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

[Emperor Hardin]

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Really? Is there a specific tile on the map?

I remember using it as soon as I obtained it.

Spoiler

I used it with Yumina who obtained it with the thief staff.

 

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

I remember using it as soon as I obtained it.

  Hide contents

I used it with Yumina who obtained it with the thief staff.

 

Yumina can use the thief staff? I could have sworn only Malliesia could.

[Emperor Hardin]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

Yumina can use the thief staff? I could have sworn only Malliesia could.

Right, I used it with Malliessa then traded it to Yumina.

Did you see my answers to your LP questions?

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Right, I used it with Malliessa then traded it to Yumina.

Did you see my answers to your LP questions?

Yeah, thanks for the feedback! I'll see if I can get to your questions when I update.

[Alastor15243]

15 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

I do wonder how you did against some of the more unique bosses such as Toras(Ballistician) or Willow(Meteor Sage), I'm also interested on your story thoughts? On a similar vein, do you have any thoughts on all the info that is out of game? 

I'm also curious as to how much gameplay advice do you want to avoid?

Toras and Willow were complete pushovers for my army. They weren't really even a tiny blip on my strategic radar unfortunately. The story is... I mean it's better than the first two games, mostly due to having more time and budget for presentation, but honestly I think the story is still rather clumsily told. Like that chain of chapters where Marth just asks people to expomonologue for him... that was pretty terrible. But also, I'm not sure how much of that is due to the fan translation. I wish there were an officially-localized version of this story I could use to judge it, but hey, hopefully the fan translation of 12 will be better at least. All in all, I think it still ranks pretty low among game stories, though right now we're scraping the bottom of the barrel and I think I'm gonna stand by my belief that this game belongs on top... for now.

As for how much gameplay advice I want, I'm leaning towards not wanting much, so that I can experience firsthand any of the games' failures in telegraphing, but then again, maybe that's unfair to the games I haven't played compared to the games I already have? Maybe I've forgotten due to being fully aware of them that there are things in games I have played that are just as bad, but I'm only judging the ones I'm playing for the first time for it...? I'm not sure. But anyway,

 

Mystery of the Emblem Day 24: Book 2, Chapter 19

Huh. So this whole book takes place over the course of a year. Interesting to know.

This looks like it could be a pretty nasty battle, so I decide the first thing I need to do is give the spheres to Rody so he can go from 18 defense to 20 and round out his other few weaknesses, and just have him go ham on the charging cavalry coming around the mountain. And speaking of mountains…

…Was this clear path straight through the mountains and into the southeast village always there? I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it before.

Okay, I just checked. No, it wasn’t there in FE1, thank goodness I’m not insane. It was, however, there in Book 1 of this game, and I suppose I just didn’t notice. Somehow. I guess just assuming the map hadn’t changed and not noticing that it had.

The village is strangely unguarded. I’m going to approach it with caution. And by “caution” I mean “Merric”. If there’s an ambush waiting in the village, Merric will deal with it. And then everyone else will follow to avoid the hail of ballistae and worm magic they'll be pelted with if they take the upper route. But thankfully everyone who’s touched the Starsphere has some pretty good resistance at this point. Rody and Linde have 10, Cecil has 14, and Merric has FUCKING SEVENTEEN. Merric could cap literally every single stat if his next three level ups proc res. That’s the only thing left. And who knows? Even if he doesn’t, there might even be another talisman coming up!

Anyway, I’m not bringing my squishy units anywhere near forts hidden behind mountains. Way too much of a risk they’ll spawn dragon riders or something.

Okay. There appear to be no Three-Houses-esque traps waiting in the village. But that’s the thing: I couldn’t know that. Now that I know the game was willing to break its own rules to ambush me once, how was I supposed to know they wouldn’t make an ambush spawn appear in the village? When a game establishes it’s willing to do anything to get a cheap shot in at you, it shatters the entire concept of trust between player and game that’s extremely important if you want them to have fun and not turtle their way through every innocuous obstacle.

…

…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

…Oh my god that’s brilliant.

I just tried to visit a house with Tiki.

WHILE SHE WAS IN DIVINE DRAGON FORM.

