screenshot Ike's FE Megathread {15.5}

[Balcerzak]

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 doesnt exist a Johalva that can beat this fight, as far as Im aware.

It's a good thing he doesn't have to, unlike his brother. Access to bow use for shit arena matchups is a lifesaver.

[Integrity]

It's a good thing he doesn't have to, unlike his brother. Access to bow use for shit arena matchups is a lifesaver.

man i forgot he got bow use after promotion, he's ready to promote right now but wasn't at the start of this chapter

[The Draco Knight]

While It's true that Arvis has no control over his own empire, the soldiers of said empire thinks that the orders they receive are from Arvis himself and no one else: this is visible in chapter 10, where Fat bishop tells That Guy that if he doesn't follow the orders he will be betray Emperor Arvis and That Guy immediately starts moving. Another example is a female paladin in Thracia 776, who says that she became a knight to serve Arvis and she doesn't understand why he does things like the child hunt.

Perhaps I'm just reading too much into rhe quotes of the various soldiers from the empire, but if Arvis rebelled against Julius, Manfroy and the Lopt Sect, deciding to stop the Child Hunt, the soldiers of the empire would have probably followed him without any question: this just shows that Arvis could have stopped this whole situtation by himself if he wasn't such a coward, in my opinion.

I could be forgetting some imoortant details tough, so...yeah

[General Horace]

to be honest the whole 'bad guy should just go kill party when they're weak' thing happens in every video game ever but they're too busy doing fuck all or being cocky, I guess.

Does it actually say the circlet prevents the brain control completely anywhere? Pretty sure it just unlocks the seal on the the Book of Narga Alvis stashed in Velthomer.

[Jedi]

to be honest the whole 'bad guy should just go kill party when they're weak' thing happens in every video game ever but they're too busy doing fuck all or being cocky, I guess.

It'd be funny if a game decided to have the big bad send his best guys at you and you actually had to live through it, but the result would be hilarious I think.

i think part of why its such a common trope, is the whole games need a curve, unless theres alot of difficulty opinions (I know you know this, but i'm stating for the public here).

[General Horace]

Yeah, it's just the way video games work. It's hard to make everything come together gameplaywise and storywise.

[Integrity]

Does it actually say the circlet prevents the brain control completely anywhere? Pretty sure it just unlocks the seal on the the Book of Narga Alvis stashed in Velthomer.

nope you're right, my bad, i was misremembering with the "it's your only hope for protec-" thing

to be honest the whole 'bad guy should just go kill party when they're weak' thing happens in every video game ever but they're too busy doing fuck all or being cocky, I guess.

while that's true (and doesn't really excuse it being really bad storytelling) most video games i can think of that do have it don't have villains that are not only shown as able to teleport wherever they want whenever they want, but also use that against us repeatedly for trivial things and know where we are all the time

EDIT: the point i was going for was less that "hurr julius trashes us for stats why hasn't he killed us" because that's just videogames being videogames. it was more that julius and manfroy from a pure narrative standpoint have had the power to end us all along with a thought, game mechanics aside, and have instead just not thought about killing us while we trashed multiple countries.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Integrity

[Tamanoir]

I actually thought Lester/Patty conversation was in Chapter 8/9...

[Mage Knight 404]

That spiel about Mafroy doe. Fucking glorious.

[Sunwoo]

I remember something you wrote in earlier chapters about how the game likes to throw a bunch of people with ugly mugs and one person who looks good-looking, which makes it really fucking obvious who the "good guy" is supposed to be. I agree with you that it's a good thing we're moving away from it in fiction.

And then I see people defending characters who are objectively not nice and excusing them for anything bad they'd done, while bashing characters who don't measure up to their standard of attractiveness for much less than what they excuse their lust object for, and I'm not sure which one I hate more.

Glad to see FE4 coming to an end, though. This is the most interesting analysis of its story I've seen anywhere.

[Katie]

I had someone on GameFAQs claiming Manfroy was a better villain than Validar because Manfroy at least had a "sympathetic backstory" due to the discrimination Loptyr cultists faced or whatever. I'd honestly argue he's worse than Validar, because at least Validar doesn't have nearly as much of a stranglehold on the plot as Manfroy does (he even ends up legitimately duped by Chrom and Robin and co. in Chapter 23), nor does he have OP teleportation powers that he only uses when it convenient for the narrative.

[Parrhesia]

it would be seriously impressive to write a villain or, hell, character worse than manfroy

[Integrity]

We’re done. God bless, I finished this chapter in a single sitting, totally zoned into Genealogy, just to bring you the final chapter in all its glory. Buckle up for a long-ass motherfucker of a post, ladies, gentlemen, and Haru. I’m probably sick to death of updating by the time you see this because imgur’s lovely new beta :) fucked up the order of my images, so I have to comb through them every time I want a picture.

The last map text is pretty short, but in essence now that we’re cruising into the heart of the empire the rest of Jugdral is rising up.

Silesia actually finishes revolting the sentence after the map text says people are starting to rise up. Agustria is actively on fire (again) because of us (again) so it’s nice to span the generations that way.

Besides that, we get the typical “these are the story mans to kill” picture, except it’s… uh. Eyebrows, middle, is the second castle we fight, since we have to rush over to Edda first for Reasons before taking Dozel and killing him. Then we advance on Hilda, top left, but Scorpio, bottom left, ambushes us. Then Ishtar sets out from exactly where Julius is and we fight her next to where we killed Hilda. Then we actually sweep off and kill Manfroy, not pictured, approximately where Ishtar is now, before fighting Julius. Don’t lie to me, game.

So here’s an interesting bit of scene to open us up. The implication (okay, explication as of the end of this game) with Lewyn is that he’s still kind of Lewyn, except for the times when he’s not and he’s Forseti, because he’s possessed. Or something. This scene, plus a few throwaway lines elsewhere, largely when he’s talking to Ishtar, serves to give the impression that there is still a Julius, he’s just overwhelmed by Loptyr.

To be fair, tone is important; you could read that “poor father…” equally well as dripping sarcasm or as sincere regret. I want to do Genealogy all of the credit I can, so I go for the latter.

Manfroy: “Alvis may have been of Loputian blood, but he clearly opposed the revival of the old regime. Crusader Fala’s ways ran far too deep with him. He would have turned on us eventually.”

Yurius: “I know… So it seems the rebel army reached Chalphy. Should that concern me?”

Manfroy: “I’ve already given orders to Bishop Rodan and Burian of Dozel to retake Chalphy. Rest assured, there’s no cause for alarm.”

Yurius: “I see… Manfroy, I want to see Yuria. Where is she being kept?”

I like, and by like I mean the opposite, how Seliph’s little uprising isn’t regarded as a threat by anybody important, even at this plot juncture. Then again, we’re in Genealogy – much like how Sigurd still expected to be the aggressor the fifth time he isn’t, Manfroy hasn’t adjusted his perception of us at all. We’re still a tiny uprising of like eight dudes in Isaach, because that’s how we started. There’s zero indication that the villains even know that we’ve taken down Grannvalean-occupied Isaach, Good Thracia, and Miletos; and Grannvalean allies Bad Thracia, and we’ve taken a hefty chunk of their homeland. There’s no change in the villains’ behavior – remember when Blume was freaking out that we were murdering all his guys?

What can you do about it besides bitch on the internet? Julius and Julia, unsurprisingly, have backstory.

Yurius: “Ha! Your memory is still intact… And to think it’s been 7 years.”

Yuria: “Yes, I remember it all now… …as if it were yesterday.”

Yurius: “Heh heh… I suppose you’ve some fond memories of your mother, as well.”

Yuria: “… Just who are you? Everything changed the day Archbishop Manfroy brought that eerie black book in. That day also marks the last I saw of my dear brother… All that remained in his place was this powerful, yet demonic child. You… whoever you are… have deprived me of my mother and my brother, as well! Who are you!? Why must you put me through this agony!?”

Yurius: “I am the inheritor of the power of the Loputo Clan. This world is my domain. And Yuria, you inherit the power of my mortal enemy… Narga. Therefore, you must die.”

To home in on what I was saying earlier, Julius definitely wasn’t the same dude before Manfroy quite deliberately put Loptyr into him – which, I guess, is different from Loptyr’s awakening? Maybe there’s a gestation period? – which tracks with the occasional lines of Julius being sorry for Arvis’ death, or treating Ishtar alright. His portrayal is a more successful (not purely, but more) version of what’s supposed to be going on with Lewyn. It’s not really clear if this is an ongoing thing (he’s being replaced by Loptyr gradually) or a one-time change (he and Loptyr were fused to become Loptulius) but that’s not really important to the story they’re trying to tell.

Hell, Julius even has the right idea – get rid of Julia – but he’s only stopped by Manfroy’s plot stranglehold. He wants to do Nefarious Things with her that, surprise, will end up causing his entire plans to crumble.

