spice things up with some of the Archanea Chronicles DLC maps!

 

Day 2 Bonus: Archanea War Chronicles 1

Okay, so first, let's do the Fall of Archanea.

Oh my god.

Oh fuck you, game.

This is exactly the same thing as what happens in Sacred Stones' opening. Do you mean to tell me that Sacred Stones copied the BS games?

Basically, Nyna refuses to leave the castle and insists on dying with her father, so some of her knights drag her away screaming, and then in the next scene, we have Boah apologizing for having her grabbed so “rudely” and Nyna's all “not at all, I was behaving like a spoiled child” like none of that grief just happened, holy shit. That's almost literally how the exchange went with Eirika.

But anyway, we're basically defending ourselves against an onslaught of enemies with the Archanea Castle prisoner gang, plus Nyna.

Weirdly, the command menu for using the rescue staff is “special”, not “staff”. Wonder what's going on here. I didn't notice that with healing staves...

Rather embarrassingly I repeated that fuck-up from FE6 and FE9 where I accidentally pressed A and up at the same time on the wrong spot and accidentally selected “end turn” prematurely.

6, 9, 12. I'm noticing a pattern here. If I do it again in Echoes, I am going to be quite pissed.

But thankfully I had already moved everyone who needed to be moved.

Yeah, for normal healing staves the command is indeed “staff”. For some reason the rescue staff is given a completely separate command label from other staves, despite it also being a staff. Not sure what's going on there.

Yeah, right now we're just walling things off with our knights as a huge horde of enemies comes at us. The enemies are really weak, but we're massively outnumbered. I don't think I really like this map design, but I have to wait and see what happens once we're properly turtled up like the game suggested.

I'm wondering if this was really the original map design. I mean, it's kind of interesting seeing a map deliberately designed around turtling, but the enemy phases are just so long and so uneventful.

...Alright, we've nearly worked our way through the enemies.

Now, if I understand correctly, while all this shit is going on, we would've been treated to a radio play of sorts, with all of the characters talking or something. Is that correct? And that the game doesn't actually end until that radio play is over, and you're just trying to survive?

If so, that would really explain why this map's main priority seems to be stalling for time rather than being fun.

…

...The boss is actually honestly named Gouber.

I understand there were events of characters joining your team once certain amounts of time passed in the original Satellaview version of this map. Well I've beaten all the enemies who were charging my location (at a fucking snail's pace), and I'm at the boss area now, and... nobody's joining us.

Alright, and upon killing the boss, we're done.

More reinforcements arrive to fuck us over in a cutscene, and then... who should show up but Camus.

Holy shit. Apparently Camus killed Midia's parents and she's never brought that up before. Christ, now I'm tempted to give her my forged ridersbane in my H4 replay and give her a shot at bringing him down.

Okay, so, this is so badass as to flip right around to comical. In a dialogue scene, Midia charges at an unarmed Camus going “Diiiiiieeee!” and then Camus just... apparently just subdues her with ease. While unarmed. This guy just subdued a mounted fucking knight without a weapon, and possibly without a horse.

...Actually, I'm not sure whether taking down a paladin unarmed would be less or more difficult on horseback.

But anyway, what I like to imagine just happened (because the game gives you absolutely no clue to how he accomplished this) is that he grabbed the non-pointy part of the lance as it was being thrust at him, yanked it out of Midia's grip, then held it upside down like a baseball bat and swung it dead-on at Midia's head.

Shit. So, it looks like the text wrap for this fan translation is just busted regardless of whether or not Dakota's involved.

Yeah, honestly, reading this scene... I don't think I like Camus. I know he gets better later, but at least for now, he comes across as something of a pretentious douche at points, and blames Archanea's incompetent king for the invasion and not, y'know, the people invading it.

Really, I wish there were Camuses who were more like Leon from Langrisser II. Leon isn't just a virtuous guy idiotically loyal to a horrible person. He's a virtuous guy who sides with an oppressive empire for virtuous reasons. You genuinely get the sense that he truly believes he is fighting for a worthy end goal by committing a necessary evil, that he's fully committed to doing it with as little added horror or cruelty as he possibly can. Hell, in the remakes, you even get to join him if you want, and he at least makes a case in favor of his ideology that it's feasible for a heroic protagonist to agree with.

With most Camuses, we don't really get that. We don't get much of a sense of why they believe in the rulers they are so undyingly loyal to other than loyalty for loyalty's sake.

Also, Camus appears to be intended to be written to be rather impolite and unrefined here because of where he comes from, and I have to assume that's a Japanese dialect sort of thing that was not translated properly at all. Also, it feels super weird that he's supposed to be characterized like that, because I have literally never seen him depicted as anything but a paragon of refined gentlemanhood.

I apparently scored 533 points.

