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


Alastor15243
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53 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

She... what kind of an unbelievably shitty mother would knowingly abandon her children and leave them not knowing what happened to her!? What possible benefit could she have gotten out of getting rid of her holy blood that was worth that to her!?

I need information, now, because she's starting to sound as bad as Claude!

Further question. Why aren't Faval and Patty in this game? As I've complained about at some length, Faval Should appear in Chapter 21. That's directly adapting the part of the game he's in. He actively moves towards Leinster in Genealogy yet they didn't think to put him in the game at all. Chapter 21 containing zero of the five characters they could have used for that part of the game just baffles me when they went to the effort of adapting the Thracians in Chapter 23 so well.

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26 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I consider all video game difficulty to be a combination of, at most, three things:

  • Information
  • Reflexes (not applicable to FE)
  • Luck

Although, you could reasonably break information into two components: accrued information- knowledge, and the application of accrued information- wisdom. SF main site is a repository of knowledge, but it doesn't tell you how to apply it.

This said, I understand your criticism. You're looking for a game where having information alone won't mostly shatter the difficulty. You're looking for a situation where you have fair amounts of information, but determining the wisest course of action using said information is difficult. Am I right?

I'd make it four, personally, to make a distinction between the accrument of knowledge and the application of it, like you mentioned:

Knowledge, Intelligence, Reflexes and luck.

Knowledge: Information about how the game works

Intelligence: Figuring out how to apply the information you have

Reflexes: The ability to put said plan into practice in a tense situation

Luck: Self-explanatory.

It's a pretty major distinction I feel. I consider the middle two to be skill based, while the outer ones are not.

My big issue with knowledge-based difficulty is that it's only ever challenging once. Once the player learns about the surprise, it'll never be a surprise again. Not unless they forget it. Conquest can be challenging more than one time, because various elements of your different playthroughs, be it rng or your own decision making for growing your team, will force you to approach the game's challenges in subtly different ways. There are tons of different ways to challenge the various deathtraps of chapter 25 of Conquest. If your team is drastically different, you're going to tackle those challenges in drastically different ways. But when all of the challenge is based on knowledge, on just knowing when the game throws ambush spawns at you, or where the enemies are hiding in fog of war, or what secret conditions will get you a shitload more goodies than the blind player will ever find... that's not something that's going to demand much active thought at all from people replaying it a third or fourth time. If having a map of a fog of war level, with all of the item locations and ambush spawn points, negates nearly all of the difficulty and allows nearly anyone to beat it regardless of skill... then I don't really consider that map to have been hard in the first place. It was just cheap.

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Thracia Day 36: Endgame

Alright, so, I did the customary “deploy everyone you want to and see where they land and also see the story” premature deploy...

...And we finally run into that Travant retcon I heard about, the one people were debating the quality of in the thread. Honestly, one point I'm surprised nobody brought up (or maybe I just didn't notice) is the main reason why I hate this.

It's a transparently cheap attempt to give this absolute nobody-who's-nobody loser some story weight as a final boss. The game makes absolutely sure that I know that it was Veld's idea to tell Travant where Cuan and Ethlyn would be. Kaga's doing exactly the same thing he did all the way back in Dark Dragon with the Gra chapter, where the very chapter when I fight some guy I've barely seen or interacted with, the game goes: “Hey, see that guy over there?”

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/58ef4e75-66e2-40e4-a5e7-6e36ee09061d

Also, this may just be the translation, but you can just feel the transparent retconning in the writing here. “Oh those poor ignorant masses who think it was Travant who organized that master plan!”

I don't like it. I don't like it at all.

On the plus side, it does explain how Ethlyn and Quan could have been ambushed by people on giant flying lizards in the middle of a clear sky, since this implies they weren't being continuously tailed, but just intercepted when it was too late because they already knew the location...

...but that's entirely incidental and pretty clearly not the intended outcome of this scene. It's pretty clear by the way things are phrased that the intention of this scene is to have Veld take the buck from Travant, and make Veld the man primarily responsible for Leif's parents dying. To paraphrase The Dark Knight, in terms of who is morally responsible for Ethlyn and Quan's deaths, this game is making Travant the mad dog, and Veld the one who let him off the leash. And what's worse is that Leif doesn't even hear this, so this is really just to emotionally manipulate the player rather than have any character development for Leif (I seriously doubt they're gonna reveal it twice, so I'm assuming Leif's never going to learn).

...Huh. Well, I wasn't expecting this.

Apparently Leif's theme plays in this chapter. No final map theme at all. That's... unexpected. I mean, I love Leif's theme, but... honestly, I don't feel it works too well for a final battle. It's too optimistic and hopeful.

Now, on to this level... Honestly... there's potential for a one-turn here, if I had a more optimized army where I could deploy a full roster of badass combat units. Unfortunately, I do not, so I'll have to take things a little slower. Probably a two-turn at the absolute fastest.

One of the deadlords, Canis, has to be taken out immediately because she has a berserk staff.

Heh. Canis. Has berserk. Rabid dog joke. And it wasn't even intentional because the deadlord names were completely different in Japanese.

Anyway, I've got six groups here, and while most of them are pretty well-rounded... others aren't. My main objective is to kill as many of the dark mages as I can before they unlock the doors and hurt someone vulnerable. I also want to plug up the reinforcement tiles immediately because they're uncomfortably close to my starting positions.

Yet again deployment prep is infuriatingly tedious given that I can't even see where people will be while I'm outfitting them.

Let's see...

So the first group is Leif, Sarah and Ced. Unfortunately, since this game doesn't have a “use” function, Sarah's inventory is one short due to needing the stamina drink, so I'll have to put the warp staff I want to give her with Leif.

...Alright, so, while the enemy dark mages have door keys, I just checked and confirmed that they do not, in fact, use them when there are people to use Fenrir on instead. So basically... it's for people who are supremely softlock fucked, and I can't exploit it in any way that's going to end well for me.

Noted. Glad I bought keys.

So, that's another thing: I'll have to give Leif a key to that room. But most importantly, all of the dark mages have to die on the first turn, or there will be problems. These guys all have 40ish attack power with Fenrir. Taking them out is my #1 priority, and every group that doesn't have someone who can do that... is gonna need a work-around.

Alright. So. I have one team that can do it, two teams that can do it and also simultaneously warp someone who can to someone who can't, one team that can't do it, and two teams that can do it with a little luck in the rng department. If I can get lucky enough to have the last two teams successfully kill, then I can warp the two emergency assassins to the team that can't do it and also one to assassinate Canis hopefully (she has miracle so that'll take some luck too).

It's... a questionable success rate of a plan, but it's getting late and I wanna finish this tonight, so let's work with it unless it proves flawed.

Note before I begin: I have to give Callion, Leif, Galzus and Tanya keys.

Alright, let's try this.

Turns out Leif's group, if Leif gets a crit, can warp someone in to help out where needed too. Alright, good to know.

...Whew. Did it. Tackling Canis between her miracle and Wrath before she could use her berserk staff was always going to be a gamble, but Ced managed it, thankfully. I think the aura boost from Nanna helped so he could better dodge that wrath crit. Good thing she was nearby.

Okay, so there isn't a final map player phase theme, but there is a final map enemy phase theme. Curious. Also not very good.

I also remembered I didn't have to rely on a crit for Olwen if I just had Linoan ensorcel her. So I did.

Unfortunately I fucked up by forgetting to rescue Olwen to keep the enemies across the door from slaughtering her.

...And trying again has made me realize that this probably isn't going to happen reliably enough for me to make it through this. Alright. New srategy. Let's see if, like with the prison level, being in combat range distracts staff users. Maybe I don't need Canis dead this turn. Maybe I just need someone who can kill her to be put in range of her.

...Nope! But I think I'm on to something. I just need to find a way to reliably restore whoever gets berserked.

And I found one! Apparently you can still rescue-staff berserked allies. So I just need to keep that rescue staff on Linoan, and if worst comes to worst, rescue them with Linoan and restore them with Asbel now that he has a restore staff.

My efforts to put this into action have been stymied by a freakish chain of enemy stat RNG making the enemies too strong for Dire Thunder Olwen to reliably kill.

But eventually I manage to make it to turn 2, and after that, it seems to be smooth sailing. Callion was chosen to be berserked yet again, but this time the rescue and restore combo worked, and now it's time to end her.

...Fuck. I have to just let her keep berserking people for three turns, don't I? Not unless I want to gamble with having Ced-

...I did. And it failed. FUUUUUCK.

...Alright, this time we play the waiting game.

...No, fuck that, I don't want to waste my rescue staves if she picks different targets. Let's just leave the dark mage around Leif alive for now, since as long as I don't put Lara in range he's no danger, and try to assassinate Canis on turn one.

Right, that worked.

...Until Draco got a lucky shot on Orsin and procced 4 consecutive hits between her master bow and continue. DAMN IT!

...Fuck. None of these strategies seem smarter than the others... But okay, I'll just wait it out, that's less RNG dependent.

...Except that I got reckless again (that tends to happen the more vigorously I reset) and wound up putting Callion in range of Porcus, the berserk sword rogue deadlord, without killing him, forcing me to try to kill Canis early in case getting two units berserked at once horribly ruined my plans.

Thankfully, this paid off, and now Canis is dead. I should be home free now. All I have to do now is activate all of the switches, and then warp skip the fuck out of Veld.

Jesus Christ Bovis is terrifying. I forgot what the Light tome weighs, he doubled Sarah, and he then proceeded to proc Astra. And it was only due to Sarah's miracle activating something like 10 fucking times that she survived at all. It's so weird, needing to check skills all of a sudden after it being irrelevant nearly the whole game. Thankfully Ced will rip him to shreds.

