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

[Alastor15243]

Genealogy Day 2: Actually playing the game

Alright, I realized I was being stupid, and there actually was a way to salvage my save. After doing that real quick, I proceed on to... actually playing the goddamned game this time.

In the meantime though, we just got Ethlyn, Cuan and Finn. I'm gonna try to train up both Cuan and Finn for the sake of Leif's stats, but they're both hard to make good, though to vastly different degrees. Neither one has pursuit, which is Cuan's main problem, and Ethlyn in addition is pretty terrible statistically. She is a healer though, and on a horse, so I can probably train her by abusing expensive staves, to an extent. I'll certainly be abusing the return staff whenever possible. As long as I can get Dew off the ground without too much hassle, I shouldn't have too many money troubles anyway. I'm not gonna do anything nuts like boss abuse or reinforcement abuse to train him, but I am gonna try to make him good too. As for Finn, I'll try to train him up at least a bit. It's kind of important to have him at least better than a baseline Leif if you don't want Leif's joining segment to be a nightmare. He, Leif and Nanna have to fight off a bunch of soldiers on their own until you make it to save them.

One last thing I forgot to mention about this game in terms of usability: The game lets you see what a unit's current and max HP are, along with their name, just by hovering your cursor over them!

Training Azel is going to be complicated in a couple of ways, and most relevant at the moment is that his defense, before promotion, is absolute garbage, and he also can't dodge well because of this game's absolutely garbage magic tome balance.

For those of you who haven't actually played this game and have not been exposed to its eldritch madness... remember when I said the game design decisions of this game are so bizarre I want a Psychonauts level devoted to seeing what goes on in their heads? This is the main offender. In fact this is the main reason why, before playing FE1, I considered FE4 completely uncontested for the title of most incompetently balanced Fire Emblem game ever made.

I'm going to list off the stats of the basic C rank magic tomes.

Wind: 8 might, 2 weight, 90 hit.

Thunder: 8 might, 7 weight, 90 hit.

Fire: 8 might, 12 weight, 90 hit.

Do you see the problem here?

All of them are identical except for weight.

There is literally no difference between the stats of fire and wind except that wind gives you a whopping 10 more attack speed and 20 more avoid.

Game developers. I ask you. You introduced the weapon triangle in this game. This is the first game to introduce that awesome and important element of Fire Emblem strategy, and you also introduced the trinity of magic here as well.

WHAT. THE FUCK. WAS THE POINT. OF INTRODUCING A WEAPON TRIANGLE BETWEEN THE ELEMENTS. IF YOU'RE JUST GOING TO MAKE ONE ELEMENT OBJECTIVELY THE BEST. AND ANOTHER OBJECTIVELY GARBAGE.

That's not to say the problem's only with magic. The weapon weights of lances and axes are absolutely ludicrous compared to the relatively minimal attack bonuses they give over swords.

But at least they give attack bonuses. At least there's the tiniest, most token sign that the developers were trying to give the player a reason to use them.

Here, it's like they were trying to make wind magic the best on purpose, which makes literally no sense. What's even the point of the weapon triangle if you just want wind mages to be the strongest?

Alright, finally got my save ported to the new translation. Gotta say, the text font is gonna take some getting used to. It feels... off... in a way the original didn't. Too sharp and tiny compared to the colors and sizes used for numbers everywhere else. But I'll use it to see if I like the new translation.

After seeing the opening dialogue and the talk I just activated between Cuan and Sigurd, dialogue seems significantly more flowery than I'm used to, but that should be fine as long as not everyone talks like that. I'll have to see how some of the more casual characters talk.

More levels. Sigurd gets yet another defense level and a bunch of others I don't remember because I didn't write this down right away, but it was a good level, and Alec... gets strength. Strength and nothing else.

Well, he won't be used much longer anyway.

One thing about the interface I don't care much for is how long it takes to cycle between unmoved units. Cycling through castles with L is lightning-quick, but whenever you cycle through characters with R, if they aren't on screen, it moves the camera sideways and then vertically until it reaches their coordinates, which takes about a second and a half each time.

And a second level up that's just one stat, in this case just HP for Azel. I'm assuming that the fact that the numbers stick around isn't the game glitching out and that it's supposed to make it easier to see the full level up, like in other games, but right now since I've gotten two one-sauce levels in a row and nothing else while using this translation, I'm starting to get concerned something's going horribly wrong. And I want to use Azel, too!

And something just went horribly wrong with Lex's northern village rescue mission. He whiffed a 92, failing to kill a bandit, and reducing Lex to an HP level where another hit will kill him. Meaning that, taking the enemy's hit rate into account, unless I want to risk roughly a 4% chance of losing Lex before we even get to turn 10, I have to have him run away to heal and lose most of that village's gold by the time the bandit dies. Well, being a savvy ironman player, I know that trying that 4% is just swinging the doors wide open for the reaper to waltz in and shit on the couch.

I've seen it happen.

It won't happen to me.

Thankfully I know the rom isn't bugged out with its level ups. Finn just got HP, strength, speed and luck, which is a pretty good first level!

Now, I think the roads are a cool idea, what with them actually taking less than a whole movement point to go through, but a .7 movement cost is just the tiniest bit annoying to calculate by hand in the instances where you have to calculate how far you can move on terrain you can't actually see highlighted. For instance, when you're trying to plan trips multiple turns ahead (given map size, this happens often), or when you're calculating how far you can canto after killing an enemy blocking the road, or, say, when your healer has already moved, you have someone you want to get healed next turn before leaping right back into the action, and you want to park him literally at the very edge of her movement range to facilitate that.

Anyway, now that we've actually secured the area around the castle, I've thought of a use for Arden. A bit too late to do this truly efficiently, but I'm doing this ironman, not max rank (though honestly max rank is better than ironman because max rank requires doing ironman flawlessly and doing it fast), and I want to take the opportunity to feed kills to Azel while I'm not in a hurry to save anything time-sensitive. And upon seizing the next castle, Arden will give me an opportunity to do that, and also maximize safety for the others.

Hopefully.

I can't actually be sure until I see the stats of the post-seize reinforcements, but I'll explain the plan and my reasons for using Arden when I get there.

And while the level is otherwise mediocre (just HP and luck), Sigurd gets defense a third fucking time in a row.

And wouldn't ya know it? Lex, once fully healed, attacks the bandit again, whiffs a second 92% in a row, and gets hit. Boy howdy golly am I glad I healed him.

By the way, while I'm not as much of a fan of their battle sprites, I love the armor knight map sprites in this game, especially sword armors like Arden.

Anyway, I have Sigurd take care of the last few enemies around the castle so that everyone else is ready to fight the reinforcements crossing the bridge to the west as soon as he seizes. I can't quite remember if the reinforcements move right away. That'd suck pretty majorly if they do, but hopefully it'll turn out we get some form of warning, or they arrive on my turn, or they're not dangerous to any space we could reach before the bridge is put back.

Anyway, in the meantime, I hand out the village money to the units I plan on using. Azel will probably be getting the speed ring, mostly because he really, really needs the speed while he's lugging around that book that's as heavy as a fucking lance. Namely for the arena next chapter, which he's going to want to clear.

Honestly, Arden isn't gonna be the one holding me up I think. I need Ethlyn to backtrack to get a few of the starting area villages because the people who saved them weren't the people I wanted getting the gold.

And alas the streak is finally broken, when Sigurd gets HP and strength, no defense, upon reaching level 9.

“Pay attention, kid! Weapons aren't created equal. See, swords best axes, axes best lances, and lances best swords.”

That feeling when the “wise old villager” accidentally says the correct thing while technically arguing the opposite.

And now that Azel has the speed ring, his avoid stat is actually in the black now!

Okay, while all of that backtracking was tedious as hell, that was largely due to poor planning on my part. The actual forward-tracking was pretty much continuously engaging, with something to do pretty much every turn, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for a lot of maps in FE1 and FE3.

But anyway, now we've finally gotten all the villages and their booty, and it's finally time to trigger phase two of this map.

Right, so, thankfully I don't have to call Midir Midayle anymore, because this translation calls him Midir again.

“Gandolf... that's all I need to hear” -Sigurd, when Midir tries to tell him that Adean has been taken.

Yeah, so, that's something that's just occurred to me as I played this for the marathon. They're referring to the people of Verdane as savages and barbarians, and clearly Sigurd is confident enough in guessing what Gandolf has planned for Adean... which begs the question of why there was an alliance slash peace treaty between these nations so ironclad and stable that none of the Grannvale citizens suspected an invasion for a moment despite nothing but goodwill holding Verdane back, when Verdane clearly has a horrible reputation in Grannvale through a clearly at least mostly-deserved bad reputation and maybe a touch of good-ol' racism. In real life, when a country is suddenly completely defenseless and you think your neighbors are violent pieces of trash, you tend to not be all that confident they won't invade.

Anyway, we've got Midir, who's going to see mixed use mostly by virtue of having just enough things going for him to forgive his much-maligned weapon of choice. Yes, he may be an archer, but he also has pursuit, a mount, and a brave weapon towards the second half of part 1. He's nothing special, but he'll definitely be contributing at least a little. And since I've got plans for the pursuit ring and wouldn't waste it on Jamka!Lester even if I didn't, he pretty much wins, by default, my divine permission to court Adean. It's not like Adean's husband choices are exactly stellar. Nearly all the cool dads have their best qualities in some way neutralized by the specific niches of Adean's children.

With him recruited and Jungby castle reclaimed, I set my plan into motion. Arden, who turned out to arrive first (with Azel with his speed ring second and Ethlyn with her two villages of gold third), chokes the point of the bridge that's about to be set down. See, not only is his defense pretty great for this point in the game, but he's the only reasonably tanky unit I have who has absolutely no risk of one-rounding enemies and thus biting off more than he can chew of the oncoming horde. No pursuit, no critical, no continue, and a weapon that doesn't do obscene amounts of damage. And that's a really good thing in this situation, as I said. We're gonna want to take these guys out slowly so we're not relying on shaky dodge rates to get everyone out alive.

The only problem is I'm banking on him being able to hold this point, assuming things about enemies whose stats I can't see until it's too late, because no, they don't spawn right after clearing the castle. They're going to spawn on enemy phase and move.

Oh well. It's Arden. This is pretty much going to be peak usefulness for him. If he dies here, I mean sucks to be my sense of judgment in that situation, but my army isn't going to suffer.

