Alastor plays and ranks the whole series! Mission Complete! ...For now.

[Alastor15243]

8 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Just tested this, and as far as I can tell, no, but once they are talked to they become green units that can be rescued and moved out of the way. Luckily I had a random save from when I decided to do both routes for the new translation that was on this chapter.

Thanks for testing that!

[Jotari]

12 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Strangely, her Chapter 16B recruitment tells you a whole lot more. From the old translation.:

  Hide contents

Sara:
“You seem to be having fun, Rinecock.”

Rinecock (boss of 16B):
“Lady Sara!? You musn’t come out here. Please return to your room.”

Sara:
“But I’m bored. Where’s Grandpa?”

Rinecock:
“Bishop Manfroy is in Conort with Lord Yurius. He should be returning soon…”

Sara:
“I shouldn’t have come here… It’s so boring.”

2nd Turn

Sara:
“Huh…? Who…who are you…?”

Rinecock:
“Lady Sara? Is something wrong?”

Sara:
“No…it’s nothing. Rinecock, can I go out for a walk?”

Rinecock:
“N-No, Lady Sara. Please… You must stay put.”

Conversation (Seiram, Sara)

Seiram:
“Lady Sara!? What are you doing here?”

Sara:
“Who are you? I don’t know you.”

Seiram:
“Ah… I was once a Lopto priest, but there is no way you would know me.”

Sara:
“Oh… But I have no need for you. I’m looking for the voice.”

Seiram:
“Voice?”

Sara:
“A beautiful voice… It’s crying out for me. It’s saying,
‘Help, help…'”

Seiram:
“…I see… Lady Sara, the granddaughter of Bishop Manfroy, can use the Staff of Kia…”

Sara:
“Oh… See you, Seiram…”

Conversation (Leaf, Sara)

Leaf:
“Huh? What’s a girl doing here…?”

Sara:
“……”

Leaf:
“Who are you? Are you alone?”

Sara:
“Hmm… So this is you…”

Leaf:
“Huh? What do you mean?”

Sara:
“Ahaha… I knew it. All right, I’ll help you.”

Leaf:
“What do I do… Where are Dorias and August when I need them…”

Sara:
“I’m Sara. I know all about you. Your name is Leaf. You’re the prince of Lenster. Your father is named Cuan. Your mother was a pretty woman named Ethlin, but she died.”

Leaf:
“! ……”

Sara:
“You don’t have to look like that. My parents are dead, too. Mama died when I still little. Papa…was killed by Grandpa because he loved Mama. It was before I was born.”

Leaf:
“……”

Sara:
“You were calling for me. So I’m offering to help. But if you’re just going to call me a nuisance, then fine!”

Leaf:
“Wait! I…I can’t let you go. I need to know more about you. Will you come with us?”

Sara:
“Well…okay. I like your voice, Leaf.”

Leaf:
“Thank you…Sara…”

 

Silence exists, don't forget. It is nearly as good as Sleep on mages.

B route is also just better plotwise as it has Miranda which gives a hell of a bigger justification for Leif's actions after Chapter 19 than some random old lady.

[Jotari]

Double posting because Serenes is being Serenes. Just want to say, recruit Xavier. It's a pain that needs to be felt.

[Alastor15243]

Thracia Day 27: Chapter 18

I was going to at least check to see if I could come up with a viable strategy for recruiting Xavier. I actually got pretty close. I figured I had a few options:

1: Staff and sword rank grind Nanna in this level until she gains one more staff and sword rank, then give her a sleep sword and rewarp staff, and have her get herself surrounded by four sleeping enemies before warping away to do another group, kill the four Friege knights in the process, then warp out of the room, bait Xavier over to the east door, unlock the west door, capture the two Leonster soldiers standing at the door, and then let the villagers head in to talk to their loved ones, sending Nanna back in with the rewarp staff to capture the other door's Leonster guards if they make any funny movements towards the NPCs.

Take note: This is the simplest plan I could come up with, and it took me a paragraph-long sentence to lay out.

2: Put one sleep sword user on either side of this forked deployment-

And that was when I hit a brick wall.

Because this fucking game has forked deployment groups completely cut off from each other, and the game gives you next to no control over who goes where.

I just can't fathom how Kaga never managed to get the idea that controlling unit placement was an important concept in his five games and nine fucking years running the franchise.

Okay.

So.

This recruitment... is all kinds of dumb.

Not because it's hard. Though again, no unit short of Haar could justify this kind of recruitment difficulty.

But because the reasons its hard are suspension-of-disbelief-shatteringly stupid.

It's not hard because you need to rescue their loved ones and safely escort them to them.

It's hard because the entire time, they act like standard red and green units when it makes literally no sense. The second you turn one of them green, not only will the other ones immediately kill him even if their own loved ones are in direct line of sight, but the guy you just turned green will go on to kill the red ones, even if they're sleeping and defenseless! And to top it all off, Xavier will continue to fight you while you're attempting all of this!

Not to mention, even this relatively painless method with the sleep swords is based on a fucking glitch! It's not supposed to work, because you're not supposed to be able to talk to sleeping units! And if it isn't a glitch, if that actually is intentional, if they made it so NPCs and only NPCs can do that on purpose because that's part of the intended secret reliable method, then fuck you Shouzou Kaga, you degenerate mad king, cackling as you watch the burning streets of your crumbling kingdom from atop a throne of lies and frozen spite!

The second the captured civilians pour into the throne room, that should be it. Xavier's men should all turn green at once, and the object should now be to keep them alive while they fight with the Friegian soldiers in the room with them. It should be like that chapter in Gaiden where merely having Tatiana with you is enough to turn Zeke's army to your side from the start of the map.

I'm not going to try this. I'm gonna try to get the member card, but that's it. Now, let's see the dialogue for this chapter and work out who goes where:

Leif: Augustus, are you certain this is a good idea, splitting our forces in two like this?

Augustus: It's a necessary maneuver if we wish to claim the castle's treasure for ourselves. Besides, rescuing the hostages will require two teams working in tandem.

Leif: Granted, Augustus... but...

Augustus: Yes, Leif? If you've an objection to my plan, now would be the time to mention it.

Leif: Forgive me for doubting your strategy, sir... but surely you could have found a better system for splitting them up than playing “Eeny, Meeny, Miny Moe”?

Augustus: DO NOT MOCK THE EENY MEENY MINY MOE, YOUNG PRINCE! IT HAS MORE POWER AND WISDOM THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY COMPREHEND!

Also, I can't believe this isn't a meme:

That pretty much sums it up. Alright, time to work out where the units I've deployed are going to wind up:

On the west side I have Leif, Callion, Olwen, Safiya, Lara, Tina, Asbel and Sarah.

On the east side I have Tanya, Orsin, Pan, Lithis, Salem, Mareeta and Schroff.

This isn't too bad, at least when it comes to deployment. I have at least one lockpick user on each side, and guys who can capture everyone relevant on each side too. I also have Tanya with Orsin, and Olwen, Asbel and Callion with Leif, so I can make use of auras if that proves necessary.