It's cool how the berserk sword, unlike the sleep sword, doesn't immediately end combat, because berserk units will still attack enemies, they just also attack friends.

But anyway, I took out all the enemies, and I opened the way. Looks like I still have to unlock a door before I can fight Veld though. But it looks like the major danger is over. I have the element of surprise, I can take out those Berserkers, unlock the door, and then pounce on him. And I'll do it with Leif, just to make sure he doesn't have any interesting lines.

Apparently even the final map has the “victory is near” theme, which is... a pretty big let-down. That kind of totally kills the drama.

Oh, shit, I misread the map and forgot the berserkers were always exposed. I was wondering how to get the middle door open and then I realized I hadn't actually sat everyone on the tiles long enough to actually open it. I thought the little enclosure with all the Berserkers was what you were supposed to open, and then Lithis would unlock the main chamber. Wow. Okay, anyway, apparently the enemies inside won't attack until the next enemy phase, so I have a turn to rush them.

...It's over. Veld is completely defenseless, only one enemy was blocking him from melee range, and he's not even on a manastone throne or something, just a regular throne. And on top of that, he starts holding his stone tome, which gives him 0 AS and terrible evade, and he can't attack back in melee or 2 range!

Checkmate. Time to fight him with Leif, and in the rare event that that fails, with Ced.

And the has the audacity to be cocky, and to even have a final battle theme, when he's totally defenseless. After the hell I went through to get here, this is... almost insulting.

...He does, however, have way more HP than I was expecting. Looks like I failed a spot check. But he has no dialogue with Leif, so... time to kill him with Ced.

Mission accomplished, but that didn't end the map. Thankfully I had enough status staves in my army's inventory to keep the remaining enemies from fucking me over at the last turn.

Seems like yes, these guys fight to the last man, even when Veld is defeated. But that's irrelevant. All they did was silence some people.

Time to seize and finish up this game.

The ending dialogue just seems to be general “yes, we did it” stuff, nothing overly interesting.

Oh, that's cute. Nanna's gonna confess her feelings, and Mareeta basically tells her if she doesn't, she's gonna stay in the aforementioned “like a sister to me” zone forever.

...Except Leif apparently... already sees her like that... and already had plans to ask her to marry him... despite saying the “like a sister to me” line a single fucking map ago.

Weird.

But yeah, looks like the game's gonna end on a sort of “to be continued”, with a bunch of flashing white screens with black text talking about what is to come in the ending chapters of Genealogy.

Also, quick note, it looks like my concerns around chapter 20 were mistaken, and that Leif's grown into a confident figure and Seliph's equal in his own right, if still humble.

But... we're done.

FINALLY. WE'RE DONE.

All that's left is to copy down my record for you guys:

Chapter 1: 16 turns

Chapter 2: 19 turns

Chapter 2x: 15 turns

Chapter 3: 37 turns

Chapter 4: 47 turns

Chapter 4x: 18 turns

Chapter 5: 44 turns

Chapter 6: 28 turns

Chapter 7: 23 turns

Chapter 8: 13 turns

Chapter 8x: 33 turns

Chapter 9: 25 turns

Chapter 10: 77 turns

Chapter 11: 29 turns

Chapter 11x: 32 turns

Chapter 12: 17 turns

Chapter 12x: 49 turns

Chapter 13: 98 turns

Chapter 14: 10 turns

Chapter 14x: 23 turns

Chapter 15: 14 turns

Chapter 16: 53 turns

Chapter 17: 10 turns

Chapter 18: 58 turns

Chapter 19: 60 turns

Chapter 20: 19 turns

Chapter 21: 161 turns (Suddenly not feeling quite as worth it given all the other, natural rewarping badasses I got)

Chapter 21x: 17 turns

Chapter 22: 34 turns

Chapter 23: 7 turns

Chapter 24: 21 turns

Chapter 24x: 16 turns (seriously!? That felt like it took forever!)

Endgame: 7 turns

Total turns: 1130

Surviving units: 46 (Rip Ronan)

Overall Rank: E (Yeah, I knew his was coming)

And as the resources said, E rank gives me a portrait showing one of Leif's adorable baby pictures, with the whole family together. And for all we know, that could have been the last time. Let's see if it has the “where are they now” for the characters...

Yep! Let's see...

Leif: 119 wins, 1 loss, 3834 exp. Curious. I could have sworn he reached max level. Does that exp score keep going up even when you cap?

Curious how the game says Leif went on to become even more famous than Emperor Seliph, which... I'm not entirely sure how that's possible, but it's what they say.

It's quite amusing that they bring up, in passing, events from Genealogy, like the revelation that Altena is Leif's sister and that she joins them. So this really isn't a game you can play on its own. You have to have played Genealogy to have any idea what the hell is going on in these endings.

Leif apparently gets called “King Leif the Wise” or the “Sage Lord”. Curious, given... of all his virtues... wisdom probably isn't one of them, from what we've seen.

Finn: 44 wins, 0 losses, 1091 exp.

This very conspicuous mention of a 3 year disappearance is... odd. Was this intended to be a lead-in to another side-story if Kaga stayed on?

Oh wait... he went to the Yeid desert... that has to have to do with finding one of the missing moms. If I remember right... Lachesis went missing around there. Nevermind. That's totally what he's doing, given their implied history together.

Nanna: 22 wins, 1 loss, 3184 exp.

...Apparently people “affectionately” kept calling her “Princess Nanna” even after she became queen. That... that sounds amazingly patronizing and rude, not affectionate.

Eyvel: 11 wins, 2 losses, 0 exp. Wait... I don' remember her dying at any point after re-recruiting her... does every time she gets captured cinematically in chapter 5 get counted as a loss on her record when you reset?

Anyway, ah, so THIS is where it mentions this “pact” with the dragons. Right when it says it expires. Meaning she suddenly remembers “Oh my god, I have two kids I abandoned!”

Apparently her reunion with her children is the subject of a timeless song that any bard who can play a lute knows. And I can just hear it now...

Bard: WEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLL PATTY'S MOM'S A BITCH, SHE'S A BIG FAT BITCH SHE'S THE BIGGEST BITCH IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, SHE'S A STUPID BITCH IF THERE EVER WAS A BITCH, SHE'S A BITCH TO ALL THE BOYS AND GIRLS!

Seriously though, how awkward must it have been to introduce Mareeta to Patty and Faval? I simply must know.

Mareeta: 64 wins, 0 losses, 2299 exp.

Halvan: 18 wins, 0 losses, 761 exp.

Orsin: 135 wins, 2 losses, 2480 exp.

Tanya: 78 wins, 0 losses, 2908 exp.

I find it amusing how they don't say that Orsin and Tanya married, but immediately one after the other say that they both married someone and were both very conspicuously described as being “blessed with many children”.

Dagdar: 37 wins, 0 losses, 353 exp.

So... apparently Dagdar could just... fix the shitty farmland he lived around with hard work? Then what the fuck were they doing before?

Marty: 1 win, 0 losses, 9 exp.

Yep. While it's not quite as meme-y as his original title... he's still “Dagdar's Beloved Man”.

Ronan: 4 wins, 1 loss, 323 exp.

That's a rather awkward way to say he died in chapter 3. “Chapter 3: Kerberos's Gate. Killed in action during the above mission.” Why couldn't the translation just say he “Died in Chapter 3: Kerberos's Gate”?

Safiya: 0 wins, 2 losses, 1730 exp.

Shiva: 2 wins, 0 losses, 85 exp.

Lithis: 11 wins, 4 losses, 3507 exp.

Apparently he became a government official briefly. I'm... quite curious how and why that happened. But apparently in some non-canon novelization, according to TV Tropes, he set off for distant lands, changed his name... and became the infamous Shield of Seals thief who founded Archanea? Weird.

Fergus: 42 wins, 1 loss, 1208 exp.

So, they ask “Was he the illegitimate son of Beowulf? The long-lost prince of the Connaught royal family?”, and apparently, according to stuff I read online, the answer is “both”.

Karin: 49 wins, 2 losses, 1435 exp.

Ced: 23 wins, 2 losses, 608 exp.

Asbel: 255 wins, 0 losses, 3865 exp. Yep, the game DEFINITELY keeps counting even after you cap out.

Asbel apparently stuck by Leif's side for the rest of the war... which only increases my feelings that he should be a playable character in the Genealogy remake so that he doesn't feel so “remember the new guy”-y in the Thracia remake.

Brighton: 20 wins, 0 losses, 716 exp.

Macha: 15 wins, 0 losses, 628 exp.

It does the same thing here, implying Brighton and Macha married without ever explicitly saying it, just saying they married unnamed people fitting vague descriptions that they each meet for each other. Weird.

Lara: 0 wins, 5 losses, 1210 exp.

Apparently she goes back to being a dancer after the war even if you didn't have her talk to Pan.

Dalsin: 8 wins, 0 losses, 334 exp.

Hicks: 5 wins, 0 losses, 189 exp.

Glade: 17 wins, 0 losses, 752 exp.

Selphina: 17 wins, 1 loss, 564 exp.

Kane: 0 wins, 0 losses, 0 exp.

Alba: 0 wins, 5 losses, 0 exp.

Robert: 0 wins, 0 losses, 0 exp.

Callion the Stallion: 184 wins, 1 loss, 3832 exp.

Olwen: 64 wins, 1 loss, 955 exp.

Apparently, despite Reinhardt's release quote being that he hopes they can meet again, there's no mention of Reinhardt still being alive after the war, and Olwen apparently thinks of him in the past tense, so... maybe he really was suicidal? ...But the way they say that her anger towards her brother caused her to marry an “unremarkable man”... what kind of connection are they drawing here between this cause and effect? Is this another sibling incest reference? And wait... I could've sworn Alfred was Olwen's husband... wasn't he?

