screenshot Ike's FE Megathread {15.5}

[Parrhesia]

I made this old thing a few years ago, superimposing Leif's movements in FE5 to the equivalent FE4 maps, and it's surprisingly accurate and sensible!

The only sketchy parts are Noel Canyon (the Great River starts farther down in FE5), The Stronghold (Leif should be arriving from the north, not the south) and Manster's exact position;

this video rules holy shit nice work

[Integrity]

maybe the desert was too treacherous to cross with an entire army

that doesn't exactly sound easy

by the time we kill ishtor at melgen we've already crossed the entire desert; darna (where we get leen) is the southern tip of it. edda (the next castle west of darna) comes up in the final, and it looks like this

EDIT: nevermind that quan nearly crossed the desert except for being a scrub, sigurd did cross the desert and punked the guys on the other side, seliph has already crossed the desert in this generation, and everybody involved in the grannvale/isaach war last generation crossed the desert repeatedly, all with full armies

Edited July 12, 2016 by Integrity

[Moblin Major General]

Tactically, Forseti Lewyn is correct in his thinking. In terms of later FEs, Sigurd walked the path of the Conqueror, regardless of how he felt about what he was doing. Lewyn, aware that it didn't work the first time, helps Seliph along the path of the King, which included going way the hell out of the way to help everyone out. Miletos is indicative of Grannvale's depravity, and therefore would rally support for Seliph in Augustria, Verdane, and Silesse, two of which already having their kings within Seliph's ranks (and no, Lewyn isn't one of them.)

Edited July 12, 2016 by Feldmarschall Rommel

[Integrity]

i know you love touting military theory 1 and probably read machiavelli once or twice but none of that is actually relevant to this. miletos isn't a strategic objective; there's no military support to be garnered from them given as they've been totally shattered and occupied, and seliph explicitly doesn't need goodwill considering that everybody is already hailing him as the righteous king of england.

verdane isn't relevant to anything in this game, silesia and agustria are already on his side since he's already liberated two very high profile provinces that were occupied (and oppressed) by the empire. in fact, he very much doesn't go way the hell out of his way to help everyone out, given as there's another half the continent you never see in the second generation.

beyond that, lewyn's plan does, in fact, follow "take a really roundabout way to julius" and "remind us that julius is priority #1 because the rise of the dark god is imminent." miletos gives nothing to us strategically, they don't even have a military to provide and we take grannvale out right on the heels of miletos; and they have nothing to offer taking them before the occupation, since the world as a monolithic entity (the only kind fe4 is capable of working with) is already behind seliph as the one true king.

also, dude, you were wrong from the first word. it's strategic thinking, not tactical.

[Parrhesia]

The real hero of FE4 is Seliph's PR guy.

[The Draco Knight]

I think that Lewyn decided to convince Seliph to "invade" Thracia because he wanted to be sure that when Seliph and his army will invade Grandbell, they would have to deal with only Grandbell's army.

To summarize: he wanted to invade Thracia to make sure they won't interfere when they will fight Grandbell's most powerful soldiers.

Bu this is just a tought of mine.

[Integrity]

hey, that's actually a reasonable enough explanation. it's not framed as such in-game, but i like it.

[Miacis]

It wouldn't be the first time that FE wants you to Kill everybody on the map...just in case.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Miacis

[Paperblade]

well done my lord you're a fighter born

[Integrity]

Time to invade Thracia! Two more posts after this and we’ll be wrapped up with Genealogy. It’ll only take three months, so at this rate I’ll be done with the series…

…sometime around when I finish my Ph.D. Jesus. I-it’ll speed up, right?

Top-left is the last occurrence of this recurring boss portrait. They’ve gotten pretty good mileage out of it, I’d say, considering it was even Lewyn’s uncle in chapter 4. There’s still plenty of use left in Man In Hood, Face Half Shadowed, though. Everyone else we know except for Hannibal, the guy in the center. He is bad. We’ll find out why.

Note the text, too – they’re noticing the fact that we’re nothing but an invading army at this point. It’s awesome, there’s finally a faction of plebeians who-

Villager: “That King Trabant is a right cold man. Thank goodness Prince Areone and Princess Altenna are nothing like him. Those two have always been very close. I hope nothing ever comes between them.”

Villager: “The villages in these parts were peaceful while under Lenster’s rule. But we were subjugated by the Thracian army soon after the war.”

Villager: “General Disler of Luthecia follows King Trabant around like a puppet. But afterwards he goes throwin’ his weight around… thinkin’ he’s important… What a jerk!”

Villager: “Could there be any truth to the rumour of a Dark Priest being in Grutia? I can sympathise with King Trabant’s situation… But, my oh my, taking sides with the Loputo Sect… what was His Majesty thinking! I’m giving you this Barrier Ring… Now, please, save our Thracia!”

Yep, typical for Genealogy, it’s just lipservice. Every village pays us money, 4/6 talk shit about how much Thracia sucks, we never see the Thracian peasantry besides villages asking us to save them. There’s no militia taking up arms to stop us, it’s only Travant’s professional standing army (and others, as we’ll see) who resist us. Once we subjugate Thracia, it’s not brought up again. So close, so close.

Trabant: “I don’t want to hear it! Don’t you underestimate me, Altenna. Your skills on the battlefield are like no other, and I depend on you and Arion to work as my hands and feet out there. So what happens? You ignore my orders, lose an entire battalion, and stroll in here like nothing happened! You thoroughly disappoint me, girl!”

Travant, understandably, is pretty pissed that Altenna just sat around navel-gazing while everybody died around her and then flew off. It’s disrespectful! Come on. I’d be pretty pissed. What does Altenna have to say for herself?

Remember that stuff I was talking about half the game ago, in chapter 4? Specifically, how rebellion has been brewing for like five years but didn’t boil over until Sigurd was there, or how Sylvia and Fury didn’t talk about the man between them a single time for two entire years, how Genealogy doesn’t have any sense of time? Altenna has been raised by this man. Altenna has shared his house for sixteen-odd years (I forget the exact numbers but she’s somewhere around 19 right now) and this is the first time Travant’s longstanding plan to warmong has come up, even as she’s been trained to be one of his two top generals. You can see some of it last chapter, too – remember how Arion, in his introduction, was all like “oh, dad, this is your sweet plan?” Blume conquered Leinster, at the absolute least, fifteen years ago. None of Travant’s generals, who he trusted to conquer Leinster and North Thracia for him once Blume was ousted, knew about this plan.

Areone: “That’s enough! Your opinion is not wanted here, Altenna. Now listen and obey father’s wishes! She’s still very young, father. I imagine the sight of actual combat overwhelmed her a bit. Please, father… just this once. Go easy on her.”

Trabant: “Arion, if you wouldn’t baby that girl so damn much, she might not be such a problem for me. Altenna… I’ll give you one more chance. Now command a battalion and take Mease back! But if you screw up again, daughter or not, I’ll show you no mercy! Understood!?”

Altenna: “Yes, father…”

Man, SF’s text dump for this game is really shoddily edited. I should ask Vincent sometime if he wants me to take a pass over the whole thing or something.

Anyway, Arion jumps all over Altenna’s case, and Travant sends her right back out with a new battalion. She’ll actually fight us this time, and we can totally kill her, but she has the highest attack on the enemy side right by about 15, which is absurd, and she doesn’t scale down when we pick her up. Arion’s excuse for Altenna totally makes sense, her first time seeing real combat in a job she probably got through flagrant nepotism wouldn’t work out too kindly – except we saw her last chapter, she was totally composed in her lines and Coluda just seized command from her and attacked. Jeez, Travant’s got issues in his hierarchy.

Trabant: “Whatever… Well, I’m off to Kapathogia. It seems Hannibal has a problem with my way of running things. And so I must take measures to make sure he doesn’t turn on me.”

Areone: “I’ve never seen father in such dismay… What could’ve happened…”

Time comes up again with Hannibal. He’s been working for Travant since before we did the first generation and apparently just now he’s conscientiously objecting. This isn’t even the first conquering Travant has done since we all died at Belhalla (except shockingly few of us actually did), but apparently invading Leinster when it’s controlled by the remnants of Leinster is different from invading Leinster when it’s controlled by a burning rebellion against the empire you’re allied with. Allied, mind, and that’s going to come up soon in the dumbest way possible.

Also note the comparison of Altenna to Ethlyn. Look familiar?

Trabant: “…Did Altenna finally leave? Boy, that girl doesn’t give in easy. Her mother was real brazen, as well. Hmph… Like mother, like daughter.”

For instance, from last chapter, the last time Altenna walked away from Travant? She’s been in two conversations now, walked away from Travant in both of them, and immediately sparked Travant to compare her to her mother, just in case we haven’t figured out she’s Quan and Ethlyn’s missing daughter, Altenna, whose name was mentioned when she was adopted by Travant in chapter 5. Genealogy is not a subtle game. Spoilers: the next two conversations Altenna is in both involve her parents as well, making every story scene involving her mention her parent/s as well, except for the brief one with Coluda.

Oh boy, Hannibal. Hannibal is a moron.

Right, here are the things: I know I keep saying Travant could cut a deal with the resistance and back out of it, and Hannibal’s calling it here, but it’s not definitely the right action. If Travant were pretty confident that the invincible empire would crush us, it would be really stupid for him to back out of the war and make Arvis angry at him once it’s all wrapped up. The cease fire is still probably the better option – take a reprieve now and try to explain to Arvis later rather than rolling the dice on the psychopath unstoppably burning your country to the ground – but it’s definitely not the only option.

The stupid thing about Hannibal’s logic is the notion that siding with the empire was an absurd idea. You might note from the text of chapter 6 that Travant is the only independent king on Jugdral right now. The empire’s eaten everyone else. Arvis even honors the pact by sending a reinforcement brigade to help out (spoilers: we kill them) and there’s a garrison of a dark mage in one of the Thracian castles (spoilers: we kill him). Hannibal’s calling it absurd now because we’re losing – we’re losing to a wildfire rebellion that absolutely nobody saw coming, after being at peace for about fifteen years. It’s like throwing a pair of dice where “any outcome except snake eyes six times in a row” is a victory of some variety, rolling snake eyes six times in a row, and having your mate go “see I told you gambling never pays off!!!!” Fuck you, Hannibal.

No. No, Hannibal, he doesn’t have any faith in you, because with the country actively being invaded by an outside aggressor you’re talking about how everything is fucked and we need to peace out and how your king’s decision making is shitty the second the fighting starts. Plus, Travant’s comeback is pretty slick.

