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

[Vicious Sal]

 

 

I think part of the issue you’re having is that when I look at uour SD turncounts and the events you trigger here, you’re playing incredibly reserved and EP focused until the game forces you to play PP. 

It might not do it in the best way, but this game for me brings me my enjoyment because of it’s blisteringly fast pace that you can have when playing through chapters. A kill or be killed vibe. EP tactics were how I started playing this game for the first time and I only really started enjoying the game when I set my mental to PP.

 

Edit; Was looking up my TC for these chapters and Chapter 5 I did in 7 turns and chapter 6 in 8 turns.

I once plotted a min TC run excl the prologue, and I waa able to set the game to 93 turns in a draft mode, which I remember gave me an incredible rush as I was playing through it.

Edited November 10, 2020 by Vicious Sal

[Alastor15243]

12 minutes ago, Vicious Sal said:

 

 

I think part of the issue you’re having is that when I look at uour SD turncounts and the events you trigger here, you’re playing incredibly reserved and EP focused until the game forces you to play PP. 

It might not do it in the best way, but this game for me brings me my enjoyment because of it’s blisteringly fast pace that you can have when playing through chapters. A kill or be killed vibe. EP tactics were how I started playing this game for the first time and I only really started enjoying the game when I set my mental to PP.

 

Edit; Was looking up my TC for these chapters and Chapter 5 I did in 7 turns and chapter 6 in 8 turns.

I once plotted a min TC run excl the prologue, and I waa able to set the game to 93 turns in a draft mode, which I remember gave me an incredible rush as I was playing through it.

I find this incredibly surprising to hear, because the game has been practically training me to turtle since the second prologue. So, so many enemy setups seem specifically designed to punish player-phase combat and make it incredibly unwise. Especially these last two maps that have had enemies deliberately refuse to move until you get in deep enough that they could kill anyone but the avatar... and then bottleneck you to make sure you can't bring enough guys in to leap in and take the fight to them first.

[Jotari]

You go inside the Fane of Raman in Trust. Which is an indoor chapter right before Camus. So maybe they didn't want to place two indoor chapters so close to each other. Though they do do that in end game. Macedonia doesn't have any indoor chapter either, but I really have no complaints there as the whole wyvern thing supports outdoor battle better anyway. On fact I think Macedonia doesn't have any indoor maps period unless one of the ones you did this week is indoor. I remember the map with the ballista and the bridge has a large castle you seize but I do t think there's an indoor map after it. If there's not then the only indoor Macedonian maps in the series is the end game here which isn't even in Macedon proper.

[Eltosian Kadath]

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Man, I just do not have the deployment slots to field everyone I want to. Shadow Dragon has thoroughly spoiled me. Looks like I'm not bringing any of the axeboi trio with me today.

That is a shame. Fun fact, base level Bord with a Hammer can one shot Lang with the Axe boy triangle attack on every difficulty (even Lunatic Reverse...)

 

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Ugh. Yet again the enemies are refusing to move when baited in. On the other hand, this makes them harder to cheese, but given the terrain being so unfriendly to player-phase action, this means I have to send in Dakota again, which isn't exactly “peak strategy”.

Yep. There was no way anyone but Dakota would have survived that enemy phase. Especially with that elfire bishop. And now the whole group's charging, so now I can player-phase this shit after I retreat a bit.

I wonder if it would have been better to play on a higher difficulty where you can't bait the enemy with a single character, and need to build a defensive line in enemy range to limit the number of the enemies that can target a single ally (then again I have noted you mentioning clever positioning being used to accomplish that in at least one of the earlier chapters)

 

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Now I've basically gotta set up a conga line of one-rounds in order to get everyone out of here alive, because the bishops decided to heal instead of attack this turn even though they chose to attack instead of heal last time. I've gotta make sure that I pierce deep enough into this hallway of knights that at least one of those bishops is dead by the end of this turn. Thank goodness for Luke's armorslayer, Linde's aura, and Caeda's wing spear.

Awesome, everything worked out fine. That was pretty intense though.

I think this captures a big part of what I like about this game. Your units can't survive well enough to simply enemy phase without thinking, and the enemy has AI and positioning that you can't just jump into a player phase either, you have to use both to overcome the challenges in this game.

 

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

We also found Libra, which is just... +2 to luck. Yawn. Well we need it to get the good ending, so I'm glad I remembered the chests.

+2 crit avoid you can move onto whomever you want is kinda nice when ironmanning.

 

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

This is the chapter that made me ragequit in college and never play it again.

Well then...

...Tune in tomorrow as I try to piece together my memories of why!

Stay safe, everyone!

