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

[Samz707]

15 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That stuff with the dragonstones is in FE3 and FE12. In Awakening there's two variations of dragonstone, but it only affects stats, not appearance at all. Also, dragonstones and Manaketes in Awakening... just... make no sense, at all. Honestly.

Oh, I thought I head somewhere there were Wyvern Dragon stones. (or maybe those are the ones that just change stats, I mean I know Wyverns are technically dragons but you know what I mean.)

I would like to see an FE game that kinda embraces the fact Dragon Stones alter stats, maybe even alternative transformations that function differently. (Kinda like Tiki in Mystery? just not always turning into a flier.), not seen much of the Fe games with beast-transformations so maybe those end up being like that, like a dragon stone that turns you into a dragon without any breath attacks for a few turns but you can still claw and are highly resilient to damage or a super-ranged breath attack but actually being just as if not more vulnerable than when you're untransformed.

14 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

 

I mean it’s stated later it’s because she didn’t want to fuck with the past too much which is understandable. She hasn’t time traveled before so it’s not like she has any idea of how this is supposed to work.

I pretty much just imagine she came up with the Marth name (which is what bothers me) on the spot and was mentally swearing the entire time after she realized she said it. (maybe they confirm that later) it just seems pretty dumb if you're trying to be incognito and not fuck with the past but then you essentially use the name of one of the most famous people in your world, that's just asking for many, many questions and are very clearly the wrong gender. (honestly she could have used her actual name and it'd have been less conspicuous.)

15 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh no, I wasn't complaining about the map shops, those are fine. Especially now that you can see what they sell on the bottom screen without having to actually visit them. My issue is more that they give you the world map, but don't let you do anything on it yet, begging the question of why they even let you move.

As for grinding, one solution is to get somebody with despoil (or armsthrift and Leif's Blade) so that you can break even buying reeking boxes. Won't work on Lunatic and above though. There the skirmishes are damned near impossible.

I can actually got soft-locked before I even got Gaius, so yeah, fun. (and they sold Grinding DLC, which makes me think they knew it was really easy to screw you over with EXP compared to at least the other FE games I played.)

 

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

So on this point, I don't care as much in the case of the other avatars (in fact in Corrin's case it'd be downright weird), but Robin really, really, really should have had skin tone options in the avatar creation imo. Because their mother must have had the whitest ass on the planet for them to not look a thing like their father, racially speaking (and also every other physical proportion speaking too I guess).

...I'm honestly amazed I never noticed that before now, gods am I dumb but Dark skin options would be nice. 

Honestly now that I'm thinking about it, if we got an FE game with an actual free-form avatar, if maybe you could choose what part of the continent you were from and it'd effect your default appearance and stats. (So if it was set in Elibe, being from llia gives you speed or something.)

 

 

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Samz707

[Alastor15243]

9 minutes ago, Jotari said:

So on this point, I don't care as much in the case of the other avatars (in fact in Corrin's case it'd be downright weird), but Robin really, really, really should have had skin tone options in the avatar creation imo. Because their mother must have had the whitest ass on the planet for them to not look a thing like their father, racially speaking (and also every other physical proportion speaking too I guess).

Biiiiiiig time. The only one I feel shouldn't have had race modifiers is Corrin, and that's largely because... I mean...

Spoiler

While it would make sense considering what their true parentage is (you could arguably justify Corrin looking like anything with Anankos as a dad), giving them significantly darker skin, or even the option to have significantly darker skin, would also make the fact that Corrin isn't actually related to the Hoshidans blatantly obvious. And that's supposed to be a twist.

 

12 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

There is a solution for this- Fire Emblem: Masonry of War, or Fire Emblem: Empires of Micromanagement. Minecraft FE or 4X FE, either way, you'll never complain this franchise has no worldbuilding ever again.😛

I'm sorry, are you taking the piss with an inside joke I'm not getting, or are you talking about something that's actually real?

 

12 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And I'm sure you'd play a game that featured a lord whose solemn duty was cleaning litterboxes across the world if the game played like Conquest.😜

You know me so well.

12 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

You know that whole "Abolish the Valm arc, it's filler" thing some people say? Well you'd need something to fill in the void, and I think emphasizing on a Risen apocalypse would be the answer. You could keep it on the Ylissean continent, provided you abolished Chonsin and relocated Vert, and moved Tiki with the Azure to Mount Prism, which you can totally do, because lack of worldbuilding means the Mila Tree is weightless and free of things to bind Tiki there.

Agreed. Especially with the bolded part There is in fact less than nothing demanding that Tiki spend her days alone, sleeping on top of a tree in Valentia.

12 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Excuse me? No IRL dynasty lasts that long, give Marth a break. At least the Kingdom of Archanea "region" has held together as Ylisse.

Granted. I'm still royally cheesed that we're given so little information for how it fell apart though.

 

[Samz707]

14 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Granted. I'm still royally cheesed that we're given so little information for how it fell apart though.

 

Clearly they fell into a deep debt as the last successor was a massive whale for Fire Emblem Heroes and just had to get that Summer Oliver Alt and the kingdom descended into anarchy when they realized they were out of money.

 

13 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Agreed. Especially with the bolded part There is in fact less than nothing demanding that Tiki spend her days alone, sleeping on top of a tree in Valentia..

Clearly she actually was a massive fan of Ram Wine and was in Valentia to get some, she was actually sleeping off her hangover when you encounter her.

 

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Samz707

[Jotari]

 

25 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

I’m willing to bet this was something better understood in the Japanese version that just doesn’t translate well into english because of just the sheer amount of dialects in Japanese that there’s no English equivalent for but who knows.

It's not like English entirely lacks dialects if they cared enough to try. Like I wouldn't expect them to go full out with Bajan English or something, but they could have given them Australian accents or something. Course then they'd be obligated to do it for all the Plegian characters. Imagine Austrlian Aversea, Validar, Henry and Tharja XD

14 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Biiiiiiig time. The only one I feel shouldn't have had race modifiers is Corrin, and that's largely because... I mean...

  Hide contents

While it would make sense considering what their true parentage is (you could arguably justify Corrin looking like anything with Anankos as a dad), giving them significantly darker skin, or even the option to have significantly darker skin, would also make the fact that Corrin isn't actually related to the Hoshidans blatantly obvious. And that's supposed to be a twist.

 

Already physical features available not withstanding of course.

 

[Alastor15243]

38 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Except, would a civilian know what their liege looks like? They have no TV, internet, or probably printing presses outside of Anna's sweatshops. Coinage could be a source of a ready portrait, but why would Emmeryn throw her siblings images on it when she is the ruler?

I mean, the guy does regularly, personally go on missions to chase bandits out of towns.

[Interdimensional Observer]

42 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'm sorry, are you taking the piss with an inside joke I'm not getting, or are you talking about something that's actually real?

