Alastor15243

I considered that, actually! But I dismissed it as an unnecessary use of resources. As it almost assuredly was on Hard. On Maddening? I'm not nearly as confident. Ahhhh, yes, I suppose so.

The monotone and robotic speech patterns, along with various things characters have said, heavily indicate literal brainwashing. And it's not like he'd be the first time... or, last time I guess.

Engage Day 46: Chapter 25 By the looks of things, we’ll be done with the game this week. That’s a fascinating prospect. As I said, I got to Chapter 19 in Maddening before I lost. But I’m still going with that file because I want to unlock the option to select fixed growths for Maddening, and apparently only your first file has fixed growths (as was rather conclusively demonstrated to me when my second file had Colgette get two consecutive build levels). I have to say, this game is getting pretty nuts. I wound up beating Chapter 19 through sheer cheese and exploiting the fact that none of those reinforcements Mauvier amasses in the center actually have any ranged attacks, allowing me to send all my forces south, huddle up in the intersection with Yunaka’s fog, get the first house, retreat to the boat, plug it up, and then after taking out Mauvier before Merrin’s Ike engage ran out and Thani became a problem, just slowly whittle away at the enemies while I sent my fliers off to retrieve the dracoshield in a suicide gambit on the last turn (I had the fliers retreat from the house with a rescue staff use after triggering the house, due to the miasma, and then kill them on the docks). I’m not so sure how I feel about the late-game design of Maddening’s enemies. I still need to process it a bit more, but the game has extremely strict doubling thresholds, Alcryst continually struggles to contribute even chip damage, and great knights have defense high enough that the prospect of any physical attacker damaging them is pretty much laughable. All in all I’d definitely say that right now Conquest has the superior highest difficulty in terms of staying fun while still being challenging, but of course I still haven’t beaten it, so we’ll see. Right, now to pick up items and critters, see if anyone has anything interesting to say, then see if there’s an exit cutscene. There must be. Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that we haven’t found our dragonstone to give to her, I’d half-suspect a reveal that Veyle’s gonna show up now, and it’s gonna be our Pepsiman who’s kind to her and gives her the stone. Alfred: I feel bad for the you from a thousand years ago. I hope everything turns out okay. You saw the future where it did, genius. … HOW DID A CAT GET ONTO FUCKING GRANLON!? …Oh, right, past. I was about to say, how the flaming fuck could a cat have made it across the sea and onto this freshly-emerged land of lava and death in the day or two at most that it’s been above the water? Everyone has some mildly interesting observations to make about time travel, but Céline appears to be the only one who even bothers to ask anything to the effect of “wait, shouldn’t we be worried about causing a time paradox or radically altering history?”. Cuz, uh, yeah, come to think of it. Actually, while Alfred’s comment was still phrased obliviously enough that I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a point on purpose, he did have a point. We made a screwup for Pepsiman Wild Cherry that he never screwed up in the original timeline. And we very decidedly came from a timeline in which that shard was never shattered. But I’m guessing that, judging by the kind of game this is, this isn’t going to have any effects at all aside from breaking the shard. But Pepsiman and Veyle talk about what they did, and Veyle says that what they did probably sped up Pepsiman Wild Cherry’s ascent to lucidity. Veyle wonders if Pepsiman Wild Cherry seeing Pepsiman will cause any weird time problems, and Pepsiman says it’s probably fine because he’s going to forget what he saw soon anyway, 1000-year sleep and all. …And we apparently caused some problems for Zephia, who reported the invaders who then mysteriously vanished. …No, Sombron sensed an “unexpected Emblem” at the time, so he knows Zephia was telling the truth. …What? The “Fire Emblem” used to already exist before? …And we have this really awkward conversation between Sombron and Zephia about children and Sombron’s views on what children are, which are as cynical and morbid as you’d probably expect. Zephia just… outright propositions Sombron… right there… and he basically says “maybe after the war”. You know, maybe they should have kept this scene and dispensed with the one before. Used this to shine light on Zephia’s motivations, rather than have her explain them to Griss while she’s dying. Also, curiously, Sombron talking about his children is apparently the first time Zephia has ever thought about being a mother. Which, uh… kinda detracts from the scene, honestly. PFFFFFFFF Pepsiman Wild Cherry is on the ground, groaning in this really awkward position, on his back with his knees bent and his head to the side. The 2D backdrop makes it feel really weird. …And then Lumera finds him. And she’s immediately sweet and caring towards him. …This… is not the first meeting of these two I expected to see. She acts like she doesn’t even know this is one of Sombron’s children. Not that she doesn’t care, that she doesn’t even know. …Pepsiman Wild Cherry apparently only knows his name is Pepsiman because Sombron called him that once. Not even in front of him, but in front of his mother, who told him before she died. That is… simultaneously depressing as hell but also so abusive that it kinda crosses the line into comical. …Yes, Lumera genuinely didn’t know Pepsiman Wild Cherry was Sombron’s son until he basically said “Lumera… isn’t that the name of the guy Dad’s trying to kill?” Anyway, yeah, I think having Pepsiman Wild Cherry be so brainwashed was a decision made to absolve Pepsiman of any past evil, which is bullshit, and also had the side-effect of making his past self much more difficult to take seriously, and also simultaneously more boring. But it would take a great many additional changes before I’d actually consider the story more enjoyable without this. Because as it stands, it gives us the delightful “No, that is stupid”. The second Timerra expressed excitement about smashing the fuck out of the next and last shard, and then asked Veyle where it was at, I knew there was going to be a complication with it. And sure enough, she feels it out with her Fell senses, and… promptly gasps. But she’s not saying what she discovered. She seems to want to put it off or something, because she asks to be alone. Lemme guess, the last shard is somewhere personal to her? …Oh no. The way she’s talking about it… …Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Okay. So. Remember when I made that huge deal out of Lumera’s comically overdramatic defeat line in Chapter 2? How I said there was no way they’d make that her defeat line if this was the only time we ever fought her? Yeah, that’s yet another thing a YouTube thumbnail spoiled me on: I was right. We do fight her again. As a Corrupted. And it sounds like Veyle’s scared to tell Pepsiman he’ll have to fight his own mother if he wants to destroy the last shard. Alright, Somniel time. BRB. …While I’m doing this, I should mention… apparently I missed a pretty damned good performance by not having Pepsiman fight Griss. He completely flips out when Pepsiman implies Griss’s loyalty to Zephia is coerced. Also, real quick, on that subject, I wanna see what Pepsiman Wild Cherry has to say to Veyle: OOOOOOOH! It seems to demonstrate that Veyle did visibly age in the thousand years! Pepsiman Wild Cherry says that this couldn’t possibly be Veyle, because Veyle looks younger! Which means this might be a Viltrumite situation here. “The older we get, the slower we age”. Combined with an already-slower aging than baseline humans at the start. …Uh… …Speaking of Veyle… …I just noticed that Veyle’s still wearing a belt collar on her neck and chains on her ankles. Even in her Somniel attire. Either nobody thought to get those off of her… or they were a deliberate fashion statement this whole time. …Hold on… …Okay, so I just went to the fashion shop and they aren’t on any of her other outfits. So it’s just hardcoded to her Somniel attire and class outfit. I seeeeeeeeee… …Uh… …Moving on. Oh yeah, and that thing I was hoping was going to be a quarry? Actually I forgot to mention I noticed it taking the shape of a statue earlier in the game, and now it’s complete! It’s of Pepsiman. Neat. So I’m reclassing Pepsiman and Yunaka, and it occurs to me that the reason Pepsiman’s class skill is the same engage-meter-size-shortening thing as you get at max rank with Emblems is probably because it would be just about impossible to apply that to the Pepsiman Emblem, given it has no sync powers, only Engage powers, so they made it something that can be innate with him. Though that still means other Emblems activate even faster on him… …I don’t know why they put you back on the class-changing screen with that unit when you’re finished reclassing. While after giving it some thought I have concluded the situations exist where you’d want to reclass immediately after reclassing (reclassing to another promoted class right after promoting, switching out of a class and back so you can reset your level without waiting to reach level 20), they’re so rare that it seems weird to keep you on that screen like it’s assuming you’d probably want to do it again. …That is… hilarious. I just tried to do some cooking to boost Hortensia and Veyle’s support rank… and it turns out there isn’t a single food on the entire menu that they both like. Alright, Yunaka has Evasion +25, Hortensia has Staff Mastery 5, and Alcryst has Strength +2. Speaking of Alcryst, one thing I find amusing about his crit quotes is that they feel like this conversation from Bravely Default where they’re all talking about special attack one-liners, and after someone points out how stupid you’d look if you talked some mad shit and the enemy was still standing, the one-liners get increasingly pathetic as they hedge their bets about what the attack will do. Alcryst, with his cripplingly low self-esteem, appears to have taken this to heart. Two of his quotes are “I hope this is enough!” (because it might not be) and “I won’t miss!” (entirely true, given it’s a crit quote). Alright, time to get as much done as I can in the next hour, then finish up when I get back. Time for Gradlon Temple. Let’s check out Corrupted Lumera. Gotta say, pretty badass establishing shot of the temple, this huge structure on a cliff. Funny though, it’s huge, huge enough that in other Fire Emblem games, storming it would be a multi-chapter event. Like in Fates, or Radiant Dawn. Kinda funny how variable that is, how sometimes storming a big location is a multi-map affair, and in other games it’s just a single battle. …Veyle wants to go in alone, destroy the shard, and come out. I don’t know how she can possibly think she can manage that given how well-guarded the other shards have been, but it’s obvious she wants to spare Pepsiman the emotional pain of facing who’s in there. She apparently wants to spare everyone but her that trauma, given how highly regarded Lumera was by all of the main characters. …Oh god I think I just saw Pepsiman’s eyes contract when Lumera’s voice came from offscreen. If so, and if I wasn’t just seeing things… brilliant touch. …Oh god, they’re having her repeat some of her lines from the end of Chapter 1. It seems like fate that my maddening ironman fucked up when it did, so I had those lines fresh in my mind when I started a new file (didn’t work out, went back to the original so I could at least unlock fixed growths, as I said). …Oh fuck, the tonal change when Veyle outs her as corrupted. I thiiiiiiiink somebody’s about to have some fun with this part. …Not yet though. She leaves and goes