Let's Play - Berwick Saga!

[BBM]

So this is me, playing through Berwick Saga. I've done some research on this game going in, but not a lot, so this is mostly a blind run of a Japanese game. So... wish me luck! Any input from people who've played this game will be super helpful. At the beginning, my comments will be a lot about trying to figure out the game's mechanics and commands, so it might be a bit boring. Hopefully it'll get more exciting as my mastery of the game increases!

Now, onwards to Chapter 1!

Part 1

Okay, there are several differences you can see already between this game and other FE-esque games. The most glaring difference, of course, is that the grid isn't made of squares but hexagons, which is pretty interesting. It means you can gang up on the enemy better, but it also means that they can gang up on you better, and also that it's harder to protect weaker units (as you'll see shortly). The second difference is that every type of terrain, even just regular Plains or City tiles, seem to give a small AVO boost. Even Road tiles give an AVO boost (though it's only 1%).

Now, onto our units!

This is our lord, Reese. He's also one of the only units whose name I know. There's a lot of weird stuff going on here. First off, he seems to be getting a rather large boost in one stat from something. Looking to the top right, there are a bunch of symbols that seem to represent weapon types. The first one is a horse, which makes sense as he is mounted. The third one is a Sword, which is fairly standard fare (see what I did there) for a Lord. The second, however, was a bit puzzling until I connected it to the stat boost and the icon and realized that it was a Shield.

Looking at this info on the Shield he's got equipped, the first number is 7, which was the same as the stat boost. So I'm going to assume that's the DEF boost the shield is giving him.

His last item is some sort of satchel thing, which has two swords in it. Some type of extra storage I guess? Sounds handy.

These are his next two profile windows. The first seems to be some type of background info, but I have no idea what the other one is about.

Now this is our Jeigan character, evident from his higher stats and the fact that he's got a pretty high level of 22. I have no clue what his name is, so he's going to be named Jeigan for now. He's also got a Satchel, but it's empty. He can use both Swords and Lances. Now, he's got a shield too, but if you notice it's got a different icon in the top-right than Reese's shield, which means that there are two types of shields? His shield is better, which might be because his type of shield is better, or because he's got a higher rank shield. We'll see. There's also a + beside what seems to be his Atk stat. Not sure what that does.

His lance has a +H beside its Mt stat. Not sure what that's for.

The first of our starting Cavaliers! He's got the same type of Shield as Reese, but it's not as good as his. Reese's was all silver and shiny! He's got a +1H beside his Atk stat. His only attacking weapon is the lance.

Our second Cavalier! Now, the interesting thing here is that even though this guy has the same map sprite as the first Cavalier, he's got an extra weapon type that looks like a pitchfork. This indicates that weapon types seem to be given out on a character-by-character basis rather than on a class-by-class basis, which is pretty cool. His STR also seems to be lower than the first guy's STR. He can use shields, but he doesn't start with one.

From now on, this guy will be Fork and the first guy will be Shield. Aren't my names amazing?

Our last starting unit! This guy can't use shields, swords, or lances, but he can use Bows! Note that this guy has a different map sprite from Shield and Fork. He's also got arrows. His Mt and accuracy seem to be kind of low. What's interesting is that one of the numbers here says 1-2, which I'm guessing is his attacking range. The other guys all had 0 there, so I'm assuming this game treats being right beside each other as a distance of 0 rather than 1. Anyways, this guy was dubbed Bow.

Now, let's actually do something. This is the action screen that comes up when I click on Jeigan. Clicking the first one leads me to:

this. So that lets you move around. Jeigan's got some pretty nice movement, which makes sense since he's got a horsie.

Attack!

Accuracy seems to be kind of low on both sides, and I'm not sure whether I double or not. If I do, that's just barely a ORKO.

There's dialogue in the battle? Okay. I'm guessing this is telling me how much damage I did. As you can see, Jeigan doubled for the ORKO. Now, after I end Jeigan's turn (all my horsie units have Canto):

As you can see, after Jeigan moved, so did some other people. Before my other guys went. ???

After I move my next unit, looking at the bottom right:

More enemy units move directly after mine. Looking at the top right, it shows one green foot looking thing and then four red ones. That makes me think that after every one of my units, four enemies get to go. This is a lot different from the traditional FE style of moving everyone on your team first and then everyone on the enemy team going.

At the start of my second turn, I get some new units!

This is the first guy. He's got an Axe and an empty satchel. He's also got a new weapon type that is either a third type of shield or some type of ring. Whatever it is, he doesn't seem to have anything of that type yet. He's got more Mt than Jeigan, which is pretty cool. This guy was Othin's avatar for a while and is currently his photo, so he's probably pretty good. I name him Red.