Just a joke. A joke that came to mind because I remember Dragon Quest got two Minecraft spinoffs. And Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors have their 4X-lite Empires spinoffs, and FE has now had a Musou of its own. There are -very very remote- grounds to say FE could try them out either genre. I'd be interested.

 

26 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It's not like English entirely lacks dialects if they cared enough to try. Like I wouldn't expect them to go full out with Bajan English or something, but they could have given them Australian accents or something. Course then they'd be obligated to do it for all the Plegian characters. Imagine Austrlian Aversea, Validar, Henry and Tharja XD

You do bring to surface the Scottish Mor Ardain in XC2. And Dragon Quest's liking for, sometimes too exaggerated, "foreigners speaking English" accents, the infamous DQIV DS translation being at the forefront of those, but DQXI the most recent did endow some of the people of Gondolia with a pinch of Italian flourish, and Japanese Hotto speaks entirely in haiku.

 

54 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Because their mother must have had the whitest ass on the planet for them to not look a thing like their father, racially speaking (and also every other physical proportion speaking too I guess).

How dare you remind me of Validar's extremely abnormal appearance. I had almost forgotten it. I wish Veld had been Robin's father. Validar is just not human ...which could've worked if a human who looks like a demon was evidence of being so closely related to Grima. But considering Robin the perfect host/reincarnation is totally normal, there goes that idea.

 

18 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I mean, the guy does regularly, personally go on missions to chase bandits out of towns.

Fair. I had brushed that out of my mind as being unusual for royalty. Can I ask the Ylissean record keepers for an account of his travel history since his begun this humbling task? I want to calculate precisely what percentage of the Ylissean population has had the opportunity to glimpse at his noble visage.🧐

Edited December 15, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Punished Dayni]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

At any rate... Awakening was the first Fire Emblem game I played as an adult. And the last one I played without really thinking much about my actual tactics. It was also the first game I got for my 3DS.

And I say this even though the 3DS I bought came with Mario and Luigi Dream Team pre-downloaded into it.

...Because when I ordered them both on Amazon... the game arrived several days before the system.

I'm morally certain at least a few of you know the feeling of spending a certain period of time having a new game but not being able to play it. Maybe you're on the car or train ride home from the store you bought it at. Or maybe there's some mandatory day-one patch you've gotta download. Or maybe your parents were religious or at least pretending to be for the sake of their in-laws when you were a kid, and they made you go to the Christmas morning church sermon immediately after opening your presents.

Whatever the reason, you're just staring at the game case, drinking in every last detail of the box, every picture, every word, every technical spec and parental advisory warning, hoping that if you just focus on it hard enough, you can more vividly imagine what playing it's gonna feel like when you finally can, like you're some kind of wolf with a wooden crate, sniffing the fresh meat that you know is inside...

...Yeah. That was me for a couple of days.

I can't help but chuckle, partly because Awakening was my first 3DS game as well (though mine came together, so no waiting there)......

And I waited two months to play 3H. It was a while before I got a Switch after getting the game, so I had to stare at my discounted title for a fair bit, which I think was for the best work wise.

Awakening was also my 3th title in the series and first legit game too.

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

No, my Amazon account says I placed the order in the middle of March in 2014, a little under a year after it came out in America. Probably because I just didn't have enough disposable income for getting new game systems before then. I actually missed out on the entire eighth console generation besides the 3DS because of this. But eventually, I bought a 3DS and started checking out the shit I'd been missing.

And lemme tell ya... I loved this game. I played it obsessively. I bought all the DLC, I beat every difficulty, and I beat Apotheosis a bare minimum of three times, each on separate files created for no other purpose.

Odd to realise I actually played it earlier than you despite not getting it when it first came out in Europe as Awakening was a few months after America's release.

Me, I had a blast for my first playthrough for those two weeks, even on Normal I was stupid and reclassed Robin to Mage on the final map so that was nice and dumb. I came to enjoy playing Hard as well, though I didn't really use the children either way. I got the DLC when they put the lot on sale in 2016, so I waited a long time to try Apotheosis, I haven't gotten round to clearing the secret route either, silly me.

That aside, we finally saw the end of NMotE, where Merric was a badass, cool. I'm looking forward to seeing the upcoming titles, much as I'm also surprised you didn't do Tearring after I thought you said you would.

Edited December 15, 2020 by Dayni

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Dayni said:

That aside, we finally saw the end of NMotE, where Merric was a badass, cool. I'm looking forward to seeing the upcoming titles, much as I'm also surprised you didn't do Tearring after I thought you said you would.

Sorry, I wound up changing my mind about that, I guess I didn't say that in quite as visible of a place in the thread. Basically, first off, a lot of people wanted me to focus on the mainline games first, and also, as for why I specifically decided not to do it before Awakening... if I stopped between 12 and 13, the true depths of Awakening's fuckery with the Archanean lore might have been lost on me if 11 and 12 weren't fresh in my mind.

[Ottservia]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Man, I really wish the game proper actually went into detail about that. Could've been interesting support conversation material.

 

Well I think the closest thing is a DLC conversation between Henry and Gaius where he states that they make “cake” from risen remains as offerings to Grima but I think that’s the only time something like that is ever mentioned. Also glad to be hear. Awakening is a special game to me so I hope to be able to add to the discussion 

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Sorry, I wound up changing my mind about that, I guess I didn't say that in quite as visible of a place in the thread. Basically, first off, a lot of people wanted me to focus on the mainline games first, and also, as for why I specifically decided not to do it before Awakening... if I stopped between 12 and 13, the true depths of Awakening's fuckery with the Archanean lore might have been lost on me if 11 and 12 weren't fresh in my mind.

Just keep in mind that when you get to TRS, you're going to be judging a game that came out a few months before Binding Blade. I'm not saying you have to excuse everything about it because of its age, if you did, FE1 might not be the lowest of the low in your rankings. But, for your own enjoyment regarding conveniences, it's not that the game is a step back, it's that you're taking a step back.

Edited December 15, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

Oh, also class me as one of the people who is neutral towards Awakening. I like a lot of things about it, but have issues with a lot of other things, but that's how I feel about literally every game in the series (yes, even the NES ones).

[Eltosian Kadath]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

The game's stroking my ego for Alexandria leading us to victory against these bandits, but... fuck it, it's warranted, that was a tough battle. Though I feel a bit weird since it wasn't really my strategy I was using.

...How do you think this would have turned out if you were blind ironmanning it like the  last game?

 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Actually, since “strategy” is long-term and “tactics” are short-term, I guess what I mean is that this game isn't the best when it comes to tactics. Strategy is actually a huge part of Awakening gameplay... in the sense of your long-term character build plans for your army. The actual moment-to-moment gameplay is generally quite mindless on anything below Lunatic+.