Trabant: “If betrayal’s not on the cards, then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

This chatter does bring up a point that isn’t in my notes that I just thought of – the reinforcement brigade in chapter 9 is the empire’s first attempt to stop us. Chapter 6 was us slaughtering the occupation force that was already in Isaach, chapter 7 was us shattering Blume’s occupation force that was already in North Thracia, chapter 8 was us executing Blume and fighting Travant’s first wave of dudes. Arvis hasn’t made a single attempt to stop us yet, and his first act is going to be to send like twelve dudes to Thracia for us to kill. Even in chapter 10 we’re just catching a Grannvalean occupation army on the defensive (outside of Grannvale proper) and killing them, with almost no support from the motherland. Arvis presumably has enough soldiers to squash all these rebellions that sprung up between chapters 6 and 7 immediately, but he sends none of them at all to deal with the one that’s an actual threat. The empire as an entity, the thing we’re railing against, is a complete nonentity until now, and they’re hardly even a secondary player in this chapter.

Anyway, Travant takes a hostage in this little blighter, Carpool. Carpool is a void of personality. The only thing I can remember that he even does is get hit on by Patches, and I just read the script for these chapters like two weeks ago. He has no lines in the final chapter.

Travant locks Carpool up in the second castle we’ll attack, geographically, which means we have to smash through Hannibal’s line to get to it. Nominally, that means that Hannibal has to do or die here, but you know how we work.

Trabant: “I’ll take your word for it. I have very little faith in Hannibal of Kapathogia, though. So I took his kid hostage, and I want you to keep an eye on him.”

Disler: “You can count on me. And what if Hannibal were to turn on us?”

Trabant: “You’re to kill the boy. I don’t care if he is a child…”

Disler: “Understood.”

And hey, Disler isn’t like jumping up and down at the thought of murdering a little kid, which makes him pretty subtle for a Genealogy villain. B+.

Man With Face Half Shadowed promises reinforcements, and he’s not lying. The reinforcement brigade is actually kind of a doozy here, it’s pretty cool. Gameplay-wise I quite like this chapter with two exceptions, one of them being Hannibal’s recruitment, but I consider that more of an easter egg honestly so I don’t hold it against it.

The other is the holy weapon user boss. What did you expect?

Seliph, the voice of reason. At least we get to hear Lewyn’s justification.

Levin: “The reasons’ll become apparent if you handle this properly. This battle is already well underway, Celice. There’s no going back.”

Celice: “But the dragon knight on that mountain top back there… She looked so sad. The thought of having to fight her as well…”

Yeah, his reason is “because I say so.”

No, I didn’t skip any lines, Lewyn just fucking snaps at him out of nowhere. What a good and well-written advisor character who I like. Oifaye comes back for his last line here and I forgot to screencap it like an idiot, but it’s okay because we have…

Oifey: “Levin, his Majesty is a little tired, it’s unnecessary to mention that…”

Levin: “I know. But everyone is doing their best. We don’t have time to stay here doing nothing. We have to return to Grandbell as fast as possible and stop Loputousu’s resurrection. Otherwise, the world will be destroyed.”

So not only is Lewyn’s justification for why we’re invading Thracia “because I say so,” he follows it up by reminding us that our priority is Grannvale, in the opposite direction, and not where we are. And we’re pushing into Thracia instead of seeking any other options, or just turning around, because he says so. Hell, at least at this point he’s probably figured out we can get the Gae Bolg out of this, but why not tell us that?

It isn’t just you, the opening narration to this map is insanely long, and there’s dumb shit to talk about in every single bit of it. Hooray. I think this is the last conversation before I got to do the arena, sally forth, and then watch more conversations. There’s a lot of dialogue in the first about third of this chapter. Anyway,

Leaf: “Yeah, I did. It’s not often you see a female dragon knight, even in Thracia. Why? Was something strange about her?”

Fin: “The lance she was holding was none other than the Holy Gayborg.”

First, you snicker at the name again. Then, you reckon, the holy weapons are probably pretty distinctive, to say the least. Plus, Finn’s seen the Gae Bolg before.

…but only members of the Nova bloodline can use the Gae Bolg, and Altenna is using it. These aren’t niche facts in Judgral, everyone knows about the Crusaders and their bloodlines and their weapons. Altenna’s had the Gae Bolg since Travant adopted her. How hasn’t this connection entered her head? Presumably she wouldn’t be able to recognize the Gae Bolg without anyone telling her it was such, but did Travant just figure she could go twenty years without anyone telling her her spear was the holy weapon of Nova? Bit of a stumbling block, sure, but

What?

This has precedence – King Grannvale recognized that Deirdre was his granddaughter by “family intuition,” something he couldn’t explain, which was presumably an aura of Naga. Finn just got a glance at her from like a mile out and realized that she vibed the same holy blood vibe that Quan did – something nobody else in the world has demonstrated the ability to do as far as I know. He doesn’t even have any holy blood himself; the other instance of this (probably) happening was Naga blood feeling the vibes from Naga blood. The last thing was a stumbling block, this is just silly. Of course, then it’s followed by this.

Leaf: “Fin! What’re you trying to tell me!?”

Fin: “Well, it means that neither your sister Altenna, nor the Gayborg, perished in the Thracian army’s surprise attack on your family.”

Leaf: “She… she’s alive!? Then what’s she doing commanding Thracian forces?”

Fin: “I would surmise that Trabant took her captive and raised her as his own child.”

Leaf: “Hmm… Trabant musn’t be as cold-hearted as everybody has made him out to be.”

Fin: “All is not as it seems. Between the two of you, only Princess Altenna inherited the God Noba’s lineage from your father. Accordingly, only she can use the Gayborg. And that explains why Trabant abducted her. It doesn’t surprise me… a man like him.”

Leaf: “So he’s basically just using her. Trabant… you’re rotten to the core! Fin, we must let her know the truth! And then we can avenge our parent’s death together!”

Fin: “You’re the only one she would possibly listen to now, Your Highness. You are her brother, after all. I’m sure she’ll open up to you. Please, do whatever is in your power to save the princess…”

Yeah. Finn picks up on Travant’s entire fifteen-year con as soon as he recognized Altenna from like a mile away (when he last saw her at age three.) on a mountaintop. Leif even jumps to the same conclusion I did, that Travant raised her out of penance or something, but Finn immediately shoots it down because he’s got this all figured out. Blood mechanics also come back into the plot as Finn points out that Leif got shitty holy blood from his dad (and shitty holy blood from his mom’s shitty holy blood) while Altenna got awesome flex *masculine grunting* blood from her dad and shitty holy blood from her mom’s shitty holy blood too. Has a Fire Emblem game ever had a successful and cool mixing of gameplay and story mechanics?

By the way, you can’t even recruit Altenna if Finn isn’t alive for this conversation. I have no idea why he’s the only person in the world who can figure this out and he does so instantly.

The turn we leave, Hannibal decides to sit on ass and wait for us to come to him. Moustachio reminds him that his son is in custody awaiting Hannibal’s attack, Hannibal still refuses to move for now.

There’s also a turn 2 conversation. And depending on how you handle Altenna, there can be a turn 3 one too. The narrative of chapter 9 is horribly paced.

Anyway, the theme of this chapter is multi-front warfare. I’m a big fan of it, overall. Off the bat, Hannibal is three-ish turns to the west, the only direction you can go, even if he isn’t applying pressure immediately, and his army isn’t too easy to deal with – you actually have to capitalize on their lack of mobility to beat them.

Altenna and a squad of Thracians come over the mountains to the south at the same time and engage you in these hills, leaving you the choice of fighting them over the hills (big defense, no mobility) and fighting them over the plains (the opposite). It isn’t really a choice, since dudes like Ced are actually invulnerable on the hills, but it’s like giving you options!

The big thing (besides holy weapon user boss, natch) dragging this chapter down is that Thracians just …kind of suck. Even our scrubbier dudes like Tristan can participate safely. Hell, I think Jeanne got a kill in one of these little messes, and that’s not looking at lads like Leicester (kills them with a crit, which he has a really high chance of getting) and Faval (deletes them.) They also have next-to no resistance, so hello Cedric massacre, or even Arthur/Tinny if you’ve built them up at all (I haven’t!)

Leif has a pretty lame conversation with her.

Leaf: “I… I’m Leaf of Lenster.”

Altenna: “Leaf? That’s Leaf as in Prince Leaf, I presume… Well, I’m Altenna… Trabant’s daughter, if you haven’t figured it out yet.”

Leaf: “Altenna, your real parents, Cuan and Ethlin, were slain by Trabant 17 years ago. You also went missing at that time along with the Holy Gayborg. The very lance you hold in your hand right now is the Gayborg of Lenster.”

Altenna: “You take me for some kind of fool!? So the person I believe to be my father is my true father’s murderer? What nonsense.”

Leaf: “Altenna, look at me! Take one good look… and you’ll know if I’m lying or not. Altenna, please…”

Altenna: “I… How could this be!? I want so badly to say you’re lying… but I can’t!”

Leaf: “Altenna… you ARE my sister!!”

Altenna: “…Wait! I must speak with my father first… I will get to the bottom of this!”

Much like Ares with Nanna she just kind of …swings around very suddenly to the truth, because it is the truth. This generation is also starting to rely a lot on convincing people to do things when you have no proof of anything, it just feels right. That’s why we’re here, that’s why Ares joined us and didn’t kill Seliph, that’s why Altenna’s joining us, probably more things but I can’t think of them right now. And, of course, she flies straight back to confront Travant.

Altenna: “Are you my true father? …or is my true father King Cuan!?”

Travant’s outrage: pretty well justified by now, I’d say. Altenna’s been a really shitty general and a really shitty daughter so far in every single scene she’s been in. On the other hand, Travant’s the villain, so she’s in the right automatically.

Trabant: “Hmph… you found out, did you… Well, this day was bound to come sooner or later. Yeah, Cuan was your father. But what the hell does that matter now? I was the one who raised you… Don’t you forget that.”

Same argument as Blume here, and Daccar slightly before him. “I raised you” as a defense – wish I could be mad about that, but that shit’s unfortunately believable. That said, though, an interesting thing about Travant is that he’s never once in the game shown to try to deceive somebody or even really act underhandedly, except for the bit in the desert which the heroes desperately try to call dishonorable but fuck them. Travant’s a really forthright person, and one’s gotta respect that. He even cops straight to murdering Altenna’s parents when he’s called on it.

Altenna: “…So you murdered my real mother and father….”

Trabant: “Heh heh… Yeah, I did. You got a problem with that?”

On the other hand, his response to being called on it is “you got a problem with that?” so I mean, I have no idea what to say about that besides putting it there for your viewing.

Really, this entire conversation is awfully handled. Altenna is portrayed as having nothing but impotent rage, despite holding the best lance on the planet, and she just runs here after Leif told her Travant did all this because she just believes him; Travant is just an absolute dick and pulls out literally the same arguments Blume threw at Tinny two chapters ago, and Arion hasn’t even appeared.

Areone: “Altenna! That’s enough!!”

Altenna: “Areone, I swear I’m gonna kill this man! Don’t you try and stop me!!”

Bleh. I don’t know if I preferred it when it was stuff I could just skim and give you highlights over or now that there’s more content because I feel like I have to talk all the way through these conversations because they’re the meat of where anything even happens in the plot. Life’s hard.