Oof... Yeah unless you don't care about killing Radd and Caesar this map can be extremely annoying. Just in case this map gets close to ending this again I think I will leave a summary of my 1 turn strat for this map in the spoiler box below

Spoiler

If your two best potential flyers can kill Roro together, you can then take out one of the fighters blocking the north-eastern bridge, get someone to block the tile he was on, so when a staff bot on said bridge uses the  rescue staff on Marth he will be put close enough to seize.

 

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I find this incredibly surprising to hear, because the game has been practically training me to turtle since the second prologue. So, so many enemy setups seem specifically designed to punish player-phase combat and make it incredibly unwise. Especially these last two maps that have had enemies deliberately refuse to move until you get in deep enough that they could kill anyone but the avatar... and then bottleneck you to make sure you can't bring enough guys in to leap in and take the fight to them first.

The next couple chapters may be a trial by fire then, as you have to really rush to get the treasure of chapter 7, and chapter 8 will butcher you if you play slow, and even 9 encourages a fair bit of speed despite the desert. Although then again last chapter pushed you with similar incentives...

 

[Punished Dayni]

On 11/5/2020 at 6:29 PM, Benice said:

I mean, maybe night music because it's the night of your life, and it's the last thing you'll hear?

Considering Tearing Shadows is likely playing I agree.

On 11/6/2020 at 4:12 PM, Alastor15243 said:

I just realized they've been steadily cranking up the level of authority your playable avatar character has with every passing game.

And that right there is another reason the avatars are not my cup of tea really.

On 11/6/2020 at 4:12 PM, Alastor15243 said:

...How is Gra in a position to supply notable forces to the invasion of a castle after its entire army was routed during the war last year? They lost, same as Grust. Shouldn't they be in a similar condition? And weren't all the Gra soldiers really weak in that map in FE3 Book 2?

I'd argue they both sent token forces because it sounds like it's mainly Archanea doing it, hell maybe they faked Gra and Grust involvement because Marth questions his own rule with this and having multiple nations involved would be more of a mental toll.

(Also, isn't it more than a year between the two? The canonical timeline has been mode more confusing to me over time, But I thought it was three years after the War of Shadows)

On 11/6/2020 at 9:59 PM, X-Naut said:

Gra has a half-decent force of experienced soldiers in FE3 Book 2, the Paladins, Horsemen and Snipers on Chapter 15 are all aligned with Gra rather than Archanea in that game.

Which isn't the case in NMotE, so I have to assume that's different for programming reasons, regardless of lore.

On 11/9/2020 at 4:54 PM, Alastor15243 said:

So after watching Jaiden's Pokemon Nuzlocke video yet again, and wishing yet again that any of my ironman hijinks made for a story half as interesting as that, I finally decided yesterday to do my very first Pokemon Nuzlocke, and I started with Pokemon Diamond, which I literally have not touched in something like 11 years. And so begins the tale of Bubblebirb the piplup, Sinistar the starly, and HELLKRAKEN the magikarp.

Yeah, as a guy with some experience, picking Diamond was not the best choice to begin with, if there's any title where you'll need the grind it's Diamond/Pearl.

Starly definitely is a good choice though, Staraptor's probably the best early bird.

On 11/9/2020 at 4:54 PM, Alastor15243 said:

...But this is just a pretense to bring up the “drill grounds”, which are apparently things that “operate all across the continent”. So this isn't just something we do at camp, it's like a shop or a storage house, and thus brings up similar questions of how the fuck these things can operate literally everywhere and aid our heroes unmolested.

So these fight clubs are either a: obscure enough they could easily tear themselves up if an army came to shut them down b: prevalent enough that Archanaean forces also use them and thus wouldn't bother to shut them down.

Course, Anri's Way is going to make this a ton more questionable. But we already know that.

On 11/9/2020 at 4:54 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Also, can we just take a second to point out how frankly fucking ridiculous this is? This is literally just an arena. You still risk mortal injury while fighting random challengers. Except, for some utterly incomprehensible reason, now you're paying them. Why? Why the fuck would anyone pay them for this? What service are they offering us? Losing still gets you killed, so they aren't creating a safe training environment. You use your own weapons, so they aren't providing equipment. What are they offering that you can't get from just doing drills with your own allies, especially since this game has already established that combat training need not come at the cost of human life?

This makes literally no sense from a business perspective. These things can't possibly get enough customers to be omnipresent literally everywhere we go. Are there really that many Goku-tier blood knights roaming the lands?

Definitely the reasoning is difficult to find, but hey maybe it's after replacing gladiatorial combat and the combatants were never paid. But that makes no sense because there's regular arenas in maps in this game.