This statement is making me glad that when I returned to Awakening in my Lunatic LP, that I restrict pairup to never be used to attack or defend, as that does make tactics a part of this game again. No wonder I barely remember this game, as that sounds incredibly dull...

[Alastor15243]

9 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

...How do you think this would have turned out if you were blind ironmanning it like the  last game?

I don't know. Maybe at this point I would have figured out the water trick on my own, but I seriously doubt it. And I'm not sure dumping all my exp into the avatar would have felt wise when they weren't my best unit yet.

Make no mistake though, I know full well I'm still in for hell with this game's ambush spawns.

 

9 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

This statement is making me glad that when I returned to Awakening in my Lunatic LP, that I restrict pairup to never be used to attack or defend, as that does make tactics a part of this game again. No wonder I barely remember this game, as that sounds incredibly dull...

Yeeaaaaah. I'm reserving judgment until I see more, but make no mistake: me not getting frustrated now is not because I think this has superior gameplay to New Mystery. It's because I'm already well acquainted with this game and all its myriad issues, and unless I notice new ones, it's going to be difficult to summon genuine rage about them. But I know full well they're there.

Edited December 15, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Venger_06]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...So fuck it! No Dakota! Instead, we'll do my first ever avatar I made for this game! Alexandria. Female, Build 1, Face 1, Hair 5, Hair color 12, Voice 1. Not sure why I decided on this when I first played this game, but I did, and I dunno... I like it. I especially like how her hair color looks on her model for reasons I can't really describe.

Also, I picked a girl for my first-ever avatar because I have literally zero desire to use the avatar as any sort of analogue to myself, or have them date the character I like the most or anything. My friend told me you could have a female avatar marry the game's lord, and as someone who once obsessively played Genealogy, that just hit all of my min-maxing character eugenics buttons. So I did it. And I'm probably gonna do it again, though now I'll be doing it with a far better understanding of why that pairing is amazing for non-postgame play.

*Sad Male Robin noises* The Avatar + Chrom pairing easily destroys this game, and helps to keep Chrom alive in the highest difficulties, so I understand the reason for choosing it.

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Anyway, another reason we're going female is because this time women are the superior sex, because Fire Emblem is still gender-segregating classes, and one of the new female-exclusive classes just happened to get the most broken skill in the entire game, nay, arguably the entire franchise.

*Sad Male Robin noises again* Ah yes, the beginning of everything. While Awakening is not so egregious, since the male Robin can serve as a pairup bot, you can have two units inheriting Robin's uber genes and the female Morgan can reproduce the female Robin's function (or even overcome it, depending on as you set up your build), this is where the seed of the unfair favorable treatment of female avatars over male ones was planted.

But it's not time to talk about it yet, as it will be more relevant in a conversation about Fates or Three Houses.

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, Maof06 said:

*Sad Male Robin noises again* Ah yes, the beginning of everything. While Awakening is not so egregious, since the male Robin can serve as a pairup bot, you can have two units inheriting Robin's uber genes and the female Morgan can reproduce the female Robin's function (or even overcome it, depending on as you set up your build), this is where the seed of the unfair favorable treatment of female avatars over male ones was planted.

But it's not time to talk about it yet, as it will be more relevant in a conversation about Fates or Three Houses.

Ironically, Awakening is literally the only one of those games I am even remotely okay with having a female avatar. As to the others, Fates just doesn't have any males I like enough other than as units, and 3H is even worse off in that regard. Just don't get me started on the abomination that is female Byleth's design. Just don't. That killed any chance I ever had of having Byleth as a girl (and that chance was already really damn low to begin with because I don't care for the males in THAT game either).

Edited December 15, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Axie]

i am way too annoying to be neutral on something fire emblem lol but i am not particularly pro or anti awakening. i recognize all of its flaws as a game, but also don't think it did anything particularly egregious that also became the new standard of the franchise, so i am glad it existed and was such a huge success, but it's not my favourite FE or anything.

i am interested at how... easy you are making lunatic sound. maybe i should try it out? never saw myself as competent enough to play lunatic in any game, to be honest.

[Alastor15243]

13 minutes ago, Axie said:

i am interested at how... easy you are making lunatic sound. maybe i should try it out? never saw myself as competent enough to play lunatic in any game, to be honest.

The thing about Awakening is that more than any other game, beating the higher difficulties is less about coming up with good battle tactics, and more about knowing how to cheese it. I guarantee that if you did what I described doing, you'd have very little issue with Awakening Lunatic beyond the first two turns. So sure, try it, if it sounds interesting to you.

Also, I hold Lunatic+ in a simultaneously high and low regard. I'm very torn about it and I wish it were remotely realistic to playlog doing it so I could show you guys what it's like. It actually gets kind of cool after a while.

[Whirlwind]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

The thing about Awakening is that more than any other game, beating the higher difficulties is less about coming up with good battle tactics, and more about knowing how to cheese it. I guarantee that if you did what I described doing, you'd have very little issue with Awakening Lunatic beyond the first two turns. So sure, try it, if it sounds interesting to you.

Also, I hold Lunatic+ in a simultaneously high and low regard. I'm very torn about it and I wish it were remotely realistic to playlog doing it so I could show you guys what it's like. It actually gets kind of cool after a while.

Yea it’s mostly cheeseing it (you’d be surprised at how easy it is) though I try to do it legit the game is too easy to cheese

[Venger_06]

18 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...This game isn't exactly the best when it comes to strategy. In fact at times it feels like there are barely any degrees of separation between it and a normal turn-based RPG. Especially since often this game just plays itself.

...Actually, since “strategy” is long-term and “tactics” are short-term, I guess what I mean is that this game isn't the best when it comes to tactics. Strategy is actually a huge part of Awakening gameplay... in the sense of your long-term character build plans for your army. The actual moment-to-moment gameplay is generally quite mindless on anything below Lunatic+.

Honestly, I think that's the main reason for the game's success. The RPG genre had been losing popularity in the late 2000s, mainly JRPGs, Awakening managed to capture this audience by playing similar to Final Fantasy Tactics for example, which was influenced by the main series in the first place. Thus, this audience was able to experience something that they would not normally play. At the very least, it certainly wasn't fanservice or Sword Art Online that caused the success, although there are people who believe that.

10 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Ironically, Awakening is literally the only one of those games I am even remotely okay with having a female avatar. As to the others, Fates just doesn't have any males I like enough other than as units, and 3H is even worse off in that regard. Just don't get me started on the abomination that is female Byleth's design. Just don't. That killed any chance I ever had of having Byleth as a girl (and that chance was already really damn low to begin with because I don't care for the males in THAT game either).

Yeah, Awakening at least gives reason to try both genders at some point. In subsequent games they place an arbitrary limit on pairs that make you miss an unit or give units for free just for having tits.

