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

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

It's hard to tell since the coastlines don't fully match, but I do see the tree being just north enough to be in former Rigel. Maybe since I interpret the lake southeast as part of the gorge the sluice gates were built for (the mountains south of it being the same ones near Mila's Temple).  I see it corresponding to the Fear Mountain Range, the tree not far from where Nuibaba's Abode was.

But again, maybe just me.

Oh right, sorry, mixed up 16 and 17. That's... kiiiiind of an edge case, yes. But even so, the thought of moving Duma's goopy, putrid corpse through the tunnels  and across the realm and burying it under Zofia castle is just... way too ridiculous for me to swallow.

[Ottservia]

53 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ah yes, and here we allude to the utterly idiotic blackmail Yen'fay was under. He basically only sided with the Empire because he believed Excellus could have Say'ri killed at any time if he didn't obey. This is horrible no matter what the interpretation. Either Yen'fay is being an idiot here, and he betrayed his sister over the completely worthless, unsubstantiated and empty threats of this... this... delusional, cowardly, arrogant, offensive creepazoid...

...Or the game really is trying to suggest that Say'ri's entire success as leader of the resistance up until we found her was entirely due to her onii-chan rigging the game in her favor.

He’s just a poor man’s itachi really. Personally I don’t think it’s handled poorly because I can understand why Yen’fey did what he did but at the same time he’s no Itachi.

[Samz707]

11 hours ago, Jotari said:

I honestly don't think they actually expect you to play the map. It's clearly designed to be taken out in two turns. Even though you start pretty far away, there's massive safe spot in the middle to move to on the first turn that leaves you in a perfect position for killing him on the second turn (course assuming you don't just finish it on the first turn).

Yeah I ended up clearing it in 4 turns ultimately, on my first long attempt Robin died because they ran out of Nosferatu, despite having 4 full books of it.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

This map... the Demon's Ingle... is called Duma's Remains in Japanese.

Ah yes, and here we allude to the utterly idiotic blackmail Yen'fay was under. He basically only sided with the Empire because he believed Excellus could have Say'ri killed at any time if he didn't obey. This is horrible no matter what the interpretation. Either Yen'fay is being an idiot here, and he betrayed his sister over the completely worthless, unsubstantiated and empty threats of this... this... delusional, cowardly, arrogant, offensive creepazoid...

...Or the game really is trying to suggest that Say'ri's entire success as leader of the resistance up until we found her was entirely due to her onii-chan rigging the game in her favor.

Yen'fay procs astra, misses all five, and then dies to an instant Mjölnir crit. His last words are “She will... be safe. I can die in peace.” Which you can either interpret as him actually trusting Excellus to keep his word even after he's dead... or him deciding that she doesn't need her big brother protecting her anymore... because she has new protectors.

...Nope, Excellus confirms in the cutscene after that not killing her should he die in service to the empire was part of the deal, and he trusted Excellus to keep it.

...And yep, it's just like I said. Either Yen'fay is a massive idiot and the story never acknowledges this, or Say'ri is supposed to be an incompetent figurehead unknowingly larping as a revolutionary with her big brother's invisible assistance.

 

Yeah it's honestly kinda depressing just how little of a care for continuity Awakening has, 90 percent of fanfiction probably cares more to actually make sense in the world of Archanea than Awakening does.

 

I was basically completely  apathetic to Yen'fay considering the sheer amount of nonesense that plot "twist" was, if he was dumb enough to believe Excellus than honestly it's practically natural selection at this point, he basically brought it on himself IMO.

[Interdimensional Observer]

36 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

I was basically completely  apathetic to Yen'fay considering the sheer amount of nonesense that plot "twist" was, if he was dumb enough to believe Excellus than honestly it's practically natural selection at this point, he basically brought it on himself IMO.

Setting the blackmail situation aside, I still find Yen’fay weak. He is made out to be a threat, but falls in our sole encounter with him, and we never once see his face beforehand IIRC, neither on nor off the playable battlefield. For the criticism Walhart has been getting here of being rushed, he did get the Basilio kill to show that he was strong. And whereas Walhart has an appreciable bombastic personality and failed but cool concept of an atheist law & order charismatic dictator, Yen’fay is stoic and naught but a glum Eastern warrior.

[Axie]

oh fates question! will you do a different avatar for every game? i guess it doesn't change much for us readers but i got curious because i never do the branch of fate thing no matter how boring the first five chapters are lol

also good lord i never quite realized how thoroughly awakening desecrated valentia lore, too, because that isn't as fresh on my mind. all of that for a story that isn't even good without it? god bless this silly game.