AND THE GAME DOESN’T LET YOU DO THAT BECAUSE WHY THE FUCK WOULD IT? VILLAGERS CAN’T HAVE NORMAL CONVERSATIONS WITH DRAGONS! THEY’RE NOT GONNA GOSSIP TO TIKI ABOUT RUMORS AND LOCAL POLITICS, YA DINGUS, THEY’RE GONNA OPEN THE DOOR

AND SCREAM THEIR HEAD OFF!

Oh my god. That’s such a cute little design touch. I love it.

Not enough to forgive what it did to me yesterday, but oh my god is that hilarious.

Anyway, none of the villagers in the houses have anything useful to tell us about any plans the enemy might have. Mostly just a ton of worldbuilding fluff. I mean, that’s cool and all, but nobody really says anything I didn’t already know, so it feels like a waste.

And either after an arbitrary turn count delay or because I sent Cecil up past the mountain ridge beyond the village, all the cavalry starts marching. Time to slaughter them with Rody. And if possible, do it dismounted so he can use Mercurius and fill out his dismounted stats too so they’re capped even indoors.

Ooh! Finally visited the village, and Roshe is in it! I mean, it’s another paladin, and he has okay growths, but honestly at this point it’s barely worth training him. I already have all of the elite units I’m going to need.

And after spending a few turns panicking about how to protect the village and all of my squishy units inside of it from the charging army of Bolganone mages and silver/killer lance paladins, I finally managed to come up with a way. I had to use one of my panic-button options though: Linde’s Nosferatu tome. I didn’t have enough of my heavy-hitters close enough to player phase all of them, so I had to come up with a way to at least tank them.

Alright, just confirmed it: even though stats can’t go above 20, if you cap a stat mounted and then cap it again when dismounted, it will remember how much over 20 the stat is, even if it won’t actually go above that amount when mounted. You can keep capped stats with a dismounted unit.

And of course, finally, the game does what I dreaded: it sends paladin ambushes after me. Thankfully everyone I brought into that area has capped defense, so hopefully nothing bad will come of this. I wish Draug were on a fort though.

Alright, everyone managed to survive, largely thanks to Linde baiting a lot of them with her 17 defense (compared to everyone else’s 20) and Nosferatu. But I’m not liking the increasingly overwhelming offensive power, the enemy’s getting. They’re sending out more dudes than I can kill. So I’m going to see if I can just rush the gate this turn.

Alright, I manage to do that, and I’m about to pull the trigger, when…

…I notice something.

There’s a very conspicuous missing fence tile towards the northern wall, opening into nothing but mountains, so it serves absolutely no purpose.

It seems like exactly the sort of thing that could be a secret shop.

Dare I risk it?

…Yes. Yes I dare. I don’t want to miss every single secret shop in this game, and this could be a good one. Let’s tough it out one more turn!

…it’s not a secret shop. It’s just a completely pointless hole in the fence. Of course.

Well at least nobody died for it.

Let’s get out of here.

Okay yeah, the dialogue explains what happened with Hardin, and everything’s as I suspected except the game keeps going back and forth on how, and in what sense, Gharnef survived. This dialogue seems to imply he’s still physically alive and able to disguise himself as a merchant to give the Darksphere to Hardin. But that doesn’t explain the previous dialogue where Gotoh said he only lives on through the Darksphere. Apparently FE12 explains this better, but here it’s just nonsense.

Anyway, Boah gives us his Thoron and Physic before dying, like a total bro. And then the chapter ends.

Let’s move on.

Day 24 Bonus: Book 2, Chapter 20

So apparently the country is called St. Archanea? What? That’s the first time I heard the “Saint” part.

I love how much of a badass the intro narration makes me sound like.

“Archanea is an old and proud kingdom that has bathed in 600 years of history”.

“Under the attack of Altea’s allied army, it fell in just one day.”

Let’s do this, Hardin.

Let’s do this.

 

Hey that’s interesting. There’s a map talk scene before the battle preparation screen? The game’s never done that before! I wonder if it’s for any particular reason…?

…Oh. It was just Jagen reminding the player to give whoever fights Hardin the Lightsphere. That’s all. Just two sentences. No conversation. I guess that is an important reminder.

