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


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8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Aaaaand I just tried out the reclass option, and apparently girls can't be cavalry in this game! Which means that if Caeda wants to use the Win Spear, she's gotta stay a pegasus knight. It would've only been a 5% increase to her strength and defense growths even so, but I still would've preferred it.

Funnily enough she can reclass to Paladin after she promotes, kinda like how one of the male class groups can access Wyvern rider, but not Pegasus rider...

I think these two weird exceptions are to account for Michalis being a Wyvern Rider, and Midia being a Paladin, without there being any examples of prepromoted characters of that class and gender...

 

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

In general though, something that puts me off reclassing in this game is that they did this really weird thing where the class growth rates can vary pretty drastically between classes and can have some huge boosts, and so they reduced a lot of characters' personal growth rates to compensate. As a result, a lot of characters are only remotely well-rounded when they're in their starting class. For example, Barst literally has 0% personal strength and HP growths, Ogma has a 10% speed growth, all three of the starting cavaliers have a better personal speed growth than Navarre, and Draug, the memetic choker of points, has a 0% personal defense growth.

Yeah the reclassing system is really weird in that it makes characters nothing like their base class when you reclass them. Draug is a great example, he is secretly really fast, with one of the highest base speeds, and a good personal speed growth, but no personal bases/growths in defense; he is a great option for reclassing but will not even resemble his starting class if you do.

 

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

So really, it feels like neither system has really managed to be devoid of problems. I'll have to check out how I like the 1.5 formula of Awakening and Fates, though I feel the problem with skill won't be fixed unless the formula is even higher than double, or skill is given some extra effect like speed to make a single point matter more often.

Skill is given extra effects in basically every game, but its always probabilistic effects, like increasing Crit Rate, or the proc rates of skills, and not a static effect...

...hmm....

I have thought of an interesting idea for making skill far more relevant, but it probably deserves to be in the controversial game mechanic page. Have a skill threshold effect counter attacks, so if the attacker has lets say 4+ more skill then the enemy they don't get a counter attack, if the attacker has 4+ less skill than the enemy, then enemy gets their attacks first.

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6 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I have thought of an interesting idea for making skill far more relevant, but it probably deserves to be in the controversial game mechanic page. Have a skill threshold effect counter attacks, so if the attacker has lets say 4+ more skill then the enemy they don't get a counter attack, if the attacker has 4+ less skill than the enemy, then enemy gets their attacks first.

Interesting! I have a similar concept where I replace critical hits with weapon-specific bonus effects that only activate if your skill is a certain amount higher than the enemy's luck (which I'd relabel as "willpower" or "guts").

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Shadow Dragon Day 7: Chapter 5

Yyyep, this is still feeling like the most interesting thing I can do with my time this weekend.

Okay wait, so there's a country called Archanea? I thought that was the continent's name. Is this some kind of America/United States of America thing?

...Oh for fuck's sake.

Apparently this game goes back to the practice of waiting until after the preparation screen to have any allies you start with appear, even when they don't appear with your party and need to be rescued.

Well, I know what's about to happen thankfully, but that's really poor design, and I can't believe they kept that.

I forged the ridersbane to +4 might and +10 hit and gave it to Jagen. Depending on whether or not they add more reinforcements post-deployment (because I remember there being more enemies), I'll send either Caeda, Jagen, or both to defend the Aurelian cavalry. Whoever's left over, if anyone, will help Marth take out the cavalry around Wendell so we can recruit him safely.

I've got limited recruitment slots today due to all the new recruits (most of them pretty good), so I'm bringing Caeda, Jagen, Cain, Abel, Merric, Barst, Navarre, Lena, Wrys, and of course Marth.

If I remember correctly (and I doubt I could forget this), this is the first map that introduces reinforcements. Which, outside of normal mode... are once again ambush spawns.

Le sigh.

You can't buy vulneraries in the prep shop, which means I'm down to the last two doses of the one we've got. I remember there not being a proper item shop for quite some time. Or maybe that was just ones that sell tomes...

Ah yes, and now that we've started, we get five cavalry. Three cavaliers, and two horsemen. Now, a funny thing happened to the horsemen, Sedgar and Wolf, in this game. See, they have absolutely garbage stats for promoted characters, similar to Jagen. That hasn't changed in this game. What has changed is their growth rates. Their growth rates... are approximately double the average. Combine that with reclassing, and you can do some pretty damned crazy stuff with these guys, making them some of the most valuable units on H5 apparently. I'll have to see what their exp gain is like and what they can do after reclassing though, because they're gonna need to start gaining levels fast. I'll probably be feeding a boss kill to these guys if I can.

But I won't do that until I have Jagen and Caeda fly in to secure the forts.