Thankfully, as I hoped, only a handful of enemies started out in range of the bridge. This obviously isn't... ideal, in terms of making a game friendly to the possibility of blind ironman play. Making the player prepare for an attack from enemies whose stats, numbers and location they can't even see isn't what I would remotely call a fair or realistic challenge. But at least in this game, as far as I remember, there are clear and specific rules about where and, crucially, when reinforcements appear. New enemies always appear around castles, and unless I'm quite mistaken only when you move the story forward by capturing the previous one, or when mobile bosses go back to respawn their troops. This isn't a game where enemies can spontaneously appear from anywhere at any time, like in FE1 or Awakening, and it certainly isn't like a certain other game that leaves you continuously, mind-numbingly paranoid about which rule they're going to change on enemy phase next, because they've slowly, insidiously established for you over the course of the game that nothing is sacred to them in their craven desire to watch you die. For the most part, the trust between the player and this game is relatively healthy. Not perfect... but healthy. And especially for this early in the franchise's storied history? I can respect that. Quite a lot actually.

Good on you, game.

Please don't do anything to make me take that statement back.

Hmmm... so yet again, I find myself thinking about something that hadn't occurred to me before about the story, this time with Alvis... Arvis... fuck why'd they have to call him Arvis...? ...When he says the king asked him to observe the battle... okay, so, messengers were sent to the king? The king was somehow informed of this invasion while it was still going on? In the days before telephones? I realize the timescale here is all kinds of vague and it's left unclear how long these battles are lasting, but lack of a day/night cycle makes it really feel like one day, as does the fact that several people are attacked and left for dead, and then, at bare minimum, survive long enough to talk to Sigurd a castle or two later. This seems really quick in a medieval setting for the king to be alerted to a battle taking place elsewhere. I'm aware that Arvis has warp magic or something, that if I remember correctly he's going to use later, but honestly that just raises the fascinating question of what kind of magical technology royal messengers and spies might use in this setting. I know full well this question will literally never be answered, which partially disappoints me, but given how much story they crammed down Echoes' throat (to its benefit and detriment), maybe that's a question a remake will answer!

If it doesn't turn Sigurd into yet another “I can rewind time but I choose not to because the plot says so” ignoramus, in yet another misguided effort to justify the rewind mechanic in-story when plenty of other games have established that you don't remotely have to do that.

But I digress. Back to the gameplay!

...No wait, one more comment on the story. Instead of saying “You don't impress me much,” Arvis says “So this is all you've amounted to...” when talking about Sigurd “struggling” against the Verdane army. That has a very different tone, and it's the kind of tone that raises questions the original didn't. Questions I know for a fact the story doesn't answer. Which kind of makes it feel like... a waste? I dunno, it's hard to explain. It suggests past interactions, or some sense of a history between the two. Like the phrasing places any higher expectations Arvis may have once had for Sigurd into a far more distant past tense. It gives Arvis's relationship with Sigurd, scant as it is, a significantly larger sense of history. It implies a lot more than a cocky taunt should, given that it's never, ever going to get followed up on. I don't know. Maybe I'm only paying so much attention to this because I remember the original line, but it's not like I had any attachment to the original line, so... who knows? But I do feel annoyed that the newly-translated line raises more questions than the game will ever answer.

Anyway, training Azel is going to be a bit complicated. He's strong enough to one-round most of the ranged attackers, and if any two land a hit on him on one enemy phase, he dies, due to his terrible defense stat. And of course, while cavalry can now do all sorts of awesome shit like attacking and moving again, they can't rescue, so if I put Azel where he can kill an enemy, I put him where other enemies can move in to kill him back. I might be able to place him in a spot where only one enemy can reach him across the river on enemy phase, but it'll take some doing. I'll mostly have to rely on Midir, who can attack and then retreat, to safely chip these guys until enough shift around that an opening... opens up.

However, I do have one option: I can have Arden stick on the space to the right of the bridge, then whenever Azel kills the enemy on the bridge at 2 range, Arden moves onto the bridge to block off anyone who Azel might have otherwise exposed him to. Then the next turn, Arden moves back to the space to the right of the bridge and Azel moves back to prepare for another attack.

Huh. So Arvis calls Sigurd “Master Sigurd”, which I can only assume is in the sense of “a title prefixed to the name of a boy not old enough to be called Mister”, as Google's dictionary puts it, because my impression is that Arvis outranks him. Maybe I'm wrong. Is Sigurd young enough for the “the young master” kind of master to apply? I'm not sure. I'm not an expert in medieval politics.

This translation also makes Arvis feel a bit less affectionate towards Azel. A bit more detached about the fact that he's fighting in Sigurd's army. Not that he showed extreme concern before, but something about the word choice here changes the feel of this conversation. At least from what I remember. Also, I don't remember Sigurd promising he'd try to convince Azel to go home after this skirmish. Though again, maybe that's just me misremembering.

...Wait... Arvis... walks away? I could have sworn he warped. I guess I'm mis-remembering. But that really begs the question of why he's walking on foot when we know there's teleportation magic he has to have access to. And if he doesn't have access to it, how the hell are messengers getting around so quick behind the scenes?

Ah well. Like I said, this is minor stuff the story's never going to explain, but for some reason I still find myself asking it.

One thing I've learned about the AI is that when enemies bunch up (and they do this a lot), even if an enemy can't attack someone, they won't move to make room for somebody who can. This is quite handy here, as it minimizes the faces Arden can be exposed to and lets me know when I don't have to heal him to full HP. Though it's still pretty nerve-racking to rely on.

I realize that bottlenecking and slowly taking potshots one enemy at a time is kind of cowardly and cheesy, but I'm doing this ironman, and I know the game's gonna get a hell of a lot more dangerous. Sometimes you've gotta take the opportunities when you can go slowly in order to get you better prepared for when you can't. And this is one of those times. However, I will be clear: I'm not going to do any infinite grinding abuse. I'm just taking this opportunity to funnel all of the finite experience I'm allotted here into units I'm actually going to use in the long run.

Also, this is my decision, so I'm not holding this against the game's pacing score or anything. Just making that clear in case anyone thought I might.

Ethlyn gets an okay level up for gen 1, with HP, strength and speed.

Arden levels up defense, which is literally all I'm ever going to need from him for the entire game, so good job buddy.

Midir gets literally nothing. Jesus Christ that almost never happens to me outside of this game.

Azel finally gains just enough HP where he can survive two ranged attacks, so I think I'm gonna use that as an excuse to speed things up a bit, then get out of here.

Once it gets down to the last four guys, I finish things up with one big mounted player phase assault, then have Azel kill the boss from range so he can be healed without putting Ethlyn in range of the boss's hand axe. Noish activated duel, but Lex whiffed another 90ish percent attack. Thankfully I wasn't relying on everyone hitting in order to keep everyone alive.

Noish activated Duel a second time in a fucking row. Wow. Of course, that luck was immediately ruined by a complete dud of a level up. Absolutely nothing, yet again. And then Lex gets an HPsauce level.

Oh goodie. The future is looking positively radiant.

I've been getting a ton of terrible level ups in this chapter. I got a few really good ones too, but I can't completely shake the feeling this translation patch is glitched in some way. I'm probably wrong, but it's sometimes a little hard to convince myself of that.

Alright, I seized the castle. Took a little under 50 turns all total. I don't think we'll have many more instances of me stalling like that, mostly because I won't have ideal opportunities to do it organically, and because I want to keep the game moving and keep content flowing for you guys.

I think that's a good place to stop for today. I'll try to do at least half of chapter 1 tomorrow!

[Espurrhoodie]

10 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'm going to list off the stats of the basic C rank magic tomes.

Wind: 8 might, 2 weight, 90 hit.

Thunder: 8 might, 7 weight, 90 hit.

Fire: 8 might, 12 weight, 90 hit.

Do you see the problem here?

All of them are identical except for weight

What's in that book that's so heavy?

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Espurrhoodie said:

What's in that book that's so heavy?

Hell if I know.

Also, sorry about the weird font glitch. I think I know what might have caused it, though not how to fix it. But even if I did, for some reason when I post stuff from my word document into Serenes Forest and post it, it doesn't let me edit it anymore, so that hideously ugly mid-sentence permanent font change is stuck forever guys, there's some higher-up intervention.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Midir gets literally nothing. Jesus Christ that almost never happens to me outside of this game.

TBF, Gen 1 growths are rather low for an FE, I recall everyone in Gen 1 has between 190 and 330 in growths. Silvia and her fellow green rival for Lewyn's love are the 190s, Sigurd is the 330. Most values are closer to 190, only Sigurd, Quan, Chulainn, and Lewyn hit at least 300. So, I guess you could say this means 2-3 stat is the norm per level up?

Although, GBA FE is ~270 for Binding (non-prepromote), 270-310 for Blazing, and 265-320 for Sacred.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Sigurd gets defense a third fucking time in a row.

His growth is a pretty good 40%. Just 10 off of Lex. I wouldn't call it super-rare.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Huh. So Arvis calls Sigurd “Master Sigurd”, which I can only assume is in the sense of “a title prefixed to the name of a boy not old enough to be called Mister”, as Google's dictionary puts it, because my impression is that Arvis outranks him.

Arvis is Duke of Velthomer already, while Sigurd's father is still alive and Duke of Chalphy. Therefore, even if they are of similar ages, Arvis is the superior. I don't know the logic behind the translation's choice, "Lord" would have sufficed I think.

-Although, "full-Holy-Blooded grown heir to a Dukedom of Grannvale, who is currently leading the fight against invading bandits", is not exactly unworthy of being called a master.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

At least from what I remember. Also, I don't remember Sigurd promising he'd try to convince Azel to go home after this skirmish. Though again, maybe that's just me misremembering.

Looking at the old translation SF has posted:

Sigurd:
“I’ll do that. I’ll see if I can get him to return home once we finish up here.”

Yep, it was there.

The old translation SF has Arvis say "Sir Sigurd", which might be a little too low for Sig's status.

Edited October 30, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

It gave me an extremely high number of matches. How much text am I supposed to capture, do you know?

Nope. Never used it. Just googled the first thing to be helpful.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

Nope. Never used it. Just googled the first thing to be helpful.

I appreciate the help. What I've managed to find that it's alllllmost Arial but not quite, and that it's size 11, at least according to my word processor. It's not perfect, but it's what I'll be using from now on until I figure it out. Pity the site won't let me edit the existing posts to change it.

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

It's kind of important to have him at least better than a baseline Leif if you don't want Leif's joining segment to be a nightmare. He, Leif and Nanna have to fight off a bunch of soldiers on their own until you make it to save them.