[Ottservia]

7 minutes ago, Maof06 said:

Sword Art Online that caused the success, although there are people who believe that.

 

Reminds of that time when that one FE tubeer tried to compare SAO’s bock standard generic ass anime artstyle to Kozaki’s. God that video is garbage

[Shadow Mir]

10 minutes ago, Maof06 said:

Yeah, Awakening at least gives reason to try both genders at some point. In subsequent games they place an arbitrary limit on pairs that make you miss an unit or give units for free just for having tits.

When the female's design is questionable (Corrin) or a complete dumpster fire (Byleth) any advantages that the female gets mean absolutely nothing to me. Doesn't help that I prefer to play as a male in most relationship-heavy games, which all three of Fates, 3H and Awakening are.

[Samz707]

4 hours ago, Maof06 said:

Honestly, I think that's the main reason for the game's success. The RPG genre had been losing popularity in the late 2000s, mainly JRPGs, Awakening managed to capture this audience by playing similar to Final Fantasy Tactics for example, which was influenced by the main series in the first place. Thus, this audience was able to experience something that they would not normally play. At the very least, it certainly wasn't fanservice or Sword Art Online that caused the success, although there are people who believe that.

I guess that's part of why I don't like it, I'm simply not a fan of most J-RPGs. (And the inability to grid on demand like most JRPGs from what I hear, doesn't help.)

I just really prefer how Echoes handled being JRPG inspired.

[Alastor15243]

Awakening Day 2: Chapter 2

Alright, three “chapters” yesterday, three “chapters” today. Sounds about fair. Especially since I don't have to do any introductions today. I'd really like to start doing the DLC as soon as possible.

So let's get right into it.

...I just realized I haven't commented on the 3D effects. That major gimmick of the 3DS that damned near every game on it used at least a little. Unfortunately, I don't think there's much I'll be able to say. Personally I can't stand to look at it for more than a few seconds at a time. I wish I could, then I might have something to say about it. I will say it looks weird when using stationary 2D images, like in this scene of Ylisstol we're at now.

Ylisstol is, sure enough, right around where Pales was in the original games, though as we'll see eventually... total creative liberty was taken with the palace's design.

Alexandria: I've never seen so many people!

Kind of a given, isn't it? Considering you have amnesia?

Anyway we get some exposition about Exalt Emmeryn's extremely pacifist nature, before Lissa reveals that Emmeryn is Lissa and Chrom's big sister. And then... we go to meet her.

Basically, Chrom's decided to recruit Alexandria to the Shepherds. I'm not sure when exactly this evolves from being the tactician of a single “elite” unit to being the commander of Ylisse's entire armed forces, but... okay, it's not quite as bad as I initially thought. I seemed to remember her basically getting made Ylisse's tactician at this point.

Aaaand we've got support conversations unlocked! Excellent! Now we can make Alexandria even more powerful!

Honestly, I think I like the system of the 3DS games best of all when it comes to support systems. At least when it comes to how you earn the supports. Having you earn the supports by having units fight together, gaining supports per action, allowing you to strategize around getting supports done quicker to unlock various benefits, is a lot more interesting than having units wait next to each other for hundreds of turns, or merely be deployed on the same map. That said, at least in this game, there's basically no gameplay incentive to unlock any supports between characters you aren't planning on pairing up. Which generally means husband and wife pairs. It's not until Fates that they add more tangible gameplay rewards for maxing out other types of supports.

Looks like Alexandria got supports with both Lissa and Frederick. Makes sense, given who she spent the most time with in the Prologue and Chapter 1. Let's do Frederick's first.

Ah yes, this is where we get some exposition about Frederick's... rather bizarre obsession with clearing paths of rocks to avoid people tripping. Like, the way he mentions it now it would barely warrant remembering, it's mostly casual, but in other supports... yeah, it's almost like he got Flanderized in the same game he was introduced.

Honestly, I wish I could like Frederick's character design. His armor is just barely too silly, but the fact that he wears an immaculate tuxedo underneath his battle armor is just such a cool idea.

And now for Lissa.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh man that's still funny. Lissa holds Alexandria's nose to wake her up, and when she gets up she's all “RISEN! WOLVES! RISEN RIDING WOLVES!”

...Though I think they don't actually get officially named Risen until next chapter, and Alexandria's actually going to express unfamiliarity with the term, so it can't have already been introduced to her offscreen. But we'll see.

Also, note, Risen is capitalized.

I wish this series would be fucking consistent about this. Hopefully the capitalization rules for races will be consistent in this game at least. If Taguel isn't capitalized, I'm going to be very pissed.

But yeah. The rest of the support isn't quite as funny, at least now that I'm already familiar with it, but it's certainly a more engaging read than the supports in New Mystery, that's for damned sure.

Anyway, enough prep, let's get on with this.

I love how Kellam actually is just barely visible at the beginning of the scene before the camera pans away from him.

Now, I know Chrom's gonna show up soon, which is weird, because this is supposed to be Lissa showing Alexandria the Shepherds' barracks while Chrom is having a meeting with Emmeryn and Phila. Meaning that assuming Lissa, Alexandria and Chrom all took the same amount of time to get here... then said meeting must have taken literally as long as it's gonna take for him to show up in this cutscene. That is one short war council or whatever it was.

Anyway, the recruitment theme is playing now, and I like it. It does well for this scene too. Good music choice.

Anyway... yeah, um... these characters are introduced very briefly, and in very stereotypical fashion. You really don't get any depth out of these characters until you get to their supports. I mean it's good that we do get that depth when seeing the supports from what I remember, but... I wish the characters weren't so shamelessly cliché outside of them.

I love the little gestures Lissa makes in this scene though. Especially when she introduces Alexandria to the group. That little thing she does when she says “you should see all the tricks she's got up her sleeve!”... I can just hear the sound effects she's making with her mouth when she does that. “Shooka shooka shooka shooka (explosion noise)”.

Anyway, Maribelle immediately sours to Alexandria when she laughs at Vaike burping, and...

...Sumia trips.

...I don't care, I found it hilarious. The way she just instantly falls on her face. Great slapstick. Dumb “character trait” to give her, but the execution here? Mwuh!

Okay, so I do find it interesting that Regna Ferox is apparently populated by what were once the roaming bands of barbarians from Anri's Way. I mean, you can argue it's kind of messed up they're still barbarians after 2000 years, but they've changed more than the rest of the world has at least. Though I do wonder what the hell happened to Khadein then. Did they all move or something? Were they driven out? I mean it's not like they had prime real estate or anything.

But yeah, we're moving to forge an alliance with the khans of Regna Ferox to the north to get help dealing with this zombie menace. A cool idea, if this story were actually more about fighting a zombie apocalypse. In practice we barely spend any time uniting against a zombie menace at all.

