Eltosian Kadath

You don't need Vine Whip for Brock, Leech Seed and Growl can deal with him fairly easily. You can also run from the Snorlax encounter, to avoid Exp from it. I must admit, the fact that this works is really counter intuitive.

Despite complaints about boat maps, I think Celica's party composition works well with those map types. The tighter space makes it easier to protect the squish mages that make up the bulk of her army, and the range of magic give them plenty of opportunity to attack. Shame the leave map function ruined that, but at least you can't turnwheel to cheese levelups... There is a villager that spreads the same vague Mathilda will be executed soon story (which he says an enemy soldier told him) to Clive. It could have been intentionally leaked to bait a trap. Other than the talk Clive has after Mathilda's death...

Surprised you didn't start with Bulbasaur, but it sounds like it is going fine. That is one way to ignore HMs You could probably finish the game with just Nidoking if you wanted. Getting early Nidoking and crushing the game with him is one of the classic Pokemon Gen 1 speedrunning routes (it might be outdated at this point). If you are looking for new party members, a Psychic type comes to mind thanks to how broken the typing is in Gen 1, and to deal with Eirika (only Tangela isn't weak, and its only moves are Wrap and Constrict...) and Koga (although Earthquakes might be able to do the job as well) easier. A dedicated Special attacker to give Thunderbolt to might be a good idea as well if you want another member, as that move works really well in the Elite Four fights (It deals with most of Lorelei's mon, you face two Gyrados that get bodied by it, plus the flying types Pigeot and Aerodactyle). My advice is teach Bubblebeam to give him an edge up in Rock Tunnel, and if you are taking on the game corner Rockets (instead of skipping that area by using the Pokedoll to skip past the Ghost Marowak, and thus the need for Silph Scope) against the first Giovanni fight, but switch it for Thunderbolt if you are going with the Nidoking solo plan before facing the Rival battle in poketower for the Gyrados there (OK that might be overkill given the levels disparity there, but definitely before Rival Fival in Silphco), or Icebeam/Blizzard before the Elite Four otherwise. You should evolve him as soon as you can, as none of Nidorino's moves are worth waiting for (you can even argue Nidoking gets a better levelup move from evolving early, as he learns Thrash at 23 only as a Nidoking...)

Nicely done, now you just need to get to the bottom of Blight Town and ring the other bell

Even if Mathilda and Delthea do not die, to prevent that you, acting as Alm, had to play in a more restrictive ways that made the map more difficult than it otherwise would have as a consequence of his recklessness. I will note that there is a villager just before the Necrodragon Mountain that tries to warn him of its dangers (or spitefully wishes for their demise on Dragonblight mountain if Zeke dies)... Celica does, in their big argument...

Just skipping over the Sluice gate example? It parallels the timing better (since that seems to matter to you), and where he finally realizes that Celica is the princess, and that the only way he saved people was with her help. Everything I said was true about the argument Alm makes it perfectly clear that his only interest in Rudolf is fighting him. The tone helps sell this point as well, but rather than embed a bunch of videos I will stick with text. To further emphasize that Alm hurt Celica with his words, she ends it off with She might not like her father, but having someone blame him for everything that is going wrong still hurts, and that he is kinda right makes it hurt more. Alm even recognizes that he hurt her when next they speak, saying He should have put two and two together after his second meeting with Slayde, and hearing about the missing princess, but even if he didn't the answer to this question would have told him. She lashes out because Alm hurt her. He might say that about the return of the princess, but the oblivious fool doesn't understand that what he says wouldn't happen because of who the princess is, and he really should know better. In the sense that Alm hurt Celica with his words so successfully that she felt the need to lash out and leave, all while remaining blissfully ignorant. I have to agree with the story here, this isn't as one sided as you act. Celica certainly lashed out, and questioned Alms action fairly pointedly, but Alm wasn't a saint either. He hurt her, emphasized his own ignorance, and he should have known better, even could have if he were the kind of person to think things through. It can, if the player is willing to suffer through the situation Alm put them in with his actions. They only start executing her when Alm attacks. Alm could have tried some form of subterfuge to extract her more safely than charge in while they try to kill her (for example having the expert on stealth Lukas get an extraction force in closer before attacking). Alm's weakness isn't malice, he just doesn't think through his actions. Just like with Mathilda, there are ways to approach saving her that work better than simply attacking the fort she is in. Sure he wont kill her, but he didn't think things through beyond that either.