Another plus side is that I'm going to be rolling in so many javelins when I'm done with this chapter that I think I'll basically feel free to use them with abandon from this point on. I think I'm running out of chapters in which my mounted units can use them. And then for the remaining chapters, I'll use my hoarded magic swords.

Alright, so, I'm going to try and get the member card, despite never really getting much money due to my aversion to selling shit. I've decided I'm not going to bother trying to recruit Xavier, but I am going to let him live.

Actually, speaking of not having much money... I just realized I have a shitton of Jormungand tomes, and then I remembered: Jormungand sucks! Let's sell literally all of them!

This, along with selling some other things like some excess armorslayers I realized I never use, gave me roughly 19,000 gold right there.

...Okay, I'm gonna level with you guys. I'm not having fun at this moment. Like, at all. This game is becoming stressful. During the entire time I've played this game since around yesterday, I've constantly had this bizarre sort of tingling, lack-of-sleep-except-I've-been-sleeping-fine headache since yesterday, the kind of headache that I suspect small children respond to by breaking down and whining incoherently on the floor. And at this moment, a big part of it is this fucking atrocious menu. Honestly, despite the usability objectively being only a little below Genalogy, I am sorely tempted to put it just barely above Dark Dragon, simply for how much it demands I do with the shitty parts of its interface. Preparing for this chapter is an absolute shitshow. Not only does this game give you shockingly little control over who goes where, but you can't even see where they'll be while you're outfitting them. And while yes, every game so far but Genealogy has done this, what they haven't done is demand this much preparation and strategy be squeezed through this terrible system. This game's atrocious battle prep interface has given me new appreciation for the near-perfection that is Fates's. Of course, what also helps is that Fates cuts down the prep you need to do by getting rid of weapon durability, which, I'm now starkly appreciating, makes for a lot less annoying fiddling with characters' inventories between battles.

But I'm done bitching about this game and eating up daylight hours. Time to actually play the map. I've gotten my inventories sorted out, and I think I should be able to handle this. I probably should even be able to get the member card.

First thing I do is use the first use of Tina's unlock staff to get the body ring from the chest I know I have no chance in hell of getting to without a warp staff.

Next, I have Lara unlock the west door, and have Asbel block the door, and Callion charge through it to chase after what must be an absolutely terrified thief. He's on foot and he's a match for my fastest fliers and riders. The only one faster than him right now is Leif, thanks to the leg ring I gave him last chapter.

Meanwhile I have both of these two use skill scrolls. Callion uses Nihil, so that he can more safely capture skilled enemies with his 20 con, and Asbel uses Sol, so that in the event that his dodgetanking fails, he can hopefully heal himself up before another unlucky 1% hit finishes him off.

I just got back from some stuff I had to do today, and it suddenly occurs to me why the preparation screen is something I've been finding so frustrating lately: I'm looking at all the shit I can get and getting frustrated at how annoying it's going to be to get it all. This game really, really brings out the perfectionist in me, and I hate that. I can't really fault this game for how much it annoys me whenever I have to miss out on shit, but I can fault the game for making the act of getting the extra shit annoying and boring, because getting all the bonus shit is literally all the challenge there is to this chapter.

See, standards of survival have actually been shockingly lenient lately. I don't think I've been genuinely scared for any character's life since like my first attempt of chapter 12. What's frustrated me hasn't been the battles that have been thrown at me. It's been the bunch of annoying extra hoops I have to jump through to get all the cool shit, which I don't find nearly as engaging. There should not be a gap this wide between “figuring out how to survive” and “figuring out how to get everything”. There should be some gap, but here the gap is so wide that I'm finding myself in the exact same situation I found myself in with Mystery of the Emblem, where figuring out how to actually beat the levels has been absolutely trivial, and the real “challenge” was to figure out how to absolutely optimize my army by feeding as much exp as I can into people with star shards.

I mean, take this map for instance: there are no enemy staff users, no major reinforcements, and most of the enemies in the map are deliberately made pathetically weak. The actual threat to my army's life is basically nonexistent. But the threat to all the potential shit I can get in this level is nigh-astronomical. Technically speaking, this map is a cakewalk. But from the perspective of a perfectionist, it's an outrageous living nightmare. I have to split up my party, so I can't do nearly as much scroll-training as I want to. Tons of enemies can only be defeated by capturing if I want the member card, but they're still standing in the way of critical shit I really don't want them standing in the way of. There are thieves backed up by dancers gunning for treasure it's impossible to get without magical assistance.

And Xavier. Xavier is so unbelievably picky about recruitment that he probably just deserves to die.

And they also try to trip you up by sending out Friegian reinforcements of the exact same class as the guys you're supposed to keep alive, with the only difference being their stats and what they're carrying.

And to add on to what I said before, they keep throwing out tempting shit for you to steal, with rewarp-holding reinforcement dark mages, a prelude to the fenrir-holding dark mages who are going to be coming later. I'll have to rush that staircase with all of the units I put on the east side until further notice.

...Quick update.

...Things haven't been too bad, honestly. I gave up entirely on chasing the thieves and dancers for their shit, aside from using the unlock staff to secure the body ring. And after that, and after plugging up the staircase the dark mages are going to come from with Pan... things have calmed down a good bit. They aren't hard, or fun, and this isn't anything I'm remotely in a mood to do over, but I've calmed down from the initial stress of planning. I'm feeding a lot of reinforcement kills into Olwen, Callion and Asbel, and they're getting some pretty decent level ups. Olwen even got move!

But honestly, without the treasure chase, the east side has basically nothing to do. They're just waiting until the west side is ready to charge. The reinforcements aren't showing up because the first thunder mage never moved, because there was never anywhere for him to go, because I never opened that door to where all the dancers and thieves were. They could try to get some more Jormungand and Rewarp staves, but I'm not keen on dealing with poison, especially since I was damned lucky not getting poisoned on the way over to seal that staircase off.

Now the thunder mage reinforcements show up on the west side, and it's time for me to steal all of their shit so I can replenish my nearly-empty supply of magic. I should have enough for a whiiiiile after this is done.

Callion's reached A rank swords, which means he can use the master sword... and not much else. Yes, he can use sleep swords now, but he's waaaaaaay too powerful to be trusting with non-lethal weapons. Especially since sleep swords don't slow him down at all.

So, something occurs to me as I approach the final chamber a long, long last, after I got rid of all the reinforcements. Somthing that makes me think I might have a chance of getting Xavier.

Callion can't be captured anymore. He's now a 20-con absolute unit who, even if he were completely unarmed and asleep, could not be captured by anyone. And given that he's also nigh-indestructible...

I could completely disarm him and then use him as a wall to help keep Leif from being surrounded while slowly and carefully funneling all of the knights to fall asleep in a specific spot in these narrow 2-wide hallways!

Yes! I think this will work! But if it doesn't, no way in hell am I restarting, even if it costs me the member card.

The first step is to simplify things by having Olwen kill all four of the Friege troops in there with bolting. This probably isn't necessary, but I don't want any nasty surprises later. Thankfully, she got enough crits to do it with the shots she had.