Alternatively you could let Nanna inherit the Return Staff, and Return Band, and literally return the whole crew to Seliph's starting castle. Making a stand with Leif Nanna and Finn is just more fun (and more consistent with the story of Thracia).

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

He whiffed a 92, failing to kill a bandit, and reducing Lex to an HP level where another hit will kill him. Meaning that, taking the enemy's hit rate into account, unless I want to risk roughly a 4% chance of losing Lex before we even get to turn 10, I have to have him run away to heal and lose most of that village's gold by the time the bandit dies.

I hate it when that happens, as the Lex rush of that bandit is the only way to save a reasonable amount of that village.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'm assuming that the fact that the numbers stick around isn't the game glitching out and that it's supposed to make it easier to see the full level up

Yes this was a aesthetic change from the patch, took me awhile to find the notes on it in the translation board

Quote

Some things were entirely optional and were done for convenience or enhancement:

• Endgame Hilda's Holy Blood: This was just a minor cosmetic fix that I don't think has too much of an effect on gameplay. And it helps her stay consistent with her settings from Ch. 10.
• Change Level Up stat abbreviations: This was done, I'm guessing, to be more in line with the future games' method of naming.
• Modify Level Up screen to persist gains: As a request from bookofholsety, I looked into a way to have the game not hide which stats were increased during the level up animations. This is probably the most noticeable non-essential change, or at least the most commented-on change. But I don't think it has drastically affected the gameplay, and it also has nice side-effect of being able to take screenshots to show off one's luck (good or bad) in a level up.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Thankfully I know the rom isn't bugged out with its level ups. Finn just got HP, strength, speed and luck, which is a pretty good first level!

Funny you mention that, as without the patch there is an actual major bug regarding level ups. The way the game handled RNs is they have a list of numbers, that the game performs math on to make more random, but if it reaches a point where it has called all of the numbers, as can happen in particularly long Arena battles, it would stop, and while it could deal with that for more attacks, it couldn't for level ups, so you wouldn't get stats even if you had over 100 growth in it (that was how this error was noticed). You used to have to exit back to the weapon select screen and reenter just before killing the enemy to get it to refresh the RNs to avoid this.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

max rank requires doing ironman flawlessly and doing it fast),

Not quite flawlessly, you have 3 reset kills before you drop a rank, and if you are willing/able to completely repeat the full chapter that also clears the "loses" from that chapter

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I can't actually be sure until I see the stats of the post-seize reinforcements, but I'll explain the plan and my reasons for using Arden when I get there.

Before I read it I am guessing you are going to block the bridge before seizing. That used to be my favorite strat for that section when I played as kid, although I have grown more reluctant to cheese that time between clearing an area of enemies, and seizing a castle. That being said if you are trying to use that to train Azel, he will kill himself into an early grave unless you are very careful. Having cavalry units charge out and Canto back behind your defensive lines is a strat that I have always enjoyed in this game, and this is one of those classic places you can make that work.

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, so, that's something that's just occurred to me as I played this for the marathon. They're referring to the people of Verdane as savages and barbarians, and clearly Sigurd is confident enough in guessing what Gandolf has planned for Adean... which begs the question of why there was an alliance slash peace treaty between these nations so ironclad and stable that none of the Grannvale citizens suspected an invasion for a moment despite nothing but goodwill holding Verdane back, when Verdane clearly has a horrible reputation in Grannvale through a clearly at least mostly-deserved bad reputation and maybe a touch of good-ol' racism. In real life, when a country is suddenly completely defenseless and you think your neighbors are violent pieces of trash, you tend to not be all that confident they won't invade.

The opening to next chapter makes it seem a bit more plausible.

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

New enemies always appear around castles, and unless I'm quite mistaken only when you move the story forward by capturing the previous one, or when mobile bosses go back to respawn their troops.

This isn't strictly true, but if they breaking one of these, there will be a story scene to let you know to be prepared.

 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

This translation also makes Arvis feel a bit less affectionate towards Azel. A bit more detached about the fact that he's fighting in Sigurd's army. Not that he showed extreme concern before, but something about the word choice here changes the feel of this conversation. At least from what I remember. Also, I don't remember Sigurd promising he'd try to convince Azel to go home after this skirmish. Though again, maybe that's just me misremembering.

One interesting thing to note is that there is alternate dialogue for this scene if Azel has died.

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Before I read it I am guessing you are going to block the bridge before seizing. That used to be my favorite strat for that section when I played as kid, although I have grown more reluctant to cheese that time between clearing an area of enemies, and seizing a castle. That being said if you are trying to use that to train Azel, he will kill himself into an early grave unless you are very careful. Having cavalry units charge out and Canto back behind your defensive lines is a strat that I have always enjoyed in this game, and this is one of those classic places you can make that work.

Good guess! Though as you saw, I did work around that problem.

[Jotari]

16 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Alternatively you could let Nanna inherit the Return Staff, and Return Band, and literally return the whole crew to Seliph's starting castle. Making a stand with Leif Nanna and Finn is just more fun (and more consistent with the story of Thracia).

 

I hate it when that happens, as the Lex rush of that bandit is the only way to save a reasonable amount of that village.

 

Yes this was a aesthetic change from the patch, took me awhile to find the notes on it in the translation board

 

Funny you mention that, as without the patch there is an actual major bug regarding level ups. The way the game handled RNs is they have a list of numbers, that the game performs math on to make more random, but if it reaches a point where it has called all of the numbers, as can happen in particularly long Arena battles, it would stop, and while it could deal with that for more attacks, it couldn't for level ups, so you wouldn't get stats even if you had over 100 growth in it (that was how this error was noticed). You used to have to exit back to the weapon select screen and reenter just before killing the enemy to get it to refresh the RNs to avoid this.

 

Not quite flawlessly, you have 3 reset kills before you drop a rank, and if you are willing/able to completely repeat the full chapter that also clears the "loses" from that chapter

Before I read it I am guessing you are going to block the bridge before seizing. That used to be my favorite strat for that section when I played as kid, although I have grown more reluctant to cheese that time between clearing an area of enemies, and seizing a castle. That being said if you are trying to use that to train Azel, he will kill himself into an early grave unless you are very careful. Having cavalry units charge out and Canto back behind your defensive lines is a strat that I have always enjoyed in this game, and this is one of those classic places you can make that work.

The opening to next chapter makes it seem a bit more plausible.

This isn't strictly true, but if they breaking one of these, there will be a story scene to let you know to be prepared.

 

One interesting thing to note is that there is alternate dialogue for this scene if Azel has died.

Leif, Finn and Nana holding them all off until saved by Seliph is the intended canon, but the way the gameplay is set up to make victory always possible means the much more likely outcome is the Leinster trio takes Blume's army entirely and meets up with Leif at Ulster.

[Alastor15243]

17 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Leif, Finn and Nana holding them all off until saved by Seliph is the intended canon, but the way the gameplay is set up to make victory always possible means the much more likely outcome is the Leinster trio takes Blume's army entirely and meets up with Leif at Ulster.

I always like to keep the leader alive to milk the reinforcements there while Seliph's army is trying to bust them out. Makes it more fun, and since it's not slowing down the mission I hardly have to feel guilty. It would be a good idea even for an LTCer I'm pretty sure.

[Alastor15243]

Alright, so, unfortunately, I'm going to have to re-apply all of the formatting by hand if I want to use italics and bold in my entries, or else make you put up with the wonky and bizarre font issues, because as far as the people I've spoken to can tell, the formatting importer on SF is broken for normal users, and no matter what font and font size I pick in my word processor, it's going to look wrong to at least someone reading this on something.

Also, the reason I can't go back and edit my previous posts is apparently because there's a size limit on what you can post, but if you go beyond it... the site just lets you post it anyway for some reason. It only realizes it's too large if you try to edit it again, meaning if I try to edit the post, I have to make it smaller before I can save the edit. Only thing I can do is divide it up and edit it into some posts I've made later in response to you guys in-between updates. Ugh.

Anyway, here's the update:

Genealogy Day 3: Gandolf and the Daughter of the Lord of the Ring

So, let's see the rest of this ending cutscene to the prologue. I kind of forgot to watch it before finishing up yesterday, hahaha...

Yet more visitors from the king that suggests news travels psychotically fast in this medieval world.

Interesting. This is yet another scene I hadn't thought about before. The king's envoy clearly is under the impression that they are going fully at war with Verdane, and he'd know, but Sigurd, unless this was grossly mistranslated, states to Eldigan in just a little bit that this is just a rescue mission and he has no intention of going to war with Verdane. Until they eventually force him. This, I suspect, is going to turn out to really showcase how Sigurd is incredibly naive about what he's doing, that he thinks this won't come to war. Verdane fucking stormed the border and ran off with a noble's daughter. How does he think this won't come to war?

Okay, so Chapter 1's text crawl says that Verdane is notorious for raiding Grannvalian soil. How the fuck do these countries have a peace treaty?

Oh, I see. So this was a past tense thing, and King Batur, who looks old enough to have been king for quite some time, has put an end to the raids. Until now.

So now Batou is Batur, Kinbois in Kinbaith, and Jamka is Jamke. I much preferred the first two, and the second is just gonna be annoying to get used to. But “Kin-bwah” was such a fun name to say.

Interesting. Eldigan's lines to the border guard are a lot more friendly and openly praiseworthy rather than the original translation's line. Looking at what the new translation says, however... if that was what the original Japanese was trying to say, then the “good work, you've got the border” I grew up with is much worse than I always read it as. I can't quite explain why it felt so innocuous before, but it did. Just a simple statement. Honestly this is kind of disappointing, because I liked the line better when I didn't know how stupid it was, and back then I liked it more than I like this newly-translated version now. I liked how short and sweet the original line was, much quicker then “You're doing a fine job, soldier. I leave the border's defenses to you.” Especially since “Good work. You've got the border.” doesn't actually explicitly state that literally only one guard is responsible for guarding the border, which if you think about it too long, seems a bit odd, especially when it's an unpromoted unit.

Yeah, the new flowery language that Eldigan and Cuan particularly use a lot is... taking some getting used to. Not entirely keen on it for reasons I can't quite describe.

Anyway, ...Kinbaith... does the usual hostage scheme with Ayra. Alright, it's spelled with a “y” here. Anyway, the statement's a bit more openly cruel here, outright telling her to die rather than let the castle fall, something I know he didn't say in the original, because I've got the original text right in front of me.