Yeah, they're really laying it on thick that Sumia has a crush on Chrom. Well sorry girl, but he's taken. I will be setting her up with somebody though. Easy dark flier access is not to be underestimated. She's definitely the stereotypical fragile pegasus knight... but in this game, that doesn't really mean much when you dump enough exp into a character.

Now, in terms of what supports I want to playlog, I desperately want to ship this chick with Henry. Those supports are a riot. But Frederick is above and beyond her best combat option. He fixes her early problems with bulk and damage-dealing and gives Cynthia some nice bulk too. And Henry... comes really late, which isn't really all that convenient for getting kids quickly to do crazy galeforce shenanigans.

...Of course... I could always try Gaius. I don't think I've ever seen those supports since it's such a terrible pairing for Apotheosis that I never bothered shipping her with anyone but Henry or Chrom after learning about the Apotheosis metagame.

...Yeah, fuck it, I think I might try Gaius.

Ah yes, and Stahl shows up too. His tropes are that the's hungry and painfully average. I don't remember his supports, like... at all. I know I paired him with Cordelia one time since he's got great classes for most physical kids tackling Apotheosis, but... the hair color. Sweet Jesus the hair color. With that hair and that look on her face, Severa constantly looked like she had just been forced to swim through a sewer. The only support of his I remember is his one with Miriel, where she does an in-depth, statistical analysis of his mediocrity, and... holy shit that love confession was pure cringe.

Stahl: There's one thing I'll never be average at, Miriel! Know what it is? Being in love with you!

Chriiiiiist.

So yeah, this is where the fact that nobody has their mounts in story scenes starts to get weird. I don't know why it is. It's not like the mounts don't have these kinds of models. They're just using everyone's battle models, so... why...? Did the height of the mount make eye lines or camera angles awkward or something?

...Yep, Alexandria didn't know what the term Risen means before this scene. So... probably could've timed that Lissa support better. They're usually better about this stuff. In particular, I like how they have the fact that Henry and Cherche show up after the timeskip to let characters talk about stuff that happened during the timeskip. Like Lissa finally getting to talk about her sister's death, and Cordelia getting to talk about the fact that Chrom's married.

But anyway, Frederick explains that “the council” (whatever the fuck that is) decided to call the zombies “Risen”. I wonder what that was like. What sorts of names did they throw in and throw out before settling on Risen? Seems like an amusingly petty thing for a royal council to be doing, which kinda makes me want to see it.

Anyway, Vaike forgets his axe for what is apparently the third time, and this is to facilitate a trading tutorial when Miriel shows up later, having found it. But that doesn't matter now, because, yet again, nobody but Alexandria and Frederick will be fighting.

Now then... time to get through this chapter. If you turn on range highlighting, you'll see that there's a little space within your starting area, shaped like an upside-down Tetris T block, that none of the enemies are in range of. What you want to do is find the mercenary to the east of your starting location, highlight him in red, pair up the avatar and Frederick, and move your avatar to bait that mercenary as far to the west as possible. Then you want to put Vaike and Virion in the top and right sections of the T-block (doesn't matter which goes where) and then pair Chrom and Lissa up with Sully and Stahl (with the cavs as the main unit of each pair so they can move further next turn) and put them in the bottom and left squares of the T-block. If you've done this properly, on your next turn all of your fragile units should be close enough to the newly-made opening in the southeast corner that they can all evacuate into it. Miriel will join at the start of this second turn, but she can just pair up with either Virion or Vaike and go with them to safety. Meanwhile, if you gave your avatar the elixir last map, then they'll have no trouble fighting these guys, but you'll probably want to flee to the mountains or at least a forest tile if possible for the terrain bonus while chugging elixirs. You want to aggro as many of these guys as possible so none of them get the bright idea to chase after your squishies huddling in the corner.

Alexandria still has to worry about crits, but she's also still leveling up rapidly, and just gained 2 HP, 1 magic, 1 skill, 2 speed, 2 luck and 2 defense in a single turn, meaning the odds of this failing at this point are absurdly low. It's still terrifying to leave this up to chance though.

Frederick just got a dual strike, and YES!

HE SAID THE LINE!

“Pick a god and pray!”

Oh man, I love that line. Everyone loves that line. It's so badass.

Hahahahaha! So now the game tells me about auto-battle, and yeah. Sure. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if I could eventually get away with that by deploying nobody but Alexandria and Chrom, but still... that option is so outrageously terrible that I'm amazed it even exists.

Alexandria got to level 13, and she's gotten magic, skill, luck, defense and resistance.

Yeah, uh... here's the big part of what makes the avatar's veteran skill so broken: the minimum exp gain for a kill is set at 8. No matter how much stronger than the enemy you are, you will never get less than 8 experience from killing one. When that's increased to 12 by the veteran skill... the avatar's always going to be gaining a level for every 8-9 enemies she kills. And that's to say nothing of the chip damage she's getting since she's not one-rounding these enemies yet. Just tanking them.

So, trading Vaike his axe reminds me: I actually rather like Miriel. She's an unpopular character from what I've seen, but I actually find her charming. Mainly for her supports. Her deal is that she's this obsessively science-minded woman with basically no social skills whatsoever, who's constantly studying the world around her, even down to the weirdest and most trivial things. I don't know why, but I find that endearing. A character with an extremely skewed understanding of the world but an extreme eagerness to learn about what she doesn't understand.

Anyway though... time to empty out some of Alexandria's inventory into Frederick's so that when we get the iron sword and iron lance in a second, we won't have to drop them. Because apparently not having a battle preparations menu means that Chrom just doesn't have a convoy right now. Ugh.

Anyway, by switching to Frederick and standing right before the edge of the enemy movement range in the second half of the map across the bridge, I can get Alexandria over to the fort to bring her defense up to a whopping 24. In Chapter 2. If this were Lunatic+, this would still be a terrifying gamble depending on what skills the enemies had, but here, I'm in the clear. And I only had to use the elixir once!

Level 14, HP, magic, skill, speed and luck. Pretty soon enemy crit rates will be just a memory. And soon she'll probably start doubling too! A faster partner might even do it now for some enemies.

The event tiles didn't have anything good, sadly.

Level 15, HP, strength and luck. Lame, but by this point I really can't complain.

I find it annoying that while all of the risen have masks on their models, only the slightly-less-generic boss here actually has it on his portrait. The rest are just the generic class portraits with red eyes and purple skin.

But with that, we're done.

[Alastor15243]

Day 2 Bonus: Chapter 3

Ah yes, and this is where the Shepherds find a wounded, terrified pegasus that wandered off from her stable (or maybe her rider was killed), and Sumia just... instantly tames the horse with her talent with animals. And so begins the first instance of one of my favorite songs in the game, despite it's obnoxiously hard-to-exactly-remember name:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doj627aUfuc

Man, the music in this game is just top fucking notch. I can't decide whether I prefer this soundtrack or Fates'. It's a really close call.