Alfred: 24 wins, 0 losses, 270 exp.

...Nope. Apparently not.

Pan: 2 wins, 1 loss, 326 exp. If I ever replay this game with any serious effort to get a good rank, I'm going to be making much more use of this guy. The only reason I didn't was because my grind-heavy Lithis did so damned well in the con department. Lithis is better in any remotely realistic playthrough.

Trude: 0 wins, 0 losses, 0 exp.

Salem: 1 win, 0 losses, 349 exp.

Tina: 0 wins, 0 losses, 630 exp.

Linoan: 0 wins, 2 losses, 704 exp.

Dean: 41 wins, 0 losses, 729 exp.

Huh. I could've sworn that those two were going to wind up together. She never married Arion, so...? ...Well that's just sad. She and Dean clearly like each other.

Eda: 6 wins, 0 losses, 215 exp.

Homer: 0 wins, 0 losses, 0 exp.

Ralph: 0 wins, 0 losses, 0 exp.

Schroff: 0 wins, 0 losses, 410 exp.

Amalda: 5 wins, 0 losses, 392 exp.

Misha: 2 wins, 0 losses, 52 exp.

Xavier: 2 wins, 1 loss, 0 exp.

Dermott: 0 wins, 0 losses, 0 exp.

Galzus: 8 wins, 0 losses, 0 exp. Wait... why isn't it counting excess exp for him?

Sarah: 76 wins, 2 losses, 3274 exp.

And... that's it.

...That's the end of the game.

...Which brings us to the inevitable question:

What did I think?


 

Difficulty: Alright, sure, let's start with the hardest one to score. But at least here, I think I'm pretty confident in my answer. This is a measure of how much real difficulty a game has. Not trial and error “gotcha” traps. Not luck-based shenanigans. And certainly not status staff users that you can keep neutralizing and stealing in an escalating, snowballing cavalcade of free shit. Honestly, before the last chapter, most of the second half of the game was a hilarious cakewalk due to all of the exploits and dodgetanking and staff abuse you can do. And I'm 90% certain I could have slaughtered the endgame map pretty damned quickly if this game had a modern preparation screen. Honestly, I was severely disappointed with this game in many regards. I was disappointed with how quickly the good difficulty peaked, and how quickly is backslid into staff shenanigans and warp-skipping with a monty haul of overpowered staves.

...that said...

...None of the games so far, save for Genealogy, have had what I'd call a “consistent” difficulty curve, and I graded Book 2 above Genealogy for having a better peak.

...And at this game's best... I was having more fun with Thracia, and was more engagingly challenged, than I was with Book 2 of Mystery of the Emblem.

...So really it's a matter of how many points I take off for the bullshit. Or if I even should take off points for the bullshit, or if that's something to consider for the other...

...Okay, no. As much as I loathe doing this, I have to be fair. Thracia, for all its faults, has managed to, in sum total, made me think about strategy more than any other Fire Emblem game on this list so far. In this big, flopping, writhing pile of very tight and slim gradations of mediocrity... I'm gonna have to put Thracia on top.

1: Thracia 776

2: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

3: Genealogy of the Holy War

4: Gaiden

5: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

6: Dark Dragon


 

Ironmannability: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA No.

While this game is mostly good about supplying you with replacement units, and while the random elements didn't bite me in the ass nearly as much as I thought they would... the fact remains that so, so much of this game's difficulty depends on concealing raw facts from the player, to the degree that this game's level of honor isn't just nonexistent, it's twenty thousand leagues under the sea. This is not a game that's prepared to let you win if you're merely smart enough. It wants everyone who plays it for the first time to be kicked to the curb repeatedly for the crime of not being psychic.

Ironmanning this game, while technically feasible, requires way, way more preparation and intel than it is remotely reasonable to expect of a fan of this series when ironman was allegedly supposed to be the intended way to play the original games. This game's honor is so far below Conquest's gold standard that I stand here struggling to put into words all the myriad ways in which I despise this game's complete and total lack of honor. The only nice thing I can say about this game's honor (and I only even mention this pathetic hurdle it managed to leap because there's a game in this franchise that somehow doesn't) is that the game never outright lies to the player. It hides stuff from the player, sure. It hides loads from the player. But as far as I can remember it never surprises them by lying to them.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

3: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

4: Dark Dragon

5: Gaiden

6: Thracia 776


 

Usability: For the first time in this entire marathon thus far, I have to take this list out of chronological order. While Thracia doesn't strictly do that much worse than its predecessors, it does make demands of the player, demands previous games rarely if ever made, that are drastically exacerbated by the interface's shortcomings. Despite what I said before, however, I've ultimately decided it was an unfair exaggeration to say I would put it beneath Gaiden, given that Gaiden still had me consulting a text file for spell damage, which I have to remind myself is still asinine even if it was a colossal improvement over Dark Dragon and I never found it a big deal while playing. But it goes no higher than that. Between the repeated pain I felt due to the limited preparation screen and the bizarre command priority that wound up tripping me up several times, I have to score the games as follows:

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Mystery of the Emblem

3: Thracia 776

4: Gaiden

5: Dark Dragon


 

Depth: In terms of diversity of roles and purposes I found my endgame army filling, Thracia loses out to Genealogy and Gaiden here. While the skill system helped it get above FE1 and FE3, a lot of my high-end units found themselves filling very similar roles by the end of the game, with only the possession of a high staff rank really giving a combat unit more of a role than just a general smasher of things. Honestly, staves in this game have so many numerous and ridiculous uses that I almost feel like there should have been like two types of staff ranks or something, just to keep that one weapon rank from being such a massive game changer. However, the various mechanics like stamina and capturing do still make this game win out over any other game on this list in terms of the gameplay depth department, which makes this a pretty hard decision. Ultimately, even though it feels super weird to say, I'm gonna have to put this just below Genealogy in terms of depth.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Thracia 776

3: Gaiden

4: Mystery of the Emblem

5: Dark Dragon


 

Balance: Honestly, this is kind of a mess, though I have to say not as bad as Genealogy. But Staves are outrageously overpowering, it has the same problem as Book 2 when it comes to those growth items, and it's just so incredibly easy to break the middle of the game in half. Optimal play and strategies at times look almost comical. I can't in good conscience put it above anything but Genealogy.

1: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

2: Gaiden

3: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

4: Thracia 776

5: Genealogy of the Holy War

6: Dark Dragon


 

Pacing: I have surprisingly few complaints about this. Aside from some ballistae in the early game where I felt draining them was almost essential, those obnoxious warp traps, and the tedious endings of nearly all escape maps, this game rarely slows down the action when you don't want it to. Much of my time-taking with this game was self-inflicted, though again, not all of it. I'm pretty sure that, in spite of those aforementioned issues, I can place it at the top of the list here. Especially since I'm 99% sure, if memory serves, that Book 1 barely improved at all on Dark Dragon's terrible enemy placement issues. This is the first game where the pacing felt... almost normal.

1: Thracia 776

2: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

3: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

4: Gaiden

5: Dark Dragon

6: Genealogy of the Holy War


 

Writing: As I said before, the decisions the translation team made with some of the dialogue has no bearing on this rating, as that would not be fair. However, I will take what I said elsewhere and repeat it here for the record:

To be clear, the people who worked on Project Exile are absolute legends, and the Fire Emblem community owes them an immeasurable debt for their labor of love. But I am not a fan of what they did to the villager dialogue. It just does not mesh well with the tone of literally any other part of the game, and it can get to levels of irreverence and tongue-in-cheek absurdity that I'd expect out of an abridged series, or Shrek. I honestly think the game would be better if that villager dialogue were at least edited to be a bit more in line with the game's worldbuilding and general tone.

As for the game itself... there's not much to say. I wasn't overly impressed by this game's writing, but it was also a lot more... solidly told... than any other game on this list. But even if it's well-told, it's not a very impressive story. So I can't put it above Genealogy, despite all of that game's egregious writing flaws.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Thracia 776

3: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

4: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

5: Dark Dragon

6: Gaiden


 

Music: Genealogy still wins. This game has a nice soundtrack, but the number of awesome and memorable tracks is still a good deal higher in Genealogy than it is here. Leif's theme is amazing, but it's not my favorite song in the whole series, or even from the series so far in the marathon. It does beat Gaiden though.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Thracia 776

3: Gaiden

4: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

5: Dark Dragon

6: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1


 

Presentation: When it comes to gameplay visuals, this and Genealogy are almost identical, but Genealogy has more badass spell animations, mostly owing to having more of the holy weapons. That said... the portraits are much better in Thracia, so I'm gonna have to put this on top.

1: Thracia 776

2: Genealogy of the Holy War

3: Mystery of the Emblem

4: Gaiden

5: Dark Dragon


 

Replayability: While this game can't compare to the sheer scale of what you can do differently in FE4, the replayability is pretty good here. This game's depth is enough that the growth-boosting scrolls and low stat caps don't give this game the “what's the point” factor of Book 2, and it also has a branching route in the story and... in total fairness... tons and tons of secrets to find. So I'm gonna have to put this second.

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Thracia 776

3: Gaiden

4: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

5: Dark Dragon

6: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2


 

Overall: This is starting to get hard to keep track of. So to help things, I'm going to give each game a total number of points won in each category, with a first place win netting 5, and 6th place netting 0. Categories with fewer than 6 places due to books 1 and 2 getting the same score will have a minimum point value of 1. That's not gonna be a perfect indicator, but it'll be helpful. Here are the results:

Genealogy: 38 points

Thracia: 36 points

Book 2: 28 points

Book 1: 26 points

Gaiden: 22 points

Dark Dragon: 9 points

...That... mostly feels about right, honestly. The only thing I instinctually object to is Book 1 over Gaiden, since I remember finding Gaiden a good deal more enjoyable. I'll swap their order for now to keep with what I've said so far, but... I have to keep in mind... note the drastic jump between Dark Dragon and Gaiden in points. I have to account for the possibility that that massive jump in relative quality may have affected my memory of its overall quality. I'll have to play around with it for fun sometime and see. I may adjust things in the future. So for now:

1: Genealogy of the Holy War

2: Thracia 776

3: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2

4: Gaiden

5: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

6: Dark Dragon

...And... with that... at long last... we're done with Thracia! Which means... after more than a decade and a half of being a fan...