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Axie said:

oh fates question! will you do a different avatar for every game? i guess it doesn't change much for us readers but i got curious because i never do the branch of fate thing no matter how boring the first five chapters are lol

I rarely do Branch of Fate either. I do generally plan on having my avatar be the original Dakota, though I will change between male and female, doing male at least once.

[Emperor Hardin]

Did you beat the Cynthia map, @Alastor15243, I haven't found your thoughts on it?

Great thoughts on the maps, how did Duma's skeleton get to rigel, it makes no sense.

8 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Conversely, I've heard it's actually Kyza, of all people, who fulfill that stereotype. In the Japanese version, he has feminine vocal mannerisms and a crush on Ranulf - or so I've heard. Really not sure if the localization making him "boring" was for the better or worse.

Kyza is more complex actually. The localization didn't make him "boring", in Japanese, Kyza also speaks in a more formal fashion/masculine fashion when in Public or around in Beorc/strangers in the army, but uses feminine language when around close friends or in private. The localization also gave Kyza more casual and "flamboyant" words at certain supports.

Kyza uses several stereotypes, but the character is also meant to be appealing and heroic.

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Did you beat the Cynthia map, @Alastor15243, I haven't found your thoughts on it?

Nope! If she and Severa are gonna be useful at all it'll be after their mothers get galeforce. They're close, so I'm gonna wait to see.

[Emperor Hardin]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

Nope! If she and Severa are gonna be useful at all it'll be after their mothers get galeforce. They're close, so I'm gonna wait to see.

Got it.

Oh I saw an old question on the Radiant Dawn LP I missed, where you asked why Kyza was so uptight, its heavily implied Kyza wants to make a good impression on the Beorc. Its more apparent in Japanese, but Kyza speaks in a very formal and masculine fashion when around Beorc and new people in the army. Kyza was also very insistent on resolving Laguz/Beorc conflicts within the army based off the Lyre/Shinon interaction. I'd guess Kyza wants to both look professional and show Beorc that Beast Laguz aren't savage and stupid.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Oh I saw an old question on the Radiant Dawn LP I missed, where you asked why Kyza was so uptight, its heavily implied Kyza wants to make a good impression on the Beorc. Its more apparent in Japanese, but Kyza speaks in a very formal and masculine fashion when around Beorc and new people in the army. Kyza was also very insistent on resolving Laguz/Beorc conflicts within the army based off the Lyre/Shinon interaction. I'd guess Kyza wants to both look professional and show Beorc that Beast Laguz aren't savage and stupid.

Thanks for the info! That's actually an interesting aspect to his character I wish were at least translated rather than omitted.

[Samz707]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Setting the blackmail situation aside, I still find Yen’fay weak. He is made out to be a threat, but falls in our sole encounter with him, and we never once see his face beforehand IIRC, neither on nor off the playable battlefield. For the criticism Walhart has been getting here of being rushed, he did get the Basilio kill to show that he was strong. And whereas Walhart has an appreciable bombastic personality and failed but cool concept of an atheist law & order charismatic dictator, Yen’fay is stoic and naught but a glum Eastern warrior.

Even then Walhart's falls flat because the fake-battle doesn't give us an real idea of how strong he is, Lyn and Jaffar both have crit-chances when they get a crit in the fake-battles in FE7, meanwhile Walhart clearly lacks a crit-chance, so there's none of the actual stakes present.

If Jaffar got a zero percent chance crit in FE7, I wouldn't have been as a terrified to face him as I was in my first playthrough because I don't get the feeling that him critting me is a real threat that way.

(Granted Walhart also died real easy to Tharja so I'm sorta biased towards not seeing him as a threat.)

Edited December 31, 2020 by Samz707

[Jotari]

8 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I can kinda see what they were trying on there.

The Mila Tree is in former Rigel. The Demon's Ingle is in former Zofia.

It feels like they were implying some kind of token gesture happened. That each sibling was laid to rest under the land of the other. Sure, the Mila Tree is nowhere near where Rigel Castle was, to match the Demon's Ingle being where Zofia Castle was, but the idea still conveys itself as long the tree was anywhere in former Rigel.

Of course one should also note that at the time of Awakening's release the notion of Duma and Mila even having remains was a baseless one. So my assumption at the time is that they were implying some kind of intermediate conflict where Duma escaped and was finally killed. As Duma and Mila are sealed away inside Falchion at the end of Gaiden instead of being killed (with nothing of the suggestion that those two things are in some way similar). There's nothing denoting that they have remains. No skull in Duma's Temple. That's another thing Echoes was retconning into the story, not sure if they intentionally wanted to patch up the plot hole in Awakening though as Echoes doesn't attempt to resolve why the Demon's Ingle is where it is.

