Let's Play Partia 2: I Can't Believe It's Not Fire Emblem!

[epilepsyduck]

Cart cart cart cart cart cart

Honestly, the character balance in this game seems really weird... at best. At times, the game just dumps tons and tons of trash on you, with a few salvageable people... was the game expecting you not to know which ones to use, and thus make how difficult the game would have been a guessing game, for some weird sort of balance?

Cart is the greatest hero of them all. I hope he's the main character of Partia 3.

Yeah, I haven't got a clue what the character balance in this game's about. They seem very keen on handing the player units that are completely unusable and then forcing you to use them for a whole chapter. I don't know if the trick was to fool players into using garbage characters to make the game harder or whatever, but given that their blog has growths for all the units (posted directly from the code in a format that's difficult to read, mind you), that doesn't seem to be the case.

Some mishaps may have stymied my progress, but everything's in order now. Let's get on with the chapter proper:

Chapter 5: Lemming-drawn carriages

Where we last left off, we were slowly plodding our way towards Kamal with some run-of-the-mill carts named Cart that could best be described as "cart", when all of a sudden these highwaymen appeared to make off with whatever goods we're trying to peddle.

We don't have time to care about that now, though. Free items!

I'm sorry to hear that. It must be so hard to have such a terrible name.

"diverse" villager #1: He's not too bright but very strong!

And then we just... have a sword now, I guess. I know the villagers in FE games would often rant about unrelated things before handing you items, but generally they'd at least go "Oh by the way here's a red gem goodbye forever" before forking over the goods. Here, people just say something and then items fly out of the phantom zone and into our inventories.

Most of our guys are gonna move south, ahead of the caravans. The carts will be safe, since the highwaymen start weirdly far away from were they'd need to be to attack us.

The cavaliers and Earlin will guard the rear while everyone else escapes. The cavs could probably handle it without Earlin, to be fair, but his starting position makes it difficult for him to engage with the foes that soon appear to the south right away.

More enemies appear to the north, some of them with horses. They're still too far away to hurt the merchants, but they'll be upon us by the turn after that.

I decide to let everyone hold up for a second so the merchants can catch up. It's not like there's any danger south of here yet.

Had I known what a mistake I was making right here, I would have slapped myself.

Nal'at returns from her mission of diplomacy with her sword that, despite the lack of dwarves so far, is of Dwarven make. She'll be heading for that next house now, which I'm sure has a 100% useful reward. How you're supposed to reach all this shit in a reasonable timeframe without a flier (which, if I hadn't gotten lucky and recruited Nal'at in the first chapter, I wouldn't have any of at this point) is beyond me.

The enemies move, still to far away to bother us. At this rate, I'm sure the carts will be perfectly safe from these guys.

Or at least, they would be, if this dumbass hadn't chosen to park his useless shitty self next to Erin in the forest tile. Now all the bow guys can shoot at him with impunity!

To make matters worse, more brigands have arrived south of us. I didn't get a picture of this, but some of the thieves are carrying ridiculously strong swords, making them almost as damaging as the mages!

Val and Erin start dealing with the northern assholes. Unlike our previous cavaliers, these two can actually handle themselves against the enemies in their joining chapter without repeated near-death experiences.

Because I am the world's best strategist, I forgot to position Val and Erin in such a way as to protect the cargo. I move Thomas and Earlin up to take the hits for this guy.

Nal'at continues to head towards the remaining house, while everyone else moves to deal with the new jerks. I'm praying Louis, Alonso and Asif can overcome their complete and irredeemable terribleness just long enough to survive even a single round of combat, because I need them to play meatshield for the merchants until the cavaliers are done dealing with the other enemies.

Earlin's dodgyness isn't what you'd think it is, because he nearly gets eaten alive by these enemies. I probably should've let Val and Erin handle it without him.

These dudes show up on the next turn. They aren't a problem yet, since they're so far away right now.

If only I'd known...

But really, who cares about that? There's free stuff to collect!

"diverse" villager #2: Scum of the earth, they are... but we must cower our head to survive.

All this way for a fucking potion. Figures.

Kade will have to do most of the heavy lifting here; he's pretty much the only guy the southern team's got that can survive a stiff breeze. I honestly wish I'd brought Raf instead of Serene or Petros.

Earlin retreats to get patched up from his little misadventure. I expected our first myrmidon to be a better dodgetank.

This is just to show the kind of gross overkill using Thomas gets you. Dude's beefy as hell right now.

Everyone lines up to fight. Well, actually, only Kade and Serene can be attacked from these positions right now, and Serene's only able to be targeted by one of the mages. The rest of these clowns are going to hope nothing toddles over to them and splatters them across the battlefield.

Everything was going so well until this mage and his Dark spell showed up and nearly obliterated Kade. I took this screenshot at the exact wrong moment to show just how few HP he had left after this fight.

If I didn't already know you've got a 30% speed growth, this would've confirmed my suspicions that you were the Abel in our Cain/Abel duo.

Suddenly, Duff, presumably in a permanent rage by the vileness of his own name, appears to make life more difficult for everyone.

Duff: Fellas! Catch or kill em! Mind the carts though!

While not as crazily unstoppable as Fenril last chapter, beating Duff is quite a bit more challenging then most of his mooks. You don't actually HAVE to beat him, though, since the chapter ends when the carts get where they're going.

Things are not going well back with the carts, it seems. The lance guys and Asif are complete dead weight.

Speaking of Asif, though, it's time we show off his exciting "Mug" skill. First, you pick "Mug" off the menu...

Pick a target...

Then pick an item, wish a helpful menu showing the insanely low chance you have of actually succeeding in your endeavor.

Once you pick an option, combat proceeds anyway. So... is Mug literally just Pickpocket but you get to choose what item you probably won't manage to steal? Here I was hoping there was a way to escape this "lol your thieves need to fight to steal things" garbage. Asif may as well have riveted his ass to the bench with this.

I really need the cavs to help babysit all these useless dudes the game's dumped into my lap, so I have Thomas start killing things to take care of the remaining archers faster.

The carts seriously have no fucks to give about these highwaymen, though. They move south regardless, putting them out of the range of Duff and his pals but moving them closer to the highwaymen that have been so far doing fuck all. As long as we can catch up with them, though, it shouldn't be too bad.

You were a naive simpleton, past me

Serene levels up by missing three times out of four, and chooses to ensure this will never rarely only occasionally happen again.

Petros heals Kade and gets all the stats he needs and skill, presumably just to taunt me over the fact he will never promote and shall be forever helpless.

You already have some stiff competition from Kade the Destroyer, Earlin. Don't make it worse by getting bad levels.

Alonso is literally so slow that armor knights are doubling him. You suck, Alonso.

Duff kind of knocked Nal'at for a loop, so I'm having her pull back to the main group, but not before she puts this cavalier in his place.

Earlin deals with the crappy-level doldrums by beating the shit out of an attacking thief. Maybe this guy stole your luck and gave you that luck-only level in return!

Even Alonso is preforming competently!

Nal'at kills a man so hard the world falls into the void of time for only a moment, and yet what felt like an eternity.

I take back all my whining about your bad levels from before.

The carts head a little uncomfortably close to the highwaymen. I'm sure this will end well for everyone involved.

Don't do this to me, Val. I need cavaliers who don't suck.

Your sister understands my pain.

So, yeah, the caravans are approaching the point where they'll get into the range of the enemy. The only one who can reach them so far is the healer, though, and I doubt we need to worry about him healing us to death.

Now, all we've gotta do is get them to these villages that are 100% relevant and not at all a giant waste of map space...

wait what no stop youre ruining everything

So, yeah, I kind of falsely assumed (based on what I don't know) that the place we needed to take these guys was those villages, what given the giant space devoted solely to them, roads that lead straight to them both, and areas that looked like potential ambush points. Because of this, I decided to take a casual pace and let the carts plow on ahead without me, assuming I'd have time to catch up.

Instead, these carts decide to immediately head straight into the open arms of the highwaymen, who proceed to tear them to pieces. I had to restart the turn three times to get them to survive a turn of this ordeal, since I had to wait for the AI to not all gang up on one cart and not unleash any crits in one turn.

I am 200% great at strategy, video games, and critical thinking skills.

Since I kind of need competent people to extract the carts from the terrible box of death they're stuck in now, Nal'at flies on down and gets patched up from her scuffle with Duff. Erin is going to have to go a couple rounds with him until we can get the merchants to safety.

Here's our formation at the end of this turn. My only hope is that they'll see how pathetic Asif and Louis are and decide to eat one of them instead of the caravan.

They don't take the bait. At least none of them critted this time, and the cart even managed to dodge once!

Kade's attempt to deal with the enemy knight is such a failure it actually breaks the experience bar. Either that or I'm just a master of poorly timed screenshots. Take your pick.

I give Asif one last chance at redemption. He ends up throwing it in my face.

While everyone competent is busy saving our suicidal merchants, I give Serene a chance to maybe take down the boss.

She hits once, doesn't crit, and proceeds to miss all three of her other shots. Why do I even keep you around anymore?

Despite a bevy of helpless targets to pick from, one incredibly intelligent foe chooses to suicide on Thomas, giving him this incredibly disappointing level. Probably his last one, if I've got anything to say about it.

The merchant fucks finally leave...

And the chapter finally ends.

No ending cutscene or anything. Given what happened last time there wasn't one, I take it our battle with the terribly-named highwaymen are not over.

Stay tuned for an incredibly large village and many civilians with no regard for their own well-being!

[TheMoniker]

You have saved the Carts! Hurrah!

Also, giving thieves powerful swords so that they have good attack? Personally, I don't like when games(FE games in particular) give enemies stuff that essentially covers all their weaknesses. If you cut out all weaknesses and make everything into a strength, you're essentially fighting the same enemy over and over again. In FE hacks, the best examples I can think of are "giving myrms extremely powerful Glass Swords" and "giving monks high-tier tomes so they have the same offence as the mages" in Dream of Five.

[epilepsyduck]

You have saved the Carts! Hurrah!

Also, giving thieves powerful swords so that they have good attack? Personally, I don't like when games(FE games in particular) give enemies stuff that essentially covers all their weaknesses. If you cut out all weaknesses and make everything into a strength, you're essentially fighting the same enemy over and over again. In FE hacks, the best examples I can think of are "giving myrms extremely powerful Glass Swords" and "giving monks high-tier tomes so they have the same offence as the mages" in Dream of Five.

Eh, I don't think giving the thieves nice swords is really such an issue with me. Even with those weapons, they're still sort of laughable against a reasonably leveled character (meaning not the characters we just recruited). The fact that they can't steal from us or pick locks basically makes them even crappier myrmidons anyway.

I had a bit of an incident where I accidentally deleted all the photos off my phone, so the update'll be delayed by a couple more days. You better appreciate this latest sacrifice I've made for you!

[epilepsyduck]

In this chapter, we discover we're not as done with Duff and Pals as we thought!

Chapter 6: Village is not to scale

Tavern lady just wants to remind you that you should consider equipping items before you use them. This is advice I totally forgot to follow in the coming chapter, because my reading comprehension skills are top notch and I was once voted "The Best Ever at Video Games" in high school.

Accompanying Kade on this latest adventure are Raf, Serene, Nal'at, Nan, Petros, Kerns, Erin, Val. Some of them have done a little arena grinding since we last saw them. I don't have screenshots, but to summarize: Nan can now actually take and dodge a hit or two, Erin is considerably better than Val, and Serene is still mediocre except for Rapid Fire.

Duff continues to hunt down our heroes to steal their cargo and, hopefully, a better name for himself, too. Granted, given that some of our units are named "Raf", "Alduskeng", "Alonso", and "Earlin", it's still not a great selection.

We cut to Kade and a few others just south of a large village. A slightly too large village, to be frank. It's bigger then the city from a couple chapters ago! Granted, these buildings are a little more in scale with our characters than the city's were, but still!

Some of our characters start way on the other side of town. I usually like chapters in FE games where you party starts split up, but I prefer to be able to control who goes where to some extent!

To rub salt in the wound, the game has paired up our two least capable units together. Thankfully they won't be alone for long, since Raf and Serene start just a little bit north of here.

Some new guys arrive. I expertly timed this screenshot so you only got to see one of them. It was totally intentional.

Tan, ignoring his non-indicative name, would've been our first nomad if we hadn't gotten a random one first. His role in the story, near as I can tell, is to say this one line and shut up forever.

(By the way, there is not a single line of dialogue uttered in this chapter that doesn't belong to someone from the caravan. That seems to indicate they're here to stay. I bet I was right on the money with Erin being Kade's chemistry-deficient suffocatingly-straight love interest.)

Oscar basically serves and identical role to Tan. No, I don't know why her name is "Oscar", because she's clearly not an overly-cheerful green-haired man.