Our next unit. Finally, blue hair! This is the type of hair colour I expect from a FE-esque game, not these traditional hair colours of Brown and Blonde! Anyway, she's got the same Ring weapon type as Red, and also a new one. Probably some type of magic, looking at it. Also what appears to be a Vulnerary. I feel tempted to name her Blue, but I end up naming her Healer instead, because:

She doesn't have the attack command available, so she's probably a Healer.

Red will choke this point!

There are quite a few enemies coming from below, but they don't seem to be able to cross the river, so it's all good.

Bow missed the archer. Can't remember if he doubled or not, but doubling and STILL missing both hits is as shameful as missing and not even doubling. What a chump.

I feed Reese a kill. Note: he actually got more EXP than this, this was taken in the middle of his EXP going up. However, he still only gained like 10 or so EXP. Combine this with the fact that only kills seem to net you EXP, EXP gain is going to be pretty slow, which will probably increase Jeigan's usefulness.

animations wut

Guessing from his custom sprite, his unique face, and his rather high HP, I'm guessing this guy is a boss of some sort... Welp.

But Shield comes through with a critical! What's also interesting is that he didn't get counter-attacked. I seem to remember this happening at other times as well (counter-attacks not happening when they should) which means that there's no EP combat?

After this, there's a scene I skip and then a question mark pops up over this house. ?

yup she's a healer

However, in my haste to check if Healer was indeed a Healer, I made a strategery mistake and left her open to this guy. Whoops.

Bleh he had a Vulnerary

hmm will this be a tink?

Yes it was, and then Fork also got counter-attacked for a sizable chunk of health. So no clue how counter-attacking works.

More units!

Who are these mysterious new units? More importantly, what will they be named? Most importantly, will Healer survive my strategery mistake? Find out next time, on Berwick Saga!

[Jedi]

A very interesting looking game this Berwick saga.. now I'm tempted to research it. The use of Hexagon tiles is interesting, the weapons are interesting, the fact that the types of weapons people use are based on character and not unit.. Wow.

[BBM]

Chapter 1, Part 2!

This guy has PURPLE HAIR, so he automatically gets named Purple since I didn't get to name Healer Blue. Anyways, he's got the same weapon types as Jeigan, but with Reese's shield type. His stats are also not very much worse than Jeigan's despite being only level 4 to his level 22, so he's probably pretty good.

As you can see, she can use both Bows AND what look to be Crossbows! She's wielding a Crossbow and her range is 0-1. It's got pretty high Mt so that's pretty good. Her name is... Crossbow!

Healer dodges 10/10

After some further chipping, the boss now has a green cross above him. No idea what that does.

He seems to be incapable of attacking, and he's also lost his shield. A possible consequence of the green cross?

Because feeding EXP to the Lord is always a good idea unless his name is Roy.

This is a pretty cool feature that let's you save after every 5 turns.

Feeding EXP to Shield because Shields are heroic.

Healer gets attacked again. I think this time she gets hit too, though I can't really remember.

Red finally lands the hit needed to kill him (he missed like three times). Also around this time one of the enemies just below Healer went into the corner of the map and then just disappeared. No idea what that's about.

I thought this one would run away like the last one. Oops.

VULNERARY

Then she gets hit again. Part of why she's getting attacked so much is because I keep forgetting to move Red before my other units, which causes the enemy to get an attack in before Red can kill them. Having to be so exact about the order in which you move your units definitely adds another level of strategy.

Jeigan and Purple rush to the rescue of Healer.

Now this guy has a red cross. Don't know how that differs from the green one.

I noticed this extra command that Crossbow had beside Bow last turn, but I just assumed it was like a Convo or something. But this turn I notice that she can use it when beside anybody, even Bow again. I'm guessing this is some sort of active skill, but no idea past that.

Healer is in trouble again. This is what I was talking about when referring at the beginning of the map to how it's more difficult to box off units.

Another green cross, but more importantly now that Purple has arrived I have enough units to move Healer out of danger.

For some reason nobody can enter the question-mark house, or, for that matter, any house. Maybe because they're mounted?

He Vulnararied up, but more importantly, he didn't lose his green cross upon doing so. Another thing I noticed at this point is looking at the top-right of the screen, my units can now go a lot more often than the enemy units can. I'm guessing that's because the player-enemy ratio is a lot better now than it was earlier.