Huh. Shanan's spelled with one N. That... totally changes how it looks like it's supposed to be pronounced. I always pronounced it Shah-NAN, but this makes it look like it's supposed to be pronounced like Sharon with an “n” instead of an “r”. I definitely prefer Shah-NAN better, honestly.

Yeah, I really don't like the new translation's handling of Ayra. I liked the slightly more informal, crass and vulgar way she used to speak. In this version, when Kinbaith says “Such a cute face, but you only use it to spew bile like that”... she didn't even swear, dude! Seriously, this:

“You better not cross me, Kinbois. Because I'll hunt you down... and put your head on a stick! Even if it takes me to the ends of hell! Got it!?”

Is a way better line to prompt that kind of reaction from Kinbaith than this:

“But be warned, Kinbaith: If you break your promise, you'll deeply regret it. Cross me, and I will pursue you to the very depths of the inferno itself, till I take your head. Remember this well!”

As Kinbaith's men line up into formation to charge Evans, it occurs to me that this game relies a lot on really clumpy mass formations of enemies, rather than spreading them out like other games do. That's another factor that I suspect really contributes to mounted units' dominance: being able to advance in and also retreat to not be in the range of so many enemies is a massive help. Man, Azel is going to be a bitch to train here. I can't count on him surviving more than one, maybe two attacks, and you can't advance against the enemies here without exposing yourself to the entire rest of the enemy forces. Kind of leaves anyone not on a horse completely dependent on their stats to do literally anything at all.

Alright, so, now it's time to do the obligatory start-of-chapter town visits!

Sigurd obliterates the arena, as usual. At least until he fights the wind mage, which takes a bit of doing, but isn't too hard to RNG cheese through repeated efforts, since this game doesn't really punish dodge tanks for scumming the arena. Yeah, units with high avoid have a way better time in the arena than units that rely on other stats to be good.

But the fact that the arena guy says “1000 gold pieces” instead of “1000 gold” made me think more about how ridiculous it is that I'm literally being given 1000 gold coins, which... sounds extremely heavy, and way, way, waaaaaaaaaay too valuable to just be handed out as prize money for beating a basic fight. Also, “Come back if you're still breathin'.” will always have a closer place in my heart than “come back if you fancy a bit o' bloodsport”.

One thing I find interesting about this game is that aside from being more expensive, steel weapons are objectively better than iron weapons, having identical stats except for cost and might.

I unfortunately overestimated Lex. He would have been fine if he just hit, but he didn't, and now he's at 1 HP on turn one, which is something I can only fix for one unit. So I've gotta be careful about who I send to the arena and how far in.

And I stop to check my phone while on the arena menu and I'm reminded how much I absolutely adore the FE1 player phase theme being played in the background by what are implied to be actual in-universe minstrels. I love it. And so does the crowd.

Actually... didn't we just basically take over and occupy a castle town? It's kind of funny how no matter where we go, no matter what the opinion of the populace is portrayed to be in-story... the people we do business with just could not give a tenth of a shit about it and will treat us like any other customer like literally nothing's going on. In fact... Okay, officially, canonically, who ruled Evans before we took over? It wasn't the guy we killed to conquer it, is it? He looked like just one of Gandolf's lackeys. This was a fucking castle, right? It had a ruler, right? A guy officially in charge? What happened to him? Kinbaith rules Genoa, Gandolf rules Marpha, and Batur rules Verdane castle proper. Why was this the only castle not ruled by a warrior prince? Is it supposed to be Jamke's? If so, why'd he let Gandolf use it to invade Grannvale, and if not, why's he the only prince who doesn't have a castle of his own, when there is in fact a fourth castle fully available for him? It seems weird that Evans was treated more like a fort than an actual castle for the purposes of last map.

Anyway, I give Sigurd a javelin. Not that I expect him to use it too much. I'm gonna have him focus on his silver sword for now and then possibly a magic sword later. But I do want him to have a 1-2 range option, and the heavy weight of the javelin probably won't matter much against slow axe users. He'll still double everything.

I tried using Ethlyn to heal Finn up for miracle abuse, to beat the myrmidon who killed him, but that didn't work out. Didn't get healed up to quite the right HP value to get into a proper miracle range. So now Lex and Finn are stuck at 1 HP, and Ethlyn's already moved. Everyone else, who I made quit while they were ahead, moves out, except Arden, who guards the castle, obviously.

Unfortunately, this has been yet another busy day, so I'm going to have to cut this short after not accomplishing much in-game. Sorry guys. I guess this game just has a lot to discuss story-wise beyond gameplay.

I'm really hoping this doesn't become a recurring thing.

[Eltosian Kadath]

4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Also, the reason I can't go back and edit my previous posts is apparently because there's a size limit on what you can post, but if you go beyond it... the site just lets you post it anyway for some reason. It only realizes it's too large if you try to edit it again

Well that explains the classic edit glitch that frustrates so many LPers

18 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

second is just gonna be annoying to get used to. But “Kin-bwah” was such a fun name to say.

Yeah I still prefer Kinbois for similar reasons.

31 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Unfortunately, this has been yet another busy day, so I'm going to have to cut this short after not accomplishing much in-game. Sorry guys. I guess this game just has a lot to discuss story-wise beyond gameplay.

Plus the arena gauntlet tends to eat up a lot of time.

36 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Man, Azel is going to be a bitch to train here. I can't count on him surviving more than one, maybe two attacks, and you can't advance against the enemies here without exposing yourself to the entire rest of the enemy forces. Kind of leaves anyone not on a horse completely dependent on their stats to do literally anything at all.

Spoiler

I seem to remember a strat where I prepared for Kinbois's forces by anchoring my line to the lone forest beyond the cropping of impassible woods. After they hit my lines I push forward with everyone, with Sigurd, Cuan, and Lex cantoing forward to block the gap between the woods and cliff after there attacks, to keep the boss and the last of his forces from getting at my units that charged forward to kill everything past that gap. Its probably too risky for iron man, and you need your Lex healthy, and even Arden needed to help out, so it might not be for this run, but it is a way to get Azel a kill or two on that section without being desperate for dodges.

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

But the fact that the arena guy says “1000 gold pieces” instead of “1000 gold” made me think more about how ridiculous it is that I'm literally being given 1000 gold coins, which... sounds extremely heavy, and way, way, waaaaaaaaaay too valuable to just be handed out as prize money for beating a basic fight. Also, “Come back if you're still breathin'.” will always have a closer place in my heart than “come back if you fancy a bit o' bloodsport”.

I'm not familiar with numismatics, but I know in the case of the ancient Rome and early modern China and Japan, that silver coinage was the backbone of the economy. But for ordinary day-to-day transactions, silver was still too valuable, so cooper coins served as the fundamental monetary unit for your common needs.

Silver therefore I'd think might make more sense as the currency FE deals in. Would the purchase of new weapons be pricey enough to justify exchange in silver? -But silver isn't as shiny as gold and what FE dev team member knows the reality of coinage?

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

This was a fucking castle, right? It had a ruler, right? A guy officially in charge? What happened to him? Kinbaith rules Genoa, Gandolf rules Marpha, and Batur rules Verdane castle proper. Why was this the only castle not ruled by a warrior prince? Is it supposed to be Jamke's? If so, why'd he let Gandolf use it to invade Grannvale, and if not, why's he the only prince who doesn't have a castle of his own, when there is in fact a fourth castle fully available for him? It seems weird that Evans was treated more like a fort than an actual castle for the purposes of last map.

What kingdom has only four castles in its entirety? I'd just assume that if Jamke did have a crown fief of his own, it isn't being shown on the map. Just as Sigurd's army can't be just ten people, or Verdane can't have only three villages.

Evans resting on a crossroads between Agustria and Grannvale would make it highly, highly important. Far from the capital yes, but I I can't see it for that reason being the third prince's possession. Who controls it then? I wouldn't have a clue.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So now Batou is Batur, Kinbois in Kinbaith, and Jamka is Jamke. I much preferred the first two,

"Batur" is a proper form of a Central Asian name though, albeit Batu looks valid in a different Central Asian language as well. Central Asia, vicious nomads who like invading settled agrarian countries. Batu or Batur works for Verdane when you think of it this way. Not sure if "Batou" is at all a viable transliteration from whatever language the name is derived.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, I really don't like the new translation's handling of Ayra. I liked the slightly more informal, crass and vulgar way she used to speak. In this version, when Kinbaith says “Such a cute face, but you only use it to spew bile like that”... she didn't even swear, dude! Seriously, this:

“You better not cross me, Kinbois. Because I'll hunt you down... and put your head on a stick! Even if it takes me to the ends of hell! Got it!?”

Is a way better line to prompt that kind of reaction from Kinbaith than this:

“But be warned, Kinbaith: If you break your promise, you'll deeply regret it. Cross me, and I will pursue you to the very depths of the inferno itself, till I take your head. Remember this well!”

"...head on a stick" sounds weak to me, as a phrase apart from whatever the Japanese says, that could have been phrased better and without the ellipsis.

Ayra saying "hell" is fine and good (she is a princess and a warrior), but I otherwise prefer the Project Naga translation. Literal and casual might just not appeal to me the way it seems to be working for you. FE4 is a game of bluebloods, so eloquence is reasonable, and I didn't consider this translation to be too flowery for me. But such are differences in taste. And admittedly, my first time bias is with this one too.

 

When Thracia 776 follows, the translators provided a PDF covering every line in the game in the Japanese, the old English fan translation, and the new one, with commentary explaining translation choices. You can always consult it if you have any questions about it.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'm really hoping this doesn't become a recurring thing.

Given the desire to do the "Arena toil" first thing every chapter because it doesn't waste turns that way, this is understandable. And the fact that FE4 has only twelve chapters, means that each opening has to be dense to account for how much plot the game wants to tell.

[Alastor15243]

26 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

"...head on a stick" sounds weak to me, as a phrase apart from whatever the Japanese says, that could have been phrased better and without the ellipsis.

Ayra saying "hell" is fine and good (she is a princess and a warrior), but I otherwise prefer the Project Naga translation. Literal and casual might just not appeal to me the way it seems to be working for you. FE4 is a game of bluebloods, so eloquence is reasonable, and I didn't consider this translation to be too flowery for me. But such are differences in taste. And admittedly, my first time bias is with this one too.