Despite not having a single syllable of dialogue in the last chapter, Val suddenly comes forth to give us some strategy. That's a very striking shade of purple in your eyes, Val.

Thomas: Good, I agree with you.

Erin: Wait, what about the villagers?

This is a bald faced lie.

Erin: But what?

Val: Nothing, just stay with Thomas, will you?

Erin is about fifty times better than you at everything right now, Val. Get some fucking speed or defense before you ask her to hide in whatever alternate dimension Thomas and our other unused units are hanging out in.

That was the last line of dialogue for the entire chapter. I hope you enjoyed it. Now, onto the new cannon fodder!

Tan's okay, I guess, but I'm not super fond of having multiple bow units running around, and we already have a nomad that's the same level, but statistically better in almost ever area. He's probably another benchwarmer.

Oscar is also decent, but not exceptional. She's our fourth cav in two chapters, but is an unpromoted version of Thomas rather than being another sword cavalier. I might rotate Val out for her if she grows well. We'll have to wait and see.

Most of the houses in this village aren't enterable. Those of you expecting some crazy treasure trove will be let down, I'm afraid. However, and few of the houses, including this one, are stores selling various goods. Oscar will be shopping at this one. What wonders shall she find?

Aside from the requisite potions and keys, skill scrolls! Actually decent ones this time, even! I buy "Life/Death" and "Risktaker".

While everyone else is dealing with highwaymen, Nal'at will be flying around opening chests. There's four in all, and Nan will be grabbing one before handing her key over to Nal'at to get the others. I don't know why the villagers are keeping their valuables outside in easily-unlocked chests, but it sure makes it earsier for us do loot them before the highwaymen can!

Nal'at chooses to wait on a house in a way that I'm pretty certain isn't physically possible. She's so badass the laws of reality made a unique exception just for her!

Come ally phase, all the civilians have the same idea, and that idea is "go to the marketplace and stay there no matter what". They appear to be under the impression that the market stalls there have some sort of automated turret system in place. This assumption probably won't pan out in the longer term.

At long last, our foes appear, sort of awkwardly far away from pretty much everything else. Partia 2 seems to love spawning shit about a million miles away from the player and having it slowly crawl towards them.

Speaking of shit, that's exactly what these guys are! Maybe they'd be a bit more intimidating if I hadn't been grinding like a madwoman, to be fair...

Oscar leaves the shop to rejoin everyone. They'll be staying at the bridge so I don't have to wait a trillion years for the enemies to catch up with us.

Nal'at snags a new lance. I have no idea if "Dragon Lance" implies it's effective against dragons, if only dragon units can wield it, or if it just gets called that because dragons are badass. The menus and desciptions in this game sure do love leaving out useful information like that.

Serene and Raf are coming to rescue Nan and Petros from their general helplessness.

The bandits plod their way towards us. When they first appeared, I was a little worried they'd swarm Oscar, but she's fine.

Meanwhile, the Green Migration continues.

More highwaymen show up, this time much closer to the city so they can actually fight us in a reasonable timeframe. Are they more threatening then the last bunch?

Not particularly, no.

Raf will be taking a break from all this violence to do some holiday shopping. DO marvelous treasures lurk behind this door?

Nope, just Steel weapons. Still useful, at any rate. I buy one of each of these.

Nan, meanwhile, finds the actual treasure, friendship a Skill Ring!

As you can see, these rings work exactly like the rings in Genealogy, instead of the stat boosters in most other FE games; they boost a stat by five as long as the ring is in your inventory. Inventory space is a bit more limited here than in FE4, though, so putting a crazy amount of rings on one unit like you could in that game probably isn't feasible.

Nal'at flies over the market on her way to the next chest. It's empty now, but soon it will be crammed with green units who refuse to budge, even as they're being hacked to pieces. I'm not sure what magical properties the villagers think this place has, but it's clear it doesn't work.

Oscar plops herself down behind our defensive line. Glad she didn't get mobbed to death.

First round of combat in the chapter, Erin kills a man.

Damn, a lot of my units have been getting movement it seems. It helps make some of these slightly-too-large maps less tedious.

The villagers come into the Circle of Punishment, believing it will save them when in fact it only orchestrates their doom. They cry out, and yet their voices are lost to the void.

Nevermind that, though! SHOPPING!

Various armor bits! I feel like a hypocrite for this, given how much I hate armor in this game, but I purchase the two "Light" armors.

Tan sets up a kill...

And Oscar knocks 'em down. +A teamwork.

I bought all the buyable spells for Kerns before the chapter began. Want to see the exciting differences between them?

Answer: They have a couple points difference in damage and weight (which I didn't adequately show here: sorry about that). That's pretty underwhelming, and I certainly hope that isn't all there is to the magic system in this game!

I use wind, just because. Instead of cool blades of wind coming to cut up the opponent, the animation is something that I mistook for being a light spell when I saw enemies wielding it, because it honestly looks a lot like FE4's version of the Aura spell. That or maybe I'm just blind and should wear my glasses when using my phone.

Nal'at almost has the treasure. She chooses to give physics a break for once and perch on the house in a way that's somewhat feasible this time.

A man tickles Kade's face with an enormous axe, and he responds by obliterating his hopes, dreams, and spine in one stroke.

Raf, meanwhile, is busy holding off everything by himself while the weaklings cower behind him. Erin, who at this point is just Raf with more speed, is coming to help him destroy everything in sight.

Kerns, meanwhile, proves less capable, to put it bluntly. He very nearly dies here.

The greenies continue to gather in order to sing the dirge that will end the chapter Earth.

Suddenly, Duff himself makes an appearance, basically right next to where all the villagers have gathered. Is he as formidable as he as before?

That's a yes!

Stay tuned to see my callous disregard for the lives of anyone wearing a green shirt, as well as what kind of fascinating rare treasures these dirt farmers have been leaving out in the open.

Growths

Tan:

HP: 50

STR: 30

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 10

DEF: 25

LUK: 10

MOV: 2

Overall, he's got fairly average growths. If he was a different class, I might give him a shot, but being a bow user means competing with Serene's would-be-gamebreaking-if-it-was-on-a-better-unit Rapid Fire skill, and I'm not sure he can surmount that.

Oscar:

HP: 50

STR: 30

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 15

DEF: 25

LUK: 10

MOV: 2

Literally identical to Erin's growths. Erin's turned out pretty great, but that's probably got more to do with luck than her growths, so we'll see if the same luck holds out for Oscar.

[Tamanoir]

Wait... Lady Oscar ?

This have to be intentional.

[epilepsyduck]

Wait... Lady Oscar ?

This have to be intentional.

I forgive them for giving her such a terrible name, then!

Are you as tired of bandits as I am at this point? Don't worry, we're almost done with these guys!

Chapter 6 Conclusion: The green shirt massacre

Where we last left off, Duff had finally shown up, ready to catch those caravans that got away in our last tussle. Here's a completely unrelated screenshot of Erin fucking up a fight against this thief.

Raf's inaccuracy is so bad it causes his opponent to leave this plane of reality for a second.

Why is everyone missing? Do your job, people!

Serene's final level up until we get a promotion item for her. Why do you hate strength, Serene?

Nan actually does a decent job stealing from enemies this chapter. I think the skill ring she has might have something to do with that, but I can't be sure.

Nal'at, still on her epic quest for treasure, reaches another chest. What lurks within?

A skill scroll! I have no idea if it's any good or not!

Down south, we're still dealing with these clowns. It'd go a lot faster if these guys could at least pretend they're trying to hit them.

Tan doesn't disappoint, at least.

These guys start moving towards the village. At this point, I wasn't 100% sure who they'd target first.

Erin has somehow decided that 30% is enough to consistently get almost every stat she needs every time she levels up. I'm not complaining.

Because I'm an excellent tactician, Nan and Erin end up surrounded. They do just fine, though.

The gap between Erin and Val continues to widen. I think she's beating him in every stat but Strength now, and he's only one or two points ahead in that department.

The villagers continue to flock to the marketplace. Maybe they're under the mistaken impression I'll rush over to protect them there.

Healing commences.

I make a half-hearted attempt at attracting the bandit's attention. Honestly, though, I don't really care that much. I don't know if there's a reward for saving them all or not, but it's just too much hassle at this point.

I'm honestly getting sick of this, Serene. Skill is your highest stat right now, and we're not even using Rapid Fire. Stop missing.

More stealing happens. I'm glad Nan doesn't suck at her job anymore.

Thief level, but she doesn't even have thief growths! It's like a curse of some kind.

Erin doesn't give a crap about your stupid "surrounded penalty"! She'll destroy all in her path!

Bleh.

Petros heals Erin and gets the only stat he'll ever need.

I have Tan enter the shop and buy the remaining steel weapons. I'm still perplexed as to why I'm not allowed to send shit to the convoy, but whatever. This system is totally just as convenient and fun.

Our main trio are the only ones to see any combat this enemy phase. Some fair better than others.

And some have their work undone for them. Screw you, healer guy!

Next turn, Nan trades her key to Kerns, who trades it to Val, who will soon trade it to Nal'at so she can open the last chest. If you're wondering why Nan had a key, it turns out thieves do actually need one to open chests, they just don't use them up when they do so. The thief class description actually explains this, I was just too dumb to realize it until this chapter.

Val goes on a magnificent journey that will take him far, far away from any sort of combat. He won't be missed.

Those villagers might want to consider a new plan. Sooner, rather than later.

Duff's still a bit of a scary guy, but Erin is tougher than she was last time they rumbled. Time for round 2!

It pays well.

With a new key in hand, Nal'at is ready to snatch up the last treasure.

She has to wait a turn to reach it, so she has her dragon sit on the windowsill of this house. Enjoy the mental picture of a giant dragon carrying a heavilty armored woman while delicately perched by someone's window.

The slaughter has commenced! Most of these villagers have such pathetic stats that they go down in a single hit from these guys. The carts are the only guys who can hope to survive more than a round with the highwaymen.

Does this cause them to flee or stop more of them from coming to join the massacre? Of course not.

Kerns deals a ton of damage to the boss with the "Light" spell. I didn't show this, but said spell looks like a tiny white dot slapping a dude in the face.

Yep, definitely Lilina.

In a bit of a risky maneuver, I have Nan attack the boss. Nan's such a good thief.

Arguably too good a thief! She doesn't have room for all this and has to discard something.

It won't be missed.

Erin puts an end to Duff's reign of terror. With his last breath, he asks we posthumously change his name to something less embarrassing. Or he would, anyway, if he actually had a death quote.

We've reached the last chest.

It contained a lot of junk food that caused Nal'at to swiftly put on weight. There was probably a less blunt way of putting it than that, Partia 2!

The merchants boldly rush to the aid of the villagers, taking blows to protect the much squishier citizens. Cart truly is the greatest hero who ever lived.

Not all the villagers are so lucky, though.

Erin ambushes the bandits by hiding behind a level-up box. So clever!

The final highwayman attacks...

... and Erin erases the bandit threat forever!

Those brave souls will probably be forgotten.

Again, no ending cutscene. I'm not sure why we've developed a sudden allergy to those.

Stay tuned for "I Can't Believe It's Not FE8: Zombies Edition"!

[epilepsyduck]

Another week without an update? We'll have to fix that right now!

Chapter 7 Prelude: One mage to rule them all

I'm certain this information has no bearing on anything we'll be seeing in the chapter proper.

Let's start this chapter off right by recruiting a new character for our cause!

I hate you.

I've reorganized the unit list so useless fucks like Herman and Alonso are at the bottom and units who might actually see a battle are closer to the top. No more having to scroll through an insanely long list to find people I actually want to use!

Anyway, as I'm sure you recall, we got some skill scrolls last chapter! Now, thanks to the incredible game design Imago is known for, we cannot actually use these scrolls from this menu, or indeed any part of the base menu. We have to be in battle. Clearly, this is an objectively better skill-equipping experience and I don't know why IntSys doesn't follow their lead here.

Of course, the arena counts as a battle. This is the only level anyone got from this, btw.

Serene receives the Soul Attack skill, which is basically Luna. I've tested it out, and it does still work in conjunction with Rapid Fire, sometimes even going off twice or three times in a battle! Hopefully this will offset her iffy strength a bit.

Raf got Life/Death, which became... Beast, for some reason. Anyway, it's similar to Wrath, though in hindsight it may have been better to give this to someone with lower defense. 14 isn't fantastic, but it's hardly squishy either.

Nal'at receives Risk Taker, which is also like Luna except if fucks over your defense too. I'll probably regret this decision.

For once, the chapter is actually letting me bring a lot of units, and not just dumping a huge load of useless jerks in my lap or forcing me to play with like 6 people. Our team is Kade, Raf, Serene, Nal'at, Erin, Kerns, Petros, Oscar, Nan, Earlin, Val, Charlotte. Some of these guys (Earlin, Charlotte and Oscar in particular) are sort of B-listers who aren't terribly likely to contribute much, but they should be fine as long as our powerhouses are there to help.

