Jotari Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 (edited) I don't think there's anything quite like the relationship between Staves and Thracia 776. Everyone always talks about it and memes about it (whenever anyone bothers to talk about Thracia 776 at all, that is), but it might seem weird to people who haven't played it. Really? Are staffs that good? What does it do with them? Well, the answer to that is actually nothing special. They just exist in abundance. A lot of Fire Embelm games have status staves, but they're things the enemy throws at you on maybe two maps in the entire game and you get one status staff maybe two tops, for your playthrough that are so valuable you just don't end up using them. In Thracia things are different, because the enemy throws status staves at you a lot. And warp, and rescue too. And because you can steal enemy weapons in Thracia, it means you can take these staves and use them without fear of losing a precious resource. Indeed, use of silence and warp is critical for disabling enemy staff users, because negative status conditions also have no time limit. If you're put to sleep then that's it, that character is gone for that map unless you have restore (which is precious and rare). So, playing through Thracia 776 without using any staves is a crazy idea, right? Well, good thing I'm crazy. And that's why I've started a playthrough of Thracia not using any staffs at all. No warp, no rescue, no sleep, no Kia staff (sorry Eyvel), no restore, no thief or unlock; I'm not even going to use heal or mend. Vulneraries for everyone. To make life a little easier, I will be allowing myself some minor save state abuses and I will be playing on Paragon Mode (because I do still want this to be somewhat enjoyable). So far I've completed the Munster arc and things are pretty smooth. These are my thoughts and fears about the up coming game. *The Reinhardt chapter will be the biggest challenge here and everything will be going into preparing for that. *Every stat booster (within reason) is going to Leif, because the enemy will never target him with status staffs, I need to make sure he can at least finish a chapter even if everyone else dies. *I'm going to focus on magic users more than physical units due to magic stat giving resistance to status staves. By far my biggest fear here is the berserk staff, which will turn my own units against me. Though the nature of Thracia and the fatigue system and Paragon mode means I will be using non magic characters liberally. **This means Ronan might finally shine in this project. Though that 0 base magic definitely isn't compensating for his high growth. Maybe with a scroll I can make him work though. *I'm going to go Route B. It's regarded as the easier route, you get another magic user in the form of Miranda and, despite how much I present myself as an expert in this series, I've only actually played Thracia once and went A route. Also Shannam is awesome and he's playable here even if I won't do anything with him (probably) *Olwen is going to die so I can use Ilios, whom I've never even seen before. *I'm not going to do a full write up of every chapter with screen shots and stuff. But I will be documenting to things for my spread sheet projects. Minor named characters and reused boss mugs. So with that out of the way, how is the playthrough going? As I've said, I've already played up to Munster and it's been pretty unnoteworthy. There's only one chapter before Munster where you have access to Saphy as a Staff User, and during Munster you only get Nana for the second half. Nana sucks so much at healing that it doesn't make a huge difference anyway and I made sure to steal plenty of Vulneraries. I haven't exactly needed to save state abuse, but whenever anyone got a Con or Movement level up I made a save state and worked with whatever I had from there. This means Leif got a movement level up which I made sure to keep, and Lifis and Lara both got a con level up. I made heavy use of the knowledge that Eyvel is literally invincible. It was actually strange throwing her into a tonne of enemies that can hit and deal damage to her and condition myself to not worry about her safety. The only chapter that's really given me trouble was the first Munster escape chapter with all the soldiers eventually ganging up on me. Overall the game is proving to be much easier than I remember. But the fact that I have double the exp gain. This is a bit of a backhanded advantage though, as it means my characters are levelling up before access to some of the better Crusader Scrolls. As of now I've put all four of my scrolls on Leif who is at level 17...which, uh, yeah, that might be a bit overlevelled for this part, but as I said, he's going to be the linchpin of my army. Now for the promised analysis of reused boss mugs. The first boss of the game is this guy 1 Weismann. The guy who kidnapps Nana and Mareeta and gives them to Raydrik. He actually gets a decent amount of screen time for a Thracia boss, having a bunch of expository dialogue with Rayrdik in the first scene of the game to basically tell us what the story is. At present, I believe his face is used four times, but I'll be counting as we go. 1 Our next boss is Bucks, who again gets a bit of dialogue introducing August to the story and basically playing into the narrative of what an utter shit bag Lifis is. And...his portrait might actually be unique, as weird as that is. No other boss uses this portrait according to the wiki's list of characters. But perhaps other npcs do in cutscenes and stuff. The boss of chapter 2x is Lifis, who is a playable character and thus has a unique face. But we do have something weird showing up already. As, while they're not enemies on the map, the following two portraits show up as Lifis henchmen in a cutscene. 1 1 I'll explain why it's weird these two specific portraits are used for Leif's henchmen later. First we have the boss of chapter 3. 1 His name is Lobos. He also has dialogue, but it's less interesting that Bucks or Weismann. I can't help but look at him and notice how old he is. Like, he's probably older than Sigurd and has seen all these changes to the continent, yet he seems completely on board with the whole evil empire stuff. This portrait shows up once more, at least as a boss. I'll keep an eye out for it's use elsewhere. 1 Another familiar face pops up in the village south of this chapter. It's Cohen, Saias' grandfather!...Well...probably not, but it's his face at any rate. This is the guy you need to bring Coirpre back to. Now we're in Munster and we see two familiar faces. 2 2 1 In Lifis cell there are three Brigands. None of them have pictures as units (unfortunately), but all three of them appear in a cutscene with their own unique faces. And, rather funnily two of them just so happen to have the same face as Lifis' henchmen on his island. They are definitely not the same characters though, as they don't know Lifis and are excited to meet him. Lifis doesn't at all seem to notice that two of these guys are complete clones of two unrelated people already working for him. What a huge coincidence of the cosmos! 1 Throughout the Munster chapters this face also keeps popping up whenever Rayrdik needs to talk to someone. Usually it's just to talk about the escaped prisoners and stuff, but he gets a decent amount of dialogue and some mild characterization when they talk about Galzus. This portrait is used twice more, once as a Leinster General and once more as a boss with no dialogue pursuing Leif after Tara. Could this be that no dialogue boss showing up earlier in the story with actual dialogue? I'd like to think so, but that's almost certainly not the intention. During the Mother and Child chapter in which Eyvel gets stonned, we see a familar face 2 It's Weismann from the first chapter. Only now this face is going by the name Bandol. And this is our first genuine no dialogue boss. He doesn't appear in any cutscenes and doesn't say anything when you fight him, kill him, or capture-release him. He lives and dies without speaking to his enemy at all. I guess Kaga felt that having faceless Commander enemies for the sake of gameplay was uncreative, so instead he did the same thing only with a reused portrait and a random name. He doesn't exist for long as the only no dialogue boss, as the next chapter we have this guy. 1 His name is Truman (It's like he's on a reality show or something), and he has the most reused portrait, at least for actual boss enemies, appearing five times. And not even having a palette swap three of those times! You can think of him as the Xane of Thracia 776. 1 Raydrik is sick of the incompetence of characters who have generic faces, unique names and no dialogue, so he calls upon the talents of Eisaneau, someone he seems to think highly of, but can't speak. Unfortunately Esianeau isn't that interesting as a boss. I like the art work though, he looks tired. This portrait appears again for two more bosses and a Leinster general. I just have two more portraits to talk about before finishing off this post. The first is this guy 1 He is a sellsword who Shiva talks to, and what's interesting about him is that he never appears as a boss. He's probably one of the dudes in Shiva's sellsword company, but his face isn't attached to any of the units. The Wiki says he shows up as one of Lifis' henchmen, but that's not true from what I can see. He is does feature as an unused character within the games data by the name of Jabarl, so there's that. Will he appear again in some form? I look forward to finding out. 1 Our last character to talk about is this guy. He shows up to talk to Hannibal about all the commotion happening. He would show up twice more as a boss and an additional time as a Leinster general later. And all of them are certainly not the same as this character who is loyal to Thracia. He's the one that arrested all of Leif's Fianna friends, so the dude does have a role in the story. I'm surprised all of this dialogue wasn't given to Callion, the playable character Hannibal gives you at this point. Instead we get this dude taking up all the screen time in the chapter and then Callion just shows up at the end with Hannibal going "Btw this guy exists and you can have him." But what's more interesting about this guy, is that he could potentially be a Genealogy of the Holy War character under a different face. Because, why not? You fight a bunch of random Thracian generals in Genealogy, this guy could easily be one of them. The most likely candidate would be Maykov, 0 the general actually in charge of Meath castle. Because it's pure fanservice that we get to see Hannibal at this point in the game. Maykov is the guy who should be here guarding the border as Hannibal is attached to Kapathogia castle and not Meath during Genealogy. It's not too farfetched he'd be reassigned I suppose, but Maykov is alive and must exist somewhere in the world at this time, so why not head canon him being at the same place you see him in Genealogy? If they didn't want me creating backstories for random NPC portraits then they should have just used the playable character you get at this point! Anyway, that was a lot of information that you probably don't care about. The deluge of minor character faces will be less next time as from here on out I'll take the chapters one at a time. I hope somewhere out there finds this all as remotely interesting as I do. Edited March 11 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 9 Author Share Posted March 9 (edited) Chapter 8 and 8x Did two more chapters today, might do more later. I'm enjoying it a lot. Mount Violdrake was easy. Probably because I am overlevelled. The lack of staffs isn't hurting yet since enemies aren't using them against me yet and careful management of HP stops the need for healing. Dagda's manor was an entirely different story. I had way more trouble than the last few chapters. I also had to do the chapter twice, because I said I could give my thieves a break, due to the low deployment slots, and just use chest and door keys. But then like an idiot I forgot to actually give any of my characters a door keys or chest keys. And it turns out I didn't have nearly enough door keys either so Lara had to come along. Good thing I brought her a long because the loot here is great. A leg ring that's going on Leif to give him ridiculous movement, wrath scroll, that's going on Leif too. Paragon scroll, I'll save that for Miranda way later in the game since people say she sucks. And the Nal Scroll obviously goes on my thieves. Gomez was an absolute beast. He could double Dagda, not sure why he didn't attempt this coup years ago as he can clearly kick Dagda's ass. Hell, he could probably take on Veld. Would all depend if he can avoid getting stoned long enough. I thought I was overlevelled but barely any of my characters could deal a dent on him and even if they could, it was hard to hit him. A Pugi crit was the only reliable method, though I guess is Asbel was with me a Grafcalibur crit could take him out. Still, if either of those characters fail to make it this long then you'd be in some deep water trying to take him down. Speaking of Gomez, what does he look like? 2 We've seen this face before. It's one of the bandits Lifis recruited prison. Definitely not the same character though, as Gomez clearly has a history here on Mt Violdrake and it'd be hard to believe he could get here before us, and not only that, before Dagda, and pull a coup on him as well. His speed stat isn't that high! I like him as a character though. He really sells the banditry as something he has no choice in and that Dagda's liberal views are likely to get everyone killed. Still, he definitely isn't making the world a better place by just spreading the misery to other people. 