Is it an arena union thing?

On 11/9/2020 at 4:54 PM, Alastor15243 said:

We have a much better and much more interesting (but way too short) talk between Arran and Dakota as Dakota finds out about Arran's deathly illness and promises to tell no one (I seriously wish he would've made sure it wasn't contagious before promising that).

Arran probably would have spread it already if it was, besides it's an anime cough, everyone knows they don't spread.

On 11/9/2020 at 4:54 PM, Alastor15243 said:

When I see the “new supports” icon on the base menu in Awakening or Fates, I'm absolutely delighted, because it means my hard work is paying off and now I get to see the gameplay and story rewards I actively worked to achieve. When I see that icon over the support section of the base menu in Three Houses, I think “Oh great, another ocean of text I have to read unless I want to call myself a scene-skipper, even though I don't even remember what happened in the last one of any of these because there's been so goddamned many of them”.

Doesn't help that the gameplay boosts are much more boring both here and there than the more personalized boosts found in the GBA and 3DS games.

Certainly less personalised in game boosts than GBA and Fates (And Tellius!), but Awakening's is a pretty generic boost, right? 3H does have some that are differentiated, but it's usually that they give might.

Other than that, I can get ya, after multiple playthroughs

18 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And now Dakota went and got cancer. Great.

Should have kept away from Arran

It would be an excuse to drop him.

[Alastor15243]

4 hours ago, Dayni said:

Yeah, as a guy with some experience, picking Diamond was not the best choice to begin with, if there's any title where you'll need the grind it's Diamond/Pearl.

Starly definitely is a good choice though, Staraptor's probably the best early bird.

Sadly, Sinistar is dead. Killed by a purugly. Thankfully my golbat I've rather pre-emptively named Cro Magnum is picking up the slack. He sucked royally until he got wing attack, but once he did... oh it's just been smooth sailing from there.

 

11 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The next couple chapters may be a trial by fire then, as you have to really rush to get the treasure of chapter 7, and chapter 8 will butcher you if you play slow, and even 9 encourages a fair bit of speed despite the desert. Although then again last chapter pushed you with similar incentives...

If they actually realistically force me to play fast, that'd actually be an improvement. And I remember full well the things you're warning me about, because I remember that Book 2 already did those things for those maps, unless they added in something entirely new that has the same effect.

 

New Mystery Day 14: Chapter 6x

Alright, let's see this shitshow firsthand. This apparently-ragequit-inducing shitshow. Let's see what past me had to put up with, or, perhaps, let's discover exactly how much of a pussy I was 10 years ago.

But first, “How's Everyone”.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh my god, this is like, Awakening-tier levels of humor, except it's dry humor.

Yumina: Picking things up from the ground is unbecoming of royalty, but... this, too, is so I can become stronger.

I mean, I think even Maribelle would be hard-pressed to say something that grotesquely prissy about picking a toy bow off of the floor.

Ooh! And we got a def boost on Palla! That could be useful for...

...Alright, let's just remind ourselves of what the hell we're dealing with.

…

…

…

…

WHAT.

WHAT THE FUCK AM I LOOKING AT HERE.

With the exception of Legion, the boss, there is not a single enemy on this map who doesn't start within attacking range of one of my units. Not one.

And it's not a kill boss map, it's a seize map.

And yes, I remember well, and thankfully I think the talk section will clarify, that you can't recruit these guys unless you beat this map without killing them.

...Okay. Thankfully there's just barely enough space to do this, as long as gates only take 2 movement points to cross for Marth. Lemme double check. Honestly, given that the Advance Wars games provided this information for the game's more than ten movement types, I'm frankly amazed the Fire Emblem games never provided this info.

...Yep, it's only 2. Thank goodness.

Alright, so, we need Yumina to stand at the northeast (or northwest, doesn't matter, but I'm picking northeast) most spot, have someone (probably Dakota) kill the fighter stopping her from going as far northeast as possible, have her go that far and rescue Marth, who will then seize as soon as Legion is dead.

That's Dakota, Yumina and Marth accounted for.

I have four more deploys to use to kill the boss.

There is no guaranteed reliable strategy to this. It's entirely possible this could ruin my ironman run catastrophically, which means I'm risking the integrity of this run to recruit two units so amazingly useless that I probably wouldn't field them until literally everyone else in my army was dead.

But I'm gonna do it anyway, because I do not want to fight this map normally, and I sure as hell don't want to unequip some of my guys and turtle this psychotic mess so that I can keep these two worthless suicidal assholes alive.

Let's do this.