Also, judging by the fact that it’s playing during the prep menu, Book 2’s version of “Trouble!” is the enemy phase theme for this map. …Honestly, “Trouble” would make a pretty great enemy phase theme, now that I think of it…

Now nearly the entire map is concealed from me, so I’m gonna have to just prepare in general and hope for the best regarding what’s inside. I’m gonna use the opportunity to train Draug just a little bit more if I can, since his weapon of choice is just around the corner. Merric is definitely gonna be the one to fight Hardin though. No contest. He’s 3 points of resistance shy of having identical stats to Hardin, and with a lighter weapon it’s gonna be a slaughterfest.

And it seems hiding the inside was literally just to make genuine preparation impossible. Granted, Blazing Sword did the same thing with its final chapter, but seriously, the fact that the moment the map starts, the thief runs forward, into the middle of your army, and unlocks the door, IN A CUTSCENE, just seems so unbelievably stupid. Like, why not just get rid of the thief and have the doors open themselves? Or have you just given up on that concept, game, now that it no longer serves your traitorous purposes?

I see how it is.

…Also, it looks like Midia is gonna die unless I warp someone in immediately. She’s surrounded by enemies a mere square away from being in Hardin’s Gradivus range. I’m gonna give Merric the Lightsphere and Lifesphere and then warp him in to save her.

…The fuck. There’s… there’s an Earth Dragon here. As in, a generic unit with Medeus’s fucking class, stats and personal weapon. Just sitting namelessly, already-transformed, in the middle of the hall leading up to Hardin’s chamber.

What the…

WAS I SUPPOSED TO GET FALCHION BY NOW AND SOMEHOW MISSED IT?

Am I going to find it in one of the chests here? I mean it would make some sense for Archanea to take it as a national treasure after the war…

BUT HOW DO YOU JUST PUT AN EARTH DRAGON IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MAP WITH NO FANFARE!?

Well, we’ll find out how we’re expected to handle it sooner or later I suppose. Time to rescue Midia.

And of course the game punishes me for trying to send someone to save Midia by opening up the door by the throne room to send in some reinforcements so she has almost nowhere to run to. Thankfully, she does have one place she can hide.

Christ this would have been so much simpler if I still had Yumina. But it’ll have to do.

Practically there’s little reason to keep Midia alive. I'm only doing it because 1: it’s the right thing to do, 2: I like the challenge, and 3: I’m curious if there’s dialogue for the fact that I killed her lover when he could have been spared.

Thankfully, getting near Hardin did NOT trigger the aggro of any of the enemies on the map, so aside from the reinforcements coming from the indoor pool room, there’s not much at the moment that Merric needs to protect Midia from.

I used a thief staff on the lone treasure chest in the prison room, and that didn’t have the Falchion, but rather a second Lady Sword. Cool, but not worth using the thief staff on. Damn it.

Really, the most eventful thing in the first few turns was protecting Midia (a process that’s still ongoing, as I need to wait for the reinforcements in the pool room to subside before I can secure a safe place for Midia). The entire front hall of the castle is completely bare, and after stopping the lone thief, there’s basically nothing to do for an entire third of the map.

So, the enemies in the prison area are pretty heavily magically powered and range-happy, and are going to be tough to approach by anyone but Linde and Merric. So I’m thinking I’m actually going to leave them for later, get Gradivus, and then barrier up Draug and have him take care of them for some doubled exp.

But actually, EVERYONE on this map is pretty thoroughly magically powered, so I’m gonna have to use Linde to open up the main treasure room at least. Please have Falchion please have Falchion please have Falchion-

The reinforcements finally stopped from the pool room at least, so now I can finally get Midia out of her extremely fragile eye of the storm and into a genuinely safe harbor.

Also, forgot to mention this, no, the enemy phase theme for this map isn’t Book 2’s equivalent of “Trouble!”. It’s enemy phase theme 3, the one that usually comes with “Liberation”. Shame. That might have been cool.

OH FUCK. I FORGOT THE ECLIPSE TOME USER. I JUST PUT MERRIC IN RANGE OF A GUY WHO HAS A 34 PERCENT CHANCE TO REDUCE HIM TO ONE HP.

NO! NO PLEASE NO! PLEASE!

OH THANK GOODNESS HE DODGED. If that had hit and then the sniper had hit… oh sweet Jesus would my campaign have taken a turn for the worse.

I can’t believe I forgot about that guy. It’s not even that I didn’t notice him. I saw him, noted his attack range when I worked out my warp-in strategy, and then forgot about him when I was clearing out the rest of the enemies threatening to charge at Midia any moment.