1 This is Rumei, our other boss of this section. And I have to say, his mug is pretty freaking goofy. Like a lot of the other ones so far, it also appears as a Leinster general and with two more bosses, and I don't think it's fitting for any of them. Especially here as Rumei, like Gomez, is a pretty desperate character, resorting to mercenary banditry even though he knows its wrong. He manages to be pretty sympathetic and to get the paralogue he needs to live. So Leif can actually deal with him non violently despite his crimes. Which is nice. I like that. Though, given his status as "Someone you fight who canonically lives" I feel there's a missed opportunity here. Why not make him a Genealogy character? He is a member of the Thracia military after all. Though, I suppose there isn't any Wyvern Knight boss in Chapter 9 of Thracia other than Areone and Travant himself. And Coulter from Chapter 8 already shows up in Thracia (and is less sympathetic a character), but if we're not married to the idea of making him a draco knight then there are Kanatz or Distler, or the aforementioned Maykov (which would explain why Hannibal is in his castle). Though, I suppose the concept of an unmounted boss who mounts his wyvern after a certain number of turns and thus becomes unable to capture and failing to get the paralogue is too good a gameplay concept to give up. So I'll just have to imagine he's one of those nameless faceless wyvern riders deployed with Areone and Travant. Edited March 9 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RPGuy96 Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 No Staves! Quite a challenge you have picked out there. I've only played Thracia twice, but the first time I think I did Reinhardt's chapter legit (or at least "legit" - I think I waited for Saias and his leadership stars to leave before doing anything). The final chapter, though, is a huge pain without warp, just because you can't redeploy your team to where you want them. Are you playing with the QoL deployment repositioning patch? That would make it slightly less awful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 9 Author Share Posted March 9 (edited) Chapter 9 In the next chapter we're just plain mistakes us for bandits in a conflict that might be over if people just talked. I guess that's hard to do when someone is attacking you on a wyvern. Had some trouble with this one, but I don't think it's from my lack of staves. Merlock's squad of wyvern knights are just very dodgy and all have killer weapons meaning it's a bit of a roulette surviving them. On retrospect spreading out my Crusader Scrolls a bit might have helped protect from crits, but without connecting with my attacks and making sure I kill at least three of them, they stand a good chance of taking someone out. 3 Merlock isn't anything to write home about. He's only here because Travant and Altena can't stick around to die, though they do hang around long enough for a nice convo wherein we see Travant and Altena actually acting like father and daughter. Ultimately Merlock a hapless sap who's really killed for no reason. It's the third time we've seen this face though which is a lot for so early in the game. We're still scheduled to see it once more. 5 minutes ago, RPGuy96 said: No Staves! Quite a challenge you have picked out there. I've only played Thracia twice, but the first time I think I did Reinhardt's chapter legit (or at least "legit" - I think I waited for Saias and his leadership stars to leave before doing anything). The final chapter, though, is a huge pain without warp, just because you can't redeploy your team to where you want them. Are you playing with the QoL deployment repositioning patch? That would make it slightly less awful. I'm playing with the patch, but I'm not using it. The inability to redeploy is meant to be part of Thracia and I'm rolling with it. Edited March 9 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 No Restore sounds unnecessarily brutal. Like I get wanting to see how T776 goes without Warp and status staffs, but the basics everyone uses all the time without question?🤔 11 hours ago, Jotari said: *I'm going to go Route B. It's regarded as the easier route, you get another magic user in the form of Miranda and, despite how much I present myself as an expert in this series, I've only actually played Thracia once and went A route. Also Shannam is awesome and he's playable here even if I won't do anything with him (probably) *Olwen is going to die so I can use Ilios, whom I've never even seen before. ...Uh, Ilios isn't available on the Miranda route. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 10 Author Share Posted March 10 (edited) 8 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said: No Restore sounds unnecessarily brutal. Like I get wanting to see how T776 goes without Warp and status staffs, but the basics everyone uses all the time without question?🤔 Indeed, I expect some characters might have to straight up die to achieve chapter goals. Berserk will be an absolute killer in specific. I'll also have to be very careful with my use of Blizzard, as I'll still be able to use that to put enemies to sleep from long range. 8 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said: ...Uh, Ilios isn't available on the Miranda route. What!? Really? Man, what a stupid character recruitment. I guess I'll have to resolve to play A route again sometime after this playthrough, as I also missed Misha on my first playthrough (about ten years ago, sheesh, where has the time gone). Just realized I missed getting the paragon sword by having Carrion talk to Selphina. I guess I don't need more exp since I'm playing Paragon mode, but it still kind of sucks. Where is the sword now? Are one of you guys still carrying it around and just pulling an Ike not letting me use it? Edited March 10 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 10 Author Share Posted March 10 (edited) Chapter 10 Now this is the Thracia 776 I remember. Ballista all covering each other. Enemies tanking on forts with ridiculous defense and just generally no way to get through without just tanking all the ballista and waiting for the enemy to break down. Fair and Balanced. We get are first really good staffs here with Ensorcle (aka Barrier) and Rescue. I'm guessing perhaps they wanted you to take out the Ballista with Karin or something and then rescue her back. Of course one actual really good use of dismounting is to send her up to a ballista and then dismount and chip away at it. Eventually she'll gain enough wexp to use a magic sword and actually deal proper damage. We first see Olwin here and she's a beast with Dire Thunder and movement stars making her unpredictable. Unfortunately you can't capture her to get another Dire Thunder copy, but if Lifis' con is rigged high enough I'm sure he could steal it. Unfortunately I've got no more lucky con level ups with him, nor any lucky movement level ups at all. All in all not a hard chapter if you just don't get cocky and take your time. Which years of access to rewind mechanics has me trained not to do. 1 Oops, sorry, wrong mug 2 Our boss this time is Largo. It's the second time we've seen this face, without even a palette swap. The first was Truman back in the Munster village escape chapter. This time he has dialogue however! I like him. He shoots the breeze with Olwin and shit talks Kempf, giving our first introduction to him. Even though he works with the villains, he doesn't seem to be an altogether bad guy, just a dedicated soldier. I like his release quote if you can somehow get Marty or someone to capture him. Largo: I spit on your mercy, invaders! Why not just take my head?! If you do somehow manage to spare Largo Dorias even comments on it and praises Leif's mercy. Not like you actually get anything for it though and, sadly, Largo never shows up in any other capacity. 1 The same praise can't be levied at the other boss of our chapter. Dvorak. Though I think my translation called him Duval. His original name is Dobaruzaku which does seem pretty hard to translate. Well, anyway, he gets no dialogue and is never referred to like so many previous bosses. Though his presence here is slightly odd. He's a lone Wyvern Knight with Thracia as his army allegiance and no explanation as to why. Presumably he's a mercenary they hired? But that's a bit off for the plot, as this is meant to be a sleepy border fortress away from all the action, maintained by an above averagely capable skeleton crew. They really have no reason to hire a mercenary, much less one that is from the country the border fortress is actually defending against! What's probably even weirder about him is that, despite his non existent role as a character, he almost has a unique face, with the mug only being shared later with a Leinster General. No other boss in the game has his face, at least according to my current notes. So, yeah, the actual interesting boss Largo uses the most recurring boss mug in the game, while the boss with no dialogue that no one ever mentions has the unique mug. Go figure. Edited March 11 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 11 Author Share Posted March 11 (edited) Chapter 11 and 11x Today we're taking Dundrum. Which is funny, because where I'm from Dundrum is a noteable shopping mall. I do wonder how random these Irish and Norse names Kaga used are. Where does a Japanese man in the 90s even get such info from? We're talking pre internet library research. Was he pouring over an atlas going "Yeah, that sounds cool." Was he reading all of this in Katakana or does he genuinely speak English? Has he been to Europe? And we see Kempf, and it is glorious. 1 They really manage to give this guy such a shit bag face that goes well with his petty, arrogant, stupid and just plain cowardly demeanor. I'm almost certain he is one of the few bosses in the game to not have his portrait repeated, though there is an unused boss called Rilke using his portrait, that could just be a placeholder though. Oh look, it's blue cloak collar guy again, here to lead Olwen away on Kempf's orders. 2 Maybe it is the same guy who was stationed at Munster? Leif's surely taken long enough getting here that that dude could have been transferred for some reason. Though, honestly speaking, this role probably should have gone to Bishop Oltoph, the put upon boss of the next chapter. The enemy also has no idea who is attacking, which was referenced last chapter too. It's nice to play as the mysterious enemy force for a change, but surely they would assume that this is an attack by Thracia? No one seems to speculate on that possibility. I know the empire and Thracia are allies, but this is all going down on the Thracia border, Travant making an Operation Barbarossa style grab for the north seems to be the more sensible (albeit wrong) conclusion. If Thracia ever has a remake, I suggest a scene for Duval the Thracian mercenary last chapter wherein Largo questions him whether this is Travant at work and Duval saying "I have no idea, nobody told me we'd be invading you. Let me go out and check (with my lance out, of course)." This chapter is pretty easy once you know about the trap. Just clear the room by baiting the enemies out and when the trap springs, make sure your squishy units arne't in range of both ballista at once and press on ahead. This chapter is rather notorious for being a potential soft lock if you don't have any keys or lockpicks going into it, but there are three enemies with door keys you can capture or steal from in this chapter (though they're all armoured knights so you need someone with high con left alive), and you don't have to open the three southern doors, which means you only need a singular key or lock pick from a prior level to stop this chapter being a soft lock. That is poor design, but it's not as bad as people say. And, I think, you could actually even still beat the chapter then if you capture all the keys, kill Fred and then move Leif through the courtyard without stopping (hell killing Fred and doing that might avoid the chapter entirely, I'm not sure). That might get Leif passed the first door, unless the game moves him down like it does other units. Anyway, long story short, this chapter has three keys and you only need to open 4/7 locks, so while it might have ended a few players runs, I doubt it has ever seriously soft locked anyone and been rendered completely unbeatable by accident. Kempf has the immortal skill (normally hidden but revealed via the patch I'm using) and warps away a turn after you open the door. I have two issues with this. If he warps away in a cutscene he should have a rewarp stave. Such consistency is necessaru for me. Raydrik had a warp stave in his inventory earlier and used it on Galzus, which is awesome. It didn't deplete any uses from its cutscene use as it should have, but I can live with that. My second issue here is that Kempf being just plain immortal when you try to kill him is cheap. My patch tells me, but an unsuspecting player wouldn't know...Including me, because I tried to kill him without looking at his skills. Yeah, that's stupid of me, but the point stands. Don't make an enemy immortal if you don't have to. It worked for Olwen and Fred last chapter because they're playable characters so they have to survive (though, honestly, I'd be okay rewriting a few scenes in this chapter for the event in which Olwen and Fred are dead or captured). Plus, for Kempf as a boss, it'd be just funnier if he ran away off screen to the right as soon as you opened the ddoor (or warped someone in), abandoning the throne. Besides, where is he even warping too? We see him in the next chapter anyway, so he clearly just teleported into the next room over instead of running to the hills, so just moving into the next room to set up the murder holes makes more sense. Now we're on to Murder Holes. I think this is the last time we see captured children with names. What I like about this trio, Peter, Rosa and Sera is that they all have unique portraits so you can know who speaks in the cutscene. Also, apparantly any units capture in the previous chapter will be found here instead of the later prison chapter. That's really, really cool. I'm not sure how likely it is for you to naturally get a unit captured specifically in unit 11 given the major threat of that chapter is ballista. I assume the escape point is at the top of the map and not the bottom where Fred flees to. I could see one of the armour knights potentially capturing someone and escaping to the north while you're trapped in the room. It's not likely someone would leave a unit that can be captured exposed like that give the narrow passages, but still, cool that the captured units are put in a place that makes sense narratively. I wish the game would do that more. On retrospect some of the "appear in prison camp at the end of the game" logic doens't hold up. Like if one of Lifis' pirates or the Dandelions capture my units why would they end up in an imperial prison camp (though I think you can't actually lose enemies to capture in the first few chapters, as that would be a way to permanently lose Eyvel before her plot death, I tried getting her captured by the enemy on this run to see what happened and, while they captured her, they didn't try to escape, if units can be captured in the first few chapters, then having them show up in Munster would make perfect sense and would even be a cool strategy to try and put someone like Halvan there to help out, Munster is frustating for having loads of lance enemies and givin you nothing put sword users aside from Dalsin). The Dandelions in particular are egregious considering they all become your friends at the end of the chapter. They also have a convenient map where it would work very naturally for your characters to be places after getting captured in the previous chapter. Olwin asks to join Leif in their conversation together and Leif initally says no, which is surprising and nice. The whole "Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, let me join your army, I'm a traitor maybe" thing is met with very little deliberation in the series. For Leift to say "You were my enemy and tried to kill me yesterday, I'll have to think about trusting you" is cool. However, he doesn't quite phrase it like that. INstead Leif says he needs to consuld August and Dorias first. Which I have mixed feelings about. Because on a battlefield and with Leif's position, it makes him seem weak and like the advisors are the ones puppeting him. Which is true to some extent, but a leader shouldn't let people know it's true. ON the other hand, Leif is fift-fucking-teen, of course he's going to be stupid and say stupid stuff that he shouldn't. That's like, the entirety of his character. So I like it, but I'd like the game to acknowledge that Leif openly saying he can't make a decision without listening to his advisor's first is a bad thing for him. I mean, in this specific instance. Obviously we see how ignoring their advice doesn't pan out for him well later. 