We cut to Erin in a pixelated field.

Kade: Indeed. We could make some good time today.

Erin: It's nice to see that you're finally warming up to me, eh?

Wow, Kade. You're quite the romantic.

I'm not sure he even knows what a joke is, or how to respond to one.

Did I say romantic? I meant he's a regular Prince Charming! "I notice you're not a stupid peasant, and you're not a weak pansy like other women" is a guaranteed way to any girl's heart!

Seriously though, the fuck kind of response is that?

Erin does not seem to particularly care about Kade's sudden outburst, and responds to it like it's the most normal thing in the world.

Kade can apparently see people's brains, and thinks Val's is just super! Maybe he's a brain surgeon when he's not being a soldier.

Erin: Yeah yeah, of course he's the important one.

Kade: Jealous?

Erin: Damn, if you put it straight that way, I guess I am. Ha ha. It's not like he's a real older brother, you see? We don't look much alike but we're twins!

I was under the impression this world wasn't particularly patriarchal, but Erin suddenly sets the record straight. That's... a little inconsistent, to be perfectly honest.

We just randomly teleport to a forest while the conversation continues. That or maybe Kade waited a few hours to respond.

Erin: That's true, too. But it get boring, you know? In a year or two Thomas might send me away to marry a rich merchant in Tebai. Practically sell me off, that is! So he and Val can finance a bigger company.

Well, I'm glad this talk of selling girls into arranged marriages ends on a joyous note, at any rate.

A wild Val appeared!

Erin: Oh yeah? What for?

Val: It's the hay cart. Did you do the thing that you promised to Sir Thomas?

Erin disappears from the conversation. She will be missed.

You have a horse, Val. You can probably catch her. Even if she has more movement.

Kade: Worried about your sister?

Val: Huh? Yes, of course.

20 Questions: Val's Sister Edition

Val: I never really understand her. I find she is... quite open about her feelings while I am not. She always acts before she thinks. Quick to laugh and jest, she has quite a temper as well.

First Erin is jealous of Val, and now the reverse is true, too! Such complicated relationships.

Kade doesn't appreciate being referred to with such a gentlemanly title.

Val: I just assumed- my apologies.

Kade: No need for that either. You have a business with me as well?

Val: Yes, there was a complaint about one of your men that you should be made aware of...

We won't be discovering what that complaint was, though. We've got bigger fish to fry!

Ugh, who invited you here? Shut up and let a cavalier who doesn't suck do the talking.

(I didn't adequately demonstrate this, but that mage isn't one of ours- she ran up to us from inside a building)

Earlin suddenly has a speaking role? It's been two chapters since we were introduced to him, and he hadn't spoken once in all that time!

Our new friend here is Olivia. No word on whether or not she's a good dancer, though.

Kade must be contemplating the stimulating conversation he had earlier, because he doesn't utter a single syllable in this entire cutscene. It's just Earlin, Herman and Serene talking to this new girl.

Olivia: Then you better take your camp elsewhere fast. I say this for you.

Earlin: Why? We didn't think this place was occupied. Is here being used for something tonight?

Rude.

Olivia: Fine, I'll explain it to you. You unfortunate bunch made a camp where to necromancers lair.

How do you "lair" somewhere? I don't think lair is a verb.

No one asked you, Herman!

Probably.

Definitely, in fact.

Leila and Laila are the necromancers in question. Given the fact they're recolors of each other, apparently sisters, and seem to have a weird dynamic going on, I guess they're Partia 2's version of Maggie/Rose, Jasmine/Paul, Pain/Agony, and other such unsettling siblings. Of all the archetypes to copy, they had to pick my least favorite.

Laila: Just when we were running out of fresh bodies to experiment with-

Leila: A bunch of hicks come in and save us a trip to town!

Also, they make this noise. I'm not sure how you're supposed to pronounce that. If this is supposed to be evil laughter, someone should tell the writers that no one makes any sort of sound resembling "ke" when they laugh.

Suddenly, zombies appear! With a weird purple palette instead of a red one.

Olivia is offering a way out of not only the place we're stuck in, but also the plot as a whole! As tempting as that sounds, we're gonna have to stick through this, though.

I thought this was Herman talking for a second. They've got a similar palette, okay, it's an easy mistake to make!

Offers to let us escape because the necromancers are dangerous.

Immediately says she's going to deal with the necromancers herself.

Lady, I hope you got the stats to back that up.

Now that the cutscene's over, we can see if she's able to put her money where her mouth is!

I think she's got this. She's also making me feel stupid for bothering to train up Kerns.

Are you ready for her incredibly flavorful description, though?

I'm not sure why they bothered, really.

Once again, our group starts split up, but not as dramatically as last time. We could probably regroup in just a couple turns, if I wanted to.

But, really, we all remember how pathetic the zombies in Gaiden, Sacred Stones, and Awakening are. How much scarier can these guys be?

Yeesh, that's a little more formidable than I was expecting. My star players like Kade and Nal'at can deal with these guys easily, but a few of my less capable units might have a bit of trouble trouble.

The bosses, like Duff before them, are already promoted. How do they stack up.

Statistically, they're not quite as impressive, and they're massively squishier thanks to a lack of armor, but the fact that they're magic users makes them quite dangerous all the same. Raf's Blessing skill will come in handy.

Also, they've both got the same skills. Honestly, if they're such geniuses, why didn't they realize that, since they're enemy units, they aren't gaining XP anyway?

So, can Kade step into the shoes of Rick Grimes and defeat these necromancers? You'll have to wait for the next update to find out!

Growths:

Olivia:

HP: 40

STR: 5

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 40

DEF: 15

LUK: 30

MOV: 2

Sure, make me feel like a total moron for using Kerns, why don't you. Olivia literally beats him in everything but Strength (which I don't think actually matters for mages, though I have no idea how the weight system works, but it's by 5% anyway) and Magic (which he's only beating her in by 10%, and 40% should be sufficient anyway with a base that high). She also has several nice skills, while the only skill Kerns has is Magic Evasion. I think we found our new mage.

[TheMoniker]

Wow, this chapter sure does have a lot of unit variety...

Also, I would NOT want Kade or whoever it is perform brain surgery on me!

[epilepsyduck]

Wow, this chapter sure does have a lot of unit variety...

Also, I would NOT want Kade or whoever it is perform brain surgery on me!

Kade's clearly a wise, charismatic and talented leader, I don't see why you wouldn't trust your brain to this man.

Anyway, I've had a bit of a recording issue, so this LP is being postponed for a few more days. Sorry that you're missing the incredible undead action, I promise I'll get back on schedule soon!

[epilepsyduck]

Finally, I'm back on track. This chapter was kind of tedious, and I had to play it twice, so I hope it brings you an infinite amount of joy and excitement to make up for the incessant boredom in instilled in me!

Chapter 7: kekekekekekekillme

This time I remember to put everyone's armor on. Why this shit isn't automatically equipped after being put in the inventory is beyond me, especially since there's no way to equip it in the near-functionless camp menu. Partia 2 doesn't care about making things convenient for the player, that's for sure.

Charlotte's a little out of shape these days, at least compared to some of our new guys. Will her first level in quite a while save her from mediocrity?

Figures.

Of course, she's doing a hell of a lot better than Earlin over here, who does a whopping 1 damage to these guys with every strike. Combined with how insanely fragile he is, he's not going to be accomplishing much this time around. Maybe he'll get a few levels under his belt and become competent?

Of course not.

As you may have noticed last time, the new girl Olivia has a weird looking icon in her inventory. In fact, it's a new spell! I have no idea if it's locked to her or not, but since she's the most competent mage we have right now, it might as well be.

Compare and contrast her unique spell with the generic "Light" spell. I think it might also weigh less or something, because there's a couple times where Mag Drive could double an enemy but Light couldn't. It's pretty badass.

It also looks awesome, for extra points.

Kade'll mop up these two so the rest don't have to bother. In hindsight, Kade probably could've handled the whole chapter alone, but since he's not leveling up anymore I wanted to get some other units some experience.

I make no promises about timing screenshots correctly so they don't just end up a featureless void.

The bigger group starts out utterly surrounded by zombies, so it'll be a few turns before they reunite with the other guys.

I don't remember if I've ever shown what the shield icon looks like when it blocks hits for you, so here's a little treat for all you guys who are especially invested in the graphics of derivative Android games you've never played.

Nan's last level up before she promotes. It ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

Oscar's level is similarly feeble. At least it wasn't luck, I guess?

There are some zombies in these little closed off rooms. They spend their turns just aimlessly moving around, unable to escape. Don't worry, we shall free their immortal souls.

I sort of expected these guys to remain in the boss room the first time around. Instead, they'll be charging after our party and getting in the way.

I sent Val down to deal with the zombies hiding in the near-empty room to the south. There's a chest here that we'll be grabbing later, because it's insanely far away from everything else and if I want to beat this in a reasonable timeframe, Nan needs to be up north unlocking doors.

Nan basically can't damage anything here without a crit, and even then the damage is puny. Given that she can't level up anymore, this is probably for the best.

Charlotte is more successful.

Kade has dealt with the zombie menace in the southeast, and is coming to help with the new and exciting zombie menaces in various other directions.

Kerns fails to hit the zombie in front of him, and is reduced to waving his arms around ineffectually as a result. That or maybe he's going in for a hug that the zombie only barely avoided. It's all up to the readers at home.

Earlin steadfastly refuses to get out of his rut. Don't worry pal, there's plenty of room on the bench for you with other winners like Herman and Alonso.

Olivia's first level is similarly discouraging. At least her bases are okay.

Here's Petros being a good little staffbot. Maybe one day we'll get another healer and/or a staff besides the basic "Healing" one.

Val, Val, Val. Strength is nice and all, but your sister is beating you at literally everything else now. At least make an effort to spread those stats out a bit.

I mean, just follow Charlotte's example here and you'll do fine.

Earlin will be spending basically the entire chapter hacking at this one zombie. In hindsight, I probably should've left this up to someone more capable.

Honestly, Olivia's been our MVP this chapter. Not bad for a new recruit, given how the previous ones generally turned out.

Healing ensues.

The last zombie in the camp area is dead, so the group starts getting back together.

The zombie had three choices to attack. It chose poorly.

Olivia and Charlotte tag team the zombies, since Charlotte's proven to be a good meatshield and Olivia is just ridiculous.

Oscar handles the last zombie in the pointless empty room. Really, there's a lot of pointless empty space on this map for no discernible reason. It could've been half the size and provided an equal amount of zombie-squishing action.

Since Olivia is infinitely better than Kerns, I'm having him stay behind to deal with the zombies in this one room with treasure. That way Nan won't have to deal with them and can just get straight to the treasure.

I speak hypothetically, of course, because Kerns completely fails to actually hit the zombies. I think this is the last thing we'll be needing from you, old friend.

Yep, definitely the last thing.

Charlotte decides to appease me instead of giving me the same crap our mage friend has offered. It helps mitigate my sour mood, but only a little.

Olivia reminds me of a time went useless losers like Quent and Kerns inspired excitement in me, instead of disappointment. It was a simpler, but happier time.

With most of the outdoor zombies killed, Nan opens the door so Oscar can deal with the ones in the slightly-less-pointless not-empty room, and also get the treasure hidden inside.

Kerns continues to be an utter failure. Definitely this game's Lilina, then.

Not that Earlin is doing much better. You're not the only myrmidon in this game, buddy, I don't have to put up with your slacking!

Raf comes to help this dumbass not get killed.

Or at least he would have, if he'd managed to hit the enemy. I hyped you up so much in earlier chapters, don't start letting me down now!

Oscar is taking a million years to deal with these zombies thanks to her godlike 11 strength, so Olivia comes in to sort things out.

She gets an okay level out of it, even!

Oscar doesn't do so bad herself. She must've heard my complaints.

Charlotte comes to deal the killing blow...

... allowing Nan free access to the treasure!

You've been getting good levels so far, Erin. Don't jeopardize this right now.

Nal'at hasn't gotten to do a whole lot this chapter, so I give her this in a feeble attempt to sate her insatiable bloodlust.

More healing.

More missing.

More killing.

And finally, treasure!

It's an S.Wind. No, I don't know what the S stands for. Yes, it's basically just a stronger version of the Wind spell. Yes, that's a little underwhelming.

I think eventually this LP will just be screenshots of health bars floating in a void with the alien purpose of jellyfish. Thankfully, that day is not today.

You literally have one job, Kerns, and it's to kill ONE zombie! 75% isn't even an especially low hit rate!

Nan opens the door so Oscar can bring down these losers. She takes a hit for her troubles.