Even if their end result is optional, avoiding these options adds a hardship to the player, forcing them to play in ways that make things harder on them. It is either Alm or the player that feels the full weight of his flaw, and I don't think the choice of who takes that burden lessens its impact. How linked this is to her flaw, and how much she is impacted by this is as muddy as the Nuibaba choice. Sounds like when Alm has conquered Rigel, killing his own father, only to discover this conquest hasn't solved everything, and must now explore the mysteries of Duma's tower, and confront his own feeling within. Or possibly when he has conquered his way to the Sluice gate, only to discover when he gets there that he has to activate the one to the south to avoid disaster, with no means for him and his army to activate it in time. Alm early on in that argument by outright saying he doesn't care about Rudolf's plans and intentions. He hurt Celica through his ignorance of who she is, and if it were his inclination he could have put the pieces together here and prevented that. To emphasize his failure here, after Celica leaves he even laments not asking a question that would have revealed who she was, and prevented him from hurting Cleica with his words. It is not as clear cut who is in the wrong for that argument.

I missed this edit earlier, but I agree with you here, Jedah being so inconsistent with what his deal is hurts it far more for me than Celica's actions do. People like to say she is acting dumb, but it does seem in character with what I see as her ultimate flaw. Celica doesn't value her life above the well being of others. She repeatedly puts her life in more danger than it needs to make people's lives better, be that taking on pirates and necrodragons and bandit kings she doesn't need to. She values her life so little that when asked by the extremely sketchy Jedah, that everyone has warned her against, to give up her soul for the small chance that he can return Mila's blessing (or saving Rigelians from the fate of losing Duma's blessing, or whatever his deal is at the time), her answer is an instant yes. I don't think it is a necessary tragedy anymore than Celica giving her soul is, both are avoidable if not for their flaws. It may have been Rudolf's plan, but if Alm knew Rudolf was his father would it have ended that way? Rudolf literally will not Attack/counter attack Alm, if Alm did the same how would it end? The most obvious is he commits one of the greatest tragedies possible, the unintended murder of a family member. If you want others he lets himself be fooled by Nuibaba into a trap (and let's be honest, that map is a trap), or he blunders past, and kills Zeke without discovering he is being blackmailed, earning the ire of Rigelians that would otherwise be helpful. His only plan for freeing Delthea is to directly attack Tatarrah instead of trying any subterfuge or magical plan to free her more safely (and can kill her in the attempt). His only plan for safely freeing Mathilda is charge and hope Duesaix doesn't kill her in a timely fashion (and yes she can die, and get some serious scolding from Clive for it). Is it happening constantly to Celica? Barring her giving up her soul near the very end (which is at best comparable to Alms loss of Rudolf), I can't think of any time she is hindered any more than Alm is for her flaw. Do you have some examples you can share?

Wasn't making a What Aboutism fallacy, for my statements to be a What Aboutism fallacy, I would be making the claim that Awakening also doing this bad thing makes it OK for SoV to do it too, I am simply responding to you making claims about how the bad thing they both did were OK when Awakening did them, as they are bad in both. Such a harsh memory of Celica. I may comment on these topics as they come up in the story, although I think they touched on her goals already, so I will comment there. I don't think her goals are particularly weird; her goal is to end the famine and rising Terrors by getting Mila into returning her blessing to the land. Food can go bad very quickly without refrigeration, so doing some efforts to preserve food for latter in the month, which also happens to preserve it for a few years, seems reasonable to me. Alm does have a flaw that is challenged by the narrative. Alm jumps to violence without thinking through the situation carefully. It isn't that he is angry and wrathful, just that he is willing to act with violence despite his lack of information. Hearing the bandits have a hostage is enough for him to jump out of hiding without even taking advantage of their stealth for an ambush, or figuring out how dangerous they might be. When he hears the Deliverance has been driven off with Clair captured, he doesn't try to find out where the Deliverance went after that, he just bursts in to retake the fort, etc. It all culminates in all the pieces being layer out for him to figure out the truth about himself, with him even admitting to Clive that he knows something is up, but he presses on with his conquest anyway without trying figuring it out, and pays the price for that.

Been helping my parents prepare their new house. What in the...I feel like I missed a lot of strange things yeserday...I wasn't even gone for all of yesterday. Also there are far too many TeeHee names now...it is getting kinda confusing. I hope our antics help you feel better.

