Alastor15243

Engage Day 32: Leif’s Paralogue Nobody’s expressed much interest in me doing the Tempest Trials, so I suppose I’ll check them out some other time when I’m not playlogging. Alright, the last available paralogue, the one that apparently lives up to Thracia. Let’s check this out. …River Thracia, huh? …Oh shit, is this where we fought Reinhardt!? We faced Saias here apparently, which we definitely also did at that time, so signs point to yes! …I am incredibly grateful that Thrud isn’t pronounced like thud with an r. …This is also the most surprised and confused Pepsiman has ever been when he hears the word trial. Given that I picked this one for last of TEN… … … … … … PFFFFFFFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YEP! THIS IS THRACIA ALRIGHT! Siege weapons up the ass? Check. Status staff users fucking everywhere? Check. The placement of the yellow death tiles clearly indicating that the bridge is still trapped? Check and fucking mate. Okay, so, quite obviously the silver bow ballistae are a problem. This game’s infuriating decision to not tell you enemy weapon might and make you do the math yourself means that if I try to get any of my fliers to tank a ballistae hit, the odds of me miscalculating and getting someone killed are intense. Plus, there is a shitload of silence staves here that will probably be very frustrating to deal with. So let’s see… in the spirit of Thracia… …how can I cheese this? I’ve heard it can be one-turned… but how…? …Oh that’s lovely. The enemies have hacked versions of status staves that give them drastically longer ranges than they’re supposed to have. I suppose that makes it feel more like Thracia, and I’m not opposed to enemies getting better tools than me to compensate for my possession of a human brain… but y’know for a second I thought those were the actual ranges, and that I hadn’t been giving the status staves a fair shake! And that’s more than a bit of a letdown. Okay, let’s work backwards on this. Question One: Who do I want to be teleported to Leif to assassinate him? Alcryst, Pepsiman, Yunaka, Kagetsu and Seadall. Pepsiman to Goddess Dance, Yunaka, Alcryst and Kagetsu for doing high amounts of damage while bypassing Leif’s weapon triangle damage reduction fuckery, and Seadall for getting to use whoever does the best job twice. Clanne will be using warp to beam them all in, obviously, though depending on what range gets boosted or what the origin point is I may have to be economical and have Clanne rewarp them all in himself. We’ll see. …Okay. Question Two: Can they actually do the job? Once I use my first set of attacks to clear out two or three of the mage knights in front of Leif, then have Yunaka draconic hex the guy, he’ll be down four in every stat and we’ll be up three with Goddess Dance. With that, Kagetsu can clear an HP bar, Alcryst can do it if Leif’s already poisoned and Alcryst is next to Pepsiman when he takes the shot, and Yunaka might be able to do it under those same conditions depending on how poison stacks. Taking into account that Leif will already have had most of an HP bar taken away by Yunaka’s initial hexing attack… …Yes, yes, I absolutely can kill this guy with a single warped-in squadron. …Okay. Question Three: How far away from Leif can I afford to warp them in? …The ideal place for Pepsiman to be able to end up when he uses Goddess Dance would be a knight’s move long down and short right of Leif (all four adjacent spaces to which would be free once two of the mage knights are killed on player phase), which would enable Pepsiman to boost the power of the attackers’... attacks. Then I’d want Yunaka to end up to the left or upwards of him (because she’d have used her first move to hex Leif), then Alcryst to the other of those two sides (because he could then use the Pepsiman-boosted attacking space with Mulagir and then move away to make room for Kagetsu), then Kagetsu and Seadall on the further back two. So, in order to get there… I’d have to have the center of the group as close as three left and four down from Leif. Preferably two left and four down if I can mange it. Okay. Where can I warp them there from? …Nowhere close enough. Okay, let’s re-assess the necessity of that far-away space. This would be a lot less complicated if I got Pepsiman Canter. Can I get him Canter? …I can practically get him Canter+. Okay, score. Let’s do that and see if that changes the calculus. Cuz with Canter, it means the space he Goddess Dances from and the space he ends his turn on to provide aura boosts don’t have to be the same spot, and that means the spot closer to Leif on the left side is valid even though one of the sides around it is blocked by a rock. …Also, while I’m here, might as well polish the rings. Okay. So now that Pepsiman has Canter… Okay, so now the closest optimal spot for Pepsiman to Goddess Dance is one left and three down from Leif. So, how close can I get him to a spot I can warp him from…? Five left and four down from Leif. Super conveniently, a purple spirit is there to mark the spot for me to remember. …But it’s still not close enough… unless… …Okay, what if I give Micaiah to Hortensia for a bit? When I use ranged fuckery on warp… does the warp boost apply both to how far away someone can be when I warp them, and how far I can warp them? And also… does the second distance originate from where the units originally are… or from where the caster is? Because if the first is true and the second is the latter case… …Hortensia can totally get them there when engaged with Micaiah. She can fly over the river a little bit, warp my plus-shaped group the required distance, then Canter back to shore and out of enemy Ballista range. Or possibly not even that, considering the whole “this will be over by the end of that turn” thing. …Okay, I’m going to postpone this. I want to warp skip this, and in order to best do that, I need more information, and a tiny bit more SP. I want to get Pepsiman Canter+ in order to maximize my positioning potential, and know exactly how warp works when you engage with Micaiah, before I attempt this. If I’m wrong and I commit to it anyway, things could get overly complicated. Which means… …It’s time for another mainline chapter. Day 32 Change of Plans: Chapter 20 Here we are. Elusia Castle. I doubt I’ll have time to do the whole chapter today. I’ve got like 2 hours of free time left. But let’s at least analyze the story and plan for the chapter so we can get started easily tomorrow. Zephia’s single word of “What” reminds me what happened last time in the eons-past beforetimes of the plot. …Yeah, we’ve been gone for a while. So yeah, Marni’s comically, childishly oblivious to how badly she’s fucked up… until Zephia just fucking slaps her. …Zephia deflects blame for losing Sigurd because she was “Following Lady Veyle’s orders”, and thus if Sigurd’s ring loss is anyone’s fault it would be hers, and I’m like “bitch her fucking eyes change and you were too oblivious to notice!” …And Zephia… apparently “already cast the spell” on Veyle… despite promising to wait until they got back… and saying to Griss she intended to keep her word… and not learning of Mauvier’s role in Marni’s fuckup until literally just now. Zephia says she had no choice but to do the spell immediately because “the defect” awoke. …DID ZEPHIA JUST INCINERATE MARNI!? …The absurd irony of Griss commenting that Marni and Mauvier are both “out cold” after being immolated… not since “Warmth is Gone” playing during Flora’s death. So she just leaves them unconscious on the ground. …The illustration of Elusia Castle looks a hell of a lot like Hogwarts, it’s kind of hilarious. …They’re theorizing that the royal guard was turned into Corrupted. I wonder what the canonical downsides of Corrupted are, because gameplaywise they seem just as competent as normal soldiers, just weak to holy. If Sombron has no reason not to turn all the rank and file soldiers into Corrupted, I wonder what the story is behind the gradual obsolescence of the Elusian army. Imagine if we saw more of this behind the scenes, perhaps with scenes of Rosado and Goldmary before they joined us, and maybe Abyme showed up a third time as a Corrupted just to drive the point home. …It’s… a fog of war map. With a boss who can teleport at will and attack us. …No… wait… …a boss who can attack us… and teleport at will? …He doesn’t have Warp Ragnarok here. He has Ragnarok Warp. The opposite. Attack, then warp away. Is that something that Celica actually lets you do at advanced levels, or is it just an enemy-only reworking to keep it from being fucking ridiculous in fog of war? …At any rate, I really, really, really miss the old version of the torch staff. Well, I guess the middle version of the torch staff, cuz it went from just being a torch in staff form, to a ranged staff that let you shoot a flare at a distant spot on the map… back to just being a torch in staff form. I really liked that flare-shooting one. It would’ve gone a long way to making these fog of war maps less outrageously frustrating. Speaking of frustration, there’s an entrap staff! And it’s droppable if we can make it to them in time! And by “in time”, I of course mean immediately, because there’s no way in hell I’m letting that fucker breathe long enough to use that thing in a fog of war map. …Oh yes. I definitely know what I’m testing warp on. I’m warping Kagetsu over, killing that high priest, and then rescuing him back. …Okay no, I can just use Astra Storm and save the staff uses. But I’ll still be testing if I could have done it with warp, because again, working out how that works is critical to flawlessly cheesing Leif’s paralogue. …This, uh… …This looks like it’ll be pretty terrifying. The existence of entrap staves has made me aware of the one weakness in Yunaka’s seemingly-flawless defense: if someone uses conventional-evasion-ignoring staves to yank her off of her defensive terrain. And for all I know, this map could be shitty enough to be hiding other entrap staff users besides that one in the dark. And also, just not knowing what’s ahead in the dark could be really dangerous for Kagetsu, because his defenses can only go so far, and he has a cavalry weakness, and… …Christ, yeah, I guessed right, this is not the day to do this. We’ll pick this up tomorrow. Alastor, signing off. PS: Given that Dire Thunder is apparently a thing in this game judging by what people in the thread have been saying, I'm really surprised I didn't see any of the mage knights equipped with it.