Meanwhile, everyone else is getting ready to stomp the bosses. They're not super intimidating, but they might get a lucky crit, so it's best if I wait for everyone to be together before we proceed.

While Oscar is crushing zombies and getting ready to rejoin the group...

... Nan is getting ready to head to the chests and reveal their delicious goodies. Hopefully they'll be less underwhelming than S.Wind was.

Keep getting that Magic and we won't have a problem, Petros. I don't appreciate being taunted with that Skill stat you'll never use, though.

In the chest in the giant empty room to the south, we find a necklace. What does it do?

The answer is "I don't know and the game doesn't feel like telling me"! That's certainly handy.

Thanks to Kerns being incompetent, Nan ended up having to deal with this jackass anyway. With his feeble help, she manages to bring it down.

And I do mean feeble.

Not one, but two growth rate boosting books! The Dain and Tordo derivatives, to be specific. These will hopefully be handy.

Raf charges into the boss room. His Blessing skill should protect some of our less magically-adept units from the bosses and their health-draining spell.

They choose to target Nal'at despite the fact that she's actually got respectable magic and crazy dodging. Naturally, this accomplishes very little.

On both their end and mine.

Raf immediately destroys one necromancer.

I try to give Charlotte a chance at whooping the boss, but all it results in is getting her health drained and a mediocre level. Tragic.

Kade handles her instead. One last chorus of "kekekekeke" rings out into the air, confusing all who hear it. Or at least, that would be happening, if these bosses had death quotes.

This tedious slog is finally over.

Frankly, I deserve more money for putting up with that.

Again, no ending cutscene. I'm beginning to worry this is where the writing budget started running dry.

Stay tuned for "Thracia's Greatest Hits: Completely Opaque Fog Edition"

[TheMoniker]

Hurrah! It's back once again!

Clearly, "S. Wind" on the strong wind tome is for "Strong Wind." You know? "Strong winds advisory"? Though, I wonder how high the MPH value is that it hurts enemies.

[epilepsyduck]

Are you tired of being able to see the map? I certainly know I am, so let's buckle up for some fog of war with:

Chapter 8: Potentially potent promotions

Let's start this chapter off right with the typical redundant advice from the pub. This lady's dim-witted enthusiasm keeps me young!

As you can see, the shops have updated their stock! The blacksmith is carrying higher-grade weapons and armor now, which isn't too interesting but is definitely a huge benefit.

More interesting, though, are the new items the shops are carrying...

PROMOTION ITEMS! Yes, that's right, we can now just buy promotion items whenever we want from the shops! They've also got the far-less-exciting torches for sale, which work a little differently than you're probably used to. I'll explain when we get to the chapter proper.

They actually started doing this last chapter, and I'd already bought one there but forgot to include it in the updates. Whoops.

For reference, the merchant who sells items in the Pub (bet you forgot about him) sells promotion items too, but for double the price. He does have infinite stock, though, while the shop can only sell one of each per chapter, so I guess it balances out.

The shops have also started selling more powerful spells than the basic fire-ice-wind-light set. No, I don't know what the D. stands for.

Now, because Partia 2 aims to have the most functionless interface imaginable, we cannot use promotion items (or, indeed, any items) from the camp menu. Honestly, sometimes I wonder why the Camp menu even exists at all.

Once again, though, the arena saves the day.

The game just displays the basic level up screen, showing us the stat boosts promotion gives our intrepid hero.

He's got a spiffy new outfit to go along with the power increase.

Ladies and gentlemen, an unstoppable war god has emerged. Still not as good as Nal'at, but then again, who is?

I don't remember giving him the Commander skill... must be a perk of promotion, I guess?

No no no, game, he promoted from "Sword" not "Sellsword". Can't you remember your own weird class names?

With his newfound power, Kade goes to town on these weaklings.

Of course, since one of these guys is already promoted, that takes a while.

A long while.

A very long while.

Glad you've taken the opportunity to disappoint me now that you can level again, Kade.

Once that asshole finally dies, the other one provides equally meager levels.

Now, because promotion items are expensive, and we've got a lot of units that have hit level 20 already, this was not the only arena fighting that happened this chapter. In order to avoid an entire army of level 20 monsters that would ruin the game's difficulty (though I probably have done that already), I used units that had already hit the level cap to grind up funds.

Again, this took a very, very long time.

Ultimately, Serene ended up doing most of the work until I ran out of buyable bows. I still have the longbow, but I don't want to waste it.

If you're wondering, Raf and Serene use the same promotion item as Kade, so here's Raf becoming even beefier.

Again, new duds for the new class. The Warrior class looks a bit like an armor knight this time around.

Now for a true display of strength.

He doesn't get any new skills, sadly, but he can wear armor now, though not shields. I'm not sure what "+2 strength bonus" means, a lot of promoted classes have mysterious stat bonuses that the game doesn't feel like clarifying on.

Also, I lied a little bit about nobody leveling up from all this grinding. Charlotte got this bleh level, followed by a better one that I didn't get a screenshot of (I believe it was HP-Str-Skl-Def).

Time to make our thief a little less feeble.

She can actually damage things now!

Disappointingly, her "new" map sprite is identical to her unpromoted one. It even plays the little animation it did for the others when they changed their map sprites, only to reveal that she's got the same old thief sprite.

Still a bit pathetic, to be brutally honest. Maybe we'll get a growth-rate book that boosts strength by more than 5% soon.

Random period in the middle of the class description AND mysterious stat bonus? Clearly worth it.

Mediocre.

Better.

Kade picks up that Book of Dragon we nabbed earlier. I won't be showing the bonuses for these books here unless someone pitches a fit, because they're exactly the same as the Crusader Scrolls from Thracia. Seriously, the game's own website admits they're carbon copies. You can look this info up yourself.

For those of you who don't care enough to put in that kind of effort (and I don't blame you), the most important boost the Dragon book gives is a huge defense growth boost, at the cost of a fairly minor speed growth penalty. I think it's a fair trade off, especially because Kade's got plenty of speed already.

Nal'at will take the Thunder book, which gives various minor boosts and has no penalty. With luck, this will bolster her already mighty stats even further.

We only get to deploy seven units, and three of them are already picked out for us: Kade, Erin, and Val. Given how much focus the game's been giving to the latter two these past few chapters, it's suddenly making more and more sense to me why Herman, Kori and Bendt are so terrible.

Raf, Nal'at, Nan, and Olivia take up the remaining four slots. Nan's going to be busy with lock duty again this chapter, and the others just happen to be some of my best fighters. In hindsight, this might've gone a lot faster if I'd brought Asif instead of Olivia, but I don't want to escort his shitty ass everywhere.

Remember the part of the last chapter where there was a chasm to fall into?

My reaction to discovering this chapter has Thracia-style obscuring fog of war.

She's on a horse, Kade.

Erin: No... no, I'm fine.

Kade: ...Show it here.

Erin: I'm fine!

K
Kade gets so annoyed he almost grows a personality! And a surly one, at that!

Erin: H, hey!

I think this is supposed to represent the passage of time or something, but it just makes it look like there's a menacing entity hiding in the shadows, judging our heroes and finding them wanting.

She's on a horse! This game doesn't even have forced dismounting!

Erin: I... thank you.

Kade: Think nothing of it.

Erin: Wow, but this is a pretty good job! I didn't know you had such a handy skill.

A second, slightly quirkier personality almost emerges, but is quickly smothered by Kade's blandness.

Also, Kade's smiling portrait would've been perfect for that line. I think the game has forgotten he has one of those.

... what?

Yeah, what do you mean?

... I'm starting to wonder if English is the first language of whoever is writing this game's dialogue. If it isn't, I kind of feel bad for making fun of the spelling and grammar.

I don't feel bad for making fun of how forced the seemingly-budding romance is, though. In what context does "fixing someone's sprained ankle is basically like marriage" make any sense?

My sentiments exactly, Kade.

Erin: What's so funny?

Kade: Never mind.

Cut to Val and our A-Team looking for the pair wayward lovebirds. Or just Erin, in Val's case.

Does this mean we get an Escape or Arrive chapter or something cool like that?

Haha, no, it's a Rout chapter instead.

With the dialogue over, Kade runs over and hides in the shadows. He, Erin and Val have torches, which work differently than they do in FE games. Basically, instead of a brief burst of light that decays every turn, here it's a constant bonus to your vision as long as you're holding it. Thieves have this type of vision all the time, but sadly giving them torches doesn't boost it even a little. This is objectively better than how it works in Fire Emblem, and for once I actually mean it.

It's some familiar rotting faces! Don't worry, the map isn't another zombie snoozefest, there's a decent variety of enemy types this time! These guys will be chillin' with those chests until Nan gets around to opening them.

They're actually less formidable this time around than in the previous chapter. I'm not complaining.

Val is a beacon in the dark, guiding his allies to victory.

Oh mean, smugglers! I bet they're really intimidating!

Did we teleport to Chapter 2 when I wasn't looking?

Of course, karma means that the second I mock him, he immediately dodges everything I throw at him. Figures.

He's considerably less successful when he goes on the offensive, though.

Do more worthy foes lurk in the shadows?

The fuck kind of sprite is that? It's got a bow, but what is it?

So, with absolutely no fanfare, the game suddenly has elves? You think you might've mentioned that at some point before you introduced them as enemies? Even a quick "oh btw there's elves and smugglers and zombies in the cave" at the end of the previous scene would've sufficed!

Whatever, we dispose of the pointy-eared menace and move on with our lives.

Another smuggler blocks our path.

Man, these smugglers are kind of pathetic.

He gets lucky and avoid Erin's attacks, though. Man, maybe I should stop making fun of them or something.

Erin elects to ignore this target and finds new meat in the shadows, obscuring her old target in darkness.

Notably, instead of the "moving through someone in the fog immediately interrupts your movement and ends your turn" thing, Partia 2 opts to prevent you from moving through enemies even if you can't see them.

It also doesn't stop you from attacking foes you cannot see.

"I'm attacking the darkness!"

We defeat the last elf in the whole level. Really, why two of the smugglers are just randomly elves is a riddle for the ages.

Maybe you should've gotten one of the growth books, Raf.

It is now when I discover that the map in the "Report" menu doesn't actually obscure where the enemies are in FoW maps. So much for that gimmick, guys.

Erin kills a man.

Val finds treasure.

And Erin uncovers the foes lurking in the night. One of them is even promoted!

But not especially threatening.

Sadly, this is the end of today's update. Tune in tomorrow for an incredible amount of backtracking for disappointing loot, and another new enemy type that's barely any different from an existing one!

Books vs Scrolls: The greatest rivalry of all time

So, while I did say I wouldn't be listing the growth boosts the books give you, I AM listing which book corresponds to which scroll. If you're really, really interested in the specific boosts they give, you can just go to Serenes' Thracia section and look at the Crusader scrolls (ignoring the build growth, obviously). I'd list it here, but I don't feel like typing it out, and the dude who runs the website just dumped this data directly from the code so it's barely readable, so copy-pasting it over would require some editing I don't have the patience for.

Book of Lord = Baldo Scroll

Book of Sword = Odo Scroll

Book of Knight = Hezul Scroll

Book of Dragon = Dain Scroll

Book of Lance = Noba Scroll

Book of Axe = Neir Scroll

Book of Fire = Fala Scroll

Book of Light = Heim Scroll

Book of Prayer = Blaggi Scroll

Book of Wind = Sety Scroll

Book of Thunder = Tordo Scroll

Book of Bow = Ulir Scroll

[epilepsyduck]

That completely arbitrary schedule I set is broken once more, but because I'm posting too soon instead of too late. What a plot twist!

Chapter 8 Conclusion: Pitiful pirates procure paltry plunder

Let's start this update off right with some old-fashioned attempted murder!

Unfortunately for these smugglers, Erin is a bit of a monster at this point. I wish I'd had the patience to grind more money so she could promote this chapter, since she isn't gaining experience for all this.

Next turn, she returns the favor, or at least tries to. Maybe Kade's spiffy new Commander skill can make things happen next turn.

Nan gets ready to start robbing these guys blind. I'm sure this treasure will be fantastic beyond our wildest dreams!

Kade teaches this lance guy just how little the weapon triangle really matters when you're facing an unstoppable god.

These smugglers really don't have much in the way of self-preservation. Really, though, when have enemies in FE ever had an abundance of that?

You'd think a sniper shooting an unpromoted wyvern knight would deal more than like 6 damage. Of course, most wyvern knights aren't Nal'at.

A cloaked figure emerges from the shadows, poises to strike, and lightly slaps Raf in the face. To say this ambush was underwhelming is an understatement.

Despite having the offenses of an anemic second-grader, this guy is irritatingly evasive.

More treasure, but Nan's the only one with any keys, so this will have to wait. Such a shame.

Not so speedy now, are you?

Enough combat, though, we need to get to this sensational treasure!