It’s ironic, maybe, since nobody actually knows what irony is. The only reason we’re in this whole pickle is because the Crusaders were dumb as fuck and left one descendent of Loptyr alive and made him pinky-swear not to have too many kids. The only reason we’re going to get out of this whole pickle is because the Loptyr guys are dumb as fuck and leave one descendent of Naga alive assuming they can do Nefarious Things with her. They’re weaponizing the only thing that can stop them and sending it against us.

Take a guess how long this guy’s defense is going to last.

We’re finally back at the home castle, which means the chapter should start soon. I’m not a huge fan of this translation; it feels like a forced title drop since we’ve been engaged in one single, continuous war against the (nominally, Arvis) same combatants this whole time. The ‘final holy war’ began when we rose up in Isaach, we’ve been fighting for a solid year since and this is the culmination.

Notice how there’s no period at the end? Yeah, Lewyn’s talking, and it’s a doozy. Take note of this initial line, amazingly nonchalant as it is. Remember Lewyn at the end of chapter 9? We knew this.

[spoiler=in case you forgot]Levin: “Prince Yurius’ real power comes from…”

Celice: “Who?”

Levin: “…the Dark Lord Loputousu.” (TN: CHAPTER CUT. DRAMA.)

Levin: “He’s been plotting to restore the dark empire from day one. We’ve got to stop him… no matter what!”

Celice: “Levin, how do you always seem to know everything? Please… you gotta let me know what else is going on here!”

Seliph is pissed at Lewyn for figuring shit out and not telling him. Plus, at this point Lewyn’s figured out who Julia is and doesn’t tell him that either. Lewyn is the worst.

Levin: “Celice, I apologise if I’ve kept some things from you in the past. In all my years of travel in search of the truth, I’ve finally stumbled upon something big.”

Celice: “What is it?”

Levin: “Legend has it Bishop Galle crossed the sea in his youth and traveled the world before founding the Loputo Empire. He was determined to drink the lifeblood of a legendary creature of the time. One sip promised powers of unimaginable proportions.”

Celice: “You don’t mean the blood of the Ancient Dragon Tribe!? That’s all superstition, right?”

Levin: “Yeah, but when Galle returned from his travels, he possessed unexplainable powers. He used his new powers to influence the young to his own devices. Before long he had built up a demonic legion of warriors that followed his every whim.”

Celice: “So where does Lord Loputousu fit into all this?”

Levin: “He was most likely of the Dragon Tribe. Their blood flows in all of Galle’s descendants, making the Loputo Clan’s evil power and the Dragon Tribe’s power one and the same.”

Celice: “Then what of our ancestors, the Crusaders? How did they come to be?”

Levin: “Well, the legend goes that the gods descended upon 12 warriors of the liberation army. It all took place at Darna Fortress. But, um…”

Celice: “But what? What happened!?”

In short, the gods are actually dragons (it’s Fire Emblem, are you surprised?) who came from across the ocean to bestow their magic blood powers onto the Crusaders to fight the evil dragon, who is more powerful than all of them combined (except their leader). It’s kinda cheesy, sure, but this particular plot point gets a pass for being so ‘90s that it’s hard to dislike. The only thing about it that’s really silly is a reminder of the timeline Genealogy has set forth:

Year 440: Galle comes back and sets up a huge goddamn empire.

Year 632 (184 years later): The other dragons decide to intervene with the Miracle at Darna.

Year 648 (16 years later): The empire falls, the Crusaders set up a billion kingdoms.

Year 757 (109 years later): Genealogy of the Holy War prologue.

These god-dragons waited like two hundred years to come help, and it still took 16 years to take down the empire Loptyr alone set up. It’s still only been like 150 years as of now, the second generation (year 777 when the game ends) now since they came down – it’s been less time since the legendary Miracle at Darna, for reference, than it’s been since the American Civil War.

Oh yeah, and Lewyn even blueballs us on this story. We’ll get the rest of it after two more castles. At least we can start!

The six pictured (and two more, further right) bishops are equipped half with Sleep staves and half with siege tomes. They’re not particularly strong, but my entire team’s resistance is complete garbage except for the people who have +res holy weapons. For reference, these staffers have 16 magic. As of the end of the game, my highest unbuffed resistances are Fee and Jeanne tied (aw, romantic) at 14. Ares and Seliph can get away with it because their swords have plus ten and twenty resistance, respectively. You’ll note that Tyrfing gives a higher resistance bonus than the resistance stat of any member of my team at the end of the game. Holy weapon balance! We’ll deal with the bishops momentarily, but first…

On request from a friend I fed every single civilian (there are 13) in chapter 10 to Leif secretly, so he promotes despite having like 4 kills. This lets me show off Master Knight at this final juncture. What’s a Master Knight?

Master Knight is silly, is what it is. Just so you know, promoted mages don’t even get an A in their specialized magic by default – without thunder blood, your thunder mages would top out at B thunder magic, which shows with Ced capping at B in all magic. Most other classes only get a single A in their specialized weapon after they promote, with some exceptions like Falcon Knights (bizarrely, they get As in both theirs) and Generals. Leif, meanwhile, has an A in everything except light magic, a C, and dark magic, which nobody can use on the friendly side until Thracia 776.

Raquesis becomes this if you grind her up in the first generation, which is easier because she has staves (gender roles in full effect in Genealogy in a lot of ways) and harder because Leif has easy access to tons of resources and a more experience-heavy generation.

Just the promotion (the difference between 20 unpromoted and 23 promoted) changes Leif from a chip attacker at 1-range to one-rounding anything, whatever, at 1-range, 2-range, or 1-2 range, while using any staff in the game. It’s silly.

The path you follow down this map is fun. Everybody goes right, then everybody but Seliph goes down and left while Seliph goes up and left, then everybody goes left more and then up, then everybody goes right, then Seliph splits off and goes up and right while everybody else stays put or keeps going right, then everybody crashes together into Julius and you win. It’s circuitous as hell and I can’t help but love it despite it being kind of bad. It’s the closest Genealogy comes to using every part of a map, by only having a lake in the top (which is obviously devoid of anything and there’s no reason to go there) and a small forested off area to the right (same). There’s one really long, empty run, but it’s used thematically so it’s excusable, even if the theme it’s used for comically falls apart.

This first squad is led by Voltz in his final appearance and it’s best to tank them right on Chalphy, since if you go too far out your entire army with terrible resistance will get put to sleep really fast.

At this point, though, unless you’ve just been feeding every kill to level 30s and making no effort to get a B-team going, your player phase is going to be mighty.

Genealogy is the closest that Fire Emblem comes, in my recollection, to having a good balance between player and enemy phases, and it still favors the counterattacker making the second move pretty heavily.

Those guys done, you continue east to Edda. Edda’s defensive formation is stupid.

Everybody you see with the dark bishop graphic has a siege tome – that’s nine. Everybody you see with the male bishop graphic has a sleep staff – that’s six, but I swore there were seven, so maybe one of the dark bishops has one. All three of the female bishop graphics have Reserve staves, that being the one that heals all allies in a ten-square radius. The boss also has a siege tome.

Also, the miniboss is the return of Neckbeard! He’s playing the same character we killed in the first generation.

This guy isn’t wrong, we have the avatars of like half of the gods, including their king god, with us right now.

We’re running out of Man In Robes, Face Half Shadowed to kill, which is a real pity in my opinion. This guy puts up no resistance. This whole army kind of does – they can’t meaningfully touch Ares or Seliph, but if any of my other dudes wanders into range of the sleep staffers they’ll eat a sleep and then infinite meteors depending on how bad my positioning is.

My positioning is good, by the way.

Everyone but the all-stars (Seliph, Ares, Leif, Fee, Leicester) head home after the sworddaves come out and die to my combined might; everything else falls by degrees. Seliph seizing the castle causes the rest of them to despawn, but why do that when I can pad kill counts?

I’d like to remind everybody that this was the translation patch that was the default, that everyone used, for like five years unaltered until bookofholsety did a good. Fortunately you’re not playing this patch, I am, and I have scripts to show you instead.

Levin: “Edda, huh… It would’ve been so glad if Father Claude was alive…”

Celice: “Yes… Father Claude died too for the sake of helping my father. But, the Father’s children…”

Levin: “Ah yes, [Claude’s son] and [Claude’s daughter]. I think they’ll lead Edda in a righteous way. For the citizens of this country, wouldn’t this be the happiest thing?”

There’s a variant of this conversation if Claude died childless and alone as is correct and proper, but it’s just Lewyn telling Seliph he’ll have to take Edda under his jurisdiction when he’s emperor of the world in a minute.