8 hours ago, Ottservia said:

He’s just a poor man’s itachi really. Personally I don’t think it’s handled poorly because I can understand why Yen’fey did what he did but at the same time he’s no Itachi.

So do you subscribe to the Yen'Fey is stupid or Say'ri is incompetent school of thought? Course after Say'ri joins up with Chrom and Robin and gets an army of "hundreds of thousands" Yen'Fey kind of can't get out of the stupid side of things. He keeps fighting up until he's the last man in a volcano by which point just acting as her bodyguard would put Say'ri in more safety. If Excellus has the power to just execure an enemy military general than Chrom and Robin would not be breathing by now.

5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Setting the blackmail situation aside, I still find Yen’fay weak. He is made out to be a threat, but falls in our sole encounter with him, and we never once see his face beforehand IIRC, neither on nor off the playable battlefield. For the criticism Walhart has been getting here of being rushed, he did get the Basilio kill to show that he was strong. And whereas Walhart has an appreciable bombastic personality and failed but cool concept of an atheist law & order charismatic dictator, Yen’fay is stoic and naught but a glum Eastern warrior.

Story!Whalhart is indeed better than Story!Yen'fay. While minor, those things you mentioned are appreciated. But being better than Story!Yen'Fay is a really low bar to set. Like I think he might just be the worse antagonist in the game. I like Pheros far more and she's clearly meant to be far more minor a character;

Edited January 1, 2021 by Jotari

[Acacia Sgt]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Of course one should also note that at the time of Awakening's release the notion of Duma and Mila even having remains was a baseless one. So my assumption at the time is that they were implying some kind of intermediate conflict where Duma escaped and was finally killed. As Duma and Mila are sealed away inside Falchion at the end of Gaiden instead of being killed (with nothing of the suggestion that those two things are in some way similar). There's nothing denoting that they have remains. No skull in Duma's Temple. That's another thing Echoes was retconning into the story, not sure if they intentionally wanted to patch up the plot hole in Awakening though as Echoes doesn't attempt to resolve why the Demon's Ingle is where it is.

Good point in regards to Mila, but there's no indication Duma was sealed within Falchion as well. His last words are only to let him and his sister 'slumber', which could be poetic about letting them be in death. But no indication he got sealed. So him, at least, would have physical remains. After all, in Japanese it may be Duma's Remains, but the Mila Tree is still the Mila Tree, no indication about her remains. SoV added that, but nothing of the sort during Awakening.

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Axie said:

oh fates question! will you do a different avatar for every game? i guess it doesn't change much for us readers but i got curious because i never do the branch of fate thing no matter how boring the first five chapters are lol

also good lord i never quite realized how thoroughly awakening desecrated valentia lore, too, because that isn't as fresh on my mind. all of that for a story that isn't even good without it? god bless this silly game.

Pretty sure you can skip the first few chapters even with a different Avatar.

2 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Good point in regards to Mila, but there's no indication Duma was sealed within Falchion as well. His last words are only to let him and his sister 'slumber', which could be poetic about letting them be in death. But no indication he got sealed. So him, at least, would have physical remains. After all, in Japanese it may be Duma's Remains, but the Mila Tree is still the Mila Tree, no indication about her remains. SoV added that, but nothing of the sort during Awakening.

Eh... I guess you could say that. But imo referring to himself and Mila as being in the same situation makes me think they are both sealed. Especially since he's saying don't disturb our slumber. Which suggests it is possible for him to be woken again.

[Interdimensional Observer]

47 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Story!Whalhart is indeed better than Story!Yen'fay. While minor, those things you mentioned are appreciated. But being better than Story!Yen'Fay is a really low bar to set. Like I think he might just be the worse antagonist in the game. I like Pheros far more and she's clearly meant to be far more minor a character;

True, Yen’ is a thin character. I never read his hot springs convos or his Robinsexual supports, but I’m not sure how much they could help. Valm was too small for two major villains, stuck as it is between a Mad King and two cultists and their god.

Gangrel I’d say is indisputably the best of the Awakening villains to me, since he actually rises to being kinda good. For one, the villain archetype he falls into hasn’t been done very much in Fire Emblem, and he does it relatively well. He’s a crass nihilist who likes pestering the heroes and mocking their goody-goodness. He gets sufficient appearances to develop an antagonistic bond with the player, but doesn’t overstay his welcome, which I find helps his kind of bad guy (though, I consider Hades in Kid Icarus: Uprising to be of the same mold and he works though he be around much longer than Gangrel).