Are you fucking shitting me?

This is a cruel joke you've played, Imago. Well done.

Kade lurks back down to the room with the two zombies in it. He'll just be hanging out there so Nan can find it easier later.

I assumed all this space was perfectly empty.

Before I remembered that dragoons can fly over enemies.

Speaking of these enemies, though, they're a semi-new class, the pirate! There've been pirates in the arena before now, but this is the first time they appear in a chapter proper.

They aren't exactly what I'd call "unique", though, since they're effectively axe fighters with a different sprite who promote into a slightly different class. I don't know if we'll be getting any for our team, but for reasons you'll see shortly, I don't think we will.

Another harmless ineffectual thief lurk down this corridor. In fact, thieves are all that can be found in this area, and this is the last one. Man, imagine how pathetically easy this chapter would be without the fog.

Erin comes to help Nal'at exterminate our new bandana-clad friends.

Though, to be frank, she's a lot more successful than everyone's favorite dragoon.

This guy may as well have stabbed himself for all this good this did him.

Nan trades the worthless stick she found to Olivia so she has room to pick up items with actual value.

More locked doors. If I hadn't already trained up a thief before this chapter, this map would've cost me a lot of tears and a lot of keys.

Erin unearths a whole nest of pirates, and even a promoted one!

Still not impressive, but at least he puts up some sort of fight.

The one word class description is what makes me think we won't be seeing much of these guys in our own party anytime soon. Such a shame.

Nal'at is a little more successful this time around, but only a little.

Y'know, I gave you the Tordo Scroll Book of Thunder to improve your growths, Nal'at. Maybe start reading it, or whatever it is you do to get the bonuses.

Note to self: smugglers have no concept of the weapon triangle.

This guy does his best, but nothing can dent Erin's titanium frame.

The next turn doesn't go well for these guys.

It doesn't go well at all.

Kade'll just be chillin' out here for the rest of the chapter. If I didn't care about the treasure, we'd basically be done with it by now, but it's going to take a lot longer if I want all this free stuff that's laying around.

We can now see what's behind Door #2

Answer: EVEN MORE DOORS. I can only imagine the reaction of someone who didn't bring a thief, it'd be incredibly easy to render this whole thing unwinnable.

Now, the next few images will just be the treasure chests Nan picked up, without any of the wandering around it took for her to reach them all. These screenshots might be out of order, so we'll just have to deal with the fucked up timeline and hope time doesn't crash in the process.

This is just one of those "[element] magic up, weak vs others" skills, so it sucks ass.

Let's you walk on water. Might be handy, but not too exciting.

Generic medium-grade armor. *yawn*

Basically this game's version of Sol. Now we must pick who will be cursed with unlife...

Now that's a find! I've got a lot of units who'd love this.

Just a visual reminder of how rings work in this game. I'm probably in the minority on this, but I wish these kinds of stat boosters were more common in FE games. I think Genealogy is the only game that really made use of them over one-use boosters with smaller increases.

As an added bonus, Nan also gave me this incredibly terrible level. It basically sums up my feelings after seeing some of this "treasure".

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

This is one of the least thief-like levels I've ever seen.

Nan doesn't have to handle these guys alone, thankfully; Olivia is here with her infinite arcane might to make this go faster.

It turns out these undead fiends had their own treasure stash, too. How do we get to it without killing them and ending the chapter early?

We don't!

Nah, I'm just kidding, I do manage to get Nan into the room without fanfare.

It's pretty worth it, I think.

In the dark, lonely cave, Olivia and her zombie lover run into a mutual embrace. That, or this is just Olivia missing.

Nan helps and makes up for getting a level that was almost good earlier.

With the zombie menace cleared, we can finally leave. Though, frankly, I don't see why we couldn't do that earlier, since nothing was blocking the stairs to begin with.

More money into my perpetually-empty coffers.

Another chapter with no ending cutscene? Guys, I was joking when I said I suspected the writing budget was running dry last chapter, but now I'm genuinely starting to believe that's happened. I guess it's less for me to screencap, but still!

Come next chapter, Petros gets some fierce competition and Nal'at meets her long-lost sibling.

[TheMoniker]

Wow. There are definitely parallels with Fire Emblem FOW chapters here. First off, my reactions to fog of war were like:

1: Well, at least they made it less BS-y by not hiding powerful enemies even if they are wimps

2: It's nice not to get stopped by enemies but it seems to allow for a lot of detection-cheating

3: I guess FOW is now superficial at best(they let the report map still have the enemies!?)

And yeah, comparing this game's menus to FE's menus? There's no competition. Also, when normal FE does chapters with a lot of doors it makes sure to give you plenty of door keys, and usually it won't be a rout mission... man, this game is seeming less well-designed all the time, though I don't like to rag on it too much.

(Corsairs are corsairs are carts are carts)

[epilepsyduck]

I've got a sweet Halloween treat for the three people who still care about this LP: I'm starting back up again! Can we just pretend that the embarrassing period where I couldn't get my shit together for a solid month never happened?

I'm very, very sorry.

Let's start this off right:

Chapter 9: Cart 2- The Cartocalypse

Guess what kind of enemies we'll be facing for the first time?

We begin our grand adventure by spending about eighty years grinding in the arena so we can afford promotion items!

Finally, she no longer has the strength of a sickly newborn.

Mind you, 15 isn't exactly great, but she can actually damage shit now. She's also got just enough speed to not get hit by every single attack that comes her way, so bonus points for that!

What's more interesting is her gaining the "Relentless" skill. Now she can imitate Rapid Fire with her basic attacks, too!

She even gets a good level up just to impress me further!

Moving away from units who need promotion to be competent, let's promote a unit who's already a killing machine!

Slightly less impressive boosts (though that magic bonus is pretty hefty), but that's understandable. She doesn't need huge promotion bonuses to be useful.

Aren't you a scary one now?

She also gained a neat defensive skill. I have no idea how useful it is, but it's something!

In equipment news, the armory is now carrying not only longbows, but a stronger version of them as well! I love when FE games make longbows not suck. It gives bow users an actual reason to exist.

Kade gained the "vamp atk" scroll we got last chapter. More survivability on a Lord is always awesome.

I contemplated giving the Continue scroll to Serene just to increase her already impressive multi-hit skill repertoire, but ultimately decided it'd look better on Raf. The other skill scrolls are still floating around in my convoy, waiting to be used/sold.

Now is not the time to get a strength allergy, Kade. We're about to start the chapter proper!

Bet you guys were wondering when a desert chapter was coming.

Erin: That is, if the sun doesn't bake me into a dried fig before! Gosh the day's hot isn't it?

Kade: Yes it is.

Val: Worried about your skin Erin? What's with the hat?

Shown here: Erin wearing a hat. Not pictured: A hat.

Val: It looks ridiculous on you.

Erin: Not as much as your face on you!

Erin needs to come up with sicker burns.

Kade: I'm doing fine. Thanks for asking.

Val: Good to hear. I guess your journey's nearing its goal?

Kade: (shrugs) Perhaps, perhaps not. Who knows?

Val: What are you going to do when you find the person?

Erin suddenly remembers when there was a plot to this game.

Kade: If- I can find her, I imagine she will need the escorting back to her parents.

Val: To Grana, yes?

Kade: Yes. To Grana.

Val: Kade, I must say I am thoroughly impressed by you and I would like to have you in my service. I need good soldiers like you who are tough and efficient. And I promise you the reward would be far greater than whatever you are paid now.

Kade: Offering a caravan guard job?

The plot... thickens?

Unfortunately, Val's hiring policy will have to wait, we're about to be set upon by the legions of hell!

Enemies appear, like, everywhere.

Man, Satan, that's such a great disguise, I hardly recognized you! Changing your name to something incredibly lame like Curlic only adds to the convincingness of it all!

Curlic: Capture the cargo and kill the rest!

Val: Tsk, we must continue this talk later!

Kade has a good grasp on the four cardinal directions. Next you'll tell me the Westpeople will attack us when we head east!

Erin: What are they?

Kade: They are raiders of mountain tribes- North of Grana. See the flying wyverns.

My reaction when I realized this was a desert chapter with flying enemies.

Val: How do you deal with them?

Serene is gonna love this chapter.

The chapter finally begins. Despite being a desert chapter and a chapter with several tough flying units, it's actually a pretty fun one; certainly 80 times better than the previous two chapters, at any rate. No treasure this time, sadly, but I brought Nan along for kicks to see if she steals anything. Our remaining lineup, aside from the forced Kade, Val and Erin, consists of Raf, Serene, Nal'at, Oscar, Olivia, and Charlotte.

Cart is back, and just as heroic as ever. We have to defend these guys again, but now they stay put instead of charging to their deaths like lemmings!

One thing of note in this chapter; dune tiles provide an evasion penalty instead of a bonus, just like FE4. It does make more sense then being simultaneously slowed down AND dodgier, to be fair. It's not much of an issue, there's not very many dune tiles in this chapter to begin with.

Olivia attracts one of our dragoon friends over and manages to get first blood.

Not that she does much with it, mind you.

I forgot to show this off, but she's got that "S.Wind" tome equipped. In hindsight, I have no idea when we're getting more of those, so it may have been a bad idea to use it up like this, but it sure knocks these dragoon jerks for a loop.

These are the stats of the flying dudes. They're actually a credible threat to a lot of our units, though we're still leagues ahead.

Satan Curlic is a bit of an upgrade from his faceless goons. He could be trouble.

Especially if Olivia keeps getting tertiary stats and not the ones she needs!

Nan's not much helps either, but to be fair, when have thieves ever been good fighters?

Nal'at comes to prove her aerial superiority to these pretenders once and for all!

Raf and Serene are handling all these guys to the south. I didn't get screenshots of their stats, but they're basically as feeble as the guys all the way back in the first few chapters. Even if I hadn't been level grinding this whole time, our army would probably be stomping these guys flat with no trouble.

Kade, Val and Erin are going to go around the whole valley to get to where they can attack the boss. It's a very, very long trip.

They contribute almost nothing this whole chapter!

That's a hell of a lot more like it, Olivia! Keep this up and prove mages in Partia 2 aren't all useless dead weight like Quent and Kerns!

Man, Charlotte's gonna need to promote soon. She's come a long way from her mediocre start back in chapter 2, and certainly contributed far more than Mark despite how badly he overshadowed her in the beginning.

I'm determined to use Oscar, just so I can have a lance cav with stats that aren't complete trash. It's slow going.

Good boy, Raf. Work on your weak points as well as your strengths!

Suddenly, a wyvern knight and a cleric appear in the corner of the map. Ravn here ponders his missing vowel and uncomfortably similar name to one of my least favorite characters in Blazing Sword.

Mary, meanwhile, provides us with what I was certain was a typo until I looked at the stat screen.

Ravn: I ride to meet Curlic. Kill him.

Mary: I guess the fate cannot be avoided. May gods bless thee!

Well... that certainly was a scene with some characters in it! I wonder if we'll ever receive even a vague explanation of who these two are and why they'll inevitably stick around after this chapter.

I wasn't kidding when I said they start in the corner, by the way. Mary literally cannot go anywhere in this map.

Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is basically a second, slightly weaker Nal'at. A diet Nal'at, if you will. Despite being only level 7, his stats are great and his growths are decent-for-Partia-2, marred only by having a pair of really shitty skills, which in the end isn't really an issue. I'm definitely using him.

Mary is a much-anticipated second healer, and comes with some even-more-anticipated staves: Warp and Rescue! Not as broken as Shadow Dragon literally handing you Warp in Chapter 2, but still pretty awesome. These aren't even the only copies!

Oh yeah, we should talk about Mary herself and not just her inventory. Like Petros, she sucks, but we need staff users. I haven't decided whether to keep using Petros or switch him out for her yet. We'll see.

Thanks to that dragoon flying so far down the map, Mary starts in his range, but she moves where Ravn was standing to get to safety. This is the only thing she does the whole chapter.

Nal'at sees her new flying partner and decides to prove her mettle to intimidate him. C'mon, guys, don't get all competitive, there's plenty of room in the skies for both of you!

With the southern enemies nearly cleared, Serene starts moving to face the boss.

Kade and pals continue on their own, far longer trek to the same end. Who will win this intense and dramatic race to the finish?!

Certainly not Oscar, who's still slowly hacking away at this myrmidon. Anything in the name of progress.

Raf takes an arrow to the face, annoying him into becoming dodgier.

Next turn, the pest is dealt with.

Lurking near Oscar and Charlotte is a single promoted enemy among a bunch of pathetic thieves and cavaliers. He's not particularly threatening, but he might get a lucky crit in, especially against lance users like Oscar. Curse your Thracia-style double-might crits, Partia 2!

It's not much of a problem when you've got an immortal sword paladin on your side, though.

Erin is the hero we deserve.