Alright. Time to fight Hardin and hear that awesome battle theme!

Oh my god. Merric actually has two more points of HP than Hardin. Funny how he’s supposed to have everything capped but they left him at 50 HP instead of 52. But anyway, while the original version isn’t fantastic, I love “Dark Emperor Hardin”. It’s such an awesome melody, and I love what the remake and stuff like the Premium Arrange album have done with it.

However… it’s a complete slaughter. Merric double-crits him with his 50% Excalibur crit rate, and Hardin goes down like a bitch. Which is a shame, because they did everything they could short of giving him special abilities (aside from needing the Lightsphere I mean) in order to make him an intimidating boss. But alas… the growth rate boosters are just that powerful, and Gradivus is just a teensy bit too heavy. Now let’s see his dying quote…

…Okay game. Fuck you. That is amazingly lazy.

So, in Hardin’s last moments, he comes to his senses and apologizes for everything he’s done. A reasonably well-done moment, for the time and for the game’s quality of writing.

…Except that his “come to his senses” portrait… is his Book 1 portrait. The one with COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CLOTHES ON. HE JUST SPONTANEOUSLY SUMMONS A TURBAN AND WHITE CAPE ONCE YOU KILL HIM.

ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS MAKE A COPY OF HIS EMPEROR HARDIN SPRITE WITHOUT THE RED EYES. THAT’S ALL. AND THEY WOULDN’T EVEN DO THAT.

Oh god. It’s going into a cutscene. Please, please, PLEASE don’t end the map! PLEASE! I HAVEN’T GOTTEN ALL OF THE CHESTS YET!

Okay. So I got the Shield of Seals.

And the Shield of Seals is what gets rid of the Earth Dragon.

WHICH I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE THE GAME JUST FUCKING PUT THERE WITHOUT COMMENT.

Unfortunately this also means that I can’t train Draug with Gradivus without wasting uses, and it’ll be to lesser effect. Shame. Ah well. Let’s grab the remaining treasure and get out of here then.

The treasure room had a bunch of promotion items, only one of which is particularly useful to me: the Guiding Ring. That’ll be handy to boost Malliesia’s bulk a tad, which would be nice considering she’s one of my most fragile units.

Anyway, both of the lone treasure chests contained swords, but neither of them was the Falchion. I wonder how I’m gonna get that? We’re running out of time to.

So the four kidnapped clerics come out of the prison to greet us, but… yep. This is where I would have gotten the bad ending if I didn’t get all the spheres. The Shield of Seals pierces through their illusion magic, because those were really cultists in disguise.

Jeigan: Huh, wasn’t that Gharnef? He and his men pretended to be the princesses.

Marth: Mmm, but what are they planning?

HOW ARE PEOPLE SO CASUAL ABOUT THIS?

Also, I’m a little annoyed they didn’t even bother showing Gharnef’s portrait. They just used Nyna’s the whole time. So anyway, now it’s on to the “good ending” portion of the game. We’re almost done, ladies and gentlemen.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Although you're trying to go blind, this is kinda important, if for some reason you wanted to try recruiting everyone left that you can, despite your deaths so far.:

Spoiler

When you get to the final chapter, not the next one, the one after that, field everyone you'll want for the final fight. There are multiple parts to the final battle, and you can't reselect your team members between them.

 

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Anyway, both of the lone treasure chests contained swords, but neither of them was the Falchion. I wonder how I’m gonna get that? We’re running out of time to.

Spoiler alert: The Big Bad has it. Again. And once again, you'll have to pry it from his cold, dead hands. That said, how he got it this time is unexplained, as far as I know.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Emperor Hardin]

Before I do my full response, remember Malleisa can use the hammerene staff to repair weapons.

[Alastor15243]

24 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Spoiler alert: The Big Bad has it. Again. And once again, you'll have to pry it from his cold, dead hands. That said, how he got it this time is unexplained, as far as I know.

Well like I said, it would make sense for Archanea to have it. Maybe he just took it again with Hardin under his control?

[Alastor15243]

27 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Before I do my full response, remember Malleisa can use the hammerene staff to repair weapons.

Yep! I've been using it!