My issue is more that Kinbaith's line clearly indicates a crassness and aggression from Ayra's line that just doesn't exist in the new one. Not saying the original was perfect, it's definitely a little bit clumsy, but I feel it flows into Kinbaith's line way better than the update. Ayra seems too cold and calm to have prompted that "you've got a filthy mouth on that pretty face" response.

Edited October 31, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

It could be that singular gold pieces don't exist and the smallest value is 100 gold (pieces). That's common in a lot of modern countries. Try finding a singular Vietnamese dong. Alternatively, given that it's a gold standard, it could be based on weight. Where one "gold piece" basically just means one gram of gold.

[Alastor15243]

Alright guys, I'll be taking Halloween off due to other obligations. I'll make up for it on Saturday though! Have a happy Halloween!

[Alastor15243]

Genealogy Day 4: Do the Dew

Alright, now we get the cutscene where Adean and Dew first become playable, and once again I find the translation interesting. Adean's “Pardon me, Prince Jamke, but are you not joining us” is like stereotypical British levels of politeness considering the “running for your life” situation.

“No. I won't stand for my brother's vile ways, but I just won't betray my father either”.

Is that grammatically correct? I would have said “won't just betray my father either”. If it had been “can't” instead of “won't”, either arrangement might have worked.

And after confirming that in this translation it's Aideen, no Adean, now the translation throws in some good-old values dissonance into the pile by having Jamke fully believe that Dew deserves to get his tongue ripped out for thievery, whereas in the previous one Jamke just said he deserved to get locked up like he did. That... significantly changes my view of Jamke's character, to be honest.

But enough of that. Let's get on with the actual fucking game. I'm behind schedule as-is.

My plan: to advance with Sigurd to take out the bandits, and let everyone else attack from inside the castle while Ardan defends it so Azel can safely get kills along with everyone else by exploiting the castle entryway's pseudo-canto, in that after attacking from the castle entryway, you can (read: must) retreat back inside.

Meanwhile, instead of having Dew run for it towards the castle, I'm gonna have him and Aideen take a detour I enjoy a lot, one that lets him gain some precious and sorely-needed experience while the rest of the army catches up to him. It also fixes the problem of keeping Aideen safe from the bandits who have one more move than her. See, Dew's pretty garbage at the moment, having neither a mount, good bases, or pursuit, but he's still a speedy sword wielder, and that means it's damn near impossible for these bandits to kill him. So what we're going to do is curve down the ramp by the village and hide on the cliffside beaches, protecting Aideen while gaining chip damage exp, occasionally being healed by Aideen whenever the only axe fighter who can attack him each turn manages to land an extremely lucky hit. The only concern is to make sure that at all other times, Aideen isn't adjacent to Dew, because that would cause them to gain love points, and that would be positively disastrous if kept up over tens of turns.

I don't collect the village with Dew though, first because he doesn't need money, he's a thief who can take gold from anyone he attacks, and second because if I did save the village, that'd send the one bandit in this area racing after the other, much-harder-to-reach village, rather than the one that Sigurd will reach in a few more turns.

Also, just noticed that “sortie” was translated as “depart castle”, which I'm of two minds about. On one hand, teenage me had absolutely no idea what “sortie” meant, so that's much clearer, even if there are no consequences for trying the button out and canceling. But on the other hand, it doesn't work nearly as well with the crossed swords icon for the action.

But anyway, a turn healing in the castle combined with Ethlyn's heal staff were enough to get Finn just enough HP to reach 1 against the myrmidon, resulting in an instant win.

Oh hey! Finally I can stop bitching about the translation and say something nice about it!

IT'S ACTUALLY FINISHED.

I finally get to see what those lovers' conversations were all about! For those of you who haven't played, there was this thing where the first time one member of a married couple returned to the castle with their partner already inside, there'd be a little “welcome home, my love” interaction between the two. The problem was that for everyone playing this game years ago, every single last one of them was complete and utter gibberish. It's cute to finally get to see them, though it is a shame that since the conversation depends on who comes home and who was waiting for them, you can only see one half of the pair's interactions per playthrough unless you save scum.

The conversation's nothing special for Cuan coming home to Ethlyn, but it's nice to see it as an actual conversation now!

Also, I find an opening where Azel can safely bait two of the archers and nothing else, just before the army bears its full force on the castle and its 15-defense guard. So that's two more kills for Azel, while Dew's steadily making his way to his first level up, attacking on both turns since if he gets hit with that 16% chance on player phase I can just have Aideen heal him.

And just before the army arrives, I remember to have Finn and Cuan have their conversation. ...Shit, I mean Quan. Fuck. Okay, I know Cuan is weird too, but what the fuck kind of name is Quan!? That sounds like the name an alien who landed in Mexico would give himself. But anyway, strength, skill and defense, basically a solid level up for free.

Dew's first level up awards him five stats, though I couldn't take them all down in time before the screen disappeared. However, I figured out eventually that he got magic, HP, skill, speed and luck, bringing the chance of those axe fighters hitting him down to 13%. He's got some really good growth rates, at least for Gen 1, which is part of why I want to shack him up with Ayra. It used to be an even bigger deal to me because I loved Sol so much when I was younger, since it generally made strong units invincible, though now I'm less keen on RNG-dependent methods of survival. Still, those growths are going to be absolutely nuts on his kids, and when sol does proc it'll save healing in the long term. Plus, while bargain isn't the MOST useful on sword wielders, there are expensive swords I can let them make use of.

Alas, I think I made a minor miscalculation in my master plan. Nothing truly dangerous, but annoying. Once they got to the castle and started attacking Arden... the castle door was blocked. And now I have to get an opening to kill the axe fighter on player phase so that my forces can take out the few that remain.

Okay, so, the “charge” command has now been changed to “besiege,” which seems innocuous, and possibly even a sensible change.

Problem: That's the command used both for attacking a castle... AND attacking FROM a castle. So now Arden is “besieging” the axe fighter blocking the castle doorway, which makes no goddamned sense.

Alright, the castle gate is clear, so time to take out Kinbaith before he can block the entryway again and possibly even kill Arden before he can get it open again.

It's interesting that they give enemies, and only enemies, the ability to spontaneously switch to any ranged weapon they have when they're attacked at range. Definitely helps make bosses a lot more intimidating and difficult to cheese, I'll give them that.

Anyway, a combination of sorties out of the castle and back in allowed me to soften up Kinbaith enough for Azel to finish him off, leaving nothing outside that could hurt him but a single bandit archer, who after Ethlyn healed Azel, posed no mortal threat. Azel is currently level 9, which is good, because the time he can get away with being a 5 move unit is RAPIDLY depleting. Sigurd killed the second bandit a while back and I forgot to mention it, so now all that remains, while Dew single-handedly fends off an entire goddamned bandit army like he's got all the time in the world, is to recruit Ayra. What I like to do to get this done is to lure Ayra around one side of the circular forest with Quan while Sigurd takes out the castle defenses, seizes, and then goes over to talk to her. Unfortunately, for maximum success, I need nobody else to be near her, and it's a pretty wide area nobody can be near. This may take some time, but it's worth it to get this right. I can't afford to lose her, or anyone she could very, VERY easily kill.

Dew's second level up, obtained upon his first kill, is much less impressive, only granting speed and luck. But hey, that's still another three points to his already pretty high evasion.

Fortunately, I noticed just in time that now that the bandit leader is in range of Dew, I need to top off Dew's HP from 28 to 29, because if not, the fighter has a chance to one-shot him with his 29 attack and Dew's 1 defense. So far, Aideen and Dew have only spent two turns next to each other, which is perfect for my plans.

And upon selling the hand axe from Azel to Lex, I have my first interaction with this game's signature, but utterly bizarre item system, where you can't trade items, you can only sell them to the pawn shop for half value and have someone else buy it from there. From a logical perspective, I utterly despise it. Creating this convoluted network of entirely canonized procedures you have to go through in order to perform what was once the most trivial and basic of actions is really jarring. Mechanically? I do enjoy the challenges it brings to the table, and I enjoy them a lot. They don't make much sense, but from a pure gameplay perspective I consider them a refreshing and successful change of pace, if not something I'm exactly keen to see again.

Thankfully, the fact that Sigurd is agile enough to have a 100% dodge rate against hand axes in a forest means that the hand axe fighters will attack with their slightly more accurate (but not accurate enough) melee axes on enemy phase. Speaking of which, I find it interesting that this is the first game in the series I believe where enemies will actively ignore units they can't hurt, either due to insufficient accuracy or insufficient damage. But aura bonuses like Sigurd's leadership stars or the Charm skill don't count, either by design or by glitch. That particular element is really handy for enemy-phase dodge tanking for certain units.

Funny: enemy units defending castles, even when armed with 1-2 range weapons against units with 1 range weapons, will always “besiege”, and attack in melee, instead of “attacking” at range. Useful for me, even if it makes no sense.

Now, running the numbers, Dew's never going to be spectacular. The promotion bonuses are pretty cool, but his base stats in attack and defense are so god-awful that Sigurd currently equals what Dew's likely to have without his promotion gains by level 30. That's a bit of a disappointing dose of reality after being so fond of raising the character for so many years. However! Thieves still have great utility in this game, and training him boosts his kids' bases, so I'm still going to try. I've already made a good bit of progress so far.

Just rescued Shanan, and compared to the old script-

...Wow. W-... did Sigurd really say “What's up?” when addressing the rescued Shanan?

Not that I consider the new translation to be much better. “What's the matter? Why are you silent? I want to know why you were held here.” sounds kind of confrontational and interrogative for rescuing a little kid. Especially since the rest of the dialogue suggests he's being kind to him.

And yet another question occurs to me that I never thought about before: How did Verdane kidnap Shanan? Maybe the story will explain it and I never noticed, but this seems a bit... out of their way, doesn't it? I'm assuming Ayra and Shanan were the ones who went to Verdane due to some business they had, and not Verdane barbarians traveling straight through other territories for no other purpose than to kidnap a foreign prince and bring him back, just to blackmail out the assistance of one talented myrmidon. I'll have to check out that talk between Quan and Ayra. And while it's a little weird, I do appreciate that feature, that the game tells you who has a conversation with who.

Anyway, interesting that Oifaye's exclamation before talking about how kind Sigurd is was translated as “wow” in the original translation and “just as I thought” in the new one, because if you think about it, those mean the exact opposite things.

Moving on, Elliot is making a beeline for Evans, so we're about to see Eldigan's finest hour in action: protecting his buddy and kicking Elliot's ass with his Mystletain and his Cross Knights. But that'll have to wait until tomorrow, because I think capturing this castle is a good place to stop for today. Once I talk to Ayra, we'll wrap this up.