I'm promoting Palla at level 14, a level early, because I want all the insurance for this I can get, and I've learned my lesson about holding out for that last level in dire situations. This not only boosts her attack power, but lets her use the Bordcord axe, which is significantly more accurate than the silver lance against axe users. I could probably get her to level 15 through the drill grounds, but it would probably cost something like 1000-1500 gold. Not worth it.

Amazingly, a use for Libra comes up immediately. I put it on Caeda because she's just on the cusp of being immune to Legion's crits, and if Legion crits her, she dies. Nobody else can fully prevent a crit from him, but everyone else can also survive a crit from him.

Okay, so, forging is still in this game, but I don't think it's my way out of this given how strapped for cash I am. Palla can kill if both of her silver lance attacks hit, so the remaining three units I'm bringing are for insurance and to give me more reliable options. I'm bringing Palla, Arran, Caeda and Linde. Depending on how the RNG favors me, Caeda will either use her double-attacking to give a more reliable method of finishing off Legion if his HP is low, or kill the northern knight with her wing spear so that Linde can rush in to do a last-chance Aura on him if his HP is higher. That's an absolute worst-case scenario though, because Palla could easily one-round Roro and end this really quickly.

Alright, time to do the talks, and then get this over with.

…

…

…

FIVE SUPPORT CONVERSATIONS!?

WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME, GAME!?

Okay, so, at least we finally get another non-Dakota support. We've got Palla and Catria playing chess. Palla wins and gives Catria some advice and... Catria says some stuff vaguely hinting that something's on her mind. I've heard some stuff as to what that might be, but we'll see if that comes up.

Yeah, it continues to be outrageously uncanny how much each of these conversation themes reminds me of a musical counterpart in Awakening.

Caeda's cooking stew and it's apparently great according to Dakota...

Huh. Does this line about fighting her in training change if you fought the other option?

It's weird that all of these conversations use the exact same gentle, sweet song that reminds me of “Shh... easy now, girl. I won't hurt you” from Awakening. It seems like they use that for literally every female character except for Cecil.

I find it interesting that, like with Elincia, Dakota's calling an awful lot of people “Sir X” or “Lady Y”. While it's undermined due to all the ridiculous praise he gets, Dakota's depicted as really humble.

Anyway, Julian's support with Dakota is just him offering to help find clues to where Lena went, and then it just abruptly ends.

...And Cecil's support with Dakota... has her panicking about a ghost... and it's implied she does the “Shaggy and Scooby jump-cling” to Dakota and nearly chokes him into unconsciousness by wrapping her arms around his neck. Wow.

...Jagen does not tell us that we need to beat the map with those guys alive to recruit them.

Oh fucking goodie.

Time to roll the dice I guess.

Apparently Caesar's crazy hungry for gold to save his sister.

...And yeah, this game gives you no hint as to how to recruit these guys, so, yeah, fuck you game.

Okay, thank goodness, Arran hit with his silver lance at a 62% chance. Palla with the Bordcord axe has a really reliable chance of killing, but I'm just gonna weigh my other options just in case...

Alright, yeah, the silver lance isn't strong enough to one-shot him, so the Bordcord axe is my best bet, since both will two-shot, she doubles, and even the Bordcord axe misses once, that'll still leave him wounded enough for Caeda to finish off probably.

In fact, I'll have Caeda fight him first just to get the exp.

Alright. Now Palla's left, and Legion's weak enough that a single attack from the Bordcord axe will kill him.

Come on 78%, don't let me down twice...

AND SHE CRITS!

Alright, we're clear. Now to just get Linde some player-phase exp and then have Marth seize.

DONE!

ONE-TURNED! And I didn't even look up a guide!

Alright, and then we convince these two to join us with the promise of the gold we'll be able to pay once we get Altea back...

...And then there's a scene with “Clarisse” where she talks to Legion about his many, many “brothers”.

And we're done.

You'll excuse me if I don't want to do another map today.

This chapter was terrible. Holy shit. I don't know what this game's deal is with tiny maps, but this map was less than worthless. I'm frankly amazed that so far the map makers haven't demonstrated the capacity to make a single good original map, and yet still insisted on making so damned many of them.

The only solace I can take in this is that it was done quickly, and thus I can kinda use todays a a break.

We'll pick up tomorrow.

Say safe, everyone.

[Jotari]

Is it possible for Marth to walk directly to the throne from his starting position if you kill that Knight? It's only five squares away and he does have seven move and can go over rivers. How much do rivers weight him down? Probably more than two points I guess since they are definitely more of a hinderance than forests. And there's no boots yet either (though I think you'll get your dancer in the very next map). Can you get a movement boost from the how's everyone or something? Either way it looks pretty tight. Maybe if you have a cleric rescue him even one square north he could make it (course if you're using rescue you might as well do exactly what you did, I'm just sort of curious).

