ping

The game is pretty bad at telling you who to bring in general, though. I think they might have seen recruitable enemies as a optional bonus and not something you're able to do everytime. Anyway, there's a small route split coming up depending on the villages in the NE of chapter9. If you visit the right-most village, you'll be able to recruit Bartre and Elphin; if you visit the left village (or neither), you'll get Echidna and Lalum. Lalum and Elphin are dancers, so their stats don't matter (iirc, Lalum is slightly more dodgy and Elphin slightly less squishy), but Echidna (a hero) is quite a bit better than Bartre. Another character gets a lot better if you choose the Lalum route, too - lower base level, but identical base stats. Regardless which route you choose: Field Lilina in Ch.10. You can probably guess why. =)

Keep in mind that her base stats are pretty low even for her level. She actually need her good growth rates to kick in or she wont even catch up to your other units. The enemies' weapons are based on the Def stat of your unit, so fighting in the arena is a lot harder for tanks than it is for dodgy units.@promoting healers: Their advanced classes have increased EXP gain compared to other promoted units. Because of that, I'd actually promote as soon as you have a Guiding Ring to spare, even though the staff EXP gets cut in half. But the combat EXP they earn should more than make up for it and since you probably won't reach level 20 promoted (you certainly don't need to reach it to beat the final chapters) you don't really lose anything of value if you early-promote.

What does that have to do with Ewan? I didn't really take Sage!Ewan's access to Light tomes into account because slayer-less Light magic is indeed underwhelming. My opinion (Mage is probably better then Shaman for Ewan) doesn't change because of that.

From what I've heard, a big problem with FFVII is that the characterization of most of its cast has been changed massively in the expanded universe and that many players misremember how they were portrayed originally. I haven't touched the EU (and I sure as hell won't), but I still thought that Tifa was the confident one and Aeris the pure, innocent one. And then I watched a SSLP of it and saw how both of them threatened to castrate a pimp and realized that I might have to revise the memories of my playthrough as a stupid 12yo. :D Looking at the game now, of course I know that it's far from perfect. It's probably too easy, important parts of the general plot are very easy to miss and the localization really isn't great ("This guy are sick", "Beacause you're a puppet" come to mind). But in my opinion, its good points outweigh that by far. The main cast and their dynamic is amazing, the plot is great (if hard to follow sometimes), Sephiroth works well as a villain (and I refuse to change my mind about that just because there are 13850233 ~~~Sephiroth123~~~'s running around the internet), the customization mechanism (completely exchangeable Materia, but still differences between the characters) is fun and Midgar is the best videogame city I've seen so far. I agree with that. Blaming nostalgia for people appreciating a game is somewhat of a lazy argument, Tamanoir. You're basically stating that people like something for a wrong reason without bothering to address their arguments and without giving any reasons youreself why said something isn't as good as they think. If you just think that FFVII is overhyped even though it's a good game - keep in mind that it's also overhated, so it all evens out on average. ;)

Mortar is where the fun in the cannoneer class lies. Being immobilized for one turn isn't that bad if your basic attack has 7 range, although Mortar itself only has 4 range. It's a bit of a one-trick pony (Ether Shell might also be good, perhaps?), but it's a pretty strong trick. =) It's the same as the Blue Mage for me - I'm sure the class can be really powerful, but I'm too lazy to bother with the prerequisites, in this case the very specific setups you probably need to run to not kill yourself.

Ch7 is probably the hardest in the game. Afaik, it's not quite as urgent on normal difficulty, but you'll want to recruit the new characters as soon as possible. If you use rescue->take->drop on turn 1 to get Roy a bit further to to NE than he normally would be able to go, you can clear a path for him to get the recruit train going immediately on turn 2 (the characters can recruit one another as soon as you got one of them). Other than that, be careful around the wyvern and the reinforcements from the starting location and you should be fine. Ch8 is easier, but it's a looong march to the throne. Try not to dawdle too much, there will be thieves stealing your chests. You can bait them into coming towards you by leaving at least one chest unopened in the treasure chamber. Just make sure not to block their path, don't even stand inside the eastern door, or they'll go for the treasure behind the throne room and be a general pain in the ass. Saving Lilina is the only requirement to go to the first gaiden chapter, so no time limit yet. It's pretty easy as long as you keep track of the archer's attack range.