But she isn't the one we need.

I let Oscar deal with the remaining foes while we prepare for the boss, who's the only dragoon left at this point. She doesn't impress.

Good thing everyone's set up, though, because he's just announced he's gonna start moving. Strangely, he does this at the start of my turn, but I'm not complaining. It certainly beats ambush spawns, AWAKENING.

Poor man doesn't realize we've already killed all of his friends. A tragedy.

It is at this moment that I realize Nal'at doesn't have her armor equipped. She's just so durable naturally I hadn't noticed until now.

Yes, this LP will eventually devolve into talking about how awesome Nal'at is, and nothing more.

Ravn doesn't get his chance at revenge or whatever thin excuse he had for joining us, because Curlic takes a shot at Nal'at instead. Maybe their identical sprites confused the man.

Unfortunately for him, Serene is in range.

She doesn't even need all four of those shotsl she crits and brings him down in one shot! I'm glad you don't suck anymore, Serene.

With Curlic dying mutely as the previous three bosses have, the chapter is over.

I wish the game was a bit more generous with money, grinding for cash is immensely tedious.

Do you remember when the writers cared enough about the story they were penning to give each chapter an ending cutscene? Clearly their love for Partia 2 has waned since those halcyon days

In the next chapter, there'll be loads of SHOPPING! And a civil war or something, I guess.

Growths:

Ravn:

HP: 50

STR: 30

SKL: 20

SPD: 30

MGC: 10

DEF: 25

LUK: 25

MOV: 1

If his base stats were any lower, these growths would be fairly unimpressive, but as it stands, they should be just high enough to get him up to snuff with little trouble. Hopefully, anyway. I might end up getting unlucky, but we'll have to wait and see.

Mary:

HP: 30

STR: 5

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 25

DEF: 15

LUK: 5

MOV: 2

Literally identical to Petros except -20% HP growth. Not that stats matter much for healers, but the only reason I can see me using her is if Warp and Rescue are locked to her, which I haven't tested out yet. If they aren't, she doesn't have a prayer.

[TheMoniker]

I find Mary's spawnpoint interesting, since it's basically the equivalent of normal FE spawning someone on a mountain. Could, ah, "Ravn" have rescued her and carried her to the fight?

Also, making the desert chapter a defense mission was actually a nice move. That way you don't have to do as much sand-trudging.

[epilepsyduck]

I find Mary's spawnpoint interesting, since it's basically the equivalent of normal FE spawning someone on a mountain. Could, ah, "Ravn" have rescued her and carried her to the fight?

Also, making the desert chapter a defense mission was actually a nice move. That way you don't have to do as much sand-trudging.

There isn't any rescuing in Partia 2, sadly. I suppose I could've had her trade her rescue staff to Ravn, have him trade the staff to Petros, then have Petros use it... but that would be an enormous waste of a valuable staff.

And yeah, the last chapter was definitely a fun one. Probably on par with Chapter 2 and Chapter 5 in terms of good chapter design, and a break from the tedium of the previous three chapters.

I have no excuse for taking so long this time! But now we're ready to actually do a plot-related thing for once, for the first time since Chapter 5! Get ready...

Chapter 10: Shops of Splendor

Now that we've arrived in Sunspear Kamal, we discover Elle picked possibly the worst place in all of Dorne the Free Cities to hide out in, due to a dispute between Arianne and Quentyn some random princes who don't really matter!

Despite the civil war, though, Kamal is a place with many magnificent treasures for sale. Unfortunately, I'm not especially frugal, and most of the things for sale are prohibitively expensive. With how light my wallet was coming into this chapter, I probably couldn't have afforded much of anything.

That is, unless we use the arena to grind up more funds.

Thomas was my main punching bag in this quest for cash. He may not be of much use later on for all I know, but for now he's great for getting plenty of money without creating an army of unstoppable level 20/20 monsters to destroy the game's already feeble difficulty curve.

His final level up for the rest of the game. If only you hadn't joined us at level 15...

I also let that random nomad guy we recruited help out. I wasn't expecting much.

I received far more than I could've imagined.

Fuck my usual one-archer-only rule; you're definitely on the team after this.

Well, not this chapter, but soon!

To help get our new dragoon up to par, I'm giving him the speed ring and one of the growth books. In hindsight, maybe the dragon one would've been more useful for Mr. 9 Defense, but I didn't want to risk having his speed fall behind when Nal'at has such good speed to begin with.

Neat, is this another defense mission?

Nope, it's like a weird Arrive-Defense hybrid instead!

Wow, Raf gets lines again? I was thinking the game had forgotten about him!

Serene: Hamza's men are overwhelming Aadil men-

Shown here: Aidil men being "overwhelmed".

Kade: We go to that mansion Lady Elle's staying and protect her first.

Raf's secretly been on an assassination mission the whole time!

Or maybe the writers just needed to find a proofreader.

Kade: Perhaps we can pluck her off and ride away from the city? I don't know.

Serene: Either way, we better act fast.

Nope, we're still not done with the Caravan of Plot-Derailing Filler, or with Generic Implied Love Interest.

Soon...

Val: Are you going to find Lady Elle? We're coming with you.

Kade: Let's move!

So this time around, we're bringing Kade, Erin, Val, Raf, Serene, Nal'at, Olivia, Nan, Charlotte, Oscar, Ravn and Mary. Warp appears to be Mary-locked, so she's replacing Petros as our new staffbot. Rescue doesn't seem to share this lock, oddly enough.

So, this chapter's a bit of an interesting idea; it functions like the "Arrive" chapters from the Tellius series, except it also involves needing to get there before the enemies tear through its feeble defenses. It's not terribly well executed, for reasons that will become obvious soon, but it's something!

More interesting are the shops around the city. There are three; this one here...

One that's way the fuck out of the way, being guarded by some green dudes...

And this one, right at the end of the level.

All three of them sell rare, expensive items. Really desirable stuff, I'm talking about here. Grinding for it was a pain in the ass, but it'll be very worth it soon...

But first, let's look at the main players in this brutal civil war.

As you can see, Prince Aidil does not have great heroes and brave knights flocking to his banners, and has to make do with the dregs the other princes leave him.

Hamza's men, meanwhile, aren't really a threat to us, but can handily destroy the green guys. These longbow-wielding nomads infest this whole level, and make getting Nal'at and Ravn around the level a bit more complicated; while they aren't doing much damage individually, they can chip them down pretty easily if you're not careful.

This is the toughest enemy in the whole chapter. He starts just a little ways south of the mansion, and he will go for it very soon if you don't squish him immediately. He's not super threatening in an actual fight, at least, but the guys around the mansion cannot handle a single round with him.

Now, thankfully for the lazy players out there, it's incredibly easy to just warpskip this whole thing. Just dump a unit nearby, have them move onto this space, and you're done!

It wouldn't be very fun to read about me beating this chapter in 1 turn with my cheater staff, though. We're doing things the... well, not "hard", really, but the marginally less easy way, at least!

Ravn and Nal'at are setting out for that shop that's being defended by Aidil's dudes for whatever reason. Its defended status isn't going to remain true for long.

Kade'll show off the one at the start. What greets his eyes?

More skill scrolls! Mostly crap ones like "[magic] mage" and "incredibly pathetic combat boost if you don't move this turn", but there's also a couple decent ones in there. I don't buy any of them, though.

Our first taste of combat! Oscar's been falling behind, but she handles this guy okay.

The Aidil dudes... let's just say there's a lot fewer of them by the end of the first turn.

Things go especially pear-shaped for these three. I'm pretty sure it's impossible for the one on the left to even survive the first turn without divine intervention.

They're just as ineffective on their turn as the enemy one, as it turns out!

Given how easily Hamza's men are dealt with, it makes me almost a bit sad for this Aidil guy. Clearly he's not the wealthiest of princes, or he'd be able to afford troops that aren't held together by glitter glue and prayer.

Mary's first level, containing the only stat I care about. Keep it up!

Olivia handles the situation with the typical gross overkill.

Like I said, the nomad guys aren't really dangerous, but they can certainly pester us from afar. For anyone not on a dragon, it's basically free experience, though, so I'm not complaining.

This guy has been holding out remarkably well. It helps the only enemies interested in him are a crappy promoted thief and some nomads.

He certainly did better than this guy. Now the store has no guards, so surely the enemies will run in and ransack it, right?

Nope, instead they opt to slowly meander around the desert, heading in the general direction of the city itself. I'm not sure why Aidil stationed three guards for the store outside of town that apparently didn't need defending; his house clearly needs the meager protection they provide a whole lot more!

Man, even against an archer you can't do jack shit. How do you even count as soldiers again?

Ooookay, now that's a problem. These guys are heading straight for the thing we need to protect!

Erin cuts her way through to reach the mansion before the riffraff, and to pick up some nice trinkets along the way!

Speaking of which, Ravn finally made it to the recently-unoccupied shop. No tactical blunders are being committed here, no sir!

Literally one chapter after getting Warp and Rescue, we get another set, and for a high-but-not-absurd price! That's not even getting into all the other nice stuff on offer.

The shop is also carrying a ton of MDef capes, which are basically armor that protects from magic attacks instead of physical ones. Not bad items or anything, but not worth the price, either, given their limited durability and situational utility.

Yes, I took this screenshot just so I could complain about the convoy system again. Luckily Nal'at can grab the stuff I missed.

You know your troops are pathetic when a lowly thief can one-round them, equipped with nothing but an iron sword and a skill ring.

Yes!

NO!

Some much-needed strength and defense, and magic just on the off chance we see a mage ever again.

Speed's great, Olivia, but magic would be nice too! Don't slack just cause you're better than Quent and Kerns by default!

So, letting Ravn go shopping in range of enemy archers may have been a boneheaded move. He wasn't in serious danger, but they do knock him to half health working together.

We'll never forget your brave, pointless sacrifice, Generic Green Unit #872346.

Injury-induced levels are the best kind.

Uh oh, that's not good.

That is extremely not good.

Time to earn your money, Erin!

Erin never lets me down.

Fuck.

In less depressing news, we're nearly done with the guys on this side of the city! Good thing, too, as the army from the desert is approaching.

Not with any particular speed or urgency or anything, but still: approaching!

Nal'at swoops in to snatch up all those staves Ravn missed.

Because I don't learn from my mistakes and was too impatient to wait for the archers to leave, Nal'at has quite an exciting enemy phase. She's made of sterner stuff then Ravn, but they still took a big bite out of her health regardless.

Despite being able to go and crush the green dudes defending the mansion, potentially ending the whole chapter, the toughest enemy goes for Erin. This game's AI certainly shares Fire Emblem's oddly skewed priorities.

His buddies similarly lack focus to the task at hand, going for this random loser instead of the house. Maybe Hamza should've handed out some Ritalin to his troops before this battle.

Nal'at doesn't care about Ravn's Speed Ring, she's still outspeeding him! What a pro!

She then decides, having gotten speed last time, to get everything else the very next level. Nal'at really should be the main character, after Cart.

Raf will not rest till he hits that strength cap. He will have the biggest muscles in the universe soon.

It's okay, Ravn. Just because you're not as good as Nal'at doesn't mean you aren't still awesome anyway.

These guys were getting way too close for comfort, so I had Erin move in for this crap level.

Once again, they prioritize suicidally rushing Erin instead of actually accomplishing their supposed objectives.

We're gonna have some visitors soon!

Though Ravn and Nal'at have sort of distracted a few of these guys.

Enough combat, though, let's move on to the really important stuff.

Stat boosting rings! I buy a Str Ring, Spd Ring, and Magic Jewel. I don't bother with any of the necklaces or the Skl Ring, because I have no idea what the former do and the latter is kind of overspecialized.

Mary does some healgrinding.

Raf kills the last of our foes in the city itself. Now all we need to deal with are the cavs and nomads!

It looks like they've picked up some new friends, though. Three promoted units, combined with some of the generic mooks we've been facing the whole chapter.

Again, though, "promoted" doesn't equal "dangerous". I'm starting to wonder if the enemies ever get one iota stronger.

Now, I could just end the chapter right now...

But I'm not going to. I've got a few units who could use the experience, and I don't want to spend forever in the arena again.

Thanks to the desert, it takes a while for them to get here.

But we manage. Most of the remaining screens are level up screens, so feel free to skip past if you don't care how everyone's turning out.

You really can't afford to pull shit like this, Oscar. You only have 12 strength and 11 defense!

That dragon book is working wonders, I see.

Adorable joke there, Mary, getting strength. There's no such thing as War Clerics in Partia 2, y'know!

Serene gets what I basically consider a perfect level up for her. She finally realizes how stupid focusing on Skill is.

I haven't been as conservative with Mag Drive as I should be, but the rewards are pretty worth it.

Kade will become an impenetrable wall of steel in due time.

Fucking thieves.