Engage Day 31: Sigurd’s Paralogue Let’s see… how much would it cost to slap Pair Up on Kagetsu? Because obviously that would be a huge weight off my shoulders. But really, in full honesty, while it terrified me, I did like how chain attacks kept literally everyone honest because they were so dangerous if you let them build. The profound irony that Corrin is probably the most balance-upsetting Emblem in the entire game, when one of her original games was Conquest, is kind of upsetting to me. Corrin says that Kagetsu reminds her of Hoshido, and, like… yeah, makes sense. SPEAKING OF WHICH OKAY I HAVE TO KNOW One of the things I’m going to just dump bond fragments on if I have to: Does Lucina and Hortensia’s bond set ever once mention the phrase “pega pony princess”? Because Hortensia sounds like someone who would say that phrase unironically. Kagetsu asks Corrin out in the second bond conversation, and she just kinda awkwardly giggles it off. I wonder what Kagetsu’s deal with that is, he says that a lot in arenas and it hasn’t come up in supports yet. Aaaaand Kagetsu now has the ability to inherit Pair Up. Good, but let’s see how much it costs… …2,000. Okay, so at least it’s as expensive as speedtaker, and for good reason. Still, we have it on Yunaka inherently, and that’s going to be ridiculous. Alright, let’s see what to do next for paralogues. I’m kinda looking forward to getting to the main story but I don’t want these to get any easier by putting them off. All that’s left to do is Leif and Sigurd. Sigurd’s the one I’m most interested in getting the results of, so let’s do that one. I get a tooltip about fast-forwarding through conversations immediately after I accidentally pressed the button to do that. Hilarious. Alright, so we’ve got fracture and freeze among the enemy staff users. As well as physic and fortify. Wow, a lot of “f” sounds. …Okay, heading back to the world map, I wanna make some purchases. I’m getting Hortensia and Clanne as high rank as I can get in Micaiah’s Staff Mastery skill. Improved healing and status staff accuracy would be awesome on these two in particular. Honestly, Micaiah’s interactions with Hortensia have a dynamic that makes me wish even more that she was the Emblem of Elusia. She’s very sweet and patient with Hortensia’s childishness, and I imagine that if Emblems had free will when used by the enemy, Micaiah and Hortensia could’ve had a very Zuko-and-Iroh-esque relationship, just with less of the obfuscating stupidity. …I’ve unfortunately really been eating into my bond fragment reserves by doing this, but now that I know about the alternative bond fragment income source, I think I’ll be good for stocking up on more. Also, I cooked a 2str/1def/1mag/1res meal, which was pretty nice. I really, really wish there existed a way to consistently put better chefs there though. The fact that they have their own strengths and weaknesses with regards to what dishes they make is a nice touch that Fates didn’t have. Kagetsu appears to have capped defense, unfortunately. At 27 raw, 36 adjusted. The only way he’s getting tougher now is by buying the higher-rank versions of the def boosting skill. And those aren’t even his top priority for new skills. I wonder how long it will take before his capped defense becomes a problem. If ever. Actually, come to think of it, I wonder what stat caps in this game are even like. All I’ve capped so far are Kagetsu’s def at 27 and Yunaka’s res at 25. Weird that it would be those two, when I only gave Kagetsu one stat booster in that regard and I didn’t give Yunaka any at all. Makes me wonder… do Emblems actually have an impact on growth rates? Because those are both stats that Corrin and Ike boost on Yunaka and Kagetsu, so if it boosted their growths too, that would make sense. …I snapped and googled it, finding the Serenes Forest page and discovering that apparently no, they aren’t listed among influences on growth rates at all. What I did find, however, that made me feel like a stubborn jackass, was that my playing it safe with promotions had in fact had the opposite of the effect I hoped it would have: promoted classes have superior growth rates to the base ones. So really, by all appearances, between stat boosts, earlier class skills, and increased growth rates, you have every incentive to get out of those base classes and into promoted ones at speed. …Noted. I will keep that in mind for my maddening playthrough. So, I’m looking at the map and the little cape that the item’s supposed to be hidden at, and it’s apparent that the best way to get those without having to worry about needing to keep Sigurd alive long enough to sneak past him… is probably going to be to fly my fliers over there. And in case there are wyvern reinforcements that will appear over that vast expanse of water, I’m giving both of the princesses rescue staves so they can get themselves and Rosado safely out of the way at speed, taking advantage of Canter as well. …Oh fuck, meteor sages and a 13 mov Sigurd. Right. Guess they’ll have to do a little covert sneak-in while the rest of my forces have Sigurd distracted. …Also, it occurs to me that since Louis isn’t doing nearly as much enemy-phasing as he used to, and he’s mostly a massive player-phase truck… it might be worthwhile to change him to great knight, and trade a little bit of strength and defense and build for 2 more mov… and another 2 more mov when engaged. …Fuck it, I’ll do it. He’s got mobility problems without Sigurd for this map, so if I’m gonna deploy him, might as well give him that mobility boost now. Dealing with these guys with silence staves feels like a huge pain, so I’m just gonna use restore staves and just facetank the consequences. …I see a male and female sage in the bottom left corner of the map, both with multiple HP bars. Are those supposed to be Julius and Ishtar? The male one has more HP bars so that tracks… and I think this is where I fought them in Genealogy… …And the female one has Thoron, makes sense… …and the male one has every fuckmothering stat capped yes that is DEFINITELY supposed to be Julius- …I basically have to take the game on faith that this is some optional objective and they won’t come after me. Can I even take this guy down…? 75 avoid, 20 defense, 44 res… …Yunaka could bring him down to 26 speed and 16 defense, not to mention a total of -30 avoid between class bonus and the -4 speed and -4 luck… …Kagetsu can one-round an HP bar after that debuff lets him double… …Alcryst can also fuck him up with Mulagir… …I’ll take a heavy beating on counterattacks but I think I can manage it. …Alright, fuck it, let’s go for it. Begin. …Okay, so this seems like a pretty straightforward cover of the final map theme. No medley, just “The Final Holy War”. Well done, but personally I would have much preferred Light and Dark, the song that this map is actually known for, as it’s my favorite map theme in the game. …One of the sages with a status staff moved without doing anything. Weird. The other two did use theirs though. One broke Yunaka pointlessly, and one froze Kagetsu. …Also this map is experiencing some slowdown. Curious, it’s not like they rendered a whole Genealogy map, not sure why this in particular would start making it chug like it’s Three Houses. Looks like Alcryst just managed to max out his bond with Lyn! They’ll be getting their last bond conversation after this battle! Nice! Though if I’d noticed he was literally just one round of combat away, I probably would’ve just spent the pittance of bond fragments to get it unlocked in advance. So far the map is pretty straightforward. Yunaka and Kagetsu can handle the enemies with ease. …Okay, my first impression of meteor’s animation is fairly lame. Still want it though. I still really, really want it. …Alfred weirdly comes on screen to tell us the bridge is ours after we kill the castle boss, and that we should rest for a minute. The hell? Why him? He’s not even in the battle! And I thought he wasn’t supposed to have any connection to Sigurd? …Maybe the “rest” is saying I have to stand on the tile to proceed? Or maybe it’ll just happen at the beginning of my next turn to avoid mid-turn map changes. I wound up using Goddess Dance in that fight, which was unfortunate. Hopefully I have time to disengage and recharge with an energy tile before I face Julius and Ishtar. And in true Genealogy fashion, a huge number of reinforcements appear from the next castle after “seizing” this one. Incidentally, I never even set foot on the fortress tile, so nothing resembling seizing is truly necessary. Oh, Rosado got a huge level up, including build! And since I already opened pandora’s box, I figured I might as well check and confirm: no, Rosado’s build growth rate is below-average, but not the lowest. Since those reinforcements are doubtlessly going to charge us, I’m sending Yunaka over to hold them off, then see if I can fight Julius, who I’m hoping is an optional objective the game doesn’t actually expect me to have to fight if I leave him alone. THE SAGES WITH METEOR ARE MOVING, REPEAT, THE SAGES WITH METEOR ARE MOVING! That barely matters of course, because Sigurd’s charging as well, and he’ll make it there first, so we can end this battle immediately if we want to. …And I think I want to. I’m gonna use Clanne to rewarp some spare units over to try and get the treasure (I have a feeling it’s that weird green-gold spot on the beach), but I don’t want to take a gamble with this huge number of enemies charging and trying to keep Sigurd alive long enough to fight Julius. I have a feeling if I wanted to defeat Julius, I should’ve fought him before seizing the castle. Sigurd got poisoned by Kagetsu. It’s on. Alright, first, let’s make sure we can kill him. …Yep, we can kill him. Alright, time to try for the treasure. …Fuck, I guessed wrong! Waiting on that patch of beach did nothing! And that was my last chance, and the incoming enemies forced me to learn that when you group-rewarp, the game won’t scramble to find spare spaces for allies, it’ll just give up if the corresponding space next to your new location isn’t valid! Damn it! …Okay. Let’s just finish this then. Weird thing I noticed is that Tyrfing doesn’t have any stat boosts. None. That’s utterly bizarre to think about, given how crazy the legendary weapon stat boosts were in Genealogy. Even when they came back in Awakening they only got nerfed to the series standard of +5 to one stat! …Well, at any rate, now Sigurd is fully activated. It’s interesting that they use the fact that Sigurd shows up after the big Veyle reveal… the reVeyle if you will… as an opportunity to talk about the hollowness of revenge from someone who knows being wronged all too well. I like it. …Weirdly, there’s a glowing item spot on the post-battle exploration map exactly where the weird green-gold spot I saw and tried was. Hmm… …Just spices. And the weird green-gold spot itself is nowhere to be found. Weeeeeird. Did I pick the right spot but screw up how to interact with it? …I wonder what the secret item was. Alright, now that we’re back, time for supports, starting with Lyn and Alcryst’s bond. …Thaaaaat’s about as satisfying an end to this “story arc” as I suppose I could hope for. But again, the limitations of bond conversations are palpable. Looks like all I got today were Clanne and Hortensia. Alright, let’s see that, then do some cleanup and see if that gets us any more. Clanne and Hortensia’s B. Clanne asks Hortensia why she wants a fanclub… and she says it’s because she already told everyone she had one. And she’s worried that if she doesn’t get one, it’ll be like she lied. Either she’s profoundly in denial about a habit of compulsive lying, or she blabbed her mouth about her supposed “fan club” while she still thought Clanne was the president of it, and that’s what she’s talking about. Context suggests the latter. Either way, she has extreme senses of entitlement and is having trouble grasping the idea that praise is earned, and can’t understand why Clanne can’t just be her biggest fan. This is amusing if you think about it, given that Pepsiman didn’t really do anything to earn Clanne’s devotion either. But obviously Hortensia has somehow managed to do still less. She does give up and see that pushing any further with this would be “sad and desperate” though. And rather predictably, Clanne finds himself actually respecting her more when she apologizes and goes out to accept the egg on her face with dignity. BUNET’S THE CHEF! BUNET’S THE CHEF! LET’S SEE WHAT WE GOT! …Tragically, I’m struggling to find a good meal he specializes in that I have the ingredients for. I don’t have any sashimi and I don’t even know where to begin trying to find it at this point. I decided on classic pizza. Now if only I could find two people who like it who aren’t the already-maxed-out Clanne and Framme. I wish I could choose the food first and then search for people who like it. Okay, Clanne and Louis it is. Str/res +2, spd/def +1. Okay, that’s… not as awesome as I was expecting, but it’s still pretty good. …I genuinely don’t know what the fuck is going on, but Clanne apparently doesn’t double Rosado even when Rosado is wielding an iron greatlance. I don’t get it. He’s using his usual engraved elfire tome and everything! Is the arena screwing with Rosado’s stats? Rosado isn’t that fast! …Yeah, what the hell? Rosado barely resists being doubled with his reduced-weight hand axe! There’s no way he’d be able to avoid getting doubled while holding a greatlance! …I… stand corrected? The thing apparently isn’t heavy at all. Huh. …Also, I checked what Sigurd has to offer now that he’s upgraded, and it turns out that Sigurd was using some weird weaker version of the real Tyrfing, because the Tyrfing he gives as an engage weapon does boost res by 5. There’s also apparently an upgraded canter that allows a 3-space move instead of a 2-space one. Good to know, though I’m not sure that’s in the budget of any of the units I’d like that on. Louis will also later kick the ceiling out of momentum and make it boost past its limit of 10 extra attack. Which wouldn’t have meant anything if I hadn’t made the decision to make him a great knight. Now it means he could potentially be doing even more damage with his new super-boosted move of 14. I wonder how much the strongest lance power costs… FIVE THOUSAND SP!? Seriously, I like these weapon skills better in concept than the weapon skills in Three Houses, but holy shit are none of them worth it in the slightest. Except the staff one. That one’s pretty great. Yunaka, perhaps predictably, has a trove of unspent SP since she hasn’t bought anything since avoid+10 back when we still had Marth. Honestly I’m probably going to wait until we get Marth back again before spending it on anything, to see if I have enough to get the maxed out version of that skill line to patch up Yunaka’s one lingering weakness. …Hmm… …I’ve been ignoring the tempest trials section… that doesn’t seem fair of me on the game. Maybe I should check this out at some point. What do you guys think? Do you guys want me to tackle the tempest trials at some point? Let me know if and when you want me to do them, and I’ll see what I can do. And with that question, I think I’m done here for the day. Alastor, signing off!