inside after some sweet assurances that she just wants to have a nice chat. …But I am looking forward to seeing how deranged she gets. Because Sombron clearly messed with her. …And then Veyle apparently ran ahead and locked us out when nobody was looking, still determined to spare us the pain of this. And we get a cutscene. Veyle talks about her own mother, and then Lumera… very melodramatically twists in the knife about how this would be the second time Veyle’s killed Lumera. …Which probably goes some way to explaining Veyle’s confidence that she can do it on her own. But after something that I initially thought was just a threatening flourish but turned out to be a lethal dark magic attack… failed to do anything… she panics. Because it turned out Sombron made her even more powerful. The lip synching here is pretty terrible, honestly. Though it’s more noticeable due to how exaggerated the lip movements are. Mommy is getting… deranged. But not as deranged as I was hoping, honestly. Bit of a letdown. …But somehow, offscreen, we managed to get the door open. And now in a 2d backdrop scene Pepsiman is at her side again. …Though I do like this monologue with Lumera explaining, seemingly genuinely, exactly why she fell in maternal love with Pepsiman upon first meeting him. And yet again Pepsiman quotes stuff that happened in the earlygame that I only have fresh in my mind due to my short-lived attempt to redo my Maddening ironman from scratch. It’s kind of crazy how well-timed that was. I have to say… I was going to say this was just a repeat of Mikoto in Revelation… but no, this is significantly better-done. Not saying it’s great or anything, but they clearly had way more ideas about what to do with the concept rather than having it be a throwaway endgame fight. Ah-ha! So that’s why I don’t have to worry about Pepsiman’s limited 1-2 range options! There’s a legendary Divine-Dragon-only sword that Lumera’s going to drop when she dies that has 1-2 range! Okay, let’s see… …Okay unfortunately it could have as much as 13 weight and there’s no way for me to tell right now, and it has 12 might, 70 hit, and 0 crit. Those aren’t… great. Also… uh… did they uh… …Did they really have to give the sword a name that looks like it could be pronounced as a homophone for “Willy Glans”? Is that the timeline we live in right now? The ultimate weapon in the latest Fire Emblem game in the series, and one of my favorite Fire Emblem games of all time… is an unintentional fucking double dick joke? …Alright, so, we’re split into two forces initially, then we’ll reunite in the center. On Pepsiman’s side I’ve got Clanne (obviously), and then Hortensia and Ivy for staff support, Alcryst to maximize the power of Astra Storm if necessary with these red staff users, Seadall to speed things up and make sure Pepsiman and Clanne can make it to the recharge squares on time, and Veyle in case things go horribly wrong and the team needs to do some heavy player-phasing. And also so Pepsiman and Veyle can get more support points. Kagetsu and Yunaka are on the other side, supported by Framme and Lindon for healing, Rosado for Eirika’s corrupted-slaying on their side’s singular corrupted wyrm, and Goldmary and Mauvier for oddjob utility. We’ll reunite in the center pretty quickly at any rate. I’m not too worried. I think this is a fairly solid plan. Begin. …And immediately we get a map theme so intense it feels like a boss theme. Either I just assumed it was when I skimmed through the soundtrack looking for certain songs, or I’ve actually heard it used as a boss theme previously. I can’t be 100% sure, but I think it’s the former. …Yeah, I’ve definitely only heard the beginning before. …This goes pretty damned hard. …Shit, I forgot yet again to give the Pact Ring to Yunaka! Fuck, guess I’ll be doing that tomorrow. …Entrap had a waaaaaaaaaaaaay lower accuracy rate than it should have. As in it didn’t have any at all on Kagetsu when it should have 45. Does it take Kagetsu’s fog-pillar terrain into account? I suppose that would be important against bosses, as is the case in previous games, but this game isn’t a fan of having bosses stick on their terrain, so it didn’t really occur to me that that would still be the case. Well at any rate I’m glad I don’t have to worry about the entrap guy. I kinda forgot he was there when I moved in and was worried things would go horribly wrong. …It’s weird going from Maddening, where I’m completely out of my depth and even my toughest units need to be exceedingly cautious, back to this file where every last one of my best units is an unkillable dodgetank who mows through damned near everything. …Back after doing my assorted daily professional obligations. Unfortunately it seems that staff users will prioritize using their staves over attacking in this game, even when you get right up in their face. The fact that the freeze staff user couldn’t do jack shit might have had something to do with it too, in fairness, but thankfully this still means I can take the bastard out next turn given that Clanne, the guy he froze, is literally in his face. Complication: the map attack du jour. I’ll need to wait for enemy phase to be over to gather the full scope of how much danger I’m in, but it seems the attack is pretty damned wide-reaching. …I am very curious what the animation for this attack is. It seems to be an aimed cone with some safe spots “behind the pillars”, but it’s hard to find consistent rules for what “the pillars” are judging by what I’m looking at. But I still can clearly see the threat zones, so I can work with this. I’ll need to restore Clanne though, or he’ll get hit. And I don’t want to have to find out how much he gets hit for. …For the first time I’ve run into Corrupted Wyrms with multiple health bars. Damn, didn’t even notice. Okay, thankfully I didn’t count on that one being dead. I’ve noticed an unnaturally long delay after using support actions on Kagetsu before the exp bar goes up. Does Wolf Knight just have an unnaturally long “rejoice” animation? …The map attack was a single, oddly narrow laser. I don’t get what the other purple lines way to the sides of it were supposed to be, it doesn’t look like this attack would go anywhere near them. …Reinforcements showed up just as Engage+ wore off and I put Seadall in a rather precarious position to facilitate recharging it immediately. Well, looks like we’re gonna have to break out the utility engages. …Only Astra Storm was necessary, thankfully. Managed to get everyone into a good position. …Oh dear. The reinforcements have Void Curse. Which means they’ll be endless. Noted. …The laser targeted the east side this time, and there doesn’t appear to actually be any shelter on this side from the laser, leaving some of my units in a very compromising position. Thankfully, a combination of using physic for chip healing solely to activate Canter on Framme and Lindon, and then using Reposition on Rosado thanks to Kagetsu, I manage to get everyone in danger to safety. Goldmary and Yunaka meanwhile hide by the hallway the reinforcements came out of, and finish off the swordfighter reinforcement Yunaka couldn’t kill due to being hit by the fracture staff. Mauvier didn’t need any help at all getting free of the blast, so he just did so. Meanwhile, Pepsiman and Clanne are poised to storm the central chamber with two full turns of Engage+ left. Rosado’s Eirika engage lasted just long enough, and he unlocked Sieglinde just in time, to kill one of the thief reinforcements in a single hit. The remaining reinforcements are far away and will not make it in time. Hopefully. I position Clanne, Pepsiman, Seadall and Kagetsu in front of the main room (after using Seadall and Clanne’s head start to kill two enemies in advance while taking position) and Goddess Dance all four of them with Veyle. Reinforcements from the rear appear to be… extremely rapid-fire. Thankfully I doubt I’ll be here more than three more turns. And our first treasure is… a dracoshield! Always welcome! Unfortunately, Goldmary couldn’t make it out of the laser’s range without risking getting cornered by the reinforcements. Yunaka’s hanging back to keep the reinforcements off of the main group to buy us some more time, but Goldmary’s gonna have to take a hit, however big that hit turns out to be. Thankfully it’s just the laser, and surely it can’t one-shot her from full health, right? …The laser did 13 damage to Goldmary. That… wasn’t nearly as terrifying as I was expecting. Clanne gets entrapped, but his evasion is so freakishly high that I’m not remotely scared. …Oh nice! Clanne has dialogue with Queen Lumera! …And she repeats to him the words she said to him during the mock battle. “Sharpen your focus, Clanne, lest you miss.” She says it genuinely, as if it’s a real part of her speaking through the Corruption, but then she laughs and says “let’s find out if [those words] save your life!” She has a hit and crit rate on Clanne, which was terrifying to see, but thankfully both were small and nothing came of it. Once Pepsiman’s at his side I imagine he’ll be a lot safer. …Yep, they’re both safe now, and positioned so that both can counter the stationary Lumera with ease. Also, I love this boss music. It feels like an evolution of the map theme in a way. …And it looks like we got a good legendary dagger! Awesome, let’s see how that looks on Yunaka next chance we get! Pepsiman: Mother! Lumera: Here we are at last, Pepsiman… How about we train here? You’ll be the one fighting. The Emblem -- Ugh… Pepsiman: What? You said that back at… Lumera: The Emblem lends you their… Ugh… No! These memories… I wanted to spend time with you. To chat for hours, take long walks together, share meals… And then… Then… Pepsiman: Stop, please! It’s all right. There are lots of things I wish we’d done too. We weren’t able to. But that’s okay. It’s better than seeing you suffer like this. You can still surrender, Mother. Please. For me. Lumera: No. Lord Sombron gave me more time with my child. I refuse to waste it. I won’t let anyone take that away. Not even you. I waited for so long! A thousand years of waiting! …Like I’ve said before… a lot of times… it hurts when the writers demonstrate the ability to write a compelling story… given the context that they… y’know… didn’t. At any rate, she’s down to two health bars. Which means it’s checkmate. A double-elfire from Lumera… and then a Bond Blast. … … … … … … What the fuck, game. Okay. SO. You know how my basis for assuming you’d fight her again was because of how comically unfitting her defeat line was? How “I’m… so sorry…” couldn’t possibly be the line they’d write to solely be used in that friendly little spar? APPARENTLY IT WAS. Because she has a completely different one here. Lumera: What have I…? So… I was right for entirely the wrong reasons. Begging the question… WHY DID THEY MAKE HER DEFEAT LINE SO MELODRAMATIC AND DEATH-LIKE!? …I just got the Willy Glans, and it is statistically inferior to my +5 Liberation in every way (or maybe the Lyration, not sure what stats it’s showing me now), though in fairness I’m guessing that means this can be forged too. I hope so. At any rate, what’s important is the 1-2 range. That’ll allow Pepsiman to contribute to Engage+ just as well as Clanne. I’ve been prompted with a save screen, and I’m sorry, but I’m taking that opportunity to end for the day. I’m starving, and I’ve got several pages of this to edit before I can eat (reading/writing on a full stomach tends to sap my mental energy like nothing else), so I’m gonna leave off here. I’m not sure how much time that will leave me to do an episode tomorrow, but thankfully it seems like I’ll have a bit of leeway for finishing this week, so we’ll see. Anyway, this was a pretty fun map! I liked the pressure to move forward and how frantic the reinforcements got at the end, though I’m concerned that on Maddening all of these factors might turn it from fun and intense to absolutely frustrating. Well, hopefully I’ll be catching up soon. Alastor, signing off!