1 And our boss of this chapter is Oltoph, whom I like because he suffers the full brunt of Kempf and I feel pity for him even though he was directly involved in the kidnap of children. Surprisingly, like Kempf, he seems to have a unique portrait shared only with an unused boss called Kant. And unlike Kempf's unused boss doppleganger, Kant actually has a different palette to Oltoph. Maybe I'll show that off at the end of the playthrough. Oltoph's battle quote tells me I'll go no further, which is a bold statement for a man with two broken Bolt Tomes and his Physic staff just stolen. I was planning to spare him, because I like him, but I attacked to just hit him once with Azel to train up a wind rank, but Azel went and attacked three times with one being a crit (another being a miss) solidly killing the poor sap. Lifis also got another con level up during the level putting him at a nice 9. He'll get another one from promotion and if I can give him the Build ring or whatever it's called, it'll put him to 12 con which is good enough to steal a lot of weapons. Overall Muder Holes was easier than I remember. Not that it was straight forward and without error, it's fog of war with siege tomes, that's always a receipe for disaster, but I remember struggling with it a lot back in the day. I guess I'm just experienced enough now to count squares leading to where Oltoph's bolting tome is likely to be. Or the first time I was just too cautious of the passageway of death itself. This time I just powered straight throughout wanting to save Olwen quickly. It's actually not that dangerous, at least for my units and their paragon boosted stats. Next time we fight the Dandelions, and I get my first taste of enemy staff combat as Salem permanently knocks out three of my units with sleep. Albeit, that's bound to happen to you on a regular playthrough anyway given there hasn't even been a restore staff yet. Edited March 11 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 11 Author Share Posted March 11 (edited) Chapter 12 and 12x Wow. What a nice house Mareeta was brought to. Do we ever see this background again? Immediately on turn one Osian is put to sleep, which hurts quite a bit. The ever reliable Pugi is now out of my grasp. And then Fergus is put to sleep and immediately captured with all his weapons stolen. And Fred is the third character put to sleep, that's the last one, right? NO! Lifis got another Con level up making him buff enough to steal Iron Axes, but in the same enemy phase Olwen is killed. Dangidy dang dang dang. If Ilyos was avilable on the route I was going then I'd just let her die, but I can't be without Dire Thunder just after getting it. So resetting. Back to the very start. Things go much the same this time, only my Lifis level up is nothing but HP. Boo. Eventually I capture Salem and end the chapter...then I see there's a village down south with the Heim Scroll that got destroyed because I moved north. And that if Olwin specifically visits a village out west you can get a magic ring. So even though I've entirely cleared the chapter...reset. I'm doing it again. Didn't take as long this time because I just let my level 20 Leif over power the south part of it to save the Heim Scroll village. This mean I lost a lot more exp (and what I care about more for some characters wexp), but I shouldn't sweat stuff like that. It's paragon mode baby. I also lost the Silence Staff in the northern village, but that's only some minor loss of funds for me. While Salem is our boss, we still get another generic faced boss in this chapter, because of course we must! 3 This is Cullough, whoose face we've seen before as one of Lifis' henchmen, and then one of Lifis' new henchmen, and now he's appearing as the henchmen of yet another playable character! He's like the Shadow Dragon/New Mystery Ruffian is he inexplicably kept working for the player. Now on to what I have gone on record saying is the worst chapter in the series because it encourages you to warp skip for so many reasons. Well not this time. Time to actually play Dandelion the way it was possibly intended. Also, can I take a second to just notice that this is three fog of war maps in a row now. Thanks Kaga >.> So, that was exactly as bad as I thought it would be. The fog of war makes it impossible to know what's coming at you. The enemy dancers really do use the dance command to give the enemies more actions. And you can't kill them if you want some of the rewards. Troude gets himself killed extremely easily. There's no way to walk around him, so you have to capture him and hold him for the whole map, essentially taking a unit out of combat. And Tina absolutely will steal your weapons from you and break her own Thief staff. She seemed to intentionally go after Osian since he had the lowest magic and seemed intent to take away all of his weapons except a broken steel axe. Which sucked since Osian was the only unit I had which could capture Troude. Oh, yeah, Tina also has five movement stars and a dancer assisting her, so even though her accuracy with the Thief staff sucks, she will get a tonne of attempts to take something. She had one remaining use of it by the time I got to her on turn 14, and I think I got extremely lucky. She had accumulated 65 fatigue points as an enemy. I didn't even know enemies could get fatigued XD. Honestly, the enemies are pretty weak, so if you don't care about the items or Troude's life, you can fairly easily just power through the chapter with little to no fear. But that just makes the poor design even worse. It's not challenging in Thracia's classic masochistic sense, nor is it fun in a general sense. It's just tedious, boring and punishing you for being a horder and a completion. Oh, and I also had to carry Safy through the entire level even though she has no weapons just because she's the only one that can recruit Tina. For some reason Perne can't just do it, and the info doesn't say she automatically joins at the end like Troude, and I'm not risking her getting away from me, even though for this challenge run she's utterly useless to me. Oh, and then I wasted 30 turns for the two dancers with a Knight's Crest and Warp to appear and they just didn't, because I'd captured a dancer, I think. I thought not killing any would do, but there was no way around not capturing one to get to Troude as he ran away carrying Salem (who joined with no items because I took them all off him last chapter). Salem should probably be able to recruit Troude, the idea of it is a bit ridiculous. Well suffice to say I am not resetting to get that Knight's Crest. Heavy abuse of Save States is the only way I got through that and I'll not be playing that chapter legitimately again. Oh, and also this chapter has no minor boss enemy, the biggest crime at all. Edited March 11 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 12 Author Share Posted March 12 Chapter 13 We get two boss men this chapter and no playable characters or otherwise important people. Paulus and Liszt, or List as the wiki calls him, though Paulus is only there at the start. Paulus tells Liszt to not be rash, but Liszt shows some personality and decides he will be rash rather than let someone else take his glory. What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a wannabe Kempf. 2 As for his face, this is the first time we've seen him as a boss, but the guy Hannibal talked to back in Chapter 7 also looked like this. At least he manages to have a unique palette. But even cooler than bossmen having personality, we also have here generic playable characters! The first and only time the series has really dont this. Oh we do get generic playable characters later starting with Shadow Dragon's replacement characters, but those guys have names, and after the DS, actual artwork that shows a face. These five brave knights are just known as Leinster with class artwork. Unfortunately they're doomed to all be slaughtered while Glade just sits tight on the gate. You don't get anything if they survive, I'm pretty sure. They were born to just be fodder. The best strategy is probably to disarm and dismount them and have the enemy capture them. Yeah, that's working out really well. The enemy just keeps trying to capture the knights and never even try to attack Glade. Glade can easily one round the enemy with an iron lance, releasing the captured Knight wherein the enemy just tries to capture them again, repeat until Glade happens to miss and the enemy gets a chance to run away (which also removes them from the seige). I wonder if I'm the first one to think of this very cheap and very effective strategy. One of the knights did die to a ballista bolt, so if there is an unlisted reward for keeping them all alive, I'm not getting it. Liszt himself seems to have gotten sick of that shit as he went and straight up killed an unarmed Leinster soldier. And not with his bow or something because he couldn't reach him, he used his Killer Lance. And then he went and did it again. Liszt just takes no prisoners, I guess. Got a movement level up on Fergus, which I'm keeping. I haven't used him yet but he's hat a pretty high level with B Rank swords, which is pretty good all things considered. Oh shit in a motherfucking blanket. I had cleared the whole level out just befor getting to work and made a save state just before killing Liszt to go to work and come back later, then, I accidentally overwrote the save state by hitting save state on the title screen instead of load state. So now I have to do the whole chapter again. Also I lost that Fergus movement level up. No way to undo the data of my save state in my emmulator or something? No? Well fuck. I just have to live with it. Holy shit. I was just getting ready to call this an easy chapter, but then I killed Liszt earlier on the second attempt. Tha triggered every enemy in the map to start retreating. Which makes sense in terms of the narrative, but it leads me scrambling to get all of that exp I previously had before it ran away. And then the enemy changed their mind half way through and started ganging up on Fred and Selphina! I wonder what's causing the AI to do this? Selphina can't take many hits at all so I could understand if they think they can kill her they'd go for it, but why Fred too? Is the AI coded to do a false retreat? Run away for a turn or two and then retaliate? If so that if fucking evil and monstrous and I love it and will put it in a fangame some day even if it's not the case here. Fortunately I had a Vulnerary on Selphina and the enemy's hit rate is atrocious, so with a little save state abuse I can keep her alive. Save states got me into this mess, save states shall deliver me from it. But really I aught to just use the native suspend function next time too. Huh, I promoted Karin, did last time too, but only now am I noticing she doesn't get swords on promotion. I could have sword Thracia Pegasus Knights do. So Genealogy Pegasus Knights have Sword/Lances at base and Sword/Lances/Staff on promotion, but Thracia pegasus knights are lance locked the entire time. That sucks. Well, I've already grinded or sword rank up this far, I'll keep dismounting her when necessary. The RNG givi'th, and the RNG take'th. Karin got a movement level up, which is far more valuable than a Fergus level up. Like, I'll sacrifice a character if I need to valuable. This means she can out range the ballista in the next chapter with a lot of room for safety. Already, finished, for real this time. There are infinite (or seemingly infinite) reinforcements coming at the end. Three armoured knights and a mage. I stayed around a while trying to get control of the reinforcement flow, but I couldn't kill enough every turn to keep things risk free without burning through my good weapons. If I'd brought my better infantry I might have been able to make much better use of them, but I'd largely brought my cavalry to that chapter to get to Tara quickly. In the next chapter we get our first proper look at Paulus ad he speaks to Baldack. I like Paulus. He has this air of weariness in him captured in his portrait. And he seems to really feel for the death of the people under his command who he could have prevented. It's pretty hard to kill him in this chapter, being a defense chapter, so they could reasonably have made him appear again later in the game with confidence that he'd probably be alive. He must be a pretty important guy in universe to be in charge of this siege, even though he's a colonel and not a general. 2 As far as his portrait goes, we've also seen it once before, and also in Chapter 7 as he was the boss there Eisaneau. I think I said some of the same stuff about him looking world weary there and that I liked him for it. So maybe the portrait just rocks. Thinking on it, Eisenau and Paulus could have been the same character. If he appeared here in Chapter 7 with these stats it'd be pretty hard to kill him. A little bit of secret immortality and you literally wouldn't be able to. I know I complained about immortality on Kempf, but you're expected to get close to and engage with Kempf. You're not actually expected to fight Eisenau. He stays at the top of the map while his reinforcements flood you. Now, it's not actually that difficult to fight and kill him, but the intention is for it to be an escape map. Furthermore, if the characters were merged, there'd be soom call back to the start of the game. One issue with Veld and Rayrdrik is that as soon as you escape Munster, their presence in the plot completely evaporates and then they're expected to sell the end game by themselves. If we had one of their specific minions return here for this siege then it'd help to establish their reach extends outside of Munster. 3 This face again. Unfortunately Baldack isn't much to write home about. He's just someone for Paulus to talk to. Definitely no Largo this guy. So since there's so little to say, I'll tak the time to say that this recurring Thracia mug totally looks like Marth's father Cornelius in the manga. Almost certainly a coincidence...but maybe not. Maybe someone at IS read the manga, really liked it, and wanted to honour the artist so they put Cornelius's manga mug in Thracia. It's possible. The beard, the hair, the collar, the resemblance is pretty striking. This chapter is pretty intense, but like most defense maps, going on the offensive actually helps a lot. Karin's extra move really helped taking out the ballistas. I got her right up to them, dismounted (because they cover each other) and used a killing edge. I then rescued her back over the wall using Deen or Eda. It's just a matter of plugging up the gaps in the wall then. Though I used a lot of my Pugi, Mareeta's Sword and newly bought Silver Edges cutting through the hoards of enemies. On Turn 8 we get an NPC boss man, which yes, isn't a contradiction because Thracia. 