Edit: Dang it, forgot I was the last to comment.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Emperor Hardin]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Toras and Willow were complete pushovers for my army. They weren't really even a tiny blip on my strategic radar unfortunately.

Whilst Willow is a great boss, especially with his surprise attack strategy, I think Toras is one of the easiest bosses in the franchise; he has 20 HP, 1 strength, 1 skill and a flat 0 in every other stat. A freshly recruited Rickard can 1 round poor Toras with an iron sword! No wonder why Toras was scared, I think the developers must've over estimated the power of his ballista.

Do you like the out of game info and want more?

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 Ooh! Finally visited the village, and Roshe is in it! I mean, it’s another paladin, and he has okay growths, but honestly at this point it’s barely worth training him. I already have all of the elite units I’m going to need.

Book 2 Roshea, as opposed to book 1 Roshea, is too late to be good. It is interesting they kept to his tanky stats, however.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay yeah, the dialogue explains what happened with Hardin, and everything’s as I suspected except the game keeps going back and forth on how, and in what sense, Gharnef survived. This dialogue seems to imply he’s still physically alive and able to disguise himself as a merchant to give the Darksphere to Hardin. But that doesn’t explain the previous dialogue where Gotoh said he only lives on through the Darksphere. Apparently FE12 explains this better, but here it’s just nonsense.

Its elaborated he was able to revive as his soul was stored within in the Darksphere and thus his body could be revived. I wonder what a Book 2 without Gharnef would've been like?

I like this map by the way.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So apparently the country is called St. Archanea? What? That’s the first time I heard the “Saint” part.

I love how much of a badass the intro narration makes me sound like.

“Archanea is an old and proud kingdom that has bathed in 600 years of history”.

 “Under the attack of Altea’s allied army, it fell in just one day.”

Pales is also Millennium Palace in the official translation. Saint due to Archanea's significance to most of the human nations on the continent.

I really love this map too.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And it seems hiding the inside was literally just to make genuine preparation impossible. Granted, Blazing Sword did the same thing with its final chapter, but seriously, the fact that the moment the map starts, the thief runs forward, into the middle of your army, and unlocks the door, IN A CUTSCENE, just seems so unbelievably stupid. Like, why not just get rid of the thief and have the doors open themselves? Or have you just given up on that concept, game, now that it no longer serves your traitorous purposes?

I thought that was interesting too. I wonder if the thief is part of the Archanean army or not?

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

…The fuck. There’s… there’s an Earth Dragon here. As in, a generic unit with Medeus’s fucking class, stats and personal weapon. Just sitting namelessly, already-transformed, in the middle of the hall leading up to Hardin’s chamber.

Not often you see a miniboss like that.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And of course the game punishes me for trying to send someone to save Midia by opening up the door by the throne room to send in some reinforcements so she has almost nowhere to run to. Thankfully, she does have one place she can hide.

This is an interesting feature of this map.

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So, in Hardin’s last moments, he comes to his senses and apologizes for everything he’s done. A reasonably well-done moment, for the time and for the game’s quality of writing.

…Except that his “come to his senses” portrait… is his Book 1 portrait. The one with COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CLOTHES ON. HE JUST SPONTANEOUSLY SUMMONS A TURBAN AND WHITE CAPE ONCE YOU KILL HIM.

 ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS MAKE A COPY OF HIS EMPEROR HARDIN SPRITE WITHOUT THE RED EYES. THAT’S ALL. AND THEY WOULDN’T EVEN DO THAT.

Its definitely odd, I think the developers were worried about not having enough space. It would also explain the lack of named bosses in several of the chapters.

What did you think of the actual maps here? Any criticism or compliments?

Edited October 23, 2019 by Emperor Hardin

[Alastor15243]

11 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

What did you think of the actual maps here? Any criticism or compliments?