I check his stats after he gets the red cross, and as you can see, most of his stats are now 0. So giving someone a red cross basically makes them completely useless, which means that if my units can get them (not sure if they can since Fork didn't get one despite being at <1/3 health), it's a big problem for surviving at low HP.

Reese gets the bosskill again, and also the first level up of the game! Not sure what the other two stats he gained are, but I'm pretty sure the first one is STR, so that's pretty good.

Chapter's still not over after killing the boss, which means it's probably a Rout and I need to kill this obnoxious guy all the way across the river.

However, even after killing him, the chapter doesn't end. At that point I realize that if I have Reese dismount, he can enter the spot on which the boss was standing. However, just after I have him seize, I remember the question-mark house. Whoops.

Now, from what I've heard of this game, there are a lot of optional missions. So even though I can go to Chapter 2 after this, doing so would result in losing some EXP and possibly units, so this isn't actually the end of Chapter 1!

[cyron]

Interesting the hexagonal tile system especially

[Jedi]

As you can see, she can use both Bows AND what look to be Crossbows! She's wielding a Crossbow and her range is 0-1. It's got pretty high Mt so that's pretty good. Her name is... Crossbow!

Well Berwick doesn't waste any time in giving us my favorite Female Archer/Sniper type of character, RIGHT OUT THE GATE WOO

[BBM]

Well, she's mounted, so she's not technically an Archer.

[Jedi]

Well, she's mounted, so she's not technically an Archer.

Well its CLOSE ENOUGH

[Refa]

Also she's not as hot as blue haired healer chick (who's definitely not Feena from Ys), probably not worth it, bench during first opportunity to do so arises.

Edited February 21, 2013 by Refa

[Ice Sage]

this looks interesting. can't wait to see more bbm xD

[MacLovin]

The Axe guy will get blessed.

Also, good luck.

And the Jeigans name is Ward iirc, so maybe ZMs/My fe6 Wards blessings will be carried by yours in BERWICK SAGA.

[Integrity]

BBM you goofbutt, the TRS forum is also for BWS.

Shooping.

[Rewjeo]

In the event you want some real names...

Jeigan is　Wodo in Japanese, so... I'm not sure. Word? Wordo? Wodor? Waldo, while technically imperfect, is also an option. (Edit: Ward. Right.)

Shield is Reon in Japanese, so I would go with Leon. Technically you could go with something like Reorn if you wanted, though.

Fork is Aderu, so I guess Adel/Adele/Adelle... Or you could go with Adder, although I would expect that to be Ada in Japanese.

Bow is Shirokku, which I'm pretty sure is Shylock.

Red is Tian/Dian in Japanese. Dunno what to do with that.

Healer is Izeruna in Japanese. Nothing jumps out at me... Izelna? Izaluna? Make it up?

Purple is Erubato, so Elbert.

Crossbow is Kurisu, so Chris, or whatever fun spelling you want to use. Kryhss, if it suits you.

Does anyone who knows Japanese better want to verify these? I'll be the first to say that I am not infallible in this area.

Edited February 21, 2013 by Rewjeo

[Icon of Sin]

I'm pretty sure those are, in order, Ward, Leon, Adel, Sherlock, Dean/Dian, Izerna, Elbert and Chris, according to most sites.

I've got the game myself and tried it a little bit, but since I'm not too comfortable around the menus I figured I could wait a bit more before getting to it. It definitely looks very interesting.

Edited February 21, 2013 by Doga Blockovich

[BBM]

Chapter 1, Part 3! This is me exploring the city map with no actual battling to it, so RayoR!

...this doesn't look like an SRPG. Anyways, there are several places I can go to in this room. I start off by talking to the chick in the room. She has a lot of menus, and after experimenting with some of them, I get:

Basically a shop I guess. I don't really buy anything.

This is the next menu, which shows our characters. As you can see, Dian and Izzy (I was told I could make it up) are missing, which is kind of lame. I'd actually heard of this, sort of, before starting. While some characters are given to you for free, others you have to hire them as "mercenaries" (which involves giving them money), and upon completing some sidequest or side objective specific to each one, they join you permanently. I'd expected Dian and Izzy to be free characters since they joined you freely, but I guess not.

Anyways, I stop talking to her and then go to the top left door:

Just a room with a bed and a desk. I go to the desk, and it has some options, but none of them have a discernable effect. I hope I didn't mess something up? That's it for that room. Going back out, I take the door that was directly behind where I started.

It leads me to some sort of city map. I go with the last option because it has a green square beside it, but this just triggers some cutscene which I can't understand. Then I choose the first option, which leads me back to where I started off, which triggers ANOTHER cutscene (even though I'd already been there?). Anyways, then I just go one by one down the list of options.