Our levels end not with a bang but with a whimper.

Also, this happened, like, five times in the course of this. I had her trade some of the excess off so she didn't have to drop any.

No, I will not stop complaining about the convoy.

I really just wanted her to steal his money, but she ended up taking his life with two crits instead, creating a black bar at the bottom of the screen that I only noticed after I uploaded the screenshot. Whoops.

The chapter ends when the enemies are all cleared out. That's nice, since I didn't want to have to run all the way back to the mansion.

Stay tuned for the end of our wacky sidequest and the disappearance of someone vital to our army.

Edited November 10, 2015 by whenbananasattack

[Baldrick]

I'd forgotten how much expensive stuff game throws at you. I'd say you were expected to arena grind, but considering how generous the exp gain is by the time you can afford half that stuff you don't need it at all.

[TheMoniker]

I find the concept of the mission ("Arrive at an area before its overrun!") interesting, but the enemies aren't threatening. Not only that, what would actually cause a game over here? An enemy "seizing" the house tile? All the allies getting wiped out? Usually in FE it was tied to one specific NPC who had to survive, but here the allies don't have any commander.

[epilepsyduck]

I'd forgotten how much expensive stuff game throws at you. I'd say you were expected to arena grind, but considering how generous the exp gain is by the time you can afford half that stuff you don't need it at all.

I certainly know I don't need any of this stuff, but I'm some sort of video game related hoarder because it would've driven me crazy to leave it all behind.

I find the concept of the mission ("Arrive at an area before its overrun!") interesting, but the enemies aren't threatening. Not only that, what would actually cause a game over here? An enemy "seizing" the house tile? All the allies getting wiped out? Usually in FE it was tied to one specific NPC who had to survive, but here the allies don't have any commander.

I'm fairly certain them arriving at the house causes you to lose, since they seem to beeline for it whenever no enemies are in range. I didn't test that, though, because I strive to have the least informative LP ever.

And yeah, Partia 2 is full of great ideas that it can't properly make use of because its difficulty curve is basically nonexistant. I'm considering flipping Expert Mode on to make things a little less unbalanced in my favor.

My phone's charger is kind of busted right now, and I don't have the money to replace it, so I'm just dropping in to tell you it's gonna be a while before I can update again. Sorry for the incredibly long waits between incredibly useless content!

[epilepsyduck]

Now that my technology has stopped trying to destroy itself at my touch, let's get on with the next chapter!

Chapter 11: The Prince is a Pauper

Tavern lady, you already know who Elle is! You're the one who told us she "had gone south to free cities" in some libertarian mission to make the Free Cities even freer!

Before we begin the chapter proper, it's time for Charlotte to get an upgrade.

She gets some nice new duds in the process.

More importantly, though, she's now one of the tankiest units on my side, and she doesn't even have to sacrifice movement in exchange for that durability! Thank you, 5% move growth!

Charlotte laughs at your feeble attempts to dent her undentable frame!

The inn's got another random recruit for us. He surely can't be worse then Est'iao, that shitty archer we picked up in chapter 7.

I stand corrected. At least Est'iao was level 1 to excuse her shitty base stats; this dude's only got 14 levels left before he hits the level cap, and his bases are only somewhat better.

And if you think this is some sort of Wolf/Sedgar situation where he's got insane growths to make up for that weak start?

That is very much not the case here. Thanks, Partia 2.

We're deploying Kade, Raf, Serene, Nal'at, Olivia, Nan, Charlotte, Ravn and Mary this chapter. Nobody from the Wacky Sidequest Caravan is coming, because frankly they've received enough focus and I'm getting sick of them.

I'm sure some of you already know the other reason they're not coming...

I thought she was staying "at with" Prince Aidil. Now I guess she's been buying real estate?

Then why did it matter that we get to the house before the enemies in the last chapter did?

Answer my questions, damn you!

We're just outside the mansion. This chapter plays out similarly to the previous one; we've got to reach and defend a certain something before enemies get there, only now that something is an NPC instead of a specific tile. Unlike the previous chapter, defeating all the enemies is required to beat the map, whereas before you could just arrive at the house to win instead (you could even 1-turn it if you Warped there).

The enemies are a little better in this chapter then the last one, but they're still rather feeble. I don't know why enemies stopped getting stronger after chapter 4 and just went back to their crappy chapter 1 stats; even if I hadn't level grinded my units to high heaven, these guys would be pathetic to a reasonably leveled party.

This guy starts next to a breakable wall near where our runaway princess has planted her last desperate defense, and will soon be inside. He's astronomically more powerful then anyone she has defending her, and will make short work out of all of them.

While Hamza's men actually improved a little in the transition from chapter 10 to 11, Aidil's men, if anything, are weaker. I feel kind of bad for this Aidil guy for having such lame troops.

Elle is pretty much the best of them by a mile, though she's still not much to look at; she's yet another cavalier with eh bases (outside of that excellent speed), and starts dismounted and equipped with a sword, even though she's a lance cavalier. Apparently, I was wrong in assuming Kori could still equip lances when dismounted way back in chapter 2. I guess this means lance cavs (and presumably dragoons, but I haven't tested it yet) are the only units who can equip two weapon types, even if they need to dismount to do it.

Frankly, I kind of wish she didn't start dismounted, since she doesn't actually need to dismount when indoors, so there's no point in her gimping her movement and equipping something she can't use from horseback. But fine, Elle, go ahead and make your first chapter in our party inconvenient.

Assuming this is Prince Aidil's home, he carries on the grand tradition of storing his valuables in random rooms around his home. There's one in this courtyard...

Two in this random room, about to be assailed by a thief...

And one that's out in some weird, pointless building in front of his home.

Nal'at will have to get this one if I want to beat this chapter faster than 40 turns from now, because it's very far away from where I need Nan to be.

Nan opens the front-left double doors, leaving the front-right double doors locked. Maybe drawing a second door sprite would've been a good use of your artist's time so we don't end up with quadruple doors, Imago. Something to keep in mind for Partia 3, at least.

I don't actually do this, I just wanted to show off how powerful the Meteor spell is. It helps that Olivia's holding that Magic Jewel we got in the last chapter.

Come enemy phase, the red guys immediately set upon that wall leading into the garden, which... makes the screen scroll all the way to the upper-left corner, for some reason. This isn't just a one time thing, either, it happens every time they attack the wall. That's certainly an interesting bug, Imago.

When will enemies learn that attacking Raf only leads to obliteration of all that you are, were, or could ever be? Attack a more merciful foe and at least allow yourself a comfortable afterlife instead of oblivion.

These guys are slooooowly charging towards the mansion itself. It'll be a while before they're actually a problem.

Also, this thief, despite having easy access to the treasure and a door blocking us from following him, politely opened the door for us so we could stop him. What a gentleman!

I have no idea what is happening to the item names in Ravn's inventory, by the way; this game's bugs don't always make sense.

It's hard to actually come up with anything interesting to say about the combat in this chapter; it's just red guys toddling over to blue guys and being eviscerated.

The wall is nearly broken now; in another turn, they'll be through it entirely. Time to get a move on!

It's a good thing they're doing that, too, because without the time-sensitive objective, this mission would be rather tension-free.

Though I imagine if these guys had even halfway-acceptable stats, their imminent approach would be pretty good at that, too.

As it stands, well... this nomad hitting Nal'at for a whopping six damage tells a different tale.

Unfortunately for him, the Incredibly Polite Thief has been skewered to sate Ravn's bloodlust. It'll do... for now.

I'm trying to feed Olivia so she can promote, because I'm sick of her 5-move ass slowing me down. It's slow going.

I wanted to get rid of this pest, but Nal'at ends up muffing it. Oh well, maybe next turn.

The wall is down, but this nomad immediately blocks the way, protecting the green guy from the scary warrior dude. Good jorb, Hamza man #4567.

You'd think, if their goal was to kill Lady Elle, that they'd make a beeline for her now that the wall is down, but instead they're content to gently poke my units with sticks and get annihilated in return.

They're not gonna get much of a chance at taking her out, either; Raf has decided there aren't enough orphans in Kamal, and is ready to create a few.

Hypothetically speaking, anyway. He kind of bungles it. Ah well, next turn.

I know you couldn't see this, since this is a screenshot LP, but Charlotte's animation has gone from swinging her lance at the opponent to properly stabbing them now that she's a general. Excellent improvement in form!

Even the thiefiest of thieves can one-round these losers. It's a sad state of affairs.

It must be hard to squeeze your whole army through one half of the quadruple doors. I would've politely opened the second one for them, but that would've been a waste of Nan's turn.

Raf defeats his evil, weaker clone, saving the greenies from doom and destruction. I'm sure someone, somewhere, will care about that.

Also, I keep forgetting Ravn is a bit of a glass cannon in comparison to Nal'at, because this archer nearly ends him. World's best strategist, you're looking at her.

Speaking of archers and dragoons, this asshole still isn't dead yet. Go away so I can get some treasure in peace!

Reinforcements! Should we be afraid?

Maybe a little nervous. Maybe.

Away with ye, pest!

Nan's opened half of the other quadruple doors this guy has. Someone should speak to Prince Aidil and convince him to renovate this place, maybe get some doors that aren't absurd.

Patching up Ravn after his little mishap; the offending nomad is already dead.

We have a very long wait ahead of us while these guys catch up. It's a Partia 2 staple to have enemy reinforcements start way the fuck away from where the player probably is by the time they arrive.

These guys are a more pressing... well, not really "concern" or "issue", those words are too strong for this. Maybe "pressing happenstance" or "pressing irritation"?

Who cares though, let's get to my favorite part of any game; free stuff!

Prince Aidil must be dead fucking broke if he considered a common, medium-grade shield to be worth storing in a locked chest. It makes me feel bad for robbing this guy we'll never meet!

I hope the rest of his treasure is a little more valuable, at least.

This is the best thing this guy owns!

They tried to break Charlotte, but found her hard as a diamond! Nothing can pierce her stalwart defenses!

Doesn't stop more people from barging in and trying, though. I wish them the best, but expect the worst.

This part of the map's a bit of a clusterfuck, which is why I'm meeting them further into the mansion where shit is less cramped and there aren't annoying untraversable pillars in the way.

There's really not a lot to say about the rest of this turn; it's just enemies taking inaccurate potshots and dealing minor damage when they even hit at all.

Why, when wielding a longbow, would you choose to attack the only unit on the enemy side who also has a longbow? Frankly, your stupidity earned you that death Serene dealt out!

Kade finally reaches the wayward Lady Elle, ready to talk her into joining us.

Unfortunately, we must wait until the next update to hear their incredibly stirring conversation, as well as a very unexpected turn of events.

Next update'll be up very soon, I'm just dividing it up to avoid hitting the image limit.

EDIT: Someone forgot to list Elle's growths and it's me! Let's fix this.

Growths

Elle:

HP: 50

STR: 30

SKL: 30

SPD: 30

MGC: 20

DEF: 25

LUK: 10

MOV: 2

Outside of that surprisingly high (for a physical unit) magic, these growths are kind of bland. Her bases are barely different from Erin's despite Erin having a lower starting level, too. There's also another issue, hidden below the spoiler...

She leaves after this chapter, and doesn't come back for quite a while.

Overall, while I'm sure she's usable, I don't think I'll bother. We've got plenty of good units already.

Edited December 1, 2015 by whenbananasattack

[epilepsyduck]

Strap in for the plot to stop faffing about and actually be about something again, in this next exciting installment:

Chapter 11 Conclusion: I legitimately didn't see any of that coming

Where we last left off, Kade had finally reached Lady Elle after much hardship and filler. At long last, the search is over.

Elle's got a nice portrait, though I'm not really sure what's going on with the collar.

Kade, that really doesn't work as a response to her question.

I can't imagine why she wouldn't want to go back to Snape Severin. He seemed like such a charming fellow!

Kade: The situation has changed, no? You cannot stay in the city now.

Elle: ......

Kade: Give me your word that you'll go back to Grana and we will protect you.

Elle: ...No!

Despite how fragile that alliance that got formed way back in Chapter 3 is, and how reliant it is on Elle coming home, Kade's suddenly seemingly unwilling to force her to return. It's like a speck of nobility has suddenly formed in the bland ocean of Kade's personality!

Elle: I don't know it yet.

Kade: Geez, we cannot let you die anyways. Come! Form shields around her!

Apparently Kade has some psychics in his army I didn't know about.

Now Elle's on our side, ready to kick butt... or just hide in the corner, which is what she actually spends most of the chapter doing.

I know it's probably a little redundant, given that we've already seen her stats and she has no skills, but let's look at her stat sheets anyway, just for completion's sake.

As I said in the last post, Elle's probably usable, but not especially exciting. I don't think she'll be seeing much use, to be honest.