[Shadow Mir]

6 hours ago, Axie said:

oh fates question! will you do a different avatar for every game? i guess it doesn't change much for us readers but i got curious because i never do the branch of fate thing no matter how boring the first five chapters are lol

Neither do I. Largely because the Branch of Fate option has issues that make it easier to just start from the beginning.

[Ottservia]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

So do you subscribe to the Yen'Fey is stupid or Say'ri is incompetent school of thought? Course after Say'ri joins up with Chrom and Robin and gets an army of "hundreds of thousands" Yen'Fey kind of can't get out of the stupid side of things. He keeps fighting up until he's the last man in a volcano by which point just acting as her bodyguard would put Say'ri in more safety. If Excellus has the power to just execure an enemy military general than Chrom and Robin would not be breathing by now.

Like I said he’s a poor man’s itachi. Do I think Itachi was an idiot for following Danzo’s orders? No, not at all so I’m not in the camp that thinks Yen’fey is dumb. Though then again Itachi’s situation had far more nuance than Yen’fey’s but that’s neither here nor there. Point is, I get why Yen’fey did what he did. It’s not like the story rewards him for it anyway. Again, he’s killed for it. The story is by no means saying he’s correct. As I keep saying he’s a poor man’s itachi. It’s handled okay but again he’s no itachi and Say’ri does not even hold a candle to Sasuke’s character. That’s not even a contest.

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Like I said he’s a poor man’s itachi. Do I think Itachi was an idiot for following Danzo’s orders? No, not at all so I’m not in the camp that thinks Yen’fey is dumb. Though then again Itachi’s situation had far more nuance than Yen’fey’s but that’s neither here nor there. Point is, I get why Yen’fey did what he did. It’s not like the story rewards him for it anyway. Again, he’s killed for it. The story is by no means saying he’s correct. As I keep saying he’s a poor man’s itachi. It’s handled okay but again he’s no itachi and Say’ri does not even hold a candle to Sasuke’s character. That’s not even a contest.

So if he's not dumb is Say'ri just incompetent as a resistance leads then? If the answers yes I don't think that necessarily a bad plot thread to explore, though I don't think Awakening really did explore it.

 

Edited January 1, 2021 by Jotari

[Ottservia]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

So if he's not dumb is Say'ri just incompetent as a resistance leads then? If the answers yes I don't think that necessarily a bad plot thread to explore, though I don't think Awakening really did explore it.

 

But that’s not what awakening was trying to explore. One of the major points of the valm arc is unity and loyalty. Yen’fey joined Walhart out of fear for his sister’s life and is ultimately killed for it. He feared Walhart and was not loyal to him due to some philosophical alignment but rather fear and blackmail. Though in joining Walhart, he only brought division between him and his sister as well as the dynasts. He is ultimately considered wrong for doing this because he’s killed for it. It’s not like the story at all rewards him for doing any of this.

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

But that’s not what awakening was trying to explore.

I genuinely do not believe for a second that Awakening was trying to "explore" anything.

[Ottservia]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I genuinely do not believe for a second that Awakening was trying to "explore" anything.

I mean every story tries to explore something and awakening is no different. Art is nothing more than a form of expression after all.

[Axie]

awakening was trying to explore the perceived last opportunity of swiping money from fire emblem fans by expressing how previous fire emblem universes existed, in the most chaotic way possible. there.

i guess if we remove all of that, we have a story of... idk, there are two wars and a time travelling villain and not much of a message? it's a very anemic story that counts on its previous references to impress, yet they also make it nonsensical.

but at least it's something, which makes it a better story than BlaBla. blazing blade: the game that ends the exact the same way it starts, with some elibe desecration in the middle.

[Alastor15243]

Awakening Day 15: Chapter 19

Let's get this shitshow on the shitroad.

The enemy is apparently stalling inside the fortress waiting for reinforcements to show up, but since the only people left other than Walhart's own division are the opportunistic turncoats... yeah, obviously this isn't going to end well, and I think Walhart knows this.

...Okay, hearing Walhart use the term “some dynast farm lord” is pretty funny in hindsight after playing Echoes. However... so he seems to have absolutely no intention of waiting in his castle and letting the dynasts kill Chrom, but... that's exactly what he's been doing until this moment. Why did he retreat to his castle to regroup if he really has no fear of Chrom at all?

...Oooooohhhh god this map. This map isn't really “hard” in any real sense, it's just... so goddamned open, with reinforcements coming from basically everywhere. We only have a small 3x3 structure in the center of the map that units can't pass through, and keeping our squishy units safe just might be outright impossible. To give you an idea... there isn't a single safe spot on the map on the first turn. Every single space can be attacked by at least two enemies.