Speed: 105

Funds: 150

Survival: 120

Exp: 158

I literally have no idea how good that is, except that apparently my survival rank wasn't my highest score despite nobody dying. Wonder how that works, but I have to assume this means I didn't do terribly.

But anyway... Yeah, I think that's where we should leave off for today.

Tomorrow we'll... get closer to Prologue VIII I guess, and then do some more of these things.

Even if I'm starting to get the feeling I'm really gonna hate them.

Stay safe, everyone.

Edited October 27, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

I seem to remember something about you being able to choose between this fight and a fight with Athena. Is it really just totally random, or is there something like those FE7 splits used to determine it?

Its actually tied to the somewhat random questions that you are asked in the prologue.

 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Weirdly, the command menu for using the rescue staff is “special”, not “staff”. Wonder what's going on here. I didn't notice that with healing staves...

Not entirely sure why, but the Rescue staff and a few other staves (like the fortify staff) are under this command instead of staff.

 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Yeah, right now we're just walling things off with our knights as a huge horde of enemies comes at us. The enemies are really weak, but we're massively outnumbered. I don't think I really like this map design, but I have to wait and see what happens once we're properly turtled up like the game suggested.

I'm wondering if this was really the original map design. I mean, it's kind of interesting seeing a map deliberately designed around turtling, but the enemy phases are just so long and so uneventful.

Personally I prefer to send Midia south to wipe out some of the key enemies in that direction, and then using the rescue staff to get her back into the defensive line on this map.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Shit. So, it looks like the text wrap for this fan translation is just busted regardless of whether or not Dakota's involved.

Its a shame your fan translation is having so many issues.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

I apparently scored 533 points.

Speed: 105

Funds: 150

Survival: 120

Exp: 158

I literally have no idea how good that is, except that apparently my survival rank wasn't my highest score despite nobody dying. Wonder how that works, but I have to assume this means I didn't do terribly.

Looking at my game, I have a 527 score on this map, for what that is worth. I have a similar score for the second and third map, and the last is lower (for reasons I will probably get into after you play that map).

[Jotari]

Oh nice. Splicing in Archanea saga to coordinate updates.

 

On 10/27/2020 at 2:25 AM, Alastor15243 said:

 

That said, I know that later in the prologue she reveals that she's lying, and that she can actually fight pretty damned well. But I wonder what her motivation for lying is, other than the obvious Doylist reason that it would be a massive dick move to have a playable character for the entire prologue that you could potentially be heavily using, only to turn around and take her away from you at the prologue's climax and leave you with an under-trained army.

 

Going back to this for a second, would this really have been that big a dick move? After all, this is just the prologue, even if you soloed it with Katarina and then found yourself unable to beat her in the boss fight, you lose like an hour of inconsequential gameplay. It would certainly be nowhere near as big a dick move as taking Edelgard and Hubert away from you in Three Houses (after you've made Edelgard your dancer and gave her your movement ring *grumble, grumble grumble*) and they were willing to do that. And honestly, while I'd never want them to be malicious about it, I would like to see them do something like that a little more. Prime example would be making Elice playable in a few maps near the end of Birthright before she becomes definitely not for obvious reasons. Like Katarina here, I find it odd to have a character just hanging around who could contribute but inexplicably doesn't because we can't risk the plot interfering with the gameplay. That just choreographs the plot a lot more and, while it makes the gameplay more fair, it also kind of makes it less interesting.

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Oh nice. Splicing in Archanea saga to coordinate updates.

 

Going back to this for a second, would this really have been that big a dick move? After all, this is just the prologue, even if you soloed it with Katarina and then found yourself unable to beat her in the boss fight, you lose like an hour of inconsequential gameplay. It would certainly be nowhere near as big a dick move as taking Edelgard and Hubert away from you in Three Houses (after you've made Edelgard your dancer and gave her your movement ring *grumble, grumble grumble*) and they were willing to do that. And honestly, while I'd never want them to be malicious about it, I would like to see them do something like that a little more. Prime example would be making Elice playable in a few maps near the end of Birthright before she becomes definitely not for obvious reasons. Like Katarina here, I find it odd to have a character just hanging around who could contribute but inexplicably doesn't because we can't risk the plot interfering with the gameplay. That just choreographs the plot a lot more and, while it makes the gameplay more fair, it also kind of makes it less interesting.

In fairness, IS weren't the ones who were "willing to do that" in the Edelgard example.

But I totally agree that this decision with Katarina is coming at the blatant expense of the story.

[Jotari]

18 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

In fairness, IS weren't the ones who were "willing to do that" in the Edelgard example.

What do you mean? Like how they ended up having to make a four way split thing? Even in the original plan I think it was always meant to be a split game. I don't think Edelgard was ever conceived as the villain who wasn't also a playable character for a portion of the game.

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

What do you mean? Like how they ended up having to make a four way split thing? Even in the original plan I think it was always meant to be a split game. I don't think Edelgard was ever conceived as the villain who wasn't also a playable character for a portion of the game.