Wow, you might run out of unit slots if so many of your characters turn out fine :D Ward: Definitely not. He has a speed growth of 20%, so most likely he'll never be any good. Lot: Maybe. ;) He can become quite the tank (tied for the highest Def growth in the game), but all his other stats are kinda bad. He might not be make the cut as soon as more good characters arrive. Dorothy: Probably not. Her average stats are a bit better than Wolt's, but if Wolt has already gained a few level-ups and is doing well statwise, it's probably better to just keep him. However, you'll recruit a nomad in this very chapter (and another one in the not too distant future). Both of them are probably better than both archers, if only because of their better mobility. Sue (the one you'll get this chapter) might struggle with her Str growth, but she's going to be an amazing dodge tank. Bors: Ehh.... The problem is that he uses the same promotion item as Alance and they make much better use of them. Unless you really want an armor knight on your team, I'd drop him at some point, especially there's not much he can do that Allen or Lance wouldn't be able to do just as well. His low movement may or may not be an issue, depending on your playstyle. Wendy: Nope. Wendy is horribly underleveled, joins just before you enter Axe Land and even though her growth rates are quite good, she'll hardly catch up to Bors' stats, even if she manages to get to the same level. Her base stats are just that bad - much worse than Roy's were in chapter 1. Barth: Also nope. His HP and defense might be amazing, but I think he's so slow that he'll even get doubled regularly on normal mode, negating that advantage. He (and Wendy) also have the same problem as Bors - promoting one of them would delay promoting your cavaliers. The empty rooms (the ones with stairs) in chapter 6 will spawn reinforcements, so be careful not to leave your squishy units in range of them As soon as all of your units moved to the northern part of the map (not sure where exactly the border is), you'll have reinforcements spawn at your starting location, so you can prevent or delay them by leaving a single unit in the southern part. Cath will appear at some point in the SE of the map. Make sure to talk to her with Roy (and maybe let Chad steal her lockpicks), but to recruit her, Roy will have to talk to her three times. She won't attack anyone (and I think after Roy talks to her, she doesn't even go for treasure), so just ignore her afterwards.

Man, I completely forgot about that! Thank you for making this very constructive and not at all superfluous contribution. I also don't know if any country on earth would allow its ruler to directly agree to the death of all of his subjects being the penalty for breaking a contract. But honestly, the more interesting question is how the penalty for breaking the contract is triggered. The way it's presented in the game, it seems like Lekain does have the power to choose whether or not to start and stop the murdering when Daein or Kilvas don't fulfill their part of the contract. But it also seems as if Sanaki can overrule that, unless I misremember why exactly Naesala is able to side with her? To me, it's completely unclear how the magic of the blood contract works. It's such a hugely powerful spell that defines a good part of the plot in Pt.3 (and retroactively even PoR), but we don't know where its power comes from, when exactly its power can be activated (it seems like 'as soon as Lekain doesn't agree with something you do' and that's kinda disappointing from a story perspective) and who is able to enable/disable it out of his own free will. And I guess we also don't know if the blood contract agrees with any national or international law systems in Tellius. But then again, we don't know much about those law systems either way, except maybe that the Empress of Begnion doesn't necessarily have to be the Apostle to be the legitimate ruler. ;) I wonder... Would killing Sanaki have the same effect? As I said, she seems to have the power to (not) activate the blood contract with Kilvas, so maybe the game passed the opportunity for another ethical choice here. ;)