Edited November 12, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Is it possible for Marth to walk directly to the throne from his starting position if you kill that Knight? It's only five squares away and he does have seven move and can go over rivers. How much do rivers weight him down? Probably more than two points I guess since they are definitely more of a hinderance than forests. And there's no boots yet either (though I think you'll get your dancer in the very next map). Can you get a movement boost from the how's everyone or something? Either way it looks pretty tight. Maybe if you have a cleric rescue him even one square north he could make it (course if you're using rescue you might as well do exactly what you did, I'm just sort of curious).

I hadn't thought about that beforehand, admittedly, but I just looked it up. Rivers cost 5 mov. And yes, I could have rescued him onto the river... if I used other units' moves to block the other higher-priority spaces around Yumina. I know right is highest prioruty and then I think down is next, so it would be at least two units I could have sent after the boss instead doing nothing.

 

[Jotari]

5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I hadn't thought about that beforehand, admittedly, but I just looked it up. Rivers cost 5 mov. And yes, I could have rescued him onto the river... if I used other units' moves to block the other higher-priority spaces around Yumina. I know right is highest prioruty and then I think down is next, so it would be at least two units I could have sent after the boss instead doing nothing.

 

If we're trying to get Marth onto the space adjacent to the river then those units blocking Yumina would be able to fight those fighters (or at least the right one) to net some extra exp. Killing them might possibly be worth more exp than fighting and not killing the boss. Of course you still got to take Legion down anyway.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

If we're trying to get Marth onto the space adjacent to the river then those units blocking Yumina would be able to fight those fighters (or at least the right one) to net some extra exp.

Ah yes, the space right below the river would also be an option. Slightly better option would be to use those fighters to block spaces by standing between them when rescuing after someone stands where the knight used to be. So one to kill the knight, one to stand where he was, then Yumina to rescue Marth straight onto the river. That leaves room for three boss fighters as opposed to my... let's call it three and a half since I couldn't get all four of them to attack at once.

[Eltosian Kadath]

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ah yes, the space right below the river would also be an option. Slightly better option would be to use those fighters to block spaces by standing between them when rescuing after someone stands where the knight used to be. So one to kill the knight, one to stand where he was, then Yumina to rescue Marth straight onto the river. That leaves room for three boss fighters as opposed to my... let's call it three and a half since I couldn't get all four of them to attack at once.

I am fairly certain you can't rescue units onto a river, as it was one of the first things I tried when trying to figuring a 1 turn strat for this map. The strat in my spoiler tag even uses that to ensure Marth gets sent to the top space using only one unit to block.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I am fairly certain you can't rescue units onto a river, as it was one of the first things I tried when trying to figuring a 1 turn strat for this map. The strat in my spoiler tag even uses that to ensure Marth gets sent to the top space using only one unit to block.

Ah yes, forgot to read that after the fact. I saw it but chose to see if I could figure something out myself, and looks like I did. Thanks for the offer though!

[Jotari]

Really why haven't they let you choose where you want to rescue someone to yet? For a mechanic that derives entirely around positioning your units, not being able to select their destination is a pretty crucial flaw.

[Alastor15243]

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

Really why haven't they let you choose where you want to rescue someone to yet? For a mechanic that derives entirely around positioning your units, not being able to select their destination is a pretty crucial flaw.

Hard agree.

 

New Mystery Day 15: Chapter 7

We have a scene between Jagen and Dakota and... man, none of these conversations are having any impact on me, despite the fact that so many seem to be intended to. And it can't just be the lack of a proper localization. I've played plenty of Japan-only games that have made me feel more than this one has. This honestly feels like a half-assed effort to appease the people who thought FE11 had too little story and character building.

Well, let's get going.

So we got a shitty sword, a shitty tome, and a strength potion from “How's everyone”.

Right, so, I remember this map very well. We've got a lot of stuff to do, and fast, if we want to get all the treasure, including a star shard. Sending Palla and Aran will be crucial, and I'll be bringing my other fliers too.

Arran's one attack power shy of being able to one-shot these thieves with a silver lance, but instead of using the strength tonic, I'm handing him the +Str/Mag Gemini star shard. There, now he can take any of these guys out in a single hit.

There's also some hunters, but they don't overlap in ranges too much, and I'll have Navarre and a dancer to help, so this should be simple.

Not looking forward to the trek through the forest that this game all but demands I take though. But I am looking forward to being chased from behind!