I said back in Altenna’s introduction that she’s stretched over a basically hollow core, and not in the Dark Souls way; this is pretty much the perfect moment to point to. “Don’t try any stop me!!” “I’ll stop you if you try!” “I can’t fight you…!” There’s no substance or consistency to her actions, she’s constantly reacting only to the last thing said to her. Her threats are hollow; she never accomplishes anything in the narrative. Every action Travant sends her out to do she totally fails at doing, and now the one thing she sets out to do herself she fails to do by inaction. She acts strong until the second there’s any resistance offered, then…

Then she crumbles. There’s nothing there, it’s just a face. There isn’t an Altenna in this game. “There’s two more chapters to this, Ike!” I can hear you saying, “There’s time!” I’ll be straight up with this one: next chapter she has an entirely passive conversation with Leif and a bizarre game mechanics conversation with Carpool. She only exists in the final chapter to talk to Arion – and her strategy there is basically to just offer herself up to him “finish me off if you must” etc. and hope he decides to defect to your side (he does.) Altenna is not only completely irrelevant besides one plot action, she doesn’t even have a poor character to mock like Lewyn does. She’s nothing, and that’s the most offensive thing of all to me.

Much like with Fury, I’ve now written more words about Altenna than existed in every design document and draft script for Genealogy of the Holy War. Fuck me.

Trabant: “…Is she dead? Areone, you didn’t need to go that far, you know… Well, it looks like it’s time for me to take matters into my own hands. Areone, you’re watching the castle.”

Areone: “Yes, father.”

Trabant: “Here, I’m leaving this lance with you. Thracia is in your hands now.”

Travant kind of pulls it back for me in this with his initial statement because it subtly paints why he was a dick earlier in the conversation: he has a temper, he’d already lost it with Altenna before she came back to disappoint him even further at a really critical junction for his entire country, and then Arion’s sudden violence suddenly grounds him and brings him down from the anger high. That works, it’s honestly good writing (contrast: the previous rest of this chapter) and it leads up well into the next bit.

Everyone knows Gungnir, right? Odin’s spear, and he’s a pretty famous guy.

Areone: “Isn’t this the Gunguneel?”

Transliteration, folks.

So Travant gives Arion his big spear and sets out to sacrifice himself at our altar. Can’t really blame him – from his perspective, we’re burning his kingdom to the ground, the imperial reinforcements aren’t here despite promises, there’s at least a guy in our army with a huge grudge against him (unbeknownst to him there’s like four guys), he’s been struggling with a shitty kingdom for like thirty plus years, and his son just killed his adopted daughter right in front of him. Travant’s life fucking sucks at this point.

Areone: “So you’re suggesting I call for a truce!? I will never, ever give in to them, father!”

Trabant: “Like I said, do as you see fit. I only ask that you see an end to the people’s suffering. Farewell, Areone!”

Areone: “Father…”

He hopes Arion can pull this back from the brink somehow but, hell, we know by now Arion is a totally incompetent dipshit. I guess Travant’s parenting skills weren’t very good, since he raised two kids who are basically just vessels for huge spears. Travant out.

If you committed your whole force to fighting Altenna for some reason, like if you haven’t processed that Thracians are garbage fighters, Hannibal starts to attack now instead of playing passively. Course, about half of my army have been skirmishing with Hannibal for a turn or two now, so there’s no change.

Back to the gameplay chatter for a little bit, Seliph has to break through Hannibal’s lines (way easier if you put him to sleep first) and get to the next castle to save Carpool, then double back to get Carpool to Hannibal. If you kill Hannibal first, you don’t get Carpool. If you get Carpool, you still have to send him back to Hannibal because Hannibal keeps fighting until he talks to his son. Hannibal, unfortunately, isn’t a great unit, so Seliph only doesn’t kill him in one round because of a lucky Big Shield proc.

Hannibal does go home for reinforcements an unlimited (?) number of times, though, so if you can burn down most of his army in one enemy + player phase you can keep him shuttling back and forth. When he’s going for reinforcements, he won’t attack anyone, which means you can totally set up a silly tower defense gauntlet of dudes that he has to run around to get home and slow him down.

The boss of this castle is a total punk and if Seliph is promoted at all by now he’ll just obliterate the guy. If he isn’t, he’s slow enough that you can just send Ares with him to kill the boss guy. Really doesn’t matter, Hannibal’s the hard part because he’s suicidal.

Border guards are in effect down south on this map, but you can still fly Fee over the mountains right up until an arbitrary point where the tiles turn yellow and she can’t go, just like when you couldn’t fly into Silesia in chapter 4, except this time your target is Thracia so you’d figure she’s not too fussed about violating their airspace. Genealogy!

Travant attacks down the same lane Altenna did and he’s …not awesome.

His battle line rules, though. The turn after you kill him you’re rewarded with more talking! Are you tired of talking yet? I am.

Areone: “Forgive me, Altenna. I had to knock you out with that swing. If I hadn’t, father would have suspected something.”

Altenna: “I see… Areone. So where is fath… King Trabant?”

Come on, what did you expect? Travant’s dead, Arion’s heard, and Arion orders Altenna to go to Leif and stay with him. I’d transcribe this one but unlike the previous ones the meat of this one is just dull.

Areone: “Next time we meet shall be on the battlefield. But be ready… I won’t go easy on you!”

This is Arion, guys and girls. He’s going into the battle assuming it’s going to come down to him versus the rebel army which has already trashed everything. He’s going into the battle assuming he’s going to lose. This is also one time where the lack of tone in text can be a killer – I already read Travant’s “Like I said, do as you see fit” as a prod for Arion to do what he, Travant, couldn’t do, not a clear call for action for Arion to never give up and never surrender, and it’s those dying words that galvanize Arion to fight a war he knows he’s losing against us for basically no reason.

Sel sat like two squares from this guy for a turn because I forgot to move him. Dude, you had plenty of time.

Up on the north flank, I’m learning that Lana in a forest actually does a really good job taking out Hannibal’s dudes, as long as she stays away from Hannib-

Motherfucker. Reload start of turn.

Fuck you, Hannibal. Fuck you.

Anyway. Carpool just tells Seliph what we already saw happen, then recruits himself. Moving on. Man it feels nice to say that about a conversation this chapter.

Well, there’s one thing, and it’s that I love Seliph’s response to this. And most of everything besides Lewyn.

SO THAT’S WHERE I PUT IT fuck I’ve been looking for this thing on every unit, every NPC, and every chapter of the item shop for the whole second generation so far.

After that conversation with Arion, Altenna leaves Thracia Prime and homes in on Seliph – but she’ll never talk to him. She just follows him forever until he talks to her. It’s cute?

We might as well indulge her. I mean, I love writing about Altenna’s conversations.

Celice: “I still don’t understand what motivated King Trabant in the first place. Why would he murder your parents and bring you back here? You were just a kid.”

Altenna: “He told Areone once that all he was after was control of the Gayborg. And that’s why he needed me…”

Wait, what? This doesn’t make any fucking sense in Altenna’s narrative – every way she’s acted is based on the fact that she doesn’t know that her lance is the Gae Bolg. When did she hear Travant say this? It must have been before her appearances here, which leads to all sorts of questions.

Celice: “So he just used you for that?”

Altenna: “I… I’m not sure myself. I know he did some terrible things, but he was a father to me…”

Celice: “Hmm… Well, it’s all beyond me, that’s for sure.”

Seliph is awesome. Altenna also plays into my headcanon that Travant was a decent dad to her, even if nothing else in the entire game script points to that being true besides this single line.

Seliph is awesome. I’m just going to keep saying it. Dude has no sense of gravitas. Welcome to the army, Gae Bolg.

This guy turns green and Hannibal’s castle seizes itself when you kill Hannibal, so there’s really no reason to kill him except for sweet experience, which means we kill him.

Pictured: a tower defense gauntlet for Hannibal to try to run.

Carpool recruits Hannibal. At this point you can kill Hannibal too if you’re Satan. The conversation is nothing at all: Carpool wants to join us; Hannibal supports his decision. Done.

Agreed, Man Half Shadowed.

Surprise! He’s back! This isn’t even his last appearance. Genealogy has gotten mileage out of this portrait in like five or six chapters so far. His squad is pretty threatening, it’s all promoted mounted units with big physical weapons, except the boss has Tornado, which is the ultimate wind magic.

Also, agreed with the sentiment.

Unfortunately they’re, like, all 1-range locked, so we wait slightly outside of their range and slaughter 2/3 of them on the enemy phase, then…

…gank the boss. Long live Grannvale. See, Hannibal, Grannvale sent the strongest pack of units besides The Man Arion Himself to fight us, how was allying with the empire absurd? Fuck you, Hannibal.

The bishop down south is the campingest bitch you’ve ever spent eight lives in Call of Duty rooting out; his army is nothing but ballistae. He has the dark siege tome too.

Seliph’s basically invincible on the mountains, though, so just hit and run a ballista per turn while you wait for everyone to finish mopping Musar up and come down.

Neh. Let’s talk optionals, since we’re almost done with the chapter. Notice how every turn since turn 3 has taken up less than half the space of turns 0-3, and we’re about done with the chapter? Narrative flow. Let’s see what this chapter has to give us.

Patty: “So you’re Corple, huh… Here I was all excited to meet the son of General Hanibal, but you’re nothing but a kid…”

Corple: “Yeah, but what about you? You’re just a kid, too, aren’t you?”

Patty: “Excuse me! You tellin’ me I look like a child!?”

Corple: “Yeah, I am.”

Patty: “You… you’ve got a lotta nerve!”

Right, okay then. I didn’t leave a single word out of that conversation.

Meanwhile, there’s some goofy ones – Hannibal gives a staff to Sharlow while they tell each other how much they love each other, Finn apologizes to Altenna like it was his fault or something, etc. but I think there’s four conversations to actually talk about. First up, this one only comes up for Faval and Patches – the Daisy/Assholio one is the same theme but with all the personality and specifics filed off.

Faval: “Patty! Are you stealing again!?”

Patty: “Yeah, just a little.”

Faval: “Well, knock it off! I don’t care if it is coming from the enemy.”

Patty: “You think I like doin’ this!? Do you have any idea just how low our army’s food supply is? That takes money!”

Faval: “Yeah, well, I caught a guy making fun of you. He said ‘It’s no wonder you became a thief with a pirate for a mum’. Of course, I floored the guy for saying that.”

Patty: “Let ’em say whatever they want, Faval. It doesn’t bother me. ‘Cause now we know our mother was a warrior… and of Crusader Ulir descent to boot! I was so happy I started cryin’ when Levin told me that…”

Faval: “Yeah, me too. With all we’ve gone through… growing up as orphans and all… I never would’ve dreamed our mother was of noble rank. Do you remember her at all?”

Patty: “Nope, not one bit. How about you?”

Faval: “Just a little… just that she was beautiful and very kind.”

Patty: “…So she’s dead, then?”

Faval: “I don’t know… But you and I are going to look for her when we’re all done here. …And then we can finally find out who our father is.”

lol.