On Lunatic+ this map is actually surprisingly fun. I wound up bringing nobody but Alexandria, Chrom, Lucina, Morgan, Miriel and Gregor, and the strategy was to find a way to galeforce every enemy in range of my party that had counter, and then have everyone end the turn close enough to Miriel in the center that almost everyone who could attack them would attack Miriel instead, since the enemy AI doesn't understand the survivability boost of nosferatu and just saw her shittier-but-still-good stats.

Unfortunately, in this playthrough Miriel can barely even contribute here. She might, might be able to siphon off enough HP to hang on, but compared to how she was in my Lunatic+ run where she didn't share exp with Cordelia or Sumia... yeah she's just not gonna be able to keep up.

To try to make this interesting, I'm going to deploy everyone I've been making any semblance of a use of lately, even the ones that can't hope to survive a straight up fight. My goal is going to be to see how well my limited army can protect the units in the middle. That 3x3 structure is going to be pivotal to my plans. I'm going to try to intercept all of my enemies as they go around either side of it, enemy-phasing most of them and hoping that I can galeforce away any of the ones that survive or go astray.

The fact that nearly the entire map is mounted units and there are going to be ambush spawns coming from every fort means this is probably going to be a slaughter, but fuck it, low-manning would be boring.

Everyone's tonic'd up.

Everyone.

...Let's go.

Morgan's going to be making extensive use of the Book of Naga to survive these enemy phases. With it, He's got 47 defense and 36 res, along with 78 HP. He should be fine. For the first time ever it's actually Alexandria I'm more worried about.

Unfortunately, it became apparent shortly after trying to put my initial plan into action to get those five cavalry near our starting position out of the way... that one-rounding enemies is becoming increasingly RNG-reliant, even for our best units. No strategy is truly stable anymore. And when both Cordelia and Sumia failed to one-round a single paladin each, I had to adjust my strategy, and this unfortunately nearly got Cordelia killed, were it not for a lucky dual guard after she got badly wounded by arcwind.

On the bright side, Morgan has finally reached the point where he only needs a luck tonic to 100% armsthrift from the back row! Two more luck procs and he won't even need that!

Turn 2's formation looks pretty nasty. Yet again almost no safe zones in sight, but thankfully, while Sumia and Cordelia can't use galeforce, they can be rescued by Anna and Libra while Lissa uses fortify, so they can contribute a bit to taking out the really far-reaching enemies without staying heavily in enemy range.

It's become apparent that there just isn't enough room to hide all of my units from the ambush spawns, so what I wound up doing was have Cordelia and Sumia block the two southeast forts, have Morgan and Lucina stand on one of the ones north of them, and thus have a space by the southeast corner of the map where only one ambush spawn can reach a vulnerable unit. Good plan. Problem is that ideally I'd have Morgan and Lucina doing the heavy duty work on the west side, since Morgan is significantly harder to kill than Alexandria. I'll see if I can switch them around with rescue shenanigans.

I'm now really wishing I could reclass Alexandria to grandmaster. She's 4 levels away from being able to reclass into another promoted class, and I hope she gets them soon, because bowbreaker won't save her from forged arcwind.

...Yep, thanks to rescue staves I managed to get Morgan and Lucina on the higher-risk west side duty, and Alexandria covering the east side, before the ambush reinforcements showed up. That's a relief.

And thankfully the game doesn't have the first wave of reinforcements include the lower forts. But don't worry. They will later.

Morgan's nearly level 20, and there's no remotely safe way to get him his second seal in time. Absolutely nobody in my formation can afford to move anywhere to do an exchange. So I'm gonna try and let Lucina take the wheel for a bit. She's not that much weaker, and Morgan hasn't come anywhere close to dying. Plus she'll be on a fort, and she has Aether, which is less stable than 13 extra defense, but still awesome. I can't let her get too far behind in experience just because Morgan's safer.

...She isn't too far behind in experience anyway though, funny enough, despite Morgan doing most of the enemy-phasing lately.

...Fortify will apparently let you use it even if there's nobody in range who needs healing. I couldn't use physic, but I could use fortify. That blows.

Hilariously, Alexandria got hit by a 6% silver bow attack. She's way too powerful for that to kill her, but given how unlikely that 91% dodge from Sumia was back in Donnel's paralogue, I technically got even more unlucky here than I got lucky with Sumia. It was on player-phase though, so I had plenty of time to heal.

...The ambush reinforcements seem to be over. Alright. Guess it's time for Walhart round one.

Alexandria very nearly manages to one-round him, but he procs aegis at the last second, and Chrom's dual strikes do nothing. Thankfully, Morgan and Lucina are here to finish him off. Morgan will do the honors with Leif's Blade so we can get some money out of it.