I think I see your point, but I'm still conditioned to expect a better reason for a villain to be villainious than just being randomly evil or having a twisted world view or (in Ashnard's case) vision. In that regard, I much prefer Lehran as a villain - he has a reason to be completely disillusioned with both laguz and beorc, making him much less arbitrary than Ashnard. I don't see why the existence of the BK hampers Ashnard's characterization, though. Ashnard does have screentime, it's just wasted most of the time by him being all evil and stuff and saying that his plans are unfolding nicely. But that's a flaw in Ashnard himself, not something that the BK forces onto him. There would have been many ways to make Ashnard more engaging as a villain - for example if we would have seen him leading the assault on Crimea and interact with Elincia at the very start of the game. Or if he would interact with anyone else but his direct underlings at all. Or if the game gave any more spotlight on his past other than stating that he's always been evil (I'm thinking of him bragging how he killed his whole family to become king). Or if he was built up better as Elincia's nemesis (I mean, he killed her parents and in PoR everyone thinks he also killed Renning). Giving him the BK's scenes might be another way, but I honestly don't think it would be the best one. But that's because I still think the BK (ignoring Radiant Dawn) is a decent villain and nemesis to Ike. ;)

Yes! I was Right on the Internet! Stop the presses! ;)On a more serious note, I'm looking forward to how the Spellblade part of my request will work out. I haven't used a physical viera yet (but I certainly will if I replay this game one day), so this is completely uncharted territory for me. I'm also interested to see if that bard really is as impactful on the plot as I remember, which is not at all.

Being locked into a single weapon type is a bad thing in general, although it shouldn't really make or break any unit. Most (primary) axe users are quite bad in this game, though, simply because their stats suck. ;) Paladins and heroes can still make quite good uses of axes, especially since the endgame is filled with lance-wielding wyvern riders. In general, you should probably value immediate use over long-term potential. The game is the hardest at the start (the peak difficulty being chapter 7) and actively using your prepromotes is much more helpful than getting slightly more XP on your growth units. You will have to bench most prepromotes at some point, but most of them are quite good when they arrive. There are no Est-y units in this game. Wendy and Sophia might look like it, but even if they catch up in levels, they will not overtake your 'regular' growth units. Unless you build your team exclusively out of scrub units, you should be fine putting one or two bad fighters in, especially on normal difficulty. Yep, and I'd look up the requirements if I were you. Most are simply "finish before turn x and some characters must still be alive", but the game doesn't really tell you which maps you have to end quickly. The turncounts themselves aren't too bad, you just might not have the time to rout the enemy or even build up supports. ;) Speaking of supports, Allen/Lance/Roy is a reasonably quick and very useful triangle.

Same with my niece, if not so extreme in the colour change. She was born with relatively thick black hair which she shed very soon and now she has dark blonde hair. OTOH, my siblings and I were all much blonder as kids than we are now, so who knows what colour Niko will end up with. :D

Nevermind, then :D My opinion is that while RD destroys one of the reasons to have the Black Knight in the story, he's still doing fine in the role he was given (menacing, seemingly unstoppable personal enemy for Ike). I personally find Ashnard to be the weaker one of the two villains and not because the BK claims too much of his screentime or overlaps too much with his role (I believe that's close to your opinion? Sorry if I remember that wrong). It's just that I don't think his social darwinistic agenda is that interesting, especially because the game doesn't really give us any hints how Ashnard became the man he is. Compare that to Zephiel, Lyon, Gharnef, Hardin or even Nergal (although in the last case, it's too obscure as well) - for everyone of them we have at least a little bit of backstory why they ended up on the pointy end of {Lord}'s sword. For the BK, we at least learn that there is a connection between him and Greil, although I concede to the point that RD's follow-up on this is fucking terrible. But Ashnard is just some evil dude with a messed-up idea of Utopia.

Or just don't use a Shaman at all. ;) Dark Magic isn't that great in this game, thanks to its huge tome weights. The legendary Dark Tome doesn't even deal effective damage to monsters. If you do want to take the Shaman route, you could consider the Summoner class. Losing out on Anima isn't too great, but it might be fun to play around with some disposable units. In that case, Knoll's phantoms are actually a bit stronger than Ewan's, but since you don't need them to survive anything anyway, that doesn't really matter.

In that case our positions don't seem to differ all that much. I think nobody here really disagreed that the BK sucked pretty bad in Radiant Dawn? It's mostly about how much that should be taken into account when talking about PoR!BK.

Congratulations! Glad to see that you both seem to be fine. I hope Leo's feeling well too, now that he's no longer the only center of attention. ;)

Here's another one for the 'violence' list. It might be worth noting that the police didn't even consider a xenophobic background for those murders for a long time - they pretty much assumed that the murderers were part of the victim's social circle and/or that the victims might have been part of organized crime and that the murders were related to that.