And all of that won't happen until I can work out how the fuck to keep these guys alive long enough to save them. I'm not sure how many of these enemies are gonna charge on their position, but I know I have no chance of making a run for it, so I'm gonna have to do everything I can to help these guys withstand the initial onslaught while holding their position. Jagen's the best bet for that, since at the moment he's more useful against things that aren't cavalry and knights. Caeda's gonna go and help Marth take out the cavalry while Jagen takes a moment to take Caeda's vulnerary since I'm pretty confident he'll have plenty of time to fly over.

Thankfully, none of the enemies really seem to be headed Hardin's way. They seem to be more focused on Cain and Abel, who I had ride north towards the bridge connecting the two sides in the hopes that the enemy would react like that.

I am going to bait at least one enemy towards Hardin though: the javelin cavalier, who could probably be a huge problem otherwise. Jagen's gonna probably be responsible for finishing him off, because his defense and attack are uncomfortably high.

Anyway, there's no explanation given in this version of Wendell's recruitment conversation as to why he's even a red unit. I can't remember if there was one before...

...And Merric doesn't get a chat with him either, sadly. Anyway, I'm in a bit of a bind. I wound up luring too many enemies down towards Hardin and company, and this might get nasty. I need an opening to take out this javcav with Jagen without getting in range of the archers making their way through the forest. Thank goodness their movement sucks so badly.

Navarre gets a fantastic level up, basically everything but defense, which he got last time anyway.

Alright, the pegasus knight started charging, as did the two knights. Sedgar managed to take out the pegasus knight (revealing in the process that he gets about 13 exp per kill, which isn't terrible), and I'll be able to take those knights out with magic before they get anywhere near my guys. Next job is to get Jagen and Caeda over to block the reinforcement forts as soon as possible. But I'll wait until they can do it at once, because blocking one is likely to trigger the conditions for spawning from both.

Jagen got a +HP, +Spd level up, and that is just great. Man, Jagen's turning out to be way more useful than I expected him to be.

Aaaaaand the forts are plugged! Awesome! I can't wait to get more fliers so I can do this more easily. Pity I can only reclass the one.

I also stopped by the village before I forgot, and now we have Bantu's dragonstone.

Alright, so, neither Sedgar nor Wolf are capable of getting the boss kill here. Their weapons just aren't strong enough to do even one damage to this knight. Oh well, Merric time!

...No, wait, I think I should use this as an opportunity to train Marth some more. It's important he doesn't get left behind if it's possible to use him to beat Medeus on this difficulty.

So I chip him down with Merric and Wendell, who has great speed for this point of the game, making him fairly useful even if I'm not sure he'll last as long in this game as he did in Dark Dragon.

...Incidentally, Merric gained another level up that was only barely better than the last one. Speed and skill this time. Well, hopefully he'll start doubling things other than knights soon then.

...Yeah, still Marth says nothing at the end of the map.

...Okay, so, that barely took me two hours, and I'm only two pages in.

Dare I do a double weekend update?

...Let's check out the next chapter and see...

...Yeeeaaaaahhhh, I think I may need more time for this one.

Until tomorrow, then!

Stay safe, everyone!

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21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Don't misunderstand me: the formula that Shadow Dragon uses is blatantly flawed.The skill stat is borderline worthless in this game when each stat point only provides a single percentage extra chance to hit, and hit rates are so manageable with several weapon types anyway. There is no way that skill as it stands is a remotely worthwhile or balanced stat, and that needs to change.

However... over the course of this marathon I've found that in games where dodgetanking becomes viable, it makes it absurdly easy to abuse it, and that makes ironmanning less interesting when assuming every attack will hit is no longer even remotely necessary. In fact, in every game so far that used the double formula, I've been able to turn most of my units into nigh-unkillable dodgetanks by abusing some aspect of the system.

So really, it feels like neither system has really managed to be devoid of problems. I'll have to check out how I like the 1.5 formula of Awakening and Fates, though I feel the problem with skill won't be fixed unless the formula is even higher than double, or skill is given some extra effect like speed to make a single point matter more often.

Lower weapon hitrates to start with? Lower the weapon hitrates and suddenly a unit isn´t top tier just for the speed stat. And then raise that Hitrate Formula to a x1.5, or even x2 for Skill. Or just have enemies ignore player units they can´t hit - have fun with the enemy swarming around your frontline, wiping out your healers, mages etc. pp.

I´ll also say, out with the Skill and Luck rallies. Unless they literally give +20 Skill/Luck or something dumb like that, they aren’t going to do shit – at the very least in the current systems. Instead give us 2-tile rallies that increase Hitrates and CritAvoid (and a class built around rallies damnit). Easier to use, can be accounted for and are predictable and not reliant on a +1 in the Lvl-up screen.