Yeah, but then at least one of them would be strong enough to break basically any opponent.

That almost isn't a joke. Brawl appears to be canon for Ike. Generics. Alternate idea: what if the brave hits had one physical attack and one magical attack?

It occurred to me there may be a very, very good reason why they decided that the bonus dragons should get from adaptable is a global +30 to your hit rate while engaged.

Engage Day 30: Corrin’s Paralogue Alright, haven’t got much time today, so if this doesn’t turn out to be as dumb and mindless as Micaiah’s I’m probably gonna have to finish this tomorrow. But anyway, let’s do Corrin’s, because apparently I can make Yunaka immune to her only fucking weakness by getting more of Corrin’s skills. Of course, Yunaka will have to temporarily shed her holy mantle and become a mere mortal woman in order for this trial to take place. But I still have Kagetsu and Louis, and as long as there’s still forest terrain somewhere she can still do something. Anyway, this seems to be the big Chapter 6 border battle between Hoshido and Nohr. Knowing the sensibilities of the game so far, though, I seriously doubt we’re getting Thorn in You. We’re probably getting Road Taken. That seems way more the style the trial themes are going for, for better or worse. Let’s see what we’ve got to work with. …Why… …I just noticed. Why are Corrin’s eyes grey? Corrin’s eyes are red. A very vivid red. And yet in Engage… …I googled to see if anyone else noticed this, and it turns out that that’s the deal with every Emblem. They all have those same eyes, rather than their own original colors. Corrin’s just the first I noticed it with, I guess. Corrin: I had three options that day. My decision meant abandoning two of my possible fates. ROLL CREDITS! So, Corrin pronounces Hoshido as “HoSHIdo”. Which is consistent with how she originally pronounced it, but interestingly, a cute, seemingly deliberate detail from Fates (knowing the game it’s entirely possibly just an accident, but I found no contradictions so…) is that while this is indeed what people not from Hoshido pronounce it as, people who are native to Hoshido pronounce it “HOshido”. …Well actually, both of the ways Ryoma canonically pronounces it are a bit weird, so I can’t be certain what his standard pronunciation is, but otherwise that seems to be the pattern. Hmmm… I wonder what they’re going to say about the choice she made. You’d think it’d be Rev, but given other things they chose to be ambiguous about… …Well they aren’t telling us now. Probably an after-battle conversation they’ll either answer or dodge the question. Only 8 unit slots, huh? And we’re where we started in Rev. But the enemy formation doesn’t seem consistent with either. Granted, I think the right side was something similar, I definitely remember fighting spear fighters at least, and wanting 1-2 range when I did it (hence the snipers)… but I know that the left side had a battalion of wyvern riders, and there’s nothing of the sort here. …Yep, there it is. Pair Up. Figured it’d be that. Immunity to chain attacks. Wow. Like, that’s literally the only thing they had left keeping Corrin from making a thief invincible. You think a mage is gonna kill Yunaka? Really? But yeah, also, unfortunately we don’t get any of the more advanced Yatos. Just the base form with the stats of an ultimate weapon. Guess the stat boosts on it were too crazy to consider giving us the Omega Yato in any capacity, and the others would’ve constituted taking sides. …And of course Corrin is a dragon unit, meaning she gets to do whatever the hell she wants with her dragon veins. This could be interesting. And of course there are stand-ins for all of Corrin’s family. A royal knight with just a staff, a swordmaster with a levin sword, fairly obvious choices here… but then they gave the Camilla stand-in a hurricane axe and I have to just laugh. Curiously, this is very obviously a river, but they’re calling it shoal because in this game units can’t wade through rivers like you could in Fates. Corrin doesn’t look all that tough. Just 20 speed. Shouldn’t be too big a deal. Okay, I’m not deploying Yunaka. As useful as she’d probably still be, I do not in any way want the end result of this chapter to be losing Yunaka literally just before she’d achieve full power. So I’m using the low deployment slots for the map as an excuse to bench her for the first time since deploying her. Likewise with Framme. Hortensia is just gonna be way more useful on this map. This map looks pretty trivial, honestly. Unless something radically changes post-deployment, I should be fine. Begin. …Okay, so they’re starting with “End of All”. OOOH! And a bit of Far Dawn and Dusk Falls! Nice picks! And now a bit of Road Taken! As I thought! Okay, so reinforcements are coming in. Alright. Gotcha. I could’ve sworn I heard someone off-handedly comment somewhere online that this was like the Yarne paralogue and you got to choose whether to fight one side, the other, or both. Guess not. Anyway, reinforcements are coming in, seemingly with no regard to which side was known for which units. Paladins from Hoshido, for one thing. Though at least the kung fu guy is on the east side. Since the Nohrian bridge is out, I’ve got my whole army storming the Hosidan side of the map. Seems like a weird choice, since Corrin is in the middle. I suppose I could wade across the river slowly through evasion-crippling waters, but why would I do that when I can just rush one side and then blitz the shit out of Corrin? One worrying thing about Corrin is that I can’t actually check her abilities to remind myself what she can do to mess with terrain, because they’re not listed under the ability. So I hope they aren’t expecting me to have memorized all of her terrain mods in order to avoid a terrifying trap. Still, I’ll keep my options open and not move myself into a corner. So the Nohrian enemies at least are storming the river and bridge, so they’ll be coming up behind me and also making it harder to get to Corrin. Okay, that’s a bit smart of the devs, keeping the Nohrian side from being irrelevant if you just choose not to go that way. …Imagine how terrifying it would be if Corrin had a multi-HP-bar dancer to represent Azura. But I guess they didn’t want to make a generic dancer model or something. So, upon reflection, I don’t think I’m all that much of a fan of the breaking system. Or specifically I don’t like it in the context that you have to land a hit and do damage to break and three of the weapons are weak to something that infamously sucks at doing damage. Kagetsu has waaaaaaay too much defense to be broken by any art user, so he’s basically just immune to the weapon advantage/disadvantage system entirely. Daggers are just busted as fuck. But also, while I like the simplicity of the system and not having to worry about evolving interactions with weapon ranks, it’s a bit of a shame that on player phase, it only matters what you’re strong against, and on enemy phase, it only matters what you’re weak against. Feels in some ways like a more neutered system than before. Still, it was a big help in keeping knights relevant, at least until Emblems could make dagger users invincible gods and Louis’s utility transitioned more to being a player-phase menace who can hit with the impact of a Sherman tank dropped from orbit. Also, these enemies on the river are sitting ducks for any flier with canter. They just can’t move enough to ever be a threat before they die. OH! SO THEY JUST SET THE FUCKING RIVER ON FIRE! Thankfully at the end of the turn. I like that they referenced the original game, but it feels weird as hell that they aren’t challenging me on dealing with the Emblem’s actual powers like they do for the others. I guess they came to the same conclusion that I did? That the interface just flat-out wouldn’t make that fair to predict? So they did a more standard map change with a guaranteed turn to react? …I just tried using Leif’s master lance on a swordmaster, only to discover it is the single most inaccurate piece of bullshit I have ever seen. Goldmary barely cracks 100 hit, before taking evasion into account, when using it. What the actual fuck is wrong with this thing? …And the fires from the Dragon Vein… were counted as being conjured on my turn… and thus disappeared after my turn ended. Thank fuck I hadn’t stuck either of the Elusian princesses near there, or they might have been in trouble. Instead, Goldmary gets a bit of unexpected combat instead. She’ll be fine. Right, time to bait in Corrin without letting her use her special, and end this battle. Kagetsu is pretty amazing. Not only is his defense flabbergasting, but his evasion is pretty kickass too, so when he isn’t engaging, he barely takes any damage from heavy-hitters anyway. Honestly, I think this is my favorite of the trial themes so far. It’s pretty damned catchy, and I like how they meshed the music together more than I usually do with this. I also like the loop transition, the part where the final “You are the ocean’s gray waves” transitions into Far Dawn. But anyway, I predict this is checkmate. If Corrin moves to take Kagetsu’s bait, she gon die. I’ve got everyone lined up to pounce her, I can set up a perfect goddess dance with Canter, she’ll attack with the stupid wakizashi because of the range I’m baiting her in at and Kagetsu will take off an entire health bar and poison her… she’s fucked. She does not, in fact, take the bait, but run straight north into the dry riverbed and summon a few piddling tiles of water. Clever girl, but alas it will not save her. I’ve got too many of my heavy hitters in range still due to the direction she ran. Because that’s the direction the enemies who had to die last player phase were coming from. The ones who had been marching across the river. So essentially she just found a different way to fuck herself. Goldmary rushes in first, now to have Hortensia and Ivy, who are too far away to contribute, heal her to full so we can get the brave assists going. …Fuck, right, she’s immune to chain attacks. No matter. She still dies this turn. Apparently Byleth’s lost and found skill doesn’t actually find you any items, which is a shame. Even if it were just Somniel doodads like ore or fish that would be pretty nice. Regardless, I’m still ripping Corrin to shreds. Kagetsu poisons her while simultaneously taking off an entire one of her health bars, and he does this twice thanks to Goddess Dance, which means that Goldmary’s Quadruple Hit manages to do enough to take away the last one. Mate in 6. So, curiously, Yato’s four slots are bright red despite still being in its base form. Curious. Anyway, I do like that Pepsiman and Corrin bond a bit over the fact that they’re both dragons whose mothers died protecting them. …And unbeknownst to both of them at the time, I just realized, their moms died protecting them from a brainwashed family member. …Another similarity is that they were both lied to about their parentage and the fact that they’re the child of the Big Bad. But they completely ignore the question of what path she chose, which is a bit of an annoying cop-out. Wouldn’t it have been infinitely more interesting if these Emblems had memories of making all of the choices, rather than keeping them from talking about any of them? I mean they aren’t even supposed to be the original heroes, right? Why not give them weird multi-timeline memories? …Oh that’s cute. The Yato has both the avoid bonus of the Hoshidan ones and the dodge bonus of the Nohrian ones. …Nope, misremembered. Apparently the Yato has neither on all paths until it gets both with Blazing, Shadow or Omega. And the Alpha gets the evasion. At least if the wiki is correct about all of this. I could’ve sworn they behaved like the weapons that powered them up and got either evasion or dodge depending on nation. Alright, let’s get back to the Somniel, get Yunaka some of these new powers, and finish up for the day. Alright, Yunaka has the Yato now, as well as Pair Up. The Hiya Papaya Messiah is now just about completely indestructible. I have profoundly mixed feelings about this development. I give Clanne the arena bouts because he’s a level away from getting his class skill now, and more speed is always nice. The random nature of the thing is starting to annoy me, because in a weird way, the game is actually incentivizing me to kill everyone I don’t want to use, because then the arena will always pick tough opponents for me and I’ll always get more EXP than the pittance I get fighting the guys I benched at the start of the game. PFFFFFFFFF Chloé: I am Chloé, knight of Firene. (Instantly gets one-shot by a raging bass-boosted fireball) Chloé: Oh dear. I wish I was recording. It was priceless. Alright, maybe I have time for a support or two, but then I have to proofread and go. Pepsiman and Ivy’s B. Yet again the support begins with Ivy staring at Pepsiman, and I almost suspect the grunt she gives was originally “jiiiiiiiiiiii” in Japanese. Pepsiman: Ivy, do you think maybe it’s time we talked? PFFFFFF Pepsiman: Can we start with why you seem to have such anger toward me? Ivy: I love you. MY FUCKING SIDES. She clarifies that this is theological love, not romantic love. But it’s still hilarious. Pepsiman: Yes, um… thank you for sharing that. Seriously, this game is so good at understated awkward comedy. I’m having a blast with a lot of these supports. Clanne and Jean’s C. Jean is lost in the forest and on the verge of tears, when Clanne finds him. …So distressed, in fact, that when he said “Hello, Clanne”, he seemed to have entirely lost his British accent. Wow, that’s some emotional distress. Everyone knows the British never drop those accents in public. Gotta keep up appearances for the rest of the world. So yeah basically they were both looking for herbs, except only Clanne came in knowing the way around the place. I wonder where they’ll go with this. There are a few things I can imagine. I doubt I’ll see them until next playthrough when I actually try to use Jean with full knowledge of growth rates. But yeah, that’s it for today. Gotta proofread this and post it, then head out and do stuff. This map was… better than yesterday’s, though not by much. It wasn’t very deep or interesting, just a simple skirmish with a handful of minor twists in it. I also think it wasn’t fair of the game to make the flames only last on my player phase, given that not all flames behave like that (some are permanent), so it wasn’t really reasonable to expect me to predict they’d vanish by the time the enemies started moving. But hey, now I’ve got Corrin at max power, so that’ll be fun. Alastor, signing off!

