Mekkah

I'm liking this series. I think it could improve some more, so I'm leaving some feedback here. tl;dr commentary is hard but here's a bunch of ways to make it easier. Looking forward to Ch2, Ch1 was actually really good.

I think it would be most interesting if you didn't cut out anything and just used the time provided by the RNG abuse to commentate, but only if there's really things to say. When I commentated on dondon's FE6 run there was always more commentary we wanted to do than gameplay to show, so it was a bit of a rush to get everything in. I guess FE4 is obviously slower paced and you're on your own, so that might be harder for you.

You could always mute the original audio and replace it with some nice background music that has to do with FE4, perhaps even the original map theme. Make sure it's on a rather low volume.

My Percival...

You can RNG abuse to some extent I think by using other characters on stray enemies. Maybe leave one guy alive for the substitutes to wail on close to the base in Ch6. In the second half of the map Fee and Arthur are available to take shots at bandits at 1 or 2-range to burn more RNs.

I don't really have the brainpower to formulate a proper reasoning for where the Leg Ring should go between Lord/Dancer/Rescuer, but it just seemed most optimal to give them roughly equal movement. I do think your thought process for putting it on Lachesis is sound, though moreso for Ch4 than Ch5, since Ch5 has a lot less terrain to go through. Even the desert has a path through it for the most part.

Can't wait to see the Rescue/Dancer abuse. I assume you use Leg/Knight Ring dancer?

You can send Sigurd through the mountains if you don't want to deal with Dew, but I'm not sure if it's quicker.

Can't speak for dondon but I really don't think this is a difficult question to answer. Rutger loses about as much in stats as the enemies do in a transition from HM to NM, prolly less than most of them since the enemies only get more bonuses as the game goes on. And a lot of other units gain stats relative to the enemy by absurd amounts. Although there's a lot of HM powered characters that are important to this run, come to think about it. Milady, Zeis, Tate, Shin, Percival, Klein...but still, people like Echidna, Igrene, Marcus, Zealot, etc become so much stronger compared to enemies that I think it's a no brainer. Think about Ch1 for instance, where Marcus can now ORKO while Alan and Lance can 2RKO.

I've reread a lot of this thread. I understand your opinion a little better now, but I still don't think you provided satisfactory evidence for it, or your claim that without the arena there's a more proper balance between mounted and unmounted units. Without having played this game without the arena at all, it's easy to tell that the arena in fact makes it harder to use unmounted units, as it's such a huge source for EXP for them. The game provides too many incentives to hurry up with the villages burning down (a bigger deal when you remove the arena from the equation), especially Ch2. You mention Lachesis promoting in Ch3 a lot. I can tell you that even with arena use, most units probably promote somewhere early in Ch4 for me. Someone like Lex could make it by Ch3, but people like Holyn, Jamka, Ayra, Alec, Noish...are you saying you usually promote those by Ch5? That seems awfully late. That's one chapter before they disappear forever.

But then there's so many ways you could make this game "balanced". You weren't meant to abuse those +5 stat rings, they were meant to be sold for profit. This game wasn't designed for you to actually make use of those stat boosts. You weren't meant to promote your units. You weren't meant to use Sigurd to do anything but seize. How is any of this sensible? Especially considering Holyn's recruitment?

The way Ephidel died was very silly, considering he had shown the capability of warping himself around at will in the very same chapter. His motivations are also very strange but that's been discussed.

I should have a Ch10 save somewhere if you're interested, that way all you have to do is one chapter.

I'd like to go back to the root of the problem. Here's a useful xkcd that fits your statement: Unless you know of the intent of the designers, all you're posting is your interpretation, which is worth about as much as mine or Integrity's. But as has already been said, even if the game designers had intended for Sigurd and friends to wait for Ayra to show up, they did a pretty poor job of that by giving him such ridonkulous stats and what amounts to a 5-6 movement lead over her.. I'd also like to bring up the fact that even a mounted unit with mediocre stats such as Alec or Noish can afford to fare poorly in combat simply because they can get ahead so far of foot units that they can afford to spend a turn chilling in a church or retreating to get healed and still contribute more damage to a skirmish than a foot unit. That's what arriving at the scene 3 turns earlier can do for you.