Right as I prepare to do that, it occurs to me that until Dew and Aideen showed up, we had literally two footsoldiers in the entire army, compared to EIGHT FUCKING CAVALRY. By the end of this chapter, we'll have 7: Azel, Arden, Dew, Aideen, Ayra, Jamke, and Dierdre. Our footsoldier forces will have exploded to THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY PERCENT OF WHAT IT ONCE WAS.

So Lachesis is now Raquesis. Which is stupid, because Lachesis is the real name, one of the three Greek fates. Not sure what motivated that change. But that's what this translation says, so fine, I'll call her that.

Yeah, honestly, from Day 5 onward, I'm just going to shut up about the translation now rather than try to argue why I dislike every third change it makes. I'm not liking what I'm seeing. Eldigan's lines are just needlessly verbose and flowery, and not even the fun kind of flowery like Owain. It sounds more like they were trying to say his lines using as many words as they could fit in. But I feel like I'm going to run out of ways to say that soon, so I'm going to stop before it gets annoying, unless something REALLY big comes up. Suffice to say unless things change, I won't be using this translation in the future. Not a fan.

One more thing though, before I recruit Ayra and end this part: I absolutely fucking ADORE the green unit theme in this game, though to me it'll always be the Cross Knights theme. I don't know why, it's such a simple melody, but I love the rhythm and the triumph of it.

Alright, recruited Ayra, and I noticed another change. There's a conspicuously removed “but” from the text of Ayra's comment about death. I always got the impression that what she was originally saying was “my brother wasn't afraid of death when he trusted Shanan to me, why should I be? ...But you're right. My life isn't mine to risk right now.” But the new translation makes it seem like what she was saying about her brother being prepared to die contributed to her decision to not waste her life for Verdane, not contradicting it. It may be that I just totally misunderstood the conversation before and that the new one's correct, but it is an interesting thing I noticed nonetheless.

But yeah. That does it for tonight's part. You almost didn't get it, you guys. A power outage in my area for most of the afternoon left it up in the air whether or not I'd be able to post this any time soon. But thankfully that wasn't a problem.

[Interdimensional Observer]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

How did Verdane kidnap Shanan? Maybe the story will explain it and I never noticed, but this seems a bit... out of their way, doesn't it? I'm assuming Ayra and Shanan were the ones who went to Verdane due to some business they had, and not Verdane barbarians traveling straight through other territories for no other purpose than to kidnap a foreign prince and bring him back, just to blackmail out the assistance of one talented myrmidon.

Ayra’s Wandering

Ayra’s home country Isaac was invaded by Grandbell’s large army, and it was on the verge of destuction. Her brother and king of the time Maricle prophesized his own fate of death and hands over his only son (also only child) Shannan to Ayra. He desired Shannan to be protected until the coming reconstruction of Isaac.

At the time, any men in the enemy’s royal family, even children, were to be executed. The better case for women would be slavery, and the usual case was to be raped and murdered. Maricle of course did not want his son Shannan, nor his kawaii (in this context it doesn’t suggest anything other than brotherly love) sister, to go through such a thing. He knew that if he said to take care of Shannan, his competetive sister would not be able to say no. As Maricle thought, Ayra had no choice but to take Shannan and escape the battlefield, and her country.

The only thing is that at this time, the only country who have not been under the influence of the gigantic country of Grandbell was the hostile (towards Grandbell) country of Verdane. Even if she escaped to one of the countries with peaceful relations with Grandbell, if their identity was revealed it was not impossible for them to be presented as prisoners (to Grandbell). So Ayra escapes to Verdane, but her long time wandering made it difficult to even get the meal for the day, so she had no choice but to work as a mercenary for Verdane. Ayra who held a brave yet pure heart lending a hand for Kinbois’ atrocities had that kind of circumstance behind it.

This sounds forced to me. This is at the start of Gen 1, before Grannvale invades the world.

• Whilst I wouldn't assume any of them to be immune to pressure from Grannvale that would lead them to be extradited to Grannvale, I wouldn't rule out the real chance of other countries being able to hide Shannan either. Augustria, Silesse and Thracia are entirely independent, albeit it wouldn't surprise me if Travant cold to all but Thracia's interests, sold out a puny Issach prince for better Grannvale relations. Chagal is a douche too, but there is always Queen Rahna.
• The other issue here is time. When did the Darna Incident happen, when did Manaan get assassinated, when did Mariccle send away Ayra and Shannan, and when did Verdane invade Grannvale? The expedition to Issach and Sigurd's conquest of Verdane are dated to 757. Did the events of leading to the expedition and the military preparations to leave for Issach happen in 756?
• Somehow, Ayra had to cross allllllll the way from Issach to Verdane, as far apart as can be on the Jugdral continent, in what could have only been months. Shannan would've had to become a hostage right away once they had stepped foot in Verdane. But given the distance to travel, they would have surely been exhausted from walking a hundred miles a day.

 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So Lachesis is now Raquesis. Which is stupid, because Lachesis is the real name, one of the three Greek fates. Not sure what motivated that change. But that's what this translation says, so fine, I'll call her that.

Blame Awakening, I'll assume the translation was finished before Fire Emblem Heroes came out. Awakening made the stupid move of "Raquesis" (which FEH corrected), and I guess the translation was just being loyal to the fault.

As for the mistake itself, blame the Japanese language.

 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Eldigan's lines are just needlessly verbose and flowery, and not even the fun kind of flowery like Owain. It sounds more like they were trying to say his lines using as many words as they could fit in.

There is always worse:

Spoiler

This from a common lowborn thief. "Casual" is language not in this amusement for the eyes and mind. All tongue is rendered as though by amateur Bard of Stratford-on-Avon inscribed.

This game is like Genealogy in several ways, but, worse. Final Fantasy Tactics it be called.

Oddly, there is one character whose dialogue was terribly out of place with this FE4 translation for me. To the point I had to bifurcate them mentally, because they were like two different characters to me, with part of them me genuinely liking. Shame, for I wanted to like their whole.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

I don't mind the translation analysis. I haven't played this translation myself so I find the changes and your opinion on them interesting.

Also I'm pretty sure enemies wouldn't attack units they couldn't damage in Mystery of the Emblem. I remember at least Tiki becoming much less effective when she hits 20 defense and suddenly no enemies want to bother attacking her, destroying her enemy phase usefulness.

5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Ayra’s Wandering

Ayra’s home country Isaac was invaded by Grandbell’s large army, and it was on the verge of destuction. Her brother and king of the time Maricle prophesized his own fate of death and hands over his only son (also only child) Shannan to Ayra. He desired Shannan to be protected until the coming reconstruction of Isaac.

At the time, any men in the enemy’s royal family, even children, were to be executed. The better case for women would be slavery, and the usual case was to be raped and murdered. Maricle of course did not want his son Shannan, nor his kawaii (in this context it doesn’t suggest anything other than brotherly love) sister, to go through such a thing. He knew that if he said to take care of Shannan, his competetive sister would not be able to say no. As Maricle thought, Ayra had no choice but to take Shannan and escape the battlefield, and her country.

The only thing is that at this time, the only country who have not been under the influence of the gigantic country of Grandbell was the hostile (towards Grandbell) country of Verdane. Even if she escaped to one of the countries with peaceful relations with Grandbell, if their identity was revealed it was not impossible for them to be presented as prisoners (to Grandbell). So Ayra escapes to Verdane, but her long time wandering made it difficult to even get the meal for the day, so she had no choice but to work as a mercenary for Verdane. Ayra who held a brave yet pure heart lending a hand for Kinbois’ atrocities had that kind of circumstance behind it.

This sounds forced to me. This is at the start of Gen 1, before Grannvale invades the world.

• Whilst I wouldn't assume any of them to be immune to pressure from Grannvale that would lead them to be extradited to Grannvale, I wouldn't rule out the real chance of other countries being able to hide Shannan either. Augustria, Silesse and Thracia are entirely independent, albeit it wouldn't surprise me if Travant cold to all but Thracia's interests, sold out a puny Issach prince for better Grannvale relations. Chagal is a douche too, but there is always Queen Rahna.
• The other issue here is time. When did the Darna Incident happen, when did Manaan get assassinated, when did Mariccle send away Ayra and Shannan, and when did Verdane invade Grannvale? The expedition to Issach and Sigurd's conquest of Verdane are dated to 757. Did the events of leading to the expedition and the military preparations to leave for Issach happen in 756?
• Somehow, Ayra had to cross allllllll the way from Issach to Verdane, as far apart as can be on the Jugdral continent, in what could have only been months. Shannan would've had to become a hostage right away once they had stepped foot in Verdane. But given the distance to travel, they would have surely been exhausted from walking a hundred miles a day.

 

Blame Awakening, I'll assume the translation was finished before Fire Emblem Heroes came out. Awakening made the stupid move of "Raquesis" (which FEH corrected), and I guess the translation was just being loyal to the fault.

As for the mistake itself, blame the Japanese language.

 

There is always worse:

  Reveal hidden contents

This from a common lowborn thief. "Casual" is language not in this amusement for the eyes and mind. All tongue is rendered as though by amateur Bard of Stratford-on-Avon inscribed.

This game is like Genealogy in several ways, but, worse. Final Fantasy Tactics it be called.

Oddly, there is one character whose dialogue was terribly out of place with this FE4 translation for me. To the point I had to bifurcate them mentally, because they were like two different characters to me, with part of them me genuinely liking. Shame, for I wanted to like their whole.

Even before the war, Grannvale is by far the most dominant nation on the continent. It's basically like the USA, with Leinster and Agustria etc being the likes of Canada and Europe etc. Verdane was the only country openly hostile to Grannvale so they were the only ones where they could be certain they wouldn't be turned over. Like, if you need to get the hell away from the US in the modern day your best bet would be North Korea or China etc.

[Eltosian Kadath]

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Is that grammatically correct? I would have said “won't just betray my father either”. If it had been “can't” instead of “won't”, either arrangement might have worked.

It is grammatically correct ("just" in this form is an adverb, and "won't" is a contraction of the verb will and not), but I see where you are coming from here, as this is a place where language as spoken, and as written are a bit at odds. The word "just" in this sentence can be used to emphasize a lot of different parts of this sentence, and what it emphasizes can greatly change the meaning, and there are two ways you can indicate what is being emphasized, first with how you say the sentence, and second with how you arrange the sentence. "Won't just betray my father either" sounds better and more natural when spoken, but is much more reliant on how you say it for meaning (for example the meaning completely changes if you focus on "won't" or a focus on "just"), whereas "just won't betray my father either" doesn't sound as good when spoken, but the arrangement of the words makes makes its meaning clearer when read.