Anyway, this is a really good conversation except for the “do you remember her at all?” part. Remember, these two grew up together. They’re probably had this exact bit of conversation, lamenting how they don’t remember Briggid, a hundred times – this is just the first time they’ve had it on camera, so they act like they’ve never talked about it before. They’re teenagers who have never talked about their missing mom. This is probably the silliest Genealogy’s grasp on the time dimension of relationships gets.

Next up, there’s a conversation Seliph can only have with Julia after we take this castle (take one guess: did I remember to?) that gets him some magic resistance. At the end of it, we get this:

Yuria: “Sir, would you close your eyes for a moment?”

Celice: “Hm? What for?”

Yuria: “I’m going to increase your resistance with the Magic Shield spell.”

Celice: “Hold on! Doesn’t using that spell put you at some risk?”

Yuria: “I’ll be fine… I have so little I can offer you, sir. Please allow me just this once.”

Celice: “Yuria…”

Yuria: “…May the grace of the gods be with this person.”

I’m only bringing this up because Carpool casts the same spell next chapter. This shit only exists in these two conversations – there isn’t even a Barrier staff to pick up in the game. What the hell, guys? Use it for all these super magic bosses we’ve been and will be fighting! Fuck you!

Third up is Seliph/Hannibal, and it’s a bit of a one.

Celice: “General Hannibal, please forgive our military aggression on your homeland.”

Hannibal: “Sir Celice… I heard you rescued my boy. If anyone is to apologise, it is I.”

Celice: “General, for you, a warrior revered as ‘The Shield of Thracia’, to be forced into battle the way you were… I just can’t believe how low that King Trabant will go!”

Hannibal: “His deceitful ways are contemptible, indeed. He has basically lost everyone’s trust. How he ever hoped to sustain the will of the people is beyond me…”

Celice: “General, please guide us. We are still young and there’s much you can teach us.”

Hannibal: “Well, if an old timer like myself will do, then you have my loyal devotion, Sir Celice.”

Seliph is, of course, fellating this total dipshit who’s shown zero acumen of any sort because he’s famous in universe, but the thing that gets me about it is that Travant is dead and we still have to treat him like everything he did was unambiguously villainous. How dare he expect his most esteemed general to go into battle against an attacking force! The nerve. “He has basically lost everyone’s trust” and yet everybody in Thracia – even the citizens, according to the map text and nothing else – is arming to try to fend Seliph off under Travant’s leadership. “How he ever hoped to sustain the will of the people” well he was about to get them some actual fucking farmland and wasn’t expecting the invincible protagonist army to kick his front door down and burn his house down with it. Hannibal treats Seliph’s invasion, every time it comes up, like it was inevitable and not at all a completely freak occurrence.

Fuck you, Hannibal. My only solace is that you will never speak or leave the castle again.

Last up, a neat pair of conversations that show some divergence in sub/kid characterization! Bear in mind, Leen/Carpool are siblings, they just don’t know it. Also bear in mind that this is the last time Laylea will ever speak, and the last time Leen will ever speak if she doesn’t marry Seliph, in which case she’d get one more conversation.

[spoiler=leen] Leen: “Are you Corple?”

Corple: “Ah… yes, that’s right.”

Leen: “So you’re an orphan, too, huh… Do you remember any of your childhood?”

Corple: “No, none of it. I guess I was just a baby when my father found me in Darna.”

Leen: “You were also in Darna!?”

Corple: “You know Darna?”

Leen: “Yeah, I grew up at the convent in Darna. I must’ve been about two when a young lady, a dancer I think, left me at the convent. And that sort of explains why I became a dancer. I thought I might be able to find my mother someday if I did. I’m not all that good yet, but I’m completely self-taught.”

Corple: “Wow, Leen, that’s great. I guess I’ve had it wrong about you.”

Leen: “Corple, you don’t like dancers, do you…”

Corple: “Well, I didn’t before, but I like you, Leen.”

Leen: “Heehee… Thanks, Corple.”

Pretty obvious hinting here that Sylvia just abandoned her kids in Darna and moved on. Nice. Their total non-relationship is an awesome thing that could be explored and completely isn’t. Since their mom wasn’t Sylvia, what do Laylea and Sharlow get?

[spoiler=laylea] Laylea: “Hey, you’re Sharlow, aren’t you?”

Sharlow: “Huh… Have we met?”

Laylea: “I’m Laylea. You’ve never seen a dancer before, have you?”

Sharlow: “No… you’re my first.”

Laylea: “Haha! Well, if you ever have some free time, come on over and I’ll dance for you.”

Sharlow: “Oh… okay.”

So one, Laylea totally solicits him, which is pretty great, but the thing besides Laylea hitting on Sharlow is that, besides game mechanics not letting them get married, there’s no implication whatsoever that these two are related. I mean, they probably are, because Genealogy is not subtly written at any point, but I’m willing to grasp at any ambiguity I can.

The other thing about this conversation is that this little garbage six-line thing is the only time Laylea talks to anybody in the entire game except for her scenes in chapter 7, of which all but one are mandatory. Laylea is completely ignored.

Levin: “I guess the pride of being a Dragon Knight leaves no allowances for conceding in battle. I truly believed Areone of Thracia would have been a more reasonable man… Celice, you know we can’t turn around now. We MUST engage this final battle.”

Celice: “Grr… Why!? Why must Areone be so stubborn about this?”

Celice: “Areone! Don’t you understand what you’re causing Altenna to go through?”

Let’s get back to business and wrap this up now that we’re over 7,000 words.

Mate, you’re a bit late on that one.

Arion’s throwing everything he’s got at us now, we’re about to smash the remaining military of Thracia. We’re tackling countries now.

But then the motherfucker’s Three-Headed Dragon Assault deploys four battlegroups. Arion, you can’t even fucking count right. This onslaught consistently follows the multi-front warfare theme of this whole chapter – if the dark bishop had attacked with the northern reinforcements, then every single engagement of this chapter would have been multi-front.

One goes northleft to – um, I didn’t get a screenshot before… well, this was one enemy phase against Fee. Rest in peace. They were going for Hannibal’s castle. I left Fee to engage them over the mountains and Carpool back to heal her with Libro, the ranged healing staff in this game.

One goes north to attack your home castle; I left the scrub brigade here to gang up on them, putting Johalva on the castle (he did a really good job!!) after they totally ignored Cedric because they have 0% hit on him on these hills. Remember, I took a dad who isn’t all that good for Ced’s stats. If anyone tells you the second generation relies on your pairings, they’re dead lying. Ced is a good unit no matter who his dad is.

One goes left to attack the castle we got Carpool from. I left Slate on top of it to play shock trooper until Fee could come relieve him. It worked perfectly, because I am a masterful tactician.

The fourth head of the three-headed dragon stays to defend Thracia. It’s led by Arion. Arion is a ho. Why?

Those not playing along, Nihil doesn’t just nullify skills. It also nullifies effective weaponry and critical hits. It’s completely infeasible to engage Arion with anything but a holy weapon user on equal terms. He’s a total beast in melee.

He’s still a dragon knight. Lana fucking clowns him. Imagine if you had Cedric with Forseti here – it would be no contest. If you fight Arion on his terms, it’s a really high power and awful slog (he actually one-shots Ares at anything less than full health); if you don’t fight Arion on his terms (i.e. you have one mage, bows don’t do squat to him), he’s a complete pushover.

Remember when this happened to Ishtar last chapter? Remember how Seliph asked Tinny about it?

Celice: “It’s hard to believe we have the same mother…”

Levin: “Yes… Empress Diadora is where he inherited his shaman abilities from. Return and Recover are just a mere thought away for him. But there’s more to it than that. Prince Yurius’ real power comes from…”

And the chapter ends right there. It’s precisely as anticlimactic as this update makes it feel.

Right, bye.

[Specta]

u fookin chicken mate i dare u to fite them

[Moblin Major General]

You seem to have forgotten the Finn was the retainer of Quan. He had no reason to believe Travant was raising Altena for a good reason. Also, I think Travant has much more justification to be the tired villain than Arvis, because Arvis NEVER should've trusted Manfroy, where all Travant did was murder a xenophobe and his dumb broad of a wife who were stupid enough to expedition into the ass end of nowhere, not to mention bring along there 3 year old daughter with the Holy Lance to match. As for Corpul, he can have Major Blaggi Blood, but only if you really could handle using Leen over Laylea.

[Integrity]

what the fuck are you even posting, dude

You seem to have forgotten the Finn was the retainer of Quan.

at no point did i suggest otherwise; however, finn was quan's retainer for like three years before quan ran off into the desert and died. it's not like they had a lifelong friendship, and it still doesn't explain how nobody but finn recognized the aura of nova on altenna. it's a stupid plot point, period.

He had no reason to believe Travant was raising Altena for a good reason.

of course he didn't, the stupid thing was that he recognized altenna from one glance when she's floating over a mountain top a mile away and from that single glance figured out that travant was raising altenna only to use gae bolg. nobody, for a single second, entertains the notion that travant raised altenna for any reason other than the one he actually raised her for. what are you even calling me out on here?

Also, I think Travant has much more justification to be the tired villain than Arvis, because Arvis NEVER should've trusted Manfroy,

arvis might not have had much reason to trust him initially, sure, but arvis had plenty of reason to trust manfroy once things got rolling since manfroy led him to form a fucking empire out of squabbling minor kingdoms. travant has gotten literally nothing out of this arrangement; arvis has gotten to rise from king of a petty kingdom to emperor of the entire continent minus the part travant's king of. what the hell's not to trust? have you actually been reading the let's play?

As for Corpul, he can have Major Blaggi Blood, but only if you really could handle using Leen over Laylea.

what relevance does this even have? who gives a shit? i feel like you're making these effort posts to call me on imaginary points to try to prove a point, but half the shit you post is dead wrong and i have no idea what point you're trying to make, dude.

Edited July 15, 2016 by Integrity

[Moblin Major General]

I forgot, too. No matter, this chapter is still better than Gen 1.

[Parrhesia]

I forgot, too. No matter, this chapter is still better than Gen 1.

that's a very low bar to set

[Miacis]

I like that Leif is the only character to entertain the notion that Travant might have kept Altenna not out of powerlust, but because he didn't want to kill a child / leave her in a fucking desert. You know, like most human beings with a conscience. Then Finn immediately slams that down because mentor figures in this game exist to remind us that villains are evil and must die.

Heck, nobody even seems glad of Altenna's miraculous(?) survival. Leif isn't excited to find a long-lost sibling after having lost most everyone else dear to him, and there's not even any mention of the positive implications it has for Leonster's future (holy blood, etc). No, instead they spend more lines of hating Travant.

Edited July 16, 2016 by Miacis

[Integrity]

and there's not even any mention of the positive implications it has for Leonster's future (holy blood, etc).

you know this is something i've probably mentioned in passing but thought it wasn't really an issue but you're right - haven't leif/finn/leinster as a whole spent the last seventeen years thinking the nova major bloodline is extinct?

leif's only got minor blood, and you need to do a minor + minor blood kid (so leif needs to have a cousin somewhere) to have major blood come back, that's the whole point of manfroy's plot.