Fair enough. Honestly a nice way to do stuff like that without punishing a blind player would be to have the character you lose to story reasons provide stat or level boosts to a character you get shortly after.

[Jotari]

3 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Fair enough. Honestly a nice way to do stuff like that without punishing a blind player would be to have the character you lose to story reasons provide stat or level boosts to a character you get shortly after.

Or just identical like Nils or Ninian. Honestly I care less about the stats and more about the inventory. I don't want to lose my good items because they were on the character who suddenly just died. If someone did happen to put all their exp into that one character then part of me feels they should be punished for front loading their army on a single unit. I was legitimately more salty about losing my movement ring than losing Edelgard on my blind run of three Houses (which turned out to be a Silver Snow route with no choice in the matter).

[Alastor15243]

New Mystery Day 3: Prologue V

I switched up controllers because I was an idiot and due to some weird mental compartmentalization of which computers I used which controllers for, I totally forgot I had a perfectly good standard 4-face-button twinstick controller I could easly use for this game, rather than using an n64 controller and having to do weird shit like mapping the face buttons to the C buttons and mapping start and select to A and B. Also, an issue with using n64 controllers is that I've got two types, a cheap third-party USB n64 controller, and a much more professional variation n64 controller called the Brawler64 with an adaptor plugged into the end to let it fit into a USB port. The bootleg has really stiff and shitty C buttons, but while the Brawler64 controller is way better built, it has a d pad that gives more resistance than is ideal for making single button tap movements like I often find myself doing a lot in Fire Emblem. So the Playstation-style twinstick it is!

...Eeeexcept for some reason my mac laptop doesn't recognize input from the twinstick and won't even let me map the damned controls. Looks like I'm stuck with one of the two n64 controllers. Guess I'll try out the Brawler64 controller and see if the d pad is as much of a dealbreaker for strategy games as it feels like.

Oh, this is cute. They actually gave Dakota a moment where he's an entertaining fuckup for getting everyone lost. I actually liked this scene, where Luke actually managed to play the straight man for once.

“Altean knights, lost in Altea. Sir Jagen is going to kill us...”

I dunno, he seems fine with Altean knights who can't fight.

Why no, I'm not letting that go, thanks for asking. I'm gonna rib on that every single time the game reminds me of it. Just to make sure it sinks in my own memory mostly.

Ah yes, this is our first introduction to the newly-added guild of assassins, and one of its members, Legion. Or as this patch calls him, Roro. Honestly, seeing how his dialogue was localized in Awakening and Heroes, I honestly wish I got to see a version of this character who talked like that in the original game, because it's really amusing. He does this bizarre thing where he just does not fucking know how plurals work, and he just tries to put them on random words, sometimes even putting a second layer of pluralization on words that were already plural, due to his freaky identity issues spanning from being a literal legion.

But then he runs off, sadly, so we won't fight him today.

But...

What we do get to do...

Is listen to this amazing music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK-_jv3Fnvo

Those Who Dare to Change History.

Man, a lot of the new music added in this remake is phenomenal. There's one song in particular from the original game that I don't think this OST did a good job with, but damn it, not only did they do a pretty great job with shit like Dark Emperor Hardin, but then this thing has this, Tearing Shadows, and... one more original song that long-time fans may remember I've already mentioned, but which I'd like to not bring up again until it becomes... relevant.

Anyway, we've got a new class, ruffians. Basically just bandits. These guys definitely weren't in Shadow Dragon. They don't look too tough though, but once again, these tiny maps are really being frustrating with how high everyone's movement is. Even though this time we have enough space to not be swarmed right away, I still feel like I'm stepping around landmines. I really don't like it.

But anyway, Merric shows up at the end of the turn 1 enemy phase.

...Okay, so... apparently Dakota's shade of dark greenish-blue hair is still blue enough that Merric remarks that he's got “blue hair... just like Marth's...”? Hahaha, the way he says that and then immediately says “I gather you're the commanding officer” makes it sound like it's a joke about blue-haired lords.

The ruffian strangely refused to aggro on turn 1, but then moved on turn 2.

Rody got his first level up, and it was HP, strength and skill. Pretty mediocre, but it's progress.

Anyway, I know Merric won't be with us for long, and he'll be coming back later (thankfully I know know when), but I'm still gonna use him, because I still plan to use him long-term.

Wrys got a null level up. That's fine, he just needs to be able to use staves.

Strangely, this game is using the Shadow Dragon boss theme here, and not a cover of the Book 2 SNES boss theme. I wonder if that's a prologue thing?

Anyway, update on the controls: I'm finding the Brawler64 controller perfectly usable right now. We'll see if that changes.

Dakota gets literally only two stats this time, but at least the non-HP one he gets is defense finally. Christ, I hope this isn't gonna be a pattern. His last three levels have been pretty damn mediocre.