The next one is some sort of jail. Talking to the people here does nothing, so I leave quickly.

The third place has two vendors. One sells swords and the other sells shields.

Fourth place has got lances and axes.

Fifth place has HORSES. This is also one of the features I'd heard about going in to the game. You can customize which type of horse your mounted unit is riding, and different horses give slightly different stat boosts.

The sixth place has a lot of vendors in it. The first one:

These are some expensive prostitutes I guess. Can't hire any of them.

This is the next guy. No idea. He's kind of cruddy, but not as bad as:

This guy has nothing at all to sell.

The next two people have a lot of stuff to sell, but I don't know what any of it is. Notice that the first one has some stuff whited in and the second person has everything darkened out. Anyways, those are the last vendors in that place

The seventh place seems to have all your units chilling out. Headquarters?

Selecting one of them makes some girl who's not one of your units rush over to them and pops this menu:

A restaurant I guess. Not entirely sure why I'd want to spend money making some of these guys fatter (Ward, I'm looking at you). Maybe it's like Pokemon where I increase their happiness?

The next place has this guy. The first option doesn't do anything, the second one opens up a stat screen of the guy I'm talking to (I'll show a pic of him later), and the third causes him to just leave? Rude.

Going into the next (ninth?) place...

Dian! I talk to him, and I get:

A very similar menu to what the last guy showed. I also have less money than when I was talking to the first guy, so I'm assuming here that the third option hired him (which is where my money went). Dian's got an extra option here, which turns out to be trading. Not sure why I could trade with him and not with the first guy- possibly because I'd already used Dian? Anyways, I hire him.

The tenth place has got a magic shop. Unfortunately, my only magical unit seems to have left me... I probably would have left empty-handed as I did everywhere else anyways, since I don't see any evidence as of yet that weapons have uses like they do in FE/TRS.

The eleventh (and last) place has got this guy. This time I actually pay attention to his stats, since I can't afford to just hire everyone:

Exact same weapons as Dion. He's got slightly more Mt but slightly less accuracy than Dian. Dian's Mt was already pretty good, so I feel that I don't need a clone with superfluous Mt but worse accuracy (which he did have troubles with). I don't hire this guy.

Now, I go back to the first place to check out if I did indeed get new units, and so I did.

This is the stat screen of the first guy I hired. He can use two types of swords, which is pretty cool. He's got some pretty nice Mt, but less accuracy than I'd expect from a sword-user. Possibly because he's using a type of sword that's less accurate, but stronger? Some type of "blade" class of swords? Anyways, I name him Gloomy for now since he's kind of depressing looking, and go over to Reese's stat screen to check which type of sword they have in similarity.

They have the first type of sword (the thinner one) in common. But, more importantly, Reese's horse is crossed out? I check all my other mounted units and their horse is also crossed out! Possibly because they can't ride horses in the city? Dunno. I leave the screen, upon which point I realize that there's one more room in this place that I haven't visited! I go to the right:

It's some sort of storage room where I can remove and deposit my satchels. I take one of them, but can't take the other, which is probably because Reese's inventory is full. Anyways, I go back to the woman and fiddle with some more options I was too afraid to try out earlier. I don't have pics of it, but there was this one screen which I thought was to save, but it was actually to load. So I lost all my progress and had to do everything again... Thankfully, since I didn't actually buy anything except the Gloomy and Dian, repeating my steps doesn't take too long. After this, I fiddle around some more, making sure to use savestates this time, and find the actual save screen, so I do that. Then, one of the options takes me to...

This place, which seems to be some sort of map! Finally, a bat- NO ALL MY HORSES ARE GONE.

Will I be able to beat this map without my horses? Find out next time!

Also, sorry Integ I thought this was only for TRS proper.

EDIT: Okay, I must have messed up some of my picture-taking. As you can see, where I say Axes and Lances, it's actually Axes and Arrows. I merged together two different places, the first of which has Axes and Lances, and the second of which has Bows and Arrows. So my numbering for the places after that point is probably off by one (I will check this after this map).

Edited February 21, 2013 by BBM

[Jedi]

Wow the city stuff looks interesting, its like a mixture of FE and Final Fantasy. also lol BBM you go conned out of your horses, how ironic for the HORSE THIEF of FE7 Drafts to get his stolen

[BBM]

Chapter 1, Part 4! As anyone who follows my FE6 Casualty Run should know, this blistering pace of updates is not to be expected for very long!

This is my mission. It's name is Katakana.

Firstly, this guy has a PITCHFORK. Looking at his stats though, both his Mt and Accuracy are kind of crummy. Not sure if that's because Pitchforks suck or because he sucks.

