Katie

Honestly, I find Eirika chapter 10 to be the hardest Eirika chapter even in vanilla FE8.

Probably Dew, so that Faval can actually hit things with Yewfelle, and he appreciates Bargain as well. Patty also appreciates the extra survivability Sol brings. Jamke's not bad though, it's just that when Yewfelle's accuracy is as shaky as it is, Faval really doesn't need to have a 25% skill growth to go with it. Plus Dew can pass down swords. Jamke goes best with Ayra IMO, since they'll get Astra along with Jamke's skillset, and always have good skills growths due to Odo blood, only downside is lack of inheritance for Ulster. Of course, Ayra also really appreciates Dew, as Dew's growths, sword inheritance, and the extra survivability brought about from Sol, all make him tied with Jamke for the best Ayra husband IMO.

I noticed Mae is still May even though she was explicitly called Mae in Awakening. It's an official name that's easy to overlook, as she's only mentioned in Boey's LB2 death quote, but still an official name all the same.

You know, I'm actually playing Thracia right now (I'm about to go on vacation to a place with no internet, so I needed a game that I wasn't LPing to play while on vacation), and I noticed the first few chapters are deceptively easy. Chapter 1 is your standard easy first chapter, with a slight twist in that your enemies are lance users rather than axe users (probably because at this point literally half your army wields axes), Chapter 2 is slightly tougher in that you have 3 villages to save if you want the Gaiden, but the turn limit is very generous so as long as your aren't uber turtling, you should make it(I even found Ronan rather useful thanks to his whopping 3 movement stars, which often activated and allowed him to get another turn in), 2x has the infamous Thracia fog but otherwise isn't too bad, if you have Leif talk to Eyvel she also strongly hints that you should capture Lithis, which is easy since he's unarmed(In fact, I forgot you could capture unarmed enemies without needing to win a round of combat, so I was actually panicking a bit because the throne he was on brought his defense up to 12 and he had high enough speed that only Brave weapons could double him when capturing, and Finn was behind the rest of the army because I'd had him fetch one of the torches, so I'd had Tanya and Ronan chip him from range which brought his HP low enough that Halvan could capture him using the Brave Axe, only to realize I'd wasted my time because capturing unarmed opponents takes no effort, but at least I got some archer EXP), chapter 3 is a bit tougher with the whole needing to rescue the kids thing but visiting the villages tells you who goes to which one so it can be figured out with some trial and error and you're given plenty of time to ferry them over before the reinforcements(which can be killed easily to buy yourself more time) reach the villages, so it's hardly tough for any veteran, and of course during all this you have Eyvel who the RN will bend over backwards to ensure lives, but after that is the Manster escape and, well, the Manster section is considered the hardest for a reason, and while it lets up a bit afterwards it still remains pretty consistently difficult. I'm currently on chapter 4. It's the hardest if you disregard some of the higher difficulties of later games, such as FE12 Lunatic Reverse, yes. And I wouldn't say a blueprint per se, but there were a lot of new mechanics it brought that were kept for the GBA titles, but many others, like movement stars or capturing, were dropped.

A shame you did Ephraim mode, cause if you had done Eirika mode you would have gotten my favorite character next chapter, but since you did Ephraim you won't get her until chapter 12.

I'll probably have the next part up when I get back from vacation on the 8 or 9th. I did make some changes with Nightmare though. I gave Arden minor Odo blood because I want Ulster and Larcei to get major Odo because I think I know a way to use Nightmare to give them the Balmung without exploiting the bug, via changing its rank to a temporarily, selling it to Larcei or Ulster, and then changing it back to S rank. I did lower Arden's skill and HP growths by 30 and 20, respectively, to counterbalance the boost from his new Holy Blood. I also removed most of the extra skills I gave units, so for instance Sigurd now only has Pursuit like in vanilla FE4, but I did give a lot of classes extra class skills that they had in later FEs, which both benefits me and the enemy. In one case, giving Swordmasters Astra, it only benefits the enemy, because the three Swordmasters that you do get always have Astra anyway.

Have you picked pairings yet, or are you letting the viewers decide?

The thing about Tana vs. Vanessa is that Tana has better growths and bases, but Vanessa has better availability. Judging by her level 9 stats in that screenshot, she's actually a bit RNG screwed, as while her luck is slightly blessed, her speed, defense, and resistance are slightly screwed.

This is a character, who has not one, but TWO ROMhacks to his name, by the way. I'm currently LPing one of them, and TheMoniker did a good LP of the other, though I plan on getting around to the other as well.

And even then, Finn and Dagdar are generally better at it. Marty is literally one of the worst characters in the game.

It's not Amelia, I love Amelia. And Tana, who you also get. No, the true worst character is

In chapter 9, you'll meet the worst character in the series, who got a whole dumb meme hack to himself.

Why would you even pair Finn with Tailto? He'd honestly probably be a better father for Bridget's kids than Tailto's.

I'm gonna be on vacation form August 1-8, so I'll go ahead and put the PMU poll for Test 10 up now, that way it'll hopefully have plenty of votes by the time I get back. The next map is a Fog map, so Ai-ke may be worth bringing, and it allows 9 units including Batta, so 5 people will have to be left behind. Because less people will be left behind than actually brought to the map, you'll be voting on who I'm benching again. I may or may not get the Test 9 conclusion update up before I leave.

Lithis and Salem.

Yeah, actually unlocking the supports is a pain. At least my OTP has the fastest support growth in the game. And sure there are some bad ones, but I find most of them at least decent, and it's not like FE7 doesn't have its fair share of bad supports as well. (Such as Marcus/Lowen, which basically Marcus scolding/tutoring Lowen and Lowen being a big yes man to Marcus) Character balance is definitely one of the weaker points of FE6. I rarely play FE6 without at least buffing the weaker characters I plan on using via Nightmare before starting.

I find FE6 has some really neat characters and some really good support conversations, I'd even say it's better than FE7 in this regard, and it has my favorite villain in the series, Narcian, who gets some of the funniest scenes in the game. I also like how the tomes are actually light, so your mages generally aren't weighed down too much. The music is also pretty good, and it actually shares a good bit of music with FE7, though I find a lot of the really good Elibe music is only in one of the two games.

One thing I like about FE6 is how even though pretty much every map has the same objective (seize, which only the final chapter and the trial maps don't have for an objective, iirc), the maps never really start to feel "samey" because the developers made them sufficiently different from one another.

Finn/Bridget can very likely occur on accident if you take too long on chapter 3 and you haven't paired Finn with anyone.

Marty only exists so Dagdar can be gay for him.

You could also just kill off Alec. He's not that good anyway.

Somewhat. PoR was decent, RD less so.

Nope. He hasn't even started Glass mode. Like, not even the characters were edited.

All right, I'm gonna go ahead and do... Test 9 gameplay: Artificial Unintelligence Next time, we get the Companion Cube back in the Test 9 conclusion!

I don't think the monsters can open the chests in chapter 11, can they?