But back on topic... well, Sumia's gonna start riding this pegasus this chapter, which makes me wonder what kind of soldier she was trying to be before getting her hands on a pegasus and riding it. She clearly seems to be a new recruit without much training judging by her talk with Chrom at the barracks last chapter... which begs the question of what the fuck the requirements for joining the Shepherds are. They seem to basically just let anyone in if they have even a passing acquaintance with Chrom.

Hahahaha, I keep having to fight the instinct to click on the OpenEmu button every time I finish typing and want to get back to the game! My hands haven't gotten used to the fact that I'm not emulating anymore!

Alright, so now we're at Chapter 3. Nothing to do here but click on it. I didn't get any supports.

And now we finally get the preparations menu. Now, this game doesn't let you pre-pair-up units on the preparations menu, which is pretty annoying given that it also means you can't conveniently check what stat bonuses your allies will start the map with (one of the reasons I know Fates will wind up at the top of the usability list), but other than that, everything seems pretty great. You can even highlight individual enemy ranges on the prep menu to help plan out your first turn's attacks, something that Three Houses inexplicably forbids you from doing.

The new inventory menu however, while not worse, is gonna take some getting used to. In the year and change since I've played a 3DS game due to starting this marathon, I totally forgot this was a thing. There's only one function now, the thing that used to be “list”. No trading, no convoy, it's all combined into a single action. More convenient, sure, but it's going against my muscle memory big time at this point. On the plus side, you're finally able to use stat boosters and tonics directly from the convoy, an excellent feature that Three Houses also inexplicably removed.

Man, I am digging the piano in this preparation music. I'm not sure what the word to describe this style of piano playing is, but I'm reminded of the “That's Just the Way It Is” piano parts.

Anyway, this is the first map where, assuming you haven't lost anyone, you need to bench people. Well, bench a person. So naturally I bench Virion. If I want more long-range chip damage from behind cover (read: behind Alexandria), I've got Miriel. Miriel's actually a pretty good unit on higher difficulties, mostly thanks to her capacity to nosferatu tank. She's got access to nearly every magical class, with her reclass options being dark mage and troubadour. But the nostanking is what matters. Having a nostank who's borderline invincible but still technically has worse stats than your overpowered avatar family is a godsend on lunatic+ if you can get rid of all the nearby counter enemies with galeforce. The AI will register Miriel as the easiest kill despite nosferatu making her nearly indestructible, so all of the enemies will uselessly suicide onto her and leave the rest of your army unharmed, as long as they're close enough that everyone who can attack them could also attack Miriel.

Aaaanyway, I'm gonna lowman this one a bit further than just benching one guy. I'm not gonna make this an Alexandria-Chrom solo or anything, but reducing my deployment a bit will make it easier to protect the weaker units I do bring and train Miriel up some. I also had Miriel and Alexandria trade tomes, because I want to preserve the uses of thunder in case a time comes where I need two tomes at once.

The enemies have reached the point where they're gonna start doubling anyone who isn't Frederick or Robin with ease, but thankfully, at least as far as Miriel is concerned, the archers haven't reached that point yet. There's exactly one archer on the east side, whereas the west side has two. So I'm gonna have Alexandria quickly rout the west side. Then we'll take advantage of the locked door hallway to create a botleneck with which to feed Miriel some kills. Incidentally, In Lunatic+ it would be absolutely vital to bring enough units to completely fill that stairway/hallway, because the enemy can have pass and that'll ruin your wall. Alexandria's reached the point where she barely takes any damage anymore, so I think we should be good here. Only concern is if killing these enemies on the west side takes longer than I expect it will.

Alright, let's get this show on the road.

So Raimi, the border guard, immediately accuses us of being bandits, because apparently Plegia has been sending bandits posing as Ylisseans to terrorize Ferox. At any rate, diplomacy completely breaks down and they start throwing javelins at Chrom. Apparently Raimi decides the best way to settle this is via trial by combat, because obviously if Chrom really is the prince, he'd be better at fighting than bandits.

Makes sense in high fantasy logic, I guess.

Cue cutscene, where Sumia rescues Chrom on her new pegasus, introducing the concept of pairup to anyone playing on normal mode.

Anyway, Kellam, completely unceremoniously, is a green unit on this map. And while he starts in enemy territory, he won't actually be attacked until he's recruited, because the enemies don't notice him either. Now, the enemies won't actually charge until you end a turn in their attack range, so you can just recruit Kellam with Chrom, pair up with him, and have Kellam walk right back to safety and then take a little more time to get everyone to the edge of the enemy range if you want. But that's not how it's gonna go for us, because there's little need. We're attacking right away. Robin leaps astride Frederick's horse and rushes to attack a lancer at range with her fire tome. Gotta use magic, due to the archers. We've got like two turns to kill them before the enemy's upon us.

Thankfully all concerns of this going wrong evaporate when Frederick slaughters the western lancer on the first turn with a dual strike crit. Good man.

Yep, thanks to pairing up with Chrom, Sumia can indeed just barely double this archer, and that combined with an attack from Sully (who's carrying Lissa) is enough to bring him down. The other one in the forest can be one-shot by Alexandria, and Miriel can take out the knight.

...But we probably would've been boned if Frederick hadn't activated a single dual strike anywhere, so yet again, there's some luck here. Not enough to be worried when resetting, but when ironmanning... yeah, I may want to tighten up my strategies from here on out.

The archer has a crit rate on Miriel, but thankfully Alexandria's solidarity skill makes Miriel immune as long as Miriel hides behind her. And Lissa is right behind Miriel ready to heal, and Kellam's buffing Miriel's defense, and if things go really wrong I can always kill the archer with Alexandria early, so... let the enemy come.

Level 16: HP, speed, luck and defense. I'm probably just not gonna even talk about her level ups anymore soon. Certainly once she starts doubling.

Anyway, Lissa can't quite heal Miriel up enough to take another hit, so she switches to put Kellam in front. He can take a round of combat from the archer, and then Miriel will switch back so Lissa can then fully heal her, and then since I wounded the archer with Alexandria using a bronze sword, Miriel's counterattack will kill. Then Miriel can start taking potshots at the rest of them and we can finally get some levels on somebody who isn't Alexandria.

With the archer gone, the only one left who can do any damage to anyone (once Alexandria unequips her sword so the soldiers lose their +1 from weapon triangle) is the knight. I do some transfers to pass Sumia all the way from Chrom in back up to Miriel so that she's fast enough to double the knight and take him out swiftly with the fire tome. After that it'll be smooth sailing, with no need to waste any resources healing anyone.

And with that kill, Miriel gets our first non-Alexandia level up (except for a Lissa one I forgot about probably), and it's... everything but HP and strength! Awesome start! We also get a backup heal staff, though we were nowhere close to using up the first.