Well, Elbert's stats are the same as they were before he lost his horse, so unlike FE5/TRS, dismounting doesn't seem to do anything other than result in a loss of movement (and also any stat boosts your horse might give you if he's of the more expensive variety). Possibly it would also remove weakness to horseslaying weapons, though I haven't seen any of those yet. And as I noted earlier, it lets you visit houses.

I'm not really sure I get how the range works. As you can see, even though her range is 0-1, she can't attack from here. She also can't use that skill she had last map. Possibly that's a skill she can only use when she's mounted?

At this point I notice that Elbert has some sort of skill with which he can target the enemy, but not player units. I use it out of curiosity.

It inflicts some sort of status on the enemy that increases his Mt and Accuracy. However, on EP, the enemy doesn't attack me. So I guess it's a nifty way to keep a troublesome enemy at bay for a few turns while you're not able to deal with it.

At this point I realize I should be splitting up my army to go both ways.

Once I attack this guy, he loses his status.

If you notice, there's a special tile there instead of the river that allows you to cross, sort of like a bridge. However, unlike a bridge, it costs a lot of movement to go over. I think there was one of these last map too, but I didn't realize what it could do.

Now I notice this guy. His range isn't 0 or 0-1, but just 1. When he attacks my units, even though he's attacking from right beside, they can't counterattack. The attack animation also involves him throwing his axe. So I'm guessing that 1 range means you attack from right beside, but they can't counterattack you unless they also have 1 range, and if they attack you at 0 range, you can't counterattack. The 0-1 range that Chris has allows her to counterattack both these guys and 0 range guys. The 1-2 range Sherlock has lets him counterattack this guy and other 2 range enemies such as enemy archers, but not 0-range guys. Getting the hang of this!

Enemy reinforcements!

If you see, he lost his bow. That's because it broke, so there is in fact weapon durability. I can't see a way to check it though? Either way I'll have to buy WEAPONS after this map.

This guy has a weird symbol beside his Mt that looks like the greek Alpha symbol. Weird thing is that even though he had 0 Mt, he did damage to Dion at 0 range, and Dion couldn't counterattack. Weird... It's also, I think, a third type of sword (knife?).

Dion doesn't seem to suffer any movement penalty from the water bridges like my dismounted units did. Neither did Gloomy, so yeah.

Additionally, as you can see, there are two bosses here. However, after Elbert attacks one of them, there's a weird chat and then he just disappears. The second one stays, though, and Dion gets the bosskill.

The run's second level is not as good as the first...

Additional thoughts:

Forgot to mention this in the body, but Reese and Ward were unavailable for this map. Not sure why. Adel has some sort of skill similar to Vantage, where he attacks enemy units before they attack him, on EP. He didn't activate this last map, so I'm guessing he needs to have higher SPD than them or something. This brings me to my next point- the Pitchfork enemies seem to be the Loldiers of this game. They had bad accuracy, bad Mt, and low speed because they got doubled by several of my units and Adel activated Vantage against them. Gloomy and Dion also have, I think, Adept, because once or twice they attacked a second time, and there was a "ting" noise as they did so. Next, I think weapon weight exists because Sherlock can double and Dion can't, even though Dion has equal or higher stats than Sherlock in everything. The only explanation I can think of is that Axes are heavier than Bows. Finally, I think getting 0 EXP for a kill is possible, because Gloomy didn't get any EXP for his kills. I can't remember Ward getting any last map either, and the best explanation is that they're both high level (13 and 22).

PS: Not sure if I mentioned this earlier but the music is nice. More subdued, in a way, than regular FE music. More string instruments and less brass instruments.

[Jedi]

I was listening to some of the OST it's quite nice

How much longer is chapter 1 anyways? lol

[BBM]

Some Useful Stuff that Othin told me in a PM:

Weapon Stat Screen:

Ahh, was not aware. Good luck!

It's two columns of three points of info, right? If I'm remembering it right:

Upper left: Mt. Same as always: add it to Str to get the unit's Atk.

Middle left: Acc. Multiply it by 10 and add the unit's Skl for that weapon type to get their Hit. Yes, it's really low, especially early in the game.

Lower left: Wt. If it's more than the unit's Str/2, they get an AS penalty equal to half the difference. As usual, the base function of Spd is to add two points of Avo; it isn't typically useful for double attacking, but it can work out that way with various skills. Worth noting: if the character has both a weapon and a shield, you add up their Wt stats for a total Wt and then subtract Str/2 just once, getting a rather substantial penalty pretty much always. You can't have negative Avo, but expect to see 0 Avo a lot for characters with shields. Again, though, double attacking doesn't work normally, so it's not as crippling as it would be in FE.