This conversation is nothing particularly interesting except that Patches and Faval or Carpool and Leen can have angst, like, last chapter about how they don’t know who their dads are, and Lewyn just casually does for this conversation. He presumably tells them offscreen, since they pop in for the Edda part of the epilogue.

Mustachio shows up for his last appearance afterwards and the next part of the chapter starts immediately.

This squad runs right to burn Edda down. You will note that they all have axes. Seliph is going to deal with them, and also be essentially immune to them. You will note they are all unpromoted.

This squad of all promoted dudes, led by the dude with the holy weapon axe, head south to crush you. They’re hella threatening ….to anybody but your insanely good sword users, of which you have at least three and up to roughly four more.

…to Slate and Larc, for instance, not even the holy weapon users, this happens instead.

The saddest Slatesaber Gank. I’m not even bolding it.

Meanwhile I’m stupid and leave the hero lance equipped on Seliph and he nearly dies. :D

There’s like a two turn run along this empty stretch after you slaughter that pack, during which you can see Belhalla! It has a unique castle sprite, and Julius will be on top of it shortly.

This is it for Angry Man In Robes too, rest in peace. Commentary seems short here because Slatesaber wiped out the entirety of the resistance I was planning to talk about in a single turn and now there’s like eight turns of just maneuvering.

this always fucking happens to me

Dozel! This is where Lex is from – note how it’s north of Chalphy, and how Lex and Azel came in from the north in the prologue? Cute thing, that. Genealogy does a really good job preserving geographical continuity even if it’s kind of a silly geography to preserve.

Anyway, Lewyn’s talking, and it’s time for the rest of that story, starting with Seliph hugely not giving a shit about the house of Dozel as a whole.

Celice: “Levin, tell me more about the source of the Crusader’s power. I mean… who are the gods anyway?”

Levin: “Here’s how I understand it… There were beings from another world who knew the Dragon Tribe’s power was responsible for Jugdral’s unrest. So they came from their world to assist us. They were the ones who appeared at Darna Fortress just as it was about to fall.”

Celice: “That’s the ‘Descent of Lord Narga and the 11 Gods’ from scripture, huh…”

Levin: “That’s right. They all assumed human forms. Narga, the god of light, appeared as a young maiden, and the fire god Salamand was that of an elderly man. Each god performed blood rites with one of the 12 chosen warriors.”

Celice: “Blood rites?”

Levin: “Yes. After making a small cut on their fingertip, they offered their blood to the warriors.”

Celice: “…!?”

Levin: “Celice, I’ll just cut to the chase. The gods you and I know from scripture are of the same Dragon Tribe as Loputousu is. So the warriors ingested the blood of the Dragon Tribe and were reborn as the Crusaders. Each Crusader received a weapon sealed with the power of their respective tribesmen. After imparting a few precepts upon the Crusaders, the tribesmen left.”

Celice: “Wow… so that’s where our power comes from!”

Levin: “Yet Loputousu’s clan wields the most diabolic power of the entire tribe. King Narga passed his own blood onto the leader of the liberation army, Bishop Heim. That was Narga’s only hope to rival the Loputian power.”

Celice: “Couldn’t any of the other tribesmen take on Loputousu?”

Jeez, Lewyn writes like I do – please imagine this wall of text delivered in the tiny text boxes I keep taking screenshots of, scrolling up bloop bloop bloop. There’s a reason I keep the turbo button held down at all times during plot dumps I want screenshots from. This is the rest of the story, no more cliffhangers. The gods are dragons, the Crusaders drank blood and got magic powers, only the guy with Naga’s blood can kill the evil god, etc. We went over all of this information after the first half of the story, honestly. I just made you read it out of spite because I had to.

Just to pick nits, though, like, why does Lewyn tell us about Naga the king god, and Salamand (really.) the fire god but not any of the other ones? Naga I can get, but Salamand? I guess Naga, Salamand, and Loptyr are the three dudes that make up Julius’ blood, but that’s the best I got. Maybe it was just random. Conversation isn’t over, though!

Levin: “Now, Empress Diadora’s children are the only surviving descendants of Heim who would have inherited Narga’s power…”

No idea what changed for Lewyn to have just figured this out, but there you have it. We’re getting this critical plot point two castles away from Julius himself. Let’s carry on before I grouse about this conversation as a whole.

Levin: “Yurius’ twin sister… Princess Yuria did. She’s the one!”

Celice: “E, excuse me!?”

Levin: “The connection kinda threw me at first, too. But, yeah, you’ve got a sister, Celice.”

Celice: “Yuria’s my sister… Geez, I never would’ve thought…”

Levin: “This explains her disappearance now, doesn’t it… But, we’ve got to find her. Because we don’t stand a chance against Yurius without her!”

Awesome, we’re done with the plot of Genealogy. I’m almost not kidding, the game actually introduces a new character in a minute to dump the last revelation on us out of nowhere.

Here’s the thing, let’s connect the dots together: Julius is, narratively, unstoppable. Lewyn himself even said that all the other dragons’ powers could compare to Loptyr’s together if they didn’t have Naga with them. You’re really, really obviously supposed to kill him with Julia. Everything has been pointing to that since, arguably, the point where you were introduced to this strange girl with Deirdre’s coloring. Without Naga, Loptyr cannot be defeated.

But Lewyn drops Julia being the spawn of Naga on you right now like it’s a new thing for him. He’s been leading you on this grand quest, ignored by the guys in Belhalla even though they could teleport-delete you all along, eventually taking you right up into Belhalla, and he doesn’t have a single card to play when you actually make it there. If Manfroy had done the thing Julius actively ordered him to do two or three times, there wouldn’t be anything you’d be able to do. You need Naga to kill Loptyr, and Lewyn has led you on a quest to kill Loptyr without having Naga with him.

So, Lewyn probably started this quest to try to find Naga, right? It worked out that way, at least – but he knew Julius was Deirdre’s son and didn’t have Naga’s power, and he knew Seliph was Deirdre’s son and didn’t have Naga’s power, and if Deirdre had a third kid, he didn’t know about it. He set out on this quest not only neither having Naga nor knowing where Naga was, but also not knowing if there was a Naga scion out there for him to find. Then he lucks into the Naga scion, but he apparently doesn’t have any way of knowing that she’s the Naga scion for the entirety of the game until now, when he figures it out. We’re even ignoring all the stuff I bitched about the Maira Pact and blood in general still being fully in effect – what if the major blood scion died young, etc. – and Lewyn still doesn’t have any reason to believe the major Naga bloodline wasn’t snuffed out.

Wind that all back, you know, Lewyn did assume that there was some Naga somewhere in the world and he was right. He did find her, maybe he knew all along and he’s being a bitch. Let’s pretend he did have a plan going into Miletos. In that case, he’s got Naga’s blood with him… but Naga’s weapon is in Belhalla, and as will come up momentarily, he not only knows that it was in Belhalla, underneath Julius, but also that it was secretly smuggled out by Arvis.

The only thing that could make Lewyn’s quest a success were a series of amazing coincidences that Lewyn had no hand in setting up to make happen that all happened after he set out on the quest to get Julius dead. The only explanation is that it was a fatalistic “we’re all fucked, better do something than nothing” quest which succeeded on a Hail Mary – but this hasn’t been even hinted at or portrayed subtly or overtly in the story and will never, it’s played rather as Lewyn having pulled these strings all along.

Fuck Lewyn.

Meanwhile, in a land of causality, I’ve quietly moved my fliers north without checking on any numbers of anything. They’re going to float on this peak for a long time because I’m stupid, but at least I can illustrate something.

Hilda’s last ever lines illustrate a difference in storytelling media that needs to be respected. If you’re watching a TV show, or reading a book, or whatever kids do these days, and the villain says “ha ha they are walking into my ambush!” only you hear that, the heroes don’t, and they walk into the ambush in the time-honored column formation and are flanked and there’s a super suspenseful episode/chapter. If you’re playing a video game, and you control the heroes, and the villain pops up to say this, only you hear it, but the heroes (who don’t hear it) are happening to cover their rear from an ambush that they know is coming, because you know it is coming, even though Hilda mumbled it to herself a few miles away. Telegraphing ambushes builds tension in stories where you can’t influence how the heroes are ambushed, but when you can influence it it’s just really sloppy.

Hilda’s castle is really swaggy. She just waltzes out with seventeen Barons with the biggest non-holy thunder magic in the game and silver lances just in case. Above her are six more sleepdaves (remember my resist conundrum? I didn’t!) and the boss is just a Man In Robes, Face Half Shadowed. Her ambush is keyed to go off when you’re about halfway up the pass and all spread out (except you know about it so you’d be an idiot to actually do that) but…

As a failsafe, it triggers when you aggro her squad at all.

Yes, Scorpio, strike my defensive line that I formed because the monologue just told me your ambush was coming from the south.