And it procced!

THAT'S RIGHT, WALHART!

WE JUST STOLE FROM A CONQUEROR!

AND THE COIN AIN'T MELTIN' IN HELL!

Alright, and yeah, at the end cutscene, the dynasts come to help us now that we're decidedly the winning side.

...Well actually, to be more precise, the southern dynasts are here to fight in Yen'fay's honor now that Yen'fay no longer is ordering them to fight for the empire? Apparently? But they didn't know about Yen'fay being blackmailed, judging by the whole “performance” thing in the Yen'fay cutscene at the start of Chapter 18. So why would they...?

...Well whatever the case, we're going to Chapter 20 next. But first... a support. Amusingly, Sumia and Cordelia standing next to each other guarding those forts while a general attacked Cordelia gave them enough support points to support with each other.

It's a quick little thing about Cordelia telling Sumia to stop doing flower fortunes and start putting her fate into her own hands more.

Let's move on.

Double feature.

 

Day 15 Bonus: Chapter 20

So yeah, the game's basically saying that Excellus was coasting on Yen'fay's reputation this entire time with his threats and blackmail, meaning that yes, the answer was that Yen'fay was stupid, and that if it weren't for Yen'fay being so stupid to believe Excellus was dangerous... he never would have been dangerous.

And now Walhart just shits on Excellus, tells him all of his scheming was actually so transparent he already knew all about it, including his conspiring with Aversa, and tells him the only reason Excellus is alive is because Walhart finds him amusing, like a court jester.

I do not like Excellus as a character. At all. In any capacity.

...And I just realized he looks like he could be Lorenz's overweight mother.

...Let's just get onto the actual map.

Anyway, this is uncomplicated but also pretty frustrating. For one thing... okay, so, the game has given us a few more deployment slots than usual, but... we haven't actually gotten any new units in-story to put in those spaces. It's basically assuming we're using more child units and got new ones very, very recently. Which hasn't happened. So I'm basically bringing Gaius for no reason other than efficiency with looting treasures. But I've still gotta protect all of these guys.

Thankfully, I do have a good option. I can break through the east side, rush the eastern treasure room, hole up in it, and have my proper units form a defense outside the treasure room door to stop the various ambush spawns.

The ambush spawns coming our way from the main entrance.

Through our massive army of offscreen story reinforcements that just arrived.

But yeah, that's the plan. With triple galeforce I should just barely be able to reach the thief on turn 1.

There's only one thief.

There seems to never be more than one thief when there's treasure to be looted.

It's like the game knows it's going to be low-manned.

Alright, begin.

...Ah yes, also, I have to keep an eye out for the one warrior with counter.

…

...Unfortunately, I apparently misjudged the attacking range of a warrior with a silver bow, and Sumia... has just gone down. Death has finally caught up with her, and she dies to a 62% bow attack.

On the one hand, I wish I managed to get her galeforce. On the other... this is actually a net gain for the playthrough, as I get to see what happens when you let a mother “die” after you've unlocked her child's paralogue.

I think this is honestly the least I've given a shit about losing a unit I've used for the whole game.

Both Morgan and Lucina are at level 20, so it's time to second seal. Probably back into grandmasters since they've gotten well-fleshed-out skillsets. Grandmaster is a really great class, pretty much perfectly well-rounded, and with no slayer weaknesses to watch out for.

So this time there was only one turn of warning between the reinforcement announcement and when they arrive. I hear that they're eventually going to stop giving any warning at all. Thankfully, none of them have counter, so... it's just more fuel for the all-consuming black hole that is Morgan and Lucina paired up.

The east treasure room has spirit dust and a beaststone+. We'll be getting the western one once this fucking massive stampede of reinforcements gets taken out.

Not that I'm remotely scared.

Morgan has 48 defense with bonuses and he isn't even done growing. And in case I didn't mention it, yes, he's got capped 46 luck, meaning with rightful king he no longer needs any help 100%ing armsthrift.

And these enemies are just falling apart in front of him.

The other side had a dragonstone+ and a second seal.

Alright, let's see if we can feed some of these more passive enemies into Cordelia so we can have at least one more galeforce user.

Looks like that's no dice. I wound up aggroing all of the enemies, so I've gotta take out Walhart this turn.

And amazingly, Walhart procced aegis or pavise on every hit, forcing me to finish Walhart off not with Alexandria, not with Morgan or Lucina, but with Miriel.

And so the Valm arc ends... with a really, really corny, pseudo-philosophical bit of nonsense about Walhart and Emmeryn, and yet again Emmeryn's legacy is 100% vindicated.