Honestly that would have been a really cool idea. Especially if it had a "complete in x turns" objective that turned it into an actual "reverse defense map".

Let alone the travesty of not letting Ryoma and Scarlet be a thing. Went to the trouble of giving them chemistry and everything, then made it impossible.

Reina is also an edge case. She clearly hasn't hit menopause given she can still have children, but she looks a hell of a lot older than 99% of FE female characters.

Shit, I totally forgot that! That would've been cool to see.

Personally? A sad moment where you just find a valuable in a dead and empty house. ...What. ...Okay I know whose paralogue I'm doing next. Personally I like Lyn with the Mulagir. It's a cool and fun weapon, and the Sol Katti just isn't nearly as fun. But maybe they should've tried harder to redeem it than abandon it entirely once they made the decision? I'm not too bothered. And since Lyn is "the archer Emblem" I appreciate that her ultimate weapon is a bow. It's so stupid and yet so precious at the same time, I adore it. Yeah I'm gonna give it the ol' college try. It's gonna be interesting once Leif unlocks the Light Brand, but I'll have to do some controlled tests to make sure the AI makes the right decisions about auto-equipping.

Yes but it does imply he walked all the way through Elusia to the very back of it and it only started snowing when they arrived. For shame.

Engage Day 29: Micaiah’s Paralogue Now that I know it’s not just attacking that activates Canter, but also staves and the like, I’m gonna slap it on Seadall in the hopes that it works for dancing too. Why not? It’s not like he has much of anything else to spend SP on. And now I’m enduring a battle between Seadall doing 0 damage quadrice while Sigurd does 13 at a 52% hit rate. It took aaaaages. …I just realized you actually can see the little rings, with unique models, floating over the pedestals in the ring rooms amidst the sparkling lights. That’s cool! Alright, let’s check out Micaiah’s paralogue and see if we’re up for it. Pepsiman: Hey look. It’s started snowing… …Was it… not snowing at all… in the entirety of the icy wastes of the entire country you had to walk through to get to this? Micaiah: Ike was trying to save us, but I could not let him. We needed help, but not his. …Curious way to phrase it… Funny enough, Micaiah’s usual voice is so outrageously unfitting for Radiant Dawn that when she starts recounting the events of the game her voice actively changes to something more suiting for it. It almost feels Yunaka-esque, but not really that far. Pepsiman: I think I know now why we were brought here. Teach me how you never broke in the face of despair and fear, Micaiah. …That makes it sound like we’re going to be playing the role of Ike in this map. Are we playing the role of Ike in this map!? …No, we are not. In hindsight, I don’t know why I would have been excited for that. Defense maps are awesome. But alas, the aesthetics of this map recreation have been completely butchered. The ledges have been replaced with regular walls, and while there does seem to be some elevation change with the stairs, you really have to squint to notice that it isn’t a flat plane. It’s honestly disappointing. When Fates recreated a map from this game, it at least did its best to replicate the effects of the ledge system it didn’t have, by making the visuals of the map the same and giving the tops of the ledges terrain bonuses at least. Also, it seems like Micaiah gets a multi-HP-bar thief with her to represent Sothe. I was hoping maybe the rest of the Dawn Brigade would be mirrored in the allies around her, but nope, not quite. There’s a sniper and a swordmaster amongst the three other allies closest to her, granted… but the third is a hero. With a sword. With an unused weapon rank in lances. No dice for Nolan. Like the original, this is covered in ballistae, but they all demand bow users to use, and we no longer have a massive retinue of yellow archers to man them. None of them are magic-using ones, and there’s only one anyone-can-use-them flame cannon at the center of the map. So basically it’s damned near physically impossible to have a party equipped to make much use of these things on the map. And since ballistae in this game aren’t direction-dependent, they’re really more of a liability than an asset, because if we lose any ground whatsoever in the fort, enemy bow users will be able to use them to attack us. Amazingly enough, Micaiah doesn’t have any staves with her. None. No rescue, no warp, no physic, not even a damned heal staff. Honestly, of all the places to encounter warp staff bullshit, I was expecting this battle to be the biggest offender. …Okay, I’m heading back to the Somniel for some stuff. First off, gotta use my three arena training sessions. Honestly, I don’t think Goldmary has managed to contribute much of anything so far. Not even Brave Assist. She just hasn’t gotten to any of the bosses by the time I actually fight them. Which is weird, because she’s not even that slow. …Well she has a huge stockpile of SP, and I have a huge stockpile of bond fragments. Let’s see if I can give her any skills that would give her an edge… First, let’s max out her relationship with Leif. Get her that master lance, for one. Goldmary: You know, Leif, I wouldn’t blame you if you began to develop feelings for me. Leif: I already have feelings about you, Goldmary. I think you and I will make good friends! SHOTS FIRED! WOMAN DOWN! Goldmary: I’m sorry if my dazzling grace distracts you in battle. I’m afraid it’s out of my control. Leif: No need to apologize. If by some chance I were distracted, it would be my fault, not yours. Leif is oblivious as shit and I love it. That seems to be another thing this game is good at, it’s like with Alfred: endearingly oblivious characters shrugging off hostile subtext and getting to the heart of things. Honestly I kinda wish I managed to make Alfred good before benching him, he would have been fun to keep seeing supports with. So now Goldmary has a build of 13, and the Master Lance. If I reclass her to a sword-and-axe-using hero instead of a sword-and-lance-using hero, I can give her a tomahawk (she won’t be nearly as weighed down as she should be) and she’ll be able to have 1-2 range with all three weapons of the triangle once she gets Leif’s Light Brand after we do Leif’s paralogue. …Fuck, she’s not good enough with axes to use the tomahawk. Well, I can still give her a good solid hand axe. Alright, when I get back from my mid-morning errands, I’m going to try and see if I can forge a good hand axe for Goldmary. Or maybe she’ll get the Celica-engraved one I currently have on Rosado, since it’s more defensive, and give the new one to Rosado instead. We’ll see how it turns out. I took Leif’s engrave off of Liberation and put it on my new second hand axe +4. It’s as strong as her silver sword, and just barely light enough that she suffers no penalties. Alright, that sounds good. …I just realized that Rosado’s comment when he likes food (that he wants to draw a picture of it first) is the medieval fantasy equivalent of Instagramming your food. I don’t know how to feel about that. But anyway, Vander made an A rank meal, and all older units get doubled bonuses to strength, magic, speed and defense, plus one res. So that’s Louis, Yunaka, Ivy, Kagetsu and Seadall. Awesome, that’s all three of my major tanks on that list! Okay then, now for skills. I think I’m gonna give Goldmary Speedtaker and Resolve. She doesn’t quite have enough for both, so I’ll get Speedtaker first and then worry about resolve later. Goldmary: I envy how cool and intimidating you are in battle, Lyn. I’m much too charming for all that. Jesus Christ these levels of passive-aggressive backhandery are off the fucking charts. Lyn is completely unphased and positive though: Lyn: No shortage of confidence in you, is there? It’s well earned, though. You work hard at it. …Shit, right, Speedtaker is 2,000, not 1,000. Then let’s give her Resolve and Speed+3. She can afford that. Plus, I wanna see how she interacts with Ike. I really, really, really wanna see how this unhinged, toxic narcissist interacts with Ike. Goldmary: Hello, Ike. I’m sorry if you find my charisma totally overwhelming. Ike: Please tell me this isn’t how everyone in your kingdom talks. MY FUCKING SIDES. Okay, I need to see more of this conversation. But not now. Not until I know for sure there isn’t some crazy bullshit with Marth and Celica I’ll want to spend bond fragments on. …Right, now to boost her bond with Lyn some more to get Speed+3… …Which made me realize that unlike Warriors, Engage faithfully recreated Lyn’s “is she even wearing underwear” look. Now, I get why Warriors did that, since with the camera going all over the place and playable characters jumping around, that was just asking for trouble. But it’s nice to see the original look faithfully recreated here. …Also, curious thing about the interface: when the game tells you an Emblem is boosting your avoid, it’s not just counting speed boosts, but also build boosts resulting in a lack of weapon weight. Interesting. Especially since that doesn’t happen for speed. It doesn’t say the Emblem is boosting Goldmary’s speed at all. Okay, now let’s do the handful of supports I unlocked. Pepsiman and Seadall’s B. Seadall: I beg you to tell me… will this food offer the perfect fuel for my dance? Either he’s consulting the tarot cards for a food’s nutrition facts, or he needs food to get in the dancing mood. Honestly, the former would be hilarious. …But it seems to be the latter. Oh god, when Pepsiman talks to Seadall about how he’s not acting like his usual self with his food cravings, Pepsiman looks genuinely fearful for Seadall’s sanity, like he’s staging an intervention. I can’t stop giggling. …The inflection of Pepsiman’s line here, though… is questionable. Seadall: Are you telling me that eating this will provide me the perfect fuel for my dance? It’s dough fried in butter and then bathed in an oil sauce… and it’s incredibly delicious. Pepsiman’s response: Pepsiman: Oh, I had one of those. It was delicious, alright. I’d think it’d be extra fuel for your dance. Now, given that Seadall has already introduced the concept of “fuel for a dance” into the conversation, you’d think that Pepsiman’s voice actor would read this line with emphasis on the “extra”, as in “oh, definitely!”