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

My plan: to advance with Sigurd to take out the bandits, and let everyone else attack from inside the castle while Ardan defends it so Azel can safely get kills along with everyone else by exploiting the castle entryway's pseudo-canto, in that after attacking from the castle entryway, you can (read: must) retreat back inside.

That is an interesting strategy, but is reliant on Arden being able to kill whoever is in front of the castle, which either makes it very slow, or very optimistic. At least Arden gets a lot of xp he never would otherwise. I wonder how this would work against an army of Canto units, as I am not sure how far the game's AI would have units retreat after attacking, so I am not sure if it would work better or worse.

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Sorely-needed experience while the rest of the army catches up to him.

You are really gambling with that boss killing Dew if you try for it. I am surprised you are risking that in an ironman.

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

16% chance on player phase I can just have Aideen heal him.

Wow, you are risking it without the terrain bonuses...I guess he will train faster, but it is even riskier.

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay, I know Cuan is weird too, but what the fuck kind of name is Quan!?

Ok I just looked it up, and its an Irish name coming from, and I quote " [an] Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Cúáin [meaning] ‘descendant of Cúán’ ". In some ways finding out Quan means son of Cuan makes the whole thing even funnier.

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

He's got some really good growth rates, at least for Gen 1, which is part of why I want to shack him up with Ayra. It used to be an even bigger deal to me because I loved Sol so much when I was younger, since it generally made strong units invincible, though now I'm less keen on RNG-dependent methods of survival.

Inheriting more than one sword skill is kinda weird in that only one can proc at a time. I forget the priority, but it basically makes the lower priority skill have a lower proc rate, for if the first skill checked procs, the other automatically fails to(although the probability of procing something goes up).

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Fortunately, I noticed just in time that now that the bandit leader is in range of Dew, I need to top off Dew's HP from 28 to 29, because if not, the fighter has a chance to one-shot him with his 29 attack and Dew's 1 defense. So far, Aideen and Dew have only spent two turns next to each other, which is perfect for my plans.

Good thing one of his level-ups proced his 50% hp growth. Just out of curiosity does Aideen heal enough to bring Dew from 1 to max, or was there always that chance of the boss hitting two turns in a row.

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And upon selling the hand axe from Azel to Lex, I have my first interaction with this game's signature, but utterly bizarre item system, where you can't trade items, you can only sell them to the pawn shop for half value and have someone else buy it from there. From a logical perspective, I utterly despise it. Creating this convoluted network of entirely canonized procedures you have to go through in order to perform what was once the most trivial and basic of actions is really jarring. Mechanically? I do enjoy the challenges it brings to the table, and I enjoy them a lot. They don't make much sense, but from a pure gameplay perspective I consider them a refreshing and successful change of pace, if not something I'm exactly keen to see again.

Feeling the exact the opposite here, as trading weapons in midst of combat is the logically nonsensical one, but makes for mechanically interesting gameplay. Having someone grab your sword out of hand immediately after you attack, putting a different one in your hand, and having that trader still have the time to use the weapon they grabbed out of your hand to attack is silly, especially when you don't have the time to switch weapons yourself after an attack. Having to transfer weapon outside of the heat of battle makes more sense, and having to "trade" weapons by selling them is more an acknowledgement that these weapons are personal possession, that are too valuable (as in your life and livelihood depend on them) and personal to lend to some guy from work.

 

[Alastor15243]

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Good thing one of his level-ups proced his 50% hp growth. Just out of curiosity does Aideen heal enough to bring Dew from 1 to max, or was there always that chance of the boss hitting two turns in a row.

Aideen has a mend staff, so I seriously doubt she'd have trouble healing 28 HP. Anyway, it wasn't nearly as dangerous as it looked. It was a failed spot check on my part that I didn't notice the leader's insta-kill power, but due to enemy AI the fighter never got anywhere near Dew before his lackeys filled up the empty space. And when fighting anyone who can't instantly kill him, fighting someone in a bottleneck wasn't remotely dangerous at all, as long as I made sure the enemy didn't get killed on enemy phase and invite two kill attempts between heal opportunities. All attacking on player phase (when still healthy of course) meant was doubling xp gain speed.

@Interdimensional Observer I agree Ayra's trek sounds forced. It sounded like they didn't realize how strange it was until later in development (at the earliest) and then scrambled to justify.

@Jotari Alright, I'll consider keeping up the script commentary.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

I don't mind the translation analysis. I haven't played this translation myself so I find the changes and your opinion on them interesting.

Looking over the old topic about the translation, I don't really see anyone criticizing it beyond some name changes, I saw only one bitter critique of it as too much fanciful prose.

Most people just seem to like that the translation is complete. And later topics suggest that while no one is throwing the other translations in the pits of hell, people would nonetheless pick the Project Naga translation over the others available.

Translation is a culinary art. There is an element of science involved, a word can only mean so many things, just as there is a cutoff when caramel will burn and when its too thick or too runny and ceases to be good caramel. But how to best pair that good caramel is open to interpretation, do you keep it simple like a creme caramel, or do you layer it in a fine petit four?

Although in my personal preference, overly casual and vulgar is a bigger problem than overly formal and flowery. And furthermore, I prefer newer fan translations than old, since old ones tended to be written by horny teenagers who had yet to master the Japanese language (albeit according to other translators). I trust newer translations to more accurate to the original Japanese's content, meaning, and conveyance; as composed by experienced translators.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Aideen has a mend staff, so I seriously doubt she'd have trouble healing 28 HP. Anyway, it wasn't nearly as dangerous as it looked. It was a failed spot check on my part that I didn't notice the leader's insta-kill power, but due to enemy AI the fighter never got anywhere near Dew before his lackeys filled up the empty space. And when fighting anyone who can't instantly kill him, fighting someone in a bottleneck wasn't remotely dangerous at all, as long as I made sure the enemy didn't get killed on enemy phase and invite two kill attempts between heal opportunities. All attacking on player phase (when still healthy of course) meant was doubling xp gain speed.

@Interdimensional Observer I agree Ayra's trek sounds forced. It sounded like they didn't realize how strange it was until later in development (at the earliest) and then scrambled to justify.

@Jotari Alright, I'll consider keeping up the script commentary.

It's undoubtedly forced, but I think they knew it. No more forced than Tailtyu showing up with Claude. FE4 gen 1 faces the rather unique problem of absolutely needing certain characters to be present for the plot we follow while the stuff that's actually important (that is to say the entire war with Isaach) happens off screen. It's basically like trying to write game of thrones but only being allowed to focus on Stannis due to the gameplay.

7 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Looking over the old topic about the translation, I don't really see anyone criticizing it beyond some name changes, I saw only one bitter critique of it as too much fanciful prose.

Most people just seem to like that the translation is complete. And later topics suggest that while no one is throwing the other translations in the pits of hell, people would nonetheless pick the Project Naga translation over the others available.

Translation is a culinary art. There is an element of science involved, a word can only mean so many things just as there is a cutoff when caramel will burn and when its too thick or too runny and ceases to be good caramel, but how to best pair that good caramel is open to interpretation.

Although in my personal preference, overly casual and vulgar is a bigger problem than overly formal and flowery. And furthermore, I prefer newer fan translations than old, since old ones tended to be written by horny teenagers who had yet to master the Japanese language (albeit according to other translators). I trust newer translations to more accurate to the original Japanese's content, meaning, and conveyance; as composed by experienced translators.

One can fall into the trap of being too literal and ending up transliterating instead of translating though.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Jotari

[Interdimensional Observer]

8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

One can fall into the trap of being too literal and ending up transliterating instead of translating though.

I'm aware of the issue -not that I'd be able to tell if this translation was being too literal.

And sometimes phrases trip people up, like the one in FFVI where the SNES translation said "business is going up", which the Japanese literally said, but which in normal parlance has the full meaning "business is going up- in smoke", so down actually, the opposite.

This said, translation, as with many complicated matters of human existences, relies on a leap of faith that the professionals we trust, are being truthful and sincerely accurate.

 

12 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It's undoubtedly forced, but I think they knew it. No more forced than Tailtyu showing up with Claude. FE4 gen 1 faces the rather unique problem of absolutely needing certain characters to be present for the plot we follow while the stuff that's actually important (that is to say the entire war with Isaach) happens off screen. It's basically like trying to write game of thrones but only being allowed to focus on Stannis due to the gameplay.

In some nonexistent anime or manga unrestrained by gameplay concerns, I could see Ayra and Shannan instead falling into Duke Byron's lap.

That they'd get caught by the Grannvalian army as they try to flee Issach (though why they don't go by sea to Manster then becomes a minor question), and then Byron meets them and sympathizes and secures their safety.

When Prince Kurth is gone, Byron continues to shelter Ayra and Shannan, and then he catches word that his son has fled to Silesse being branded a traitor. Assuming his son would obey his word and protect the Issachan duo, he sends them secretly ahead of himself. It could work I guess.

This would have the effect of weakening Sigurd's choice to send baby Seliph to Issach, since he'd have hardly had any time to personally bond with Shannan. But, Silesse can certainly suffice as Seliph's shelter. The biggest reason Seliph has to be raised in Issach, is because FE4 wanted to do a full world tour- every country MUST be visited and fought within. Although I'll say FE4 did a better job of this than FE6, another "world tour" game.

[Alastor15243]

Genealogy Day 5: Because I skipped Halloween

I start off the part getting Aideen her warp staff since Dew can't attack his turn anyway (enemy would die on enemy phase if he did), because holy shit would that be a horrible loss if I missed it. That warp staff is gonna be essential. In fact, Aideen probably isn't going to be doing much else besides using it. And the awesome thing about having the better staff user use warp in the castle while the more mobile staff user has return is that it's functionally identical to having a mounted staff user who can use warp, except two units get experience instead of one.

Warp is pretty interesting in this game: you can only use it to teleport to castles you've already secured, which you think would significantly limit its usefulness considering how I've been using warp in the last three games. But trust me, this thing sees a lot of use.

Curious that in this translation, Dew calls the warp staff a “cane” when giving it to Aideen. Is Dew playing dumb, or does he, a thief, really not know what he stole to give to Aideen as a present? Was this just some weird attempt to impress a girl with a random present that lucked out?