I'll probably just echo a lot of posts with most of my points, but here goes: Binding Blade: I quite like the plot of the game and can't think of anything I would want to change there, but the pacing of the game is just terrible. Jahn's huge exposition dump is probably the worst part, but in general it feels like they noticed while doing the Bern arc that they were suddenly out of disk space. I mean, after liberating Sacae/Ilia, Roy has to fight exactly one battle to reach Zephiel's castle (not counting the quest for Apocalypse). So yeah, I'd love it if the game would expand more on the war in Bern, even if they had to shorten some of the previous arcs. Blazing Sword: Make Nergal's backstory less obscure. As is, he's basically little more than a cackling, powerhungry dude with no clear ambitions other than more power without any idea what to use it for. Sacred Stones: Hm, good question. I actually like how Eirika's and Ephraim's routes basically have two different Lyons / DKs. I wouldn't mind some changes in the characters (Eirika just being naive during the whole game is a bit painful, for example), but I really like the plot as a whole. Path of Radiance: I agree that Elincia should have been an active combattant much earlier. Maybe shortly after Mist and Rolf decide to join the fights she could decide that she can't stay at the sidelines when even those kids fight for her cause? I'm OK with the BK being the primary antagonist for Ike in this game. He's not very interesting as a character (duh - he hardly has any), but imo, he works well as a menacing thread and a seemingly unbeatable foe for most of the game. The game throws enough hints that I (knowing that there is a sequel) am very interested to learn more about his motivations. Only too bad that he's mostly disappointing in RD. :/ I especially hate the "my final teacher" bullshit Ike pulls after finally defeating him. Instead, I would have liked if the BK would actually have died in PoR, but in RD the player learns his identity (did it really have to be Zelgius) and through his connection to Greil maybe even something about Ikes father. But that's more about Radiant Dawn and I only put it in the last entry because my main grief with RD is the Blood Pact (very creative, I know). I agree with NekoKnight that the plot point of Daein being forced into an alliance with Begnion could easily have benn constructed without it - just make Begnion threaten to completely eradicate Daein if they don't comply, either by military power or if that wouldn't seem suffenciently overkill enough, through some magical nuke. But having people just drop dead because their king (or even former king in the case of Kilvas, iirc) was tricked into buying a vacuum cleaner signing a piece of paper puts my suspension of disbelief to its limits. ;)

Oh, wow! Again, all my best wishes to all of you!

This is hilarious. So Trumps is innocent until proven guilty while Hillary is technically innocent until proven guilty but not really? It's pretty weak of you to call out anyone who thinks that Trump is a sexual offender and in the same actual post just assume that Clinton's guilt is a proven fact. Dude, you ignore the first half of that part of Trump's 'locker room talk' to make it appear harmless and when I call you out on that, you choose to ignore the second half. This is what Trump said, nothing cut out: (source) That's one coherent statement, not two different ones. I could add that his apology was little more than a build-up for some "But my political opponents are still worse!!!", but then again, that's everyone's modus operandi in this fucking election.