The second step is to open the door, and make Xavier attack Callion from across the throne pool while Leif stands to Callion's left.

The third step is, once all the knights are safely and decidedly on the west side of the throne room... unlock the east door and have Orsin take over Xavier-baiting duty by standing on the other side of the throne pool.

Then, Callion and Leif slowly retreat back further and further into the room, slowly creating a line of sleeping enemies along the side of the two-wide hallways, making sure always to keep a clear, walkable path through the hallway as they do so.

Through a stroke of luck, one of the javelin soldiers starts attacking Orsin from the exact spot that I wanted Xavier to attack Orsin, and this doesn't result in Xavier chasing Leif and Callion instead! He just doesn't move because his only viable space is blocked!

Meanwhile, Mareeta goes back to the southern treasure room to keep the attention of the Leonster javelineers squarely in the throne room so they don't kill any of the civilians, in case their AI turns out to be that stupid.

...Holy shit. Mission... accomplished. Now to have Leif and Callion head into the throne room to capture the javelineers, and then release the prisoners!

I DID IT! I FUCKING DID IT! ON MY FIRST TRY! HOLY SHIT! I RECRUITED XAVIER ON MY FIRST TRY! AND WITHOUT A SINGLE LEONSTER CASUALTY!

Now all that's left is to steal the adept manual, kill Gustav, and get the fuck out of here!

Holy shit.

I feel exactly the way I did when I managed to get everyone out alive in Foreign Land and Sky. Super exhilarated and satisfied with myself for triumphing over the impossible... but not any less pissed off at the “impossible” I triumphed over. That was still outrageously tedious, especially since I had to wait until the reinforcements stopped coming to even try to attempt it. I have very little desire to do that ever again... but now I can say that I recruited Xavier on my first try, without save-scumming!

And now Leif promotes, which means it's time to finally start training him up again. Next chapter is in all likelihood going to be all about him.

But until then, take care everyone!

[Interdimensional Observer]

Congrats on Xavier! The worst recruitment ever is done, and once is enough for a lifetime.

The inability to alter deployment locations at all, despite FE3 giving you a cumbersome but extant method to do so, really starts going from "bearable" suddenly to "terrible" with Chapter 18.

[Codename Shrimp]

10 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

really starts going from "bearable" suddenly to "terrible" with Chapter 18.

especially in Chapter 19.

Alastor, get your (Re-)Warp staves ready and prepare for Warpfiesta, the Map. I love that map personally because of that xD

Teleporting all around the Map like the evil Ai does in all games is super damn fun.

Edited January 15, 2020 by Shrimperor

[Eltosian Kadath]

58 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

I DID IT! I FUCKING DID IT! ON MY FIRST TRY! HOLY SHIT! I RECRUITED XAVIER ON MY FIRST TRY! AND WITHOUT A SINGLE LEONSTER CASUALTY!

Nicely done.

If I had a max con unit I would have gotten Xavier on my ironman, as my sleeper placement had one hiccup due to me foolishly letting the civilians out a little too early, and having to bottle neck while having units rescue them back far enough to fix it. One of the two I needed to move was the high roller of con with 18, and while I could move the  normal15 con ones, I couldn't move that one. Didn't even try for the member card as it is not really worth the effort.

 

58 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That was still outrageously tedious, especially since I had to wait until the reinforcements stopped coming to even try to attempt it.

You could have blocked them to speed things up a bit if you wanted.

 

32 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

 

The inability to alter deployment locations at all, despite FE3 giving you a cumbersome but extant method to do so, really starts going from "bearable" suddenly to "terrible" with Chapter 18.

There are kinda ways to mess with deployment location by deploying/undeploying units above units whose position is vital (for example on chapter 18 (as well as 19, 21x, and 24x, similar sort of idea with chapter 24 and endgame, just with more groups) all the even deployment slots go to one side, and odd to the other, so adding/removing a unit switches the sides of everyone after that unit), with the option of deploying extra scrubs to change unit order to better facilitate these changes in future chapters (as deployed units are moved above undeployed units in the deployment order for the next chapter). The only really bad ones for deployment location is chapter 20 and endgame where units are a bit too spread out to make this work well.

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

You could have blocked them to speed things up a bit if you wanted.

I considered that when thinking about typing that, but no, it would be way too risky to keep somebody standing on that northwestern staircase constantly when the armor knights were charging into that corridor.

 

31 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Teleporting all around the Map like the evil Ai does in all games is super damn fun.

Honestly, if I ever play this game again, I'm going to do everything in my power to get both Asbel and Nanna to A staff rank, and make them the focus of all of my scroll abuse. And "everything in my power" includes promoting Asbel as soon as I can and having him and Nanna heal basically every injury my party gets. If anything on earth could get me to play this game again, it would be getting to watch Asbel and Nanna ascend to outright godhood with the ability to basically teleport at will and slaughter everything in their path where they arrive, like they're fucking Nemesis in the opening 3H cutscene crashing down like a meteor.

Edited January 15, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Codename Shrimp]

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

And "everything in my power" includes promoting Asbel as soon as I can and having him and Nanna heal basically every injury my party gets.

Some tips for that, if you ever replay the game:

1. Abuse never ending poison to never ending heal

2. Asbel is super great in Arena

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I promoted Asbel in chapter 6 to raise his staff level early.

At chapter 14 he reached C (without arena abuse), so I think he might be possible to bring him up to A till the end of the game.

But seriously Grafcalibur is way too good than to use him as (only) staff user.

He trivializes the game for me.

[Alastor15243]

6 hours ago, Rosalina said:

I promoted Asbel in chapter 6 to raise his staff level early.

At chapter 14 he reached C (without arena abuse), so I think he might be possible to bring him up to A till the end of the game.

But seriously Grafcalibur is way too good than to use him as (only) staff user.

He trivializes the game for me.

Obviously not only a staff user, but I'd use him for most of my healing.

[Jotari]

Haha. If you're having such an awful time with the menus now, I'd love to see what your reaction would be for the patch when they were left largely untranslated XD

[Alastor15243]

Thracia Day 28: Chapter 19

Okay, so, this is absolutely asinine.

This map (and the peek I took at the map of chapter 20) cements my decision that Thracia's usability is the second worst in the series so far. It simply has no business making starting deployment position this fucking impactful and also completely impossible to fully control.

But even then, thought this was going to be relatively reasonable, because I got lucky enough with my unit roster order and manipulating the every-other-unit sorting that I could put all my fliers with the lower group, along with a ton of my mounts.

Unfortunately, all of the mounted units chasing me have a minimum of ten fucking movement. They are by default faster than any promoted rider who hasn't gotten a movement level.

I thought I could make things easier by deploying fewer guys, but no, it's the ones highest up on the list who deploy closer to the enemy forces.

I'm probably gonna have to use the rescue staff for this. Multiple times.