2 This is the second time we've seen this face, the first was Lobos all the way back in Chapter 3. Compared to that McCloy looks younger due to a hair palette swap. It looks a bit like a typcial Genealogy mug actually which is used for the General Thracia bosses I mentioned earlier in the thread. As far as McCloy's character goes, he doesn't have one. He's just here because they didn't want Travant to take the field. Honestly, it might have been awesome if Travant did personally take to the field here. It'd be scary going up against Gungnir. I don't mind a retreating or immortal boss under those conditions where it's just this powerful force you're meant to avoid, like Chapter 10 Julius. But instead we get a repeat of every Wyvern boss in Jugdral not part of the Thracian royal family. Which is to say, Trvant shows up, does something nefarious, then delegates the actual task to someone else and flies off. Well, actually Rumei is a wyvern boss who doesn't fit this model. Good old Rumei. I planned to get the Dragonlance with Karin on the final turn, but it turns out you need to get Deen specifically to get the Dragon Lance. Luckily I had a save state from about turn 6 when I had already gained pretty full control of the map and could maneuver things so Deen could get it on the last turn. Huh, the Dragon Lance is Arion's personal weapon. I was going to say what about Gungnir, but now that I think about it, of course Travant uses that at this time (as I mentioned just above). Arion having his own personal weapon actually makes a lot of sense. Being so dedicated to this cause has to give it away, not quite as sensical. Dean is pretty loyal to Areone, I wonder what he ends up doing immediately after the game ends. I mean, you do fight Thracia pretty much directly afterwards. His ending mentions him surviving the war and continuing to help Areone, but did he stay with Leif and Seliph until Areone joined them in the end game, or did he abandon Linoan to be by Areone's side again and remained with him for the rest of the game? I suppose either interpretation could be justified, but I like the idea of him abandoning the heroes shortly after the end of the game. It'd be nice if he had a battle convo with Coulter, but battle convos aren't that common in Thracia. Wiki has a death quote for McCloy, but I just killed him and he didn't say anything. No battle animation either. On the last turn a bunch of Lopt mages show up. Just like how I was saying Esianu and Paulus could have been the same character to refer back to the start of the game, these Lopt mages should have been led by Veld. There is no one leading them, they're just there, and that sucks. If Veld using Stone would be too potentially deadly make it Manfroy or Julius or someone (though Veld has only one turn to attack and he could be rigged to miss an enemy phase attack or something). These are bosses you're not intended to be able to kill in gameplay in a chapter where you're meant to be losing in the story, use it to show off the villains and their power. Hell Bloom himself should be here! Or Ishtore and his girlfriend Liza, his castle is actually pretty near by compared to the rest of the game. Speaking of which, it's a bit weird this and the previous chapter have the bulk of the enemy forces coming from the south. That's where Thracia lies. The empire forces should be primarily coming from the north. That's were Connaught and Bloom are, along with the entirety of Leinster. Oh dang. The enemies move after turn 10. Oi. Looks like there's no way I could grab the Dragonlance. Maybe if I foucsed more on the south west gate more with Mareeta and Osian I could have pushed forward enough to clear out Paulu's area, but it doesn't seem possible. Hmm, unless I have Karin try and carry Deen away with a dance from Lara. It would risk putting all of them in ballista range for a turn, but I have save state abuse so I think I can pull it off. I'm a genius. I took away all of Deen's weapons and sent him down to the village and dismounted him. Because he couldn't use the dragonlance dismounted, the enemy captured him. The enemy didn't steal the Dragonlance for the captured Deen...not sure why, but point is, the chapter then ended and since the enemy was still on the map, Deen wasn't considered a captured enemy and stayed in my roster with the Dragonlance still there. Curiously it says that it's used by both Deen and Altena (not even Arion) which is funny because she's not playable. I wonder if you can convince her to capture a player character and then equip it on the one map where she does appear. I hoped to get all the Tara chapters done in one update, but I've said a lot here and want to post. I'll talk about the Tara escape later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 13 Author Share Posted March 13 Chapter 14x and Chapter 15 Escorting civilians out of the valley. This chapter gives us my favourite Lopt sect member Codda. 1 Surprising this is the first time we've seen this face. Lopt sect members tend to be some of the least interesting and most generic characters around and they all look like this, it's barely a character design. Thanks, I hate it. But I like Codda. Mainly for this line he gives Misha (while stealing half her mercenary company). "You have me mistaken for a man who repeats himself. This is an order, Captain." Though the bad ass vibes of this line might be just the creativity of the guy who made this translation (the same dude who changed all the village events into comedy skits that doesn't mesh well with the overall tone of the game), as the old line was simply "This is an order", fittingly boring for a Lopt Sect member. Anyway, I encoutnered this line from Codda when categorizing all the Fire Emblem characters and it really stood out to me. Though looking at it in context, his previous lines could have served tobe more intimidating to match this one. Nevertheless I still feel that they should have put this guy in the previous chapter leading the Lopt mages if Veld is really on holiday or something. He could even die in the previous chapter with no issue. Just make him living there a condition for this Gaiden. Punishing a player by removing a chapter because they killed a boss they weren't supposed to? Rewarding a player for skipping a chapter for killing a boss they weren't supposed to? Eh, either works for Thracia. 3 Hiding in the darkness we also have him. Blue collar man. Previously seen in Leinster and leading Olwen away. In other words, this boss is using Thracia's bizarrely faced generic soldier portrait. This, guy, this Eichmann, you can keep your Heimlers and your Roberts, this guy is the most obscure Fire Emblem boss. He has a portrait of a generic cutscene npc, he has no dialogue, no one ever mentions his name, he's in a side chapter you can skip and he's in fog of war. He likely charged your Osian and got a pugi to the face without you even knowing he exists. Interestingly though, he is a Hero, who is hanging out with Lopt sect members. So either he's one of Misha's men that was stolen, or he's a Lopt sect member who actually hit the gym instead of the books. I prefer the latter. And now that I've see him on the map, his affiliation is indeed Welkenrosen. Is this the only non dark mage lopt member, even among generic enemies? He's also nastier than I expected, two movement stars and a killing axe with a critical coefficent of 2 and Adept on top of that. I'm going to steer clear of him for now and take out Codda from the mountains with Deen and Karin. Hopefully that will stop the Sorcerer ambushes. Eichmann I can probably pick off with javelins since he has no long range defense. Everyone else is still in the south escprting civilians. I visited 4/6 houses last chapter. Could have visited more, but I didn't see it as a priosirty. Codda's death quote is a prayer to Loptous asking the evil god to take his soul into its embrace. This is something I remember from the Lopt member outside with Misha in the Leinster exterior A route chapter, and it's something I picked ug up on as interesting. Maybe its just the translations, but I don't get the vibe that the lopt sect members from Genealogy are genuinely religious. Their death quotes seem more about asking Manfroy to forgive them or something. It's more interesting and creepier for them to appeal to their god in their dying breath, confident in the righteousness of their vile acts even then, with some kind of after life existence waiting for them. Linoan got a movement level up! Making two save states to ensure the Fergus debocalce doesn't happen again. Oh wow. She got another movement level up. lv7 Linoan with 7 move. That's insane. She doesn't even have any scrolls. Though with how fast she's levelling up I should have put some on her. I take it back. Eichman isn't some no name forgettable unit. The dude is a beast. 16 speed and 14 strength and not weighed down thanks to his 16 con, in addition to everything I said above. Where has the Lopt sect been keeping this guy? He's basically Galzus-lite. He's also starting on a mountain, so if you try to ambush him he has +5 defense and +30% avoid too. This is my lucky day for rare growths, Lifis got another Con proc right as he reached level 20 (yes, I got him to level 20 before promoting him). After promotion that puts him at 11. Finished the chapter. It wasn't too tough, but I feel like it's a bit of a rng fest. Enemies are weak, but they attack you from the dark. If you get too many unlucky hits or poisoned too much it could certainly land you in trouble. The two bosses themselves are tough to take down, but you can approach them pretty safely from the hills, so long as Codda's long range magic doesn't hit you too many times. The reinforcements don't seem to stop when they die, but by the time you get to the centre of the map you've probably cleared out enough of the backlog so that anyone who does attack you will do it one at a time. The ending cutscene looks out of place. We've just escaped a valley yet Dorias' convo with Leif has the backdrop of a castle gate behind them. Lewyn unexpectedly shows up then to talk to August, and he mentions the Orgahill region. Which...uh...why? Of all the places to name drop in Jugdral that Lewyn is doing mysterious off screen stuff, why there? It's even less important than Veerdane. From what we see of it in Genealogy of the Holy War there's absolutely nothing there. It's basically just pirate island. Did the Lopt Empire even bother to conquer it? We know from Genealogy's ending that they didn't care enough to impress their will on Verdane. The start of the next chapter talks about how some people in ther army want to conquer Leinster while others want to conquer Munster. It describes pragmatism as winning out and going for Leinster, but pragmatisim puts it lightly. It's just basic reality. The entire country is now between us and Lesinter. It's curious there's no mention of Connaught though, as that's actively where Bloom is and closer than any other major city. But, this is Thracia 776, where Bloom might as well not exist. 2 Oh look, it's eye patch, Shiva's friend from the Munster escape. He still doesn't have a unit representing him. 3 And his boss is Zyle, who has the same face as two of Lifis' minions. 2 During a cutscene we see Amalda talking to Cohen, and unlike the early game chapter, this could genuinely be Cohen. She calls him Bishop, and maybe Cohen is a bishop. Saias is, why not his grandfather? No, probably not Cohen, he talks about living in the lone village and spending his final years raising the kids. He also talks of the Empire as if he's not part of it. Ralph is here too. For some reason this character is selected as the face of Thracia's under developed cast, and, honestly, that seems a bit unfair. He has his generic help the villagers schitck, which isn't amazing, but it's better than Selphina's gang gets. His stats are pretty decent too. Maybe it's just his generic looking portrait. Huh, Leif can visit the church and converse with this Cohen lookalike too. This guy actually has a decent amount of screen time, he deserves a name. Oh wow, you can actually finish the chapter pretty much instantly as he's offering to warp the entire army in one of the directions. This dude has some Gotoh level warping ability. I'm not going to take him up on his offer though, at least not now. I want to teach Mareeta Astra first, which means hanging around this chapter for at least ten turns. Speaking of Mareeta, she's just got a movement level up. Shannam is here. For some reason his affiliation is with the bandits, even though he's obviously jsut here escaping for Tara. That's a pretty easy chapter. Aside from Zyle himself, all the bandits are pretty weak and inaccurate. I think the intention was for you to rush to save Amalda and Ralph, but the interface lets me know Amalda is invincible so it's fine to just leave her to get crowded around bantis who keep thinking they can kill her but don't. The chapter is basically free exp for my weaker units, though even then it's a bit annoying as most of the action happens in the forested area where misses are frequent. Next chapter I'll go up against my first Berserk staff. *shudder* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 14 Author Share Posted March 14 Chapter 16B and 17B First thing I see here is an enemy dancer. I thought Perne was the only one who did that. Oh! He's still alive! Blue collar man! 4 And he's paired up with a lopt sect cultist again 2 Serra is here too. And I get why, she needs to be recruited in both routes to get the Kia staff. But it is a bit weird that they made her playable in both routes and not Iliyos. Miranda too feels important enough to be a multi route character. At least one of them probably could have been better served getting recruited last chapter with Ralph being moved to a route split character. There's a lot of really good loot here I have to be sure to steal/capture. A sleep edge, another Pugi, Mastwer Sword, Wind Sword, luna Manuel and a Master Bow. First turn I fly up and kill Linecock with Karin and Deen. They survive enemy phase only getting hit once each from Dark Mage due to the way I positioned them. Only had to depend on a little luck to dodge. Easy to do on the first turn. Makes Linecock a bit dissapointing as a boss. His Berserk staff seems more intended to captured than used against the player. Oh, Sara appears as an enemy here. I wonder did Linecock have another scene that would have played if I didn't 1 turn kill him. Doesn't seem like she's been fielded to actually fight Leif though, given she has no tomes. I made a mistake of capturing one dark mage with Karin, and on the next turn attacking without realizing I never released the dark mage. I was actually saved by a warp tile which took her away from the enemies who could have killed her. Shannam's allegiance is weird again. Last chapter he was categorized as a bandit, here he's a Welkenrosen, which makes even less sense. Serra warps around the place to avoid being recruited, which is kind of annoying. Oh, Salem can speak to her too. Can he recruit her? The wiki says that Leif has to talk to her, but I like the idea of Salem recruiting her. And my emulator just froze when Leif stepped onto the monastery to recruit Miranda. I hope that's just a one time issue and Miranda isn't locked off from me. It also means I'll have to do the last few turns again. *sigh*, this chapter is a bit of a slog. At least this time I know where Serra will warp to and can recruit her turn 3. Ha, like Olwen, Leif doesn't know what to do and needs Dorias and August's help, but here it's funnier because this weird girl has just come out of the forest saying she'll join him and knows everything about him, unlike Olwen who could be an optional enemy. Looks like Recruiting her with Leif stops Salem's convo. I'll use save states to see what that's like but continue from here. Ah, Salem can't recruit her, but he does talk about the Kia staff. Which honestly should be more tied to Serra's recruitment. I wouldn't mind some transparency from the start that this is what she can do and this is her purpose, especially