I CAN NOW SAY THAT THERE ISN'T A SINGLE MAINLINE FIRE EMBLEM GAME I HAVEN'T BEATEN! WITH THE EXCEPTION OF A ROUTE AND A HALF OF THREE HOUSES, I'VE PLAYED THE WHOLE MAINLINE SERIES! WOOOOOOOO!

Alright! Now then! Tune in this Monday, when we move on to Fire Emblem 6: The Binding Blade!

...First I'll have to find a rom or a save file with a pre-unlocked hard mode.

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Nice, I am a bit surprised about the positive result of FE5, but it's mainly because the first three games (I have not played) seem to have way less to offer.

I still consider FE5 as the measure, the modern FE parts are based on gameplaywise.

Honestly I do not find FE5 that bad to ironman.

The 1-99% hitrate is a thing, yes, but FE5 is the only FE part I can think of everyone is usable without much effort. 

Of course if someone with a great personal weapon like Asbel or Orsin dies, it is a massive loss, but I think it's still very beatable.

FE5 is the game I would like to ironman first.


I mainly read through FE5 becuase it is easily the most controversial FE game in the series for good reasons.

I enjoyed the read and share lots of your opinions and could also gain some useful information for myself.

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2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Lithis: 11 wins, 4 losses, 3507 exp.

Apparently he became a government official briefly. I'm... quite curious how and why that happened. But apparently in some non-canon novelization, according to TV Tropes, he set off for distant lands, changed his name... and became the infamous Shield of Seals thief who founded Archanea? Weird.

I'm pretty sure this is an urban legend coming from something no one has ever actually researched. Jugdral takes place a thousand years before Archanea, and Shadow Dragon takes place six hundred years after the founding of the Kingdom of Archanea. So Lifis would need to live for an extra four hundred years to be able to live long enough to steal the Fire Emblem. Plus if they genuinely wanted to make a connection they would have just called Lifis Adrah right out the gate and put it in the actual game. Maybe it is in the Thracia novellisation and that was just written by an overly eager fan, but in terms of the canon of the games, it's impossible. And it isn't even a case of "Oh maybe Jugdral only took place around a thousand years ago and it was really closer to six hundred" because we have a timeline backed up in Mystery of the Emblem confirming Naga died 500 years before Archanea's founding, and Naga obviously had to be alive for the Miracle of Darna to happen a hundred and fifty years ago in Jugdral's backstory. So assuming she died immediately after Darna, that's still putting Lifis's lifetime over three hundred years before the founding of Archanea. So unless he's somehow secretly a manakete or something, it aint possible. Plus, how would the book even reveal such information? Does it have an ending section at the back like in the game and the author arbitrarily decided to deviate from the game for several characters?

Also Lifis's ending gives him the credit for wiping out the very pirate group he founded and led. He straight up betrayed his comrades and had them all slaughtered once he became part of the united government. Man, he's such an asshole. I love it.

Edited by Jotari
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1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Honestly, one point I'm surprised nobody brought up (or maybe I just didn't notice) is the main reason why I hate this.

It's a transparently cheap attempt to give this absolute nobody-who's-nobody loser some story weight as a final boss. The game makes absolutely sure that I know that it was Veld's idea to tell Travant where Cuan and Ethlyn would be. Kaga's doing exactly the same thing he did all the way back in Dark Dragon with the Gra chapter, where the very chapter when I fight some guy I've barely seen or interacted with, the game goes: “Hey, see that guy over there?”

To quote myself from forever ago:

On 11/25/2019 at 7:40 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

It tries to takes that moment away from Travant in an attempt to give it Veld, in a way that falls flat in both games.

 

Time for me to bring up something cool about this final map that most players wont see due to that desire for a perfect run. If certain characters aren't recruited, or die (or in one unique case their gaiden was missed) the Dead Lords will wear their faces. After I realized I accidentally unlocked the most obscure of them (Dagdar only shows up if you miss his gaiden) I decided to make the lot of them show up, and arranged their deaths in chapter 24.

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Dagdar, presumably killed by Gomez and his crew alongside his daughter, becomes Tigris.

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Both Lifis and Sarah were sacrificed on 24 to see the full extent of this easter egg, and they became Porcus and Canis (who look far less zombiefied than the others)

ZFmsSQ2eKAmluizD-tHlk1XvsPYr94gwZU_FQIyO

Galzus was killed without seeing Mareeta, and with those blood red eyes he becomes the vengeful Bovis.

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With Sarah dead no one can use the kaia to reach the gaiden let alone recruit her, and so Eyvel returns as the deadly sniper she secretly was in the form of Draco.

I will also note that the first part of FE7 endgame took a lot of inspiration from this map...

Another interesting thing to note is that Miranda has a scene during the ending before Nanna's confession, where she brings up that all of her advisors are suggest her and Lief marry as the last members of the royal families from the Princedoms of northern Thracia (with her the Princess of Alster, and him the Prince of Leonster), but he puts her off saying he will decide after Genealogy. This makes the Nanna confession and proposal somehow even more jarringly fast than you already found it. In her ending it says she doesn't wait for Lief to give his answer before she marries someone she feel in love while waiting.

As for my Ironman, I should have done more extensive preps before endgame as I had three deaths on turn one. The problem was I had no good plan for two of the siege weapons (my awful alternative plan, that they just might try to use hel if someone was in range just made Glade and Delmud die), and while Olwen could Dire Thunder the nearest one to death, Draco obliterated her on enemy phase. I lucked out with Asvel's placement so he slept Canis with Blizzard (my original plan was to have Mareeta mulch her with the Mareeta sword as with two hits she wipes Canis out with her capped strength, and with capped speed, and skill she has a massive chance of procing one of her skills to make the kill even easier). The next turn I got cocky and made what was somehow the biggest oof of the playthrough, after Olwen's vantage let her damage Draco, plus Miranda meteors, Ced goes for the kill, and she miracle wraths him to death. With Ced having already warped the only other person in that area away, and my full use Rescue staff dying with him, that corner is just not reachable until I deal with other sections of the map. This directly leads to death numbers five and seven, as I didn't finish that corner off until after two turns of reinforcements arrive (they stop spawning after you open up Veld's chamber). When they arrive they killed Selphina, and only with a lucky dodge does Lara avoid death as well. This forces me to break my last remaining rescue to warp my best combatant Mareeta into that locked room at the corner of the map to end these reinforcements. Then we get to the Veld issue. The only combat units in range of a warp on the turn he arrives are Asvel and Lief, now I still have 4 uses of the Grafcalibur for just such an occasion, and if Lief could actually hit a pair of 80 somethings (or if Veld didn't have that vulnerary) it would have been over far sooner... After the first of these failures I start marching Osian in the direction of the nearest warper, and I didn't account for the extra damage that ensorcel gives the Fenrir tomes, so he becomes death number six. The turn after Grafcalibur breaks they finally combine the ensorcel and silence staff to sleep him... and then I start trying for the more meme-y kill option, Berserking the Hel mages (as they could drop Veld down to 1 health with one of those) but they just get overwhelmed by the other enemies before they have a chance to act. Linoan becomes the seventh and final death as no one was around to deal with the reinforcements that spawned in Draco's corner, and those with the status staves to save her were either silenced or trying to berserk enemies in Veld's room (after the Hel mages die I have been Berserking Berserkers to thin out and distract the enemies in Veld's room). Eventually one of the enemies Yotsumung Asvel, which replaces his silence with poison, so him and Lief eventually take Veld out, but that ended up being utterly disastrous. That being said it was a fun run, with the fun I had using Miranda and Eda (both of whom I never really used before) and with how few Stamina drinks I went for there were points where I had to be careful with fatigue levels, which was interesting, plus it gave me a good chance to see the Dead Lord easter egg.

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8 hours ago, Rosalina said:

Honestly I do not find FE5 that bad to ironman.

The 1-99% hitrate is a thing, yes, but FE5 is the only FE part I can think of everyone is usable without much effort. 

Of course if someone with a great personal weapon like Asbel or Orsin dies, it is a massive loss, but I think it's still very beatable.

FE5 is the game I would like to ironman first.

I don't exactly disagree with you on this technically, but part of my philosophy is that permadeath and losing units along the way is such a core and ingrained concept in the series that a player shouldn't have to have already played the game and perpetually be consulting a guide in order to do an ironman run, and that any features the game adds that would make that next to impossible (ambush spawns and other "gotcha" traps the player has no time to properly react to) are really just shitty parlor tricks to artificially inflate difficulty, and thus I very strongly mark down any game's ironmannability if they have them. Because one, they shouldn't be there in the first place, and two, it keeps the player from getting to enjoy that amazing ironman first playthrough. My very first experience with ironmanning was in Fates, and the fact that in that game, despite playing it blind, every single one of the very few deaths I had was my fault, made me realize how awesome it is when a game lets you ironman it for your very first playthrough without making you consult a guide to not get your soldiers randomly and arbitrarily kicked to the curb every map.

Edited by Alastor15243
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14 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

The only nice thing I can say about this game's honor (and I only even mention this pathetic hurdle it managed to leap because there's a game in this franchise that somehow doesn't) is that the game never outright lies to the player. It hides stuff from the player, sure. It hides loads from the player. But as far as I can remember it never surprises them by lying to them.