Upper right: Rank. You want the character to be at least this level to use the weapon. If not, there's some weird down arrow that will show up whenever they have it in their inventory, and every time they try to use it in battle, they have a chance of simply failing to attack equal to 5% per level difference. This essentially replaces weapon ranks: characters can use higher-ranked weapons, but it's a bad idea.

Middle right: Range. Range 0 is melee; the character enters the enemy's space to attack and gets their terrain bonuses. This means bows can fire at foes one space away, but they're still counted as a separate range from swords. Weapons with range 0-1 (or the rare 0-2) always attack adjacent enemies from range 1. I think dragon breath is an exception for some reason, though? Not that there are many dragons. It's worth mentioning one of many weird situational mechanics here: if a character's AS is 11 or higher, it's displayed with a plus sign - as 11+ or whatever else. This signifies that the character can counterattack at range 0 against range 1 attacks, running up to enter the enemy's space.

Lower right: Durability. The better the letter, the longer the weapon takes to deplete. You don't see an absolute number for remaining durability; rather, it's signified by the black dot next to the weapon, which changes other colors as it depletes, from green to yellow to orange to red, at speeds depending on the letter grade. Weapons can also randomly break early if they're at green or worse, which is stupid and annoying. I think I have the numerical details written on the Calculations page.

I should probably post this somewhere public, although I guess I should verify it all first to make sure I didn't mix anything up. Feel free to quote this if you think it's helpful anywhere else.

Unit Stat Screen:

Spd, as a core stat, should be in the right column along with Str and Mag. Don't remember the order - I think it's Mag, Str, Spd for some reason? Also Def is strangely absent from that column, and is instead just on the left. You can probably figure it out by comparing to the base stats I listed on the site and what matches to what.

Double Attacking:

Oh yeah, double attacks. Basically, the first thing you need to understand is that combat is changed up from the FE formula of attack, counter, double attack is one unit is fast enough. Normally, if the defending unit gets hit and takes damage, they lose their counterattack chance. Furthermore, double attacks can happen if the unit initiating combat is faster, but they're more like a counter to a counter: they're only if the defender counters, and only if the attacker is undamaged. So it's really a second chance at one hit rather than being double attacks as you think of them.

There are all sorts of extenuating circumstances, from skills and weapons, but this is the gist of it.

[Jedi]

Well thats useful to know all that now going in thanks Othin!

[BBM]

Chapter 1, Part 5! I think this is the last part!

I go to the green square, which triggers some cutscene (dem cutscenes). Then I go to shops and buy bunches of weapons for people, and then go to the stables. They only have 4 of the cheap horses available for sale, and I don't want to buy the expensive ones, so I buy horses for Reese, Ward, Elbert, and Adel. After that, I go to the places I hired people to see if I can get any new ones, and lo and behold!

I actually know her name! She's Sylvia, the archer girl that everyone who plays Berwick faps to!

25 Mt wtf. Using Othin's new info, she's got some pretty nice SPD but only okay STR, meaning her bow and arrows must be pretty good (which they are). She can use both bows and crossbows. I go back and get her some extra weapons too.

Now, to the map! I'm only allowed five character for this one, so I take Elbert, Dion, Gloomy, Adel, and Sylvia (Reese and Ward still being unavailable). I start, and...

I only have these two guys? Okay...

Looking at the map, there are only two enemies here, so I don't see why I even needed 5 characters in the first place? Also something else that might be a chest?

This is our first character. She has that look of royalty, with blonde hair and what looks kind of like a circlet. So I name her Princess. She can uses swords, lances, and horses (though she doesn't seem to have one). However, all her stats are kind of bad. But she does have 1 Magic, for whatever reason? This leads me to believe that she either gains magical abilities at some point, some physical weapons go off the MAG stat, or MAG is used in the calculation of RES as it is in FE5/TRS.

He's Knight, because every princess needs one, right? His STR and SPD are a bit better than her's, and he's also using a better weapon and has a shield. He's got the same shield type as Ward! Only swords for offence though.

I have Knight charge forward, and enemies appear out of nowhere! Good thing I had him move first and not Princess!

What's interesting here is that Arthur has one extra command above the attack command than normal. Normally, the only command above Attack is Move. It turns out to also let him move, but with one extra movement space! Probably has some drawback to it.

Curses one of the guys at the top has Physic.

At this point, I have to have Princess run away because she deals crap damage and takes a lot. But she's in range of them anyways. Thankfully...