for Leif's sake so he can reassert that motivation to save Eyvel, now, finally, having some hope and means to do so. Recruited Miranda with no issue. But I'm really hurting for tomes. They're easy weapons to steal, but I haven't been vigiliant enough to do so, and there's no real place to buy them. I hope I can get a shop soon that will let me make full use of Shannam to properly equip my mages. Remember I'm using every mage I can get my hands on to have defense against status staves. It doesn't help that Serra, Miranda and Linoan all come without tomes (and I accidentally sold Salem's dark tome when I captured him meaning he had to compete for stolen Thunder Tomes with everyone else). Shannam moves to talk and then says "H-hey, wait! Let's talk about this.." And then Homer procedes to counter and kill him. "Ngh. What a stupid way...to..." Honestly, I can't disagree. And, not, Eichmann is not the only non-mage Loptyrian, as the fighters in this chapter are outright called Loptrions. Oh wow, Shannam is actually working for the Loptyrians and not just randomly here. Well...I have to respect his ability to get a job considering we saw him literally last chapter. How did he manage a gig so quickly? And how does this generic dance accompanying him fit into it? Remember, this guy is also meant to resemble wanted terrorist Shannan too! Unlike the fighters, the Dancer is identified as Dancer, not Loptrion though her affiliation is with the Welkenrosen. Still, I demand that Shannam be able to recruit her. She can still be a generic dancer, like the Generic Leinster Knights. But I want her for at least this chapter! Uh, that chapter was such a slog. Enemies were hard to hit, there was no pressure anywhere on the map, enemies don't even seek you out, you just engage them one at a time and slowly move everyone to the very far corner, making sure poison doesn't eventually kill you. What were they thinking? I'm about to say at least it's not fog of war, but fog of war would at least provide some sort of challenge to the map and reward you to seek out enemies to get their loot. This should have been a seize map and Miranda should have been a mandatory unit. Now we're finally conquering Leinster from the south. I like that the two route split maps have you attack Leinster from different sides, what I don't like is that there was zero care taken to ensure the Geography looks remotely similar. We don't even see any sign of the eastward travelling river from the A map and the caldera is completely different between the two. Even assuming the B map is a zoomed in version of the A map doesn't offer much consistency. The only way to resolve this is that Leinster is much loonger and these two maps aren't all that close to each other at all. And yeah, none of this matchs Genealogy either, aside from the presence of a caldera. August says they're approaching the rear gate, so does that mean the A map is turned around in some way? All maps so far have been pretty consistent with geography wherein down is south and up is north etc. No new units to be gained this chapter, which sucks. On both routes you get Sera and which units you get here determine who you can recruit between Conomor and Amalda. On A route you get Sleuf (possibly the best unit in the game), Ilyos and Misha, while on B route you get Shannam and Miranda. Neither of which are considered much good. But I don't care about characters not being good. I care about the imbalance. There should be an equal number of characters on each route! And why don't we fight Misha anyway? She can fly, she should be able to get here. It should be Misha and Serra on both routes with Ilyos, Seluf, Miranda and Conomor being the route exclusives. Actually, Ralf should replace Miranda since Miranda is important for a pretty big plot point that otherwise gets given to a random NPC later. Not sure how we can still make Conomor's recruitment work in such a scenario though. Anyway for this map we have Palman 3 He shares Eiseanu and Paulus's mug, but, at least to me, he looks less tired and worn out. It's amazing what colours can do for a portrait. As far as his character goes, the only thing he's displayed is a mildly chauvenistic attidted towards Amalda, telling her to calm down about her opinion of THE KIDNAPPING OF CHILDREN. It's funny though because he doesn't seem onboard with it or particularly against it. He seems to think it's pointless to have any opinion on it at all because it's happening anyway. Which is a bizarrely mild approach to such a thing. The game suggests I use mages or flying units to take out the ballista...but the ballista re all behind enemy walls that can't be flown over. Taking them out with seige magic would be possible, if there'd been more than one fire tome since the start of the game and I actually had someone with the weapon rank to use the meteors I've stolen. Miranda is ostensibly my fire mage, but she can't even use the Elfires that have been sitting in my convoy since I don't know when. Looks like I'll just have to use the age old strategy of milling ten turns in their range and exhausting their ammo. It seems to be the only way, especially without long range healing. The vendor in this chapter has fire which I buy with Shannam. This map I'm going to really try and grind out Miranda with the paragon scroll I've saved just for her. Hopefully I can give her a horse in time for the escape chapter after Leinster. Man this game just loves forests and mountains. Some kind of Acrobat Scroll to ignore movement penalties would be very valuable. Oh wow, so, visiting the villages reveals how you're meant to deal with these ballista. By basically sacrificing Leif's own people who have become suicidally angry at the empire. That is...wow, that's awesome. Why did no one tell me B route does this before now? The game heavily encourages you not to do it, so I'm going to make a save state and accept their aid just to see what it's like and then tediously take out the ballista myself. Unless I get a movement level up or something. The game gives you another option to deal with this chapter using a familar face. 4 Truly the ruffian of this game. You can pay him 20,000 gold to open the gates 3 Stop by the gates and this familiar face opens it for you. There is a second set of gates too, I wonder if he'll open them for me as well. I thought this might be some kind of trick since it opens you right into Amalda and a bunch of cavaliers but they don't seem to move to fight you. Ah, they do, but only after you actually enter the area (smaller than their range). And yes, the thug opens the other gate too. Ah, actually the fliers can fly over those walls. So that is a possibility to handle them, Karin can out range them and then dismount to take them out with her sword rank. I'll do that after I finish watching the suicidal villager rush. Seems they managed to clear out the entire chapter pretty effectively, without even all of them dying. However they couldn't handle Palman himself. Though he broke his Greatsword killing them all, so villagers vs empire is a bit of a stalemate. Playing the chapter for real now, Amalda charges if you get near Palman. It seems I can straight up killer her here. Well, since I don't have Sleuf, I don't be able to recruit her, so I might as well, but then who leads her troops in Chapter 19? Well, I've hit her with the sleep sword and I'm going to capture and release her so I can get that Master Sword. I'll have to look up how the later chapter is handled though. Fergus got back that movement level up I accidentally overwrote before. I've also finally promoted Dalsin. He is almost certainly better to promote at level 10 so you can start grinding his other weapon ranks, especially lances as he's the only indoor wielder apart from Xavier, but I wanted to grind him to level 20 for shits and giggles. Palman doesn't have a long range weapon, which is ridiculous at this point in the game. That makes him easy to cheese with Salem for exp...Make that Salem, Miranda and Homer, because I need all three due to how consistently he's dodging these 30% attacks. Freaking true hit. He goes down eventually, and we move on to taking Leinster's interior. All in all that chapter wasn't nearly as bad as it looked. The two cheesy ways to take it are fun and even without them, flying over the walls and dismounting a powerful flier is a good way to deal with the ballista. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 15 Author Share Posted March 15 Chapter 17B, 18 and 19 And in the next chapter we finally get a boss with a completely unique face 1 Well, Kempf earlier had a unique face too, unless you cound unused content. Seems weird that in all our travels only now have we met someone actually important. And Gustaf is important, being the guy in charge of Leinster castle...only...I don't think the game sells him as important. He's basically this games Morzas. We're told he's bad, and because this is Jugdral where things are edgier, it's implied he's raping local women, but he lacks presence and a connection to Leif. This is the map abusing Leif's people yet there's no personal amnimosity at all. Depsite having a unique face, he does feel like just another chapter boss, with the real star of this show being Xavier and his very difficult recruitment conditions. What about Gustaf's face? Well...it's kind of bland. It feels like his unique design is more happenstance than intention. He looks like every other general we've went up against so far. All in all, he's a weak antagonist in a place where the game needs and deserves a strong antagonist. The two big challenges of this map are recruiting Xavier and getting the member's guard by not killing any Leinster soldiers. I will give it my best shot to do the former, but I won't bother too much with the latter. The only secret shop in the game requires warp to access, so it's off limits to me. Oh, we also have enemy dancers here. Are they meant to be Gustaf's harem? They do talk about him having vices and stealing women. And, while I'm checking out enemies, I better tally all the Leinster generals, who have names! Though I think that might only be for the fantranslation to help make matching them to civilians easier. 2 Marlon 4 Frank 5 Charles 2 Dirk 1 Sean 1 Edward 1 Andrew 2 Nicholas The weird thing here is that Sean, Edward and Andrew all seemingly have unique portraits. Though Andrew fdoes look a lot like Carrion, it's not the same portrait though. I needed to kill a lot of Leinster Soldiers to make sure I could get the Body Ring in time without warp, so the secret card went out the door very quickly. Recruiting the generals was easier than anticipated though, as I lured them into the open doorway and then stole the Killer Lance form the general in front. This left him unable to attack or retreat and left them there as a big crowd. Ah! What the hell. A Dark Bishop just appears from the stairs and attacks with Fenrir, killing one of the civilians no matter what I do. How fucking cheap. Looks like I need to permanently plop someone down on that stairs. Ah, but I have no one near by. Can I do so without restarting the entire chapter again? It doesn't look like the Dark Bishop is missing the civilians no matter what string I try to generate. Yeah, it has over 100 hit and they have 0 avoid. And I don't think I can get any of my units down there in time even if they proc movement stars. Fuck. This is just fucking cheap. If you're going to ambush me with long range tomes killing the civilians, at least give me a turn to react. I take it back, getting those villagers to talk to the right general is a fucking nightmare. How is anyone expected to do that in a run without abusing save states? They just keep killing each other. If I were to seriousl iron man this, I think I'd have to use all four charges of Tina's thief staff to steal the hammers from the four Leinster generals that have them, kill the Friege generals with bolting and then hope I have enough con to steel the killer lances (at least there's a body ring to give me some insurance for that in this chapter, but even then you'll need at least one con level up on Pern or Lifis). As soon as you open the door, pluck a buly Bow user one tile south of the door, warp everyone to the western side of the map so you can rescue all the civilians and make sure they don't get in the way, then rescue pass the one civilian needed (a specification a vanilla player in 1999 would never know, by the way) to the bow user, have the bow user step back and place the civilian in the spot below the door. Fortunately the Leinster generals won't attack the civilians, but they will attack each other. It's fine for an allied general to die, the risk is them killing an enemy general in counter attack. That's why stealing their weapons is vital and why you'd have to use basically the entirety of the thief staff to ensure you can do this with no room for error. Gustaf has maxed defense and maxed strength, but only uses Thoron, so that 20 str isn't doing him much. It also means his Thoron can easily be stolen leaving him completely defenseless. I'm going to break Dalsin's Iron lance against him just for the wexp. Finished now. I said up a save state just before killing Gustaf and had him murder Miranda to see what would happen, and the same scene as A route where a random old lady takes her position in the plot happens. That's fine, Miranda doesn't need to be a retreating character or anything, but she should really have been playable on both routes so over 50% of the players don't see the old lady scene instead of the one actually utilizing a playable character. Next chapter, and, oh! We're seeing a face from the previous chapter. Hmm. He's identified here only as Dorias's man. Should I count this as a seperate character? In terms of context, it absolutely makes sense that this guy is Edward, the Leinster General from the previous chapter. But, Edward can die. I'm going to appeal to context and say, yes, it is the same guy, and since he doesn't have a death quote explicitly drawing attention to death, then he meerely retreats if you get him killed. 1 And look, it's our one an only scene with Bloom in the game. The actual person with political authority of this whole country and Leif's prime personal villain...and he gets all of two lines. His portrait is looking good though. Ah, Amalda is here. I wonder if she would be if I killed her in 17B. I only captured and released her. I feel like yes, since usually the game considers capture and release the same as death. Ie if you capture release Shiva in 2x he won't show up later, but if you just capture him and hold him at the end of the chapter then he will. We also get Wolf here, previously seen just last chapter as a Leinster General and much earlier as the guy speaking to Hannibal. 