EDIT: and what happens when your major blood kid dies young? the blood story mechanic is stupid.

Edited July 16, 2016 by Integrity

[Specta]

haven't leif/finn/leinster as a whole spent the last seventeen years thinking the nova major bloodline is extinct?

say the name Edited July 16, 2016 by Specta

[Integrity]

Faval: “I don’t know… But you and I are going to look for her when we’re all done here. …And then we can finally find out who our father is.”

i just realized that finn or lewyn can be their dad, men who are here right now, and i don't think this conversation changes

[The Draco Knight]

Heck, nobody even seems glad of Altenna's miraculous(?) survival. Leif isn't excited to find a long-lost sibling after having lost most everyone else dear to him, and there's not even any mention of the positive implications it has for Leonster's future (holy blood, etc). No, instead they spend more lines of hating Travant.

Well, Fin, in his dialogue with Altenna, cries and It's not improbable to say that It's because he is indeed glad that Altenna is alive, but It's just an assumption, sinfe he couldbe crying for other reasons, such as not having tried to search her.

Leif, in my opinion, is kinda of justified to not have such a feeling towards Altenna since he has literally no memories about her.

Anyway, Areone probably assumed that his father didn't want him to surrender by the way Travant acted towards the Liberation Army until he decided to "suicide". Or maybe the devs just wanted to make the player fight a wielder of the gungnir.

Edited July 16, 2016 by The Wyvern Rider

[Ansem]

lmao you kicked his ass with lana amazing

also every pt i go through i kill travant with leaf because im still 6 inside

[Katie]

I just got caught up on this, and I was wondering who Faval's dad was, and now that I see that his dad was Lex I understand why his accuracy is so bad. Lex isn't exactly the best father for Faval(or Patty, for that matter). Granted, Faval doesn't need a good dad because Yewfelle automatically makes him good. And honestly, the main reason pairings matter less than people think is because even if you end up with all subs the game still hands you a few god units like Shanan and Ares so you aren't completely screwed.

[Integrity]

Chapter 10. We’re almost there- we’ll actually end this post in Chalphy, right back where we started, before we invade the rest of Grannvale next chapter. I find these two chapters to be pretty polarizing, in the most honest way – they’re two of my favorite chapters in Fire Emblem for the most part, but the things they do badly are awful. This chapter’s a bit milder than the next, as I recall.

The – ehh, this map text is indicative of what we’re getting for the rest of the game.

had built up a sizable fortune through trade.

However, all that remained was a region dying out under the empire and Loputo Sect’s rule.

Queen Hilda of Chronos drove numerous citizens to a hideously cruel death. While Bishop Morigan carried out merciless child hunts at Rados under orders from Archbishop Manfroy.

Due reminder here to watch your grammar, kids. Just look at this translation. Besides the first draft looking work, Miletos is (as far as I’m aware) supposed to be a nation that once built its wealth through trade, then was subjugated by the Loptyr Empire an indeterminate about of time ago. As of chapter 8, Ced tells us that some kids were sent to “the shrine in Miletos” but in chapter 9, Seliph tells Julia they’re stopping in “the free city of Miletos.” Heaven knows. Anyway, our evil empire is murdering children because they’re evil. I’m …not sure it’s ever explained why they’re hunting for children. There’s a blurb in the opening narration that at some point a few hundred years ago a bunch of children were sacrificed “for the glory of Loptyr” or something close to that, but that was a one-time event and beyond that I have no idea. Anybody know?

Fortune, hope, freedom, and destiny had all been stripped from the hands of the people.

The Dark Sect’s sacrificial rituals, claiming one life after another, left Celice with no other choice but to intervene.

An intense battle ensued, and the Imperial Guard was driven away, and Peruluke was free once again.

The liberation army received a hero’s welcome from the townspeople.

Their very presence began to revive the once lost hope of Miletos.

So here’s something new – we do some explicit fighting offscreen. This is the only time in Genealogy (well, bar the generational transition, natch) where we start a chapter in a place we didn’t go the previous chapter or, in one case, were led to at the end of the previous chapter (the 3-4 transition.) I dunno if it matters, but I thought it was fun.

Anyway, Loptyr cultists are murdering people indiscriminately (blood for the blood god!) as sacrifices for Loptyr’s glory, and the child hunts (which are really elaborate) are ongoing. Genealogy’s pulled out all the stops; there is nothing redeeming left about the evil empire. So much for a lack of absolute good and evil, eh Lewyn? Fuck you.

Bet you didn’t expect the chapter 2 bishop guy to come back! Out of curiosity, I did a quick tallying just from twelve tabs of FEWoD to see how much the boss portraits get reused in this game. Note that this only counts chapter bosses, not random plotmen.

Two times: The bosses of the prologue (DiMaggio and Gerrard) come back as the pirate boyz in chapter 3.

Kinbois (Jamke’s brother) is Donovan (the war criminal).

Elliot (invades Raquesis, wants to invade her another way too namsain) comes back as Maios (Lewyn’s uncle).

Voltz (Beowulf’s boss) comes back as a nobody in the final chapter.

Shagall comes back for one line as Muhammed.

Slaydar (bow knight in chapter 5) was a nobody boss in chapter 6.

Andre (invaded Silesia in chapter 4) also plays Scorpio (his own son) in the final chapter.

Three times: Boldo (the first General we fought in chapter 2) comes back as Daccar (Lewyn’s other uncle) and then as Disler (the guy who held Carpool captive.)

Clement (the chokepoint boss in chapter 2, in my notes as ‘fat bishop’) comes back as Bramsel (the guy who probably molests Leen) and then as a guy in this chapter we’re doing right now.

Jacoban (mercenary from chapter 3, ‘mighty neckbeard’) reprises his mercenary role in chapter 7 as Jabarro (Ares’ ‘dad’) and then is a nobody boss in the final chapter.

Cuvuli (the leader of the mage squad in chapter 4, ‘angry man in robes’) plays the same character in chapter 7 and in the final chapter.

Four times: Moustachio (Hannibal’s assistant we killed in cold blood) was previously the leader of the defensive line in chapter 2 and the final boss of chapter 7, and will go on to be disposable in the final chapter.

Five times: Pamela, the chick who killed Mahnya, is a longer-haired edit of Deetva, the other pegasus knight on that map. The mage boss in chapter 5 is a recolor of her, the mage sisters from chapter 7 and 8 are recolors of her, and we will fight a new trio of mage sisters in the final chapter who are also recolors of her.

Man In Robes, Face Half Shadowed hasn’t actually been a boss since chapter 1, surprisingly, where he was his Green Robe, Left Shadow configuration. He came in the same configuration in chapter 9, and in this chapter we will fight him in his powered up Purple Robe, Left Shadow configuration. In the final chapter we will be graced with his twin Purple Robe, Right Shadow configuration and then be blessed to fight the ultimate Blue Robe, Right Shadow form. Julius isn’t the final boss, spoilers.

Side note: Man In Robes, Face Half Shadowed has been used a number of times as randoms, such as the Yiedman from chapter 7 who was looking for the siege tome and some guy in this chapter, so his actual use count in particular is way higher than this suggests.

Grand prize: You all know the medal is going to That Guy. His list of accolades numbers:

Shagall’s flunky who we crushed in chapter 2.

Travant’s flunky who he sells to Shagall, who we crushed in chapter 3.

Travant’s flunky who he leaves behind after killing Quan, who we crushed in chapter 5.

Dannan’s flunky who failed to capture us before we crushed him in chapter 6.

Travant’s flunky who seizes control from Altenna, who we crushed in chapter 8.

Arvis’ flunky who he sends to save Travant, who we crushed in chapter 9.

But that’s not all – That Guy’s reign of terror isn’t over! Clocking in at seven appearances:

This very chapter. To put it another way: we kill this guy in more chapters than we can use any single unit in. He’s in more than half the game.

Pour yourself a cold one, That Guy.

Yurius: “Hmph… The sacrifices to the Dark Lord must be quite a scare for the people.”

Ishtar: “They all go to pieces when their child is to be sacrificed. Especially the mothers…”

Much as I’d rather opine about good and cool characters like That Guy, we have a plot to get to. The chapter starts on a good foot – the opening narration involves all five of the worst characters in the game.

Apparently part of the benefit of the child hunts is that taking away everyone’s children makes them super subservient to the empire. Lucky. Ishtar’s leading the child hunts right now and always will – there’s a throwaway line later in the game that she smuggled a group of children away unbeknownst to Julius she shepherds every single one of them to a monastery and in truth she’s a very caring individual! It’s a really dumb throw-in line that just comes out of nowhere and leads to all sorts of questions; haven’t the child hunts been going on for years? Why are Ishtar (lowkey) and Arvis (straight-up) confronting Julius about the hunts if they’re sabotaging them? How hasn’t Julius noticed?

These questions will never be answered.

Yurius: “Have them sent to the capital. I’ll groom them myself. After breaking all sibling and friendship ties, I’ll match them up in a duel to the death. Those who survive shall go on to serve Loputousu as faithful new inhabitants of the empire.”

Ishtar: “But what about Emperor Alvis? He has made it clear that he is strictly opposed to any child hunts.”

This is the closest thing to an explanation I know of for the child hunts: Julius stages sick thunderdome deathmatches and then the winners get to be his loyal slaves. The plan’s cool and awesome, don’t get me wrong, but there are probably way better ways to get loyal slaves than seizing kids randomly and going through all this trouble.

The flow of chapter 10 is that there’s, like, exactly three dialogue points that matter: this one (which is really long), the middle of the map (shorter), and the last bit with Arvis (worth the pain.) Here we’re introduced to Hilda, Ishtar’s mom. She’s, uh, Genealogy in a nutshell.

Hilda: “I see. I think he likes you, dear. You think he’ll ever make you his princess?”

Ishtar: “I don’t know.”

Hilda: “Ishtar, you listen up! We Freeges are of noble rank within Grandbell. And I’m originally from Velthomer, just as the Imperial family is. Who could possibly make a more worthy partner for His Highness than yourself!?”

Ishtar: “Yes, mother.”

Hilda: “Now, on to these rebels… the ones responsible for killing my husband and my dear Ishtor. They stole Alster from us, as well. Celice and his family shall forever remain the Freege’s bitter enemy! Ishtar, I’ll stay here to confront the rebel army when they arrive. You go on back to Miletos and get the children ready to send to the capital.”

Ishtar: “Yes, mother.”

Man In Robes, Face Half Shadowed (Green/Right): “Your Highness, the mages are finally in position. However, a few children did slip past us in the disorder. How shall we handle it?”

She’s ambitious. Bizarrely, she refers to herself as “we Freeges” even though she married into the family and comes down from Fala, but these lines here are all Hilda ever gets except for a throwaway engagement line in the final chapter. No mercy, have the literal children slaughtered to a man. It’s a theme on Jugdral, and not one it handles with any grace whatsoever.