I’m not that cheesy, though (actually I am but for different reasons) so I load back and do it right. The line you have to cross is approximately where Johalva’s nameplate is in this screenshot.

Scorpio is a bitch largely because he’s accompanied by three healers, he regenerates himself, and he’s holding the best bow in the game for random crits on your dudes.

Leicester finishes his ascension and slaughters approximately half of his brigade over three turns alone, but I didn’t take one thing into account!

I forgot to repair his weapon after Edda. Oops. Leicester fades and Faval moves in to replace him.

Faval is actually a horrible matchup for Scorpio. Scorpio has a higher hit rate than Faval, even when Faval’s on a mountain, and Scorpio gets random crits while Faval might or might not. Just leave behind a few scrubs to surround him on four sides and cut him to ribbons.

His custom conversation, captured in its entirety in these two screenshots, is among the best in the game.

As this is all going on, the north engages. In addition to huge durability, a few of Hilda’s daves have Reserve staves. It’s a meatgrinder, tell you what.

Man In Robes, Face Half Shadowed makes his final stand here, the last boss before Ishtar, Julius, and Manfroy.

Ares one-shots him later.

We grind the meat (Lana, Lana, Lana, but also Leif’s newfound magic proficiency) until we can finally break through and get Ares to Hilda.

Yeah, Hilda, yeah you do. Sorry. The rest of the squad gets to cower now while I raid down the sleepdaves. They’re not accessible, largely, at 2-range. The only way to kill them is to seize Freege and run all the way around through Ishtar and back and then you can engage them – or you could use fliers, and Fee should be able to resist Sleep.

Should.

What actually happened was four turns of Fee and Altenna killing two sleepdaves, then getting put to sleep. On the next turn, Ced would restore one, get danced for, and restore the other. They would kill two more, get put to sleep, and repeat. It was both really stupid and really funny.

Two castles to go.

Remember the plot element we spent the last like three chapters, most of the generation, chasing? These kids that were airlifted from Manster to Miletos, then escaped Miletos before we could get to them, now they’re in Belhalla?

Felipe: “I had secret orders from His Majesty to safeguard all the abducted children from Yurius.”

Celice: “You wh-!? You mean they’re all alright!?”

Felipe: “That’s correct. They are all safe and sound at the monastery here in town.”

Celice: “Wow… You sure did a fantastic job keeping that from Hilda.”

The game just introduces a new character to tell us that everything’s gucci. He’s going to be with us for the rest of the game. He has absolutely no function nor personality except as a loudspeaker beaming the plot straight to us. Nice job chasing the kids this whole time, there’s no payoff whatsoever, you don’t even see them at any point.

Felipe: “None of the soldiers came near the monastery for fear of retribution from the princess.”

Celice: “Princess Ishtar did that!?”

Felipe: “Her Highness is in truth a very caring individual. She took an interest in the children’s welfare right from the start. It was Her Highness after all who coordinated their escape from the Royal Palace.”

Celice: “Is that right… Well, everyone will be glad to know the children are safe. Sir Felipe, please accept my utmost gratitude.”

And here’s our resolution for the Ishtar plot, except for we’re going to kill her momentarily. Genealogy’s ultimate telling, not showing – Ishtar, uncharacteristically for everything we’ve seen about her thus far, including arguing with Arvis about releasing children just last chapter, has secretly been caring all along and has been hiding kids and nobody’s noticed. It’s not just Hilda, Ishtar’s stealing kids from Julius and Manfroy and they’re not noticing.

This is doubly great when you recall the details of Arvis and Ishtar’s conversation last chapter – Arvis was demanding that Ishtar release these kids, right now, and Ishtar was hesitant on the matter, but apparently Arvis had a guy in the capital who had secret orders to take the kids out of the capital, and Ishtar totally helped him. “Her Highness is in truth a very caring individual” says Felipe, when the only time Ishtar does something remotely like that is an offscreen event that’s done before we arrive that we never get the see the aftermath of. As far as our viewpoint is concerned, Felipe could just straight-up be lying, because these words are the end of the kids subplot.

Fortunately, after this dump at Freege I don’t have four pictures of heads talking in a row for the remainder of the game. I’m almost done. I’m almost done.

Levin: “Because we don’t stand a chance against Yurius without her power.”

Here’s another one to let sink in for you, then. Julia is either at Velthomer or Belhalla, but we’d better get Julia before we go to Belhalla, since Julius is also at Belhalla. What if Julia’s at Belhalla? We’re fucked, game over, that’s it. It’s a coin flip right now, in the final hour of confrontation, but there’s no acknowledgement of that fact. Lewyn even acknowledges again, in a sentence fragment, that we can’t kill Julius without Julia, without Naga. At no point during the game has he had anything under control – he actually hasn’t done anything besides point us in a few, occasionally wrong, directions, but he’s held up by both the narrative and the characters as the brains behind this entire operation. He’s the Platonic ideal of the Ideas Guy, the position every nerd who’s played a million video games and regularly edits a wiki thinks is a paid position on design teams, and he’s credited for it.

Meanwhile, Ishtar suicides on us because she thinks it’s her job. I’m not even joking. That’s her emotional depth in this scene.

Ishtar: “I mean no disrespect… but do understand I take great pride in being a warlock of Freege.”

Ishtar: “No… Of course not. I love you, Yurius. You know that.”

Yurius: “Heh heh… Alright, you do what you want. I’m not stopping you.”

This is Ishtar’s final act, to shore up the defenses so that mortals don’t get close to her beloved, who is impervious to mortal arms.

[Integrity]

I will not miss Ishtar, nor will I miss three more clones of Pamela, nor will I miss this game. This analysis has been amazing closure.

Arion’s back! Let’s take a quick digression to finish talking about him in his entirety, because, yes, three screenshots will completely finish Arion’s plot.

At the end of the turn, Arion shows up in the farthest southright corner of the map. His head almost completely blocks his entrance, which is one of the funniest things in this entire game to me. If he takes Chalphy, you get a game over, even though you’re on a death or glory charge against an immortal god right now. By the way, he starts three turns away from Chalphy. This is about as pointlessly dickish a move as a game can pull.

Somewhere after we annihilated his country’s military two chapters ago and occupied it and Julius teleported him out to safety, he managed to pick up a small squad of dracodaves. I have honestly no idea where he scrounged up elite Thracian dragonriders after what we did to his country, but such is life! He’s the same bitch to kill as he was in chapter 9, and you’re probably not meaningfully stronger since Genealogy’s units peak really early considering the length of the game. I might write an essay about power curves at some point because Genealogy’s power curve is kind of silly.

If you get Altenna to talk to him, he turns green. I’m including the conversation in spoilers if you really want to read it and not commenting much on it because it’s basically just Altenna trying the same tactics she tried on him in chapter 9 except this time he caves. He and his newly minted squad will follow Altenna. I don’t think he’s referenced in the epilogue except Seliph says something different to Altenna based on whether he lived or died.

[spoiler=thus spake arion] Altenna: “Areone… stop! Just what is it going to take for you to listen to me!?”

Areone: “Altenna!?”

Altenna: “You’re such a coward! You’re so caught up in your damn ego that you’ve completely lost track of what’s right!”

Areone: “So what are you suggesting I do!?”

Altenna: “Take a look at Prince Celice! Why do you think he’s out here putting his life on the line? Think about it for a minute.”

Areone: “So what? He’s in the right and I’m not somehow?”

Altenna: “Areone… If I can’t get through to you, then just finish me off and move on. My fate is in your hands…”

Areone: “Altenna… that’s enough. I… I see your point now. My final action as a mercenary shall be for Celi-… No, for you, Altenna. I fight for you.”

Altenna: “Oh, Areone…”

Good shit. Meanwhile, back with better characters,

Nah. Cockblocked. It’s Manfroy. Julia has a new evil sprite because she is being mind controlled and will probably die to your units unless you’ve been pumping her up.

See this intersection, where Ishtar is now? She’s shoring up Julius’ defenses by advancing on us at full tilt, natch, but to get Julia, Seliph has to run either past them (through Julia) or up north through that gap in the trees you can barely see, seize Velthomer from Manfroy, and go back to wherever Julia is and talk to her to recruit her. Then Julia has to walk (or be warped, thank Christ) to Velthomer to get the book of Naga. It’s convoluted and kind of silly, particularly since Julius and his evildaves will stand stock-still the whole time you’re at it if you don’t provoke them.

The final trio of pegasi are insanely annoying. They’re fliers with rings to boost their movement, they have magic swords that heal them at 2-range, they have very high evasion and speed and defense and resistance (this chick at 25 is strictly a statistically superior Fee, who is 30, and there are three of her, not counting skills), and they all have Awareness, so no shooting them out of the sky for you. By the way, the single downside of the Earth Sword is that it has ten uses, where every other non-staff in the entire game has fifty. You will note that their version does not, in fact, have ten uses.