I personally don´t think dodge tanking should be part of FE - especially the kind of dodge tanking that just annihilates everything - BUT that is also kinda depended on how strong enemies are. If they are garbage then who cares, but if the enemy just about onerounds any of my units, except the guy who has a ton of Avoid stacked on him, then yeah, please don´t harm my dodgy boy.

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2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay wait, so there's a country called Archanea? I thought that was the continent's name. Is this some kind of America/United States of America thing?

Yes. Do you not remember this from before? There is the continent itself, and there is the (Holy) Kingdom of Archanea. The Kingdom of Archanea itself it would seem is the oldest extant and certainly currently the greatest human civilization on the continent.

Hardin apparently became Archanean King no. 24 according to the intro to the War of the Heroes. Factoring out the two down short downfalls of the Kingdom of Archanea to Dolhr, there were 598 years of existence for Kingdom of Archanea prior to King Hardin, which means each of the 23 prior kings ruled on average for 26 years. Not entirely sure, but those sound like fairly or very good reign lengths by Medieval standards.

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1 minute ago, Jotari said:

Colour me surprised that you didn't know there was a Kingdom of Archanea seperate from the country. Where did you think Nyna was the princess of?

Honestly, I'm not quite sure. I think I visualized it as some kind of empire for some reason where Nyna was a the seat of it, and every country was once part of "Archanea" before the big war. Not sure why. Just one of those things I didn't consciously think about too much so I allowed myself to get weird ideas about it, like when I thought the previous apostle was Sanaki's mother.

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9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Anyway, there's no explanation given in this version of Wendell's recruitment conversation as to why he's even a red unit. I can't remember if there was one before...

...And Merric doesn't get a chat with him either, sadly. Anyway, I'm in a bit of a bind. I wound up luring too many enemies down towards Hardin and company, and this might get nasty. I need an opening to take out this javcav with Jagen without getting in range of the archers making their way through the forest. Thank goodness their movement sucks so badly.

 

I'm pretty sure Merric has a recruitment conversation with Wendell, and then if you recruit him that way, Wendell has a similar conversation with Marth only it's an introduction rather than recruitment.

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...No, wait, I think I should use this as an opportunity to train Marth some more. It's important he doesn't get left behind if it's possible to use him to beat Medeus on this difficulty.

 

You're going to get Falchion (aka Wyrmslaying Silver Sword) then I take it.

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2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

You're going to get Falchion (aka Wyrmslaying Silver Sword) then I take it.

Current best-case-scenario plan:

Get Tiki. Skip starlight. Kill Tiki. Get Nagi. Revive Tiki. Get weaker Falchion, spheres, and two divine dragons.

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32 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Current best-case-scenario plan:

Get Tiki. Skip starlight. Kill Tiki. Get Nagi. Revive Tiki. Get weaker Falchion, spheres, and two divine dragons.

Really the biggest prize there isn't Nagi, but being able to keep the Starsphere. Why have an unbreakable Wyrmslayer for two chapters when you can have an unbreakable Gradivus or Divine stone for five more chapters?

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8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Honestly, I'm not quite sure. I think I visualized it as some kind of empire for some reason where Nyna was a the seat of it, and every country was once part of "Archanea" before the big war.

All of the "Seven Kingdoms of Archanea (the continent)": Archanea, Altea, Aurelis, Macedon, Grust, Gra, and Talys (the youngest of the seven, founded 25 years before SD Chapter 1) are unified under King Marth at the end of the War of the Heroes. Maybe thats your source of confusion?

Khadein remains independent of Marth under Wendel & Arlen. Dolhr I presume remains independent under whatever never-ever-seen nice Manakete that live there. Dolhr may be bad lands, so Marth if he had an imperialistic bone in his body probably doesn't want it anyway from a great empire perspective. Little axed-from-FE3 Pyrathi nobody know what happened to, but why not annex it to Archanea?

The Kingdom of Archanea does not appear to have ruled the entire world prior to Marth's unification.: 

  • Dolhr for a time at least controlled the entirety of its large island, most of which later became Macedon.
  • Aurelis was founded in 499 on the Archanean calendar, year 1 (the epoch) being the founding of the Kingdom of Archanea. This happened after King Cartas "subjugated" the northern plains and installed his younger brother Count Marlon as King of Aurelis. "Subjugated" implies military conquest of an enemy, I'd hazard Central Eurasian-styled pastoral nomads, which would definitely be a distinct civilization from the sedentary Archanean one. 
  • Grust's founding is stated to have happened after the "taming" of barbarians neighbors.
  • Gotoh is the founder of Khadein.
  • Let's ignore that city they added on the west coast of Archanea in SoV. Retcon is what it is.
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4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Really the biggest prize there isn't Nagi, but being able to keep the Starsphere. Why have an unbreakable Wyrmslayer for two chapters when you can have an unbreakable Gradivus or Divine stone for five more chapters?