Sound about right :D It's more two artifacts carrying a hero than the other way round, though. Anyway, sorry about the delay. Last weeks were rather busy, so I didn't find the time to finish that. I hope the screenshots are enough for me to remember what was going on without looking at the recording again. ;) [spoiler=Update 5] So last time, our designated unit forge decided to go rogue. This is one of the more annoying random events in the game - others range from gifted items or gold to all global enchantments dissipating to a meteor dropping on a city. And looking that up just taught me that parking B'Shan (or any other hero) in the city would have kept it from rebelling. Live and learn, I guess. I make this event a bit more annoying myself because I decide to run my entire army to defeat the one spearman guarding the city instead of just having Reywind fly over and do this on his own. Well done, Past Me! But to be fair, I'm not exactly on a turn limit right now. In the meantime, the spearman remains behind to scout around the rest of the island for a bit and since I do have my impatient moments, he attempts to clear a monster lair containing War Bears and one group of Sprites. Those are the two lowest-tier Nature beasts, although Sprites are quite a bit more dangerous, especially if they appear in groups and/or in Nature nodes. (Yeah, this pic is from a later fight for a node) Their magic attack isn't too strong, but it will wear down weaker units. Their combined effort is ultimately still not enough to kill a spearman (Weakest unit type in the game! Hobbits are awesome.), but at least it calls for a Healing spell. In case I forgot to describe it before: Healing restores up to 5 HP to a wounded unit, reviving fallen figures as long as at least one stayed alive. It's quite powerful early on when basic units only have 6x1 (or 8x1) HP, but it loses its usefulness over time and the Life realm unfortunately doesn't really have any spells that heal more HP on one unit. Stab! As most (or every, can't remember) magic attackers, Sprites have only 4 shots per fight and as soon as they're forced into melee, they go down pretty easily. Still, before you get ranged units on your own, multiple Sprite groups have a good chance to get some kills. Still in the meantime, the Nature node next to Jafar's cap spawn some raging mosters who instantly attack the city. It's only two War Bear groups, though - nothing a Heroic Klackon spearman couldn't handle. Another not-so-important detail about the game: The Heroism spell is slightly bugged if used during combat. Despite my Warlord trait, it only boosts troops to Elite level instead of Ultra Elite, missing out on one defense point and +1 To Hit. Some time around the recapture of Sacred Vale, I decide to found a few more Hobbit expands after all. I usually hope to find a neutral city of a race with more long-term potential (read: Universities for the science), but it's not like Hobbit cities are a waste of resources. In other news, the next contestant has arrived. Oberic sent a few Sprites out to scout, so I have no idea where to find his cities. As such, I'm not too thrilled about this encounter - his Sprites will potentially be annoying because the AI doesn't always seem to check the tiles they move through so they sometimes just move into their opponent's troops. And since he has a few Chaos spellbooks in his library, I don't really want to make him declare war on me by chasing down his scouts. I doubt that he has the big global spells ready yet, but even the lower Chaotic spell tiers contain a few annoying options. On the bright side: I eliminated Jafar fast enough to not let Oberic (and everyone else) notice, so he might stay peaceful for now, even though he doesn't react to any diplomatic stuff. Oberic actually rearranged his library a little bit. He used his two additional picks for two Chaos spellbooks, but in addition swapped out one Nature book for yet another Chaos book. His ability, Mana Focusing, is unchanged - it allows him to gain 1.25 Mana out of 1 Power, instead of the usual 1:1 ratio. It's an alright trait, but unfortunately horribly outclassed by the Alchemy trait. In general, gold is a lot easier to come by, so an Alchemist's ability to transmute it into Mana is more powerful all around and the Alchemy trait also grants magic weapons. Since Oberic shouldn't be aggressive right away and would have to cross the ocean to attack me directly, I don't think I have to rush my military. Instead, the cap pumps out a few more settlers... ...before returning to infrastructure for a bit. Science buildings give a fair bit more research points than the same-tier religious buildings give Power, which is why I often put all of my Power into Mana and Skill while relying on Libraries etc. for research. The Sages Guild unlocks the Alchemist Guild which in turn equips all new units in the city with magical or (if the city has some in its borders) Mythril weapons. The Alchemy trait gives troops magical weapons in all cities but doesn't seem to let you process Mythril ore, so Sacred Vale starts to work on the buildings tree towards the Alchemist Guild, even though there are still the Foresters Guild (food and hammers) and the Miners Guild (even more hammers) available. The next fight is against a few monsters of the Life realm: I already mentioned how crappy the Guardian Spirit is at fighting. Its stats might be higher than the Unicorns', but since it's only one spirit per unit, they're still pretty harmless. Unicorns aren't terribly strong either, but thanks to their Teleporting