I hate Carlyle for mostly the same reasons (luck based, high avo, crit chance). I think there was something exploitable about him though (can't crit from range I think) but it's been so long since I've played this game.

I've had some annoying experiences with Vigarde because of Great Shield and that tiny little bit of crit that he has.

I actually like Beastfoe on Nolan more since he's more durable, has room for Vantage and thus gets more mileage out of it. If Jill is only going to attack once every turn anyway, might as well give her Paragorn and let her loose with the Brave Axe.

I feel like if you cut out all the dead space where you're moving but not doing anything else they would be better. So yes, I think they're a bit too big. It also wouldn't hurt to give foot units +1 mov each.

You can find a happy medium by having Volug weaken things without killing, still giving him strike EXP. Especially if you need someone to set up kills for scrubs like Leonardo/Edward.

When I played HM for the first time, the only units I consciously put EXP into were Jill and Nolan. I was only barely able to promote them for 1-E. Maybe one of them in 1-8, not sure. So that shows how hard it can be to use a guy like Aran. For forges, forge whatever you need. The forges I seem to always do are: 1 max hit/mt Iron Axe for Jill 1 max hit/mt Iron Axe for Nolan 1 max hit/mt Steel Axe for Jill 1 max hit/mt Steel Axe for Nolan 1 spare max mt Steel Axe for the Dawn Brigade 238972389237892478942789 max mt Hand Axes, some of them with boosted hit in part 3. You can never have too many of these, especially in part 4, with so many different units wanting to have as many as possible. Mia and Nephenee like to have max mt/crit Steel weapons as they combine well with doubling, Adept, innate Crt, and later on, their masteries. Do not worry about supports too much. Earth x Earth is definitely nice for the Dawn Brigade, but only if it's not inconvenient for you. My fliers are usually supportless. Earth x Earth is a waste for the GMs, since they usually have more trouble killing stuff than surviving. If you plan to use Soren, he's probably Ike's best support, but not by much. He will prolly still be bad at this whole enemy phase thing. I do not recommend using him, but if you do, probably best to try and capram his Mag/Res and then BEXP up his Spd, maybe Crown him.

You should definitely use Leonardo and Edward early on, but especially the former drops like a rock in performance level really quickly. If you want to use them long term, you're really making the game much more difficult than necessary. Edward will never escape getting 2HKO'd and doesn't even double reliably. Jill and Nolan you almost cannot go wrong with. If you want to use Edward or Leonardo long term, I'd support that guy with Nolan and leave the other. If you really want to use both, support them with each other. Zihark is not as good as Jill/Nolan, but he's still pretty good. Aran is useable. Treat Micaiah as a staffbot even when she doesn't have staves. Everyone else on the Dawn Brigade is only good up until a certain point. I'm sure you can guess the expiration dates of units like Sothe, Volug and the temporary godmode units of the DB by yourself. For the GMs, Ike, Titania and Haar are no-brainers. Mia, Janaff and Ulki are the only other units I'd say are really good. Gatrie and Nephenee have their perks. I like supporting Mia with Ike, and Savior Titania with Mist in her saddlebags.

I'm going to guess that whatever happened to Lyn it was as irrelevant as everything else she did in FE7.

That chapter is going to be so much fun to commentate. The Killing Edge breaking, the double item finding with Fiora, the way Lucius, Rath and Heath snag a bunch of EXP, Canas going on a solo mission...

I wouldn't worry too much about the parents of any unmounted kids. Most of FE4 LTC is obviously determind by how ridiculous your lord is, and people like Faval, Lester, Lakche and Skasaha really are not going to matter much. If you can get the lowest turn count possible in gen 1 with Levin x Tiltyu I would go that route, might require some elaborate jealousy setup though, idk. If not then it's obviously not worth it, but an 1-2 range mounted unit that destroys everything seems like it'd contribute. Definitely get Rescue as early as possible. I think the only FE4 speedrun I've ever seen used Claude x Aideen but I think the guy who ran it (YayMarsha/Molotov) said Azel x Aideen would have been better in retrospect.

A sequel is no fun if the game has already told us what will happen in the future and the Big Evil has already been permanently defeated to the point of no return.