I always hated giving up the starsphere when I played this in high school. I think my favorite part of my Marth solo was getting to keep the damned thing.

4 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

All of the "Seven Kingdoms of Archanea (the continent)": Archanea, Altea, Aurelis, Macedon, Grust, Gra, and Talys (the youngest of the seven, founded 25 years before SD Chapter 1) are unified under King Marth at the end of the War of the Heroes. Maybe thats your source of confusion?

Khadein remains independent of Marth under Wendel & Arlen. Dolhr I presume remains independent under whatever never-ever-seen nice Manakete that live there. Dolhr may be bad lands, so Marth if he had an imperialistic bone in his body probably doesn't want it anyway from a great empire perspective. Little axed-from-FE3 Pyrathi nobody know what happened to, but why not annex it to Archanea?

The Kingdom of Archanea does not appear to have ruled the entire world prior to Marth's unification.: 

  • Dolhr for a time at least controlled the entirety of its large island, most of which later became Macedon.
  • Aurelis was founded in 499 on the Archanean calendar, year 1 (the epoch) being the founding of the Kingdom of Archanea. This happened after King Cartas "subjugated" the northern plains and installed his younger brother Count Marlon as King of Aurelis. "Subjugated" implies military conquest of an enemy, I'd hazard Central Eurasian-styled pastoral nomads, which would definitely be a distinct civilization from the sedentary Archanean one. 
  • Grust's founding is stated to have happened after the "taming" of barbarians neighbors.
  • Gotoh is the founder of Khadein.
  • Let's ignore that city they added on the west coast of Archanea in SoV. Retcon is what it is.

Yeah, chalk it up to it having the biggest combination of "least played" and "least recently played" of all the FE canons in the franchise for me. Man, I knew I'd forgotten details over the last year but that really just makes it more real. Christ. That's gonna make re-reading this fucking novel of a thread even more important.

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9 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Little axed-from-FE3 Pyrathi nobody know what happened to, but why not annex it to Archanea?

 

Might as well. Marth already invaded it without provocation, wiped out its military and overthrew its monarchy. Annexing it would be responsible by that point.

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4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Might as well. Marth already invaded it without provocation, wiped out its military and overthrew its monarchy. Annexing it would be responsible by that point.

I am really forward to checking out that chapter and seeing what you mean.

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Just now, Jotari said:

Might as well. Marth already invaded it without provocation, wiped out its military and overthrew its monarchy. Annexing it would be responsible by that point.

It's a poorly-written chapter, designed for another dose of bandits and An Introduction to Manaketes, using a stationary one you can kill from afar with no issues. I'll chalk up the failure of the absolutely nonexistent dialogue between Marth's peaceful negotiators and the king's men to the king's bitterness in old age and possibly degeneration and or Dolhrian sympathies. Oh and it being a totally unimproved three minutes of narrative from an 8-bit game. No wonder FE3 snipped it out, nothing of value besides the Manakete intro was lost.

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3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

It's a poorly-written chapter, designed for another dose of bandits and An Introduction to Manaketes, using a stationary one you can kill from afar with no issues. I'll chalk up the failure of the absolutely nonexistent dialogue between Marth's peaceful negotiators and the king's men to the king's bitterness in old age and possibly degeneration and or Dolhrian sympathies. Oh and it being a totally unimproved three minutes of narrative from an 8-bit game. No wonder FE3 snipped it out, nothing of value besides the Manakete intro was lost.

It's stuff like that that makes me really wish the OVA had ran longer than two episodes. As much as I like Shadow Dragon's chronicle style of story telling, a lot of the actual nuance of conflict is lost by taking such a wide scoped view of things.

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Shadow Dragon Day 8: Chapter 6

Alright, so, quick thing before we begin:

I'm starting to get really annoyed with the minimal effort put into spicing up the story. I am not entirely convinced that everything I enjoy about this game's writing wasn't exclusively the result of the localization team, because almost nothing has been added to the main story after the prologue. The gameplay has been enhanced a great deal, but the story is basically identical in almost insulting ways. And the weirdest thing is I think the prologue might have gotten my hopes up too much for what the rest of the story would've been like. If the rest of the game was like the prologue, I think I might've liked the story a lot. Especially with the character writing. Alas... I'm starting to get the sense that this game was fairly low-effort in various ways.

Anyway, on to the gameplay.

I reclassed Wolf to a hero and Sedgar to a general. Might switch things around once Wolf gets more speed much later so that he can get a bit more defense, but right now, these are the most useful classes I can have them in. Still, Wolf isn't gonna be doing much until he gets more levels or a better axe rank. He can double, but he's not any stronger than Ogma or Navarre, and has a worse sword rank, so...