 

I haven't been following this project yet, but this interests me. I shall now pay more attention.

 

14 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright! Now then! Tune in this Monday, when we move on to Fire Emblem 6: The Binding Blade!

...First I'll have to find a rom or a save file with a pre-unlocked hard mode.

Woot woot best game time.

It's a pretty easy thing to do with FE Builder, there's probably a UPS patch for it already. FE Builder comes with one included, but failing that I could send you a save.

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47 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I haven't been following this project yet, but this interests me. I shall now pay more attention.

Woot woot best game time.

It's a pretty easy thing to do with FE Builder, there's probably a UPS patch for it already. FE Builder comes with one included, but failing that I could send you a save.

Always happy to have a new reader! I managed to find it and set it up earlier this morning. I've got the rom, the latest translation, and hard mode unlocked.

11 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

To quote myself from forever ago:

I stand corrected then! Looks like it was mentioned.

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

Also Lifis's ending gives him the credit for wiping out the very pirate group he founded and led. He straight up betrayed his comrades and had them all slaughtered once he became part of the united government. Man, he's such an asshole. I love it.

Ah yes, I did notice that, but I was kind of at the point of "no, if I bring up everything I notice in these I'll be up past midnight" by that point. It is quite interesting, and I wonder what his motivations were.

 

13 hours ago, Jotari said:

Did you use any long range tomes in the final chapter? They can be pretty useful for taking out the key threats. Especially Blizzard with its ability to put enemies to sleep.

I did not. It's one of those things I'm not used to having in my arsenal, so it didn't quite pop up on my mental list of "shit I can do". Which annoys me, because I went to the trouble of bringing it and everything, but in the frustration of the situation it didn't occur to me.

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Binding Blade Day 1: Chapter 1

Alright, let's get this started. Binding Blade. The first portable Fire Emblem game. The first Fire Emblem game made after Shouzou Kaga left the series.

I'll be honest. Apart from my praise/criticism for the GBA games in general, I have next to no idea what to expect here. I last played this game ages ago, and when I did, I was drunk with the power of save states and barely remember anything about the game's actual difficulty or map design because it was rarely relevant. Because not only did I save-state-abuse to fix mistakes, I also save-state-abused to rig level ups.

Arena level ups. Which I abused to a frankly asinine degree.

The only thing I really, vividly remember thinking about this game as a kid was that one of the cavaliers in this game was my favorite in the GBA trilogy because he was the only one who was blue.

Yes, I'm pretty sure I also mentioned this somewhere on Serenes Forest already, but according to my search it wasn't in this thread, so I'll repeat it: I mostly based my favorite units on which ones had the coolest looking classes and were my favorite color. My absolute favorites as a kid were sages, paladins, FE8 sword generals, most of the lord classes (though I hated whenever a foot soldier got a horse, as I thought that killed their established aesthetic), heroes and swordmasters.

I don't think I even knew how stat calculations worked by the time I played this game. I think this was still at the stage where I was just watching the cool animations and coasting on stats alone.

I'm frankly astonished that between my youth and adulthood, I managed to be and stay a major fan of this series for two almost entirely different, and almost mutually exclusive, sets of reasons.

But anyway, let's get started.

...Oh for fuck's sake.

This game is utterly shameless with how much it's aping FE1. It's not even trying to hide it. It opens with an intro with dialogue vague enough to apply to either fucking game.

And I hate to bring up two negative things in a row, but I have to talk about this game's music. While the music itself can be great, and I remember a lot of tracks I like, I'm not remotely a fan of this game's sound design or midi instruments. Now, this could certainly be due to FE7 nostalgia, I will freely admit, because I just caught myself about to write “now, everything that carried over to FE7 was fine, but...”... but... I just hate how primitive a lot of the instruments and sound effects sound. I'm not a fan of the extensive use of synth sounds in the music, especially. And with every song that's in both FE7 and FE6, including the FE7 ones I never heard in game until years after first playing FE6, I find myself preferring the FE7 version. Also, while I'll talk about this later, what would be my favorite song in this game is absolutely ruined by poor instruments, but more importantly, just generally bad composition. Thankfully it's been remixed, multiple times, but that won't help me here.

But alright, enough shit-giving, let's get going into the actual game.

This game opens with a text crawl almost identical to the one in the intro to FE7, so much so that I almost get the feeling that the translators tried to make it identically phrased but somehow screwed up. That doesn't sound likely however, so I have to assume the slight differences were intentional on the fan translators' part.

And of course, this text crawl explains that humans are psychotic racist bastards who attacked the dragons unprovoked, for no stated reason, and drove them off the planet into another dimension, and that the humans did it with weapons... so powerful... they fucked up... the laws... of... nature...?

...That... please don't tell me that's supposed to be a Hiroshima metaphor.

I... if there's any confirmation of whether that's true or not I'd like to know, but I'm not going to delve into my opinions on that here. This is hardly the time or place for it.

Moving on, I don't really like this continuous “humans are the real monsters” narrative whenever humans and dragons have come into conflict. It's gotten old, and I generally despise the concept of an entire species that's all but explicitly stated to be genetically more virtuous than the human race. It's annoying with elves, and it's no less annoying with dragons.

Three Houses came extremely, extremely close to subverting the narrative by... spoilers...

Spoiler

...making Sothis a colonizer from another planet who came to a world already inhabited by humans with their own advanced and prosperous societies, and then felt entitled to start handing it over to her own children she created on this world specifically to live on it, an event that ended in the entire human race technologically regressed, stunted, and low-key enslaved to a theocracy built entirely on lies where the goddess's insane daughter gives her mother credit for creating the humans she merely stole the planet from, with an underground society of the remnants of the ancient culture the dragons both physically and historically eradicated now fighting a war of guerilla tactics to try to reclaim their planet from the colonist invaders...

...and yet they still somehow managed to twist the narrative to make the dragons the put-upon victims acting in revenge against the injustices of ancient, racist humans.

I swear, if I ever make a Fire Emblem fangame, it's going to play the above spoilered paragraph entirely straight, and take every common and classic trope of the manaketes and twist it for horror. Just once, just once, I really, really want a game where humans and dragons come into conflict, and the dragons are almost entirely in the wrong.

But I'm not getting that here, and I'm going to try to not give this game too much shit for it. It wasn't quite as overplayed back then as it is now.

...That's weird. The intro text crawl faded out when the last line of text barely had time to appear on the bottom of the screen. I know I got more time to read it during my test play of the intro on Saturday...

Looking at the map as they display it here... holy shit, Valor is a massive island. I'm frankly amazed the Lycian League never tried to claim it as part of their territory. I can't remember what exactly besides Nergal and the (inactive) dragon's gate made the island so dangerous, but maybe I'll find out more here. I wonder if Valor's even mentioned in this game. If not, maybe FE7 was always planned?

And there's Ilia, making Elibe yet another FE continent where the flying horses find an icy wasteland to be the best place to call home. I still don't get it. The game even explicitly states the soil is terrible for crops and plant life. It's Thracia On Ice! The people even do mercenary work to survive there too! Why the fuck do the flying ponies like it there!?

Curious. I don't think I saw the peninsula below Bern highlighted as its own country. What is it, and why isn't it part of Bern?

Okay, so Roy's heading back to Pherae from Ostia with his knights in tow, and Bors, a knight responsible for Lilina's safety. So then why wasn't Bors already in Pherae, guarding Lilina as she went to visit Eliwood? Weird.

And thus we meet Eliwood, who's currently sick, but is probably the luckiest bastard of any character to ever father or give birth to a FE lead. He's the only one who isn't dead by the end of his child's game. Chrom I suppose also, if you count Lucina as a lead and you don't count the fact that the Chrom who fathered the Lucina did die.

It's kind of funny how so much of this map resembles a vertical version of FE1's first chapter. Rotate it 90 degrees counterclockwise, and the village you can visit is in the same spot, and so's the second village, except this time that's the one that's pre-destroyed and the original pre-destroyed village is absent.

Alright, on to the actual gameplay. I just looked up the growth rates I've got to work with, and I'm amused that Allen and Lance have growth rates almost identical to each other, with just 5% variances between them in each stat. That might make it easy to do a little experiment I've been wanting to do for a while, where I “scientifically” weigh the pros and cons of early and late promotion. Mekkah and quite a few others say it's basically always a good idea to promote early instead of later, but this seems to be something that assumes something I've rarely experienced in practice: that the middle of the game is always harder than the end of it, and that that big promotion stat gain is more useful in the mid game than the 10 levels of push back down the experience curve is detrimental in the late game. But personally, I've never found the middle to be the hardest part of the game. I've played games where the difficulty was consistent the whole way through, and I've played games that start hard and keep getting easier, but I've never played a Fire Emblem game that I would describe as peaking in difficulty at the midway point.

However, I'm not going to presume to know more about the game than people who have done LTCs and speedruns, so I'm going to try to see if this is true in practice myself, at least in the instance of this game. I'm going to use Lance and Allen equally, and then promote one of them, probably Lance, as soon as I get the first knight's crest in chapter 8. Then I'm going to promote Allen at level 20 like I usually do, and see which one wound up more useful overall, and who wound up helping me out of bigger jams. The higher difficulty should help make said jams more common.

Alright, I've set up my first move. It's a bit annoying, because the GBA stat window is complete and utter trash. Most infuriatingly, it puts calculated stats like might, hit, evade, etc., on a completely separate screen from base stats, so if you want to calculate the damage an enemy will do by subtracting your defense from the enemy's might, you have to flip between pages constantly. This is going to be annoying, but I'll have to get used to It, because it's my life for the next three games.