I'm sorry, I know I'm shitting on this game a lot, and I hate that I have to, because this is one of the few games in the series, along with Conquest and possibly Radiant Dawn, that feels like it was designed with a genuine, heartfelt desire to be challenging in interesting ways. And I appreciate that more than you can imagine. I wish Three Houses had been made with Thracia's heart... if not its brain (though in many ways even that would have been an improvement). But they're just pushing their very limited technology and genre knowledge to places they simply could not possibly have been pushed to responsibly in that day and age, and it shows. It shows a lot.

Part of me would love to play a Thracia remake, to see how modern design sensibilities improve the game. Of course, the other part of me knows they're probably not actually going to fix any of the core problems with map design, and are just going to throw in a turnwheel to paper over the cracks. And I will continue to believe this until a game comes out with a rewind system and doesn't use said system as an excuse to be lazy with map design. I know we only have a sample size of 2, but that's still two more reasons to believe this will be the case than not.

But enough of bitching about the gameplay. Instead, let's bitch about the story!

I find I have to agree with Jotari when he said B route has a better story here. When you have a character make a stupid, emotional decision with major consequences, you need to make us sympathize with the decision as much as you can. And I dunno... I hear what he said last chapter about Alster, but he was mostly just saying it. I didn't really feel his emotional investment in recklessly coming to Alster's aid. And from what I hear about Miranda, it sounds like this would have had a lot more buildup in B route, and someone who could emotionally cut Leif a lot deeper to justify his rashness. I'm starting to regret taking the A route, honestly.

But even setting that aside, this feels... super dumb, storywise. You can't have a character like this die offscreen when we last saw him just a battle preparation screen ago. It just feels... completely cheap and empty. I didn't feel anything but mild amusement at the absurdity of it.

On the plus side though, I'm pretty sure this is the part of the story where Thracia and Genealogy cross timelines. Any chapter now, Seliph is gonna show up to help.

Okay, so, I fidgeted around with things, and it looks like I have a little more time than I thought: when you warp Schroff in to recruit Amalda, her entire army defects with her and turns green, so the massive army you're expected to deal with is completely cut in half and then distracted for several turns. A very minor downside of this is that I can't wall up on the bridge by the castle and steal all of the troubadours' heal staves like I was initially hoping when I thought about this last night (it seemed like the perfect opportunity to salvage Asbel's staff rank and maybe see him hit A rank staves by the end of the game). However, it's become blindingly obvious that that is the least of my problems with the challenge set out before me, so beggars can't be choosers here. Warping Schroff in on turn one is clearly something you're supposed to be able to do, because there's a single opening to talk to her in the initial formation, and then she can rescue him and land completely outside of the enemies' attack ranges.

Let's do this.

Tragically, due to first-move advantage, Amalda's troops are little more than a temporary distraction as Conomor's troops slaughter them. But as long as I can get Lithis and Pan away from the front lines on turn one, along with some civilians they pick up, I should be able to do it. Unfortunately, this also means I have to do some rescue staff abuse to get them out of there, but now that I know I also have to get Amalda on turn one for best results and thus can only spare one staff use with Safiya to rescue others after warping in Schroff and dancing her...

...What I wound up doing was repeatedly restart for a 25% extra move from Pan, so he can get far enough away he doesn't need to be rescued on turn one. Misha also got a lucky second move, meaning she managed to beat the thieves riddling the countryside to the house they apparently want to destroy and have a ridiculous head start on. But now it's safe. Maybe they're Two-Face AI thieves, given their erratic behavior, but hey, at least now I can guarantee these houses' safety.

Meanwhile, Dean and Karin, along with Amalda, head over to the southwestern villages, to claim them before the army finishes with the green units and arrives to make that ridiculously unfeasible until long after the bandits have their way with them. I finally promote Karin and Fergus on the first turn too, around roughly level 15, since if they haven't reached level 20 by now they probably aren't going to, and a refresher on their exp gain and a boost in stats will probably help them stay relevant. Plus, Karin REEEEEALLLY needs the move right now. Those guys are gonna start gaining on them if they aren't careful. I'll promote Finn a bit later. He has 99 exp right now, so it feels like a waste not to get that one last level up before promoting.

I also let Alba get captured, since he was mostly filler to space out who gets on the rear lines, and I still need somebody to get captured for that gaiden chapter.

This is an extremely lucky first move, especially with the Misha extra move, and I don't want to have to redo this due to a fuck-up.

One of the village conversations is only mildly dumb. It makes it sound like she's giving you a leg ring, but it's a speed ring, which apparently allows her, and only her, to run quickly rather than react quickly, which is what the speed stat is supposed to do.

And another one is a brick joke about what happens to plants when you water them with pure water.

But Pan got two movement star activations, one on each of the first two turns, meaning that combined with the distraction the green units provided (it's frankly sad how little opportunity they have to help since red goes before green in this game), I won't need to use a rescue staff on him at all! So the total is just one rescue use and one warp use! Hopefully I can keep this up.

Okay, that sad poem about the Yied massacre was pretty touching, though I wish it stuck to a consistent rhythm rather than just loosely trying to string two rhyming words together with an inconsistent number of syllables. This poem doesn't really work when recited aloud.

Also, one of Amalda's troubadours has been holding on for an insanely long amount of time. Probably because her Miracle skill gives her a 48% chance of negating any mortal blow, which is probably a lot of these. But at any rate, my units are in the clear, all the houses have been visited with relative ease, and I can end this map right now if I want to, but I wanna see if I can realistically get some training in for someone.

The troubadour eventually did die the turn after I wrote the previous paragraph, but holy shit, she was a fighter to the very end. I salute you, nameless Friegian troubadour. Your valor has saved countless lives on this day. Just not your own.

Asbel's evade is at a mind-blowing 109 thanks to the five leadership stars I brought to this map, in addition to Leif with the Kingmaker, Nanna, and a forest boosting his evade. The luck ring I had him put on during the march up didn't hurt either. So, there's a forest tile right by a pseudo-bottleneck, and I'm gonna see if I can use it to train Asbel up. Especially since Conomor is going to be one of the first to fall, and without his +12 to hit, I probably won't even need to hold that forest tile position, and can move to a more secure one to take care of the rest of the troops! The specific spot I have in mind is just in front of the bridge just south of Leonster.

I really wish I brought more of those thunder tomes I stole. It really is tricky, bordering on annoying, that I can't reach into my convoy whenever I need something. Thankfully, however, using rescue-drop strats, I can steal the thunder tomes from the mageknight reinforcements, so Asbel can keep this up pretty much indefinitely. Meaning I'll be able to secure the map and then steal those remaining 6 uses of blizzard for Asbel before Ging TFO. Best of all, the mageknights just stop in ranged attack distance of Asbel and don't even fight him because his magic is so strong.

Now if only this let him train his staff rank. But I'll have to wait until the next map with poison before I can do that. If I decide I want to.

At any rate, I finally weathered all 25 turns, racking up a frankly ridiculous amount of half-used thunder tomes I'll sure as hell be selling next preparation menu in order to buy a shitton of staves, and now it's time to steal those blizzard tomes and fortify staves from those two bishops. They each used two uses each on Amalda's green units, but that's still 6 uses ripe for the taking. I just need to work out how to neutralize them without making them want to run away. Unfortunately, even with a 50% growth rate in the stat due to scrolls, Asbel's been getting terrible defense gains, though it's hard to complain since that means he can strike a nice balance between being able to dodgetank and being able to survive long enough to proc Sol the in the event that dodgetanking fails. More importantly, he maxed magic, is on track to max out luck, and already maxed out everything else important when he promoted, because sage promo bonuses are insane.