That's 7 to .5. Yeah, I think we can pretty safely say that Emmeryn's depicted as 100% in the right by this narrative and a veritable saint.

We get Vert, the second to last Gemstone, and...

...Plegia “offers” to give us the last Gemstone, and despite it being an obvious trap, Chrom decides to go because, amongst other things like having no choice if he wants the Gemstone, his sister would have gone. 8 to .5, like we even still need to keep count.

...Cynthia's paralogue is still open. There won't be a better time to go than now, so... let's do it now.

...Oh, but first, Libra has a support with Cordelia due to some positioning shenanigans I guess.

...It's mostly setup, with Libra helping Cordelia out with some crates. Not much to comment on.

Let's go.

 

Day 15 Bonus Bonus: Paralogue 9

Anyway we visit this lush (but very tiny) island in the middle of the sea, where some random bandit has decided to take on Chrom's name, the name of the ruler of a far off country, not to milk his good reputation for free shit from the locals, but to... to what, exactly? What does pretending to be Chrom do if you're just gonna strong-arm everyone into doing what you say anyway like a normal common thug?

Also, how the hell can these villagers, upon seeing Chrom, confuse Chrom for the bandit when he hasn't even introduced himself by name and the bandit looks nothing like Chrom?

Like, one of them implies he's visited her personally and yet she still thinks Chrom is this bandit guy.

Yeah, this is beyond dumb, and seems to serve no other purpose than to have Cynthia have a chance to be adorably stupid. But it doesn't excuse everyone else's stupidity.

...It's become blindingly obvious that the window of opportunity to make child units badass without DLC grinding has passed. Cynthia's basically unusable in her current state. If she had galeforce I could've used a beastkiller to get her some quick and easy high-exp kills on some cavalry, but she doesn't, so I can't. Instead I'm just gonna quickly recruit her with Chrom after the rest of the enemies are safely out of the way, and then just slaughter this entire map between Alexandria, Morgan and Lucina. Maybe funneling some kills into Cordelia if I can. She is only three levels away from getting galeforce after all.

Let's go.

This map has a gimmick where the boss will slowly recruit neutral NPCs by the north of the map into enemies with his lies about being Prince Chrom. Cute concept, but it's technically a net benefit to wait for them to all be recruited because there's no reward for finishing quickly and you just lose training opportunities.

And yeah, all the enemies rush me, so there's basically no strategy here at all. Not that I expected any from this game.

Cynthia's really cute, and her talk is funny and adorable, but beyond story this map has basically no substance at this point.

...Shit, not only do you get less exp if you go to him early, you're actually punished by giving him an easier time retreating, because he runs away back the way he came.

That almost cost me the large bullion, but thankfully I managed to do a rescue chain to get Cordelia all the way over to Morgan and Lucina to do rally movement and give them just enough movement to reach the boss in the one turn of warning I got before he'd have made it to the edge of the map.

And that's victory in four turns.

Now, Frederick starts talking about how he's going to make portraits of Chrom and have them distributed all over so nobody mistakes someone else for Chrom ever again, and Chrom, likely still reeling from the embarrassment of the last time Frederick commissioned a portrait of Chrom (in their rather infamous C support together that I sadly didn't get), just says “Frederick. Let's just go.”

But yeah, so this proves that you can still get the child units even if the mother “dies”.

Speaking of which, we get a cute little talk between Cynthia and Sumia. It's a shame how terrible this game's story is, because the characters are really, really likable.

Frederick and Cynthia's support... annoys me. It's super, super short, and it involves Cynthia asking her father's opinion on which dramatic entrance she should use in battle. The thing is... all of Cynthia's potential fathers are weirded out by this, including Henry, and also, I'm pretty sure all of them pick the exact same of the three choices. How much work would it really have taken to just have the fathers actually pick different ones based on their personality? It has absolutely no consequence on the rest of the support, so there'd be no reason they'd all need to pick the same.

...Aaaaanyway...

Yeah, sorry, I think that's it for this week. The game will probably be over by the end of next week provided nobody insists on hearing my opinion on any of the DLC or spotpass paralogues. I think it should be pretty obvious at this point that nothing is really going to improve my opinion of this game's gameplay. The entertainment value of every difficulty below Lunatic+ dies the instant you decide that enemy-phase slaughterfesting isn't good enough for you anymore. There's a dumb, mindless sort of fun to be had with this game, but I've found that when I have to talk about the game too, it easily, rapidly overstays its welcome.

Well, happy new year.

Stay safe, everyone.

Stay safer than Sumia.