. But no, he reads “I think it’d be extra fuel for your dance” as if he is the one introducing that concept into the conversation for the first time. Very awkward read. But in fairness, it’s an awkward line. “I mean, I think I do know”. And here’s the opposite problem. The context does suggest that he’s only guessing, hence emphasis on the “think”, which the voice actor does. But the fact that “do” is even in the line all but demands that the emphasis be on that “do”, which wouldn’t fit the context of the line at all. But anyway, Seadall takes his food inspiration seriously, and it’s simultaneously comical over-seriousness and also sensible. His dancing is an actual, vital skill on the front lines, and he’s worried if his dancing isn’t perfect because he didn’t eat the right food to inspire it, someone will die due to his inadequacy. Kagetsu and Seadall’s B. So Kagetsu seems annoyed by the uselessness of his predictions to Seadall. He predicts his next performance will be packed, but they always are. He predicts rain, but the clouds are already visible. Kagetsu: You see? Useful as cooling fans in winter. …Oh shit, Seadall’s teacher, the one who taught him to dance, was murdered by thieves. And he has survivor’s guilt over the fact that his fortune-telling didn’t predict it to save him. …And he proceeds to predict something horrible happening to Kagetsu, through a death card in the upright position. I have to say, that’s a nice way to end a B support on a cliffhanger that doesn’t in any way call into question how they’d still fight better together. Rosado and Seadall’s B. …And Seadall.. is watching Rosado sleep. He’s apparently been spying on Rosado for ages and still can’t figure out his “secret”. …I am going to laugh out loud if this entire support “conversation” happens without Rosado even knowing it took place. Apparently not only does Rosado not use moisturizer… he doesn’t even use shampoo. He also apparently washes his face and hair by dunking them in the lake, fully clothed. HOLY SHIT! THIS ENTIRE SUPPORT HAPPENED WITHOUT ROSADO’S KNOWLEDGE! ROSADO NOW FIGHTS BETTER AROUND SEADALL AND HAS NO EARTHLY CLUE WHY! Saphir and Diamant’s C. …This conversation apparently takes place back at Brodia Castle. Saphir apparently considers herself emotionally unworthy to fight Diamant because she can’t get past the hatred in hear heart brought about by the war with Elusia. I’m assuming she means towards Elusia, but she doesn’t explicitly say. Alright, let’s take another look at this map. So, if Micaiah doesn’t have any staff-related tricks up her… opera gloves… then it seems like I can just rush the bulk of these fuckers with Kagetsu and Yunaka and make quick work of this map. I’m guessing there’ll be some post-deploy complication I’ll be told about, because otherwise this just looks so painfully easy to cheese. Alright, let’s try this. …Yet again I’m not a fan of the interpretation of Radiant Dawn’s music, though I do like how it starts with that recurring leitmotif heard all over the soundtrack. Yep, Canter does indeed work on dancing. Good to confirm! Alright, so, Yunaka and Kagetsu can indeed handle the initial side cavalry just fine, and the enemies rushing up front will be easy to manage. …Okay, yeah, there are reinforcements. A good deal on them right before the beginning of turn 3. But after dancing around some backup units, Yunaka is now in a position to start baiting in Micaiah on turn 4, who stands absolutely no chance against the Hiya Papaya Messiah, and even without engaging, none of the reinforcements can hurt Kagetsu. Not even the backups, because they literally can’t survive a round of combat with Kagetsu in order to line up for chain attacks. Yunaka: I’ve never been great at fighting magic users, so… maybe go easy on me? Is that a reference to how mages are supposedly the hard counter to thieves? Well lucky her, her evasion is off the charts even without the fog. But anyway Micaiah responds saying no, of course she can’t, and talks about how it’s her job to “guide [her] to somewhere new”… Yeah, again, I’m sorry, the way these people talk about this makes the fact that death is for real in these kind of obscenely creepy. Oh hey, some wolf knights finally arrive! I was expecting more of those, y’know, because this map was crawling with laguz last time. But I guess this is a role reversal where now Daein is the one sieging the place. Right, time to have Kagetsu lure the Sothe stand-in over to my main army so we can fuck him up and take his lunch money. Success! Kagetsu even dodged the poison and critted Sothe’s first HP bar away! Yunaka has Micaiah dead to rights with her last HP bar right on time, so I’ll just blitz Sothe for the money, forget the others, and kill Micaiah to end the fight. Alcryst got a really weird level up. HP, Mag, Res and Build. Well, build is always nice! …So, a small nitpick I have about the game, now that I’ve beaten Micaiah: The transition from boss music to victory music always feels jarring. Frankly, how I would have done it would be to give every boss theme both the intro they already have… and an outro. A triumphant finale to the song. A way to transition from the intense boss music into the victory screen, which generally feels rather abrupt and incongruous as the game stands. Micaiah: Well done. You passed the trial safely. She says. And would still say if someone died. …Oh right, Micaiah can predict the future. They bring it up just now for the first time in this game as if it’s something well-established by previous conversations, so it was a bit jarring. Now then, let’s see what Clanne can do now, do some cleanup, and finish for the day. God damn it, the line read for Micaiah’s “You did it!” when you talk to her on the post-battle map makes her sound like a kindergarten teacher. Given that this is a character who canonically marries a man she met as a prepubescent boy, that’s more than a little creepy. Okay, so Rosado and Eirika got to rank B during this, so can’t forget to check on that bond convo. So now Rosado gets the wind sword, a magic weapon. And his magic isn’t atrocious, so maybe he’ll actually have some use for that against fliers. I got Clanne to level 15 with Micaiah, and honestly, that staff mastery skill is pretty damned tempting for him. It could make him a menace with status staves. …When Clanne uses obstruct… does he make five obstacles? …Something to test, something to test. …I have to wonder what the point is of having staves with ranks below C though. There’s no weapon rank growth, and I haven’t seen a single class with a weapon rank below C, so what’s the point in making a distinction? For the purposes of Lindon’s skill for weapons, it still kinda makes sense… but what purpose does it serve for staves? Goldmary just unlocked a support with Lapis in the arena. I wonder how that’ll go? …And with Saphir. Oh I’m really curious how that one will turn out. Apparently Goldmary’s “bad level up line” is apologizing if the speed of her growth intimidates me. Gaslighting, much? Now then, supports. Wow, got a lot of them. Pepsiman and Kagetsu’s B. …Kagetsu’s asking Pepsiman about his hair. And Pepsiman fairly considers that he doesn’t actually know if his hair is common among dragons. …Kagetsu says that in his homeland, “it is the Dragons of the East who are worshipped, not the Divine or Fell”. …Okay, the east. So that pretty solidly takes out Firene unless, like, he means the east of Firene or something. Solm is looking more likely, but could he perhaps mean east of Elyos entirely? Pepsiman talks about the “Dragons of the East” as if he knows what they are. And then asks about Kagetsu’s homeland. Oh boy. Here it comes! Kagetsu: It is part of the Queendom of Solm, but remote. Well, guess that answers that question! Mystery finally solved! So Kagetsu’s actually royal, and ventured away from home because he hated how insular his culture was and wanted to explore the world. Iiiiiinteresting… Pepsiman and Rosado’s B. …Rosado refers to positive attention from others as “likes”. …That’s the second time today Rosado has acted like a modern-day social media influencer. I’m… a bit alarmed. Pepsiman and Goldmary’s C. Oh, this should be good. She apparently threw a picnic for Pepsiman, as she’s asking at the campsite if the meal was to his satisfaction. …She asks him to look her in the eyes like a goddamned succubus with hypno powers, and she’s clearly hitting on him. Goldmary: You have such an intense gaze… Tell me what you’re feeling in this moment. Pepsiman: Hmm… nothing much, really… PFFFFFF …Okay now she’s whispering in his ear and this genuinely is starting to feel like sexual harassment. Pepsiman is completely, adorably oblivious, however, and just asks for the recipe for the meal. Honestly, I kind of want Charlotte to be a DLC Emblem, as utterly implausible as that is, just to see her interactions with Goldmary and Pepsiman. Alcryst and Seadall’s A. Yeah, figures this would be among the first A supports I’d get. Dancers and archers interact a lot. Yeah, this is about what I’d expect. Alcryst getting disillusioned about Seadall’s lifestyle and feeling guilty about assuming it was so carefree. It’s funny how Alcryst is really over-the-top and unnecessary in his apologies when he hasn’t really done anything wrong… but his apologies for when he does start resembling being in the wrong, like this, are far more normal and sober. Goldmary and Saphir’s B. …Goldmary has egg on her face because she completely fucked up in catching the fish for the contest. Lucky for her, Saphir caught great fish for both of them, and Goldmary’s narcissistic train of thot can’t process the concept of this act of decency. …At least for a moment, before she returns the gesture by sharing some rare herbs she planned to keep to herself. It’s nice enough. Goldmary and Lapis’s C. …Ooh, apparently Goldmary’s parents run a hot spring inn! …The inn… is having trouble with bears… …I uh… …I seem to remember hot springs and bears being a thing that came up in Awakening, but I can’t pinpoint exactly where. If so, is this a reference to that, or are bears just a common problem with hot springs in Japan? PFFFFFFFFF Lapis is apparently a comically ballsy tomboy who regularly shouts at bears to scare them away. Her delivery of these lines is pretty great. …I wonder how this is going to end. Something tells me that something will go wrong with the advice to just shout at them to leave. But I’ll have to find out later, and probably put in some effort to see it happen outside the arena. Regardless, that’s it for now. Today’s map was honestly pretty disappointing. It should’ve been a genuine “survive” map where I had to hunker down and outlast them against terrifying forces, but no real care was put into making the map even remotely resemble the original in terms of how it played. The map felt like a farcical mockery of the original map, which was one of the most intense moments of Radiant Dawn. The music being covered in a style that didn’t remotely fit the original tone certainly didn’t help. Actually, I think so far I’d consider the Emblem paralogues the weakest part of the game. Ironically I think the best one was Byleth’s so far. …Maybe I’ll do another mainline map next time. Probably not, I’ve still got so many paralogues. Alastor, signing off.