Now, in order to capture these sages safely, I need to drain these ballistae. Simple enough. What isn't so simple is that I also need to work out whether silenced enemies retreat. If they do, then I can only safely capture one of them as far as I've been able to work out, at least not without wasting their blizzard uses or risking death. But if they don't, then I can capture both of them no problem. But that also means that if they do retreat, one of them is expendable anyway, so I'll silence the one on the forest to test, after I've exhausted the ballistae.

Also, forgot to mention: Asbel got a move level up in all of that chaos, so he's at 8 move now. Excellent.

Alright, so yes, units run away when they're disarmed through silence. Good to know. Well, time to grab that other one and get out of here.

Done. Alright, so that was... a chapter. I love the basic, raw concept of the thing, but it was just a mess in execution. All of the difficulty was in the very beginning. Had I retreated immediately after I secured everything against that massive wave of reinforcements, I might have even found the end exciting and climactic. But the game yet again rewards you for sticking around way, way too long, by giving you rare shit you can try to steal and a plentiful supply of basic shit to grab. I honestly feel that all escape chapters in this game could benefit from infinite, no-experience, steal-and-capture-immune reinforcements. Something to make sure that it's impossible for any escape chapter to not actually feel like an escape at the end, and to ensure that you can't hold off the enemy forever. I'd have loved to have been forced to escape earlier, but the game just rewarded me way, way too much for milking the bastard.

Now, in the ending dialogue, once Seliph was introduced into the conversation, I thought two things:

1: Holy shit, yes, I can't wait to see him,

and

2: It feels like a lot of this narrative is trying to set up a narrative arc of insecurities and self-esteem issues that explains Leif's... less-than-pivotal role in the leadership of Seliph's army.

His journey hasn't been nearly as successful and bump-free as Seliph's has been by the time they meet up, which makes me suspect his story is going to make Leif ultimately decide that he shouldn't have much of a leadership role in his and Seliph's combined army, as Seliph is a better and more responsible commander. Can't say I blame him, and that's an interesting way to retroactively justify his role in Genealogy, but if it happens, it's gonna be kind of a downer that the ending isn't gonna be that triumphant (though that was already a given, since the real happy ending in Genealogy won't even have happened yet by the time this game is over).

On the other hand, Augutus then uses that to segue into something halfway between uplifting and pragmatic about what Leif represents to his army, for all his faults, basically saying his self-doubt isn't helping anyone. So who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. And I do know that there's a big and triumphant map theme coming, which I have to assume will be justified story-wise.

But anyway... now we're at chapter 20. Eight chapters left in the game.

And by the looks of this map... and the insanely random deployment positions...

...Holy shit is this gonna be a doozy.

[Codename Shrimp]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

And by the looks of this map... and the insanely random deployment positions...

...Holy shit is this gonna be a doozy.

Oh yes. It's a cool map...

but (1 small reinforcement spoilers)

Spoiler

Ballista ambush spawn baby. But they shouldn't be any trouble really.

Honestly, starting Ch.21 iirc i just started warp skipping. There's one map that will come soon that is really asshole-ish with it's ambush reinforcemets. Like, so asshole-ish, i almost dropped the game at chapter 23 thanks to them. That's how pissed off i was.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Asbel's evade is at a mind-blowing 109 thanks to the five leadership stars I brought to this map, in addition to Leif with the Kingmaker, Nanna, and a forest boosting his evade.

And that's how you break Thracia. Unless Saias is there or something, You need to majorly fuck up to make enemies have more than 20 hit on you post midgame. Enemies in this game are pretty weak.

I honestly wish in a remake they remove all the bulshit surprise stuff the player can't see coming, however compensate by massively buffing the enemies, and make them high quality (ala Conquest) so it doesn'T feel like you are fighting early game enemies all the times.

 

Edited January 16, 2020 by Shrimperor

[Jotari]

I actually love this map and it's the kind of map that to me justifies the inability to rearrange units. Just imagine how terrible this map would be if you could just place all the units you don't care about down south and retreat on the first turn. There needs to be something to force your units there and make you want to save them. It's a really interesting map as you can end it on the very first move of the very first turn if you so choose, but you won't.

Now, that being said, I get why minimum deployment cap and especially an inability to rearrange would annoy people. So I think the obvious, and really interesting, solution is to add another chapter in before this one where instead of Leif being your lord, you play a single chapter where Dorias is your lord, assaulting Bloom at Connacht. The units you bring to that chapter then become the ones who are in trouble in this one. This gives the player more control, but also prevents then from cheesing it (despite being a siege it would have to play more like a defense map so you can't just sent Dorias out there alone). Plus playing as a different lord for one chapter is a cool thing that the series has rarely done (basically just Radiant Dawn and kind of one Sacred Stones chapter).

Edited January 16, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

29 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I actually love this map and it's the kind of map that to me justifies the inability to rearrange units. Just imagine how terrible this map would be if you could just place all the units you don't care about down south and retreat on the first turn. There needs to be something to force your units there and make you want to save them. It's a really interesting map as you can end it on the very first move of the very first turn if you so choose, but you won't.

Now, that being said, I get why minimum deployment cap and especially an inability to rearrange would annoy people. So I think the obvious, and really interesting, solution is to add another chapter in before this one where instead of Leif being your lord, you play a single chapter where Dorias is your lord, assaulting Bloom at Connacht. The units you bring to that chapter then become the ones who are in trouble in this one. This gives the player more control, but also prevents then from cheesing it (despite being a siege it would have to play more like a defense map so you can't just sent Dorias out there alone). Plus playing as a different lord for one chapter is a cool thing that the series has rarely done (basically just Radiant Dawn and kind of one Sacred Stones chapter).

That's an interesting solution. Mine would have been to basically unlock starting positions as you deploy units, unlocking them in the same order your army is by default deployed, so that you're still forced to have half your army stuck in the rear, but you can at least control who they are and in what formation. But I like yours a lot better, mostly because it also fixes how dumb I consider Dorius's death to be. Of course, given he's missing an arm and can't fight, he couldn't actually be the lord of the chapter, but still.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

That's an interesting solution. Mine would have been to basically unlock starting positions as you deploy units, unlocking them in the same order your army is by default deployed, so that you're still forced to have half your army stuck in the rear, but you can at least control who they are and in what formation. But I like yours a lot better, mostly because it also fixes how dumb I consider Dorius's death to be. Of course, given he's missing an arm and can't fight, he couldn't actually be the lord of the chapter, but still.

If you have control over who the southern army is then the chapter is an instant win for a mercenary enough player (and the units left behind aren't even killed). Even in the current set up LTC and 0% growth players have worked out exactly how to manipulate the deployments in the chapters leading up to this to no sell this chapter.