...Moving on, this chapter is gonna be simultaneously easier and harder than it was in Dark Dragon. The enemies are much, much stronger, and warping single units straight into the fray to guard the chests is no longer gonna be possible. It also won't be necessary, however, because you can get stolen items back from thieves by killing them now, so I just have to make sure that no thief steals more than one item and I should be fine. I count one thief for every chest not in immediate reach of us, incidentally, so I think we may have it made.

I may have to warp someone in to stop the thief by the exit from fleeing though. We'll see how it goes. It'll either be Sedgar or Jagen who's gonna take the job. Probably Sedgar, but in case other enemies stick around and having much higher speed is worth sacrificing a modest bit of defense for, I'll put the vulnerary on Jagen because he'd have a much easier time passing it to Sedgar than the other way around.

It's kind of amusing seeing Emereus bark orders to the thieves like he'd call them that. I have to assume these are people he hired to get the Aurelian castle's chests open or something. Maybe he'd actually call them thieves? Whatever.

...Okay, so I just had Julian recruit Rickard after Barst used the door key (couldn't remember if Marth could recruit him, so I played it safe and didn't unlock it with Julian), and I've gotta say... I seem to remember Rickard having some... camp gay aspects to him? Can't remember if it was in the original games, but I know it was at least in one of the other three games. Did the localization get rid of it, or was that introduced in 12?

Also, Rickard was left in prison with a sword, just like in the original. Also like in the original, he doesn't start out with a lockpick, but then, those don't exist in this game and thieves don't need them, so...

...so he...

...could've...

...gotten out...

...at any time.

Anyway, this is starting to get scary. I forgot about the charging cavalry, who turned out to be perfectly timed to charge my position just as a bunch of knights and an archer did. I managed to get rid of the mage by one-rounding it with Caeda, which was an excellent, life-saving call, because now I can probably wall this.

Yeah, I basically walled with Sedgar and an unequipped Wolf. My hands are kinda tied because if I advance one space closer, the northern stationary archers move in, and there are too many enemies already aggroing me right now for me to attempt that. Hence why Wolf is unequipped and hasn't killed this wounded iron lance cavalier until we can deal with this damned silver lance cavalier and send Sedgar in to plug up the wall so we can safely player-phase the rest. Then we'll warp in someone later to take out the thieves, probably Jagen with his silver lance. Gotta be careful not to corner any of the ones with exotic stolen swords though, or they might use them to attack Jagen out of desperation, and then I might not get them.

I've been breaking out Excalibur a bit here, using four of its 33 uses to deal with the initial rush. That's pretty much over now though.

It's kind of frustrating that Hardin has an amazing lance rank, but doesn't start out with any lances. I forgot to give him any before I realized this, so... lesson learned there.

Merric still hasn't gotten any magic, but in addition to speed and skill, he got HP, luck and res, so... okay, yeah, I'm okay with that for now. I just hope he starts getting some magic soon, because that's supposed to be a decent growth of his.

...Apparently this game also kept the quirk all the way back in Dark Dragon that staves don't change order in your inventory when you use them, and that you can't re-arrange them without trading with someone else.

And it kept the fact that you can trade with somebody by going into your inventory and selecting an item and picking “trade”, even though it's completely outdated and the modern trade command exists alongside it!?

Were they building this on top of the original source code or something!? Because if not, what madness could possibly possess them to code that shit into the game if they were rebuilding it from scratch!?

Anyway, we got all the treasure without incident, and managed to kill the two fancy-sword-holding thieves before we had to learn if they'll use their treasure to fight if they have to, thanks to a lucky crit from Caeda on the armorslayer one in back.

Something weird just happened. You know how the L button shifts you to the next available unit? Well, I used it right after Wendell used the last charge of a heal staff, which brought me to Rickard, who was off buying shit on the other side of the map with the bullion I just got. The “weapon broke” jingle was still playing, and...

...The jingle suddenly was only playing in only one of my 3DS speakers, like the game actually... somehow has... sound-location-sensitive stereo sound programmed in for the map screen even though, unless I am very much mistaken, it doesn't happen in any context other than this.

Wolf gets his first level up, and... it's +2 in HP and +1 in literally everything else but luck (and mag and res, but almost nobody physical has growths in those, so not getting those isn't really worth comment).

Hoooooo boy is this a good start, Wolf.

Anyway, yeah, just like basically any game in the series, once the aggressive AI units run out, there's really not much challenge to the map. I've been feeding exp to Sedgar and Wolf, but chip exp is actually pretty good, so I don't think there's much need to give them kills. They'll level as long as they do a lot of baiting and wounding.

Oh shit. An archer and a mage, positioned to have equal attack range in our direction. I don't have anyone who's good at defending against both. Thankfully, Cain can just barely survive with one HP.

And Caeda finally gets her first strength level up! Great! Forgot to mention, the last one gave defense!