I don't think I've really talked much about the combat utility of anyone but Alexandria and Miriel. Well, I think you can probably guess why at this point. It's because on the higher difficulties, the number of units worth using can be counted on two hands, and on Lunatic+ they can be counted on like one.

I can't really say much about how they perform on normal difficulties either, because... I mean that has the opposite problem. Most of them play roughly the same. Anyone who can get 1-2 range can pretty easily enemy-phase sweep through most of hard and hard if you give them enough experience. With this game... the nearly-nonexistent exp curve and infinite level ups really fuck with any concept of needing to use a large army for anything. Quality over quantity is heavily encouraged by every aspect of the game's being. I really can't talk about how units are doing in the same way I can talk about them... basically anywhere else.

I dunno, maybe the game will pick up once I get to the DLC and start spreading my exp out a bit more and try to play this like a normal fire emblem game with a larger army. For now, while I don't actively hate playing it... it doesn't really feel like a Fire Emblem game for the most part. What it is isn't bad, per se... but I don't know what it is.

Miriel gets a second level up, and it's HP, magic, skill and luck. Much worse, but hey, a level is a level, and there'll be plenty more where that came from.

Alright, we're clear with the bottom half. Lissa will heal everyone up for some exp (she gets a really useful skill at level 10), and then I'll work out what to do next.

So, something else I didn't get a chance to mention yesterday... I like most of the character designs... but I don't actually like most of the costume designs. Any form of armor in this game looks pretty ridiculous, for one thing, with the infamous toilet-bowl-head cavalry and the ludicrously goofy-looking knights being prime examples.

Alright, we burst through the door on the west side, and Alexandria and Miriel worked together to take out the knight there. Miriel got the kill after Alexandria did near-fatal chip damage from a position where she can enemy-phase the nearest archer next turn. We don't want there to be two archers left when we start walling.

I'm gonna preserve my sanity a bit and have Alexandria do this walling armed this time. Alexandria will wound, Miriel will kill, so we'll get through this a good deal faster.

Miriel hits level 4. Skill, speed, luck and defense. Excellent. The sooner she can start doubling, at least with a Sumia pair up, the better.

She gets level 5 shortly after. HP, strength and resistance. Same four-level good-bad-good-bad level up pattern that Alexandria got. Huh.

Aaaaand 6 was another good one! Everything but strength and defense!

Lissa's been getting consistently terrible level ups, which is a shame, but it's highly doubtful she'll function as anything but a short-term healer, so I'm not completely broken up. ...Except I am because I really want to use her kid. We'll see what the DLC allows for.

I have exactly 20 magic uses remaining, between fire's 12 and thunder's 8. Thankfully after the next chapter, which only has a handful of enemies and should be over swiftly, we'll be able to buy some new supplies.

Killing the boss with Miriel isn't looking very realistic without wasting a lot of tome uses, possibly all of them. So I'll give the kill to Alexandria instead, because she can dispatch Raimi with ease.

Miriel's nearing C in tomes. I want to get her to A as soon as possible. There are some extremely powerful A rank tomes that the game basically gives you for free. Remember the stuff about the rainbow potion and the like in New Mystery? Think that, but even crazier.

Actually, I just realized I have an opening to have Miriel at least finish Raimi off. So I take it. And Raimi finally believes us as we (non-lethally due to plot powers) KO her. And Miriel gets magic, skill, speed and defense. A fine level up.

Raimi is suddenly super polite to us now that we've proven our legitimacy through battle, and... honestly, while I can't explain why, I actually like Ferox's whole “Battle is their politics” thing. Can't really explain it at the moment though.

Anyway, next chapter.

[Alastor15243]

Day 2 Bonus Bonus: Chapter 4

Alright, last chapter before we get access to the outrealm gate and have any hope of training up a proper army and playing this difficulty like a normal Fire Emblem.

...Oh shit! We've already unlocked some stuff! We can buy stuff at shops, or do Donnel's paralogue...

...We'll do Donnel's paralogue tomorrow. I wanna finish this whole pre-DLC part today.

However, I'm starting to grow concerned with my plan with this.

Okay, first off: Remember those concerns that certain lunatic design choices were a shameless excuse to sell DLC? Well personally, I'm of mixed opinion on whether or not that's true. On one hand, yes, the skirmishes being made nigh-impossible while none of the DLC shared that fate definitely leans towards that... but on the other hand, they make you go through no fewer than five extremely difficult chapters before they even let you try using the DLC. You'd think they'd let you use DLC from the outset if these difficulties were made deliberately mind-breaking in order to sell that stuff.

But the fact still remains that the way I'm going to play this game is going to be a way that only a minority of owners of this game will actually be able to play. I don't know what the sales numbers are, but I'm pretty sure not many people bought all the DLC like I did. And my original intention of checking out how this game plays on higher difficulties with a modest amount of extra grinding... well that was initially, before I remembered about the whole skirmish nerfing, an attempt to try to play the game on its terms, the way it was meant to be played. And that... feels wrong, given how completely atypical this is going to be of most playthroughs.

I still want to do it, but I'm worried it might skew my perception of the game in unfair ways, positively or negatively.

...But I mean, come on. I can't play this game on hard. It would be complete and total nonsense. And playing it on Lunatic as mostly an Alexandria solo would probably be really, really boring to describe if I kept it up too much longer.

...Alright, let's just keep going for now. I'm pretty sure I'll go through with it, but I'm open to being talked out of it.

So, yet another cool little thing about this game is that when you send characters to the armory to buy, sell, or forge things, characters have unique lines for each action that appear on the bottom screen. They tend to have very funny things to say if you try selling their stuff.

...Oh, speaking of which, I just got access to the bonus box and renown awards! This is basically a bunch of free shit, and a bunch of shit you get by increasing your cumulative “score” in the game over multiple playthroughs, respectively. I've got 9,000 renown, granting me everything but the four most expensive prizes. This nets me... an unfathomable treasure trove of valuable items, and trust me. If you're tackling Lunatic+? You're gonna need them.

Uhp! We've got some more supports! Let's see what we've got here...

...Ah yes. This is when Frederick reveals that he secretly hates bear meat and wants Alexandria's help getting over is revulsion to it so that he can force it down if necessary.

Okay, so Frederick accidentally insults Alexandria in a pretty funny way:

Frederick: Yes, I will train till I can consume anything, without concern for taste or decorum. Like an animal, or a savage... or like you, Alexandria.

And that causes her to go silent... and then smile oh so sweetly, and I just love it. I know the revenge is coming soon.

Anyway, Alexandria then gives him some “jerky” that's actually dried bear meat saved from that night in the woods. This can be absolutely ludicrous if you save this support conversation for, say, after the timeskip. It would also make Frederick screaming for a healer a lot less of an overreaction.