On their first turn, they’ll always go for the triangle attack nonsense and attack at 1-range, so if Seliph or Ares can hit the 2x~50% to kill them without any skills or crits with Tyrfing or Mistoltin, they melt. If.

I get some dumb luck and get 2/3 on the enemy phase and put the third to sleep.

Ishtar, meanwhile, picked up a Barrier Ring between chapters, so she’s immune to your status effects now unless you have a capped Ced with the Magic Ring. You have to fight her fairly, so instead of doing that I abuse the living fuck out of saves and gank her with Slatesaber, since she’s the last boss in the game he can reasonably gank and I thought he deserved it.

Bye, bitch.

Here’s the beginning of Seliph and Ares’ exodus northrightwards.

See the liiiittle bit of red on the left? This is next turn. It’s a bit of a hike.

As the Dynamic Duo approach Velthomer, Julia makes it to us. She’s clean one-rounded by every single unit in my army, so I just silence her with Lana and wait. Spoiler: I have to apply Silence twice more before Seliph makes it back.

I have no screenshots of Manfroy’s fort full of daves. It was six? guys who all had Hel, which reduces HP to 1 if it hits. Manfroy himself has a siege tome. He’s a spectacular dick. Fortunately, there’s a church right there, which I haven’t explained at all because they’re largely irrelevant, but they heal anyone standing on them to full for a price based on their missing HP. Gold is easy to come by, but churches tend to be inconveniently placed and your healers do just fine.

Since the church heals anyone to full, Seliph can easily solo this. Kill all the bookdaves with whatever 1-2 range you want – hell, a javelin is good enough – because Hel can never kill you, just reduce you from 1hp to 1hp repeatedly, and they’ll walk out of Manfroy’s range happily.

If none of them hit you, great, go kill Manfroy with Tyrfing. If any of them hit you, great, stand on the church for one turn and then go kill Manfroy with Tyrfing. It’s a long run for a zero-skill zero-strategy payoff.

Good news, Manfroy actually dies if you do this. There’s bonus dialogue if you kill Julius without killing Manfroy first, in whichManfroy just kind of melts for no reason out of nowhere (seriously: W, what’s happening!? Oh no! The life-force of darkness is fading… Nyaagh… Loput… ou… su…”) and then Julia’s mind control is broken without Seliph needing to talk to her, but it would be silly for you to do that.

Oops but seriously, CED? Leen’s right there. Slate’s right there. Attack somebody helpless!

(load turn save, remember to reapply silence)

This is awesome. “Word is” from whom, exactly? Why do the villains know everything in the entire game world except this exact thing? Lewyn’s just heard on the street that Arvis put the book of Naga in Velthomer.

Felipe: “Now if we just knew the whereabouts of that circlet…”

Levin: “Hmm… The Empress’ circlet…”

And Felipe knows where the key is. And we, note: the heroes have no idea, know where the circlet is. The villains apparently knew none of these things, the only three things we could use to bring their entire plan crashing down. This story ends on the worst note and I never noticed the first time I played, good golly.

Nothing to talk about in this conversation. Seliph’s voice snaps Julia out of it. You can try to do this while Manfroy is alive, but it doesn’t work. Julia gets her nice portrait back. Special note that Lewyn is there with Seliph when he snaps Julia out of it, but he makes no comment about the circlet. The heroes never connect the dots, we have to do it for them – but when Julia makes it to Velthomer, the scene treats it like it’s no big thing. We’ll see momentarily.

So you warp Julia up to Velthomer, because walking would take for-fucking-ever, and you walk in.

And Lewyn’s first mention of the circlet besides “Hmm…” is just a casual “hey, Julia, try your circlet on this.” In a written (or 3d, even) work, this would be fine, since you could have characters wordlessly react to or notice the circlet, but in the Talking Heads Talking At Each Other format, there’s no way to convey that besides outright stating it. It’s logical that our mans talk about things behind the scenes, but the game is unpredictable at best at assuming that they do – sometimes it’s shit like this, where Lewyn obviously noticed the circlet off-camera; sometimes it’s shit like Sylvia’s Jealousy.

Whatever. It’s a four-line conversation and Julia gets the book of Naga. The stat bonuses from it are-

uh.

Right. Ahem.

The stat bonuses from it are insane. Julia is level seven and she’s now our arguably deadliest combatant even before factoring in that she negates Julius’ super special awesome half-damage-from-everything bonus. Good job, you got your last second superpower to kill Julius.

Julius has Meteor, and as soon as he fires the Dark Warlords (they’re actually called this) move out. They’re twelve Hard Lads using the best weapons money can buy.

They’re also, goofily enough, named one to twelve in German.

Honestly, though, we’re talking endgame shit here. They’re tough, but you’re tougher.

If Julius himself had been sanely designed, this would be a really good endpoint to the game from a gameplay perspective, or at least so close to one. The Dark Warlords are aggressive and will happily move out from beneath Julius’ Meteor bubble once they’re chasing you, and Julia (and probably Seliph) are coming south from Velthomer.

See, Genealogy has been cultivating this thing for much of the game – maybe deliberately, maybe not – that your holy weapon dudes are your dedicated boss killers, as in most other of your units shouldn’t even try to touch the bosses unless they’re overleveled which, due to a low level cap, will never be the case later in each generation. Julius is the ultimate realization of that; only Julia can hurt him appreciably, and only your holy weaponsmen can do varying degrees of chip damage to him. Everyone else is stuck doing nothing to him.

Where this falls apart in most of the other bosses in the lategames is that the daves in front of the boss protect the boss, so you need to chew through them and then have your army stand around while Ares rams into the boss repeatedly, Arvis. To add on to that, just because your holy weaponsmen are great boss killers doesn’t mean they’re not also great chaff killers, so it’s often best to just toss the holy weaponsmen forward and have them chew on the whole defense, then move forward and eat the boss. Thanks to Genealogy’s simple damage formula, not dying to the overscaled bosses means the holy weaponsman is likely to be able to tangle with the entire squad of daves and be relatively safe.

Julius is different. The Dark Warlords are straight up threatening, even to your holy weaponsmen, but they’re not overpowered filth that your other units can’t engage. They’re all locked to their weapon type – the swordsdave is stuck to 1-range, the bowdave to 2-, etc. – so there’s free chip to be had in places. They also, as a corollary, attack from a variety of ranges, with every weapon type in the game; you’d be hard pressed to find one person with a weapon (besides Forseti, but that weapon is the actual worst) that’s the best choice against all of them, or even a good choice.

This means that the Dark Warlords are actually best fought as an ensemble, one last team fight, and Julius isn’t really possible to fight without just using the one or two units you have by now who can engage him. Since the Dark Warlords come out to fight you, it wouldn’t be too hard to retool this fight such that your entire army draws them forward and engages them while Julia sneaks in and pops Julius while they’re busy. In fact, I’m not much of a fan of respawning enemies in these kinds of games, but this would be an awesome time for the Dark Warlords to be functionally invincible, respawning one full turn cycle after they die, so that your beleaguered lads just have to put up one last perpetual fight while the Velthomer brigade comes south to take the boss out. That would be an amazing final boss, something Fire Emblem has never accomplished. In fact, the final bosses of Fire Emblem are universally pretty badly designed, but we’ll get to each in sequence.

To put a more concrete picture in your head, this is actually, I just realized, the end of the plot to Myth: The Fallen Lords, an amazing game from Bungie in the late ‘90s. At the end of the game, Balor, the evil bad guy, is rousing this massive army to deliver the coup de grace to your side of the war, and your king hatches an evil plan. In the third-to-last mission, River of Blood, you control a very large (by Myth standards) force on the outskirts of Balor’s mustering ground. With them, you slide around the enemy to the crossing point over the titular River of Blood, murder the bridge guard, and fulfill your orders to just stand there and hold out against Balor’s infinite undead lads as long as possible. Once you’re in position, the scenario ends – the holdout is offscreen. The second-to-last mission, The Final Battle, has you taking a small section of your army on an assassination mission to kill Balor. You shepherd Alric, the NPC king (parallel to Julia here, I should have thought of this sooner) to Balor through Balor’s remaining guards who haven’t left yet, and Alric cuts off Balor’s head. Since Balor’s forces are undead, the snake withers without its leader and you eke out a pyrrhic victory.

Then you go and throw Balor’s head into a massive hole because it’s still alive and you can’t actually kill it so you just throw it away and walk off. It talks to you the whole time. It goes nuclear after you throw it in the hole, and I mean literally. That’s the final mission, The Great Devoid. The Myth games are weird.