But we'll have to find out next time, because the map's over, just like that.

Hahahaha, so Merric's lost too, and is asking Dakota for directions!

And now we meet Kleine, or as she's apparently called officially, Clarisse. I'll try to call her Clarisse, but it can be hard to remember when playing a game that uses different names. And anyway, she's one in the long and proud tradition of blond-haired archers this series seems to be littered with.

…

…

…

Fuck you, game.

Apparently Marth and Jagen are such phenomenal idiots that after directly observing the 7^th Platoon's progress, they rank Dakota as exceptional enough to become a royal guard... and Katarina along with him.

They've actually been watching Katarina do nothing, and they're so impressed by it that they want to make her part of the royal guard!

SHE HAS DELIBERATELY REFUSED TO GIVE EVEN THE SLIGHTEST INDICATION THAT SHE IS EVEN CAPABLE OF FIGHTING, AND YET SHE GETS PERSONALLY SINGLED OUT BY MARTH AND JAGEN THEMSELVES AS THE ONE ALONG WITH DAKOTA WORTHY OF JOINING THE ROYAL GUARD!

ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE MARTH AND JAGEN BOTH LOOK BATSHIT INSANE!?

And this was part of Katarina's goal all along, right? To get into the royal guard? And her plan to do this... was to pretend to be completely useless... and then pair up with some promising-looking guy, hope her first impression was right, and piggyback on him all the way into the goddamned royal guard!?

This is...

...This is the worst thing.

This is the worst plot point in the entire marathon thus far.

This is worse than the nonsense exposition of Rudolf's rant in Gaiden.

This is worse than Sacred Stones shamelessly sporting a full-on time paradox, or having Seth claim he “found out” information that just a cutscene prior he made clear he already knew.

This is worse than the herons being genocided down to five survivors by a bunch of angry peasants burning down a forest the size of Gallia.

Hell, this may be worse than some of the shit in Three Houses and Fates.

...Fuck it. I have to know now.

Does Katarina actually provide strategic advice on normal mode for the tutorial?

If she does, then this is just an extremely comically unfortunate side-effect of ill-thought-out difficulty dialogue changes.

If she doesn't...

...By the looks of it, no, she doesn't. So far all she's done in the first prologue is just tell Dakota that they should move to a space. She wasn't the one explaining anything in the tutorial, that was just game engine textboxes.

This is really terrible writing. Seriously. You can't have a character admit they can't fight, do literally nothing, and then not only pass the knight exam for the country we are supposed to be rooting for, but get nominated for the fucking royal guard.

And now there's going to be a test. And Katarina isn't going to participate. And she's still going to get elected to the position she set out to get elected to in order to assassinate Marth.

And we are supposed to be fucking engaged here.

...Christ, do I really have to keep playing now?

Yes. Yes I do. I have to keep playing.

 

Day 3 Bonus: Archanea War Chronicles 2

Oh hey, fun fact: yesterday, after learning from the previous chronicle that Camus killed Midia's parents...

...Well, I was just in time to get that far in my H4 playthrough, so I gave Midia my forged early-game ridersbane and let her have at him, and after being softened up by Jake, he went down to a solid hit this time.

Good job, Midia, your parents are avenged.

Anyway...

Time for Episode 2: Crimson Dragoon.

...Okay, no, I have to restart this. I saw something in the intro that...

...Ah, okay, so that was a girl. She looked like a boy at first glance, which made me really confused when a guy said she was his girlfriend.

Anyway, looks like Hardin and his men are teaming up with the Whitewings to take out a stronghold full of rapey bandits. Good times.

So the enemy is a guy named Ruben... why does that sound familiar in a Fire Emblem context?

Man, this is significantly tougher than the previous one. Lot of high-movement enemies and fragile combat. I wound up having to take one of my best fighters, Minerva, out of the fray because she was the only one fast enough to stop the thief from reaching the western village. After that, I very nearly lost Wolf there due to fucking up some AI prediction (minimizing ganging up by putting more fragile units in the range of individual units) because I forgot I actually killed the one cavalier I left in Est's range. But Wolf (who's a lot more fun when he's a hero, not gonna lie) hung on with 1 HP and we just barely had the resources to kill the rest of the aggressive guys. Both the villages are safe and the thief is dead, but this is bad. I'm pretty sure that bishop is gonna join us soon, but 1, until he does we have like one vulnerary, and 2, when he does that's gonna cause its own share of problems due to where he's positioned.

...Oh, looks like he doesn't join us automatically in this version, Minerva has to recruit him by talking to him. Alright, so, should I do that now when only my fliers can defend him so I can take advantage of the healing now before he can waste any more on enemies I can't finish off, or do I wait until I can get the coyote brigade across the river and through another nasty army of...