Lost the maddening ironman on Chapter 19. I had reached the point where it didn't really occur to me that any of my units could be one-rounded by an enemy, and Colgette was promptly just barely one-rounded by a Wolf Knight who got lucky with two consecutive 50% hits. I'm starting over using the lessons I learned about what I would do differently (again). But man was that a blow. I have to say, Maddening gets quite intimidating at that point. I only managed to do the Lucina and Lyn paralogues by that point, and upon skimming the others it constantly looked like doing the next mainline chapter would be easier. I'm hoping I'm better prepared for the lategame this time.

You did indeed just never notice. It's there, thankfully. Correct, and I realized this afterwards, but the point still stands: Tiki ages way faster than any Elyosian dragon is shown to age.

Engage Day 45: Chapter 24 Alright, back to the game! Sorry for that pathetic post yesterday, let’s try to actually put a part out this time! Also, I just cleared Chapter 17 on my maddening ironman yesterday. Yunaka was the MVP again, but for entirely different reasons this time. I had her mass-immobilizing enemy forces with Seadall’s help in order to buy time to rally my forces, and I wound up burning 3 rescue uses just for protecting her and getting her to energy tiles and back. I was fucking terrified when Zephia moved in tandem with Veyle and Hyacinth this time. Anyway, back to my hard run. And working out how I’m going to replace Louis. Alright, it’s not amazing, but it is at least something I consider worth experimenting with. I’m going to be putting Sigurd on Lindon. Momentum works for physical or magical attacks, so if I can get his hit rate up with a good booster, I should be able to have him do some nice thoron chip damage from relative safety on the rare occasions he has to attack rather than using staves. …Oh wow, that’s simultaneously adorable and sad. Both Lindon and Sigurd are talking to each other about their dead wives and how lovely they were. I just barely got their bond high enough to get Canter+, which means I got him Hit+20. Hopefully soon we’ll be able to get him up to Hit+25, which he just barely has enough SP for. The amount he came with. Man, imagine how much it would suck if characters didn’t come with their own starting SP. Okay, so his hit rate with Thoron is now 140. That is… …Below average, but serviceable. I’ve also got Elsurge for when he absolutely has to hit. Man, elsurge comes in so clutch in the first third of Maddening. Basically anyone who can use magic can put in some serious chip damage with that thing, stats be damned. Also, I remembered to put Nova on Ivy. Now then… let’s check out this next chapter. …And hopefully find out why its icon is a snowy mountain and not underwater. …Aaaaaaaaaaand I don’t really know what the fuck was supposed to have happened in that cutscene. Really, if they don’t have the budget to actually show mountains moving and the terrain reshuffling, maybe don’t make that a setpiece? But anyway, Pepsiman has apparently been flung by the earthquake far away from the rest of the party. Which could get ugly for gameplay depending on what this means by the end of the story segment. …Oh. …Oh I see. This is where Pepsiman… runs into Pepsiman Wild Cherry. …Who is… …Okay, this is kinda dumb. That big, iconic, heavily-memed shot of Female Alear with a slasher smile in the opening… kinda feels like a complete lie now. We’ve only ever seen Red Pepsiman as either an edgy anti-hero in flashbacks… or as a deadpan soulless husk here. I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I’m guessing that due to magical bullshit regarding how Pepsiman has repeatedly brushed with death, Sombron’s able to resurrect him as a zombie slave like Veyle can, even though he’s still alive. Y’know, like how Roxas and Sora were able to exist at the same time. Speaking of which… we have a character on our team who can canonically raise the dead. Temporarily, perhaps, but she can still do it. Now, I can think of countless reasons why Veyle wouldn’t be willing to do this for the sake of our cause… but y’know… I’d like to hear her say one of them. I want the topic to at least come up. But of course, we have the draconic time crystal. If gameplay bullshit is so frequently ignored in the story, I’m not surprised that story bullshit is so frequently ignored in gameplay. …And literally just when I say that… So it turns out it’s not a weird Roxas-esque person-and-zombie-at-once situation… this is time travel. Zephia’s magic was just a super powerful time crystal. Which begs the question of who created Pepsiman’s time crystal, and how much life force it takes to create a crystal of effectively-unlimited short-term time travel as opposed to a single use going back 1,000 years. And for that matter, the game implies that once the magic of this time crystal runs out, we’ll automatically return to the present. And I don’t even want to know what kind of horrific snapback madness that implies about what would happen if our time crystal ever ran out of its presumably-theoretically-finite power. And now Pepsiman Wild Cherry is robotically expositing about how Sombron’s killed tons of Pepsiman Wild Cherry’s siblings for disobeying him. Which uh… I seem to recall a certain line, that I in fact quoted in this very playlog: Sombron: I do not remember all my children’s names or faces. But that one I killed myself. That implied that most of the children died as casualties of the war, killed by the good guys. But Pepsiman Wild Cherry seems to be implying a great deal of them were killed by Sombron. …Yeah, Pepsiman Wild Cherry even says “most”! Also, I have to assume from the music that this is supposed to be a creepy scene, but I’m just laughing at how ridiculously incompetent this guy is, being such a robotic chatterbox while talking to somebody he’s supposed to be mugging for his ring. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AND PEPSIMAN JUST FUCKING DIPS! So apparently due to time travel, we’ll be getting to fight an enemy Emblem again. But I’m still waiting to figure out how they’re going to compensate for us having all the Emblems long term. Oh, and here’s Zephia again! So, us destroying the shard in the past is obviously gonna stick. So I have to assume none of these characters are actually going to die. …And Zephia’s just letting us have this what-must-be-to-her-asinine discussion of time travel while saying fucking nothing. Pepsiman Wild Cherry: Is that what you’re trying to do? Break the shard? Pepsiman: What if it was? Would you let us pass by? Pepsiman Wild Cherry: No. That is stupid. MY FUCKING SIDES! And now Pepsiman shows off to Pepsiman Wild Cherry that he also has Marth, and Pepsiman Wild Cherry is like “you have a Marth too?”, and the way he just says a Marth is just so silly to me, like he’s talking about a card game or Pokemon. …Okay, so, yeah, seems like the “serious” prep theme is gonna be the only one from here on out. As for the map, we seem to be split into three lanes, with access between them in small gaps. Also, fog appears to be a natural terrain element here. I wonder if it moves, like cloud cover in that Radiant Dawn map? Also, I wonder if that means that all of the Dragon Vein terrain effects are recycled from other things in the game? Either way, this seems fairly straightforward. Especially on Hard. So let’s just get right into it. After I cook first, obviously. Shouldn’t skimp on things just because it seems easy. Not after I just lost a unit to another map that “seemed easy”. …Alfred completely screwed the pooch on the cooking, and the reactions were amazing. Ivy: I did not know pain was a flavor. I suppose that’s what sweet, salty, spicy and bitter add up to. Kagetsu: I dislike this very much. It tastes of nothing but failure. AND WE GOT DEBUFFS TO MOST OF OUR STATS WHAT THE FUCK Okay, please tell me we can reshuffle this. I was awoken by Alcryst ASMR, but I didn’t immediately recognize his voice and initially got the mental image that this was Alfred, still shell-shocked by his disaster of a meal. Anyway, please lemme redo the meal, please lemme redo the meal… I CAN’T REDO THE MEAL, FUCK! Okay, noted. Never let Alfred near the kitchen again. Oh god, seeing all that red on everyone’s stats… even though it’s a single point each… it hurts so much… …I’ve got some supports, might as well do them while I’m here… Pepsiman and Veyle’s C. Oh nice! We get her theme! Veyle seems worried about Pepsiman, what with the whole “coming back as a zombie and then coming double-back as an Emblem” thing. She also, predictably, has guilt over what she did while evil, and Pepsiman obviously doesn’t blame her. …All this talk about “big brother” and “little sister” and all that… So, 1000 years had absolutely no effect whatsoever on the physical appearance of Pepsiman, Lumera, or Zephia. We haven’t yet had confirmation of what 1000 years did to how Veyle looks, but like… how does their longevity work? I mean, clearly it isn’t the “age normally until you hit twenty and then stay young for way, way too long” variety seen in certain series, given that Pepsiman and Veyle still aren’t fully-grown. But if it’s like how it was in the Archanea/Awakening games where it’s just a flat multiplier on how old they have to get in order to look a certain human age, then that multiplier is way, way bigger than it is for Archanean dragons, because 1000 years was enough to take Tiki from “might still use a security blanket” to “your son calls me Mommy too”. Granted, Awakening isn’t exactly respectful of its source material’s dragon lore, but you get my point here. If they simply age slower, they age waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay slower. I hope we get a glimps of Young Veyle while time traveling. That might help give us answers. Ivy and Hortensia’s A. …Ah yes, so Hortensia apparently skipped enough grades that she was in the same grade as Ivy. …Which would imply that Ivy never graduated before getting drafted either. I wonder what the story with how she got her retainers is… Anyway, this is a cute support. Hortensia and Veyle’s C. Ooh, this could be cute! …Or heartbreaking if Hortensia still has a grudge. …Oof. It looks like it’s the latter. She doesn’t care that it was due to mind control, because, as she puts it: Hortensia: I’ll never forget the sight of you laughing as you watched my father die. …That is… understandable… but it would’ve been way more sympathetic if they had her say that line more in the sense of extreme discomfort rather than anger, as in “look, I know it wasn’t your fault, but your laughing face is burned into my memory and still gives me nightmares. I can’t look at you”. Then again, she is very young and can easily have come to unfair conclusions from trauma. They then go on to both say they feel they’d be better off being the other’s species. Hortensia because then her father would still be alive, and Veyle because she wouldn’t have spent eons hated and alone. I’ll be honest, while this is understandable, I was kinda hoping we’d get a support chain with bubbly obnoxious Hortensia getting into shenanigans with sweet and reserved Veyle. …Okay, I’ve wasted enough time today. Let’s do this. Pepsiman Wild Cherry: I make avalanches happen. Even when they don’t want to happen. I just do this. (Cue rushing snow that pushes one lane back, only my units) Okay, that was hysterical, but this sounds like a potentially annoying gimmick. …I’m getting a tutorial about limited-turn battles… now. This late in the fucking game. That’s… frankly absurd. We should have had one of these by now if they felt a tutorial slide for it needs to be given. Fuck, I forgot to reclass Yunaka. Damn it, well, fuck, guess she’s missing a level or two this map. She’s pivotal to holding the northern line. Unfortunately I couldn’t get Veyle and Mauvier behind cover in time, so they got blasted to the back. But it’ll be a while before their side gets snowblasted again, so hopefully they’ll be able to catch up. Nova turns out to be insanely useful against the corrupted wyrms. …And we get a smashing s-rank axe I can’t use from the corrupted. Yaaaaaaay. Ooooh, an S-rank bow! Let’s see how good that is! …Did they really have to make the shard attack indicator such a frustratingly similar color to the other attack range indicators, which were already similar enough? This game uses such a narrow range of colors for these things that it makes me feel colorblind. Alright, testing time: can you override a partner’s engage with Engage+? …No, you cannot. Alright, good to know. Thankfully by the time I had the opportunity to test, Clanne’s backup Marth engage only had that one turn left. Alright, we’re just about at the end. Pepsiman Wild Cherry is just in range. … … …That is so fucking lame. The avalanche effect. It doesn’t have an actual push-back animation. If you pay attention and give your units enough space to move… you can see that they just fucking walk to wherever the game says they were pushed. Okay, as comically absurd as Pepsiman Wild Cherry’s lines are, I will admit I did find this line pretty great: Pepsiman Wild Cherry: I admit, I am jealous of you. You have my face, but you say the things you feel… out loud. …Yet again, like with some of the “versus Morion” lines, they should have ended there, but they went on and had him spell out what he meant by that, which was lame. …And then they seem to imply that Pepsiman’s trauma over the Corrupted is because he has residual unremembered trauma of watching them kill his siblings. Great showing rather than telling, game. I’m assuming that’s what Sombron meant by “myself”, as in most were merely killed on his orders by the Corrupted. Pepsiman’s capped too, so I gotta remember to reclass him as well. And we got boots! Sweet! Probably going on Seadall. Alright, I think I’m gonna call it after this cutscene, need time to edit before heading out for the day. …And there is no cutscene Straight to exploration. Alright, I’ll cut it here then. I think I might be taking the weekend off, sorry. I’ve got some stuff I’d like to do this weekend. Alastor, signing off.