As for my strategy itself, basically, I sent Marcus up top to fight the two axe fighters, while Bors baits in the lower one. If I did my calculations right, Roy and Lance should be able to take out the two up on the cliff, while Allen, with Wolt chip damage, should be able to take out the one down south.

Alas, foiled by the AI's own stupidity. The two axe fighters could have both attacked Marcus, but the closer one attacked from the closer space, leaving the further one nowhere to attack him from, leaving me with one of the two far healthier than I was hoping for.

Fortunately for me, nothing stopped me from having Marcus attack that straggler on turn two as he advanced to keep the other axe fighter and archer from overwhelming my weaker units. I have to say, this feels really, really good, feeling pressure from genuinely strong advancing enemies I can't reliably enemy-phase, and having to take them out before their numbers catch up to and overwhelm me. This is the kind of pressure I really like, and I like it when games find ways to apply it as often as possible. The “don't move until approached” AI is very, very easy to misuse, and in most of the games so far, it has been. I think only Fates really managed to create enemy groups that waited for your approach that were still intimidating to take out. When they don't charge in groups, it's way too easy to pick them off one at a time.

Marcus is absurdly useful at this point in the game for weakening enemies. I like how he only kills things with a silver lance and can only weaken them with an iron sword, but he still has that silver lance for when I really need it.

What I'm not liking all that much are these Javelins. They have a whopping 30 hit penalty compared to iron swords, to the point that these starting enemies have a better than 50% chance of dodging them. Ouch.

My reflexes from Thracia are kind of fucking me over here. I think my fingers are used to “trade” being the last thing on the menu, and I've selected “wait” by accident twice now.

Things have calmed down a bit now, and have way less pressure, so most of the danger has passed. But I am disappointed that now we're back to the usual “bait at your leisure” gameplay.

But I got my first level up! Speed and defense for Roy! He could definitely be doing worse!

Lance one-ups him by adding HP to that.

Looks like the enemies at the very bottom, with the exception of the one to the right of the boss, do in fact aggro in groups!

And Allen one-ups both Lance and Roy by adding Strength and skill to the HP, speed and defense!

On the plus side for this game's interface, this game lets you look at the stats of your and the enemy's units while cantoing! I can't quite remember which ones, but I know a lot of games don't let you do that, and that can be pretty scary at times, when you're positioning them basically blind.

The boss is pretty dang nasty, and I'm letting Marcus handle him unless an opening arrives to kill him with Allen or Lance. Then I might take it.

Said opening does not arrive, and Marcus exactly kills him. Shame, but oh well, it's just one boss kill. Speaking of which, boss kills don't seem to give Marcus that much experience. Weird. I remember Seth getting much more experience than that when killing bosses in Sacred Stones.

Nothing much of note in the ending cutscene aside from the ludicrous similarities to Dark Dragon still shining through. Apparently this game is more popular in Japan largely because of its similarities to FE1 and 3. As someone who never grew up with 1 or 3, I don't think I'll ever for the life of me be able to understand that. If 4 and 5 were massive departures from the spirit and style of the original games, and then they shat all over 1-3's legacy, or had Marth appear as some jaded washed-up loser put in the story solely to be one-upped by the new characters, then I would entirely understand why this game's similarities to FE1 might be a point of praise, or at least relief. But here... I don't really get it.

...Then again... FE4 and FE5 were in many senses exactly that kind of “massive departure from the spirit and style of the original games”. They are drastically different experiences from 1-3, and not all of those changes were good. Maybe the Japanese audience just didn't like a lot of the bigger feature expansions? Or maybe the Japanese fanbase knew about Kaga's departure, and they were scared about the direction the series would go in now that it was under new management? And then seeing a game even more like FE1-3 than Kaga's later works put them greatly at ease?

I'm not sure. But I'm not going to tell them they're wrong.

Well, that's it for today. I could do more, but after spending nearly all of my free time playing Thracia these last few weekdays, I think I'm ready for things to be short and sweet again, if just for a little while. See ya tomorrow!

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1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

This game is utterly shameless with how much it's aping FE1. It's not even trying to hide it. It opens with an intro with dialogue vague enough to apply to either fucking game.

 

Perfection begins with improving what is already there.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Three Houses came extremely, extremely close to subverting the narrative by... spoilers...and yet they still somehow managed to twist the narrative to make the dragons the put-upon victims acting in revenge against the injustices of ancient, racist humans.

Wait really? Hah, wow, Three Houses continually seems like something I was alright to skip.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I swear, if I ever make a Fire Emblem fangame, it's going to play the above spoilered paragraph entirely straight, and take every common and classic trope of the manaketes and twist it for horror. Just once, just once, I really, really want a game where humans and dragons come into conflict, and the dragons are almost entirely in the wrong.

As a human who is all things considered a fan of humans, that'd be pretty neat. That said, FE6 does end up with a little more nuance, I would say. Mostly in other parts of the game though.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

And there's Ilia, making Elibe yet another FE continent where the flying horses find an icy wasteland to be the best place to call home. I still don't get it. The game even explicitly states the soil is terrible for crops and plant life. It's Thracia On Ice! The people even do mercenary work to survive there too! Why the fuck do the flying ponies like it there!?

Evolution don't care 'bout no "like" nonsense.

***

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, on to the actual gameplay. I just looked up the growth rates I've got to work with, and I'm amused that Allen and Lance have growth rates almost identical to each other, with just 5% variances between them in each stat. That might make it easy to do a little experiment I've been wanting to do for a while, where I “scientifically” weigh the pros and cons of early and late promotion.

Imma stop you right there and point out a couple of problems with this idea.

Yes, I know "scientifically" is in air quotes but I still feel the need to point it out.

Experiments require reducing the variations to a minimum. While Alan and Lance are pretty similar, it should be noted that:

  • They have different growth rates, and while they aren't drastically different, that's still a variation
  • Even if they did have the same growth rates, growth rates and random, so the stats they gain will most likely be different
  • Alan and Lance have different base stats
1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Mekkah and quite a few others say it's basically always a good idea to promote early instead of later, but this seems to be something that assumes something I've rarely experienced in practice: that the middle of the game is always harder than the end of it, and that that big promotion stat gain is more useful in the mid game than the 10 levels of push back down the experience curve is detrimental in the late game.

Early promotion usually means level 14 more than level 10.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I've played games where the difficulty was consistent the whole way through, and I've played games that start hard and keep getting easier, but I've never played a Fire Emblem game that I would describe as peaking in difficulty at the midway point

The latter case is still an instance of the middle of the game being harder than the end.

***

All that said though, promoting one of Alan and Lance as soon as possible is what you should be doing anyway, and it will be a good bit before you get another knight's crest. So this isn't exactly a ruinous plan you've set out. Not to give too many hints, but promoting Rutger quickly is also a good idea, largely because throne bonuses in this game are so ridiculous and you need a fast, accurate unit with high damage output (in this case +30 crit) in order to deal with the bosses.

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2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

It's kind of funny how so much of this map resembles a vertical version of FE1's first chapter. Rotate it 90 degrees counterclockwise, and the village you can visit is in the same spot, and so's the second village, except this time that's the one that's pre-destroyed and the original pre-destroyed village is absent.

Weird, I never noticed this before. Yeah, the game takes heavy cues from the Archanea games. Really feels like a "back to basics" move following Kaga's departure, as you mentioned. 

Can't wait to read what you think!

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2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Three Houses came extremely, extremely close to subverting the narrative by... spoilers...

  Hide contents

...making Sothis a colonizer from another planet who came to a world already inhabited by humans with their own advanced and prosperous societies, and then felt entitled to start handing it over to her own children she created on this world specifically to live on it, an event that ended in the entire human race technologically regressed, stunted, and low-key enslaved to a theocracy built entirely on lies where the goddess's insane daughter gives her mother credit for creating the humans she merely stole the planet from, with an underground society of the remnants of the ancient culture the dragons both physically and historically eradicated now fighting a war of guerilla tactics to try to reclaim their planet from the colonist invaders...

...and yet they still somehow managed to twist the narrative to make the dragons the put-upon victims acting in revenge against the injustices of ancient, racist humans.

[citation needed]

Spoiler

The accounts you get in the game say that the ancient humans' advanced technology came from Sothis, then the humans attacked Sothis. So it's not "Sothis came along and wrecked pre-existing human society for shits and giggles", it's "Sothis came down and used her powers for the benefit of all creatures, then some humans decided to attack her". I personally think that TH does a good job of showing that it's bad people, human or dragon, that cause problems.

 

Quote

Alright, on to the actual gameplay. I just looked up the growth rates I've got to work with, and I'm amused that Allen and Lance have growth rates almost identical to each other, with just 5% variances between them in each stat. That might make it easy to do a little experiment I've been wanting to do for a while, where I “scientifically” weigh the pros and cons of early and late promotion. Mekkah and quite a few others say it's basically always a good idea to promote early instead of later, but this seems to be something that assumes something I've rarely experienced in practice: that the middle of the game is always harder than the end of it, and that that big promotion stat gain is more useful in the mid game than the 10 levels of push back down the experience curve is detrimental in the late game. But personally, I've never found the middle to be the hardest part of the game. I've played games where the difficulty was consistent the whole way through, and I've played games that start hard and keep getting easier, but I've never played a Fire Emblem game that I would describe as peaking in difficulty at the midway point.

I was under the impression that Mekkah's advice was less "always promote early" and more "don't be afraid to promote early if you're struggling".

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13 minutes ago, Seafarer said:

[citation needed]

  Hide contents

The accounts you get in the game say that the ancient humans' advanced technology came from Sothis, then the humans attacked Sothis. So it's not "Sothis came along and wrecked pre-existing human society for shits and giggles", it's "Sothis came down and used her powers for the benefit of all creatures, then some humans decided to attack her". I personally think that TH does a good job of showing that it's bad people, human or dragon, that cause problems.