The intro cinematic of the prologue gives him Lucina for some reason.

If something seems outrageous I should probably keep in mind that I have Sigurd, Byleth and Micaiah now. Cross-warping, 10+ mov, and quad-dancing. I might be able to do some crazy warp skips.

Engage Day 28: Roy’s Paralogue Okay! So! Apparently there’s a veritable trove of bond fragments I’ve been obliviously sitting on! Let’s see this… … …I just went from 1,497 bond fragments… to 21,932. The act of collecting them was initially exhausting as all fuck until I noticed the “collect all” option and promptly did that to preserve my sanity against that goddamned jingle. Okay then! LET’S USE SOME OF THIS SHIT. So I did an arena battle with Ivy, let it run in the background while I looked online for something, then heard: Byleth: I’m not setting a very good example. Ivy: Lucky, I suppose. PFFFFFF …Okay, “Lost and Found” is a pretty cute call-back skill idea. I hated the game and I can still acknowledge that it’s cute that Byleth can find items and build support points by chance when ending turns next to an ally. Kagetsu lost a battle with Ike, but he fought valiantly, getting two crits in. And since he didn’t need to win, he now has Ragnell! But that’s just peanuts. He was nearly there anyway. Let’s see what else I can do with this bounty. …Hey! Let’s get some of those supports with Ivy and Corrin! If nothing else, I’ll get the option to buff her max HP later. So apparently it’s entirely fine to attack in melee with the Wakizashi in the arena. Ivy: It must be terribly boring to follow a surly one like me around. You have my apologies. Corrin: On the contrary, I’m very entertained. I enjoy seeing all the subtle ways you express yourself. REALLY? No talk of the conflict of having to fight your homeland!? That is such a depressing missed opportunity! But anyway, let’s get Alcryst Mulagir, and then have Kagetsu and Ike max out their bond. Kagetsu asks Ike about the mercenaries he had under his command, feeling they must’ve been very strong. I find it weirdly endearing that the people he mentions (by class and talent, not by name) as being particularly talented are Soren and Shinon, the two hardest-to-get-along-with of his group. And this conversation is actually four lines long, not just two! Nice! Sounds like Kagetsu’s about to get a story of Titania. Oh yeah! Notification just reminded me of an idle thought I set a reminder to talk about: I wonder how they’ll keep bosses interesting when we have all the Emblems. They’ve really been relying on a lot of Emblems being in the enemy’s possession to spice up boss fights, so I wonder what’ll happen when I get all twelve, which I imagine is gonna happen a good bit before the endgame. Kagetsu now has a defense of 31 between his maxed out Emblem and the newly-obtained defense+4. Kickass. He also has Resolve+, meaning it’ll get up to 38, which is Louis’s defense. …I accidentally clicked to fast-travel to the same room I was in, and thankfully, while the game didn’t prevent this, it also didn’t unload and re-load the room or anything, so no loading screen. I got Framme her tome proficiency through Micaiah, and Micaiah made weird fucking sounds when Framme repeatedly punched her. But hearing Framme and Micaiah’s bond reminds me: Micaiah is another character where I can’t imagine this voice actress actually saying any of Micaiah’s lines from the original game. This Micaiah is insufferably saccharine. Meanwhile the Micaiah of Radiant Dawn had a lot of heavy shit to say, not to mention a lot of cold snark. She has a lot more in common with Soren than her depiction here would remotely suggest. Emblem Ike is honestly psychotically strong whenever anyone fights him in the arena, and I don’t see how anyone could defeat him with a physical attack. …Alright, I’ve worked my way through just about 10,000 of that windfall of bond fragments, so I’ll keep that remaining bit-more-than-half for when I get the remaining Emblems in case I get any sudden ideas. Now to feed Lilith, grab items, and then look for Roy’s paralogue, which completely slipped my notice during the initial investigation. …The level recommendation for Roy’s is actually the highest of all of the ones I’ve seen, but it’s apparently one of the easiest? Alright, let’s see what we’re dealing with then. “Binding Grounds”… …Is this what they renamed the Shrine of Seals to after they decided Sword of Seals wasn’t a good name? Hell, I didn’t think that was a bad name even back in Melee when I thought it was referring to the animal! I mean hell, why not? Marth had a dolphin slash! …Please let this be the FE7 version of the shrine approach. Lyn’s was from FE6, it’s only fair! I like Roy’s VA’s acting here recounting the battle. It actually makes me believe he was there. Pepsiman: Battle you? But why? UGGGGGHHHHH …Anyway, no, it’s not the FE7 one, it’s the FE6 one. And it’s kind of hilarious seeing the scale difference here. Not just in the fact that the map has gone from 32x36 to 24x26, but in that the huge, fuck-off mountains the GBA games were famous for are now just boulders barely ten feet high. I guess that’s what happens when you take a map made with no sense of map-to-unit scale in mind and then try to put it in a game that does try to make things seem proportionate. …Roy’s level 40. He has 30 speed, and until Yunaka debuffs him literally nobody in my army has the speed to double him. …Now, Jotari, you said you would, and I quote, “rate this paralogue as the easiest of the bunch”… …But you also said you were, and I quote, “an awful person who hopes all of [my] digital friends die”. And given this is also based on one of the most infamously challenging maps in all of Fire Emblem… …I have a feeling you might be trying to trick me into fucking myself up by committing to a challenge that has really powerful enemies and nasty reinforcements. Well I’m not falling for it, Jotari. I am not gullibly walking into this challenge for your sick and twisted amusement. I am deliberately walking into this challenge for your sick and twisted amusement. Because I am a let’s player. And let’s players do not turn a blind eye to entertaining challenges. Even if it’s a trap. Even if it’s strategically unwise. Let’s do this. First, off, CHECK THE FUCKMOTHERING STAFF USERS. Happily, it seems there aren’t any. Good to know. …HMMMMM… A bunch of wyvern knights with exactly 17 speed, all of them wielding axes? When Kagetsu just got Ragnell, which he has 22 speed with? SOUNDS LIKE A SIGN TO ME. …But that reminds me I forgot to make a meal. And yeah, something boosting speed and defense would be wise. Okay, so I made veal rolls, and I don’t know what black magic fuckery Timerra’s doing to the meat I give her to retroactively make it harvested specifically from baby cows, but the results are passable. Saphir is apparently afraid of heights. I’m sure some deranged asshole has made her a wyvern knight specifically after hearing this, but I won’t be doing that, no sir. …Mostly because I’m not using her, but still. …Also, I decided against giving Louis the talisman. In hindsight that was probably a mistake with the previous ones, and Kagetsu would probably get more mileage out of the talismans now. So he will. Ivy gets the goddess icon, Hortensia gets the seraph robe. Alright, that sounds about right. Now then, let’s get back to assessing the map. I can pretty easily take out the mages below between Clanne, Ivy and Alcryst (the lattermost with Seadall’s dance to boost him the rest of the way over). Kagetsu will take the wyverns on the right side and utterly annihilate them with Ragnell (which is inferior to his ultra-forged silver dagger in every way, hilariously enough, except for that whopping +5 defense, but fuck it, that 5 defense is awesome and also fucking Ragnell), and then after that, he’ll use his earth-shattering defensive powers to press the advantage against the generals and snipers. No backup units anywhere that I can see, because Bern didn’t know about the Engage meta. But if he needs help, I’ll have some healers tailing him. Meanwhile, if the southern group gets into trouble, they’ve got Yunaka. Nuff said. Now to press on with this, stay vigilant, and keep my options open in case reinforcements send everything to hell. Begin. Okay, as expected, Roy’s music is “Beneath a New Light”, though I’m not a particular fan of the way they covered it. Though let’s see the battle music first before I judge any further. Yeah I’m not a fan of how they did the chord progressions here. They aren’t anything like the original, in a somewhat unsettling way. Honestly, most of these trial themes feel like they were written by someone who wasn’t really a huge fan of the original songs and wanted to do something weird and experimental with them, only sounding as much like the original songs as they had to. Kind of a disappointment in general, which is a shame, given how much I like the music in this game and the series in general. One thing I’ve noticed… remember how I said the Vajra-Mushti looked weird in Byleth’s inventory? That’s because for some reason, all of an Emblem’s weapons are monochrome when they’re on the Emblems and not on you. Not sure why. Pepsiman: Is that the sound of huge wings? It sounds like wyverns! I KNEW IT! I KNEW THERE WOULD BE REINFORCEMENTS! Goddammit, and they say “advance with caution”. They’re proximity-based again probably. Hopefully not full-out same-turn tripwire, but the game has done that on at least one occasion, so my faith is a bit shaken. …Oh thank goodness, they’re end-of-turn. Awesome. Alright, that should be no problem. For some reason, these snipers have more defense than the wyvern knights. Don’t know why, but while Yunaka couldn’t take out any of the enemies she baited in, there’s more than enough player-phase muscle in her group to finish the job. …Oh shit. I just had Alcryst use Astra Storm… and realized that Luna procced on individual attacks. So you can’t crit on it, but you can proc skills. Damn, that could make Alcryst devastating. And it also means I shouldn’t necessarily “not bother” Astra Storming a high-defense target just because it says it’ll do no damage. If I’m desperate, then I should keep in mind that there’s a chance it’ll do something. …More reinforcements showed up, and they were in more awkward positions this time, but thankfully Rosado managed to block off one of the ones closer to my start point, allowing Framme a single space to reach unharmed that didn’t involve backing herself into a corner. Honestly, canter is insanely handy. It lets you do things like, say, kill a wyvern rider with your archer while still letting him move to a slightly out-of-the-way energy tile to refill his engage meter. Or reposition your glass cannons for a goddess dance. …I only needed to do the former this turn though. Aaaaaand all the remaining fliers charged once I got in range of the wyrm. Alright, no big deal, Kagetsu’s got his engage back and Yunaka is Yunaka, and those are the only ones in too deep to retreat. A Mulagir Astra Storm completely unmakes the wyrm, and then all of the wyverns completely ignore the supremely untouchable Yunaka for the far more DPS-stable Kagetsu they do a piddling 1 damage to. Unfortunately, I probably would have been happier using the Astra Storm on the meteor mage at the bottom of the map. But fuck it, let’s just press on while Kagetsu still has his engage. Weirdly, if you have basic resolve equipped and also equip Ike while high enough bond that he grants you Resolve+, then despite the original redundant skill being greyed out, you get +5 from “effect” and then +2 from “emblem”, as if it’s applying the greyed out skill first. Alright, I entered the shrine’s attack range… and weirdly, only Roy moved out to challenge me. Well, thankfully there aren’t too many of the wyvern knight reinforcements. I’ll have my army head down to catch up with Kagetsu and Yunaka while they soften Roy up for us. Incidentally, so, I finally worked out through experimentation (and actually using it) what the hell the deal with Call Doubles is. Basically, they stay put there until your engage ends… but they chain attack with you for all of the rest of your attacks in that engage, wherever they happen to be. That’s pretty badass, and really turns Alcryst into a DPS menace. Alright, I’m laying on the hurt on Roy. He’s paralyzed, debuffed, poisoned, all the wyverns are dead, and hey, I can even position a goddess dance to take out the gold-toting meteor mage in the shrine! Oh cool! Alcryst gets a conversation with Roy! …Alcryst predictably questions why Roy’s deigning to fight him due to his self-esteem issues, and Roy assures him he’s a worthy opponent… which would make this absolutely comical if this conversation happened on enemy phase and proceeded to result in a dead-for-real Alcryst. Disappointingly, Lyn has nothing to say to Roy. But anyway, that was the final blow. Honestly, I’m getting the feeling you were telling the truth when you were saying this map was easy, Jotari. …So Pepsiman reminds Roy of Idunn. Which is apparently pronounced Ee-dune, emphasis on the first syllable. I figured it was more like Idunn, emphasis on the second. I imagine Pepsiman has to be quite confused as to why he’s being compared to a traumatized and corrupted divine dragon. Though yes, in fairness, the heterochromia is a thing. …Goddamn it, Pepsiman’s exaggerated bend-over when asking whether Roy spared or killed Idunn is absolutely absurd. He seems honestly childish here. And also, Roy says he’ll tell him after the war is over. So is the good ending not necessarily canon then, and they’re weaseling their way out of confirming? …I’ve gotta wonder if anyone lives in this un-visitable house, and what their opinion is about the weird shit Emblem chaos magic did to their lawn. …Well, alright, I think that’s my entry for the day. Tomorrow I think I’ll try yet another paralogue. Probably Micaiah’s, because I know for certain that Clanne still stands a lot to gain by bonding more with her. Especially increased staff rank. Alastor, signing off!