And yet again there's a removal of a very important “but” in Aideen's dialogue. Originally Dew's bullshit lie that the staff simply fell out of Heaven just for Aideen was met with “Yeah, right. Well, it'll help out around here to have it. Thanks”. Here, she responds with “Oh, Dew... Having a staff like this ought to be a great help to everybody. Thank you. I'll cherish it.”

Now, if we're being charitable, we can read that “Oh, Dew...” as Aideen being exasperated and saying “What am I going to do with you?”. However, there's no sign of a subject change. No “but”. No “still”. As if the “Oh, Dew...” is just an introduction to the thanks that the rest of the line constitutes. Which makes Aideen sound hilariously naive.

Oh shit. OH SHIT.

I NEVER NOTICED THIS BEFORE.

There's a riff playing in the Isaachian music that plays when Ayra talks to Quan, one I hadn't noticed before. In fairness I rarely see this conversation since it doesn't get you any items or love points. But the melody playing is clearly what they use in Chapter 6's map theme, which takes place in Isaach! That's super cool! I like hearing it all impressive and serious and pseudo-desert-y as compared to Chapter 6's way more lighthearted and upbeat version. This sounds like something that would play for a powerful and wise king, like Caineghis. Or something that would play in a SNES Zelda sand temple.

Anyway, I like this talk. In both versions. They didn't really make any changes here that bother me, nor is it noticeably needlessly verbose.

I decide to give the first village to Lex, since he's about to get a rather expensive axe that he's going to absolutely depend upon to be a relevant combat unit. You all know the one. And if you don't, then you're probably super confused about all the people who say Lex is a good unit and not just a good father. Because his viability almost entirely revolves around this secret easter egg weapon.

4 levels for Dew so far, and not a single one of them got strength. They haven't been bad levels otherwise, mind. No HPsauce or lucksauce levels. He's even gotten two points of defense, and he's procced speed nearly every time! But holy shit is his strength garbage at the beginning of the game. The idea of this guy ever scoring a kill is starting to sound laughable, which is really, really sad.

Oh well. Maybe I can salvage him with some rings. He can buy them easily after all. And if all else fails... he's still marrying Ayra, and thieves gain exp from using the “give” command, so I can always have him spend all of his downtime gaining 10 exp a turn having sexy naked coin fights with his wife.

I want to know the story behind this road. Judging by the way it starts up again in a straight line at the opposite end of this forest, I have to assume that it's all part of the same road. So why does it just... stop, right at the edge of the forest, and then start again on the other side? Is the implication supposed to be that the road's still there, just impossible to see from above through the trees, and so for aesthetic reasons they treated it gameplaywise like there's no road at all? Were the Verdane savages just lazy bastards who didn't wanna bother clearing the forest for the road?

Or, far more interestingly... was there once something there? Is this forest the overgrown ruins of something manmade that once stood there?

Is the entire Verdane road project long since abandoned, and this is the first sign of disrepair and decay? Or was there once a castle that stood on that spot, lost to violence or madness or plague, and now naught remains to suggest it was ever there but the roads that led to it?

Words cannot describe how giddy I would be to discover that question actually has an answer and it isn't just some of this game's stupid nonsense amidst the gold.

Anyway, Ayra and the rest of the army made it to bail Dew out, roughly in time to milk the other half of the map's love points. You only gain love points up until turn 50, which forces you to manage your first 50 turns better if you wanna gain those adjacent love growth bonuses, and also prevents you from grinding marriages too much at the end of a map. I'm gonna try to get as much as I can from that couple, but also I want to make sure the experience goes to units that need it, so I'm not just gonna send Sigurd in to free Dew right away.

Dew finally got strength, if little else that level, but at least now there's a limit to how strength screwed I have to prepare for him being!

And with some careful and moderately clever thinking, I manage to route the entire rest of the charging Marpha castle guards without a single unit to spare. Not that I'd have been fucked if I hadn't managed to do it perfectly. I had other options, but this worked out excellently.

Of course it occurs to me now that Lex completely forgot to grab that village, the entire point of him going that way around the huge circular forest by Genoa. So now I have to send him back. But thankfully I don't even have to wait for him: he'll make it to his little event easily even if we hurry from here on out.

Alright, we've killed Gandolf, leaving us with nothing left for this map but the final, obnoxious stretch through that final, obnoxious forest.

I think this and chapter 6 are the low points for the game's pacing. This map was clearly designed for story first and gameplay second, which... annoys me.

Okay, I just got the conversation between Sigurd and Aideen, and... wooooooow. If this is an actual correct translation, and I was just assuming a reasonable explanation from the somewhat vague original, I like how I interpreted the original way better.

Basically, in the original, when Aideen says she joined the clergy to “aid the chances of finding [her] sister”, I always assumed she meant that joining the clergy would make it actually easier to find her. As in, she'd go on missions and see more of the world and be able to get more clues. Especially since Sigurd goes “you still think you can find her, do you?”

FUCKIN' NOPE!

The new translation is:

Sigurd: So all this time, Aideen, you've been praying for her sake, haven't you?

Aideen: Yes. I know we'll meet again some day. No matter what happens, I must give her this: her sacred birthright, the bow Yewfelle!

So. It's not that she thought being a cleric would make it easier to search. Her plan was just to pray that they meet again. And the only conclusion I can draw from that... is that she joined the clergy SO THAT HER PRAYERS WOULD MATTER MORE.

…Let's move on.

Just captured Marpha and started the scene with Dierdre, and it's weird that they changed generic creep guy's line from “Don't you wanna have a little fun” to “I'm just asking for a little date”. I don't get the purpose of the change, especially since he's still getting grabby with her judging by the completely unchanged “let go of me” line.

Yeah, and then his next line, after she says she needs to leave and begs him to “heed [her] no mind”, he goes “Shaddup! Keep up your yapping and you'll regret it!”

...I'm sorry, but I gotta bitch.

Going straight from “Come on, I just want a little date” to “SILENCE WOMAN!” seems... really weird. The original is also a bit odd, since both suggest that suddenly he takes issue with the concept of her talking at all, which suggests to me it might just be bad writing and a problem with the original Japanese that this just faithfully translated, but at least with the original he wasn't even making pretenses that he wanted to do anything that involved her talking. Like, the fact that he's yelling at her for talking at all suggests that not only was he lying about just wanting a date (inherently obvious, of course), but that he never even intended it to be believed, that he knew that she knew what he was planning, and that he wasn't even luring her into a false sense of security, and that his line was apparently supposed to be one of those “shame if something happened to it” style euphemisms, in this case meaning “draw attention to yourself and I hurt you”.

The scene goes from “drunken horny misogynist meathead jackass attempting to get laid and not taking no for an answer” to “outright rapist with weird 'I have you now my pretty' one-liners.”

But Sigurd's intervention still plays out like it's the former and not the latter. If he were actually outright trying to rape her at that moment, I don't think an “apologize and run away if you know what's good for you” would have been Sigurd's response. I just have a feeling.

Fuck it. The whole thing's just bizarre. Let's move on.

Actually, sorry, no, one more comment: What was Dierdre doing in the castle anyway? The village elder (props to the new translation for actually explaining who the old man was, btw) says they don't interact with the outside world, so clearly there must have been a reason. What was it? Why was she so conveniently there, allowing her to have spoken with Aideen and heard about Sigurd, giving their brief encounter just the tiniest shred of emotional depth beyond sheer hormones?

Alright. NOW let's move on.

I always found it hilarious how ready Sandima is to dispose of Batur the instant he even slightly questions him. Like, this scene reminds me of the scene with Ephidel and Lord Helman from FE7, but that one was done way better. Here, everything happens so ridiculously fast. Sandima's gullibility is established mere lines of dialogue before a tiny slip in it spells his death.

That said, I do like the sound effects they use in the cutscene, which make it clear exactly how Sandima is killing him: with black magic.

Okay, I'll give the new translation this one. They managed to cut down, SLIGHTLY, on the “as you know” nonsense of this conversation between the two Loptyr cultists, without limiting the information being provided both to us, and to the left-for-dead Batur currently bleeding out on the ground who has to pass this information to Sigurd with his dying breath (even if, should I remember correctly, Sigurd doesn't really need to know any of this information for anything he does in the plot to change. Maybe it was to plan a false lead that he was the full-game main character who would eventually stop them?).

But anyway, yeah, Batur is currently dying. Like I said, these battles can't take more than a few hours most at total, considering that shit like this can happen and Sigurd can arrive just in time to hear King Batur's dying words.

Anyway, time to recruit Jamke and deal with the basic-ass bandits he brought with him. Bandits who will all turn on him the second he sides with Sigurd's army, because in addition to having no castle of his own, he also has absolutely no retainers or anyone loyal to him. Honestly, Jamke feels like the unloved black sheep of the family, which is utterly insane considering King Batur's attitude. Shouldn't he be the favorite in the family, and a shining example of what his older brothers should be like? Why did Batur think that Gandolf and Kinbaith deserved castles and henchmen before Jamke did?

But on to gameplay, Jamke is one of those units who are way more terrifying as an enemy unit than they are as an allied one. Mostly because of his terrifying list of skills. Continue and Duel, combined with Pursuit from his class and Critical thanks to his killer bow. This guy can do an absolutely ludicrous amount of damage, if he's lucky. This makes him mediocre as a player controlled unit because when planning you have to assume that none of those proc skills will activate, but utterly horrifying as an enemy unit because when planning you have to assume that ALL of those proc skills will activate. Repeatedly. Forever.

Which means it's damn near physically impossible to have a unit at this point in the game whom Jamke DOESN'T have at least a tiny, tiny chance of one-rounding. If it weren't for the fact that Aideen can just barely move to talk to him if she ends the previous turn just outside of his movement range, recruiting this guy would be an RNG-based hellscape of a time.

Uh-oh. I forgot that in order to perfectly lure in Jamke... you have to have Adean stand outside of his range, AND MAKE SURE HE'S ACTUALLY MOVING IN THAT SPECIFIC DIRECTION. I had her approach from a cardinal direction instead of at a diagonal, and now he's moving diagonally and she has to retreat to have any chance of talking to him. Now I have to get my units out of the forest, many of whom are slightly slower moving through the forest than his troops.

Well. That's... kind of unpleasant, but I don't think it's anything I can't get out of.

...Next time. Not attempting this tonight. We're starting to reach the time of day where my decision-making skills start to drop. And that... would be bad.

So until Monday, take care!