...No, fuck it, I'm recruiting him. We'll split the army in half between us by recruiting him the same turn that the cavaliers bait an archer towards the coyotes, it should be fine.

Mission accomplished. Two knights and an archer went north, everyone else went east.

Honestly, these imperfect hit rates always make me incredibly nervous, especially when they're pre-designed because you can't customize your own army yet, and especially especially when a single missed hit could spell disaster.

Fuck. One of these knights has a ridersbane. I don't think even Hardin has the bulk to take even a single shot from that, but let's see... I may need to bring Minerva over for this, which is a problem because she's busy protecting Frost, Catria and Est from the incoming cavalry and fighter reinforcements.

...Nope, Hardin can take a hit, and they've got vulneraries too so I don't even need to use Frost's physic staff. Which is good, because Minerva definitely needed it this turn.

Alright, everyone's healed up, and the reinforcements seem to be over, but we've only got two physic uses left for the final stretch, and no vulneraries. Maybe I should've done more player-phasing with javelins and bows and magic instead of having Minerva enemy-phase them, but my manpower was split so I had no choice.

...Alright, I think I can manage this. I fucked up a bit by missing a crucial javelin attack from Minerva in the hopes of staying out of another horseman's range after baiting in the first one, but it didn't kill her (hence why I took the risk) and I healed her up... decently enough. But we only have one heal left.

...Fuck, I accidentally put Wolf in range of both the sniper and the boss, and now I've baited in the boss and have to kill him without Wolf. Damn it.

I accidentally did something stupid by having Roshea fight the boss despite it making no difference to whether or not he could be finished off, but my foolishness wound up saving me because it burned the RN that would've missed if I had Hardin try to kill him first. The boss is down, and we've got three enemies left, but most of our guys are wounded and there's a fucking sniper left.

I was briefly tempted to sacrifice one of the whitewings to bait in the sniper considering how useless they'd be against the remaining knights, but then I realized that Frost could survive if the sniper didn't crit, and with his physic staff gone he hasn't got much more use for us if he dies anyway, since Minerva's all I need to take out the remaining knights.

And so Minerva wiped the floor with the remaining two knights, and I managed to complete this map with no healing left and one death.

...A death which Hardin does not acknowledge at all. He even laughs at one point when talking to Minerva, like he's in a good mood! For shame! This is a fucking one-shot! There are seven playable units! You couldn't write some conditionals for their deaths!?

Anyway,

Speed: 100

Funds: 50

Survival: 120

Exp: 160

Total: 430

I apparently got exactly as many points for survival as I got last time despite someone dying. Which makes me think it's not a percentage, but it's just a solid 20 points for every unit you keep alive.

Well, that's it for today. I'm not really a fan of fixed-deploy chapters, but at least this one was challenging this time.

But man am I still pissed about how stupid the Katarina thing is. Holy shit.

Tomorrow we'll tackle Prologue VI and Chronicle 3.

Stay safe, everyone.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Shadow Mir]

33 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Apparently Marth and Jagen are such phenomenal idiots that after directly observing the 7^th Platoon's progress, they rank Dakota as exceptional enough to become a royal guard... and Katarina along with him.

They've actually been watching Katarina do nothing, and they're so impressed by it that they want to make her part of the royal guard!

SHE HAS DELIBERATELY REFUSED TO GIVE EVEN THE SLIGHTEST INDICATION THAT SHE IS EVEN CAPABLE OF FIGHTING, AND YET SHE GETS PERSONALLY SINGLED OUT BY MARTH AND JAGEN THEMSELVES AS THE ONE ALONG WITH DAKOTA WORTHY OF JOINING THE ROYAL GUARD!

ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE MARTH AND JAGEN BOTH LOOK BATSHIT INSANE!?

And this was part of Katarina's goal all along, right? To get into the royal guard? And her plan to do this... was to pretend to be completely useless... and then pair up with some promising-looking guy, hope her first impression was right, and piggyback on him all the way into the goddamned royal guard!?

So Katarina wins by doing absolutely nothing. In Mario Party and Smash Bros., I'd be okay with that, but here? Double u tee eff.

[Eltosian Kadath]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

And this was part of Katarina's goal all along, right? To get into the royal guard? And her plan to do this... was to pretend to be completely useless... and then pair up with some promising-looking guy, hope her first impression was right, and piggyback on him all the way into the goddamned royal guard!?

I always got the impression that Katarina's plan was just to join the Altean Knights, not the royal gurds specifically, as her plan never really hinged on being placed so highly.

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I always got the impression that Katarina's plan was just to join the Altean Knights, not the royal gurds specifically, as her plan never really hinged on being placed so highly.

I'll have to keep playing to see, but even then, this was an absolutely terrible plan to get into the Altean army that required the idiocy of everyone around her to work.