My units arrive! Took them long enough!

\

Neither Elbert nor Adel have horses, even though the horse symbol on their status screens isn't crossed out anymore. Is it because it's an inside map?

so strong

I have her use a weaker arrow, of course.

Suddenly this guy appears out of nowhere (people are appearing out of nowhere all over the place, and not as reinforcements because they don't come at the end of the turn). He's got a red cross?

I see a new command here that's not the normal attack command. I use it, and...

The guy disappears, and I get his item? It's almost like I Captured him, but without the bit where my unit was still carrying the enemy. I also got EXP for it. Note: I've been getting much more EXP for kills this chapter. Wonder why?

lol

I didn't take a shot of the command, but Knight seems to have some ability that lets him attack someone with more accuracy? It wasn't there earlier, I don't think. Sort of confusing.

Anyways, then one of the enemy guys steps onto the bag thing on the ground and then suddenly gets healed, so I try to have Knight do the same because he's low on HP.

But ambush! Ugh where are these enemies coming from.

Anyways, I start having my people at the bottom move up, because the reinforcements from the bottom look like they're done.

Nope! Bit of a dilemma here- should I move Princess first or Knight first? Both low HP.

I have Knight move first, but it doesn't help him because he dies anyways. Cough. Well, I reload at the 5-turn mark, where I last saved, and redo some stuff so Knight's not in such danger. In the middle of this, it suddenly dawns on me that the enemies appearing out of "nowhere" might just be enemies coming from inside fog. If that's the case, the fog isn't very clearly shown.

Anyways, just showing a pic of one of these cloaked monk guys. He can use swords, though he doesn't have one. He's also got the ability to use magic, and some new weapon type? Looks kind of like a mace. This is the first person I've seen, I think, who can use both magical and physical weapons. Also, I realize at this point why I'm getting more EXP: these guys are several levels higher than the chumps from the last maps.

I move Dion onto the bag thing.

Seems it doesn't heal you. Looks more like a chest, so I click on ??? and get some item. Not sure what it does.

Anyways, I move Elbert upwards towards the two bosses. I have him attack the boss who can heal first, as that guy's more of a threat. He misses, and then that guy goes, and he puts some status on Elbert:

Huh. Then I have Gloomy try and weaken the other boss, since the first one is blocked off by this boss and Elbert. He still can't get EXP, so I'm worried when he doubles AND procs Adept or whatever skill he has that lets him attack twice in a row, but he misses, so the boss doesn't die.

Then the boss attacks him on his turn and dies. Well that was a waste of bosskill EXP. I try and get Elbert to attack the healer boss again on the next turn, but he can't move or do anything else. An effect of the status, perhaps? Knight tries to attack him as well, and also misses.

asdfasdfs fucking Berserk. Gloomy can't run away and there's no healer, so my strategy is to kill the boss before Elbert goes. So I have Gloomy attack the boss, but he misses. >_> I move Knight out of the way, and let Dion have a shot, and he FINALLY hits, but that's not enough. At this point I'm praying that Elbert misses. Then I realize that the Berserk seems to have worn off. One turn only I guess. So I wait for the next turn. Both Elbert and Dion miss. >_> Turn after that, Elbert goes again and hits for the kill.

Not bad.

That map was a step up from the others, mainly because the FoW was really confusing the first time around as I didn't realize it was there, and the enemies spawning from nowhere in the middle of the turn were starting to freak me out.

[Jedi]

Sylvia! <3

I'm liking her already! [totally not involved with how much I like female archers and snipers] Wasn't there a whole topic on her back in the day?

[Refa]

Sylvia does seem pretty awesome yes (only because she's a sniper and not an archer).

Also resisting the urge to make Zelda joke with Princess.

[Jedi]

Sylvia does seem pretty awesome yes (only because she's a sniper and not an archer).

Also resisting the urge to make Zelda joke with Princess.

We shall all await when BBM somehow gets her defeated so we can see him say

[BBM]

hahahahaha

Also, Refa, I thought you were going to be one update behind at all times! What happened to that?

Edited February 22, 2013 by BBM

[BBM]

Chapter 2, Part 1!

I visit all these places and trigger ALL THE CUTSCENES

...but I still have my mercs? I was under the impression that you hired them only for one chapter. So Chapter 1's not over. So, savestate in hand, I fiddle with some of the purple-haired chick's options until I trigger a cutscene in the starting place, at which point:

Mercs (which includes Princess and Knight) are gone, whee. Well actually this is a bad thing, but it means Chapter 1 is finally over. I go to re-hire my mercs, and:

His price doubled even though he didn't gain any experience at all. Checking the other mercs, ALL their prices doubled, and I really don't have the money to hire them at such high prices. So I decide to trudge on with my free characters.