 

Spoiler

Said sources that say she gave humans their technology also say she created the human race, when they later admit she did no such thing. The entire religion is a series of elaborate lies deliberately intended to control the human race, and what little technology we see the Nabateans have access to, those golems, has almost no relation to what the Agarthans use, technology that is made using a material named after their country. Apparently, correct me if I'm wrong, but apparently whatever the Nabateans' golems are made out of, it isn't agarthium, judging by the fact that apparently they don't drop it when their shields are destroyed.

 

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2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:
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Said sources that say she gave humans their technology also say she created the human race, when they later admit she did no such thing. The entire religion is a series of elaborate lies deliberately intended to control the human race, and what little technology we see the Nabateans have access to, those golems, has almost no relation to what the Agarthans use, technology that is made using a material named after their country. Apparently, correct me if I'm wrong, but apparently whatever the Nabateans' golems are made out of, it ISN'T agarthium, judging by the fact that apparently they don't drop it when destroyed.

 

Spoiler

Not later, no. Rhea talks about Sothis helping the ancient humans develop their technology at the end of VW, at the same time as she admits that Sothis didn't create the humans.

I also don't think you should draw conclusions from the material drops. It's been thousands of years since the two societies diverged; there's no reason to suppose neither the Nabateans of Zanado nor the Agarthans ever discovered newer and better materials on their own.

 

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7 minutes ago, Seafarer said:
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Not later, no. Rhea talks about Sothis helping the ancient humans develop their technology at the end of VW, at the same time as she admits that Sothis didn't create the humans.

I also don't think you should draw conclusions from the material drops. It's been thousands of years since the two societies diverged; there's no reason to suppose neither the Nabateans of Zanado nor the Agarthans ever discovered newer and better materials on their own.

 

Spoiler

Indeed, we know so little we can't say one way or the other what happened back then. To be clear, my point wasn't me trying to argue that said dragons were, conclusively, as evil as I described. I was mainly describing what little we know happened in intentionally vague, mostly-correct terms with the intent of demonstrating how easy it could have been to make the Those Who Slither In The Dark sympathetic and tragic instead of the comically one-dimensionally evil bastards they are, and how the writers added in plot elements that brought them tantalizingly close to making the game I've been waiting for where they finally subvert the "dragons were loving and peaceful people who are only hurting us because of the sins of our ancestors" narrative the series seems to love using.

 

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46 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Indeed, we know so little we can't say on way or the other. To be clear, my point wasn't me trying to argue that said dragons were as evil as I described. I was mainly describing what little we know happened in intentionally vague, mostly-correct terms with the intent of demonstrating how easy it could have been to make the Those Who Slither In The Dark sympathetic and tragic instead of the comically one-dimensionally evil bastards they are, and how the writers added in plot elements that brought them tantalizingly close to making the game I've been waiting for where they finally subvert the "dragons were loving and peaceful people who are only hurting us because of the sins of our ancestors" narrative the series seems to love using.

Oh, absolutely.

Tbh, I'm making a FE-inspired game myself, and a big thing in that is going to be that the dragons who helped humans are definitely not the good guys, and it's the humans who end up fixing everything. Though I guess that's a slightly different deconstruction to the one you want.

EDIT: It shares the aspect of humans saying "screw you" to dragon "gods" and being right; that's probably why my brain thought it was relevant.

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1 hour ago, Seafarer said:

Oh, absolutely.

Tbh, I'm making a FE-inspired game myself, and a big thing in that is going to be that the dragons who helped humans are definitely not the good guys, and it's the humans who end up fixing everything. Though I guess that's a slightly different deconstruction to the one you want.

EDIT: It shares the aspect of humans saying "screw you" to dragon "gods" and being right; that's probably why my brain thought it was relevant.

No complaints here!

Now, back to some other comments:

 

3 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Evolution don't care 'bout no "like" nonsense.

Yes, but it does care about survival. And I fail to see why horses capable of flight would settle in a country that logic dictates would have the worst grazing in all the land. I brought this up in FE4, and wondered why flying horses wouldn't wind up native to Augustria or Verdane, if they can fly and migrate basically anywhere.

 

3 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Imma stop you right there and point out a couple of problems with this idea.

Yes, I know "scientifically" is in air quotes but I still feel the need to point it out.

Experiments require reducing the variations to a minimum. While Alan and Lance are pretty similar, it should be noted that:

  • They have different growth rates, and while they aren't drastically different, that's still a variation
  • Even if they did have the same growth rates, growth rates and random, so the stats they gain will most likely be different
  • Alan and Lance have different base stats

Yeah, most of this occurred to me, hence the quotation marks you noted. I'm well aware if I were really to do an experiment on this it couldn't possibly be done in the context of this marathon, but still, might as well try it to get at least some initial data on this.

3 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

The latter case is still an instance of the middle of the game being harder than the end.

True, true. But it's not a case of the middle of the game being something early promotion would be particularly helpful or important for, if you've already faced harder challenges just fine.

Honestly, I'm looking forward to hearing more from you in this thread over the next few weeks. You've got a lot to say about this game, and I like hearing it! I love it when people come into this thread to comment on the games they're the most knowledgeable/passionate about.

As for promoting Rutger early... I'll think about it. I'll see what challenges I run into.

 

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

Weird, I never noticed this before. Yeah, the game takes heavy cues from the Archanea games. Really feels like a "back to basics" move following Kaga's departure, as you mentioned. 

Can't wait to read what you think!

Can't wait to find out what I think!

 

Edited by Alastor15243
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8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yes, but it does care about survival. And I fail to see why horses capable of flight would settle in country that logic dictates would have the worst grazing in all the land. I brought this up in FE4, and wondered why flying horses wouldn't wind up native to Augustria or Verdane, if they can fly and migrate basically anywhere.

 

Well, it's not like Artic Foxes are jumping ship to Mexico or anything. Not to give it more thought than its worth, but the magical flying horses are probably adapted specifically to that climate and benefit from the lack of competition the undesirability of their homes gives them.

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, most of this occurred to me, hence the quotation marks you noted. I'm well aware if I were really to do an experiment on this it couldn't possibly be done in the context of this marathon, but still, might as well try it to get at least some initial data on this.

I wouldn't say it's particularly useful initial data, but I guess we learn by doing and gotta start doing somewhere at some point.

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Honestly, I'm looking forward to hearing more from you in this thread over the next few weeks. You've got a lot to say about this game, and I like hearing it! I love it when people come into this thread to comment on the games they're the most knowledgeable/passionate about.

 

Thanks! I like FE6, so it should be a mutual pleasure to see how this unfolds.

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I only played FE6 first time early last year, and not on Hard. I was not in the mood for tolerating weakness, and essentially wrote off everyone unpromoted but Alance, Melady, Rutger, Deke, Sin, and a blessed Lugh as untrainable without excessive effort. I was being overly harsh methinks, but I'm curious how difficult it is to polish up weaklings in FE6.

 

38 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yes, but it does care about survival. And I fail to see why horses capable of flight would settle in a country that logic dictates would have the worst grazing in all the land. I brought this up in FE4, and wondered why flying horses wouldn't wind up native to Augustria or Verdane, if they can fly and migrate basically anywhere.

Not to mention how they keep warm. Sure, the wings might let them graze on the hardiest grasses on the highest mountaintops and never trudge through snowbanks, but how do they stay warm? Thin, long wings made of flesh with blood coursing through them sound perfect for death by hypothermia. As they lack thick body hair or blubber it looks like, my only speculative answer is their blood contains copious amounts of organic antifreeze.

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56 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I only played FE6 first time early last year, and not on Hard. I was not in the mood for tolerating weakness, and essentially wrote off everyone unpromoted but Alance, Melady, Rutger, Deke, Sin, and a blessed Lugh as untrainable without excessive effort. I was being overly harsh methinks, but I'm curious how difficult it is to polish up weaklings in FE6.

OOF. I've always thought this game has had the poorest cast quality wise, but this leaves me speechless.

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The music is really that bad, nothing in the series comes close to how bad it is.

Never noticed how similar ch1 is to the original, that's the kind of pick up you make marathoning the games like this.

One day I'm going to make a hyper meta fire emblem game / story. One day...

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13 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Apparently this game is more popular in Japan largely because of its similarities to FE1 and 3. As someone who never grew up with 1 or 3, I don't think I'll ever for the life of me be able to understand that.

Actually getting released in Japan might have helped.

 

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:
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Indeed, we know so little we can't say one way or the other what happened back then. To be clear, my point wasn't me trying to argue that said dragons were, conclusively, as evil as I described. I was mainly describing what little we know happened in intentionally vague, mostly-correct terms with the intent of demonstrating how easy it could have been to make the Those Who Slither In The Dark sympathetic and tragic instead of the comically one-dimensionally evil bastards they are, and how the writers added in plot elements that brought them tantalizingly close to making the game I've been waiting for where they finally subvert the "dragons were loving and peaceful people who are only hurting us because of the sins of our ancestors" narrative the series seems to love using.

 

The first installment in the series seems to subvert that narrative you're claiming Fire Emblem presents. While some fans definitely sympathize with Medeus when they learn his backstory, as far as the game is concerned he is 100% in the wrong for starting these wars and the likewise the Earth Dragons in the backstory were so incredibly racist themselves that they would rather go insane than even resemble humans. It's only the Divine Dragons that have any shed of (human like) morality among the dragons (and later games even retcon that). Shadows of Valentia confirming Mila and Duma as dragons also makes a story where the dragons are completely and 100% in the wrong for enforcing their philosophies on human populations. And even over in Tellius Deghensea's radical isolationism is heavily critisized by the end of the series even after the reason for it is revealed (though that series is also the only one with no overt evil dragons at all). The only game where dragons come close to being human's moral superiors is this game...which is also a game that involves them wiping out a poor woman's soul and forcing her to be a brood mare for an army of mindless clone soldiers. Which isn't all that moral in my book.