He could be the lord. Just having breally bad stats to reflect his injury. It is canon that he did go there and command after all (if we're having personal skills in the game some kind of personal skill that doubles weapon weight because he only has one hand could accurately reflect his injury while still not making him too useless). I like this idea too because it gives Bloom a chance to be a boss. You might have blinked and missed it, but Bloom appeared at the start of this chapter to deliver a single line of dialogue. That is the entirety of his screen time in this game. For a Bloom fan it hurts.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Jotari

[Eltosian Kadath]

On 1/14/2020 at 5:17 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

There are kinda ways to mess with deployment location by deploying/undeploying units above units whose position is vital (for example on chapter 18 (as well as 19, 21x, and 24x, similar sort of idea with chapter 24 and endgame, just with more groups) all the even deployment slots go to one side, and odd to the other,

Just wanted to note that I was wrong about 21x, it doesn't follow the even odd pattern like I previously said.

 

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

I find I have to agree with Jotari when he said B route has a better story here. When you have a character make a stupid, emotional decision with major consequences, you need to make us sympathize with the decision as much as you can. And I dunno... I hear what he said last chapter about Alster, but he was mostly just saying it. I didn't really feel his emotional investment in recklessly coming to Alster's aid. And from what I hear about Miranda, it sounds like this would have had a lot more buildup in B route, and someone who could emotionally cut Leif a lot deeper to justify his rashness. I'm starting to regret taking the A route, honestly.

To add to this some more the B route also does a better job introducing Xavier as well, with Dorius calling for his traitorous blood, before some of the survivors of the castle town set the story straight.

 

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

But even setting that aside, this feels... super dumb, storywise. You can't have a character like this die offscreen when we last saw him just a battle preparation screen ago. It just feels... completely cheap and empty. I didn't feel anything but mild amusement at the absurdity of it.

If you have the chance to look over the ending chapter story segment of last chapter again, it is really clear that both Dorius and Augustus know that Dorius is going on a suicide mission (although it is going over Lief's head), and doing so will save the prince.

 

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

I actually love this map and it's the kind of map that to me justifies the inability to rearrange units. Just imagine how terrible this map would be if you could just place all the units you don't care about down south and retreat on the first turn. There needs to be something to force your units there and make you want to save them. It's a really interesting map as you can end it on the very first move of the very first turn if you so choose, but you won't.

Now, that being said, I get why minimum deployment cap and especially an inability to rearrange would annoy people. So I think the obvious, and really interesting, solution is to add another chapter in before this one where instead of Leif being your lord, you play a single chapter where Dorias is your lord, assaulting Bloom at Connacht. The units you bring to that chapter then become the ones who are in trouble in this one. This gives the player more control, but also prevents then from cheesing it (despite being a siege it would have to play more like a defense map so you can't just sent Dorias out there alone). Plus playing as a different lord for one chapter is a cool thing that the series has rarely done (basically just Radiant Dawn and kind of one Sacred Stones chapter).

I agree with this entirely. Love this map, and the minimum deployment and inability to rearrange units are the only things that make it work. That extra map does sound like a cool solution if they ever remake this game with modern sensibilities (although they are going after Alster, not Connacht).

 

As for my iron man, ended up deploying extra scrub mounted units to get extra horses to carry units in the south, make sure Eda was in the south, had Miranda and Safiya in the same section (the north as it turned out) to warp recruit Conomore, and managed to get all the villages but the middle two. I Intentionally left one of the scrubs behind to get the gaiden, but otherwise made it out without losses.

[Alastor15243]

2 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

If you have the chance to look over the ending chapter story segment of last chapter again, it is really clear that both Dorius and Augustus know that Dorius is going on a suicide mission (although it is going over Lief's head), and doing so will save the prince.

I already knew he was gonna die because I knew this Alster rescue fucked up and that Leif loses one of his leadership stars, so maybe I didn't pick up on how obvious it was. But if he knew full well he was going to die doing this, that honestly makes it worse that he willingly took so many men to their deaths rather than trying harder to explain to Leif that it wouldn't work.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Flere210]

Just pointing out that the first Langrisser, an asinine game in many ways that was released 3 years before Mystery of the Emblem, already allowed you to chose where to deploy people. It never was a difficult thing to implement. It's just SNES era design philosophy that equate user unfriendlines whit difficulty. 

 

That map make me want to deploy a bunch of useless, weaponless characters and just finish it in a single turn.

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Just wanted to note that I was wrong about 21x, it doesn't follow the even odd pattern like I previously said.

 

To add to this some more the B route also does a better job introducing Xavier as well, with Dorius calling for his traitorous blood, before some of the survivors of the castle town set the story straight.

 

If you have the chance to look over the ending chapter story segment of last chapter again, it is really clear that both Dorius and Augustus know that Dorius is going on a suicide mission (although it is going over Lief's head), and doing so will save the prince.

 

I agree with this entirely. Love this map, and the minimum deployment and inability to rearrange units are the only things that make it work. That extra map does sound like a cool solution if they ever remake this game with modern sensibilities (although they are going after Alster, not Connacht).

 

As for my iron man, ended up deploying extra scrub mounted units to get extra horses to carry units in the south, make sure Eda was in the south, had Miranda and Safiya in the same section (the north as it turned out) to warp recruit Conomore, and managed to get all the villages but the middle two. I Intentionally left one of the scrubs behind to get the gaiden, but otherwise made it out without losses.

It was a 50/50 toss up for me and I knew it when posting. Didn't research because I actually had a massively hard time making that post on my stupid mobile.

[Alastor15243]

Thracia Day 29: Chapter 20

So, apparently this siege has been going on for six months. And keeping mind that the opening dialogue of Genealogy Chapter 7 suggests the failed taking of Aslter and the siege of Leonster starts right when the chapter begins...

The entirety of Genealogy Chapter 7 alone took at least six months.

That is the kind of timescale the game's suggesting these maps take place on, so this is just a friendly reminder from your friendly neighborhood killjoy that King Batur spent months bleeding out on the floor.

Now, this is an outrageously offensive clusterfuck of a map, which brings all of the problems with the preparation menu front and center. The concept of this chapter is fascinating, and there's a chance I'm going to enjoy parts of it, but the problem is that a massive amount of the difficulty is yet again centered on the hostile user interface and general nonsense. And this time I mean gameplay-and-story-segregation nonsense.

Why, prrrrrray tell, are my soldiers all scattered about the castle, trapped like rats inside of rooms they don't have the fucking keys to? WHY DO MY SOLDIERS NOT HAVE THE KEYS TO THE ROOMS THEY'RE LOCKED IN!? HOW DID THEY GET INSIDE? AND WHY ARE THE SWORD ARMORS THAT WE LOCKED UP IN OUR PRISON STILL ARMED WITH KILLING EDGES AND CARRYING VULNERARIES!?

WHY IS THERE A BATTLESHIP IN THAT LAKE, INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS? WHY IS THERE A BATTLESHIP IN THAT LAKE!?