[Jotari]

Legions name in Japanese is Roro;? What the? I don't remember that at all!? He's (they've?) always just been Legion to me, which is a damn appropriate name. Are there two translation patches? Or did Awakening just overwrite my memories of him? I thought I played New Mystery after playing Awakening though. Colour me confused.

[Alastor15243]

10 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Legions name in Japanese is Roro;? What the? I don't remember that at all!? He's (they've?) always just been Legion to me, which is a damn appropriate name. Are there two translation patches? Or did Awakening just overwrite my memories of him? I thought I played New Mystery after playing Awakening though. Colour me confused.

Is there a more up to date translation I'm not using then? If so, would you guys rather I use it even if it means getting a reroll on my stats?

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

Is there a more up to date translation I'm not using then? If so, would you guys rather I use it even if it means getting a reroll on my stats?

That's what I'm questioning. Probably not though. If someone went and retranslated it or changed the names it probably would have been available in the same place you found this one (presumably Serenes) unless you've had this patch hanging around on your computer for the past ten years. My mind probably just overwrote Roro with the preferred localised name.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That's what I'm questioning. Probably not though. If someone went and retranslated it or changed the names it probably would have been available in the same place you found this one (presumably Serenes) unless you've had this patch hanging around on your computer for the past ten years. My mind probably just overwrote Roro with the preferred localised name.

I actually don't remember how or when I got my hands on this patched rom, only that this isn't the exact download I originally played 10 years ago because that was on a different computer. I just had it already for some reason. Guess I tried to play it again and gave up for some reason.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

18 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Legions name in Japanese is Roro;? What the? I don't remember that at all!? He's (they've?) always just been Legion to me, which is a damn appropriate name. Are there two translation patches? Or did Awakening just overwrite my memories of him? I thought I played New Mystery after playing Awakening though. Colour me confused.

According to the SF name chart, it always has been:

ローロー

Rōrō

Roro

Roro

Why did NoA change it to Legion? Don't know. Did Roro sound too barbaric? But BerserkerCloneMan is a barbarian in behavior. Legion was a great choice for a new name, though they should've called him Lolo.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

According to the SF name chart, it always has been:

ローロー

Rōrō

Roro

Roro

Why did NoA change it to Legion? Don't know. Did Roro sound too barbaric? But BerserkerCloneMan is a barbarian in behavior. Legion was a great choice for a new name, though they should've called him Lolo.

I don't dispute that his name was every anything other than Roro in Japanese, just why I think of him as Legion if the only real exposure I've had to him was as Roro. Roro or Lolo both sound far too silly in English to me. It sounds like the name you'd give a dog or something. The short repeating syllables just don't sound appropriately menacing. It's like the kind of name a villain in a comedy would get with the joke being that they they have a cutesy name.

[Alastor15243]

New Mystery Day 4: Prologue VI

Alright, let's keep going I guess. Time for the ongoing adventures of Dakota Waterstone Vendelgate of Altea and the girl who's simultaneously the dumbest and luckiest assassin alive.

Anyway, Luke does more ranting about his complete failure to get girls, and really, I think this is the part of the series where this archetype... starts to annoy me. Before it was funny, but from here on out most of the iterations of this archetype are just kinda pathetic losers who are trying too hard and too wrapped up in their failings compared to the previous ones. At least I think that's why these later versions bother me.

I mean seriously Luke, why are you taking this shit from Katarina? She's a fucking freeloader! Tell her you're a more valuable asset to this army than she is! Even you deserve the dignity of admitting that!

Three months have apparently passed. That's a bizarre amount of time to let pass in chapters that are this astonishingly short, but okay, gotcha, 3 months have passed and you've still let Katarina sit out on all of the training.

AND RIGHT ON FUCKING CUE:

Jagen: During this time, I've witnessed many a platoon desert because they couldn't stomach the harsh training.

Harsh training that is apparently optional.

Ah, nice! Frey's shown up! Which reminds me that we actually get to use him in this game! Amusingly enough, since we've seen Cain and Frey so far, I wonder if anyone playing this for the first time thought that meant that Abel was being retconned as the canon sacrifice?

I wonder if cavs will have an easier time doubling in this game. One of my complaints with Shadow Dragon is probably that doubling requirements are generally so uniform and hard to reach that anyone who isn't a swordmaster or hero just flat-out won't be doubling anything.

Oh sweet! We get the battle preparations menu!

Which means we finally get to hear it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcS4vHwlW0M

Before Battle.

The first time in the entire series where the preparation music... starts to fucking slap.

And it's not gonna stop from here on out, lemme tell ya.

While the really awesome part doesn't happen until the second loop, everything up to that is just such a catchy and intense buildup. Hell, for the first time ever, I've turned off “pause emulation in the background” just so I can hear this uninterrupted while I type this up! Because I imagine I'll be doing that a lot while going through some of the stuff here.

Oh god. Here it comes. The breakdown. Just as I finish typing this sentence.

Let's go.