I have her get back on her pony, immediately rendering her unable to fight. I kind of wish I'd brought a lance for her to use, but we really don't need her to contribute at all anyway.

There's not gonna be a whole lot of gameplay in this update, I'm afraid; there's simply not much to talk about in that arena, at least as far as this chapter is concerned. There's a ton of unused screenshots because I couldn't think of anything interesting to say about any of them, since this part was pretty tedious.

Though I did find it amusing how much the nomads seemed to love targeting Serene, aka the only unit who could actually hit back. It's like they wanted it to be over, too!

A thief arrived outside, presumably to steal the Shield of Disappointment (or other randomized loot, presumably) if you didn't get there in time. Nal'at puts him in his place.

Something at least a little more threatening is coming this way. Not anything massively worrisome, really, but it's something.

I mean, invading this house and smashing shit up didn't work so well for these guys, so I'm not sure why they think they'll be any more effective. But hey, who am I to question the genius tactics of Prince Hamza, the faceless specter whose troops have been giving us grief for two chapters.

I'm skipping ahead quite a bit to show Nan's search for treasure, and the perils she faces along the way.

In the meantime, Charlotte takes advantage of her ability to level again to give me this shit. You're better then that, lady!

These poor lancer guys are struggling to keep up, but inevitably get left behind for Nal'at to pick off.

This is me doing an inadequate job of showing off the Meteor spell. It's basically a small purple dot that flies down and explodes into smoke, just like meteors in real life.

Great, more mysterious jewelry. At least it sells for a decent price, but it'd be nice if the game indicated what this item actually does.

More Serene shenanigans. This game's AI certainly doesn't share FE AI's fear of counterattacks.

Raf get's some more survivability, not that he needed it.

Continuing the trend of disappointing treasure, the game gives me this inexcusable shit. Maybe I was getting too lucky with the loot in previous chapters, and the Random Number Goddess decided to balance it out.

The chapter's pretty much over at this point; there's only two enemies left after Olivia scourges this one with arcane might.

I sent Elle to grab Nan's key and go get the last treasure herself, but she was waylaid by this jerk.

I've trapped the last enemy in the map in the Box of Shame. Now Elle can get the treasure without any problems!

Will it be worth it?

Figures.

Our prisoner is no longer needed, so Olivia finishes him off.

The deed is done.

I think the -1 ally is because we recruited Elle, or maybe we had some sort of ally made entirely out of antimatter. Either way, we're actually receiving a pretty good amount of money for once, and that's all I care about.

Believe it or not, we're not done here; there's actually an ending cutscene, after 6 whole chapters without one! And it's a doozy...

Time to go back to Snape Severin, Elle. I can't imagine why you'd run away from such a reasonable, compassionate man!

Elle, for her part, is suddenly just a little reluctant to go back instead of being willing to potentially face death to avoid having to return.

But you don't have to live with him, so I think your situations are a little different, buddy.

I... what? Since when are we allied against the king? I thought dealing with Aanon was because we were loyal to him!

Maybe I'm just forgetting something, but I sincerely don't remember a single scene where it looked like we were plotting against any kings.

Okay, that much I do know. Maybe I can work out where the treason is coming from.

Yeah, nothing I didn't know before. Maybe I need to go reread some of these older chapters to find out where the batfuck this is coming from.

Val is up to date on who's who in Grana, apparently.

I... guess he does? Since you guys are talking about it, anyway.

Lying so low even the people reading all this text didn't know about it!

One day, I want to learn how to pronounce that. Maybe I could be a silent protagonist.

Wut?

Yeah, what are you talking about?

Sudden wardrobe change and then... I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to say about this.

(Why is it always an ancestral sword? It's in line with FE's sword obsession, especially in the early days, but still! Be a tiny bit more creative with your fantasy tropes!)

Scratch that; I legitimately have nothing to say about this.

I didn't get a screenshot of this, but there's a little scene of Kade, Raf and Serene kneeling. I guess that means it's legit.

We're getting a map screen now? With a slightly pixellated picture of Kade that makes him look drunk, even!

That makes it sound so casual and blase it's kind of hilarious. "I found the girl I was looking for, and I also found a prince and princess I guess. No big deal or anything."

Aw, don't ditch Cart! He was the greatest hero of them all, your rebellion will surely fail without him!

Wow, whoever this Malak guy is, he must really suck at being king if we instantly have that much support just from gossip.

Are the north and south different kingdoms, or are the guys in the north just jerks who refuse to use the same titles as everyone else? I'm assuming the latter, if they're taking part in the same rebellion.

Here are some nobles that probably don't matter. They aren't pretty, at any rate, so we certainly won't be recruiting them.

I'll give this scene credit; it taught me that chevauchée apparently means "ride on horseback, usually for the purpose of raiding and pillaging". Partia 2 is an immensely educational experience.

Apparently Malak's been reading from the Tywin Lannister playbook.

That's... kind of an abrupt place to end that cutscene, but okay. At least there was a cutscene that time!

Stay tuned for "Now That's What I Call Thracia 776: Running Away Edition"

Exciting (and slightly spoilery) preview

There's a key bit of info I didn't include in the original updates:

I've switched hard mode on. It seems takes a chapter to fully kick in, which is why the enemies were still so weak and why I didn't mention it earlier. The cuts to XP gains did kick in, though, so I knew it was working despite that.

Really, though, given how lame the foes in previous chapters have been with hard mode off, I can't expect even this to bring them up to par, right?

I stand corrected.

Edited November 29, 2015 by whenbananasattack

[Baldrick]

Tidbit: in the iOS version (at least the version I had) those reinforcements spawn inside the residence. I think it's unintentional because some get trapped in the walls and can only be attacked at 2 range.

[TheMoniker]

IT WAS VALDEMAR ALL ALONG

GASP

THE PLOT POINT WE KNEW NOTHING ABOUT UNTIL LITERALLY JUST NOW HAS BEEN REVEALED

Okay, but seriously. I really do feel bad for Aiden. He can't afford good men or good chest placements, or even good things to put in the chests, because he wasted all of his money on quadruple-locked doors!

[epilepsyduck]

Tidbit: in the iOS version (at least the version I had) those reinforcements spawn inside the residence. I think it's unintentional because some get trapped in the walls and can only be attacked at 2 range.

Bugs in Partia 2? I can't believe such a thing!

IT WAS VALDEMAR ALL ALONG

GASP

THE PLOT POINT WE KNEW NOTHING ABOUT UNTIL LITERALLY JUST NOW HAS BEEN REVEALED

Okay, but seriously. I really do feel bad for Aiden. He can't afford good men or good chest placements, or even good things to put in the chests, because he wasted all of his money on quadruple-locked doors!

I'll be fair and say the fact that there is a claimant to the throne out there is mentioned several times before now, so the fact he shows up in the story is hardly surprising. I guess the fact there's more to Val and Pals than caravan guards is mentioned once before, too, but it's so vague that it still feels a bit cheap for us to have been traveling with a secret prince the whole time without knowing it.

On the other hand, it does finally explain why the writers bothered to have Kade "disguise" himself as a mercenary before joining up with them; I imagine this plot point would've been illogical to conceal for so long if Kade was honest about who he works for.

As for Prince Aidil, he's suffered so much it almost makes me glad he's a faceless nobody who'll likely never appear in the plot again.

This is gonna be a short update, but the chapter itself will be coming soon. It'll likely be a three parter, with this being the first part. It also happens to be my favorite chapter so far, so I hope you guys enjoy it too!

Chapter 12 Prelude: Familiar names, unfamiliar faces

Careful, tavern lady. We already know Malak follows the teachings of Tywin Lannister, you don't want to be the Masha Heddle of this story.

I'll stop making ASOIAF jokes eventually, I promise.

Where we last left off, we'd found the girl we'd spent seven whole chapters looking for while getting into various wacky sidequests, and discovered that one of the people who'd been dragging us along on these sidequests was secretly the true heir to the throne. Shall we look at how things have changed since that reveal?

Just tell me if you notice what's missing here.

Just really take a look and try to puzzle it out.

If you just don't have the time, energy or attention span to do it yourself, I'll tell you; all but one of the caravan characters have left our army. For the record, the deserters are Erin, Val, Thomas, Earlin, Louis, Alonso, Tan and Oscar. Elle is also gone, though she was barely in the party to begin with. Asif, oddly enough, remains on our team, likely because they didn't want to have you train him up as your main thief and then yank him away for several chapters. Smart thinking, Imago.

Don't worry, they do come back eventually, but it's gonna be a little while. Of those units, the only real loss is Erin, and even then, we can make do without her until she returns. They apparently dump their inventories into the cargo before they leave, but I didn't know that at the time I recorded the last chapter and stole their weapons anyway.

Before we get on with the story stuff, we've got a new promotion to take care of! If you read the last chapter, you've probably already guessed who.

Olivia is finally ready to stop slowing down my team with her shitty 5 move so she can bring the pain with that huge magic stat of hers.

New map sprite, as always if your name isn't Nan or Asif.

Really putting the "cannon" back in "glass cannon", aren't you, Olivia?

Alright, onto the chapter itself! If you're wondering why I didn't show a deployment screen, it's for a very special reason: every single unit still in our army is coming into the next chapter! I made sure they all had at least iron weapons, so none of them are defenseless, but if I can help it most of them won't be participating in combat. And no, this isn't a case of there merely being enough slots for them all to take part; all of them must come into this battle.

Wow, the king looks like such a friendly guy. I don't know why people are so eager to overthrow him!

I suppose that's why.

Let's play an old Fire Emblem favorite, "spot the sympathetic character". Gee, I wonder who it could be?

Mad Dog, eh? Where have I heard that title before?

Where have I heard that name before?

Given what I've seen of General Victor in the field, I'd imagine this'd go well for him.

Ah. Well, that doesn't really bode well for us, does it?

He may have an unoriginal title, but he's apparently a pretty threatening figure nonetheless.

We cut to Kade and Co. in a big area crisscrossed by like a billion rivers. These must be those "river lands" that fiction writers (except the writers of Game of Thrones for some mystifying reason) enjoy making the target of hellish wars and nonstop pillaging.

Kade, an inspirational hero for us all.

Kade sees the conspicuous arrows on the ground, and knows that can only mean one thing; safety.

My reaction when I realized units I hadn't used since the beginning of the game were force-deployed.

Our units start scattered throughout the map, with Kade sitting almost dead-center. One of the rivers basically splits the map right down the middle, dividing your army into two main groups. It'll be a while before they get a chance to reunite, and by the point they do the map's almost over. Since Kade is on on side and Raf is on the other, I'll call them Kade's Team and Raf's Team when I'm referring to them collectively.

These are the enemies closest to Kade's team. Annoyingly, Mary, a frail healer with 5 movement, starts right next to them. I could've fixed this by starting over and repositioning her in the Organize screen, but I decided to make this difficult for myself instead and just escort her to safety the hard way.

Shall we look at the enemies on this side of the map?

We're no longer dealing with pathetic 3-in-every-stat losers like the past few chapters. I'm not sure if switching on expert mode is responsible for this difficulty bump or not, but either way, it's about fucking time the enemies started catching up to us. They're still no match for my best units, but can handily crush most of the weaklings, and can even bring down some of my toughest fighters if they gang up on them. You can try to stand and fight, but for reasons that will make themselves known later, it's better to just run for it.

Let's see how the enemies on this side of the river stack up.

They're a little weaker, but not by much. I imagine you could hold this side of the map a bit more easily, but it's still not worth it in the long run.

Finally, let's look at the enemies upriver from us, where the two teams will meet.

The axe armors aren't especially impressive.

This ballista isn't super threatening, but he can cause headaches if he starts targeting your weaker units.

This guy is a douche. That meteor tome of his (which he's somehow cheated and gotten ten uses for instead of the regular five) can pulp some of those losers you've probably forgotten about like Herman and Arthur in the blink of an eye, and is even moderately dangerous to competent units. If you want an easy time of things, you need to either send a flier after him or Warp someone to take him out.

Just in case you've forgotten, here's some of the worst units on our side. A lot of the units this chapter will need constant babysitting, and woe unto any player who's forced to rely on any of them for combat at any point in this chapter.

This is where we need to get our army up to. The chapter objectives are basically like a middle ground between the Tellius games' escape missions and Thracia's escape missions. Unlike the former, you can't just get the main character up there and end the chapter, so you can't cheat with the Warp staff to 1-turn it; unlike the latter, the game doesn't punish you if you have the main character go first, because the objective actively requires that everyone leave the map, instead of allowing you to leave people behind and causing you to lose them for most of the rest of the game. I kind of prefer this system, if only because it makes more sense than the former and isn't as punishing as the latter, but that's just me.

I'm afraid I have to cut the update short here. Next time, mysterious entities will hand us free promotion items, and we'll see the return of an old foe you've likely long forgotten about!