3 And the most fun fact about him is that he has identical class, stats and skills to the boss of the next chapter, Barath, leading me to suspect they were originally the same character and it was only changed when they realized Wolf could be killed. Given the nature of this chapter as an escape chapter, I would have been fine with Wolf being immortal. Hell they should have stuck Bloom on the field and have him chase you away with Mjolnir. That would have been epic. This chapter is one of my favourite in the series, not going to lie. It's just such a cool position to be in. In terms of chapter goals it's the easiest to clear in the entire series. You start by the goal and can take it with no effort. You just have to abandon half your army to do so. And honestly, I was slightly tempted to do that. I have loads of useless characters I'm not going to use again. And it would let me get the prison centre chapter. But...I want Miranda to speak to Conomor and I'm just too big a softy to let those civilians die. I did lost two villages to the thieves though. I just don't seem to have any workable way to get to them in time. This chapter is the one where warp, rewarp and rescue really become fun. Unfortunately I don't have access to them, so it's a real scramble to the finish. It took me quite a few tries and different deployment configurations to get the first few turns down in a way that let me recruit Conomor, get all the civilians to safety and not lose anyone. Ha. A Friege soldier is healing one of the brigands. That just feels weird. Obviously they're both on the side of the enemy, but it just seems odd. I can see the Empire forces ignoring the bandits because they don't care about the civilians, but not only assisting them, but actively using their resources like a heal staff to do so is...well..it's certainly a policy. Can't save two more villages from the bandits, but they both give a staff, so that's fine to lose. R.I.P villagers. I'm also going to note here, that this is yet another time we see the area around Leinster, and again it looks nothing like Chapter 17 or Genealogy aside from the presence of a Caldera. That being said, the map overall seems to be a pretty good approximation of the area between Leinster and Ulster in Genealogy, only with the added presence of a river and the western villages (sans the church) being pushed over slightly to fit. I got everyone up to the castle safely, including the villagers. Leif is now guarding the bridge and ready to power level again after sitting at level 20 for so long. I wish I'd given him the scroll to boost magic though, as his magic is sitting at a paltry 2 while his other stats are practically maxed. I have some magic rings saved up though, which I think I'll toss on him. It took ages, and Leif grinding to lv20 in a single chapter, but I finally waited out the reinforcements and cleared the map. The reason for this is less to do with the exp, and more so I can try and grab those blizzard tomes the mages in the south have. They will be invaluable for inducing long range sleep on Reinhardt's chapter. Next time we'll be back in Leinster castle, though it'll look completely different. While staying in Leinster castle is what I usually do in Genealogy, the game actually encourages you to flee to a church in the west, which would have been ice for the sake of continuity and for showing how desperate Leif's situation became. I'll have a lot to complain about in regards to continuity in the coming chapters. 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Cdijk16 Posted March 15 Share Posted March 15 Why didn't you use the Sleep Sword you obtained in Chapter 16B to put the Leonster generals to sleep prior to turning any of them green? That would have stopped them from killing each other and made the process much more consistent. The civilians ignore status effects that prevent them from talking, so they can speak to the generals even if the generals are asleep. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 15 Author Share Posted March 15 (edited) 9 minutes ago, Cdijk16 said: Why didn't you use the Sleep Sword you obtained in Chapter 16B to put the Leonster generals to sleep prior to turning any of them green? That would have stopped them from killing each other and made the process much more consistent. The civilians ignore status effects that prevent them from talking, so they can speak to the generals even if the generals are asleep. I assumed you could not talk to a sleeping person. I did try it at one point, but I also didn't really have any sword users on that side of the map who were weak enough to not kill them. Edited March 15 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 16 Author Share Posted March 16 Chapter 20, 21 and 21x In this chapter we first get to see Reinhardt in all two of his scenes in the game. He's talking to Barath 1 Barath is interesting for two reasons. The first is, as I said in the previous chapter, because he has identical stats to Wolf, which is either really lazy or suggests something else. The second is that he has a unique face. Which is odd for a character of such low importance. I do hope he appears in a Genealogy remake instead of that one Commander, I might have said the same thing last chapter about Wolf, but really, either of them will do. We get a good sense of the timeline here. Ishotre is already dead and Mergen taken. That means during this chapter Seliph is already fighting Tine and the three mage sisters, possibly even ousting Bloom himself. That's kind of obvious from the ending of the chapter, but I do like the perspective Reinhardt brings here. Bloom is upset that his son's dead, because of course he would be. I like Bloom, I even wrote a fanfic about him once. I wrote the entire thing but only ever found the motivation to post half of it. I should finish editing it some day and complete it. Oh wow, Cohen also fought Seliph at this point. That's not something we see in Genealogy, but now I really hope we do. I'm very sure you don't fight a generic baron at that point. Let me check. Hmm. Well there is a Steel Axe General Commander, but that's a far cry from Cohen who is primarily a mage Baron who's psychical back up is a Master Lance. Oh, look who's making an unexpected return 3 This guy says "Uh...Y-yes, sir?" and "Ah, at once sir", which is still more dialogue than Dvorak, the boss with this portrait, actually gets. August says if they fall here they have no where to run...no mention of that church from Genealogy Finn urges Leif to flee to. August also note how we're giving Seliph time to take Ulster by distracting Bloom's forces, and I just love that as a narrative plot point. If this was the same story as Genealogy flicking back and forth between the two scenes would run the risk of being a bit forced and artifical I feel, but with Genealogy already an established story and these events already happening elsewhere, it just makes the world feel larger and keep a central focus on these people, right here, doing what they can. Oh wow, an enemy with unlock. Isn't that exclusive to Tina? Are these two random mages related to her like that one Berserker with a Pugi in the forest who must be Osian's cousin or something? That was far easier than I remember. I guess power levelling Leif last chapter unbalanced my exp a bit. I remembered this chapter being pretty desperate hold out, but I was able to overwhelm the enemy pretty easily and was only at risk to ambush reinforcements that could crowd around one person. Now, this chapter. This chapter. The Liberation Wars. I have a lot to say about the bosses of this chapter. 3 This is Seimetol, yet another Thracian mercenary. He uses Rumei's portrait, but he's not as memorable as Rumei. The previous two chapters adapted Chapter 7 of Genealogy, while the remaining chapters adapt (most of) Chapter 8. There were Thracians in involved in Chapter 8 of Genealogy, hell the chapter is named after them, but they only involve themselves after Bloom is dead. In fact, it's specifically a plot point that Travant isn't helping Bloom and wants him and Seliph's forces to exhaust each other so Thracia can take over. So...why the hell did they put Seimetol here? Was it purely just to have a wyvern enemy? Okay, fine, but let's make something of it. Let's have Seimetol be confident he is going to get back up from Trvant and then lament that it never comes, so we can show this plot point of Trvant abandoning the empire from the ground level (pun not intended). 4 And this is Fraus. This is the fourth and final time we see his face, it' s been a while. We fought him all the way back in Chapter 9 when he was the Thracian accidentally attacking Dorias and Selphina. Here he's a Friege mage who guards the castle. He has dialogue, but it's so basic he might as well not have any. But I don't care about that. I hate him not for what he is, but for what he is not. Which is Ishtar. He is not Ishtar. And he should be Ishtar. Because in Genealogy Leif's forces fight Ishtar. That's what happens. Ishtar is sent to take back Leinster castle along with Faval and the thre mage sisters. And all five of them should have been present in this chapter. Not only would this maintain continuity with Genealogy, but it would actually be better for Leif's character arc. Because at this point Leif is feeling inferior after his massive fuck up and he projects it onto him not having major holy blood. Well showing the goddess of Thunder tearing apart the battlefield, and Faval with his holy weapon would have served to further reinforce Leif's doubts. Seeing Julius warp in and save Ishtar would have been more impactful for selling Julius' presence than the weird way they did decide to handle him. But, okay, things are different in Thracia 776. Leif naturally conquers Connacht in Genealogy while in Thracia 776 he's heading straight for Munster. Fair enough, this doesn't match the flow of battle of Genealogy, there's kind of a crosscross happening. You could argue Leif rides down to Ulster and starts from there, even though in this map we start in the North West, but fine. If we accept that putting Ishtar or even the three mage sisters (who should have shown up at least somewhere in this game) here is impossible for these mundane weapons...then where are Muhammad and Ovo? Simply put, in Chapter 8 of Holy War you face 9 named bosses, and Thracia 776 decided to use just 1 of them. 3 We meet yet another random bishop using Cohen's face, this time the one that promote Linoan. What's funny about this one is that Cohen was already mentioned last chapter and is going to be fought next chapter (give or take a Paralogue). Usually these NPC and boss faces are spread out quite a bit so you only vaguely recognize them, but this is two consecutive chapters in which the reused portrait could genuinely lead to some confusion. Dang. I did almost the entire level and was approaching Fraus at the castle when he put Leif to sleep with his blizzard tome. Leif can get hit by status effects, the enemy just won't target him with status staves. And what this means...game over. I can't use a restore staff, so I can't seize with Leif. Reset. That chapter seemed easy at first, but a lot of cavalier reinforcements from the east can quickly overwhelm you. Most enemies are pretty weak though, and some high defense units they won't even bother attacking, so it's not that hard over all, but probably more tricky that the previous defense chapter in which you are meant to be overwhelmed and pushed you your limit. And because I intentional got a unit captured in the the previous chapter, we're going to go to the Gaiden, where Leif risks everything for the sake of...Shannam. What!? Homer has E rank wind magic, which means he can't use any of the wind tomes I just bought...how is he meant to get D rank magic to use wind if he can't use wind? Maybe if I promote him he'll get some wexp, but this is stupid one way or the other. 1 And we get met with a fresh face. His name is Zaom, and he does not have a unique design. He shares it with the later boss Coulter, who is interesting for a few reasons. Zaom is also talking to this guy. I'm going to show some restraint and now count this as a new character. Given the proximity of time and distance and that the assault on Leinster did end with a retreat, let's say he's the same guy Barath was talking to and that he managed to survive and make it here. We're at the point where they're fully expecting you to be warp skipping chapters, because this chapter is just ridiculous played conventionally. You have very few units (or at least units with weapons) and the enemy themself spams warp like to crowd you. The enemies aren't super strong, but they vary between physical and magic means they can kill you if you don't heal often. Zaom potentially putting people to sleep with Blizzard is also pretty lethal. On turn 30 the Wilkenrozen show up to force you to get out of the level. They're represented by this face 3 Who, sadly, is not a boss...And then Julius shows up with Ishtar to have a casual conversation in the prison. WHY WASN'T JUILIUS AN ENEMY UNIT! IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO TERRIFYING TO HAVE HIM SHOW UP WITH UNBEATABLE STATS! YOU'VE PUT HIM RIGHT THERE! USE HIM IN GAMEPLAY! Imagine you somehow played Thracia without without Genealogy, this red head kid is just going to feel so random, but put him here in gameplay and he'll have so much more presence. *sigh* Next chapter is Reinhart. I won't complain about minor bosses there. Or again. The rest is great. But this section frustrates me in how little they pay attention to continuity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 17 Author Share Posted March 17 So we open up to Cohen finally appearing. 4 And he proceeds to espouse a whole bunch of last minute backstory to Saias that Saias already knows. This is just so hilariously poorly done as far as conventional writing goes, yet I love it so much. I have to say though, Saias misses a lot of presence he has in the game in not appearing in the B route. And then Reinhardt gets his second of three whole scenes in the game 1 Here we go. 19 leadership stars, sleep, berserk, silence, I'm going up against it all. Victory only needs Leif to seize the Throne. That means I have to be careful to get him over the bridge! And...Cohen immediately uses Berserk on Homer, procs a movement star (yeah, bosses who can randomly attack twice, joy) and then uses it on Leif...I was sure enemies didn't target Leif with status effects. But here we go, Turn 1 failure, Berserked Leif. Looks like i"m going to have to rescue Leif for the first few turns to ensure he doesn't get hit with any of the status staves. I got a Pure Water with a pretty unique looking soldier. The first few chapters took quite a few resets to survive. Between Berserk, Sleep and Silence, a full 9 of my units are put out of commission, and I have to manipulate things so they are 9 that I choose. My initial plan all game has been to train up a bunch of magic user, but as I said before, that just mean Cohen targeted Leif. And Saias 18 magic is pretty hard for most characters to avoid without chugging all my pure waters (which on retrospect is probably a better use for them than the hypothetical power boost they could give me in endgame). So to get around Berserk I had to deploy several bulky units with no weapons for Cohen to target. Once staff spam is survived, I need to spend d a bunch of turns removing the ammo from the Ballista near the castle. Not even my jacked Karin movement can out range it. Then I need to ferry units safely into the range of Cohen's blizzard without Karin getting hit. All the while defending against the reinforcements who move towards my very impaired army. Finally after turn 40, Cohen warps Saias away and with his 10 leadership stars going I can finally hit things with some reliability. Cohen warps Saias away against his consent, and much like I praised Raydrik having a warp stave when he warped Galzus in a cutscene at the start of the game, I would have liked it if Cohen had a warp staff here for the same reasons. This turn