For the record, does anyone know how the hell Twin Strike works? I gave Eirika to Clanne on my Maddening ironman file and for some reason a +3 steel sword does more damage with that attack than a +1 levin sword despite the latter having more might and using a stronger stat. I am completely stumped as to why.

That's honestly hilarious and part of me feels insulted that I have been spared that positively magical dumpster fire. This game's story is beyond saving, might as well go all out.

I had something I wanted to say, but the rhetorical question I asked as I wrote today's part was immediately actually answered by the game and thus I was no longer sure I even had a point. At any rate, Pepsiman's adult/minor status is all over the fucking place. He was designed to look 17. But he's old enough that 1000 years apparently hasn't aged him a day. But dragons clearly emotionally mature at a much slower pace than humans. But this surely still has to be offset in power imbalance by the accrued knowledge. But he's lost most of that due to a case of amnesia.

Engage Day 44: Pepsiman’s Paralogue Part 2 Welp. We lost Louis. I have to find someone else to field, and I have to reshuffle my Emblems again. Honestly I’m tempted to just field Lindon and give him Sigurd to boost his mobility in emergencies. That’s the beauty of staff users: you can find a use for them no matter how shitty their stats. …And as I typed this up, I for the first time ever lingered on the start screen long enough to see that there’s a class roll. With the fucking Fire Emblem theme playing. Oh holy fuck that takes me back. I remember when Fire Emblem games used to do this with this music playing. …Oh nice! They show off crit animations on this screen too! They didn’t used to do that! …Unfortunately all the class roll seemed to have time for was the leads. The crown royalty of the four nations and Pepsiman and Veyle (who adorably seems primarily motivated to do critical hits so her opponents don’t suffer as long). …Anyway, back to the game. What’ve I got to deal with now? Clanne’s heading over to take out the huge swarm to the east that killed Louis, and Kagetsu’s still got the north. The south has just been routed by my efforts with Clanne last turn, and the west nearly so as well by Yunaka. Gotta say, Engage+ is fun, but I imagine it’s a lot more problematic once that avoid boost starts making enemies straight-up ignore you. …I wonder what happens when there’s literally nobody on the map they have a hit rate on? Do they just give up entirely and do nothing, or do they suicide? …Yeah, I was pretty dang close to beating this last time. I just won. Looks like this’ll mostly be a cleanup episode. I’ll do a proper part on Friday, if possible. Right now I just need to work out how the hell I adapt. They’re discovering it’s not an Emblem ring at all. Meaning Louis died for nothing. …Wait, the “Pact Ring” holds the power of Lumera? …What’s going on here? …Okay, Marth is explaining the concept of an S-rank in a suspiciously platonic way, and I’m wondering how much of this is original and how much of this is the censored localization making excuses for itself. …Okay actually from the sound of things, the platonic thing was entirely intentional and not an invention of the localization, because you can give it to literally anyone in your army you have an A rank with. Including, presumably, your literal, at-least-half-blood-related sister. I guess it’s just up to the individual support’s case whether it’s deep friendship, a sibling bond, or romance. So… S-rank is just the new A-rank, exclusive to the player character. Because that’s how A-ranks used to work. They were the highest support rank you could get, and you could only get one of them, but they weren’t always romantic, even when they had paired endings attached. S-ranks do now what A-ranks used to do ages ago. It kinda feels like… inflation. Honestly, the whole thing just weirdly strikes me as strange and bizarre for reasons further beyond that, which I can’t explain. I dunno. I guess I’ll have to see it in action. Oh hey, also, my amiibo came in the mail last night! I’ve got the last two! …And it turns out I have even less time today than I expected. Fuck. Sorry, I’m gonna have to cut this here. See you tomorrow. Alastor, signing off.

Oh wow, glad to hear you enjoyed it! I have mixed feelings on the work, as I tend to have mixed feelings about any past writing I do. I tend to experience one of two things whenever I read some of my old work: 1: This is cringe, what was I thinking? 2: Could I even write something this good today? I definitely had fun doing it, and I'm sad that I probably won't ever be able to finish it.

Funny enough, I had this wild idea where instead of the dinky dragonstone they got, Corrin could "eat" a dragon vein (and thus not get to activate its effects) in order to get a draconic super form for a few turns, in exchange for being more of a Roy-esque lord otherwise. It's uncanny that we actually got "super forms" in a legit FE game.

So, been playing Maddening, and something reminded me of a further absurdity in this plot: Zephia didn't know about Pepsiman. Didn't know that Lumera had a supposed child all the royal families visited. How the flaming fuck does that nugget of intel elude you for a thousand fucking years? Because by all indications she spent the whole thing conscious.

Sorry to hear that! Best of luck yourself! ...Yeah, honestly, even if it isn't an ambush spawn, I still don't like the goalpost-moving. That may be me just subconsciously scrambling for something to be mad at with Louis dead, but I don't think so. I think if I did this before doing Leif's, it would have ruined Leif's for me. Imagine that mission if I hadn't been able to be confident my mission would be complete when the game said it would be?