Hilda does have a few extra lines if and only if she’s engaged by Tinny in this chapter though!

Hilda: Hohoho, if it isn’t Teeny. You’re that woman’s daughter, right? You’re just as ungrateful as she was.

Teeny: Hilda… because of you, my mother…!

Hilda: Ah, she was an eyesore. I made her life a living hell! Hahaha, I had so much fun back then…

Teeny: ! I’ll never forgive you…

Hilda: Well, don’t we sound all grown up!? What can a little girl like you do to me? I’ll send you to hell, just as I did her!

What a deep and nuanced character.

The kids, probably rightfully enough, don’t have any real sense of the shit they’re in. They’re worth a hundred XP each, though, and there’s a solid eleven of them on the map. Get leveled!

This conversation is held entirely between recurring boss portraits. That Guy is tired of child hunting, and Fat Bishop shows up to tell him his new job is hunting children. People in Jugdral are fucked up, I tell you what. Hey, speaking of fucked up,

Manfroy: “Heh heh… You’ve no memory of me, do you… It’s just as well. Now come!”

Yuria: “No way. Let… let go of me!”

Manfroy: “No use in resisting, my dear. Now come along quietly.”

Yuria: “No… stop it… Prince Celice, help!!”

We made it. We made it to the worst scene in the game. Remember Manfroy’s stupid bullshit plot powers of teleporting all over the place, plus having planned everything so far? Remember how he waited patiently for Deirdre to leave the chapter 3 castle before he snatched her out from right next to Noish the dumb fucker out in the open all alone? He teleports into our castle, abducts Julia from inside the castle, and teleports out, leaving no trace. I don’t know what else to say about this scene, so instead I'll write a huge essay about Manfroy.

One of the worst sins you can commit when writing a believable narrative is to give your heroes or villains powers that could, conceivably, just end whatever situation they’re in with a complete no contest. That’s not to say underdog scenarios are bad, just that there has to be a reason that the scenario is underdoggin’ instead of, say, over. Sometimes it’s comical: there’s some Touhou bosses who have literal world-obliterating power (to say nothing of what they could do to you) but they don’t do that because then they’d be bored, jeez, watching things happen is way more fun. Sometimes it’s serious: I know you’ve read/watched a work where the heroic rebellion only isn’t losing its war because the evil empire just can’t pin them down and take them out and guerrilla warfare ensues. Maybe there’s a weak justification, like why you can’t just end a lot of real-time strategy missions by airdropping your hugest tank in; you report to somebody way above you and they don’t think your skirmish is strategically valuable enough to merit that kind of firepower.

On the other hand, since I’m sure a bunch of you have read Harry Potter, the infamous example from those is the Time-Turners, which could be used to basically circumvent every bit of major plot drama that came after Prisoner of Azkaban. Superhero shows can fall into this trap really badly: a lot of the drama in The Flash relies on people getting away from The Flash, not infrequently on foot. Let that sink in. Jessica Jones, on the other hand, has incredible super strength, but none of her fights with ordinary mortals (she even loses some) end with the Ordinary Guy just getting cold-cocked three meters into the air and landing unconscious or maybe dead. Terry Goodkind (an awful writer, don’t ask teenage ike about books) has a bad habit of writing things into his books that would either pose huge problems for or totally solve future drama and just forgetting they exist after a book or so.

Video game mechanics tend toward this becoming both really common and really silly, which is part of why we have gameplay-story disconnects. Oblivion is one of the classic worst offenders: pretty much the entire game world levels alongside you, and while some creatures (demons, etc.) just start pulling out more powerful versions of themselves to fight you, bandits just keep getting better gear (and leveling up) until a guy demanding 30 septims or your life is wearing full spiky demon plated endgame armor. Guards around towns in older MMORPGs are another silly one; the guy guarding the zone gate from a level 20 area to a level 25 area is level 60 and can oneshot literally anything in the zone, but the people still have all these problems to bring to you. We had some jokes in Dark Age of Camelot about fifteen years ago because the gates between the open realm vs. realm areas and the safe zones were staffed by these insane archers who two- or three-shot any top-geared player – why aren’t these dudes out taking keeps with us? Fire Emblem falls prey to this pretty easily, too: we absolutely could have taken Blume, Langobart, and both of their squads when they came to arrest us in chapter 3. Hell, Sigurd with the Tyrfing (/Lewyn with Forseti) would have chuckled at all those cute meteors that were being dropped on him after chapter 5 and then proceeded to slaughter every single mage present. For the other end of the spectrum, the recurring miniboss Turks in Final Fantasy 7 start out a decent warmup fight and never really get better as you level up, even though they keep fighting you, to the point where your later ‘boss’ fights against them just give you the option to spare them and walk away instead of bothering. And they let you.

So here’s the question to ask: why are we still alive? Manfroy has the power to abduct our plot lady straight out of our strongest point. Julius is practically untouchable by us and can teleport himself wherever he wills, without any limits as far as I’m aware. It’s not like the villains don’t know where we are, or haven’t known for months now where we’ve been. This isn’t even a silly mechanics disconnect, either – obviously Hilda could have ended our entire rebellion if she had happened to be visiting her son and husband in chapter 7 game mechanics-wise, but she’s only scaled up to that because she’s a chapter 10 boss, not because she’s significantly stronger than Blume in-story. Julius is infused with the power of the dankest god, and carrying around his holy book, the second-strongest magic in the known world, while the first (and only counter to him) is MIA. It would have taken him literally (I mean literally, not figuratively literally) five minutes out of his day to find us – wait, he’s known where we are this whole time – and teleport to us, annihilate Seliph/the entire army, and be done with it. One could say he doesn’t think we’re a threat, or he doesn’t think we’re important because only the resurrection is important, but that would be a really lazy justification considering he continues to sit on ass while we kick his front door down and put his entire family under our knife, up to and including him. There’s literally no reason this game is still going on after partway through chapter 7.

There’s more to say about Manfroy, which we’ll save for his next appearance, but Lewyn’s here now so I have to shift my focus.

Yes, Lewyn, what could they possibly want with the enigmatic girl who you’re about to figure out is the last bastion of major Naga blood in the world.

I’ll go ahead and spoil it to you: Lewyn pretty much arbitrarily figures out everything about Julia between chapters here while she’s not with us. He doesn’t know anything about her yet except that she’s hanging with us. Seriously, Lewyn knew Deirdre for like two years, why can Finn recognize the aura of Nova on Altenna at a glance but Lewyn can’t recognize the aura of Naga on Julia after running her around for a bunch of time? Mechanics make this silly, too – Julia’s tomes can’t be used by anybody in the whole game except people with Naga blood, but I doubt this is relevant to the story. Except it is sort of funny in hindsight that Seliph grabbed some super rare tome (Aura or Resire) that could only be used by Deirdre and Julia out of every single allied, enemy, non-player, and playable character in the entire game world introduced so far. Fun fact: did you know Ced has a B in Light, but there are no B-rank Light tomes in the game?

Some spell animations are really silly in the arena. I mean really.

This is my last arena screenshot to show off just how fucked some arena matchups can get. Johalva rough-and-rudely annihilated the first two fights, and then the game just throws a fucking swordmaster with a Hero Sword in the third fight. There doesn’t exist a Johalva that can beat this fight, as far as I’m aware.

Whoo, as the plot ramps up it feels like I’m showing off the chapter after more and more words every time. Thank Christ this game’s almost over, I think I’d write myself to death before actually starting a hypothetical thirteenth chapter.

The first enemy group is within charging range of your castle. It’s worthwhile to just swarm them; your horse lads can engage with their default movement and Leen can boost slower people (/a Seliph who walked back after his kill) for another wave of death.

Your second turn then involves sweeping over the rest of the enemies and walking over to Hilda unmolested. Good job.

That Guy starts moving immediately, but he moves pretty slowly and the kids are on your side of Hilda. There’s no reason they should ever come close to the kids. It’s not even a race – your foot mans can make it there handily in time, and if you’re a little behind then Hilda will just sit on her castle and let you use it as a chokepoint to filter the squad through and kill them.

Of course, one of the two Sleep staffers will sleep the guy you just sold your fucking Restore staff to because you forgot his resistance is ass. Every time.

For scale reference, this is Fee’s movement range towards Hilda the turn we killed the entire squad south of the start. There are no enemies except for some token pirates between us and her. This map is really weirdly sized.

Those pirates, bizarrely, don’t even get to the village until you’re past it. And they’re not strong pirates – Tristan could take them one-on-one, and you know how many screenshots Tristan’s been in. You probably forgot he existed.

Hilda, in keeping for every story boss left, does fucking loads of damage. She’s pretty tame compared to the others, though, so I don’t even bother to silence and just go for the kill with my fuckboys.

More scale reference: this is That Guy’s squad as it approaches Hilda. We’ll be through her and have time to set up a line before they can attack us, handily. Behind them is approximately three turns of Seliph running full-tilt through absolutely fucking nothing to get to another castle which is defended by Four Dudes. They’re entirely inconsequential except for having enough damage at a large enough range to force you to use only your best dudes to wall out the initial charge. I have no more screenshots of them. Hilda dies.

Lewyn explains that we have to walk to the bottom-right corner to open the gate that’s right here. Alright.

The entire gang parks here and just waits while Seliph and Ares run southleft for three turns to fight….

…the saddest, most garbage boss left in the game. Come on. Leicester could punk this dude.

Everyone’s dead, moving on-

By this point, honestly, even Lewyn has stopped pretending there’s any ambiguity to the Loptyr Empire. Not that Genealogy had any significant subtlety to begin with, but right now the evil empire is just Unabashedly Evil and does Only Evil Things and good Literally Cannot Exist within it. It’s as cheesy as you can get. Their only national pastimes are murdering people for the glory of an evil god and putting children into sick thunderdome deathmatches.

This opens the gate at the end of our turn and gives us extra dialogue.

Comically, the enemy gets the first move after the gate opens. On my first run of this turn I had Leen in front ready to boost people to maximum range and this dude just walked in and oneshotted her without giving me any chance to react. Genealogy!

Arvis! This is his first appearance this whole generation except for in map texts.

Alvis: “Ishtar… I know you can do better than this. Now release the children.”

Ishtar: “But I have orders from Prince Yurius…”

Alvis: “I’ll inform Yurius myself. Don’t you worry about him.”

Ishtar: “But…”

Since Genealogy hates cool and good things, Ishtar will be a reoccurring boss in three chapters, whereas Arvis’ story will be entirely resolved by the end of this one. Fortunately, Arvis’ story is a mostly-good one – he disapproves strongly of all this child hunting that’s going on in his empire and he’s forcing Ishtar to put a stop to it here.

Hang on, one points out, all this shit which is happening in his empire without his say-so and he’s just now putting a stop to it?

Enter this little fuckerino. Arvis’ kid turned out to be a little demon after Manfroy did some shit to him, and now he’s the one who’s really pulling the strings.