It is just completely unfathomable to me how my characters have gotten themselves into this situation. Literally none of it makes sense. Last chapter? Fine, we were caught off guard. But this? Leonster has been under siege for six fucking months. This is not a surprise ambush. This has been going on for a while. What the fuck led up to this? In what universe that hasn't globally replaced my army's brains with used fucking cat litter did dividing up our army between multiple locked doors and then throwing away the key even resemble the beginnings of a tenth-of-the-way sane idea!?

...I pray you all see my frustration here. The issue is that this map doesn't prompt feelings of “Oh no, I'm in serious trouble because I have to defend a slowly crumbling castle from an unceasing tide of powerful enemies,” it prompts feelings of “Oh no, I'm in serious trouble because my army is fucking braindead and I have to bail them out”.

AND THEN THE MAP HAS THE AUDACITY TO PLAY LEIF'S UPLIFTING HEROIC MAP THEME! NO! BAD GAME! IT'S LEIF'S FAULT WE'RE IN THIS MESS, DON'T FUCKING CHEER FOR HIM! HE'S THE WORST!

...Outfitting for this map is gonna be tedious as all hell, because what characters need is largely dependent on where they start, but you can't see where they start and outfit them at the same time. So what I have to do is figure out where all the units I want to deploy will wind up by deploying prematurely, and then go around writing a damned shopping list, looking at what each person is going to need, and then restarting and giving that to them. And since I see literally no reason not to, I'm going to be writing that shopping list here.

I've thought this about the last three maps too, but I have serious doubts that I'm going to get this map done in one day.

My biggest concern here is that Lithis, Lara and Pan are pretty much at the absolute top of my deployment list, meaning it's likely going to be impossible to not deploy them in the same general area. Adding to that the fact that I only have one door key, I may be in trouble unless I can work something out.

Alright. By changing who I deployed, namely by S-drinking Safiya, taking out some of my fliers who are probably just going to be a liability here, and deploying Lithis, Pan and Lara, I have managed to get a thief in each of the “fuck me sideways” southern rooms. I only have two lockpicks, so Pan, the remaining thief, is gonna have to go without. But with one lockpicker on either side, we should thankfully be slightly better off. Now then, about that shopping list...

Let's start with the throne room, housing Leif, Asbel and Glade.

Leif has everything he's going to need. I gave him two magic rings and a speed ring, which he'll get to using as soon as he can, to shore up his lacking stats a bit since I still haven't had an opportunity to safely scroll train him, and with how insane the late-game chapters are turning out, I'm starting to suspect I never will. Beyond that, he has his trusty Light Brand and Kingmaker, as well as a sleep sword.

Asbel's mostly all set, with two thunder tomes and a mostly-full heal staff. I just need to give him another tome, probably that wind tome from last chapter just to be on the safe side. He has two crusader scrolls, Dain and Bragi, which might be pushing it given how wide I'm gonna have to spread the scrolls out here, but I really wanna give him the best chance possible of maxing out luck and getting a little more bulk.

Glade needs some swords in case he has to fight indoors, and a vulnerary if I can spare one. He's mostly here for the authority star.

Next, let's look at the central chamber, with Mareeta and Amalda standing in the narrow hall below the shops, and Xavier and Tanya on the lower end on opposite sides of the upside-down U.

Mareeta's got an iron sword, her personal Mareeta's Blade, and a master seal she's going to be using this chapter. I'll probably give her another sword, a crusader scroll, and a vulnerary.

Amalda's gonna have some basic gear, but she's gonna need to be mostly empty-handed in order to do some much-needed shopping, namely heal staves for Asbel and torches for 24x, which is apparently a fog of war chapter, like all but one of the gaiden chapters are.

Xavier... worries me. He's here mostly for his leadership star, but I'm concerned about what siege tome users are going to do with his accost skill. And I know there will be some siege tome users. I'll have to hope my advance guard of heavy-hitters like Callion, Asbel and Mareeta can intercept them, and if not, I'll have to have pure water doses handy for him to minimize the damage. I would be tempted to un-deploy him, but he's high up on the deployment list so I'm concerned about fucking up something important with deployment positions by removing him and making me start over with prep. He won't strictly need a scroll, since he'll get crit resist from being near Leif, who likely won't leave the throne. But if I can spare one, he'll get one, because it would be nice to get Leif out there into the action.

Tanya has a master seal and is gonna use it. She's actually doing pretty fine, and she should be a great support to Orsin when they double back to the core throne room. I've given her the Neir scroll and some low-grade bows, but I'll probably leave a killer bow with her in case she levels up her bow rank this chapter.

Now for the right main chamber, with Safiya by the treasure room, Pan by the door, and Callion in the corner by the door.

Safiya's gonna be armed with heavy-duty staves, my physics, my fortifies, but most importantly, rewarp and rescue. She is going to rewarp to the throne room the second she's in danger and then save anyone who gets horribly, hopelessly cornered late into the map when I really don't want to have to reset.

As for Pan, I changed my mind, and decided Pan should be the one to keep the lockpick, and Lithis will be the one giving his to Lara. Pan's close enough that he'll be able to bail Lithis and Finn out pretty much just as quickly, and this way we have the lockpick on someone with a high chance to move twice in a turn, and on someone who can get Callion outdoors where he belongs immediately. After that, he's gonna unlock the one chest, and then unlock every door he can to free up movement around the castle and, if he has time, finish up with some shopping. For this reason, he's got a lockpick and an iron sword, and that's it.

Callion's job is to get out there and beat the living shit out of everything he can, as much as he can, to buy time for everyone else to get to a better position. He's got Hein's scroll, as I don't need to boost his defense anymore; it's at 18 dismounted, and I'm pretty sure that means it's already capped when mounted. He's also gonna have a shitton of javelins and killing edges, and prooobably he's gonna keep his trusty but little-used flame sword in case things get extra hairy.

The southeastern “fuck me sideways” chamber has Finn to the east and Lithis to the west.

Finn has kind of fallen behind. I'm not sure why, I guess I just always saw him as an early-game unit I shouldn't overly invest in long-term due to his poor performance indoors. I've mostly just been using him for his brave lance for capturing. But he's got his usual lances, and while he's outdoors he can probably contribute a good deal, getting some more use out of that brave lance while he still can.

Lithis isn't gonna have a lockpick, so he's mostly just gonna be here to buy stuff at the shop with Amalda. He and Finn are going to GTFO the second Pan lets them out.

The southwestern “fuck me sideways” chamber has Lara to the east and Nanna to the west.

Lara I'm going to give a lockpick and a vulnerary, and that's pretty much it. Her job is going to be to run for the door, open it, and just keep running to open every door she can find so that my big hitters can come to assist Callion in fighting back the tide of reinforcements.

Nanna has her trusty earth sword and a flame sword, and I'm gonna give her whatever crusader scroll I can spare, probably Fjalar. The remaining four slots of her inventory I'm going to give to silence, physic, heal and fortify. She and Safiya are gonna be on heavy-duty healing duty this mission, and I'm hoping that gets her to A in staves this map.

Finally, the “you shall not pass” chamber of bottlenecking right below the throne room, with Orsin and Fergus.