count is ridiculous though. Why as high as 40 turns to mill through before Saias leaves? It should be, like 10. Took an age, but by dipping Karin in and out of their range, I managed to kill enough of Reinhardt's mage knights to drop her in his expected range and get the Blessed Sword. Then I baited them away, killed Cohen with Leif and seize on the next turn, leaving Reinhardt alive. Honestly, the bridge gambit the enemy pulls here is to their own disadvantage, as it means once you aggro them, they can't get the bulk of your army. This chapter really should have had something like a turn limit to force you to move faster and engage Reinhardt and not just cheese it by taking advantage of the fact that they've isolated themselves. A turn limit (with Saias leaving much earlier) would make it far more intense, if you're not just warp skipping it, of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 18 Author Share Posted March 18 (edited) Chapter 23, 24 and 25 We open with Saias helping Ced rescue civilians. Which is kind of a weird plot development. I mean, Saias was an enemy fighting against us last chapter. Sure, throughout the game he hasn't been depicted as a bad guy, he helped Mareeta after all, but why the sudden turn around from fighting against us to fighting with us? What prompted this from him? If rescuing the civilians was his priority, then why waste his time fighting against the liberation army trying to help them? Ced is also way too trusting in this scene. Saias very well could have just taken the all important sword and civilains and just handed them back to Raydrik. But, I suppose he was in a pretty tight spot. We then see Raydrik talking to none other than Although this time I won't increase the tally, because I'll assume it's the same character as the very first blue cloak man we saw talking to Raydrik back at the start of the game. I'm not sure why they had blue cloak collar man talk to Raydrik here though, as he's immediately replaced by the boss of this chapter 1 Really, conservation of characters should have come into play here. Faden should have been the person Raydrik was talking to at the start of the game. Use your characters, people. Having generics actually doesn't make your world more filled out and lived in if your named characters are given so little to do that they might as well be generics themselves. As for Faden, he has a unique face, and that's about all I can say about him. Real shame he wasn't characterized at the start of the game in the Munster arc. This chapter is a bit busy to do anything interesting with him now. 4 We also have our lopt bishop boss of this chapter. He'll get merc'd by Ced pretty quickly, but before then he'll have plenty of time to use silence on me in an irritating way. Several enemies here also carry sleep, we are at peak staff to staff combat now and I'm fighting with both hands tied behind my back. Overall I really like this chapter. The layout puts some ridges in to make the chapter work, but otherwise it's a very faithful recreation of this area form Genealogy of the Holy War. And best of all, it has 2 THE SAME BOSS FROM GENEALOGY! THE SAME BOSS FROM GENEALOGY! They ignored Ishatar as a boss, they ignored Faval completely, they ignored the three mage sisters and Tine is barely mentioned. They never gave Ishtore or Liza the time of day, Bloom gets a single scene with less than a handful of lines. Every boss from Chapter 7 and 8 of Genealogy if ignored, dismissed, disrespect except Coulter. He stands above all other bossmen as one appearing in two games under the same circumstances. ANd most gloriouslu of all, this means giving him a completely different face to what he had in Genealogy XD Like, seriously, there isn't even half an attempt to make him look the same. Though, to be fair, it is the most overused boss face in Genealogy. Maybe this was meant to be an original design for him, but then they went and made Zaom have the same face. Oh, also Altena is here too, but much like Genealogy, she won't engage us...and she's not even holding her Holy Weapon. What the hell? I guess that's why the Dragonpike is said to be Dean and Altena only...still though...why? Her having Gae Bolg here is plot relevant, it's part of what allows Finn to recognize her. In light of all this, it's kind of surprising they even let Ced have Forseti in this game when he could have been a father-ambigious-Ced (or even Hawk). I mean, they seem really reluctant to show off any Holy Weapons otherwise. They never let Bloom or Ishtar use Mjolnir against us. We never see Faval at all. Travant never takes the field with Gungnir, nor do they utilize Julius for anything other than a cameo. Shannan and Balmung never appear in the game at all, and here, even when it would just be flavour and she wouldn't need to actively use it all. These weapons are in the code. They glitch the game if tried to use because they're unfinished, but they're there. It wouldn't be hard at all to have them, and here most of all there is no excuse. It's plot relevant and gameplay irrelevant. Just do it! Maybe they're afraid the player could capture or steal holy weapons, so they only gave us one on a playable character, but surely there would have been ways to prevent that, and capturing Altena here, in particular, would have vastly more plot complications than repossessing her Holy Weapon. Ahem. Holy weapon erasure aside, I do like this chapter. It gets so chaotic with four different forces all vying for control in a way that makes sense for the plot. And all the while Seliph is up in Connacht fighting Bloom. So much is happening, it feels like a real war, unlike the protagonist centric battles of other Fire Emblem games. Here, Leif is clearly just one actor of a multi layered conflict where everyone has their own story. We get a scene where Alphand reveals he's lost his tome and needs to find it. This is a gag repeated from Genealogy, which would have been perfect if it were the same boss, but alas that happened in Yied. Having it happen to two completely unrelated Lopt Sect members makes it feel a tad contrived, but the scene itself is well written by the translator. It doesn't take him very long to find it and when he has it, he's pretty dangerous, so I have to put Saias in his vicinity to trigger Ced's appearance, if I wait too long he'd be able to kill my sleeping Deen, who is entirely defenseless. Oh wait, Altena straight up leaves the map instead of hovering on the mountains like she does in Genealogy. All the more reason for her to have used Gae Bolg. On a related note, I kind of wish the Thracians here were green units like in Tara (or some other colour so as not to interfere with the green=ally who can't attack me perception). This is even more of a three way battle than Tara was and by all rights the Thracians should attack the remaining empire soldiers too. I don't know how, but a Thracian managed to capture Xavier, stealing my only Master Axe. The Thracian has a con of 13 while Xavier has a con of 15. Xavier was asleep, but that shouldn't matter, I thought. Otherwise you could capture those Baron bosses with 20 con like Cohen and Raydrik. I thought Leif getting the Blagi Sword, a weapon that specifically only works with holy blood users, undermined Leif's arc of feeling inferior of not having holy blood. "Oh no, I'm so useless because I don't have major holy blood." "Fear not! Yes, you aren't able to wield a holy weapon, but you're still have divine and better than those peasents because you can wield this! An unrelated sacred relic tailored towards beating this enemy that conveniently you can use!" And while that's true, the Blaggi Sword is probably better off not being a thing, Ced's convo with Leif is pretty awesome and a good reason for his turn around...Faval and Ishatar still should have been characters in this game beyond cutscene cameos though. And then Saias leaves for...reasons. I don't really get why. It's possible to have him stay if you kill Alphand and seize the same turn before Ced shows up. In which case Ced doens't join for...again, reasons. So it's essentially a Samson-Arran choice, only you have to do some LTC one turn speed run to get the weaker of the two characters. Given that, to get Illos, Miranda has to randomly be dead, I can only suspect there was some kind of technical limit to the number of units you could have in your army, hence why they made it so you could only have one of the two, but it's a bit weird and doesn't make much sense. If it were a technical limit, then having Saias stick around if you have at least one dead or unrecruted ally would...well it wouldn't let thins make much more sense narratively, but it would make things feel less random, especially if we give someone a line about Leif not being at full strength and needing the reinforcement. Now we're in the second last chapter, as I won't be doing CHapter 24x since it relies on the Kia staff, which I won't use. I suppose I could still get the staff and go to the chapter and just not save Eyvel, but I'm afraid of both this chapter and the following chapter, so I'm going to try and finish off Raydrik quickly. The Bragi Sword is a bit of a funny weapon. It's meant to be useable by people with Holy Blood, so Leif, Nana, Diarmuid and Fergus can all use it. But Eyvel, Galzus and Mareeta can't. Eyvel has her weird situation, but Galzus and Mareeta should 100% be able to use it according to the lore. I would also personally like Miranda to be able to use it too, so Leif's family isn't the only one with Holy Blood in Norht Thracia. So I'll chalk her lack of using it to an oversight along with Mareeta and Galzus. 1 Looks like I'm going up against Berserk staffs again. *gulp*. First order of Business is to ensure Lara and Mareeta end up with Leif in the south by manipulating my deployment order. I'm hoping I can do this in about three turns, and without losing anyone. I also have 10 blizzard uses from the two tomes I managed to steal before, so hopefully Asvel can disable the berserk staffer. Well...shit. I genuinely wasn't expecting the enemy with the restore staff to actually heal the sleeping enemyh with the berserk staff. Looks like I'll have to put both of them to sleep...And I goto a game over because Galzus was able to one round my 20 defense 20 speed Leif. A second go around. I blizzard both the restore staff user and berserk staff user. Lure Galzus in, this time remember not to give Leif a broken weapon. Olwen, bolstered with a Pure Water, tanks all the dark mages in her area. I then position Conomour to csteal the berserk sword using the sleep sword. Mareeta recruits Galzus and together with Ced and Asvel, they take out the other mercenaries. Leif then heads up alone to Raydrik and takes him out. Simple. Had to do a few resets due to the enemy getting lucky with Fenrir a few times. But overall it was relatively simple. 1 Alright, here we go. All out. All Pure Waters and Vulneraries on the units. All siege tomes here. Everyone with a door key. I'm going to try and do this with no save states at all, though I will be willing to let people die, and I will be resetting the first few turns if need be. Things start off poor. My absolute first priority is to neutralize Canis due to her Berserk staff, but I only have Conomor, Linoan and Sara. Linoan and Sara have maxed magic, but they still aren't exactly my A team. It seems I can't do it without Conomor dying. He can put Canis to sleep, but then he has WTDagainst the master lance knights, one of which can one round him. Well, since he'll die anyway, I might as well Berserk he instead of sleep her. This is weird. First round Berserked Canis used Berserk on her fello Deadlord. But now, she insists on using Berserk on Osian even though she's Berserked. I did read that getting enemies to Berserk each other does depend on unit placement somewhat, so maybe I'm killing or leaving alive the wrong untis. But, berserking the enemies isn't critical, so I'll just put her to sleep instead. Okay, I need Conomor to hit Canis with the sleep sword at 40% accuracy on turn 1, and is frustrating to reset every time he misses. So no save states with the exception of hitting Canis on turn 1.z Well, it was a bit of a blood bath, but I did it in the end. Ronan, Lifis, Karin, Dalsin, Linoan, Conomor didn't make it. Ronan, Lifis and Karin in particular where very useful in this playthrough, yes, seriously, Ronan too. His magic growth didn't end up helping him endure enemy staves, but his movement stars and fortunate movment level up mad ehim quite versatile. And because I was giving him favouatism, he had Luna and Adept to help him kill, though he didn't entirely need them once he hit a high enough weapon rank to use the Brave Bow. I could certainly do the endgame without any losses, but it would require manipulating placement order so I could get Ced or Galzus near Canis to ensure I can one turn her. Total Turns: 893 Surviving Units: 40 Overall Rank: E...which is pretty shameful, and I definitely could have done better even with the challenge restrictions if I wasn't so focused on minmaxing. Ultimately, Thracia without staves is entirely doable and not as troubling as I thought. It mainly just invovles different strategies as opposed to warping in an OP unit and storming the enemy castle solo. I'm not done yet, I have a save file at the route split and I'm going to briefly check A route just to see if any more boss portraits are used there to complete my catalogue. Edited March 18 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cdijk16 Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 Mounted units are treated as having 20 Constitution for purpose of Capturing, so enemy mounted units can capture anything with less than 20 Con. That's why the 13 Con Wyvern Rider was able to capture Xavier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanty Pete's 1st Mate Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 5 hours ago, Jotari said: Total Turns: 893 Surviving Units: 40 Overall Rank: E...which is pretty shameful, and I definitely could have done better even with the challenge restrictions if I wasn't so focused on minmaxing. Ultimately, Thracia without staves is entirely doable and not as troubling as I thought. It mainly just invovles different strategies as opposed to warping in an OP unit and storming the enemy castle solo. Congrats on making it at all! I am impressed that it was possible, without too much misery. In the "challenge run" sphere, I am actually revisiting Genealogy right now, for a "Sigurdless" playthrough. What happens when your main Lord is only allowed to Seize and serve as an Authority bot? Time to find out! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 18 Author Share Posted March 18 15 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: Congrats on making it at all! I am impressed that it was possible, without too much misery. I was playing paragon mode mind you. That probably needs to be stressed more (but I also insisted on not early promoting which was a laughably stupid idea,so it probably balances out). 15 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: In the "challenge run" sphere, I am actually revisiting Genealogy right now, for a "Sigurdless" playthrough. What happens when your main Lord is only allowed to Seize and serve as an Authority bot? Time to find out! A Sigurdless playthrough genuinely sounds more difficult than a Sigurd solo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanty Pete's 1st Mate Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 8 hours ago, Jotari said: was playing paragon mode mind you. That probably needs to be stressed more (but I also insisted on not early promoting which was a laughably stupid idea,so it probably balances out). Ah, the duality of Kaga. To be sick and twisted enough to make Thracia 776 in the first place, yet also benevolent and merciful enough to provide a slightly easier secret mode. Love that the original Japanese title - "Elite Mode" - makes it sound like it's gonna be harder. I wonder - have any games since done anything like Paragon Mode? Closest I can think of is Fixed Mode in Path of Radiance, but it's debatable whether that's slightly easier, or merely different. 8 hours ago, Jotari said: A Sigurdless playthrough genuinely sounds more difficult than a Sigurd solo. Yeah, Quan has become my closest thing to a "carry". Also I'm gaining more appreciation fo Naiose, who has been dealing more damage in one hit than Alec manages to exert in two. Plus, going Sigurdless means that Ethlyn and Ayra get to play around with the Silver Sword. So, not a total waste. Maybe I'll count how many turns this takes me, then count how many turns "Sigurd solo" demands, and see which one comes out on top (bottom?). But I've never done a Sigurd solo, so... more work, yay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 19 Author Share Posted March 19 (edited) 2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: Ah, the duality of Kaga. To be sick and twisted enough to make Thracia 776 in the first place, yet also benevolent and merciful enough to provide a slightly easier secret mode. Love that the original Japanese title - "Elite Mode" - makes it sound like it's gonna be harder. I wonder - have any games since done anything like Paragon Mode? Closest I can think of is Fixed Mode in Path of Radiance, but it's debatable whether that's slightly easier, or merely different. Yeah, Quan has become my closest thing to a "carry". Also I'm gaining more appreciation fo Naiose, who has been dealing more damage in one hit than Alec manages to exert in two. Plus, going Sigurdless means that Ethlyn and Ayra get to play around with the Silver Sword. So, not a total waste. Maybe I'll count how many turns this takes me, then count how many turns "Sigurd solo" demands, and see which one comes out on top (bottom?). But I've never done a Sigurd solo, so... more work, yay. A Sigurd solo would probably take more turns, but it will also be quicker to do in real time. Because a Sigurd solo inevitably involves a huge crowd of enemies ganging up on him that takes tonnes of turns to get through. Tonnes of mindless turns with the turbo button firmly pressed. Which means it actually takes very little real time to do, even if the turn count is really high. A Sigurdless playthrough on the other hand would be fewer turns but a lot longer spent on each turn as every unit's action needs to be considered. Edited March 19 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 21 Author Share Posted March 21 (edited) Chapter 16A Going back to it and we're at Chapter 17A, just to take a glance at the A route and so I can finally recruit Misha and Illios. The first face we see is the glorious Kempf talking to Nkialaf 4 Who not only looks like Largo and Truman, but has the exact same palette as them. And what's kind of ironic here is that he chews out Kempf for abandoning his position at Dundrum. Said cowardaice of Kempf also got Largo killed, Niakalaf's identical clone. So there's more or less a direct plot line between those two characters with their identical appearance not being commented on at all. 5 Okay, that's actually hilarious. So, glancing at the map, the boss of this chapter isn't actually Niakalf, it's this guy, Brook, who is just Nikalaf in a purple cloak. And I didn't make a mistake or anything, yellow caped Nikalaf is the guy in the opening cutscene talking to Kempf, Kempf even uses his name, but then he just vanishes and is replaced with someone who looks identical to him with no explanation so we can fight Nikalaf himself next chapter. That is just...a ridiculous decision. You might as well just have a generic enemy guard the castle, since we already have Kempf, Illios and Conomore in this chapter serving as bosses. Speaking of Illios, I just recruited him with Karin. Not only does Olwen need to be inexplicably dead, but you need to recruit him with this specific character he has absolutely no connection to at all. What a stupid recruitment. I have to start again because I killed all Illios' sleep sword minions without realizing it and I need at least one of them to get Misha. Fittingly, Illios is the one to kill Olwen himself on this run. Kill the nobility and steal their title! Hold up...sleep Edge is 20 weight and used by a Cavalier. How the hell am I meant to steal it? I somehow have to have sleep to use sleep. Is getting to Salem before he expends all the uses of his sleep staff literally the only way to recruit Misha? Recruiting Illios without engaging his underlandings doesn't turn them green or do anything that might help me get their stuff...Okay, it looks like recruiting Misha on a no staff challenge is impossible. There's simply no way to get the ability to use sleep on her without a staff. I'm going to break the rules of the challenge to recruit Misha purely because I never recruited her before and want to do so on this run just to see what she's like. And to that end I'm going to use Tina's thief staff to take one of these sleep swords. Fortunately she has one charge of it left after using it on me. I pick up Sleuf, who is one of the best characters in the game for his base A Staff Rank, which, of course, is useless to me. I think the intention here is to send someone along the mountainous and forested southern path to take out the ballista safely from behind, but Karin dismounting and using her Flame Sword accomplishes the same thing much quicker. I put Kempf to sleep and let him live. Despite giving you the ability to be merciful, Thracia's bosses rarely appreciate being spared. Kempf here says "Hmph...I won't forget this! Remember me well, for this is the face of your conqueror!" It would be nice if the game played with that a little bit and had previously spared bosses come back at certain points in the game, rearmed and eager to fight you. That puts capturing them for their equipment less of an optimal thing to do and more something you'd need to consider on a case by case basis. And, perhaps, if you don't release the enemy during the chapter, you can toss them in a prison at the end of the chapter and then recruit them Fates style. I'd actually like that a lot for Thracia. Let me play as Kempf and Ecihmann! Though, given how jacked some of the boss stats are in this game, that might actually be hilariously unbalancing. I think the game expected me to take a lot longer with that, as Conomor doesn't show up as a reinforcement until turn 20 despite being mentioned in the opening and the enemy's stated strategy being to hold out until then. The wiki also mentioned two pegasus riders coming as reinforcements on turn 15, waiting for Conomor to show up revealed way more than two showing up. Conomor is here, and he's talking to green cloak man 4 Again, he's getting more lines than Dvorak. Of course, it's possible this is the same soldier man we saw speaking to Barath and at the prison later, but considering Conomor's battallion is meant to be Ulster knights, I'll say no, they're not. Especially since this particular green cloak soldier fiercely wants to fight for Ulster while the other continues to fight even after Seliph reclaims it. Conomor brings up Miranda as his excuse, which is funny because we never see Miranda in this route and are given absolutely no context for who she is. His desire to fight is also really weak. A few of his soldiers fight Lifis who was left behind at the start of the map, and then they all proceed to flee the map. Given how this is almost purely for narrative, I think it'd be much better if Conomor showed up earlier, like on turn 5 or something. Then we could have an actual story of Conomor basically betraying Brook and Kempf (poetic justice on the latter there) by only making a show of fighting before fleeing. Edited March 21 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 22 Author Share Posted March 22 (edited) Chapter 17A Oh wow, that's hilarious. When Gustaf chews out Nikolov for losing the last battle, Nikolaf immediately blames it on Kempf breaking rank to try and get his own glory. That is...not what happened. And I don't think it mechancially can happen. Kempf is an unmoving unit who stays within the cover of the Ballista like he was told to throughout the entire battle. Nikolov, who's introductory scene was repremanding Kempf for abandoning his allies, immediately abandons Kempf and blames the guy the one time Kempf actually followed orders and died or was captured for it. That is just, fucking poetic justice gold for everyone involved. Oh wow, that's cool, in this chapter the benched characters are actually fighting Reinhardt off screen. Good luck Robert and Alva and all those other characters I don't use. 5 This is Moore, he doesn't get any dialogue during the intro cutscene, though the characters do mention him and his mug shows up on the intro map. Honestly, I think this guy probably should have just been merged with Linecock, the mage in the forest from B group. The enemy has had plenty of time to know we're coming and with rewarp staffs it would make perfect sense for the Lopt in the forest shrine to move to this position to assist with intercepting us. Instead we have two, practically identical lopt bishops who say next to nothing. Well, at least they gave them different coloured robes. Huh, so, something weird, Saias shows up on turn 10x and orders the Silessian mercenaries to move out...they're all dead at the moment except the captured and sleeping Misha, but that's not the weird thing. The weird thing is that August knows Saias' backstory. Even though it's meant to be a secret from Manfroy. Cohen does later make reference to how Saias has become so influential that even Manfroy can't kill him...but...that can't possibly be true. Like...Alvis, the Emperor himself, is cucked by Manfroy's power. The only possible way Manfroy can't freely assassinate Saias is if Julius doesn't want Saias dead. Which, might be the case as Saias treats Julius, but it's an awful lot of headcanon to get around a bit of a plot hole. The chapter has been mostly smooth sailing until now, but with Saias here it's going to put three of my units out of comission. The game also plays a mean trick of a psudeo ambush spawn by having a bridge appear on enemy phase which an army of armoured knights can immediately cross. But my real big complaint about this chapter is that you can't steal Saias' sleep staff in a chapter where you need to have access to sleep to recruit a unit. You can't capture him and he's sealed off on all sides you can't even warp someone in to use steal on the staff. It's just kind of a middle finger for anyone who came to this chapter without a Sleep Staff or Sword (like me, the first time I played). A few turns later Reinhardt's army shows up, but because it's still too early to blow the Reinhardt load, they're being led by General Mueller. 4 Who is talking to, not Reinhardt, not Cohen, not Barath, not any other boss in the game, he is, of course, talking to Blue Cloak Collar man 6 And, at six appearances he beats out the Largo clones, beats out the Lopt Sect members, beats out guy talking to Hannibal, and Cohen clones, this is the king of Thracia reused portraits. One boss without dialogue and 5 times talking in a cutscene, more if you don't count some who could logically be the same characters. This is what happens when a Generic Soldier takes off the helm. They become Blue Cloak collar man. What!? That army of armoured knights who ambush with a bridge spawn I mentioned earlier, they all have movement stars...why!? Sure, bosses I can get behind, even generic dancers as it makes them more of a necessary target, but a mass of generic eneies should not have movement stars. *sigh* Well, fortunately I was advanced enough in the chapter that it negatively effects them as it means one generic is ahead of the others and easy to pick off. We do get one more appearance of Cohen's face as a bishop who talks about Sara wandering off, which is confusing with A route in perspective. Honestly this is just more reason to have made Moore the same character as Linecock, then he could have specifically brought Sara here instead of her just having some kind of schrodinger's monastery. 5 As for this guy? Is he the same bishop as the route split? The same one who promotes Linoan? I don't know...maybe, probably? They all have warp, but in Lieu of any evidence, I'll have to say no. This one is actually probably a Lopt Sect member if he's hanging out with Serra, right? Well this puts Cohen up there with Ecihmann for the most portraits, at 6. Uh...I finsihed the chapter and Misha didn't join me. I spoke to her with Karin, I captured her, what gives?...Or did I forget to speak to her with Karin this time? Oh man, I'll be so irritated if that's what happened. I must have, as Capturing and Releasing her doesn't work. Sigh, looks like I have to do the chapter again. I wonder if I can blitz it and try to kill Gustaf before Saias shows up, as it's pretty difficult to beat the avoid combination of Throne+Saias Took a bit of save state abuse to make sure everything went perfectly, but I managed to kill Nikolav before Saias shows up. As a result I got to view an alternate scene where Blue Cloak Collar man talked to Saias instead, since Nikolav is dead. Finally, finally, finally I recruited Misha. And with her, I believe, I've recruited every playable character in the Fire Emblem series (well, I'm not going to include every alternate name for a substitute unit in Shadow Dragon or Fates, though I have gotten, but never really used, all of the Fates bosses). I did a run through of the following chapter just to use Misha for a bit. She was pretty out classed by my Karin, but my Karin was also pretty damn OP by that point. I tried the sleep sword method on the Leinster Generals and, yeah, it's way more consistent to just plug Fergus in the door with a sleep sword and convert them one at a time...it does mean every general except the last one or two is guaranteed to die though. I didn't actually get Xavier in this test run for some reason though. I'm pretty sure none of the generals died before being converted, but Xavier just kept targeting Leif with a killer bow instead of talking to him or allowing himself to be talked to. Not too sure why, maybe I just missed a kill or something. But, well, job done. A route and B route both with no staffs, with the exception of one thief staff use to recruit Misha just out of a personal score to settle. B route is definitely the route to go with this challenge though, as Miranda and Shannam will be a lot more useful than impossible to use Sleuf and impossible to get Misha (unless you want to rig Lifis up to 20 con, which actually sounds like a tonne of fun but it is blatantly cheating). I'll tally up all the bosses for you later (I'm sure someone must be interested). Edited March 22 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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