Alvis: “Yurius! I’ve had about enou-“

Yurius: “You still don’t get it, do you… You’re too old, father. Don’t you think it’s time you retired? Or do you still have thoughts of banishing me from the empire?“

You know the downside to having your son turn out to be the spawn of Satan? You can’t really tell him what to do. Turns out Manfroy’s stupid plot powers extend over the villains, too, since Arvis’ empire that Arvis built doesn’t actually work for Arvis and that, well, pretty much sucks. Arvis is really pissed off by this turn of events, since it turns out he wasn’t really a bad dude in the first place, just totally willing to throw Sigurd under the bus to make his empire swole, not unlike how we’ve murdered dozens of sovereign lords between the two generations while pursuing various goals.

Just in case you didn’t pick up the implication from the last sequence, here’s Manfroy to tell you it straight-up. Also, just in case you hadn’t picked up on Julia’s importance, here it is as well.

Manfroy: “Yes, everything with Yuria went smoothly. She’s being held at Chalphy Castle. She clearly remembers how, when you were children, you left her for dead… As well as her mother warping her outside the castle walls.”

Yurius: “Hmph… Yeah, Diadora just sort of accepted the idea of being killed by her own son. But she did manage to muster enough power to save Yuria before I could finish her off. Yuria inherited the power of Lord Narga from Deirdre, not I. That’s why we must kill her… while we have the chance.”

Manfroy: “But the Book of Narga is sealed up at Barhara… I cannot envision Lord Narga somehow residing within the girl, as well.”

Yurius: “You just don’t get it, do you… The incarnate of Narga flows within the Heim’s royal blood. We must wipe every last one of them from the planet!”

Manfroy: “Alright, then. I’ll have her executed at once, Your Highness.”

Yurius: “Don’t you slip up, Manfroy. Alright, I need to head back to Barhara.”

Manfroy: “I’ll place the entire sect behind holding the region. And I’ll see to it that we bring before you the corpse of Celice.”

Ignoring the, uh, weird translation work here (“the incarnate of Narga”?) this whole conversation is really stupid because of Manfroy. In short: Julius tells Manfroy, rightfully, to kill Julia, the only scion of Naga left on the planet, because only Naga’s magic can kill him. If Manfroy does that, Julius is invincible (well, sort of.)

So spoilers to you: Manfroy doesn’t do it. He goes behind Julius’ back and tries some shit that we counteract and we get Julia out of it and use Julia to kill Julius. Not only is Manfroy’s plotting the cause of every major even in the first generation, and not only is Literally Julius caused by the culmination of his plotting as he pulls a fast one over on the entire civilized world and is now pulling the strings of the entire empire, but the only reason we win is because of the first, singular, slip in judgment Manfroy has made all game. All of the rest of his plots went perfectly or close enough to perfectly except this one, and this one slip is enough for us to topple the entire empire and kill him and Julius.

Manfroy has a perfect, hilarious stranglehold on this game’s plot. Everything goes where it does because of Manfroy. He has the perfect plot-warping power to abduct our dudes whenever it suits him, everybody listens to him, including Arvis, and nothing bad happens to his entire plan until we abruptly topple it all in one go. To put it another way: Julius is narratively invincible until approximately eight turns before we kill him. There isn’t a conflict even here, we’re just powerless against the infinite plot power of Manfroy and hoping he doesn’t flex it until suddenly we get a single advantage and annihilate him in one go. It’s horrible pacing. It’s a boxer getting wailed on for eight rounds and losing conclusively and hanging on by a thread of his life and then in the last seconds of the eighth round he swings his first punch that connects solidly and it happens to knock his opponent right out. No buildup, even the conclusion doesn’t really have any payoff because you just have won, congratulations. It’s like every game Portugal played in the Euros this year.

Yurius: “I’m not all too concerned about him, but you do as you please.”

Amusingly, Manfroy recognizes us as a significant threat despite having the teleportation powers required to have deleted us at any point, invalidating the only answer I could come up with for “why is this game still running.” On the other hand, Julius still doesn’t regard us as a threat as we’re invading Grannvale, having toppled half of his occupying forces and Thracia, so maybe I was right and that is the whole, lazy justification for the narrative. Plus, I’m sure there’s an Ozzy joke to be made here but it’s too late at night for me to think of it immediately. Somebody spot me here?

Meanwhile, Ishtar continues to be a good and well-written character. Sounds like hella fun, doesn’t it? The rebels are knocking on Chalphy’s door, practically, let’s just kill one and fuck off. Good stuff.

As far as gameplay goes, this castle is bizarre. There’s a scattered mess of axedaves, bowdaves, darkdaves, and sleepdaves standing around in ones and twos, up to the castle, which is Julius and Ishtar hanging out underneath a pretty weak boss. If you kill Julius or Ishtar, Julius calls it off and takes both of them home. The thing Julius just talked about (and Ishtar’s totally on board for) is in also full effect – if he or Ishtar kill a unit, they declare their victory over the other and both immediately buzz off. This is actually foreshadowed, though you’d not be wrong to totally miss it, particularly considering we’ve heard this before, from Lewyn in chapter 7, and it meant absolutely nothing:

Villager: “None of you stand a chance against the Imperial Prince Yurius in your present condition. As unfortunate as it may be, you may need to make a sacrifice to get where you’re going.”

This time it’s legit, though; throw a Hannibal at them and let them kill him and they’ll just leave right then. Why you would do that when silencing and murdering Ishtar is about as hard as it was when you were forced to do it two chapters ago, I’m not sure, but there you have it.

Fuck that, though, we’re pulling Julius in and destroying him thanks to an …oversight? Intended change? I have no idea.

Julius is swole as shit and it’s actually significantly worse than it looks. First up, his resistance is higher than we can ever straight cheese – our hypothetical highest magic is Ced with a Magic Ring, who can get a perfect 35 and not the 36 necessary (hilariously, if Valflame were dropped by Arvis and usable by Azel’s son, which it totally ought to be, we’d be able to cheese him fine in the final chapter.) Second, he’s got Wrath, so hope you can kill him straight-up once he’s under half health. Third, making that much worse, his magic book halves all incoming damage, and not in the way you’d expect. He’s got 25 defense, let’s say you throw a 50 might attack at him – you’d figure that’s 25 damage, halve it and you get 12 or 13 depending on how the game rounds, yeah? No, it halves the damage of the incoming attack, which means that when you go to engage your 50 might is now magically 25 might, and you do 1 damage. Since Fire Emblem uses straight subtraction to figure out damage, this is ridiculously powerful instead of just vanilla-brand stupid good like you’d figure “take half damage” to be.

Practically speaking, that plus Wrath means he’s all but impossible to kill in this chapter. Once he’s below half health, any hit from him (and you see his accuracy) is a one-shot kill on any unit in your army. Hell, before he’s below half health, any hit from him will kill about 90% of your army – only the super buff ones like Ares, Seliph, and Faval are likely to be able to tank it. Plus, there’s no reason to even engage him since you have the much squishier Ishtar to kill to chase him off.

For some reason, he doesn’t have Awareness, unlike in the final chapter, so Ares crits him twice. I want to stress that this damage is the result of twin crits from Mistoltin at 67% hit. And he’s just as bad next chapter, except he’s uncrittable and standing on a castle for extra evade. Good thing you pull your own absurdly overpowered book that exists only to kill Julius in the final seconds before you fight him, if you play your cards right! That’s good plot pacing.

Your reward for pulling off this Herculean feat is Julius sulking and walking off. Quality villain.

Besides that fight, the rest of this is incredibly uninteresting; I clipped out about three turns of Ced waking someone up, being danced for, and then waking someone else up while Fee killed another sleepdave. A bridge is going to pop up here, so I’m taking a turn or two to just get everyone up there before taking the castle since the next part is kind of dumb if you don’t anticipate it.

No-fly zones are in full effect here. Wouldn’t want our two buff as hell fliers, one of whom heals the other, to accidentally invade Grannvalean airspace and pull off sick flanks or anything. We’ll take this time while I’m repositioning to go over the optional content, which is pretty sparse compared to the previous chapter in terms of relevance to anything. First up,

Corple: “With your permission I’d like to cast a Magic Shield over you.”

Altenna: “Ah… you’re worried because my resistance is low, aren’t you… But isn’t that a dangerous spell to cast? Look, that’s kind of you, Corple, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Corple: “Your Highness, I never knew my real mother… But you’ve always been there for me. Please… I’m just trying to help you!!”

Altenna: “Alright, Corple. If it means that much to you… But promise me that at the very first sign of trouble you back out. Understood?”

Corple: “You got a deal! Don’t worry, I’ll be extra careful!”

Altenna: “Shall we proceed then?”

Corple: “Sure. Okay, now just be calm… O Lord Blagi… Bestow upon this woman your venerated strength.”

Fucking come on what is this spell?

Ike’s personal problems out of the way, Leicester actually has a conversation in this chapter! It’s his first one since we recruited him!

Lester: “Hey, Patty. You’re looking lovely as usual.”

Patty: “Lester… put a lid on it.”

Lester: “Geez… Why’re you such a grouch all the time?”

Patty: “I just get tired of you teasing me, Lester. That’s all.”

Lester: “Do I do that?”

Patty: “Yeah, you do. You don’t even treat me like the other girls.”

Lester: “You’re a girl!?”

Patty: “…you creep!!”

Lester: “Hey, it’s just a joke… C’mon, don’t get so angry. I’m sorry, okay? I guess I just sort of like you, that’s all. So I just sort of… you know.”

Patty: “What do you mean, you ‘like’ me!?”

Lester: ‘Like’ as in ‘not hate’! Need me to repeat it!?

Yeah, you know, no matter about the children being sacrificed in this desolate wasteland that used to be a nice place all around them, it’s time for some anime! This is particularly aggravating considering that Leif and Jeanne have a conversation that happens at right about the same time which is all about how shitty and ruined this pretty nice place is now, and that one also derails straight into them being largely unaffected by the ruin around them.

Bear in mind, too, my words a while ago about the sub-kid personality divergence. Dimna, in his solo conversation, is portrayed as a bit timid and self-deprecating, and he still has this same conversation word-for-word with Patches/Daisy.

Faval also has a conversation where he’s mostly teased by Lana.

Faval: “You like kids, huh?”

Rana: “Yeah, I really do. You were taking care of orphans before, weren’t you? That’s so wonderful, Faval.”

Faval: “Yeah, well that was Patty‘s idea, not mine. I’m really not all that big on kids, you see.”

Rana: “Hah… I know better than that. I saw all those crying children clinging to you when we were leaving the Manster District. You’re like a father to them, you know.”

Faval: “S, stop it, would you? I just… Look, I gotta get going. I’ll see you around.”

(Faval leaves)

Rana: “Haha… You’re a good guy, Faval.”