ability, they can reach your ranged units instantly and deal some decent damage to lower-leveled troops. Their Resistance To All trait surprisingly increases everyone's magic Resistance by one (Guardian Spirit) or two (Unicorns), but doesn't stack. Frankly, these monsters are just a bit too little too late to be challenging, so I'll just skip to the reward: The Staff of Odin instantly goes to Reywind, even though his magic attack isn't really high enough to make use of the +3 To Hit bonus. But the defensive bonuses (guess what Magic Immunity does?!) make him harder to kill and that's what I want him to do: Not die while providing some additional ranged damage and/or cast spells and his Leadership bonus to all the other units. And by the way (next mostly-useless mechanical detail): While Magic Immunity blocks almost every harmful spell in the game (it doesn't save the hero from, say, falling into a magically created crevice), it does not completely protect from magical unit attacks. Instead, it give the unit a fixed Defense score of 50 when hit by an appropriate attack - so it can still be harmed by extremly powerful attacks or by an attacker with the Illusion ability (ignore defense). That's quite tanky! He's also able to outrun melee attackers that can hit him (Gaze attackers like the Basilisk, for example, can initiate melee combat against flying units) and just kite them. Still, the strongest Summon in the game does seem to be out of reach at this point of the game. I intend to clear out the node at some point, of course, but since there is a bit more on the continent to explore... A little word about roads since my Klackon Engineers are working on connecting my cities: Connecting your empire does increase your gold output, depending on how many citizens the connected cities have (and even more if said citizens are of another race). Unfortunately, the Road/River/Ocean multiplier is capped at the city's own pop, so it's only really relevant in well developed cities. Speaking of gold: Here's another, nicer random event. :) Researchwise, I'm not exactly rushing towards the good stuff. There are a few useful spells available right now, but I still think that building up our Skill base is more helpful right now. Still, Holy Weapon (gives +1 To Hit and is cumulative with the Alchemy magical weapons) is a nice little spell that I probably should use more and I spot at least four spells in the research list that might come in handy. Clearing out another lair gives me yet another staff for my heroes - - well, a wand to be accurate - that gives its wielder immunity to physical ranged attacks through the Guardian Wind spell (which for some reason is a very common Sorcery spell). But since Odin's Staff is a lot better overall and Reywind only has one weapon slot, it goes into the vault for now. Next fight: The Nature node next to Jafar's capital. It's guarded by yet another one of the many Nature realm monsters, the Cockatrices. The game consideres them to be around as strong as Basilisks - in reality, they're very reliant on their Stoning Touch ability because neither their physical attack nor their durability are very impressive. But to be fair - the Stoning Touch is quite dangerous. "Touch" abilities in general are a bit weaker than "Gaze" abilities like the Basilisks petrifying gaze because they're triggered during and not before the regular melee combat. However, not only reduce Cockatrices the enemy's chance of survival by 30% (compared to the -10% of the Basilisk), but they also make them roll Resistance once for every Cockatrice (i.e. up to four times). Their biggest weakness is the same as almost every melee unit in the game: It's not that hard to just shoot them before they can do any damage at all. The reward is Really Broken Shit. Lionheart is a 3rd-tier Life spell (which is the 2nd-highest), but the bonuses it can give to a unit are pretty ridiculous. How ridiculous you ask? I'll cover that in the next update. :p This is actually the end of a playing session and while I have already played a bit more, I still have to extract the screenshots out of the recording. So before I throw out the numbers, I'll make sure that I also have a decent target to demonstrate it.

I feel that way about both the Scouring of the Shire and the Tom Bombadil sequence (although I don't think I could name any specific favourite part in LotR). Imho, both work very well written down - Tom to show that there is a world outside of the plotted areas and the Scouring to show Saruman's petty character - but both would probably destroy the pacing of the respective films. The ending really is long enough as it is. ;)

Quoting from the video - literally immediately before your part of the quotation starts: "You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait." Selective quotations are a powerful tool indeed.

What You got to be kidding. What you're saying here is basically that the women should proactively greet Trump with "I'm not OK with you making any sexual advances so keep your tiny fingers away from me" and if they don't it implies consent? That's not how it works. What Trump described was very clearly sexual assault.

They're just too tired to get mad at anything. You should try it: don't sleep for more than four hours without interruption for at least two months and then try to find the energy to express your discontent. It'll just accumulate and then explode when the kids go to school - mostly during parent-teacher conferences. (I have some friends who work as teachers and many of their stories back this theory!)