Fair point, being an empire is more about ruling over people that think of themselves as distinctly different people, and declaring yourself an empire. I just figured setting up a few kingdoms is an easy way to make people think of themselves as differing peoples. I was simply responding to this attempt to defend Awakening due to it containing characters more complex than Faye. This part of your comment was what I was responding to when this analysis started, as it is built on the idea that Tharja has more going on than Faye. I also responded to the comment about the harem being more of a love triangle by pointing out that Chrom also has a wife to consider.

Its probably a case of Empire means evil...although setting up a few kingdoms in his domain and having them fight for supremacy does sound like Duma's philosophy on how to treat humanity. Nice, looks like archer Kliff worked out for you despite the levelups you have been getting. I didn't really elaborate on that flippant line about Virion, because Tharja was the relevant one. There are hints, even all the way back in his join chapter about Virion liking women to dominate him, and this support felt in line with that, although I didn't really lay the groundwork for that interpretation. Sorry. Ah yes Tharja's key arc, that feigning friendship gets her things of value to stalking Robin, like physical safety, pliant servants, and magical materials. Seeing as your point is that Tharja isn't as one dimensional as Faye which you continue to claim, showing that Tharja is as one dimensional is proving that point wrong. Tharja has as much going on as Faye, and just because the player can make her their in game wife doesn't mean Tharja has agency, only that the player does. At least they didn't feel the need to tie the value of Faye's friendships to something of tangible value for her stalking Alm. In fact the make clear that it will be directly counter to her interest in Alm through the previous support, where Silque tries to tie their friendship to Faye's interest in Alm, and she rejects it, and notably doesn't return to this idea when she warms up to their friendship. They added two characters in SoV, one male and one female, one for Alm's side, and one for Celica's side, one at the beginning of the game, and one near the end. Faye wasn't added for the sole purpose of increasing female representation, the two characters were brought in to counter balance each other. As for the other, Shadows of Valencia is a remake of Gaiden, a game that came out on the Famicom. Other popular games on the Famicom include games like Super Mario, in which the only female character in the game is a damsel in distress, The Legend of Zelda, in which the titular Zelda is a damsel in distress, and Final Fantasy, a game whose first quest is to rescue Princess Sara, a damsel in distress. Gaiden is a product of its time as much as Faye is a product of the 3DS era.Plus Tharja repeatedly having men jump in front of attacks to defend her is getting into some damsel in distress territory as well... That is undercut by how the paired ending in Awakening are treated. With the exception of Kellam, all the husbands (and Robin) have a canonical ending with a sentence about their wife as an after thought at the end (Robin being by far the worst offender, where there spouse barley gets name dropped at the end). Seeing them all stacked up like (with noted exception of Kellam) that makes it feel like the wives are just accessories to the husband's successful ambitions (or Robin's spouse an accessory to the player). Only the solo and Kellam paired (and F! Robin) endings place the women as the focus of their own ending. I am guessing this is talking about the Tharja and Faye comparison here, although I have not read through enough of the "support complaint thread" (again I am guessing this is the "Why are supports still considered to be a good form of storytelling?" thread) to really know. At least from my perspective, the nature of what is being discussed isn't about supports, but two characters with striking similarities. That being said, this is getting a bit expansive on the thread, so this is my last post about it.

One thing to note about that one is it deals holy damage, which is effective against skeletons. That is useful if you want to explore what is behind the boneyard next to fire link shrine.

Or Tharja is true to her goals at the beginning, securing supplies to creep on Robin, even if she has to lie and make nice to the manakete to do so. Tharja is irritated with Vaike because he keeps interrupting her while she is stalking Robin. I will also note that people taking a blow for Tharja is an oddly recurrent plot element to multiple of her A supports. Which shows that Faye came to realize the value of their friendship in and of itself, instead of recognizing an extrenal value to it, like people being willing to take a hit for her. Virion's is mostly just her assuming he has been hexed (or trying to hex him), and him going along with it because he likes being dominated by women. A lot of characterization about how the hexes of dark mages work in that one.