Both maps suffer from severely lacking shit to do in the first few turns unless you use warp. The first half of the first map and the first third of the second were completely enemy-free. In the second map's case, the fact that none of them charged me also meant they were relying entirely on formation to be a threat, and... I can't off the top of my head remember any game but Conquest that managed to make threatening enemy formations that let you come to them. Aggressive enemies are really important to keep up the pressure and force the player to adapt with limited options. Part of why I still find Birthright a lot of fun despite its inferior map design to Conquest: it likes to do that a lot. Meanwhile Revelation is a complete and utter shitshow because the enemy AI has basically no aggression at all for like... fuck, I can't even remember when that stops being true. Every enemy on every map seems to wait for you to come to them, and combined with the turtle-encouraging gimmicks on every other map... yeah, let's just say that's not going to be one of my favorites.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Emperor Hardin]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

Both maps suffer from severely lacking shit to do in the first few turns unless you use warp. The first half of the first map and the first third of the second were completely enemy-free. In the second map's case, the fact that none of them charged me also meant they were relying entirely on formation to be a threat, and... I can't off the top of my head remember any game but Conquest that managed to make threatening enemy formations that let you come to them. Aggressive enemies are really important to keep up the pressure and force the player to adapt with limited options.

Well there is a 32 unit in FE3's engine, so that is a reason for the numbers.

Do you want any more out of game story info?

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Well there is a 32 unit in FE3's engine, so that is a reason for the numbers.

Do you want any more out of game story info?

I don't quite get what you mean. Do you mean the game physically couldn't have more enemy units on screen at once?

[Emperor Hardin]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

I don't quite get what you mean. Do you mean the game physically couldn't have more enemy units on screen at once?

32 is the limit for enemy units that can appear on screen, essentially. Chapter 19 has 31 to start with and chapter 20 has 32 units on screen.

Does the out of game story info not interest you?

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Emperor Hardin said:

32 is the limit for enemy units that can appear on screen, essentially. Chapter 19 has 31 to start with and chapter 20 has 32 units on screen.

Does the out of game story info not interest you?

I don't really know if it interests me or not. What kind of info are you talking about?

Anyway, that explains the pathetic enemy numbers, but if that's the case, the game really should have understood its limits and not had such ridiculously huge maps.

[Emperor Hardin]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

I don't really know if it interests me or not. What kind of info are you talking about?

Anyway, that explains the pathetic enemy numbers, but if that's the case, the game really should have understood its limits and not had such ridiculously huge maps.

Background on the Wolfguard.

Though it should be noted the DS remakes mostly kept to around the same numbers.

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Emperor Hardin said:

Background on the Wolfguard.

Though it should be noted the DS remakes mostly kept to around the same numbers.

Alright, lay it on me!

The fact that the DS remakes don't change it... that's surprising to hear. I don't think I noticed anything like that in my initial playthroughs of Shadow Dragon. I'll have to pay attention to that when I get to those games, and see if I can figure out why I didn't notice it then.

[Emperor Hardin]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, lay it on me!

Wolf mentions Hardin freed them all from slavery. This is expanded in the background, going back to what I said earlier about humans practicing slavery on other humans, the native people of the Aurelian plains people were treated like slaves by the Aurelian nobility, Hardin put new policies ensuring equality and had the slavery practicing nobles, stripped of their titles and banished.

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

The fact that the DS remakes don't change it... that's surprising to hear. I don't think I noticed anything like that in my initial playthroughs of Shadow Dragon. I'll have to pay attention to that when I get to those games, and see if I can figure out why I didn't notice it then.

There's a little more, but not that much more; DS chapter 19 has 4 additional warriors in the village section and some of the enemies by the castle have been moved out a bit. There are also more enemy reinforcements spawn points. Overall though it is the same with the first few turns being focused on both sides positioning. 

[Alastor15243]

31 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Wolf mentions Hardin freed them all from slavery. This is expanded in the background, going back to what I said earlier about humans practicing slavery on other humans, the native people of the Aurelian plains people were treated like slaves by the Aurelian nobility, Hardin put new policies ensuring equality and had the slavery practicing nobles, stripped of their titles and banished.

Where is all this information again?

[Emperor Hardin]

5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Where is all this information again?

Out of game interviews such as books and guides. 

[Jotari]

Huh. Didn't know you could form the Binding Shield to banish the Earth Dragon. I always just go for it and kill the thing. Which takes a long time in FE3 due to it's halving attack gimmick. At least unlike Medeus it has no way to heal so you can take it down eventually with non Falchion users.