Anyway, Caesar was kind enough to bring a new steel sword right when Dakota was running out of his old one, so I'll have him take that. We don't have any major talks to listen to by the looks of it, and the ones there are don't really need to be described. They're just telling me not to fight Astram.

Alright. I'm bringing my fliers, my cavs, my healers, and Marth and Dakota. Our target is the Fane of Raman.

Let's move.

And of course, we get a dumb but kinda funny scene with Navarre ditching the thieves he was with and saving Feena the dancer, and Feena reading way too deeply into that.

I still don't want to risk these thieves attacking Feena, so I'm making sure not to land her in range of more than one. I'll have Navarre take out the hunter, then hope the thieves are cowards like I think they're gonna be.

...Thank goodness I chose to do that, because the thieves do attack Feena.

...The thieves have started running, and they went in the opposite direction than would be ideal, and are now covered by both the heroes to the northwest and the hunters by the Fane of Raman. I'm not quite sure how I was expected to-

...Oh right. Rescue staff. I have that. Man, similarly to how the early-game of FE7 treated Marcus, I really don't like how there are instances where the rescue staff is basically required for optional objectives. The rescue staff should be a safety net for when things go wrong. Deliberately inserting situations where you seem to need to use it just seems... inflexible. But at least Marcus didn't have limited uses. Being told “If you want this master seal, you need to trade a rescue charge for it” just seems... annoying.

Okay, so a villager warns me never to go near “that cave”, but then I'm reminded that there's actually hidden treasure there, so fuck it, I'll do it on the last turn in case there actually is anything dangerous about it that the hidden treasures section didn't tell me.

I had a scare where I thought Navarre was gonna die due to an unfortunate space-clearing crit, but thankfully not all of the thieves attacked him. It seems only the ones with treasure run away.

OKAY THAT'S JUST RIDICULOUS, GAME. IT REALLY FEELS LIKE YOU EXPECT ME TO USE THE RESCUE STAFF MULTIPLE TIMES TO GET THROUGH THIS WITHOUT GETTING ANYONE KILLED.

Ugh, fine, I still have two more Hammerne uses. One rescue charge for a seraph robe, please.

Odd. I wonder why the rescue staff lets you freely select your space on the map like in the Tellius games, but the physic staff still makes you scroll through the list of viable targets.

Alright, I don't think the Wo Dao is worth a third use of rescue in one map. It's just a killing edge that trades some might and hit for more crit. This is an ironman. I don't plan on counting on crits. And by this point, my fliers have managed to come in properly and take out the remaining hunters and theives, so there's no need to use rescue staves to salvage anything else. We got the star shard, we got every other treasure, I can deal with losing a Wo Dao.

Now to just get the fuck out of here before these reinforcements fucking murder us.

I managed to use Cecil to get close enough to the reinforcements to bait the cavs down south, towards Dakota, who I'd like to feed some more experience and get promoted as soon as possible. When they actually get here though, She's just gonna run away. She's not fit for enemy-phasing.

Dakota thankfully gains a defense level, along with HP and luck.

I honestly prefer the boss's lines in the original. They were a bit more on-the-nose about his “blatant thief yelling at others about stealing things” hypocrisy, which made the joke more ridiculous. It was closer to the feel of the classic “You're trying to kidnap what I've rightfully stolen” line from The Princess Bride.

…

...Oh.

OH.

I SEE, GAME.

SO THAT WARNING FROM THE VILLAGE WAS ACTUALLY THAT THERE WAS A FIRE DRAGON AMBUSH SPAWN IN THAT ROOM.

RIGHT BY WHERE I PUT ARRAN AND DAKOTA.

I honestly don't know whether to be angrier at the game or at myself.

Let's see how this turns out. Dakota probably won't die, but Arran very well might.

Thank goodness, he's not strong enough to one-round Arran. That could've been nasty.

Well, I got the physic from the cave. Time to do some player-phase kills for exp and then seize immediately.

Looks like the dragon would've given me a fire stone if I had managed to kill him, but that just wasn't in the cards.

Alright, we've seized, so time for the ending cutsc-

...

...Oh god.

Oh dear sweet Jesus.

They did almost literally nothing to how the original handled its “worldbuilding”. A near total non-sequitur subject change as Marth just nearly-out-of-nowhere asks Jagen to start expodumping about Naga.

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

Alright, fine, let's get this over with.

...Christ. At least the music was nice.

Then out of nowhere we get another accessory scene, but I don't want to try on one of Wendell's hats, so no thank you. Let's just get moving.

Okay guys, uh... I'll be honest. I'm practically scrambling for excuses to give this game a worse writing ranking than Shadow Dragon. Is that sane? Is that normal?