...Okay, looks like I was overreacting with the archer and mage thing. There was only one open space they could attack from, so my caution really only would've saved someone from dying if my guy got a crit.

Boss is meleelocked, so... this is gonna be a piece of cake.

Wendell got his first level up and got... literally nothing. Christ, I didn't think his growths were that bad. Even Jagen hasn't gotten one of those yet.

...Yeah, he just got ridiculously unlucky. He has two 40% growths and a 35% growth, and the rest are like 20 ish. He should've gotten something.

Anyway, I'm chipping the boss down with Merric and Wendell while Wolf fights for 0 damage in melee to train up his axe rank and Lena heals him up, becoming the highest-level unpromoted unit I have, amusingly. Meanwhile Sedgar keeps trying to hit this guy for one damage so he can get the single point of experience he needs for his first level. But he keeps missing.

He finally succeeds, and gets...

HP+2, and then skill, speed and defense. One less than what Wolf got, but I'll take it.

Barst killed the boss and got not only HP and speed, but also defense for the second time in a row!

...Oh, also, it only occurs to me to check now if you're allowed to access the convoy through Marth, and yes, you are. So that's back for good now. Every game from now on, with the possible exception of Echoes, lets you use that absurdly broken convoy mechanic.

Alright. So, Princess Nyna is here. Let's see if now Marth gets to speak up.

...Yes! Yes he does! Okay, now let's see if he did that in the original...

...Looks like I'll have to watch a video, because Dark Dragon's script is so minimal that Serenes Forest doesn't even bother to include it.

...Yep. This line was in the original version too.

...They didn't even add in a reaction to him receiving the fucking Fire Emblem. They did add in a graphic for him getting it, but that's it.

Seriously, I looked at the original ending script for this, and far as I could tell, there was literally nothing in the DS version that wasn't, in substance, already in the NES version. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that the text for the two Japanese versions of the game is identical.

Holy shit is this script lazy. As a Fire Emblem fan, I am seriously offended here!

...But as a playlogger, I am beyond gleeful.

...In fact... fuck it!


 

Day 8 Bonus: Chapter 7

Yep, I think I've finally come to terms with the fact that not only am I actually having fun with this game... and not only am I having more fun than I've had with this marathon in months...

...but I'm actually having more fun with this game than anything else I can think to do with my free time today.

So you get a double update, boys and girls. A double update after two consecutive weekend updates.

Permit me the ego to call you lucky.

Amusingly, the name of Marth's army has changed yet again, in rapid succession, according to the narration.

Anyway... hoo boy. This map is pretty ominous. Thankfully I've got a decent tank, but I don't know for sure what the trigger is for the ambush spawns, and until then, we've mostly just got the village guards and whichever of the fliers charge us to deal with.

I'll just hold fast and take out the archers guarding the village gate before I do anything reckless. Gotta wait and see which of these enemies, if any, will charge me.

Okay, so, this chapter only lets me deploy 14 units. I only remember one joining us, and that's Bantu. Either it fluctuates now and isn't always 16, or... I'm missing something.

Anyway. Wolf gets to work on the archers since he can use hand axes now and can double with them, and everyone else... mostly just lies in wait. Also, a villager mentioning the Hauteclere (an axe “with unknown origins” retconned into the lore so that there's an axe to rival the three regalia of the game) reminds me to talk about Minerva.

She's... I don't think she's gonna be very good in this game. She just doesn't keep up with the overall stat inflation. Back when caps were 20 across the non-HP board, stats and growths like hers were pretty good. Now, though... I mean she doesn't hold a candle to Sedgar and Wolf, let's just leave it at that.

No, actually, let's add that Caeda would equal or surpass her in every stat if she promoted right now.

...Still, she's a flier with a high weapon rank and thus access to powerful weapons, so... I mean she'll be a bit better than Jagen I suppose.

...Aaaand they started charging immediately. I know that Minerva has herself and the Whitewings just fuck off before you're forced to fight them, but I don't know whether that's on turn 2 or 3.

...Yeah, it's turn 3. I hope. I'm gonna stay out of her way just in case if at all possible though, because she's getting uncomfortably close to my army.

...Okay, I fucked up, and two of my units are in Minerva's range, just barely. If she waits until after attacking to flee, either Merric or Barst is dead, and... I do not want to have to think about that.

...Okay, they're holding position and not moving. Minerva didn't attack when she had the chance, and there's no way they expect me to spend all of these turns out of their range when they're in the center of the map. I'm gonna take a chance and move my guys in to deal with the thief and the unnamed pegasus knights.

Thank goodness. They didn't move, and now I can play it completely safe and stay out of their range entirely until they leave, now that everyone I need to get into their range to confront is dead.

...And now they're gone. Alright. Time to get moving again. Honestly, that was more of an annoyance than a challenge. Now we've got an entirely empty map to deal with until we get to the ambush spawns.