Engage Day 43: Cleanup Amber made us a decent meal, I got all the items lying around… hmmm… now then… I’m going to be tackling the Pepsiman paralogue next, so let’s check that out so I can see what I’ll need to be prepping for, and do so. …So it seems that now that Pepsiman has become an Emblem, some part of the world has morphed to become a location memorable and important to him. In this case, the garden where he fought his mother. Marth confirms that Emblems can feel the air and smell things even outside of the Somniel, answering the question brought up by Lyn. …There’s a ring on an altar? Hm? …And it seems we have to fight Corrupted. Led by, lemme guess… Past Pepsiman? …Oh no, apparently not. I know you do that at some point due to Youtube thumbnails, and I figured Pepsiman’s Trial would be as good a place as any to do that… but apparently not. …Shoot, lemme guess, since this obviously isn’t an Emblem ring, it’s just the ring Pepsiman can use to marry someone? This just unlocks my S support? …I knew that was a thing, and looking at the Serenes Forest info page for the “Alear Emblem” made me realize there was a 21st bond rank for your S rank support. Thankfully not anything huge, so you’re not pressured to make your S-rank and your Engage+ partner the same character. …This is… what the fuck. This is a psychotically trivial battle. I could one-turn this with the utmost ease. I just have to get that ring back, and he starts so close to me that a single Micaiah rewarp would let me get all of my heavy hitters right next to him for some bullshit shenanigans. The starting unit formations are even prime material for a Micaiah rewarp. And I could even use one of the things I have way more of instead, and use rescue, just to conserve uses! …Okay, fuck it. I don’t have time, but this doesn’t look like it’ll need time. I’m gonna finish prepping at the Somniel and then head over to rush this. Day 43 Change of Plans: Pepsiman’s Paralogue I’m simultaneously insulted and delighted that this map exists. How cheesable it is feels so ridiculous to me, but at the same time, I love staff shenanigans, and this is just a perfect excuse for them. PFFFFFFF So after using a secret book on Hortensia to boost her staff-conserving skill, I had her do some arena training, and she went up against Alfred. Who was using a levin sword. Alfred: Thanks for showing me what I still need to work on. Hortensia: Obviously! Hortensia then got completely bodied by Alcryst with a brave bow, unlocking their A support. Which I will be viewing shortly. And the last one’s against Goldmary. Sweet! Alright, supports time. Pepsiman and Hortensia’s B. Hortensia continues to be frustrated that Pepsiman isn’t completely disarmed by her cuteness. And he asks her why she’s so fixated on this… and Hortensia then talks about the political backstabbing around her mother. She uses this as a segue into how inspiring she found her mother’s charm, and how she wants to emulate her mother’s charm and be like her. And… Pepsiman kinda points out that this was probably part of her mom’s intention when she did that, to teach her how to survive without her. Something about this support feels… off. Like it was missing a few sentences here or there. But I can’t put my finger on why. … Goldmary and Yunaka have a support unlocked. Oh. My. God. Let’s check this out. Yunaka and Goldmary’s C. Hortensia’s doing laundry when Yunaka walks in. Okay, so, I’ve seen part of this chain. Yunaka starts doing… an uncanny impression of Goldmary, but that’s all I know. Anyway, Yunaka doesn’t want to do laundry with Goldmary, and she won’t explain why. Lemme guess, she’s super good at it, but primarily in a morbid way, like she knows a ton about how to get bloodstains out, Yor Forger style? Alcryst and Hortensia’s A. …She’s apparently given up on trying to help him. I’m… frankly not surprised after their B support, and that helps this chain jive with the rest of his supports, but I wonder what’s gonna happen next. …Apparently Hortensia’s hit the nail on the head that Alcryst wanted more confidence to better make friends, and Hortensia’s now reassuring him he already has friends who accept him as he is. And, uh… look, like I said when this topic came up with Constance, I get the message of “you don’t need to change who you are at your core just to please people”, but the fact that fucking twice now this moral has been given to characters regarding their crippling social anxieties that cause them unceasing emotional pain… Like… what!? Fucking no! No, by all means, get help with those things! Don’t just give up and internalize them as an immutable part of your identity! …But rather adorably, Hortensia freaks out when Alcryst starts getting the sorts of uncomfortably close to people that she’s apparently known for, and runs away flustered. And Alcryst just chuckles and says “now I know how it feels to talk to me”, which, alright, charming way to end this. But fuck the moral. Ivy and Veyle’s B. …I knew it. Ivy tells Veyle she needs to eat a plate of spicy food as penance for her crimes. And after Ivy backs down, thinking even that might be too much, Veyle just fucking lunges at the plate and makes food-shoveling sounds. …Because apparently she loves spicy food. Apparently Hyacinth told Ivy at some point she hated it, which was why Ivy thought this would be a suiting tongue-in-cheek “punishment”. Veyle is absolutely adorable. How have I not naturally unlocked any of her supports with Pepsiman yet? I really want to see them. Hortensia and Goldmary’s B. So apparently Goldmary’s managed to teach Hortensia enough to be good at cooking. …Rosado and Goldmary aren’t officially Hortensia’s retainers, apparently? …They were classmates? Hortensia and Goldmary are the same age!? …And I learn this through an infuriatingly as-you-know-y conversation. This almost felt like an A support though. Huh. Well anyway… Rosado and Mauvier’s B. …Rosado has apparently taken Mauvier accessory shopping. At… the item shop, not the clothier’s stall. PFFFFFFFFF Rosado points out the bunny ears on an accessory case, and Mauvier’s like “I agree that it looks like a rabbit, yes”. Man, “comically serious” characters are the best. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OH MY GOD! ROSADO IMITATES MAUVIER GUSHING ABOUT HOW CUTE SOMETHING IS, AND HE’S USING THIS RIDICULOUS DEADPAN TONE TO DO IT! …And the only time he can think of when his “heart fluttered” was when he was struck by a poison arrow. Anyway, yeah, at this point I’m definitely guessing that Veyle is going to be key to getting Mauvier to understand cuteness. Assuming they don’t just accept that he won’t grasp it and that’s okay. Speaking of: Veyle and Mauvier’s C. Mauvier catches Veyle wandering through a Solmic town at night and warns her that it’s probably not wise for her to be wandering around alone considering the number of war crimes her evil half committed and the number of people who might want revenge. Veyle’s adamant that if that happens, she’ll apologize, and that she can take care of herself. Not quite as carelessly flippant as that makes her sound, but… yeah apparently she has something she needs to do alone. I wonder what. Alright, time to cheese this map. Okay, the boss has 24 speed, 20 defense, 14 res, 67 HP. To one-round him I need to have 54 physical attack or 48 magical attack. But then of course I also have Yunaka I can send in to debuff him and also the Goddess dance… okay, who do I want to send…? …Yeah, Yunaka, Seadall, Kagetsu and Veyle should do the trick. Especially since I have Louis, Alcryst and Ivy ready to do long-range, no-staff-shenanigans-needed extra damage. …Oh fuck, one complication: I can’t use rescue unless I drop a filler unit into the center of the empty plus for Hortensia to actually target. Right, well, that’ll be Rosado. He can’t do much here anyway. …No wait… what if I made it Goldmary, then tried to see if I could get Goldmary to wind up adjacent for chain attacks? Even if I failed, she still might activate her “chain attack anywhere in movement range” ability. Alright, ready. Let’s go. …This map has its own unique music. That… almost feels like a waste. Alright, let’s go. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! GOLDMARY IS IN RANGE! I just have to give her a ranged weapon back because I forgot to equip one fuck. …I barley even needed half of my firepower. It was over shockingly quick. And Yunaka got the killing blow. Fitting, since she’s the one I plan to marry. …AND THE GAME LIED TO ME ABOUT THE OBJECTIVE AGAIN!? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, GAME!? …Okay. Okay. So. Thankfully… once the boss dies, your turn ends… and it goes right back to your turn. So there’s not even a pseudo ambush spawn when the enemies come pouring around everywhere. In no way am I being punished for attempting to do what the game told me would win the map. It moved the goalposts, yes, but in a safe and responsible manner, and not in any fucking way like Foreign Land and Sky. So, I’ve gotta get all my allies safely into the center, then send out my juggernauts to fend off the reinforcements from all sides. Thankfully, I came armed for bear with movement tech, so that’s fairly straightforward. …One thing I have to be concerned about is this brave assist boss. Thanks to the whole “multiple health bars” thing, he’ll pretty much always be at full health and activate it. And that could be dangerous as hell. So maybe I shouldn’t go crazy on what I have Clanne do, even if Engage+ makes him just about invincible. …Yep, looks like brave assist does indeed not take spent revival stones into account. Glad I had the good sense to limit the enemies I left Clanne in range of just in case. And thankfully they only had smashing weapons so they got obliterated before even a chain attack could land. …Honestly, this is kind of intense. The center is getting swarmed, and I barely had the firepower to secure the sides in any way. The bottom will be free now that the boss is on his last bar of HP and is no longer a brave assist hazard, but only next turn will tell if I actually have the space to get everyone there without movement tech. …Oh. …Oh fuck. …I failed a spot check, and Louis is about to get obliterated by a mage knight, getting doubled by bolganone. I had him hold one of the sides to leave my squishies room to huddle up in the center, and… …Christ. That was brutal. …Who the fuck am I even going to replace him with? Who am I going to give Sigurd to? …This hurts. This really, really hurts. Not gameplaywise. He’s not nearly the pivotal defensive cornerstone he was in the earlygame, and even his player-phase offense has by this point become situational as hell. But… like… of the characters I’m still actively using, only Pepsiman, Clanne and Framme have been around longer. He carried me through so much of the early game, and he’s survived so much. And now he’s gone because of a single enemy I left him in range of. And I just got my last replacement units, so like… what am I even going to do? …I’m gonna have to leave this here for now, guys. I didn’t expect this map to take this long, and like I said, I don’t have much time today. I’ll finish up tomorrow. Alastor, signing off. …Rest in peace, Louis.

...That... why? Why gate entire items behind ludicrously overpriced nonsense? That's basically saying "this is grinding only". Please tell me that isn't the only S-ranked staff.

Both, though Valla would be very different.

I have a Fates rewrite concept that has this exact premise. With a more human Garon and a more flawed Mikoto, but still.