The “writing” of this game just generally pisses me off at every opportunity, whereas the writing of Shadow Dragon was just kinda unobtrusively and conscientiously not there.

I'd honestly rather be talking about almost any other game's story right now.

That said, aside from the annoyances of those damned thieves and the multiple rescue staff uses I had to use, I did find this to probably be the best map so far. I could've probably held out longer if I knew what was coming, but I still definitely felt the pressure to push forward. I really like maps that use rear reinforcements to push you forward.

But that's it for today. Tomorrow we'll be taking on the next chapter, and getting close to the part that I remember being psychotically easy in the original.

Let's see if they do anything to mix it up, hm?

Stay safe, everyone!

[Venger_06]

On 11/8/2020 at 1:07 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Also, fascinatingly enough, Sacred Stones is the only place where the "favorite" and "least favorite" graphs have any overlap at all. For every other game it's either only people's favorite, or only people's least favorite, or just neither. I'm curious what made it that polarizing.

Also, if anyone wanted to post further thoughts on the why of their votes, I'd love to hear them!

I hope I'm not too late so I'll make it short and quick: I started reading at SD's playthrough, so I chose SD as my favorite because of this. Then I went back to read some of older entries (that I played, that is), starting with Sacred Stones. I chose it as my least favorite because your experience and thoughts about the game are almost completely opposite to mine. Except for Selena. Selena sucks.

On 11/9/2020 at 1:54 PM, Alastor15243 said:

So after watching Jaiden's Pokemon Nuzlocke video yet again, and wishing yet again that any of my ironman hijinks made for a story half as interesting as that, I finally decided yesterday to do my very first Pokemon Nuzlocke, and I started with Pokemon Diamond, which I literally have not touched in something like 11 years. And so begins the tale of Bubblebirb the piplup, Sinistar the starly, and HELLKRAKEN the magikarp.

A bold choice. Pokémon D/P are the hardest mainline games in the franchise, and pretty unbalanced too.

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Maof06 said:

A bold choice. Pokémon D/P are the hardest mainline games in the franchise, and pretty unbalanced too.

Haha, maybe there was a subconscious reason why that was the last one I bought. I picked it due to wanting to pick one I played, not wanting to pick the one Jaiden did, and not wanting to pick a Gameboy one since those don't have running shoes and are pretty slow.

But yeah, I have noticed these things since then. But by this point, I kinda don't want to just start over.

 

10 minutes ago, Maof06 said:

I hope I'm not too late so I'll make it short and quick: I started reading at SD's playthrough, so I chose SD as my favorite because of this. Then I went back to read some of older entries (that I played, that is), starting with Sacred Stones. I chose it as my least favorite because your experience and thoughts about the game are almost completely opposite to mine. Except for Selena. Selena sucks.

Thanks for clarifying!

[Jotari]

So this was your raging inducing map your first time playing this game, right? And now this time round it's you're favorite in the game thus far? Imagine if in ten years time you reach enlightenment and start seeing Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light as the pinnacle of this series! XD

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Jotari said:

So this was your raging inducing map your first time playing this game, right? And now this time round it's you're favorite in the game thus far? Imagine if in ten years time you reach enlightenment and start seeing Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light as the pinnacle of this series! XD

No, 6x was the ragequit-inducer. I remembered this map being pretty okay in FE3B2.

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

No, 6x was the ragequit-inducer. I remembered this map being pretty okay in FE3B2.

Ah. My mistake then. Did you not remember the dragon in FE3B2 though? Or did you finish the map too fast or something to see it there? I'm pretty sure the dragon appears in the original too. It's the first introduction to feral dragons so it actually has some plot relevance (personally I would have retconned a few feral dragons like this into Shadow Dragon instead of having them inexplicably coming into being in Book 2, but we've already talked at length about Shadow Dragon failing to build upon lure established after 1990).

Edited November 13, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

Ah. My mistake then. Did you not remember the dragon in FE3B2 though? Or did you finish the map too fast or something to see it there? I'm pretty sure the dragon appears in the original too. It's the first introduction to feral dragons so it actually has some plot relevance (personally I would have retconned a few feral dragons like this into Shadow Dragon instead of having them inexplicably coming into being in Book 2, but we've already talked at length about Shadow Dragon failing to build upon lure established after 1990).

No, I honestly have no memory of fighting a dragon here in FE3B2. If it did happen, I somehow completely forgot. And I remember sticking around at least a little to milk shard-boosted exp gain for someone.

Speaking of retcons... I'm still keeping an eye out for what the hell the game has to say about wyverns this time, since dragon-slaying weapons don't work on them for some reason.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

No, I honestly have no memory of fighting a dragon here in FE3B2. If it did happen, I somehow completely forgot. And I remember sticking around at least a little to milk shard-boosted exp gain for someone.