(One in-chair dance session later)

Alright, let's actually get to preparing. I hope this means the fight will actually be interesting enough to warrant it.

Nooooooope. Five enemies on a map that fits exactly onto the screen. Gotcha. So yet again we're playing Fire Emblem Heroes but without the nerfed movement. Sure.

Although, they only let us bring five units of our own, so we've gotta start making cuts.

Hm... is this when we get Cecil? I don't really like her as a character, but we don't have much time for her to really cement herself as “part” of the 7^th Platoon before things go to shit, so I'm hoping she joins soon. Honestly, they should've just had her be part of the 7^th Platoon from the start, as Ryan's partner or something.

...Also I just realized the implications of saying I don't like her as a character.

Dakota's a Gary Stu.

Katarina's an assassin roleplaying as a useless freeloader and never getting called out.

Luke's a pathetic girl-obsessed tryhard.

Rody and Ryan barely have any personality at all beyond “responsible” and “responsible and also shy”.

Add in me not liking Cecil (for reasons I'll explain when she actually shows up and starts demonstrating the qualities) and that means I literally do not give a shit about a single member of the 7^th Platoon.

Le sigh.

...Interestingly, they let me position Dakota. Interesting. I mean I guess he's not the lord, but I remember Robin being a fixed-location unit at least sometimes.

Alright, I see the conversation that gets us a “new platoon member”, and it's labeled two stars. I'm reading one labeled three stars, and it better be pretty goddamned important.

...It was just a recap of the previous game, specifically explaining what the Fire Emblem is.

We didn't get a character. We didn't get an item. We didn't even get strategic advice.

This would have been a one star conversation in the Tellius games.

Did they invert the star system or something? Why is this shit three stars when a new character is two stars?

Fuck it, let's get the new character.

Ah okay, so Cecil's joining from another platoon. Is this one of the ones that crashed and burned and like she was one of the only competent members?

...Also this version calls her Cecille, which makes way more sense as a girl's name than Cecil, but apparently no, her canon name is Cecil.

And yep, that's exactly what happened. Her entire platoon deserted and she still wants to be a knight, so she's joining up with us.

Also, Katarina talks about using some “secret connections” to get us some weapons. I'm pretty sure I know what those “secret connections” are, but I wonder what she gains by using them for our benefit. Is it to help us get into the royal guard because that would be more advantageous for her, even if it might not have been her original intention?

...And are we allowed to use other weapons? It feels like the Altean knights are just completely apathetic about all manner of methods of cheating. Plus, just wanted to point, out now that I just realized it, that we aren't even fighting with training weapons, but somehow magically we're not killing anyone.

Alright, so Dakota talks to Jagen about being a noble who left “the castle” due to family circumstances. And Jagen reveals that apparently Dakota's “grandfather” (I think this game is implying he's not related by blood) Maclir was an old friend of Jagen's. And Dakota reveals that now he's apparently dead.

...Huh. Okay, so none of those conversations got us anything at the moment. Cecil hasn't joined us. So... three and two star conversations don't seem to get you anything. Do the stars go higher than three or something? This makes shockingly little sense, especially when the star system in Tellius was so blindingly easy to understand.

I'll be honest: I'm starting to really fucking hate these tiny maps. They're so tiny that at times you can practically be attacked by every enemy on the map at once if you don't retreat as far back as you can go from the moment you start, and even then you'll still probably be in range of like half of them.

Alright, I'll be deploying Dakota, Rody, Luke, Caeda and Merric. My five units who can actually fight in melee range. We'll let the soldiers come to us, counterattack them, kill them on player phase, and then deal with the archer, the mage, and Draug.

God these tiny maps are the worst idea ever with Archanean movement ranges.

Oh, also, just confirming: like Shadow Dragon, this game lets you highlight individual enemy unit ranges on the prep screen. Not much of a reason to mention this, honestly. That's been the case for every game since individual enemy range highlighting has been a thing after all, and it's not like there's any game that doesn't do it!

 

COUGH COUGH COUGH            COUGH                COUGH

                             COUGH             COUGH                COUGH

COUGH COUGH COUGH             COUGH COUGH COUGH

                             COUGH             COUGH                COUGH

COUGH COUGH COUGH             COUGH                COUGH

 

...Man, maybe I should get a cough drop.

Alright, let's go.

...Huh. So Cecil is a redhead? I could've sworn I remembered her having purple hair.

...Yep, just checked, she originally had purple hair.

Meanwhile her map sprite gives her pink hair. Well, at least they change the map sprites based on character hair color this time, even if they don't get it quite right.

...Ah yeah, and apparently she brought some stronger weapons. So either this would've happened regardless, or that 2 star conversation did result in a character and multiple items. Wow.

Anyway, honestly, I wish they did this during prep so I could actually plan around this.