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Both maps suffer from severely lacking shit to do in the first few turns unless you use warp. The first half of the first map and the first third of the second were completely enemy-free. In the second map's case, the fact that none of them charged me also meant they were relying entirely on formation to be a threat, and... I can't off the top of my head remember any game but Conquest that managed to make threatening enemy formations that let you come to them. Aggressive enemies are really important to keep up the pressure and force the player to adapt with limited options. Part of why I still find Birthright a lot of fun despite its inferior map design to Conquest: it likes to do that a lot. Meanwhile Revelation is a complete and utter shitshow because the enemy AI has basically no aggression at all for like... fuck, I can't even remember when that stops being true. Every enemy on every map seems to wait for you to come to them, and combined with the turtle-encouraging gimmicks on every other map... yeah, let's just say that's not going to be one of my favorites.

Sounds like the best way to do this map would have been to have the player's army spawn inside the first portion of the castle (what you describe as the empty first third) and then have enemies outside the castle (where the player spawns in the actual game) that rush the player from behind as they're trying to proceed forward into the enemies defenive formations, with Midia's survival as being the time limit that discourages tanking. Less wasted area in the map, two flanks for the player to focus on (or three if you warp someone in to save Midia) and agressive enemies driving things forward.

Of course if I were designing this game I would have eliminated this map entirely on Book 2 and replaced it with something completely different, because I despise it when games just reuse the exact same map, but I adore it when they reuse part of the exact same map and part of something new. In this case I would have liked it if the palace was assaulted from the south, so Hardin's throne was at the northern edge of the map, like how they use Ostia's castle and the Temple of Seals in Binding and Blazing Blade. Sacred Stones does something similar between Chapter 5x and Chapter 8. It's just shifted a very tiny bit to the east with a different spawning point, yet it feels like a completely different map. The previous map I would have liked it if they didn't clone too, especially since Marth is attacking Archanea from a different direction than he does in Book 1 (although at least Pale's geography encourages that map as the only means of offense. Then again, Marth has already resolved to use a more dangerous mountain path so the game already justifies a northern attack).

 

 

[Alastor15243]

9 hours ago, Jotari said:

Sounds like the best way to do this map would have been to have the player's army spawn inside the first portion of the castle (what you describe as the empty first third) and then have enemies outside the castle (where the player spawns in the actual game) that rush the player from behind as they're trying to proceed forward into the enemies defenive formations, with Midia's survival as being the time limit that discourages tanking. Less wasted area in the map, two flanks for the player to focus on (or three if you warp someone in to save Midia) and agressive enemies driving things forward.

That sounds like it would be way better. But I wish they made it clear what units would attack Midia and which wouldn't, because they were happy to put Est in range of siege tomes. With Say'Ri in Awakening, if I remember correctly the enemy formation telegraphed a much more clear time limit for how long she'd survive, while with Midia, she was surrounded by enough units to slaughter her in one turn, and you just had to guess how many would actually do it. Hence why I had to warp Merric in to play it safe.

[Jotari]

12 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That sounds like it would be way better. But I wish they made it clear what units would attack Midia and which wouldn't, because they were happy to put Est in range of siege tomes. With Say'Ri in Awakening, if I remember correctly the enemy formation telegraphed a much more clear time limit for how long she'd survive, while with Midia, she was surrounded by enough units to slaughter her in one turn, and you just had to guess how many would actually do it. Hence why I had to warp Merric in to play it safe.

I amend to my suggestion that you'd need to expand the entrance to stop the player from plonking a single tank to stop all the enemies attacking the rear.

Regarding Midia, I think she's actually fine until you get to the throne room. Only the reinforcements attack her and they only appear when you get close to Hardin or attack one of the enemies near him. Which actually makes the map less boring than it would be warping someone in to defend her on turn 1.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I amend to my suggestion that you'd need to expand the entrance to stop the player from plonking a single tank to stop all the enemies attacking the rear.

Regarding Midia, I think she's actually fine until you get to the throne room. Only the reinforcements attack her and they only appear when you get close to Hardin or attack one of the enemies near him. Which actually makes the map less boring than it would be warping someone in to defend her on turn 1.

My issue is the game didn't tell me that in any way, and I had reason to believe based on what almost happened to Est that she'd be attacked immediately. If she started out in range of nothing but units too weak to damage her that just exist to keep her penned in, or if she were in a cage or something, that would be one thing. But this game basically forces you to either play it safe or rely on trial and error restarts because it's terrible at explaining the rules of its gimmicks before it's too late.