Julius himself would need to be retooled pretty badly for this to happen – check out these odds, remembering that Julius heals every turn. To be fair, I have it approximately as badly as is possible right now, since I didn’t use Julia much when I had her just to make this specific point, but Julia at her peak can still only four? round him if I recall. Maybe three with straight hits.

Because of the length of this fight, everyone just stands around like dopes, just like every other Genealogy boss, except for Leen (to speed things up) and Jeanne (to keep Julia attacking as much as possible.)

Julius still has Wrath, also, so if you’re an idiot (me) and don’t park Julia in the door, he’ll just start deleting one person a turn with a Wrathed Meteor unless he’s above half health, and then you have to reload and consider your mistakes. I’m not a fan of this, particularly – but it would work in really well with the narrative I put together earlier. Without Julia/Seliph engaging him together, he would be able to provide hella killer support to the Dark Warlords, making your perpetual grind against them ineffectual and losing quickly. This forces you to split your Hugemen off to kill Julius, who is himself Huge, while using your pile of daves to engage his daves so that they don’t come home to kill your Hugemen who are fighting Julius.

Julia levels up from killing Julius eventually. That almost feels like bad manner, honestly. It takes like six turns, probably eleven rounds, but like I said that’s just about the worst case scenario.

Julius invented Tumblr rage capitalization before Tumblr was a twinkle in its maker’s eye. My Tumblr is cool, by the way. You should follow me and also revel in things like sexy men’s sexy naked torsos.

To cap off our journey, a little comical dragon flies out of Julius and spreads its wings, then explodes. The game continues to be playable until you seize Belhalla, which is helpful for getting things like unit kills and such from the fortune teller. I’m pushing through to the end of this Godforsaken game, though, so it’s time for unit shoutouts, optional conversations, and then the ending. My beer is open and there’s a second to my right. I will be wasted by the time I post this. I should open a Patreon so you can pay for my booze.

I’m doing a Top 5 here, and I’ll probably do something similar for every game after this. Ares is my fifth rated motherfucker of this game, because he put some serious work in at a blistering 71 kills. There’s a lot more killing to spread around the second generation, and Ares is very good at both doing it and wasting the worst of bosses. He was in love with Leen.

How could number four not be #LeicesterRising? He was worthless until I got that bow back from Faval, and then he rose to get 56 kills in like two and a half chapters. He became relevant. I may like Genealogy less now than I did when I started, but I sure as hell like Leicester more than I disliked Lester. He was in love with Tinny.

Fee. 86 kills, carried chapter 7 and a good part of chapter 9, plus her earrings are cute and she heals. She’s got one of the, uh, worst conversations coming up in the optional conversations, though, even though I like her a lot. She was in love with Slate.

He got one kill fewer than his dad. 77. Seliph’s always a brick, and he’s actually capable of killing Julius if you really need him to (it’s a horrible slog without a lot of Charisma), so he’s good and cool. Don’t forget his killer one-liners occasionally all over the place. He married Lana.

One hundred and eight kills.

Let’s move on to optional conversations. The optional conversations are much like the lover’s conversations in chapter 5, but they unlock after various castles at kind-of random rather than just at the beginning of the chapter. There’s also a little bit more variety, in that this is one of the points where there’s multiple kid-sub divergence conversations. At any rate, we’ll start with Jeanne. She’s got a great conversation with Leif that’s unique to her, and it is her only unique conversation in the game.

Janne: “But I…”

Leaf: “Look, anybody not of Crusader blood should not be out here fighting.”

Janne: “I know… I don’t mean to be a burden on everyone, but can’t I at least use my staff?”

Leaf: ”Hmm, you’ve got a point. Alright… but promise me you’ll stay well clear of any combat. As the queen of the New Thracia, I can’t afford to lose you.”

Janne: “Don’t worry, Leaf. I promise I’ll be careful.”

This isn’t even anything for Jeanne, except that she’s wildly less outgoing and quieter than Nanna, despite sharing every conversation with her except this one (and Nanna’s couple of Nanna-specific conversations). The point of this is that Leif has figured out that you should do nothing but deploy people with holy blood, all the time. :D

Jeanne’s remaining conversations are shared with Nanna except one. That one’s …Nanna with Ares. You’ll remember they’re cousins. They haven’t forgotten either.

Nanna: “Aless, take it easy out here. You still have a monumental task awaiting you.”

Aless: “I haven’t forgotten, believe me. I’ve no intention of dying in this war. I will not rest until Agustria has attained the glory my father envisioned for it.”

Nanna: “I know you can do it, Aless. Your father would be so proud of you…”

Aless: “But I can’t do it alone, Nanna. I need you.”

Nanna: “Of course, Aless. My life is yours. I’m not making the same mistake my mother did.”

Aless: “What… his own sister fell in love with him?”

Nanna: “Yes… she did. But it’s not all that strange, really. They had different mothers.”

Aless: “Hey, that reminds me. You and I are cousins, aren’t we…”

Nanna: “Yeah, that’ s right. Hehehe…”

Yep. I was wrong, many days ago. It’s still unsaid whether this is a one-way crush or a mutual love, but it’s definitely there. Raquesis was, in fact, a fister sister. Congratulations, Genealogy, this isn’t even the last instance of last-second incest you’re going to throw at me. Fuck you, Genealogy. It’s not that strange. They were only half-siblings. Nothing else Nanna says or does in the final minutes of the game are even noteworthy. She has conversations with Seliph and Leif and my only notes for them are “whatever.” I’m not going to bother to look them up.

Patches has three actually pretty different conversations (Sel, Shanan, Leicester) held together by one theme: she makes them all lunch. It’s actually cute, I like it, it’s a coherent characterizing theme without just copy-pasting her conversations for each potential husband she could have, like Genealogy has already done before. In her Shanan one, for instance, she makes him lunch, and he’s kind of a bitch to her about it (“What do you think this is, a picnic or something?”) but he eventually accepts it and eats it. On the other hand, with Leicester, she makes him a huge lunch, and he eats it, and he loves it, and he loves her cooking, and she loves him. It strikes a good contrast between the different men she makes lunches for, while preserving her own character trying the same thing for vastly different personalities. I’m going to give Genealogy an unironic gold star for this one.

Daisy has a single conversation, with Dimna (not-Leicester), about how they both fucking suck. It’s not incorrect. It’s boring and sad. I will not transcribe it.

Lana is the opposite of Patches. Two out of three of her conversations are word for word the same, just like her mom.

Rana: “[skasaher/Faval]…”

[Skasaher/Faval]: “What’s up?”

Rana: “You make me proud, you know that?”

[Skasaher/Faval]: “Hey, what’re you gettin’ all sentimental on me for?”

Rana: “[skasaher/Faval], you promise me you won’t get killed out here, okay?”

[Skasaher/Faval]: “Don’t you worry… I’d never leave you.”

Rana: “[skasaher/Faval]… …”

[Skasaher/Faval]: “…yeah?”

Rana: “…I love you.”

Every. Single. Word. Her one with Seliph centers kind of around how they’re childhood friends and she feels bad for Julia (also “Well, I don’t know if I’ve actually done anything…” shut the fuck up Lana) so there’s really not much.

Mana has a special conversation with Assholio and it’s kind of cute but you guys don’t know either of them so I’m not going to bother, honestly.

Tinny’s special because she’s got a conversation with Arthur, but only if she doesn’t have a lover. She’s also got three lover conversations that are pretty different, and none of them have too much about them. The Seliph one has him largely steamrolling her and, weirdly, has the most characterization out of them. The /Ced one has nothing, but it’s sweet. The /Leif one is like Sel’s, but toned way down. That’s pretty much it. The focus for Tinny is her conversation with Arthur, and its contrast to Linda’s conversation with Amid.

[spoiler=tinny and arthur] Arthur: “Tinny, we’re getting pretty close to mother’s homeland.”

Tinny: “Yeah… I wish I could be happier about it. What’re you thinking?”

Arthur: “I’ve resented the Freeges since the day they took you and mother away from me. I can’t tell you how much I’ve wanted to smash their skulls in…”

Tinny: “But, you know… Uncle Blume, Ishtar, and Ishtor weren’t really that bad… I mean… they were nice to me and mum, at least.”

Arthur: “It was Hilda, wasn’t it…”

Tinny: “Uh-huh. I hate her so much, Arthur… I’d kill her myself if I could!”

Arthur: “Tinny, no one’s ever going to lay a hand on you again. You’ve got my word!”

You can’t fire off this conversation after taking Freege, by the by, Genealogy paid that much attention at least. Blume was absolutely a bitch to Tinny in the single interaction we saw them in, I don’t know what she’s talking about, but it basically just highlights that Hilda is horrible and needs to die. What about Amid and Linda, then?

[spoiler=amid and linda] Amid: “Linda, we’re getting pretty close to mother’s homeland.”