I do some mildly-complicated transferring to get the fancy new gear to Luke, Rody and Dakota, and get everyone positioned so only the soldiers can attack them.

...Which reminds me, I don't think we even saw soldiers after the prologue in the original game. I hope they're a bit more willing to add in new classes to pre-existing maps in this game. I don't want the final chapters to be berserker, dark mage and Manakete city again.

Anyway, Luke and Cecil wound up being the ones attacked, so I have them heal up while Dakota and Merric finish the soldiers off in a single hit each.

An entire self-writing support conversation could've happened just by the mere event of having me command Cecil to ride over and ask to borrow a vulnerary from Luke.

Yeah, that went as well as I expected. No issues there, and now the map's already over after a couple of turns.

And yet again we have an instructor being amazed that he fell to Dakota and offering to join his ranks to fight the next instructor, who will inevitably also be amazed that he got defeated by a guy that that keeps recruiting the instructors he beats like he's Alucard absorbing the souls of his fallen foes.

Dear fucking god! Is this the same writing team!? Is this the team from Shadow Dragon that I wished in my profound naivete had been allowed to write more original material!?

Ugh. Alright, let's see the ending...

...Okay, so, based on Katarina's comments that she feels that together, she and Dakota would be an unstoppable team as royal guards, the writers really seem to be under the impression that they've made it look like Katarina's contributing to the team. It feels like they thought they just had to say that Katarina was a tactician and then just let us assume the rest without actually showing her doing anything of value, or indeed having her be the character canonically doing any of the actual tactical decision-making. Honestly, this was the chapter that showed her doing the most of active value to the team, and even here she was acting more like a manager than a tactician.

Alright. Let's get the second part of today over with.

I really don't want to do this today.

...Maybe stalling to get Prologue VIII on Halloween was a mistake. But I can't exactly back out now. I've gotta do all of these sometime, and it'd be a massive pain if they weren't all in one place.

 

Day 4 Bonus: Archanea War Chronicles 3

Alright, here's Episode 3: Thieves of Justice.

Huh. So Rickard and Lena, huh? I have to assume Julian's gonna show up. They seem to be raiding the royal palace for some reason. Lena doesn't seem to like it but feels she needs to to help the poor.

Ah yes, now Lena's being attacked, and this is where, I assume, someone shows up to save her. Probably Julian.

Nope! It's Navarre! Interesting! So they gave him a history with Lena, huh? I didn't realize that. Though I have vague memories of the Fire Emblem OVA going over something similar...

Anyway, Navarre agrees to help them raid the palace, and... apparently Castor's coming too?

The fan translators apparently gave Castor an accent where he goes “me” instead of “my”, which I'm pretty sure he didn't do in the original Shadow Dragon, so I wonder what the change was for.

Weird that a lot of the music used here seems to be a quirky, goofy variation of “Holy War”. I'm pretty sure that leitmotif wasn't used in anything bright or cheerful before this remake, so I wonder why they chose that theme of all things to make all wacky?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Rickard: C-c'mon, Navarre! Whadya think I'm gonna do? Run off with all the treasure?

Navarre: Yes, exactly.

I would've translated it as literally just “Yes”, but it's still really funny how blunt he is.

Wow, Rickard is just... a pathetic and manipulative and childish guy. It's hilarious but also kind of insulting that Lena just buys the schtick so easily.

I like how this is more of a heist episode though. Actually, this is making me wish that some fans got together and made some fan-dubbed radio plays out of the Satellaview audio.

...Hooooooly shit is that a lot of treasure chests. So many that they can't possibly expect us to loot them all. So are we just racing against these thieves to loot as much as we can? And why are these thieves apparently in the good graces of the Dolhrian occupation army?

...I guess I should keep playing to find out.

...I do not find out. There are just a shitton of red thieves adjacent to us, along with...

...Some guys with portraits, including...

...Malice!?

Oh shit! I remember her! Yeah, she was a character who was introduced in the Satellaview games but was then added I think to this remake in the game proper! But while she was the first female mercenary in the original... in this version she's just a myrmidon. Shaaaame.

Also this game is calling her Maris, which again, makes much more sense as a woman's name, but, also again, is apparently not her canon localized name.

And...

And...

Holy shit does this map look annoying and complicated. I have a myrmidon, a cleric, a thief and a hunter against enemies who are literally nothing but armor knights and thieves, there's an armor slayer that I can only realistically get by warping someone in to kill the thief since he doesn't seem recruitable...

...and according to the wiki, there are reinforcements that start endlessly showing up... on turns 21 and 36.

Is it supposed to be remotely normal for this map to take that long!?

No, sorry, no, I'm not fucking doing this today, I'm so sorry, but this looks like total garbage. This does not look like even the tiniest fucking shred of fun. It looks long, it looks complicated, and it looks boring as shit.

I'm sorry, but I am fucking out.

Stay safe, everyone.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Alastor15243