CHAPTER 2

This didn't show up for the last two maps, so I'm guessing that this is a mandatory map and the last two were optional.

Reese and Ward are back in black, which probably indicates that they're only usable for mandatory maps.

Anyways, the map starts, and we get some new units at the top!

She's using a pretty good weapon, which is why her Mt is decent even though her STR sucks. She's got a shifty look to her though, so I name her Thief even though she's more probably a Myrm.

lmao I think this is an actual Thief, but that name's gone, so she gets to be named Ribbon. She has no offence or defence, so uh.

You can tell right away that this guy thinks he's the shit, because while everyone else looks either straight at you or to the left, he looks to the right. So I name him Lefty, JUST TO PISS HIM OFF.

Anyways, those three people are surrounded by enemies, so I have Lefty move first to a semi-chokepoint area where he can block off most of them.

That leads to this, however. Ouch.

At this point, I see what looks to be some sort of start button on the map.

I move Ribbon onto a forest tile, and she gets a green leaf over her head. Is her name Tarzan Jane?

A tile that gives 0 AVO!? Blasphemy! Note: the water-bridge tiles do as well, but I didn't notice that earlier. Also, the boss has some sort of skill where he inflicts upon himself the same status that Elbert inflicted upon the enemy a few maps ago. It boosts his Mt and Hit.

Anyways, the next turn, I have Ribbon move onto the start button, and it turns out it's actually an Escape tile!

Bleurgh I should probably have him escape. He did pretty well to survive this long though, he didn't get hit by the archers a single time (he got hit by the axe guy both times, and this is starting to make me think that there's no weapon triangle in this game).

Anyways, at this point I'm beginning to think that Vantage is pretty OP because of how the attacking system works in this game. I put Adel in the middle of a bunch of enemies, and as long as he's faster and doesn't miss, they can't hurt him at 0-range at all. He just attacks them on the enemy turn and after doing damage, prevents them from counter-attacking at all.

Then we get this guy who attacks Adel even after Adel hits him. >_> Welp that was close. After this I try to have him escape, but he can't. But both Ribbon and Lefty were able to escape, which probably means that the escape tile is solely for the three new units.

Hmm, turns out playable units can get the crosses (or at least the green one).

The green one also disables your attacking and defensive stats totally, so I'm guessing the difference between the green cross and the red one is that you can't Capture people who have the green cross.

BTW, Capturing is also really good in this game, because it's like killing an enemy, because they leave the battlefield, except it also gives you all of the enemy's items, as well as EXP.

Ugh I swear this guy isn't supposed to do so much damage.

Yup, can't capture this guy.

Growths don't seem to be very high in this game...

After I healed Sherlock, he lost the green cross. If you remember back to the first map, the boss didn't lose his cross upon self-healing from the Vulnerary, so I think that this is a property unique to healing magic (or this particular healing magic, anyways).

Not bad, not that it ended up mattering. You might be surprised at the fact that Thief leveled already, but the reason is because she has some skill that lets her multi-attack a LOT. Not just regular double-attacking, but she procs something like Adept nearly every battle. This makes her combat really good, and she has rather decent avoid too.

Anyways, I have Ward enter the ? house near the boss, and this...

Sparks a duel! It's not a regular fight with regular combat rules, it's more like something in an Arena. I get an item after Ward wins.

Eh. Doesn't matter.

Pretty good. Too bad it didn't matter, again.

Why didn't the last three levels matter? Because I had to reset to the 10-turn mark and redo some stuff because Chris died. >_> The problem was that more reinforcements came from those caves at the top, and her and Leon got kind of overwhelmed. So in my new strategy, they just retreated after getting the chest instead of sticking around and fighting. And the way things worked out in this new strategy, Thief got left at 98 EXP and neither Chris nor Adel killed the enemies they did last time. In this strat, both Thief AND Reese critted one of the other bosses, killing him before he could use his Vulnerary. Ward picked up the other bosskill, which was kind of lame and unintentional. Oh well. Then Reese seized.

Even though Adel did end up running into that boss who was able to counterattack after getting hit, I still think Vantage is really strong. I guess we'll see how many other enemies I face that can bypass this, but currently I think it's kind of broken.

This map was actually a bit difficult because getting Chris and Leon to survive up there was a bit of a challenge. Izzy's healing abilities also kind of suck. I should buy Vulneraries.

I want Dion and Sylvia back.