Engage Day 42: Chapter 23 Alright, let’s go! I think I’m gonna do this map and then tomorrow I’ll tackle the Pepsiman paralogue. No idea what it’ll unlock since I already go to level 20, but I want it. But before, again, Chapter 23. But before that, let’s do supports! Pepsiman and Seadall’s A. And it doesn’t bode well that I can’t remember what the first two were about. Oh right, his weird food obsession. So it seems to be clarifying that Seadall was being a health nut before. I wish that was made more obvious from the beginning. Pepsiman and Saphir’s B. Ah, so Saphir has some baggage about a childhood friend murdered by Elusia invading. Yeah, that and re-reading Alcryst’s comment early in the story about Brodia targeting Elusia because they’re batshit insane and politically dangerous, and I honestly don’t see Brodia as being in the wrong with this war. And Pepsiman hits the nail on the head that Saphir isn’t just trying to protect the “be the very best, like no one ever was” dream of her fallen childhood friend, but she’s also out for revenge on Elusia. Saphir’s visibly disarmed by how observant he was. Oh hey, as if a sword rank weren’t already dirt cheap enough, turns out that at this point all you need is a B support with Pepsiman to get it, along with arts! Yeah, really, I have to wonder why swords have been singled out as being so fundamentally different from axes and lances for so long. Oh hey, Ivy and Veyle have a support! …Please don’t be mean to her, Ivy… Ivy and Veyle’s C. Veyle’s apologizing for what her father did to Ivy’s father, and Ivy seems visibly uncomfortable with the idea of Veyle feeling she needs to apologize. Ivy: You owe me no apologies. Your father’s sins are not yours to bear. Veyle: I don’t think that’s true. Please, I have to do something. That’s… an interesting discussion to have. Not in that I feel it’s nuanced or evenly matched, but more in the sense of “I genuinely wonder what arguments you could come up with for being morally responsible for the behavior of your parents/ancestors”. Ivy just caves in though and tells her she’ll think of something Veyle can do to atone next time they meet, but her tone of voice makes me suspect it’s gonna be a cute joke. Alright, chapter time. This chapter’s called “The Four Hounds”, which makes me suspect it’s gonna have a lot of backstory, given that one’s an ally and one’s dead, so they can’t just be calling it this solely because we’re fighting the remaining two. So apparently Veyle can tell where the shards are, while Pepsiman can’t. Either because his Divine Dragon energy is interfering with his Fell Dragon side, or because he’s no longer part Fell Dragon at all since becoming an Emblem. But more importantly, how did we gloss over them trekking through a goddamned volcanic wasteland of bubbling lava!? We commented on how uncomfortable a fucking desert was first chance we got! But nope! Straight to running into Zephia and Griss! So, hilariously, this scene reminded me that they weren’t fucking present for our entire comeback tour, and both Veyle being good and Pepsiman being alive are total shocks to them. So initially when they mentioned Sombron’s plans of conquest beyond Elyos, it sounded like they meant other continents, but now it seems like he’s on some kind of multiversal tour, what with the portal and everything. …Christ, Zephia’s getting built up as an abusive mother figure now. Please let her be Pepsiman’s mom, that would be hilarious. Then Zephia rather passive-aggressively implies she had an abusive childhood and is simply continuing the cycle of abuse, and I really am preparing to cringe if they elaborate. Editing Note: Having actually learned her backstory by the end of this chapter, I have to wonder what the fuck she was supposed to be implying here. Also, uh… the stationary backdrops are really fucking conspicuous once you notice the lava isn’t flowing. …Hmm… they’re using the “serious” battle prep theme for this. Is that just gonna be the norm with these from now on? Before it was reserved for big, climactic battles, but I’m starting to get the feeling that from here on out it’s basically just going to be this game’s “As Fierce as Fire”. But yep! Full 14 unit deployment! Nice! That’s only 2 less than the endgames of the good Fates games, and those generally had a lot of units in guard stance most of the time! Oooh! Looks like Griss has a brave tome he drops! Super heavy, but at least it’s another brave magic attack! It’s S-rank, so obviously that’s going on Ivy. Clanne can’t use it without reclassing, and even if he could, he’s got dragon’s fist, which is lighter and already overkill. …And a second S-rank sword? This time it’s a smashing one. Huh. I guess that means there’s gonna be a wider variety of S-rank weapons? Also, Corrupted wyrms, but the problem of course is that they’re still too weak to really warrant trying out the whole “Fell Dragon Slayer” aspect of Engage+. But I will be doing so anyway. Speaking of which… it’s annoying that the game doesn’t display the abilities and weapons of Engage+ on Pepsiman. It’d be nice to check their stats in battle even when your Engage+ isn’t ready. Saphir whipped up an S-rank peach cake, which is awesome. Okay, now back to prepping this first turn. I wanna get Pepsiman and Clanne their kill bonuses on turn one. Ooooooh! Pepsiman has an engraving now! -1 might in exchange for 10 hit, 20 crit, -1 weight, and 20 dodge and avoid! All in all, pretty great! Actually… …Yeah, I think Yunaka would appreciate swapping with Lucina on this. The extra crit is crucial to her now. I wound up forging Liberation to +5 because holy shit is that relatively cheap to do and boy do I suddenly have a fortune of materials. Also, I’ve swapped up my Emblems again a bit. I’ve decided Goldmary is getting Lucina after all, and Seadall’s getting no Emblem, because frankly he doesn’t need one. Marth is instead going on Clanne, so that Clanne has a backup engage while Pepsiman’s is still recharging. Might as well. But yeah, this will be my first opportunity to try out Mauvier with Leif. I expect nothing but crushing disappointment with my meme build, but what the heck, it’s just hard mode. …Hang on, lemme check… what are my supplies in the shop of warp and rescue staves? I’ve been really stingy with them, but it might be time to cut loose… …The store has two more warps and one more rescue, and… …Okay, question. Not to you, or to the game, but to myself. The entire reason I’ve been avoiding putting Micaiah on Hortensia this whole time is because I didn’t want to waste her ability to put staves on a non-staff-using unit. …But now I’ve put it on fucking Framme. You ever had one of those moments? Where you keep doing something without realizing your reasons for initially choosing to do that have long since ceased to apply? It’s weird as hell, man. Okay, that does it, Micaiah belongs to Hortensia now. I’ll still be fielding Framme as a filler staff bot because she’s still better than Lindon and Pandreo, but Hortensia with her amazing staff-conserving class skill is going to be my Micaiah user. Anyway, I’ve got 4 uses of rewarp left, with none left to buy in the store, 2 uses of warp with two more whole staves for sale, and 8 uses of rescue with one more whole staff for sale. Noted. Alright, enough stalling, this map seems pretty damned straightforward, might as well get moving with it. …Oh. …Oh I see. That annoying rubble in the way is going to be destroyed throughout the battle. As they explain after the battle begins. …Okay, I’m of two minds about this. These post-deploy curveballs are a little annoying, but at the same time, they definitely spice up a blind playthrough while still giving you enough time to respond to them that what these curveballs do to your strategy can reasonably be deemed “your fault”. …Alright, so I get advance warning where the bombs will fall. Good. Nice, then I think I’m okay with this. So it seems when you Engage+, any Emblem the character already had is negated, even the passive non-engaged effects. I can’t see any of Marth’s skills on Clanne now. Noted. Alright, so, the meteors fall at the end of player phase. Which would be absolutely, ridiculously unfair… if it weren’t for the clearly indicated warnings at the start of player phase. That’s the crucial difference. As I’ve said before, you always need that critical single full turn to squirm. …Wait, Draconic Hex activates without engaging? I could’ve sworn it used to need engaging. Have I just been so aggressively dragon-veining with Yunaka except against bosses that I never noticed? It seems the pattern with the meteors is that two are focused on destroying obstacles, and one is focused on targeting your army’s center of mass, as it were. One thing: It would be nice to know how much damage the meteors do, on the off chance that I actually have to place someone in range. As it is, I kind of just have to assume the answer is “too much” and keep my units off those spaces. Pepsiman and Clanne have been tearing things up with just Seadall and Hortensia for support, and they’ve been going up the left side (the one full of wyrms) and have already breached the boss. I don’t think I want to aggro both of them quite yet, so I’m gonna wait until my other forces catch up. They’re doing pretty well, as I should hope they would, given they’re the entire rest of my army. Also, shit, I keep forgetting to check what Engage+ does to the equipped ring’s stat boosts. …Okay, so it completely overwrites them with hefty boosts to speed, defense and HP. That explains a lot of what I’ve been seeing. Okay, that’s awesome! Alright, we’re coming up on the end, and it looks like I miscalculated and I’ll have to fight Zephia now due to where I placed Clanne. No matter, they’re freshly engaged, this should be a cakewalk. Zephia: My dear sweet Divine Dragon. We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we? Pepsiman: Zephia… You must have known who I was a thousand years ago. Zephia: Yes, I believe we met. But the details are hazy. Lord Sombron had so many children, you see. A bug would’ve had more luck getting my attention. Pepsiman: Oh? Am I that forgettable? Zephia: Oh, not at all. You’re the Divine Dragon now. But in due time, you’ll be me. One tends to lose count of the lives that pass by. You’ll understand one day. Pepsiman: I will never be like you. Zephia: Haha. Well, it barely matters anyway. You aren’t leaving this place. You’re going to die right now. (Promptly loses an entire HP bar before she can get her smash attack in thanks to a lucky crit) Funny enough, for some reason the AI seemed to think a 0% accuracy attack that theoretically did more damage was a better call than a 0% accuracy attack that Pepsiman couldn’t counter. Go figure. But as for why I quoted that whole conversation, that seems to decidedly dash my “Mommy Zephia” crack theory. I can only be so disappointed, given I was only rooting for it because you wouldn’t find trashier cheese outside of a pizzeria dumpster. Anyway, these guys are going down soon. I’m gonna have Veyle Goddess Dance Mauvier to see what his conversations are with each of the Hounds. Zephia: You’re going to kill me, Mauvier? After everything? Mauvier: At one time, I would not have imagined it myself. I believed our path to be just. …Hhhhhhhooooooooooooowwwww? Mauvier: That we were family. Zephia: Family… I’m surprised to hear that from you. Mauvier: I am, I admit, solitary by nature. But I felt a true bond with the Hounds. ….Hhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwww? Mauvier: I let our “family” distract me for too long. Until you took Marni from us. Zephia: You know, Mauvier… you can turn your back on all this. You can leave. Mauvier: I left you, Zephia, after you made a wreckage of the Hounds. I don’t have any last sentiments. You see… I learned something from you in the end. AND HE INSTANTLY CRITS AWAY HER LAST HEALTH BAR AND LITERALLY GETS EXACTLY ENOUGH XP TO GET A LEVEL UP IN EVERYTHING BUT HIS HP, STRENGTH AND HIS CAPPED BUILD LET’S GOOOOOOO! AND IT WAS MY 300TH FUCKING CRITICAL HIT! HOLY SHIT! THAT WAS HYPE! Now let’s see what he has to say to Griss! Griss: You come to get revenge? Or were you hoping the Hounds would take you back? We were a family, Mauvier. That makes us like brothers. No one would blame you for missing us. Mauvier: I am here to strike you down. I have nothing more to say. Griss: Geez, a stiff till the end. Guess there’s no point in holding back the killing, then. Griss hangs on with a single goddamned point of health after that Quadruple Attack. Unfortunately I can’t get Pepsiman’s talk with Griss because he’s too far. Oh well! Clanne time! Alright, and the shard’s broken! …This is like… the first time in the entire game where the victory screen hasn’t felt abrupt. There was an actual winding-down to the map with a dialogue box that made a good transition. And like that… the Two Hounds are dead. …Or not, Zephia’s still alive. …Griss isn’t though. …And Zephia is now telling us, with what appear to be her final breaths, that the next shard is underwater. And that we have to “raise the mountains or drain the lake” to get to it. …Why is she telling us this? …And she gives us the means to access it. …Apparently using the last of her life force to do so. What are they doing with this character? Zephia: Of all the mage dragons that ever were, only I am powerful enough to create this. What the fuck are they doing with this character!? …They give her a brief sob story about how she was born with magic too powerful, and by the time she learned how to control it, her parents had been among the many casualties. And she’s helping us because she just… has an inkling that it’s the right thing to do. …Euuuuuughhh… The charm only lasts a few hours apparently, but of course the Somniel will just play havoc with that. Unless this is a mandatory two-parter, which might be cool. And Veyle’s, like, rightly flabbergasted and furious that of all the times Zephia could have picked to do the right thing, she’s chosen now, and not before any of the other bullshit she’s done. Zephia: I can be kind, just this once, because it’s too late for me to make things right. Had I done any of this earlier, would you have really forgiven me? We, allies? Heh, nonsense. …Zephia clearly cannot comprehend what series she’s in. But anyway, I’m hoping the next level is like, Wind Waker Hyrule Castle stuff. I’d love it if they played with the visuals of bringing air to a place that’s supposed to be underwater, and I hope we get a two-parter where in the second half we fight in the “rain” as it collapses. Probably not going to happen, but I can hope. Gradlon has some pretty creepy ambient music, gotta say. Alright, any story next? Gonna try and wrap this up soon so I can eat. …Griss is apparently still alive, and Zephia and Griss are having a dying conversation or something. Griss seems to think the reason she gave is bullshit. It is, to be fair… but I have no doubt that the real reason we’re about to hear is gonna be even bigger bullshit. …Well, she’s saying it’s more… dying spite at being abandoned by Sombron. Actually… that I kind of get a bit more. …But amusingly enough, I wasn’t entirely off the mark when I talked about Zephia having a kid with Sombron. It’s something she wanted to happen at least. And she resented that Sombron never gave her one. …Um… …Is there some particular reason he was her only option? It’s not that she wanted a powerful child or anything, she’s saying she just wanted a family. Like, even assuming dragons and humans can’t interbreed… like… uh… she has to have had other options than Sombron, no? What about, oh, I dunno, some member of her apparent entire separate species? What happened there? …And Griss apparently… looked up to Zephia as some mix of a mom, big sister, and god. Which, like… goes miles to explain how fucked up he is, honestly. And now Zephia’s utterly miserable, realizing that the one thing she always wanted was with her the whole time, and she’s utterly destroyed herself in her idiotic attempts to get “the real thing”. …This whole scene is fucking gross, man. …I’m gonna cut things off here. Tomorrow might just be a cleanup day, I’m gonna likely be too busy for a proper update. See you then. Alastor, signing off.