Orsin is gonna have his trusty Od scroll, his Bhuj, and whatever other ranged axes I still have left (there's been a serious drought of them lately), and he's gonna guard the main throne chamber, with Tanya backing him up once she makes it in.

Fergus I'm gonna give whatever swords and crusader scroll I have left to spare, and he's gonna try to help out as much as he can outdoors for as long as that's a remotely sane idea.

Alright. I finally finished preparations. And now that all of that preparation is out of the way, and now that I have my door openers in somewhat reasonable positions through sheer luck, I'm saving a shred of hope this mission is actually going to be fun.

Let's find out.

Edited September 26, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Alastor15243]

Thracia Day 29: Chapter 20, part 2 (so I can edit this post)

Honestly, I absolutely love this song, especially hearing it play on an actual map, but it's kind of disappointing that the moment where it plays isn't as triumphant as it sounds. This is “Seliph's Theme” levels of “undying hope against impossible odds”, but Leif is just kinda generally moping in the conversation before this. This is “Leif's Theme”. It's... it feels like it's just completely against the rules, and not in a cool way, to play a triumphant main character theme when the main character hasn't done anything cool, or at least made a speech!

Alright, it seems this map is slightly more fair than I gave it credit for, in that the enemies don't immediately start breaking walls, they start unlocking doors first. Looks like the wall-breaking comes later, so the “fuck me sideways” chambers are “safe” for at least a little longer than I thought. We'll have to wait and see how much longer, though.

...Looks like they start breaking walls as early as enemy phase 3! Literally right after I wrote the previous paragraph! Oh goodie!

Oh wow, we have some bishops with unlock staves. Enemies getting to use copies of my army's personal weapons? Well first off, I'm gonna wanna see if I can steal some of that shit with Callion, with Nanna supporting with the fleece-and-release.

Second off, this makes those imprisoned, armed soldiers a lot more dangerous than I initially thought. I had to have Safiya rescue Asbel from the throne room to get him into the action early. Safiya wasn't the one who was in danger, so much as Lithis and Pan were, as neither of them have crusader scrolls, and they had to go right through that hallway without the aid of Safiya's at-will teleportation.

I managed to get my hands on an unlock staff with 2 uses left thanks to Callion (and later another one with one use), and Fergus helped with the fleece-and-release since inventory space here is a bit tight at the moment.

And the ballistae reinforcements showed up. Callion's been making quick work of them, and they didn't do too much harm when they first showed up either. But Callion's gonna make his way to the southwest now, to make sure he can take out those meteor tome users as soon as they show up before they can threaten the throne room area.

The reinforcements aren't as plentiful as I initially thought. I'm actually kind of disappointed the enemy isn't applying more pressure now. I've nearly gotten rid of all of them.

At first I thought I got an “unlucky” level up with Callion that didn't get any of the, like, two stats he hasn't capped. Nope! Callion's at 13 move now, baby!

Yeah, I'm doing so well at the moment that I've got the “victory is near” music playing. Good sign, though honestly, if and when they do a remake, not only do I want that victory-is-near music to never play in this chapter, but I also want Leif's theme to override the player phase battle theme.

...Oh, and also, justify it a bit more mood-wise.

Lithis finished his shopping (mostly torches and one heal staff; I don't need as many heal staves as I thought since I've been able to capture plenty), so all that's really left to do is weather the last few waves of reinforcements, wait for that leader to move, shore up my defenses, and get ready to steal that last crusader scroll.

Alright, the boss has started moving, but I'm gonna have to bait him over with Callion to make sure he actually goes towards the people who can steal his scroll, because right now he's going to the east, with nobody there but Amalda, Asbel and Finn.

Alright, I've done it. But strangely, killing him doesn't immediately end the level, even though more than 15 turns have passed. I'm hoping there's not some extra secret surprise here that could fuck me over. But anyway, I managed to replenish my hand axe supply for Orsin during the chaos of the final turns. I thankfully managed to make room, and both groups, Amalda/Finn/Asbel and Callion/Orsin/Tanya/Leif/Nanna/Mareeta/Lithis, managed to contribute to getting those extra hand axes. So I should be good for the foreseeable future, especially since really only Orsin is using them.

So yeah, looks like the reason killing him didn't end the chapter is because the game just doesn't check if you've won until the turn ends for some reason. Have there been any other “Defeat boss” missions? Is this how they usually work, or is it because this is also a defense chapter and there are two conditions to fill, one of them time-based? Well, whatever the reason, it let me get a little bit more experience for Orsin and Tanya on one last enemy, so if somebody is complaining, it sure as hell ain't me. And so I've beaten the level, with an hour of free time to spare!

Annoyingly, despite me soundly kicking the invading army's ass, the ending cutscene still acts like we would have been fucked if Seliph hadn't arrived, and that Seliph just saved our asses with his army arriving. Granted, it's mostly just how they phrased it. If they had just said that the next wave of reinforcements was instead retreating due to Seliph's army, that would have been better. But honestly, this shouldn't have been both a defense map and a “kill the boss” map. The battle should have been over after like 17 turns or so, and there should have been more enemies by the end. Something more like what they did with Chapter 14, to make it clearer that the player just might get fucked over before it cuts to cutscene. This, by contrast, really doesn't feel like Seliph saving me in the nick of time, it feels like it did in the actual Genealogy game: Seliph's army arriving to clean up after Leif and company had mostly sorted things out on their own.

Speaking of which, however, I do like that most of the enemies attacking Leonster were armor knights, just like in Genealogy. I can only assume that the boss of this map is canonically the same then-nameless commander leading the forces in Genealogy. But anyway, Seliph's army's here! YAY!

It's weird that they play the slower, cutscene version of Leif's theme at the end of the map here, when storywise this is really Seliph's triumphant moment, not Leif's. I would have loved to hear a Thracia rendition of Seliph's theme playing when Dermott showed up with a letter from him.

I love how they basically recreate the conversation Dermott has with Nanna in Genealogy here.

Alright, so... chapter over! And now we have Dermott! Woo!

Honestly, once you get past the potential dangers of initial unit placement, and how obnoxious it is to actually make the preparations for this map... I had a lot of fun! Great music, and a pretty fun battle, if not quite as thought-provoking as I thought it would be. Mostly my best units could go wherever they wanted unimpeded, just as usual. Still, it was paced well and didn't overstay its welcome or encourage/reward tedious capture-grinding. So yeah! Well done, game! Good job!

What's next...

...Poison ballistae!?

...Hello heal grinding for Asbel!

Edited March 13, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

I liked Leif's uplifting theme playing here, if you take it as "just hold out a little longer and help will arrive". Hopeful in desperation, not triumphant.

I like how the destroyed walls look here too, it's really driving home the point that Freege means business. No chipping away a small section and squeezing a few soldiers through, they're bringing out the battering rams and bulldozers. 

[Flere210]

Poison ballista makes my laugh. 

"Hey we are going to hit those people whit huge bolt that can easily pierce through rocks"

"Better coat them in poison just in case putting a gaping hole in their body is not enought."