Alright, so, I avoided recruiting Bantu juuust yet in case that was a secret trigger for the ambush spawns to come early (unlikely, I know, but I'm paranoid), and I inched Sedgar juuuuuust far enough in that he could rush straight onto the first fort and stay there, trigger the reinforcements with regen and beefed defense, and see how dangerous they are.

...Incidentally, Christ. You guys weren't kidding. This game really doesn't show the stat bonuses of equipped dragonstones. It's not even in the description. What the fuck were they thinking!?

...Yep. One of the forts' cavalry reinforcements still have ridersbanes. Shit move, game. Shit move.

...These cavaliers won't adjust their position to attack from superior terrain if they're already on a space they can attack that unit from. Interesting quirk of their programming.

...The game tried to fake me out by stopping reinforcements for a turn. Thankfully, I hadn't finished off the first wave yet, and I was using the seeming opportunity to ready myself to plug the forts up just in case, so I didn't put anyone in range.

Sedgar got everything but luck. His luck stat is... going to be worrying I think. Wolf has a more manageable one, with a better base and growth, which I think in the long run makes him the slightly better unit. Which I'm grateful for since he's cooler.

Anyway, I have Sedgar sit on the fort to take the brunt of the attacks, while any stragglers are baited in with Wolf so that my ranged units can finish them off for some extra exp.

Wolf got everything but skill and luck. Since he still has enough luck to resist standard crits, I'm satisfied for now, but I'm hoping that 50% growth procs soon.

I'm running out of Sedgar's javelin. Really should've gotten him a second one. I was not expecting these reinforcements to last so long.

Christ, the reinforcements are still coming!

And in my hubris I tried to have Sedgar retreat so somebody could pass him a fresh javelin, and as a result, I've lost that fort. Thankfully I barely needed it since Sedgar took so little damage, but now I'm facing even more reinforcements, and the movement pattern of the ridersbane fort reinforcements means that the central fort is covered now at all times! Now I'll just have to wait the damned things out.

Sedgar finally gains luck, at the cost of speed and HP. Well, he was at 2 luck, so I guess I have to take that.

...I have to take it regardless, mind, but...

...Alright, the reinforcements are finally over. I'm still gonna plug them up just in case, because I don't fucking trust this game and its ambush spawns.

Wendell got a good level up this time, skill speed and luck, helping to keep him one of the fastest members of my army. Quite the spry old man.

...Wait a sec... okay, so I just checked, and apparently staves do re-order... for Lena. For Wendell they still don't, which I have to assume is some kind of glitch related to his possession of a weapon.

Fun fact, out of curiosity I just checked my Dark Dragon playlog: Dark Dragon has the exact same glitch. Staff reordering works for Lena, but not for Wendell. I said almost the exact same thing about Dark Dragon more than a year ago.

That settles it, I highly suspect this was made by building off the original source code. There's very little explanation for the shit I've noticed today otherwise.

Barst obliterates the boss with a hammer and gets the silver axe that nobody can use quite yet. Soon, though. Soon.

Speaking of weapon ranks though, Wendell just got to C rank by healing up Barst! He can use warp now! Meaning that from now on, whenever we want, we can panic-button cheese basically any map with a general or paladin boss by warping in Caeda and Marth in quick succession!

Good to keep in mind.

Alright, we've reached Chapter Fucking Seven, and now, at long last, we finally get a line from Marth that wasn't in the original version.

Marth: Manaketes? You mean the dragonkin?

Also, Manaketes is capitalized, dragonkin is not. So for those of you keeping score: beorc, laguz, Branded, parentless, Manakete, dragonkin. Got it memorized? I do, and I hate it.

Curiously though, this translation explicitly states that Malledus thinks Manaketes always used stones to transform. While the fan translation of FE1 I'm looking up online has Malledus simply say they have the ability to seal their true forms inside of stones.

...Also... they completely cut out the talk of the three tribes of Manaketes. That explains why it was news to me when I played Dark Dragon.

Marth also gets another line where he's almost making fun of Malledus for telling him shit he would obviously already know. Yeah... this is... barely added lines, and more Marth just... saying some of Malledus's old lines for him. Man, with the prologue chapters in mind, a lot of this is comically redundant.

Anyway... that's it for today!

Man, I am really getting back into the swing of this stuff! Maybe I'll do a double-update tomorrow too!

Stay safe, everyone!

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19 hours ago, Jotari said:

Might as well. Marth already invaded it without provocation, wiped out its military and overthrew its monarchy. Annexing it would be responsible by that point.