Linda: “Yeah… I wish I could be happier about it. What’re you thinking?”

Amid: “I’ve resented the Freeges since the day they took you and mother away from me. I can’t tell you how much I’ve wanted to smash their skulls in…”

Linda: “Hey Amid, what made mum defect Freege and join Sigurd’s army?”

Amid: “She joined because her sister died fighting for Sigurd’s army. The two were real close.”

Linda: “She was our aunt, huh…”

Amid: “Yeah. I think her name was Tiltyu.”

Linda: “She died in battle… How sad…”

This conversation is really funny for a few reasons. First, it just straight up assumes the only reason Tiltyu didn’t get married is because you sucked and let her die. Second, Amid and Linda’s mom happens to be Tiltyu’s totally unmentioned sister, like a bad self-insert fanfiction. Third, Amid and Linda’s mom was actually in with your forces all along and you had no idea, but she joined you because Tiltyu died fighting for you. It’s the absolute culmination of the subs being the kids with the serial numbers filed off that I’ve been talking about since chapter 8, since these two have the same exact conversation about Freege as the kids do. By the way, Amid and Linda do have minor Tordo blood, so Tiltyu’s sister just lost the genetic lottery and her kids got screwed. Holy blood is such a dumb story mechanic.

Aight, we’re almost done with this. Larcei has four conversations, technically, but only because two of those are with Johan and Johalva. Johan is precisely how he’s always been (“Love makes no mistakes, my darling. Now let’s see a smile!”) and Larcei is just slightly less dismissive of him than we’re used to. It’s like looking at somebody’s ideal tsundere anime relationship from the outside; it’s pathetic. Sel’s nothing. Shanan’s, uh, summed up by these two lines:

Lakche: “Absolutely not! I’m not a child anymore, you know.”

Shanan: “Heh… Could’ve fooled me.”

Bear in mind that gameplay-wise they’re married now. What?

Johalva’s is decent, though.

Lakche: “Johalva, you okay?”

Johalva: “This battle is proving to be a tough one… even for me. At least we got Dozel back… Alright, I’m going back in.”

Lakche: “You be careful out here! You’re the one who has to get the duchy back on its feet.”

Johalva: “Yeah, I know… Besides, I’d never get over my father’s and brothers’ deaths if I left things as they are. Lakche, you’re with me on this one, aren’t you?”

Lakche: “Uh-huh. I guess you could say I sort of owe you.”

Johalva: “Yeow… that’s my girl! You’re the best, Lakche!”

Lakche: “Johalva, you freak!”

Okay, sure, it’s anime as fuck, but Johalva does one up on most Genealogy characters and acknowledges that you’ve murdered his entire family to get to this point. Without hyperbole. Unless you married Lex to someone and their kids are alive, there is no named Neir-blooded character in the game who is alive besides Johalva. On the other hand, this conversation doesn’t update to reflect if you do have Lex’s kids alive. Genealogy makes a half-step in the right direction. Radney has nothing different from Larcei.

That brings us to... Fee. Fee has two conversations of note, and one with Arthur that’s just more of the same that we’ve seen. Her /Seliph conversation isn’t too much of note, except that she drops the bombshell that Isaach is rioting now to get free of the empire – didn’t we start this whole generation by freeing Isaach from the empire? Sheesh. Her other conversation is, uh, Oifaye. Yes, the same Oifaye who’s like 35 by now, while Fee is probably 15. Remember, Fury didn’t have both kids when the first generation ended seventeen years ago!

Fee: “Oifey, how about I go get a close up on the enemy?”

Oifey: “That’s not a good idea, Fee. They’d shoot you right out of the sky.”

Fee: “Oifey.. um…”

Oifey: “What’s on your mind, Fee?”

Fee: “It’s really admirable that you’ve devoted your life to keeping Prince Celice safe.”

Oifey: “Hm… We abandoned Sir Sigurd’s army right at the battle’s peak. It’s not something I’m proud of. But the mission awaiting us was a fate worse than death. That went for your folks as well.”

Fee: “I feel I’ve gotten to know my parents better recently… like the kind of lives they lived. All the talks we’ve had together have really helped clear up my past, Oifey.”

Oifey: “Well, Fury helped me out a lot back then. Perhaps I’ve been able to repay some of that debt to her through you.”

Fee: “I still have so much to learn from you, Oifey. I want to be more grown-up.”

Oifey: “There’s no need to rush yourself, Fee. That’ll happen in good time.”

Fee: “Oifey! You gotta let me catch up before you get all old on me!”

Oifey: “Whoa… Hold on a second there!”

Editing these conversations is pretty hard when you’re quite drunk, and I can’t think of anything to say that the conversation doesn’t already, Jesus, they’re getting married for fuck’s sake and they’re talking like this, but whatever. Moving on. That’s all the optional content and we can get to the epilogue.

Hilariously, the epilogue is broken in the patch that everyone used and didn’t attempt to improve upon for years. Please, please, give a silent prayer or something to bookofholsety, because he did God’s work fixing this bullshit. We’re going in text-only.

Seliph is surprised when Lewyn tells him that he’s going to be the king of the new united Gran empire. I have literally no idea how this surprises him, but it’s fucking Genealogy by this point, who even knows. The epilogue of Genealogy is actually pretty reactive, and you can read the whole text here if you’re interested, but it does a lot of determining who is whose kid and who’s dead and etc. etc. It’s a really good use of if-elseif-else statements considering the year it was coded in. I’ll cover our version of the epilogue and choice things from the rest of it. It progresses by country.

For Isaach, Shanan is the rightful ruler and speaks to us as such. He talks casually to Seliph, largely because he raised him, and if he has a wife his wife calls him on talking to us casually for no fucking reason. Then when he’s like “what, I have to call him King Seliph now?” they think he’s angry and back off. It’s the most surreal shit. Patches married him, by the way. If he’s dead, Slate gets the throne; if they’re both dead. Larc gets the throne and a sad conversation. Interestingly, the Genealogy programmers remembered to put distinctions between multiple and single people leaving for Isaach, and have special conversations for if Larcei had a lover who died. There’s a bizarre amount of effort put into this epilogue compared to the rest of the game’s writing, and I sincerely recommend you read the link if you’re curious.

Leif takes over the New Thracia, which it’s actually called. He married Jeanne, so she comes with him to rule the country. If he doesn’t, Altenna does. Speaking of Altenna, this conversation …happens.

If Arion is alive (if Leaf is dead in this case, the conversation is unchanged)

Celice: “It would be great if Arion could lend his strength to your cause, wouldn’t it….?”

Althena: “That is…..that’s meaningless yet. But sometime, someday…the time will come…”

If Arion is dead

Celice: “I’m sorry about what happened to Arion…you loved him, didn’t you?”

Althena: “Please do not speak of that again! It’s….ended…and over…”

Thanks for that, Genealogy. Altenna fell in love with Arion when she thought he was her brother. Awesome. Everyone else who’s from Thracia goes back to Thracia, including Carpool if he’s not the king of anywhere else (he is with us), but there’s one more order of business. There’s a bizarre fucking conversation if Patches is Sharlow (not-Carpool)’s lover:

Patty: “Sharlowe, you’re so cute, you know that? Listen, how about you let me be your big sister from now on, huh?”

Sharlowe: “Eh, you mean, Miss Patty? But why?”

Patty: “Hee hee, you’re still really a kid. Well, nevermind. If you don’t understand now, you’ll understand someday.”

I just, I don’t even know anymore. I can’t even deal with this shit anymore. I’ve had too much to drink and it’s too late at night.

Ares leads the United Agustria. His conversation with Seliph involves how their fathers “believed in each other toward the very end” which is patently untrue considering Sigurd tried to talk Eldigan down from siding with the obviously evil Shagall like three times before having to either kill him or have him killed. Whatever, screw you guys. If Leen doesn’t have a lover she, uh…

Lynn: “Hee hee, Lord Celice...you’re trying to make me feel better. But really, it’s OK this way. I still have my dancing, after all… I’ve always been alone. So from now on, I’ll just continue to live my life out alone.”

That happens. Right. If Diarmaid (actually Tristan) has a lover, Seliph has an amazing line about it:

Celice: “You, [charname]? A, ah, so that’s how it is. Well, I don’t really know anything about it, but congratulations.”

It doesn’t matter who she is, Seliph says it. I have no idea why he’s so mad somebody loves Diarmaid, but I don’t mind. He’s stupid. Tristan’s conversation drops the knowledge on us that Agustria is “still engulfed in the flames of war” so apparently that uprising that happened in chapter 10 didn’t go so well.