And well Sacred Stones where they might as well not exist.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

The first installment in the series seems to subvert that narrative you're claiming Fire Emblem presents. While some fans definitely sympathize with Medeus when they learn his backstory, as far as the game is concerned he is 100% in the wrong for starting these wars and the likewise the Earth Dragons in the backstory were so incredibly racist themselves that they would rather go insane than even resemble humans. It's only the Divine Dragons that have any shed of (human like) morality among the dragons (and later games even retcon that).

Just about half the allied dragon cast has ranted about how much they despise the general human race because of what they did to dragons ages ago. There's a very clear message of "humans were sacks of shit back when dragons roamed the earth".

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Shadows of Valentia confirming Mila and Duma as dragons also makes a story where the dragons are completely and 100% in the wrong for enforcing their philosophies on human populations. And even over in Tellius Deghensea's radical isolationism is heavily critisized by the end of the series even after the reason for it is revealed (though that series is also the only one with no overt evil dragons at all). The only game where dragons come close to being human's moral superiors is this game...which is also a game that involves them wiping out a poor woman's soul and forcing her to be a brood mare for an army of mindless clone soldiers. Which isn't all that moral in my book.

 

Spoiler

 

That's why I said my issue was that whenever humans and dragons in general came into conflict, it was the human's fault. Gaiden isn't a story of man vs. dragons, it's a story about humanity mercy-killing, and resolving to live without, their well-intentioned but dying and senile gods. And I think you're kind of downplaying just how much human racism has basically become a meme in the narrative of this franchise. Lemme put it this way. Let's generally, broadly summarize the human-nonhuman relations of every game in the series. You'll notice that they can largely be grouped into three categories, one I've bolded, on I've underlined, and one I've italicized:

FE1+3: Humans and non-humans come into conflict. Humans are racist. Negative qualities of non-humans stem greatly from reaction to said racism.

FE2: Humans and one non-human come into conflict because the non-human isn't in their right mind.

FE4+5: Humans and non-humans on the same side come into conflict with another group of humans and non-humans.

FE6+7: Humans and non-humans come into conflict. Humans are racist. Negative qualities of non-humans stem greatly from reaction to said racism.

FE8: Humans and non-humans come into conflict. Non-humans are literal demonspawn with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and thus impossible to be racist towards. But the humans are still racist because they whitewashed the great dragon out of their folklore of who saved the world.

FE9-10: Humans and non-humans come into conflict. Humans are racist. Negative qualities of non-humans stem greatly from reaction to said racism. Come the sequel, all the good guys work together to come into conflict with a group of humans led by a non-human because the non-human isn't in their right mind (All three at once! Impressive!).

FE13: Humans and non-humans on the same side come into conflict with another group of humans and non-humans. And also the humans were racist to the Taguel to the point of near genocide.

FE14: Humans and one non-human come into conflict because the non-human isn't in their right mind.

FE16: Humans and non-humans come into conflict. Humans are racist. Negative qualities of non-humans stem greatly from reaction to said racism.

 

I realize that this isn't a perfect fit for every single one of them, but I personally find it a bit alarming just how much this categorization broadly works. As seen above, the only real exception to these three general types of conflict, and the only one where it's humans vs. non-humans, the non-humans are in the wrong, and the non-humans are both morally responsible for their bad actions and not carrying the baggage of the sins man, is one where the non-humans are Fantasy Satan and his questionably-sentient minions, and even then, the shitty humans of the past took the dragon hero who led the human heroes to victory and whitewashed him out of their folklore.

Technically, technically 9 is an exception too, as it is stated that the Laguz were the slavers first, and that Beorc oppression of Laguz started out as overkill retaliation for the fact that the roles were reversed in the distant past, but this is brought up for literally one sentence, in one conversation, and dismissed instantly in a manner that makes it clear it isn't supposed to be seen as tragic or sympathetic at all in the way the backstories of the non-human antagonists are, and that this isn't humanity's turn to be depicted as the formerly-wronged people tragically lashing out in revenge.

FE9-10 did that kind of story best, and the series shows little sign of topping it any time soon, so the repetition is kind of annoying me at this point.

 

 

Anyway, on to today's update:

 

Binding Blade Day 2: Chapter 2

Day 2 ahoy!

Yeah, with Lycia and Bern lit up like that on the map, it only makes me wonder what that big empty spot lining the peninsula below Bern is.

And of course, in true FE1 fashion, we meet a mercenary band of axe users run by a grizzled sword user in this chapter, hired by the guy we saved from bandit attack in chapter 1.

But the actual story of this chapter, to be fair, is radically different.

In that it has a story at all.

But the low height of the leapt bar aside, I still like it. It's not groundbreaking, but it's a cool setup for a chapter and a great way to introduce a character who by her very nature as the sister to the big bad has a lot of story potential.

But now we run into some of the most infamous cannon fodder in the entire series: GBA soldiers! Yaaaaaaay! It's amazing to run into, in the second chapter of hard mode, mind you, enemies so outrageously weak and slow that everyone in my army but Bors can double them at base.

It's kind of sad that the weapon stats for this game are such that even with weapon triangle disadvantage, swords are still more accurate against lance users than lances are.

The enemy AI seems to prioritize Roy a lot, despite me screwing up and putting Lance in a much more precarious situation.

Alright, the backup has arrived, and Wade and Lot are here. I'm probably going to use Lot, since his stats and especially his growths seem pretty good (he's got a really high defense growth for this game, and ideally I'd like someone with an S rank in axes so I can use Armads). Wade, however, does not look like he'll ever be all that great. He's got a better strength and skill growth, but his speed growth is absolutely atrocious, and that sounds like a recipe for disaster for anyone who already can't double. Plus, given how notoriously inaccurate axes are in this game, I don't think it would be wise to have more than one dedicated axe user.

Shanna... holy shit, I forgot how much I hate GBA pegasus knights. I think they're a big part of the reason why it took me so long to warm up to fliers. Not only do they have the durability of a dried twig, but they're incapable of carrying anything heavier than the rare-to-buy slim lances without losing attack speed. And with said slim lances, they barely hit for shit! All that speed they come with isn't worth much when they're slower than the rest of my main fighters just by equipping an iron lance. That said, she is a flier. So there'll have to be some times that those wings come in handy.

At any rate, I spend my first turn rescue-dropping Lot onto the fort, because I really want to secure those forts in case reinforcements are already going to be coming from them, and also because I really don't want to have to fight enemies on them. Thankfully you can rescue units with con equal to your aid, not greater, though in fairness aid is already just one lower than your con, so it looks like that “greater than” thing is already applied to con. But the point is that Wade could rescue Lot, and then Shanna could take and drop him onto the fort while and fly away Dieck covered the other fort.

You know what I always wondered? Why are the trade and convoy options glowing green in the GBA games? I've never been able to think of a reason why those specific options would need to be highlighted.

It's kind of crazy how much of an impact the music makes on the feel and aesthetic of this game. The graphics are basically identical all-around, and yet the weird music seems to put it in a wholly different context such that it feels incredibly different from FE7. Did Bravely Second feel this jarringly different from Bravely Default? I'm... no sure. It's a jarring experience at any rate, which makes me wonder what it was like for Japanese plays who played this first. How did they feel about the new musical style in the next two games?

All Lot gets for his first level up is HP and speed. Well, speed is important for him, so for all of the low-quantity level ups he could have gotten, that's definitely one of the better ones.

Alright, I've mostly cleared the place out. Quick note I forgot to mention: I spent most of this map without using Marcus, because I didn't have enough iron swords to let Roy and Marcus fight without Roy wasting his rapier, so I sent Marcus to do the shopping quickly. In hindsight, I probably should have kept Marcus with the main party, had Bors do the shopping, and then overloaded Bors's inventory so that I could warp an iron sword straight to Marcus once that was done, and I just realized upon finishing this paragraph that I spent it calling Marcus Jeigan. Fuck me.

Honestly the tiny but extant enemy crit rates are... quite intimidating, especially since this game provides next to no means to resist or counter them besides raw luck and support bonuses.

The last two non-boss enemies are refusing to move at all, so I approach them cautiously by gravely wounding the archer with Marcus in the hopes that that snaps them out of it. Unfortunately Marcus crits, which isn't ideal, but still, better that than getting too aggressive with someone else and getting overwhelmed. And I still had to correct myself that this is Marcus, not Jeigan. I just don't associate this guy with Marcus. It's so weird.

The boss is still pretty nasty. In fact even Marcus can't hurt him without an armorslayer. Initially I thought of feeding the experience to Roy with his rapier, but when I saw how little damage that did, and how inaccurate the armorslayer was in his hands, I decided to just give the armorslayer to Marcus and save uses/vulneraries.

I find it amusing that the boss is a guy who betrayed the evil empire, planning to hand Guinivere over to someone pretty much exactly like Roy, and yet we still wound up coming into conflict because he's a sack of shit.

Also, I just remembered: this game has a feature I've sorely missed in the games before and since this era: it has a quick little bit of flavor text describing characters when you press the info button and navigate over to their name. I always liked that, and missed it when they stopped doing it.

Anyway, the story's definitely way more interesting than Dark Dragon's was by this point in the story, so that's a big plus for me. And... I'm having fun! Though this seems to be the case literally every time I start a new Fire Emblem game, even the ones I eventually come to despise, so... that isn't exactly as reassuring as I'd like it to be. But it does feel great being at the era of the series I grew up with! I'm frankly amazed I've already gotten this far.

 

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