You’ll notice a theme in these that they largely could take place in any chapter of the game, and for two reasons: they don’t reflect any prior conversations, largely because there aren’t any prior conversations to reflect; and they don’t make any reference, or pay the most token of attention, to the events of the chapter around them. The Leicester/Patty conversation, in particular, could have been in any chapter from 8 to now and been exactly as it is and would have fit in precisely as well. We’re getting into the basics of the support conversation system, which has a whole essay ready to go before we start those games!

Moving on,

Altenna: “Thanks, Leaf. Actually, I was just thinking about Areone…”

Leaf: “I thought so… I heard someone came along and just took off with him.”

Altenna: “I heard it was Prince Yurius.”

Leaf: “The Imperial Prince Yurius!? But why?”

Yes, Seliph was surprised when this happened to Ishtar, Seliph was surprised again when this happened to Arion, and Leif is surprised when this happened to Arion.

Last up, we have Lewyn.

Yep, Lewyn is finally going to talk to his daughter – but only if she’s Fee, Leen, or Tinny. His conversations are all about how he’s the worst dad possibly in the entire world, and that’s counting some pretty shitty dudes. Amusingly, his bad daddery isn’t consistent among the three.

Levin: “Tinny, Hilda was your aunt, wasn’t she? It must be tough being out here.”

Tinny: “No, I’m fine with it. Queen Hilda was an evil, evil person.”

Levin: “What, did she treat you bad or something?”

Tinny: “Yeah. She always used to beat me and call me names, and she said my mother a traitor.”

Levin: “That would’ve been Tiltyu…”

Tinny: “Yes. She and Arthur escaped to Silesia after the Battle of Barhara. Then she had me. But I was told my father passed away…”

Levin: “Is that right… So you came to the Alster Kingdom after all that?”

Tinny: “Well, we didn’t go there willingly. We were taken by force by King Blume’s men. And then that’s where my mother died.”

We get Tinny’s backstory dump if Lewyn is her dad, and it’s a shitty one. There’s slightly more to this conversation, but it all involves Lewyn not copping to being her dad, probably since she thinks her dad is dead. Nice. This one has the least Lewyn involvement, and is mostly just a vessel to include Tinny’s backstory/Tiltyu’s end. It’s a little odd that Tinny wouldn’t figure it out, given as she’s Forseti and Lewyn’s actually Forseti and Arthur’s been using the Book of Forseti this whole time (probably) but oh well. Then there’s Leen!

Leen: “Hey, Levin. Did you know my mum?”

Levin: “Huh? Why would I know your mum?”

Leen: ‘Cause you seem to know everything.

Levin: “You want to know about your mum, huh…”

Leen: “Yes! And my dad too!”

Levin: “Leen, you are who you are… Don’t worry yourself too much about who your parents were. I will tell you this, though. Your parents loved each other like nothing else. They parted during a very rough time, but they still look over you, Leen. Trust me, they do.”

Leen: “Yeah… Ever since I was little I felt as if someone was watching out for me. That was my father, wasn’t it… Why won’t he show himself to me!? It’s lonely not knowing who your parents are your whole life…”

Levin: “Leen…”

She straight up asks Lewyn, her dad, who her parents are, and he just gives her a non-answer. Dick. Apparently he was absent-dadding the whole time but not, like, particularly successfully, considering the profession and straits she got herself into. You’d also figure Carpool might have figured out he and Leen were related, given as they’re both mysterious orphans from Darna who vibe Forseti, and also have figured something about Lewyn out considering that he’s the baby scion of Forseti, but eh. Lewyn plots. We’ve still got Fee, the …best.

Fee: “Father, you are so cruel! When I first saw you at Rivough Castle, I could hardly believe my eyes! I was so happy… I was in tears! But you wouldn’t speak to me! Do you have any idea how horrible that’s made me feel!?”

Levin: “So… what? You’ve just been pretending not to notice me all this time?”

Fee: “I decided I wasn’t going to talk to you unless you approached me first.”

Levin: “Damn, you’re stubborn, girl.”

Fee: “Why, you! That’s it! You just forget you ever had a daughter!! If you weren’t such a jerk, mum still might be…”

Levin: “Fee, look, I’m sorry about Fury… But what went on between the two of us is really none of yours or Sety’s damn business!”

Fee: “Father!”

Levin: “Fee, the only thing you need to concern yourself with is winning this war! Got it!?”

The only one who knows that he’s their dad, and he’s just a massive bitch to her out of fuckin’ nowhere. It bears mention that Lewyn is supposed to not be Lewyn at this point – it was teased a bit in chapter 4 when he grabbed the book at Silesia and sort-of confirmed in a throwaway line (the last line of the game) that he’s been possessed by the spirit of Forseti, bizarrely considering we play with every other holy weapon in the game and get none of that going on, and that he’s not exactly human anymore, but it comes across as less possession and more really shitty writing every time the justification looks like what’s going on. It’s really inconsistent, and you only notice when he’s abruptly a huge dick like now; and you only notice that because of magnitude, since Lewyn has always occasionally been a huge dick.

Good shit right there.

Right, time to stop dithering. We’re chasing these kids castle-by-castle through the entirety of this chapter.

More interestingly than Lewyn, a good character makes his final real appearance. Palmark is just some dude, he’s not terribly important, but what is important is that Arvis actually does something of his own volition here.

Alvis: “That’s right. Yurius’ people will be here soon from Barhara. You must leave immediately!”

Palmark: “Y, yes, Your Majesty! You have my sincerest blessings.”

He’s kind of spite killing himself right here. He’s pissed that Julius took over his sick empire, he’s pissed that everything he’s done has been at the behest of Manfroy (who wasn’t, surprise, beneficent in the least), and he’s pissed that nothing he’s done this whole game has turned out like he wanted it to. So instead of just dying like Travant did, he decides to throw a huge fuck you to Julius and smuggles the kids out as a Hail Mary to try to get them to Seliph.

Alvis: “You once served under Sigurd, correct… I think you know what to do with it.”

Palmark: “Yes, Your Majesty. I believe I do.”

Alvis: “Then get going… And keep those children safe!”

A huge fuck you; he also gives Palmark the Tyrfing, and it’s in peak condition. Arvis is primed and ready to sabotage his entire empire to spite the people who did this to him.

Alvis: “No… I’ve been such a fool. Manfroy’s been using me all along. But by the time I realised what was going on, it was too late. Yurius is the reincarnation of the Dark Lord Loputousu. He murdered my beloved Diadora and had the same fate in store for you…”

Yuria: “Yes. Mother used her last drop of energy to warp me away from Yurius. I must have lost my memories over the shock of it all. I’m glad Levin found me. But I still just break down and cry when I think about what Yurius did to mother…”

Arvis just got played, plain and simple, and there was nothing he could do about it. Now that you’re here, his conscience is too dirty to go on, but at least he sees a way to try to get his revenge from beyond the grave. ‘course,

Manfroy: “If Your Majesty has a problem following Prince Yurius’ orders, she’ll be put to death.”

Alvis: “You’ll what!? Just who the hell do you think you’re talking to!?”

Manfroy: “Heh heh heh… It’s high time you realise the order of things. You’re no longer anything but a mere servant to Prince Yurius. If you wish to avoid any further anguish, you’ll succumb to His Highness’ every wish. I’ll also see to it that the children you released are all dead by sundown. Mwahahaa!”

Yuria: “Father!!”

His plan won’t go off without a hitch. Fuckin’ Manfroy. He even has a stupid cheesy evil laugh to seal it off. Have you figured out that he’s evil?

Alvis: “Yuria, I’m powerless against these people. Take this circlet… It belonged to your mother. It’s your only hope for protec-“

Manfroy: “What are you two going on about!? Yuria, you’ll come with me at once!”

Arvis does have one last swipe to take, and it’s a dumb plot device. Apparently, Deirdre’s circlet is able to prevent mind control from taking full hold, which will become relevant next chapter and is the only reason we’re able to get Julia to get Naga to kill Julius. Contrived plots are one thing, but the entire plot resolving itself kicks into motion in the last about 10% of the game; before that you’re just spinning your wheels without purpose or potential to ever win, narratively speaking.

Palmark runs the kids off to this suspicious peninsula, where conveniently Fee and Altenna are waiting to receive/save them. Huh. Wonder how that happened.

AI gets the first turn and is close enough to engage again this time, but I have the right lad in front. It’s a pretty diverse assortment of Daves, but they’re not any trouble to chew through in a phase or two at this point.

Not pictured: the area in front of Arvis had five siege tome mages and a Reserve staffer. Jerks. There’s also a squad of dark mages that head over to eat the children, but it’s not like they could do much between Fee and Altenna.

Arvis’ last stand itself is …bad. He has the same problem going on that Julius did, but he also has Big Shield and Awareness; there’s essentially no strategy to fighting him whatsoever beyond ramming Mistoltin and/or Tyrfing into him repeatedly and healing them. Arvis will have zero chance to kill them, they will eventually kill him after four to ten turns of zero strategy ramming. This is Genealogy's endgame bosses: there’s little room for strategy, your units either fight with zero chance of death or fight with one hundred percent chance of death, slamming into a static mans over and over again.

Slap, slap, slap. Seliph does have a unique conversation for it, but it’s nothing.

Seliph: Emperor Alvis! Why did you kill my father…

Arvis: Celice… So you made it. I commend your bravery. But you will, nonetheless, be incinerated by my fire. You're just as pathetic as your father was…

Slap. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Celice: “Yeah… I’ve finally reached my true homeland. It’s a good feeling. But I also feel somewhat empty inside.”

Levin: “You’re worried about Yuria, aren’t you… You really like her, don’t you…”

Celice: “No, I’m just worried about her.”

Levin: “Several townspeople said they saw Bishop Manfroy take off with her. She must still be in Grandbell somewhere.”

Celice: “Levin, I know I should be happy now that my father’s death has been avenged, but I still don’t feel right somehow.”

Levin: “That’s because this war is not yet over with. Actually, the real battle, the holy war, is just on the horizon. See this war through, Celice. You’ll find the answers you seek. Trust me.”

That’s your whole payoff, by the way. Every plot revelation will come in the next chapter. So let’s look back, what happened this chapter?

In the beginning: Manfroy plot stole Julia.

…

In the end: Arvis smugged Tyrfing to us and set up the final chapter so we could win.

What happened in between? Nothing of consequence, at all. No revelations, no new information. We’re one chapter to the endgame, and the entire chapter was filler besides the bit before we started and the last two castles. Even the optional conversations didn’t have anything to say besides the bit of backstory that came with Lewyn’s daughters’ conversations.

Next time: endgame! That’s gonna be two or three posts, and then a text post or two, and then Thracia starts up. I’ll try to accelerate to get through all of that so I can take a break before starting Thracia since I have to start a new notes file for the new game and I like to keep a long buffer before posting. Hasta la vista.

[Moblin Major General]

If I were Arvis, I would've torched Manfroy's ass with Valflame. He's not worth fighting, the plot says.

[Specta]

integrity i didn't realize you were That Guy all along

he's as done with this game as you are

Edited July 19, 2016 by Specta