What about Banditdom? Jamke’s son inherits Verdane. That means that Slatesaber assumes his rightful place as king of the bandit land. God bless. My notes on the entire Verdane part of the conversation are, quote, “jamke’s son gets verdane GO SLATE”, line break, “SLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE”. If he has a lover, he’ll insist that they stay, they’ll say “NO I’M GOING” and he’ll immediately cave to their demands, doesn’t matter who the lover is. There’s three different conversations that can occur, but they all have the same result.

On to the motherland. Seliph takes over the motherland, obviously, but there’s a ton of squabbling kingdoms within it. Faval takes Jungby unless his dad takes one of the other countries, and I honestly don’t remember who Faval’s dad is right now, Lex? If it’s Lex, Patches is actually getting Jungby. He has a ton of identically-worded conversations with his lovers. Awesome. Patches has a special conversation for if she takes over Jungby but, uh, she also has a special conversation for if she fell in love and her lover died. Respect this trigger warning.

[spoiler=trigger warning unironically] Celice : Patty? Are you crying?

Patty: “Yeah...I am...*sobsob*”

Celice: “This is about [charname], huh...you really do like him, after all...”

Patty: “I like him...I really really love him...Lord Celice…I…What should I do? What can I ever do?”

Celice: “I don’t know either, Patty...but...be strong. You’ve got to live on and be strong. No matter what sorrows befall you, you can’t let it get the best of you. You can’t just give up, Patty. You can’t.”

Patty: “Y, yeah...I’ll try...but Lord Celice, can I ask for one little thing? ...Please, can you hold me while I cry?”

Celice: “...Patty...”

This is probably one of the worst endings any character in Fire Emblem can possibly get, honestly. Jesus Christ.

Leicester goes to Jungby if he doesn’t inherit a country and his wife talks about coming around all the time. It’s particularly great in the case of Patches, Fee, or Leen, because they actually say “Isn’t that grand?” about it. Lana, meanwhile, rubs it in your fucking face if you don’t marry her to Seliph. Like, holy shit game.

No Lover/Not going to father’s

Celice: “Lana...I’m sorry.”

Lana: “...”

Celice: “Lester said you were angry...”

Lana: “That’s because you...but it’s all right. I’ll just be going back to Jungby. So, farewell, Sir Celice.”

Celice: “Lana...”

Inheriting Jungby

Celice: “Lana...about how you’re going to rule Jungby and all that...”

Lana: “Yes, I’ve never thought it’d end up this way either. But I get to stay beside you...to help you. That makes me more than happy enough.”

Celice: “I wanted to stay around you for always, too...but fate is a strange thing, isn’t it?”

Lana: “Yes, really...”

Isn’t it subtle how the game ships them?

Meanwhile in Freege, Arthur can’t forgive “Reptor or that Blume son of his” which is perplexing since we murdered Reptor before Arthur was even born. I don’t even know. Oh, and hey, Genealogy turned out to have all that incest I’ve been insisting it didn’t have crammed into the fucking epilogue. Fuck Genealogy.

Celice: “You and Arthur are really close to each other, eh?”

Teeny: “That’s because...I like him...”

Awesome. If Tinny has a lover, this doesn’t come up, but if her lover is dead, she doesn’t have a crying conversation like Patches did, she talks about how she’ll “move on” and how “lovely” her brother is. The translator in the link I opened with even tried to make it not sound incestuous, for Christ’s sake. I’m about done here.

Lex’s son, Faval I guess, gets Dozel. There’s nothing else to say about it. If he’s dead or Lex didn’t get married or whatever, Johanalva gets it instead. This is unique because Johan gets his first and only non comic relief conversation in the entire game:

Johan: “Your Majesty, thanks for everything.”

Celice: “Take good care of Dozul, Prince Johan.”

Johan: “Going home won’t exactly be a pleasant business, but I just have to atone for my father and my brother’s crime. I wonder if the people will ever be able to forgive me…”

Celice: “It’s because of you and your strength that we won this war the way we did. The people knows. And your kindness, too. Everybody knows.”

Johan: “Thank you, Your Majesty. If it’s at all possible, please forgive House Dozul for our wrongs.”

Celice: “Of course, Prince Johan. Please lend me your strength, for Grandbell’s sake and the world’s as well.”

Johan: “Of course, my lord. Our loyalty towards the throne will never falter for as long as eternity lasts. I swear this. I promise.”

Johalva’s line is pretty great, too:

Johalvier: “Hnn, can’t be helped. This is the only way that’s me, you know. Well, Celice, you do your best. I’ll be going now. Later!”

Claude’s son gets Edda. Great. Claude’s daughter retires to the cloister in Edda as well, even if it’s fucking Leen or Larcei or someone else totally uncharacterized by this.

Leicester, being Azel’s son, gets Velthomer. Seliph acknowledges in this conversation that Arvis was “only swept along with fate, a sad man.” Leicesters also confirms in this conversation that there is a Fire Emblem in this game! It’s the symbol of House Velthomer.

Oifaye goes back to Chalphy to rule it in your absence. Seliph stays in Belhalla as the new emperor. Cedric goes back to Silesia with Fee, who’s pretty chipper in her conversation. Even if her lover dies, she tries to put on a strong face about it. The conversations only differ by tone until their latter third, it’s a pretty good change for something you probably won’t ever see. For instance, compare:

Fee: “Yessir!”

Celice: “Is your pegasus Manhya fine?”

Fee: “She’s super.”

Celice: “And Fee?”

Fee: “‘S course, I’m doing great.”

Celice: “Hahaha, that’s just like you, Fee.”

With

Fee: “Yes...”

Celice: “Is your pegasus Manhya fine?”

Fee: “She’s fine...”

Celice: “And Fee?”

Fee: “Not so fine...”

Celice: “About [charname]?”

It’s almost subtle for Genealogy’s standards, let’s be real here.

Lewyn’s son leaves with Lewyn, intending to grow up like Lewyn and breaking my heart, Carpool. Lewyn, at the last minute, abandons both his kids casually. He just leaves them to rule Silesia, with no experience, without him, with the line “You’re being emotional, [charname]. I’d like it if you’ll refrain from embarrassing me any further. You should already understand what I mean. Isn’t that right, [charname]?” Fuck you, Lewyn.

And then, at the end, finally, Seliph just straight up calls him a dragon.

Celice: “Yes, I understand now. I’ve always heard that Dragonkind fears involvement in the world of Man...but you’re different. You broke that rule. You guided us. I, everyone, everything in this earth, will never forget the debt we owe you, Levin...no...warrior of a distant land, Holsety of the Wind...”

That’s the end text of Genealogy. Fuck you, Lewyn.

[N30]

That was a good read. I can't wait for FE5.

[Parrhesia]

Let's Play the Fire Emblem Series - Fuck You Lewyn

[Katie]

Will you be covering Gaiden at all?

[General Horace]

promoted Julia has a very real shot at just killing julius in one round of combat, he can proc charge and kill himself and she can proc continue (both ignore nihil)

Is meteor wrath actually a thing? Thats pretty hilarious if it is.

[Parrhesia]

Will you be covering Gaiden at all?

Which ones will it be, then?

We're going to start with FE4. The ones before that either have remakes (FE1/3) or don't have a story (FE2). Plus, I already did a LP of FE2 somewhere as a younger Integrity, and I'm already going to be retreading FE5. Plus plus, I don't want to torture myself with NES - it's already hard enough to do GBA (let alone SNES) after the DS/3DS ones.

right in the op

[Integrity]

promoted Julia has a very real shot at just killing julius in one round of combat, he can proc charge and kill himself and she can proc continue (both ignore nihil)

i never knew this, actually, neat. i did see continue activate once or twice when i was doing it this time, i think, but i was on zero brain and literally just holding turbo mode the whole fight

Is meteor wrath actually a thing? Thats pretty hilarious if it is.

yep. if you stand in the gate, he'll sally forth to fight instead of using meteor, but if nobody's gumming him up he's happy to drop a like 80 damage meteor once a turn.

[Moblin Major General]

One would hope Project Naga fixed the narrative issues, but if you ignore the plot and insert your own, it could definitely become more interesting. So as the literary critic, on a scale of nonsense to Pulitzer Prize, how do you rate Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War?

[Integrity]

the plot in the second generation was worse than i remembered overall, but the high point (arvis) was better than i remembered.

overall, i'd say the game's plot was quite bad, but in the infuriating way where there's glimmers of something great peeking through. it's close enough that a localization team with little regard for fidelity could make it into a solid 7/10, but to actually make it good would take an overhaul of the game's flow in addition to that.

[Balcerzak]

Im probably sick to death of updating by the time you see this because imgurs lovely new beta :) fucked up the order of my images, so I have to comb through them every time I want a picture.

May have more comments when I finish reading your massive contribution, but wanted to get this out of the way before I forgot.

[Integrity]

god bless you

[Serpent of Sheol]

hot damn that was a good read