Presumably, they could have all stayed on the starting island (peninsula?), and just fended off Pirates. But hey, there's treasure to be gotten. Also Jeorge is there, because

Still, Mannu makes for one of my favorite bosses in the game. His lines at the beginning of the chapter are so deliciously hammy.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I reclassed Wolf to a hero and Sedgar to a general. Might switch things around once Wolf gets more speed much later so that he can get a bit more defense, but right now, these are the most useful classes I can have them in. Still, Wolf isn't gonna be doing much until he gets more levels or a better axe rank. He can double, but he's not any stronger than Ogma or Navarre, and has a worse sword rank, so...

These classes work very well for them. Replaying, it's bizarre to me how much better Hero and General tend to be than other classes in the same pool. Hero for the Speed, Skill, and mobility; General for the physical bulk. Horseman has great Move but generally bad stats; Berserker and Warrior are good in HP, Strength, and little else; and Sorceror only really works for magical units. I'm using Sedgar as a Hero in my current run.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also, Rickard was left in prison with a sword, just like in the original. Also like in the original, he doesn't start out with a lockpick, but then, those don't exist in this game and thieves don't need them, so...

...so he...

...could've...

...gotten out...

...at any time.

Somehow, this never occured to me. What's more, he seems to be the only enemy thief in the game without "thief AI", presumably since he's recruitable. But yeah, this logic is on-par with Desaix leaving Mathilda in a prison cell. With her armor. And horse. And a lance.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

..The game tried to fake me out by stopping reinforcements for a turn. Thankfully, I hadn't finished off the first wave yet, and I was using the seeming opportunity to ready myself to plug the forts up just in case, so I didn't put anyone in range.

It appears that they use an "On-On-Off" scheme for reinforcements. Not sure how many tirns this can last for. Anyway, these cretins killed Pegasus Knight Athena on my current playthrough. Vun voman vill be missed.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Speaking of weapon ranks though, Wendell just got to C rank by healing up Barst! He can use warp now! Meaning that from now on, whenever we want, we can panic-button cheese basically any map with a general or paladin boss by warping in Caeda and Marth in quick succession!

I find myself using Warp a lot more on my current playthrough. Not so much for "warp-skipping", but for convenient maneuvers. Like in chapter 6, I warped (Armor Knight) Cord up to the NE corner, to kill the Thieves before they escaped.

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

These classes work very well for them. Replaying, it's bizarre to me how much better Hero and General tend to be than other classes in the same pool. Hero for the Speed, Skill, and mobility; General for the physical bulk. Horseman has great Move but generally bad stats; Berserker and Warrior are good in HP, Strength, and little else; and Sorceror only really works for magical units. I'm using Sedgar as a Hero in my current run.

Yeah, really, I remember looking at the stat changes, and the others have almost nothing going for them in the bases department. At least not in the "brawn" division.

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

I find myself using Warp a lot more on my current playthrough. Not so much for "warp-skipping", but for convenient maneuvers. Like in chapter 6, I warped (Armor Knight) Cord up to the NE corner, to kill the Thieves before they escaped.

Yep, I did that with Jagen. But if you did it with a knight and made no comment of it biting you in the ass, I have to assume that means the thief won't use his stolen armorslayer then?

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2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yep, I think I've finally come to terms with the fact that not only am I actually having fun with this game... and not only am I having more fun than I've had with this marathon in months...

 

Do you think the marathon will cause you to rank Shadow Dragon higher than you would typically if playing as a stand alone game? 

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4 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Do you think the marathon will cause you to rank Shadow Dragon higher than you would typically if playing as a stand alone game? 

Not sure. Really, it's only heavy writing that's significantly more tedious to playlog than to play. Most of what I'm enjoying is just the experience of playing this game, which is a lot more fun than, oh... definitely the last three games, and maybe Blazing Blade too. I don't think I marked Radiant Dawn down much for my fatigue. In fact I ranked it much higher than my desire to play it again.

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7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, really, I remember looking at the stat changes, and the others have almost nothing going for them in the bases department. At least not in the "brawn" division.

Yep, I did that with Jagen. But if you did it with a knight and made no comment of it biting you in the ass, I have to assume that means the thief won't use his stolen armorslayer then?

So for that one, I moved Cord so he attacked the Thief (still with Steel Sword equipped), while leaving a path for the Thief to escape. I was resigned to let that Armorslayer drop go. But then I got a lucky crit (working off a forged Iron Lance), so clearly I am a master of strategery.

10 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, really, I remember looking at the stat changes, and the others have almost nothing going for them in the bases department. At least not in the "brawn" division.

Would have been nice if they gave Warrior even higher Strength (I think it's about on-par with General). As for Berserker, maybe it could have more skill (to pair with innate +10 crit), or give a decent Res boost (say, base 5). Also it should start at C Axes, like Swordmaster and Sniper. Horseman, I don't wanna buff, but I will say it's startling how much faster enemy Horsemen tend to be than playable ones.

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