Engage Day 41: Marth’s Paralogue So! Apparently I wasted a good deal of Veyle’s SP on something I don’t actually have room for! Alright… change of plans… …I’m going to experiment on having Clanne become the ascended fanboy supreme and be Pepsiman’s Engage+ partner so we can see just how Pepsiman interacts with magic. Micaiah then goes on Framme, Byleth on Veyle, Lucina back on Seadall, and Marth on Goldmary. Oh, and just for a refresher: Sigurd is on Louis, Corrin is on Yunaka, Lyn is on Alcryst, Celica is on Ivy, Ike is on Kagetsu, Roy is on Hortensia, Eirika is on Rosado, and Leif is on Mauvier. We’re gonna see how this all works today, except the Marth part, because we’re doing Marth’s paralogue. Before we go though, one last thing: I wanna see if I can put a better, non-staff skill on Clanne. …He doesn’t have much SP to work with, so let’s just go for an upgrade to his speed boosting skill. …Shit right, I spent all of my bond fragments on Mauvier and Veyle yesterday. Which was mostly a waste in Veyle’s case. Oh well, guess he’ll make do with Speed+2 for now. Might as well do the normal arena battles though. …Oh wow, I apparently got a lot more supports since last time I checked. Either that or I didn’t actually just have 1 support last time like I remembered, and I just completely spaced out and got sidetracked after the first one. Well, let’s get them sorted out now. Pepsiman and Mauvier’s C. So Pepsiman, pure cinnamon roll that he is, has decided he wants to give Mauvier a present as thanks for protecting Veyle all of this time. Which is… frankly an adorable way to look on the bright side of things. Mauvier, however… is quite the sad sack about his past actions, and I hope we actually get into them, because I could already tell this from Emblem bonds and assorted non-support dialogue, and it threatens to get annoyingly repetitive if he doesn’t hammer home exact details of what he has to atone for aside from specifically fighting us. Alcryst and Hortensia’s B. So this confirms that Hortensia was just trying to get a rise out of Alcryst earlier with the Brodia comment, and she’s going to help him with that confidence thing. Probably not much is going to come of this due to the whole “literally every other support with him” thing, but we’ll see. …Hortensia thinks Alcryst is cute when he cries. That’s hilarious and kind of worrying. It’s giving me FeMorgan flashbacks with Yarne. …This is the most Alcryst that I’ve ever seen Alcryst get, and it’s kind of uncomfortable. Like he’s approaching “Day-Constance” levels of sexless masochism. … …And I just realized that this support is… almost like indoor and outdoor Constance talking to each other. Rosado and Mauvier’s C. Oh, this could be interesting! These two kind of knew each other. They were on the same side before, and now they’re on the same side again! I wonder what they’ll do with it. …No, it just seems Rosado wants to cheer Mauvier up by making him develop his “cute sense”. PFFFFFFFFFF Rosado: It’s top priority! Not being able to feel cuteness is like… it’s like not being able to taste the heat in a spicy stew! Mauvier: Hmm… I do appreciate a spicy stew… OK then. Teach me about cuteness. Man, Mauvier sounds like he has potential as the comically serious dork. Also, I will be outrageously surprised if the B or A support doesn’t have Veyle come up in some way. Because if we’re talking about cuteness that Mauvier would care about, Veyle’s is like #1 on the list. Alright, paralogue time. Altea Castle, huh? I was kind of hoping for the final battle, given that we’re approaching the endgame and this is the final main Emblem paralogue you unlock. It would’ve been crazy fighting our way through the endgame map of Shadow Dragon. REALLY!? THE LAST FUCKING ONE, AND THEY STILL HAVE PEPSIMAN REPEAT THE WORD “TRIAL” QUESTIONINGLY!? Anyway, yeah, I just got the tutorial for Engage+. I really wish they explained this earlier. …Oh no. There’s a thief poised to run away with a secret book. Just like there was a thief poised to run away with the geosphere. Meaning this is based on the Book 2 version. The one with the nasty trap. …Okay, so, there are a lot of really, really scary enemies huddled around the treasure room. …I think I’m gonna do something ridiculous. First, lemme put Canter on Framme now that I’ve decided she’s my Micaiah bot. Then let’s see how much I can pump up Kagetsu’s stats. …I have the material to make Kagetsu’s silver dagger a +5, but that only boosts damage by 1… hmm… what else can I do, between that, tonics/meals and dancing…? …Also apparently I got an A rank support with Louis from cooking. Let’s check this out. …I really don’t have much to say about this one, sorry. It’s not bad, just… nothing sticks out at me worth commenting on. …Damn it, Kagetsu’s just barely shy of being able to one-round these heroes, and obviously he doesn’t want to leave them alive or they’ll chain attack him into oblivion. Alright, so much for my plan of boldly group-rewarping into the mouth of evil and taking out the thieves on turn one. Also I notice there are a ton of revival-stone generics, and I can’t put my finger on any particular pattern they’re supposed to be following. Pretty sure the guy in the vault is supposed to be Astram, but there are two heroes, two warriors, one mage (who doesn’t have Excalibur so if it’s supposed to be Merric I question that), two snipers I can see… …Yeah I’m sorry, it’s been a while. I don’t know who they’re supposed to be referencing. Alright, well as long as I don’t do anything monumentally stupid, this should be pretty straightforward. So let’s stop wasting time and just do this. Louis is gonna chase after the thief in back, I’m gonna test out Pepsiman by having him and Clanne take out those warriors up the middle, and everyone else is gonna make the chase to the treasure room, with Yunaka and Kagetsu of course leading the charge. …So the music opens up with “Trouble!”, then moves to the Book 2 “victory is near music”… then back to “Trouble!”… then… a weird creepy “Together We Ride”… not a bad medley, all considered. I’ll have to see how it goes in battle. Speaking of… ENGAGE+! Oh right! Engaging gives unique kill quotes, and Clanne’s appears to be fanboying about how he’s fighting alongside the Divine Dragon. …Did I just hear the faintest trace of the Melee menu theme during the music? Maybe it’s a coincidence, but that would be an amazing call-back to where Fire Emblem got its start in the west. Louis took out the thief with his brave lance with no issues, and now he’s heading back to catch up with the main group. Shouldn’t take him too long. …No, it doesn’t seem to be the melee menu theme, but the horns definitely do something that briefly sounds like it while harmonizing with “Trouble!”, and I like the effect. …So far the treasures are an elixir and speed tonic, which are… pretty damned lackluster treasures for this part of the game. …Clanne… with Dragon’s Fist… is fucking terrifying. Honestly, yeah, I’m actually pretty damned happy having Clanne and Pepsiman be Emblem Pepsiman battle buddies. They’re terrifying, even if this is their only Emblem. Also, their special is stronger when they’re adjacent, which is something I heard the DLC Emblems do with their corresponding main Emblem. Though I don’t know if the mainline Emblems also get a corresponding boost. …Also, holy shit, that attack was so badass. Meanwhile, my army needs to take out a bunch of mildly wounded heroes Yunaka played with and ran ahead of. Alcryst managed to very nearly take out an enemy he only did 3 damage per attack to by double-proccing Luna. But alas, the guy still had 1 HP left. Thankfully Framme was nearby to do the chip damage necessary with help of Seadall to secure the kill. Frankly I’m glad that I’m having Veyle use Pepsiman’s old Emblem. It’s kind of adorable watching her do what her big brother used to. Alcryst gets another double-Luna, and this time it’s just barely enough to kill a thief with his longbow! Go Alcryst! Chest three as a silver greataxe… Embarrassingly, I tried to kill a thief by counting on one of Alcryst’s four brave bow hits to proc Luna. None of them did, and then I discovered Mulagir would have just barely done the job if I had bothered to check. Alright, the thieves are dead and Yunaka is holding the door. Incidentally, not sure if I mentioned this, but even though enemies on Maddening ignore you if they have 0% hit on you… that’s still in itself super useful. Yunaka can basically stroll around the battlefield at her leisure as long as she has cover, and then do sneak attacks from natural cover with impunity. That wound up being how I dealt with the bosses in Chapter 13, using hit and run tactics to bait them near trees. I was about to dive for those refill tiles near the main room, but then I remembered that getting into the treasure room was what triggered the reinforcements in the Mystery map, so I decide against it and send Pepsiman to pick up one near the treasure room instead. Instruct apparently isn’t an ability you can Canter after using, which is weird, because Goddess Dance is. …It would appear the trigger for the main room to become active is indeed getting into the treasure room. Thankfully though, this time at least they have someone walk up to the door to break it down. Alright, bracing for impact. And the last treasure is… an antitoxin. …Literally the best part of that haul was the silver greataxe, and I’m selling that. Not since that FE6 map with all the antitoxins and elixirs… and even then I think that one had a valuable gem… Oh shit! Right! Veyle’s new class skill! She regenerates her engage meter automatically! I’ll have to keep that in mind, but right now I want her getting refilled immediately, so energy tile it is! …Actually it’ll be refilled by the time they get here, so might as well make sure she’s where she needs to be on time and save that one for Louis. …Man I wish Pepsiman had a viable 1-2 range option in his dragon class. That would drastically improve his teamwork with Clanne. …Weirdly, only the axeman is charging after breaking down the doors. Aside from that it’s just rear reinforcements. Huh. Hey, so from what I’ve heard, this game brings back fixed growths! You can select it after beating the game once, but your first Maddening playthrough is fixed by default. If so, fucking awesome. Especially if they didn’t bring back the goofy weapon growth manipulation bullshit. I love being able to play with fixed growths, and I’ve been adoring the results so far on Maddening if that’s what’s going on. Come to think of it, Veyle’s ability is really, really useful for someone in more of a support role. OHP! Marth’s started moving the second we got in range of anyone in the throne room! Alright. Let’s dance, you blade-dancing son of a bitch! Alright, I successfully got Marth baited out (making sure he didn’t one-hit-kill Yunaka with Lodestar rush because apparently Yunaka’s defense is just that terrible), so now it’s time for the big mega ultra dance party player phase. Turns out that the boss theme is triggered even if the boss is just a side-target of splash damage, like Override. …Oh, wow, I like how Yunaka turns Corrin’s relieved “It’s over” into a yep-we’re-done-here “It’s over”, cheerful and sassy. I think this is the first time I’ve heard it because Yunaka doesn’t usually get kills while engaged. She usually gets the first hit in for the sake of debuffs, but thanks to Louis opening up with an override to get rid of a chain guarding healer, Marth was wounded enough that her debuff attack got the first HP bar kill. …And I can finish the rest with just danced Kagetsu alone, so let’s see what other fun we can have here on this last turn. Ivy and Clanne completely obliterate the two-bar general who had some gold, then we finish off Marth. I say “completely obliterate”, uh, perhaps that’s a bit of an understatement, so to be clear: That general could have had triple the HP stat and Clanne still would have one-rounded him. Dragon’s Fist is fucking amazing. Kagetsu just hit level 20, which is apparently the max in spite of what happened with those thief brothers. Well, guess I need to second-seal him. Marth: As I fought, I was reminded of an old friend. …Oh shit, nice. They talking about Kris? …Oh no, Tiki. …And this is just reminding me that they still haven’t resolved the whole “turning into a dragon” thing. Is that going to be an even bigger eleventh-hour superpower, or is that just going to be entirely unresolved? …This conversation is also reminding me of the horrible shit Awakening did to Tiki and Marth’s friendship. Alright then, now let’s see what Marth has to offer, then clean up and finish! …Marth doesn’t really offer anything new in the later stages, just upgrades on existing skills, which is a pity. I looped Kagetsu, and I’m about to do the same to Yunaka who’s level 39. But I put Kagetsu back in a sword-using wolf knight class because he’s got a better sword rank and I’m under no delusion that I’ll be wanting to use axes on him anyway. …Unfortunately for some reason I can’t loop Yunaka back into thief until I hit exactly level 40, which is annoying. Which means Yunaka might waste a level next map. …Apparently something I did made the chef change from Rosado to Lindon. That’s annoying, I was hoping to see how Rosado cooks. But man, honestly, this Pepsiman Emblem thing gives me a lot to think about for future playthroughs. I’m starting to feel Pepsiman would be better off in a class that gave him good 1-2 range, or even train a bunch in a magic class to be good with a levin sword, even if that would rob him of his dragon utility for most of the game. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying in a way, because it feels like what Pepsiman’s been good at for the whole game has been something of a trap, and he would’ve been better off building up his magic stat and only going back to being a dragon at the very end. Which means that on future playthroughs I have to think about someone else to make my dancer, which means thinking of what stat it's most important to boost. Probably strength or magic, because it’s definitely not speed. If whoever I’m sending in isn’t already doubling on the first set of attacks, that’s a problem. But then again maybe they’re ganging up on the first few enemies. Well, as I said, stuff to ponder. Pretty good map, honestly. Better than most of the trials on hard mode (though as I’ve seen they promise to be way, way more interesting on Maddening). So next time I’ll be talking Chapter 23. Alastor, signing off!