I heard Mekkah say a similar thing about her in Warriors, that she's a perfect fit for Warriors' cheesy nonsense.

... Thank you very much, and noted.

Oh no, he's pretty great for other things, it's just that's the only thing I use that silver bow for. I use the longbow for regular attacks.

That sure would've been a sight. I wonder how cool camels would've managed to be, it seems suspect. That sounds plausible. Still, nice catch. Well yes, but Alcryst's super-heavy Ike-engraved silver bow has exactly two functions right now: 1: Being Alcryst's strongest bow when using Astra Storm. 2: Maybe letting Alcryst do chip damage to generals. Mulagir completely obsoletes the first and primary purpose (since Astra Storm can only be used while Mulagir is available), which is making me think maybe I should give someone else a super strong, super heavy weapon for use with specials. The specific tone and way she read it out sounded like a child learning to read. Also the grammar was a bit basic and simplistic. ...Oh shit, did any of the others I already beat have hidden items? Weird. I would've bet anything that the talisman would've been the harder one to get.

Engage Day 27: Lyn and Byleth Paralogues Alright, it’s been a while, let’s do some paralogues. Maybe more than one if we can manage. But for now, let’s start with Lyn’s. Okay, I realized I hadn’t quite finished up my Somniel maintenance, so I’m finishing that up real quick, and I can’t help but notice that the item shop has shields on the wall. Were they originally planning on bringing shields back, or at least the concept of equippable items? I mean, Thyrsus feels kind of out of place in a game that doesn’t have them. Needless to say the paralogue I’m most scared shitless of doing is Corrin’s, as it means by necessity that Yunaka won’t have Corrin with her. I’m gonna wait until I really outclass that one before I do it. Let’s see, what’s the recommended level incidentally…? …If I recall correctly, that’s one level below what they said Eirika’s was! NO FUCKING THANKS! Lyn’s it is! …And they’ve decided it is pronounced Sa-kay!? That’s how I pronounced it as a kid, but everyone fucking insisted to me it was Sa-kah due to the Japanese version! I personally think Sa-kay sounds better, so I’m a happy camper, though I wonder how other people who went by the Japanese pronunciation feel about this. …God damn, hearing Lyn talk about the brutal slaughter of her people is incredibly irritating, because she seems to have the tone of a kid’s show narrator talking about how Caillou was bummed that everybody was too busy to pay attention to him. It’s not even that Wendee Lee is a bad actress! I’ve seen some of the stuff she’s been in, and she knows how to emote, certainly at least better than she’s doing here. It just seems like her interpretation of the character is terrible. And if she doesn’t change it, then her performance in a hypothetical FE7 remake is likely to bring the whole thing disgustingly, depressingly down. …They don’t mention a trial this time! They just go into it like they know the drill, which is nice. Personally I’d say better to make the first time seem a little too aware than make the other 11 a little too oblivious. …Oh shit. OH SHIT. From the appearance on the map I thought we were doing “Prologue: A Girl from the Plains”. We’re not. We’re doing the fucking Sacae gaiden from the Binding Fuckmothering Blade. Complete with separating our army between three different spots. They’ve also recreated… for the most part… the enemy makeup of that map. Cool touch, but it feels a bit weird, for two reasons: 1: It’s kinda sad that the aesthetics of the bow knight and magic using classes don’t remotely fit with the Sacaean aesthetics. If they gave different classes different looks in different countries, or made more classes native to distinct countries, I imagine making bow knights Solmic (makes sense, given that Fogado is their representative among the main cast) would make the aesthetics work more here. 2: Those wyverns are the Sacae traitors’ Bernian… Bernic… Bernese…? …allies. So it feels weird having Lyn allied with them. 3: Just generally using a map from Binding Blade instead of Blazing Blade feels so weird to me. This is supposed to be FE7’s time for representation, not a second go of 6. Gameplaywise I love this, it looks like it’ll be fun (though probably easier than it should have been). But beyond that, I question the choice. …This is gonna be a curb stomp battle. I just looked at their stats. Holy shit, the scariest part of this is probably how sub-Marianian my guard is right now with how pathetic their stats are. …Shit, right, I should put Roy on someone. Fuck it, let’s just slap Roy on Alcryst for now. …Oh wow, they really did not design the space swapping animation for when spaces are far apart. It looks so weird seeing them move in seeming slow motion orbit. Unless they announce a gimmick post-deployment, it looks like there’s no need to fish through the various tents for Lyn. She’s right out there, and the bosses are just for gold. Thank goodness for that. Okay, so, before I start, something’s been bugging me: I don’t like how “swap spaces” is called “swap spaces”. Because it’s also the only option that lets you get a good look at the map, so it should have been called something like “view map”. I dunno, the fact that it’s called “swap spaces” just doesn’t really sit well with me. Alright, I think I’m ready for this. Let’s go. …Okay, so the tents have reinforcements, and we need to attack them to stop the reinforcements. Fair enough. Better than the original gimmick, to be sure. Okay, I’d say I like this map theme. It’s far from the best music that FE7 has to offer, but it fits Lyn perfectly, so it’s fair enough. I barely even feel like discussing strategy. I really should have done this sooner, and I’m probably better served spending my time today breezing through this rather than taking the time to write and edit anything about what I’m doing. If anything interesting happens, I promise I’ll let you know. And honestly this is making me think that I should do the rest of the paralogues now rather than later, so they don’t all eventually get this boring by the time I have the nerve to do them. Losing Merrin sucked, but it was probably more interesting to read about than this. Yeah, I basically just rushed in and kicked their asses, killing the bosses (you don’t have to visit or anything) and making my way towards Lyn. I beat all the ger bosses in 6 turns. No reinforcements spawned by the time I killed the last one. Now for Lyn. She might actually be a bit complicated due to the fact that she’s anti-cavalry and my cavalry are the ones that got there first. Interestingly, Lyn doesn’t have her third weapon, which I’m assuming is either Mulagir or Sol Katti. I’m hoping Mulagir, since that’d be better for Alcryst. Well, we’ll find out what it is after we win. And now Lyn’s active, and her attack range has expanded to include both her movement range and Astra Storm, which I’m really grateful the attack range before wasn’t lying about when it didn’t take it into account. That would have suuuuucked. But yeah, she went down pretty quick once the forces just a turn behind caught up. Kagetsu, Yunaka and Rosado made quick work of her. INTERESTINGLY, when Lyn’s talking about the friends that helped her grow beyond the person she’d been just from growing up on the plains, she explicitly refers to Eliwood and Hector, not the tactician. That’s interesting and encouraging, because I’ve seen fairly strong arguments that Awakening and Heroes were trying to lean her into kind of… obsessing over the avatar, as it were, and having each new avatar remind her of them. Not even finding out that Pepsiman woke up with no idea how he got where he was, surrounded by unfamiliar people, springs up memories of the tactician like it did for her with Robin in Awakening. So, I looked inside some of these huts, and… aren’t these things supposed to be for nomads? They seem… incredibly well furnished with heavy, hard-to-pack-up wooden furniture and a huge fuck-off metal oven-stove thing. Sooooomething tells me this isn’t 100% historically accurate to the nomadic lifestyle. Alright, what new stuff have we unlocked with Lyn? Woooo! Mulagir! Excellent! And Alcryst’s just bulky enough to carry it without consequences and enjoy the full 5 speed boost! Looking forward to getting my hands on that! …Once I do, Alcryst’s silver bow will be completely pointless, since it has the same might. Hmmm… I should keep that in mind and see if anyone else can use a weapon to buff their special, and switch the bond to that. …I’ve decided to give Roy to Ivy for now. Roy’s surprisingly mage-friendly. Rise Above boosts your level, which works just as well for mages as for warriors, and Hold Out is great for anyone you expect to be in danger of dying from a screw-up. Which works great for fragile fliers who may or may not have very recently been literally one speedwing short of a corpse on the road. She’ll probably get Celica once I get her, though. Okay, I just wanna say, I think I’ve concluded that the music in this game is from real instrument recordings. But if it isn’t, holy shit, props to whoever composed this for including the little metallic slides across the acoustic guitar strings in the Somniel theme. And we’ve got some supports, okay, let’s check these out… Framme and Kagetsu’s C. …Framme sounds like a child reading aloud when she’s writing her letter to her parents. It’s weird. But hey yeah! Both Kagetsu and Framme have family at home! And when Kagetsu says that not all parents are like Framme’s, worrying about her when they don’t hear from her, that makes me think his relationship with his family is more strained. And yep, Kagetsu says he hasn’t gotten any letters from home. Because he ran away from home and didn’t say where he was going. And evidently they haven’t heard of him becoming an Elusian retainer, so that pretty solidly confirms he’s not from Elusia. And yeah, “Pale Sands” does hint at Solm. And there are some very conspicuously pale sands at the top border between Solm and Elusia. But I dunno, something tells me Kagetsu would be from a place where Sakura trees would feel natural. Anyway, Framme tells Kagetsu he should write to his family, and Kagetsu is very frightened of the