Before I made that statement I went through her supports to check that a majority of them did. The Tharja-Nowi support literally starts with her trying to talk Nowi out of a Talon so she can magically discern her future prospects with Robin Lon'qu-Tharja support ends with her admitting that she will be stalking Robin while they are married (although not marrying her will give her more time to do so) I don't know what you reading into the Virion-Tharja support, other than both of them being equally creepy. As for Vaike, it sounds similar to the revelation Faye has at the end of her Silque support chain, that despite her attempts to rebuff Silque, the friendship had taken root. Despite her acting like Alm is all she needs, it wasn't true, she needed the friendship of others as well. Also the Vaike support involves Vaike interrupting Tharja stalking Robin.

The main difference I am seeing is that Tharja has more garbage to sift through. The multitude of monotonous supports really skews things, as it makes the content of the two characters supports indicate the opposite of this assertion. It looks like the writer of Faye's supports cared more about Faye than the writer of Tharja's supports cared about Tharja. All of Faye's supports focus on Faye, whereas some of Tharja's supports spend a fair bit of time explaining how Dark Mages work in Awakening as a way to avoid having to write about Tharja's character. I don't think either cared that much, and both are just as one note, with the difference mostly coming out due to how much they felt required to write.

But a majority of Tharja support chains do involve Robin, and about the only note I am seeing added in the ones that are is that she is a Dark Mage. Honestly running through so many of them emphasizes how one (arguably two) note she is with how repetitive they become.

He really is, but once you get to the underside of the bridge, if you have a range weapon you can shoot its tail until it breaks off, which gets you a sword which has functionality similar to a Jagen (high base damage, but terrible scaling, which makes it useful in the early game, but falls off as you levelup, plus its difficult to forge...).

Sounds about the same for Alm, two girls crushing on him (or obsessed with him if you prefer for Faye). And once you factor in the girl Chrom actually marries into the mix, that brings him to 3, which sounds like your arbitrary harem cutoff number. I am looking, but beyond obsessed with Robin, former Plegian, and is a curse slinging dark mage, I am not finding anything else going on for Tharja. You can match that level of detail with Faye at least with, obsessed with Alm, from Ram village, and intends to remain a village girl.

You mean Havel The Rock? Nicely Done!

But these games do have an inbuilt assumption of monogamy in the mechanics, so why should harem behavior be ok in the games without canon love interests? Awakening does the same gross harem antics thing with Tharja being obsessed with Robin, Sumia starting with an obvious crush on Chrom, and Cordelia being obsessed with Chrom (but never canonically being allowed to marry him) the only difference is that the player chooses the canon pairing of their playthrough.

Sorry all, I have been a bit busy this month, but I should get the next update up later today (hopefully the date doesn't roll over before it gets up...), but here are some comment responses. Its not the only game where bows are awesome, the silly range they get in Echoes/Gaiden make them awesome in that game for instance, they are good (but specialized) units in Fates, I think they find a healthy niche in the harder FE game difficulties. I will keep an eye open for this mysterious shop. So far chapter shops have been underwhelming, and it iss nice to hear that this changes (at least in part...) The setup is so similar to the Ruby and Arthur map that I expected it to work the same with the player units being reinforcements at a later turn. The power of favoritism!!! Despite Clifford trying to stomp on her dreams, she will become a great knight in her own right. That ally and enemy disparity in mechanics is unfortunate. If the enemy followed the same rules, I wonder how differently it would play... All right, will do, although I hadn't read this before the coming update, so expect it in the one after. Offensively he is, plus he has more evasion than Ward, which sorta helps hi bulk. The door/gate location choke point means a thief only has to survive one melee hit, and with the turn system you could claim that choke point with one of your units if the computer doesn't acts on the removed gate immediately. Even if the door/gate tile didn't act as a choke point, Berwicks turn system would let you cover the thief with other troops mitigating this danger. That is something to keep in mind when enemies show up with those dangerous skills. Interesting...even if you can't see the enemy due to hide or increased vision range? Funnily enough I was thinking about the choke point in the opposite direction. If the enemy claimed that choke point I would only have one 0-1 range option to break through it, which you have less options to deal with than the other way around. The turn system mitigates the enemies ability to gang up on your allies as you can act between the enemies to heal, block space, or kill enemies, whereas in the FE turn system that would be a far greater concern, as they would have to take 3 hits without an opportunity to respond

Oh wow you started the whole series with 3? I wonder if that makes it easier or harder to understand the story... As for the voice actor question, most of them are people who voice acted the character before, and the voice of Hercules is the same VA as in the 1997 movie.

Also FE12 Lunatic isn't bullshit, just incredibly difficult.