8 was a fun defense map, 10 and 11 are pretty fantastic, 12 is probably my favorite desert map in the whole series due to the brilliance of the quicksand (FRIENDLY WARNING! IT NEGATES CANTER! My Clanne nearly died finding that out on my Maddening run), 14 had some issues with how easy yet tedious it is to cheese the bosses even on Maddening but is a pretty satisfying first map to get full control of Ike for, 17 was a great time and a pretty epic showdown, and honestly 20 was pretty dang fun once I figured out how to make full use of Micaiah and Illume. 13 is probably my least favorite of the mainline chapters so far. Not in the sense of me thinking it's inherently bad, more in the sense of "this is where one of my favorite characters is at her most vulnerable and it's also the only fog of war map that you don't get Micaiah for". I dread it and want it to be over as soon as possible. I am so glad to be past it on my Maddening ironman and to have Merrin back.

Yeah honestly it wasn't nearly as creepy in Radiant Dawn as Engage is making it feel in hindsight with Micaiah's extremely uncomfortable performance and characterization. I am quite frightened of the idea of a Tellius remake that makes Micaiah act more like she does in Engage.

...I'm gonna have to take a look at those abilities again because that makes it sound infinitely worse than I thought it was.

I might, once I see firsthand what you're talking about. Are you saying when you Engage+, you only have the Emblem Pepsiman abilities and not whatever ring you put on him?

Personally I think Sigurd really saves armor knights in Engage, even if eventually even that makes them better served promoting to great knight. Sigurd really benefits from being given to someone with a lot of attack power and who doesn't particularly pay much heed to the consequences of moving drastically ahead of the pack, and Louis fits that bill perfectly. Eventually though, immunity to breaking just frankly isn't that impressive in a game where daggers are as broken as they are and anyone can be made into a terrifying tank if you give them Ike. My wolf knight Kagetsu has enemy phase performance that frankly makes Louis blush, but honestly Louis is still a valued and badass member of my team thanks to just how much he synergizes with Sigurd, especially as a great knight. Though I suppose that last bit is a point against armor knights, not for them. I'm still playing through Maddening though, so I don't know if that'll make my impression of armor knights better or worse. My personal opinion on how to balance armor knights has generally evolved over the years to "more rear reinforcements, and don't give armors any weaknesses that cause other classes to radically outperform them in combat". Have armor knights, hands down, be the guys you pick not to go to the enemy, but to fight the enemies that come to you. The keystone of your rear lines.