Speaking of retcons... I'm still keeping an eye out for what the hell the game has to say about wyverns this time, since dragon-slaying weapons don't work on them for some reason.

Well I just checked and it definitely is there in the original.

Maybe it only spawns if you get too close to the cave and you didn't on your Book 2 playthrough.

Something else I just noticed now, that Fire Dragon is carrying a dragonstone...I didn't question that until now, but it kind of makes no sense. Degenerated dragons are the ones who refused to seal their powers in their stones and become manaketes. So why would this feral dragon have a dragonstone? It can't be its own dragonstone otherwise it wouldn't be feral. Did it kill a manakete and just keep it's stone around? Or is this Bantu's stone, I think he joins again next chapter without one. In which case that just depicts Bantu has critically neglectful of his dragonstone to lose it a second time in two games and still brings forth the question of how this random Fire Dragon managed to pick it up and carry it on its person. Meh, chalk it up to gameplay and story segregation with dragonstones being unique I guess.

[Alastor15243]

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well I just checked and it definitely is there in the original.

Maybe it only spawns if you get too close to the cave and you didn't on your Book 2 playthrough.

Something else I just noticed now, that Fire Dragon is carrying a dragonstone...I didn't question that until now, but it kind of makes no sense. Degenerated dragons are the ones who refused to seal their powers in their stones and become manaketes. So why would this feral dragon have a dragonstone? It can't be its own dragonstone otherwise it wouldn't be feral. Did it kill a manakete and just keep it's stone around? Or is this Bantu's stone, I think he joins again next chapter without one. In which case that just depicts Bantu has critically neglectful of his dragonstone to lose it a second time in two games and still brings forth the question of how this random Fire Dragon managed to pick it up and carry it on its person. Meh, chalk it up to gameplay and story segregation with dragonstones being unique I guess.

Yeah he was carrying a stone in the FE12 version too weirdly, and his attacks even depleted its uses despite him having fire breath in his inventory!

[Jotari]

27 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah he was carrying a stone in the FE12 version too weirdly, and his attacks even depleted its uses despite him having fire breath in his inventory!

So you're extracting its essence from it post mortem like Nergal!

[Alastor15243]

PHEW.

So, as we speak, I'm seeing the end credits of Silver Snow.

I've done it.

The marathon AM run will be the only reason I will ever have to touch Fire Emblem: Three Houses ever again.

Sweet. Blessed. Relief.

Now... time to sleep and get ready for tomorrow.

[Interdimensional Observer]

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

They did almost literally nothing to how the original handled its “worldbuilding”. A near total non-sequitur subject change as Marth just nearly-out-of-nowhere asks Jagen to start expodumping about Naga.

This isn't the first non-sequitur in the War of the Heroes. Where did the "Altea got invaded" come from at the end of Chapter 4? There are two excuses here, the first that it's supposed to be a surprise. And the second excuse is that the original reason for coming out here in the first place, Yumina and Jubelo, are perfectly capable of dying, they needed something to end that chapter that was in no way related to them whatsoever. Two excuses is more than what Chapter 7 has though.

 

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

Something else I just noticed now, that Fire Dragon is carrying a dragonstone...I didn't question that until now, but it kind of makes no sense. Degenerated dragons are the ones who refused to seal their powers in their stones and become manaketes. So why would this feral dragon have a dragonstone? It can't be its own dragonstone otherwise it wouldn't be feral. Did it kill a manakete and just keep it's stone around? Or is this Bantu's stone, I think he joins again next chapter without one. In which case that just depicts Bantu has critically neglectful of his dragonstone to lose it a second time in two games and still brings forth the question of how this random Fire Dragon managed to pick it up and carry it on its person. Meh, chalk it up to gameplay and story segregation with dragonstones being unique I guess.

Actually, a thief has Bantu's dragonstone in the next chapter, this Fire Dragon is carrying a totally unrelated d-stone.

Maybe it couldn't contain all its power and some congealed into a stone. Or maybe you're right, maybe it got into an argument long ago with its dear friend over draconic pride. It got angry, chose to shift out of distasteful humanoid form, and incensed, found itself unable to cling to reason and accidentally killed its Manakete friend. Finding its mind permanently too blurry lost to shift back into Manakete form, it has since cradled its friend's stone between its forelegs when it rests and carries it everywhere in its mouth when it moves, it is deeply regretful of what it had done, their departed friend was right, and now, they're doomed to suffer until they day when they finally meet again.

Edited November 13, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer