My FE4 Playthrough

[Hrothgar777]

In this thread, I will comment on my run and ask for advice from other people who've played this before and know the ropes much better than I do.

 

I'll start on this note:

Tonight, I beat Chapter 1. I believe that I've recruited everyone and suffered no fatalities (since I reset whenever this happens). I made a few blunders: first, I went southwest for the second castle, and then had to backtrack to the first one, which is guarded by Ayra. This both proved an unnecessary time suck and triggered the event where men started to advance from the final castle to the northwest. Since I didn't know what'd happen if a castle I'd captured was taken, such as this being a possible lose condition, I had to scramble there as fast as I could. Thankfully I made it with time to spare and then checked out the castle, discovering to my disappointment that the arena count doesn't reset. Second, I missed that obscure house on the southwest corner of the map. By the time I noticed it, it would've been way too much of a diversion for a chapter that was already heading into its 40th turn. But whatever item is there, I missed it. I did have Lex get the Brave Axe, though. And the thief kid did earn me a large sum of gold, which to be fair is a surprisingly not scarce resource in this game.

 

(On that note, I actually don't hate the way this game handles money. This system has no practical value, sure, but it does trick your mind into being less averse to spending, since only a given character's funds can be depleted.)

 

Anyway, the start of Chapter 2. Last time I had Azelle guard the castle but it proved a waste since there was no real threat to it (that interesting custcene aside). Do I need to leave a guard behind, especially given that I possess the Return and Warp staffs?

Also, it seems my units had no romantic support convos in Chapter 1, Sigurd and Deidre's cringe love story notwithstanding. How do I get these? Do I need to play catch-up now, given that I only have 4 more chapters until the big thing happens?

Edited Saturday at 05:31 AM by Hrothgar777

[Jotari]

9 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Anyway, the start of Chapter 2. Last time I had Azelle guard the castle but it proved a waste since there was no real threat to it (that interesting custcene aside). Do I need to leave a guard behind, especially given that I possess the Return and Warp staffs?

Generally speaking, no, you never actually have to defend your home castle. There are a few isolated moments where enemies do try to take your home castle, but, as you've already figured out, you can use Return or Warp to get a unit back in time, and it's better this way as you can send the unit that best matches the advancing army (though really castle boosts are so great pretty much any units can defend a castle indefinitely from an assault, good for racking up kills on a weapon though). The castle is attacked in Chapter 2 specifically, and for that one you will want to send a specific unit back to recruit a new character.

9 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Also, it seems my units had no romantic support convos in Chapter 1, Sigurd and Deidre's cringe love story notwithstanding. How do I get these? Do I need to play catch-up now, given that I only have 4 more chapters until the big thing happens?

Love is happening even if you don't see it. This game predates what you would think of as the modern Support System.  There's no C, B,A,S ranks. Just one invisible number that reaches a threshold to move from "Bachelor" to "Lover with X". Conversations still exist however, as you've seen already, characters have a talk option (check status screens frequently to see who can talk to whom) and some of those talk grant love points. Once two characters are married they might have an exclusive talk event that gives an item or just for the sake of characterization (including a confusing potential adultery plot in one weird case), but since any male can marry any female, it is entirely possible to have two people that get hitched who we never see exchange a single word with each other. As for how love points are gained, in addition to some conversations which grant love points, all characters passively gain love with all other compatible characters each turn up to turn 50 (how many points depends on the pairs in question). Characters also gain additional points when standing next to each other (I think again up until turn 50). So if you want to get two specific characters to marry, just have them stand near each other for a bit and they probably will eventually. Don't expect to see any results until late Chapter 3, though there is a function in the castle to check how close characters are to falling in love with specific partners.

Edited Saturday at 03:07 PM by Jotari

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

but since any male can marry any female

This excludes Sigurd, Quan, Ethlyn, and Deirdre, who are in fixed pairings. But otherwise... have at it.

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

though there is a function in the castle to check how close characters are to falling in love with specific partners.

Specifically, there's a dude you can talk to in the castle menu. He's "Old Hubba" before "Old Hubba" happened.

16 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

discovering to my disappointment that the arena count doesn't reset.

Yeah, for every chapter, the "Arena" is shared among all castles. Which is honestly a relief. Sending all my units through 21 arena opponents a map would be quite the chore.

16 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

But whatever item is there, I missed it.

Just Gold, thankfully. Most villages are just Gold. Which makes the ones that offer an item - or an event - all the more interesting.

16 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Tonight, I beat Chapter 1. I believe that I've recruited everyone and suffered no fatalities (since I reset whenever this happens).

Congrats! I actually failed to recruit Ayra on my first playthrough. Which had some... unfortunate implications... down the line.