Ah yes, we get a Miriel support now! Miriel and Kellam. And I love it. She's just so fucking confused about Kellam's running gag of constantly being ignored by everyone despite his ridiculously loud and bulky armor, and she's staring at Kellam like a hawk, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.

One support combo I really like is the one she has with Gregor, who I usually have her marry for the ridiculous combination of armsthrift and Aversa's Night that you can then do with Laurent.

I buy a bunch of strength and defense tonics, which are now buyable and reasonably cheap instead of exclusively random bonuses. With that and the two fire tomes I bought, I think we'll be good for the next chapter. But we'll see.

We get a pretty funny moment where Alexandria imagines the khan they're going to speak to and expects a big hairy barbarian guy, only for Flavia the buff-but-pretty amazon to show up and go “Am I now? Please, do go on!”

Anyway, Flavia apologizes for the trouble at the border, and Chrom says it's no big deal.

Chrom will always say this. Despite it possibly having resulted in the death of up to three of his allies (Kellam, Vaike and Stahl), or the potential permanent crippling of anyone with plot significance and/or a vagina.

...I shit you not, when I originally wrote that above paragraph, I totally forgot about Kellam.

Anyway, now we're off to win a tournament for Flavia because that's how Ferox decides who gets the lion's share of the power every few years.

...This is a pretty big excuse plot, namely because we're never given any reason to think that Basilio, the West-Khan, wouldn't help us.

Also, apparently they always choose representatives, preferably foreigners, to fight their battles for them. This feels... like a really weird tradition. Especially since the khans don't even give orders. What is this supposed to prove here? That the winning khan is better at knowing who's strong? They aren't even allowed to train their champions. They'r supposed to be total strangers.

...Also, this tournament is heavily implied to be to the death, or at least that killing your opponents isn't against the rules, because they talk about having proxies do it to avoid having a ton of dead khans, and Flavia says she hopes Chrom survives.

...Is that why Lucina interfered here? To save him? ...No, that can't be it. He can't die here, because he dies later in the bad future timeline. Would it have just been another grave injury, like the one Lucina later says Chrom was supposed to suffer during the assassination she stopped?

...Fuck it, let's just go.

…

This map looks pretty dang tricky. Thankfully, with Sumia paired up with Miriel and Chrom paired up with Alexandria, I'll have two units capable of hitting the speed benchmarks for doubling every enemy on this map except for the boss, Lucina. That's important, because this is a very, very open map where you need to clear out the enemies swiftly or be hopelessly surrounded. I could probably solo his with Chrom and Alexandria, but I'm not liking how badly that could go, and Miriel is so close to being capable of proper combat.

I'm gonna give Miriel the Tiki's Tear from my renown awards. It's really at its most useful at this point in the game, before I gain access to all of the tonics separately (since it's just all of them bunched into one, and you can just use all of them simultaneously if you want). Since Tiki's Tears give +5 to HP as well as +2 to other stats (unlike the rainbow potion), this makes Miriel tough enough to tank the steel axe fighter she's going to have to fight. I may need to give her some of the permanent stat boosters I got too, because this could very easily go wrong.

...Yep, I gave her the dracoshield and the spirit dust. Lissa can't heal very quickly, so we'll need her to take as little damage as possible and do as much damage as possible.

...Oh shit.

She's just a couple of attacks away from gaining access to Celica's Gale.

That's a tome that works like a brave weapon, for those of you unaware.

Oh I've got this map in the fucking bag.

Alright, let's go.

...And now it's revealed that “Marth” is the champion of the West-Khan. And that's when we get another awesome cutscene... one where Chrom finally notices that “Marth” is holding a sword that looks exactly like his.

Chrom: Tell me! Who taught you to fight like that!?

“Marth”: MY FATHER!

...I can't believe I didn't get the twist right away in my first playthrough.

But yeah, so, here's the thing: you know what the game should've done? Lucina should've called herself “Alm”, not “Marth”. Make the extremely suspicious (though admittedly not suspicious enough for me apparently) fact that Lucina has a second Falchion a great deal less suspicious by letting the players assume (perhaps with assistance from the assumptions of the cast) that it's the Valentian Falchion.

...Which incidentally we never see regardless.

Walhart totally should've used it.

But yeah, the fact that she has another Falchion just isn't even talked about after this cutscene.

But yeah, we're starting. Both Miriel and Alexandria move in. And Alexandria, while she doesn't kill the fighter because Chrom doesn't proc a dual strike, does gain speed and defense (along with HP and skill) on her chip damage level up! Oh yeah. She doesn't even need Frederick anymore to be a menace.

Miriel however does luckily get a dual strike with Sumia that allows her to kill her fighter. That's really fortunate. And now she's gotten to C tomes and can use Celica's gale, meaning her side should be a cakewalk from here on out. She can one-round anything if she needs to.

Chrom finally levels up from dual strike chip damage, and he gets HP, strength, speed and luck. Not the best, but far from the worst.

...Not that he'll be seeing much time in the front row, mind you.

Man, Miriel keeps getting defense! This time along with skill, speed and luck!

“Marth” just started moving, but I was able to intercept her with Alexandria, and now that all the other enemies are dead, this should be a breeze.

Alexandria gets HP, skill, luck and resistance.

...Honestly I really shouldn't be saying every level up I get anymore, it's pointless. Alexandria's amazing, and will continue to be so for the rest of the game.

Unfortunately, “Marth” is shameless about using the Falchion's built-in infinite concoction function, allowing 20 HP healing at will by just using the item. This may take a while, but she only does 8 damage. I do more. I'll finish this eventually.

Ooh! Got her down to 1 HP! Let's see if I can give Miriel the kill. Get as much mileage as possible out of the Tiki's Tear I used for this chapter.

Yep, success!

Alright, we're done. And now after Flavia congratulates us and keeps up her end of the bargain with the alliance, Basilio shows up.

And then Lissa starts fangirling about how “dark and mysterious” and “dreamy” “Marth” is, and... honestly, knowing that she's talking about her own niece, that's just hilarious.

And then Basilio gives them Lon'qu, pretty much eliminating any doubt that they could've gotten their alliance from Basilio, making this whole thing... pretty damned pointless. Really all they did was get further in the good graces of the ruling Khan, which... I mean I guess that helps, but again, it's not like they had to help Flavia specifically win.

And yeah, Lon'qu's uncomfortable around women for... reasons that are kinda weird, from what I know of his backstory. But he does have one really funny line here:

Chrom: And Lon'qu? You have no objections?

Lon'qu: He gives orders. I stab people. I think our roles are clear.

But with that... we're finally done!

We're finally at the point where we can start playing DLC chapters! If I decide to tomorrow. Which I probably will. If you want me to keep playing without any grinding at all though, just focusing on low-man cheesing the shit out of this, please make your case.

Stay safe, everyone!