idea. Ivy and Hortensia’s B. Ooh! More on the story of their moms! So Hortensia doesn’t really remember her mom. Interesting. …Uh-huh. So it was another “concubine wars” situation, where Hyacinth had a harem of other women? But this time even while the queen was still alive? …But apparently Hortensia’s mom managed to win even the queen over? Hortensia is really touched to hear about how her mom did this for her, and I have to ask why this sort of discussion never happened before, in all this time. Hortensia and Goldmary’s C. Ooh! I wonder how Goldmary is around her princess! …I feel like I’m missing context here that will clarify this, but from the sound of things, Hortensia is jealous about the amount of attention Goldmary gets from men. What I found funny is that when Goldmary said “I’m sorry if my natural charisma is in any way an inconvenience to you”, she said it exactly the way she would if it were a disdainful humble-brag, but I weirdly got the impression from context that it was genuine. Though it seems like Hortensia has been asking her to turn down these advances or something, from how they’re talking about it, and I’m curious if further supports will elaborate on the “if so” and the “why”. Okay, let’s see if we can rattle off another absurdly overdue easy paralogue. OH MY FUCKING GOD, GOLDMARY’S FIGHTING CLANNE IN THE ARENA AND I JUST NOTICED THAT CLANNE’S HORSE IS WEARING A FUCKING WIZARD HAT THAT IS ADORABLE! Also, it occurred to me during arena training that the following exchange could happen if Clanne beats Bunet: Bunet: Defeat has left a bitter taste in my mouth… Clanne: Yum! The lingering taste of victory! Clanne has nosferatu now, and I imagine he could do some pretty terrifying things with it provided his accuracy stays good. Alright, next paralogue, next paralogue… I just did Seadall and Lucina’s bond conversation when a notification reminded me, and I wonder if we’ll eventually get any references to Inigo from them. Micaiah’s is around Eirika’s level… Byleth’s is a few levels lower… …as is Sigurd’s… …Leif’s is around Eirika’s level again… …Alright, so, Byleth or Sigurd should be my next destination. I’ll go with Byleth, because Byleth isn’t all that major of a player in my army and doesn’t radically change how one of my best units plays. …But I’m more curious about Sigurd’s so let’s check out this one first. …And they just… outright spoil the big tragic ending of the first half of Genealogy. Woooooooooow. I guess they figured Heroes already spoiled enough? I’d figure they’d try to be a little more vague about it in the hopes of planning ahead to the next remake. Well in fairness, all they say is what happened to Deirdre, but Sigurd says he’ll say more about the plot of his game after the trial. PFFFFFFFF Part of me was actually expecting this to be an entire Genealogy map. In hindsight, I don’t fucking know why. Even the prologue would have been psychotically massive for this game. But this seems to be a segment of Chapter 10. Which means this battle theme might be Light and Dark! …Oh shit, this game has siege tomes after all! They’re 3-7, so not as crazy as the usual 3-10, but having those be infinite use is gonna be crazy if I can find a way to make them. I’m assuming that if I upgrade elthunder enough I get bolting? Actually hold on lemme check- …No, that doesn’t work. Stops at thoron, which I temporarily forgot exists and I already had. Either there’s some trick to getting alternate forge paths I haven’t figured out, like you need to get it to a specific forge level before cross-forging it, or these things are enemy-only. Which would be a shame. Alright, time for Byleth’s. So, Byleth’s toeing the party line regarding the mythology of the Church of Seiros, indicating that this isn’t Crimson Flower Byleth. Weird, because that’s the only way his adventures can be past tense and he still has dark green hair. What’s the timeline here? …Okay, so there are weird pink crystals where the crest stones were in the original game. And there are still some thieves lurking about. I wonder what the gimmick is gonna be here, because clearly they’re planning something related to the original “stop them from stealing the crest stones” thing. One thing I miss from 3H regarding the interface is the ability to turn the camera 360 degrees. I always found the layout of this map uncomfortable and annoying for reasons I can’t describe, and turned the camera around so that my army was at the bottom and moving up. …Yet again Byleth is in the place of his enemies on this map. He’s standing where Edelgard stood during this original battle, which is more than a little weird. …Vajra-Mushti looks very, very different in his inventory than it did in mine. Wonder why. …Hmmmm… the Sword of the Creator is a sword that increases in power with the user’s magic, and yet still targets defense? That might actually be another reason to slap this on a mystic. But I don’t have any of those on my team at the moment, so… …Oof, someone has to get the boot from the team due to the deployment limit of 9. …Of course. This is a Three Houses map, after all. Let’s see… …These enemies honestly don’t seem so tough. Alright, I’ll just drop Goldmary, Rosado and Seadall. I’ll also slap Leif on Pepsiman for now. I gave the dracoshield to Kagetsu because it would just barely make him immune to the strongest daggers on this map at 29 defense after the meal and other bonuses. Plus, he’s one of my two units who most needs to rely on their defense stats, and Louis has plenty to work with. Alright, let’s begin. …Okay, so I need to protect the crystals. Unfortunately the game doesn’t tell me how much HP they have, and I can’t even select destroy to see how much HP they have myself. So it’s sort of a defense map, where I have to go on the offensive to secure the things I’m supposed to protect. Cool, I like that! Alright, so, first off, I have Clanne, Ivy and Louis fuck up the three enemies below me (Louis makes it via engaging), and then I have Alcryst use Pepsiman’s personal boost to snipe a western swordmaster from behind my crystals while Kagetsu takes out one of the berserkers on the east side (and also notice that that wasn’t a stiletto thief with abnormally high attack, it was a swordmaster. Fuck. Well Kagetsu’s still a good user of that dracoshield). Okay so those crystals have plenty of health. Good. So I have a chance in hell of a perfect score. Lessee here… …Yeah, honestly, this map seems pretty comically straightforward. Most of the enemies who moved at the start are now dead, and I took out both of the dragons before Louis even had time to exhaust his engage. Louis completely liquefies those fuckers with a brave lance. There is nothing more terrifying than being slower than Louis, and those dragons died in the full grip of that terror. Louis then proceeded to help out with the second wave on the stairs and then canter back onto an energy tile, meaning he’s good to go again next turn without ever having to stop fighting! Man, Sigurd really completes Louis. He’s what’s keeping Louis relevant in the late-game, and Louis’s really good at taking advantage of it. They just mesh so well. FUCK! WARP STAVES! I KEEP FORGETTING ABOUT THEM! AND BYLETH GODDESS DANCES! …But they didn’t attack Hortensia despite having a clean shot at her? Either one of them could have one-rounded her! …Lucky me. Wow, I thought for sure I was going to lose her. Right, time to finish this before he can pull any more tricks like that. Okay, looks like these… generic enemies… have revival stones? I’m guessing they’re making a beeline towards the crystals. Which means I need to kill them fast or I don’t get the reward. I could also rush Byleth, but they have money, and I need money. I took the wyvern out with Hortensia and Alcryst, leaving just the general and the halberdier. And they just had one of the priests warp the other so he could in turn warp the halberdier. This fight is frankly getting chaotic, and I need out of it now. Okay, everyone but Byleth is down without any of the crystals being destroyed. That was tense, with my forces scattered the way they were all over the map. I didn’t expect to suddenly be going on the defensive like that when I thought I had him cornered. Well played. Now I’ve paralyzed Byleth with Yunaka, so things should go smoothly. …Byleth’s conversation with Pepsiman is so cringey. It’s basically Byleth saying power can be used for good or evil depending on the heart of the wielder, and Pepsiman reacts like this is some grand revelation he’s just learning. And hilariously, as if a reference to Three Houses’s incredibly awkward placement of side objective rewards, a text box just pops up saying what I earned for defending all the crystals: a talisman and an elixir. Well, that talisman’s going on Louis for sure! Okay, terrifying surprises aside, I actually really liked this map. It was shockingly lenient with how it took advantage of warp staves, but without keeping them from being terrifying. But yeah, I have to start paying attention to everything in a staff user’s inventory, even if it’s green. Alright, I think I’ll leave it there for now. I’ve got stuff to do today that I need to start heading out for. Alastor, signing off!

Even if all of that is true... twenty range if you give her to an archer or thief! Twenty!

If they did affect growths, it would probably be my favorite implementation of that sort of system, given that you can't swap them mid-battle, so there's absolutely no pressure to do so and min-max your stat gains. Granted, it would make the dearth of good magic Emblems more frustrating...

Sorry, I misspoke. Back of the boat as in the side of the boat that's at the back of the map. Half of the boat is just inaccessible due to being off the edge of the map. And since the upper stairs of the boat have crates in the way, the upper deployment slots are completely cut off from the middle and lower ones.

You're shitting me. Yeah, speedtaker is a tempting inheritance for her now that I've got her accuracy sorted out via engraving. It'll be some time before she can afford it though. ... ... I miss Merrin. Counterpoint: Brodia only went to war with Elusia, and while Brodia was apparently reluctant to agree to a peace treaty, they did agree to it, and there's no implication I could see that they had any martial conflict in the past.