[Samz707]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Unfortunately, it became apparent shortly after trying to put my initial plan into action to get those five cavalry near our starting position out of the way... that one-rounding enemies is becoming increasingly RNG-reliant, even for our best units. No strategy is truly stable anymore. And when both Cordelia and Sumia failed to one-round a single paladin each, I had to adjust my strategy, and this unfortunately nearly got Cordelia killed, were it not for a lucky dual guard after she got badly wounded by arcwind.

It's become apparent that there just isn't enough room to hide all of my units from the ambush spawns, so what I wound up doing was have Cordelia and Sumia block the two southeast forts, have Morgan and Lucina stand on one of the ones north of them, and thus have a space by the southeast corner of the map where only one ambush spawn can reach a vulnerable unit. Good plan. Problem is that ideally I'd have Morgan and Lucina doing the heavy duty work on the west side, since Morgan is significantly harder to kill than Alexandria. I'll see if I can switch them around with rescue shenanigans.

There seems to never be more than one thief when there's treasure to be looted.

It's like the game knows it's going to be low-manned.

And so the Valm arc ends... with a really, really corny, pseudo-philosophical bit of nonsense about Walhart and Emmeryn, and yet again Emmeryn's legacy is 100% vindicated.

That's 7 to .5. Yeah, I think we can pretty safely say that Emmeryn's depicted as 100% in the right by this narrative and a veritable saint.

Anyway we visit this lush (but very tiny) island in the middle of the sea, where some random bandit has decided to take on Chrom's name, the name of the ruler of a far off country, not to milk his good reputation for free shit from the locals, but to... to what, exactly? What does pretending to be Chrom do if you're just gonna strong-arm everyone into doing what you say anyway like a normal common thug?

Also, how the hell can these villagers, upon seeing Chrom, confuse Chrom for the bandit when he hasn't even introduced himself by name and the bandit looks nothing like Chrom?

Like, one of them implies he's visited her personally and yet she still thinks Chrom is this bandit guy.

Frederick and Cynthia's support... annoys me. It's super, super short, and it involves Cynthia asking her father's opinion on which dramatic entrance she should use in battle. The thing is... all of Cynthia's potential fathers are weirded out by this, including Henry, and also, I'm pretty sure all of them pick the exact same of the three choices. How much work would it really have taken to just have the fathers actually pick different ones based on their personality? It has absolutely no consequence on the rest of the support, so there'd be no reason they'd all need to pick the same.

 

 

Yeah I don't like the whole ambush spawns making it really only able to use 3-7 units a map if you don't seriously grind nature of Awakening.

IMO generally a strategy game should be beatable on your first go when you've gotten a nice grasp on the mechanics, there can be surprises but nothing that will wipe out your units with no way to really counter them outside of knowing ahead of time (Unless your units are all/mostly generics who get replaced anyway.) which Awakening does not do, at all, Nosferatu tanking with only Tharja/Robin and their stat backpacks is considered one of the best strategies for a reason.

Not to mention that the thief ALWAYS drops the stolen item when killed, I swear the actual thief class in this game is borderline useless since you can just buy keys I'm pretty sure and just let the thieves steal the items for you. (not to mention grinding via the random battles/Anas can get you any item in the game pretty much.)

Yeah the entire bandit as Chrom situation is completely dumb, doubly so if Cynthia is Chrom's daughter yet she still completely falls for it, it feels like they just scanned the list of potential situations, saw the "Evildoer poses as hero" thing and just went "Yeah lets do that"  and wrote that in 2 minutes while not thinking about it.

Morgan's Father supports are basically copy/pasted 90 percent so clearly Awakening didn't care too much for supports. (Over half the supports I've seen don't even read like they could be romantic yet suddenly it's S-rank marriage on the spot time suddenly.)

Edited January 1, 2021 by Samz707

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Now, Frederick starts talking about how he's going to make portraits of Chrom and have them distributed all over so nobody mistakes someone else for Chrom ever again, and Chrom, likely still reeling from the embarrassment of the last time Frederick commissioned a portrait of Chrom (in their rather infamous C support together that I sadly didn't get), just says “Frederick. Let's just go.”

I thought I remember reading once that the nude Chrom recruitment poster was an invention of the localization, the Japanese is more tepid.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

On the one hand, I wish I managed to get her galeforce. On the other... this is actually a net gain for the playthrough, as I get to see what happens when you let a mother “die” after you've unlocked her child's paralogue.

Reminds me I did Future Past with only Chrom paired to Robin once. It was capable of being completed on Hard on a females-only run. FP2 was entirely doable no problems, FP3 had to be one-turned, FP1 demanded a turn-one rush to keep Noire from being sniped in a single attack. No parent conversations are available if one does this.