Alastor15243 Posted March 10, 2020 Author Share Posted March 10, 2020 19 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said: You need 60 points for an C support, 60 more for B, 80 more for A. Most characters start with a few points towards C, in the case of RoyxLilina, it's 56 base points with a +4 points per turn adjacent growth. That is the fastest support in the game. RoyxLarum is 1 point base with +1 per turn adjacent growth, the bare minimum/slowest support there is, Sue, Sophia, and Shanna are the same with Roy. Yep, I've looked at the chart. I've been keeping them basically glued to each other, so with any luck, I should be able to get that A rank just barely in time. Binding Blade Day 32: Chapter 22 Well. Here we are. The final chapter of the bad ending that we will not be getting. After being reminded I have other, prepromoted units who have at least C rank staves, I've decided to bring Yoder to this map, replacing Perceval. He's great, but I don't think I'll be needing him, and Allen is slightly better now. ...This is... speaking of status staves... why don't I see any of them on this map? I know I remember Mangs dealing with staff users in the ironman death montage, so why... ...Oh. It's because they just spontaneously appear in the cutscene right after preparations. I literally have no idea what the fuck Kaga was thinking when he came up with that concept, or what the devs of this game were thinking when they kept it. It's just such an obnoxious troll that doesn't even do anything other than annoy the player unless they're playing ironman. I've gotta say... Zephiel's behavior here is part of why I like him as a villain. He's actually prepared to die to protect Idunn and make sure his mission is accomplished. Now, almost obligatorily, a lot of the human semifinal bosses enact their ultimate plans from beyond the grave, but this is largely out of spite for the people who beat them at that point. Zephiel seems to be the only one who actually entertains, and accepts, the idea of them not living to see their work come to fruition. Getting back to the actual fight though, I'm kinda nervous. Watching the clips from Mangs' death montage made this map look absolutely terrifying. That was probably the fact that he had basically no one left by the end, but still, I know that this map is gonnna have reinforcements chasing after me and pressuring me to finish this quickly. So let's do this. As I watch Shin completely obliterate a mercenary, I'm reminded of how Shin's easily the best bow user I've ever had whose name wasn't Leonie or Claude. Now, this is largely because his stats are absurd thanks to hard mode bonuses, but honestly, you probably wouldn't even need to give bow users a ridiculously high BST in order to make them good. Something I'd love to try is simply re-speccing archers so they're not just skilled, but strong and fast, with defense being their dump stat, like minmaxed Heroes archers. Still decent HP though, so that it's almost implausible for them to ever be one-rounded, but you wanna make sure they don't end their turn in enemy range, so it's something of a puzzle to using them, similar to units like Elise. If they're only gonna be useful on player phase, best to make them dominate player phase. But instead of that, most archers in Fire Emblem tend to have rather mediocre “balanced” stats all-around, and the reduced exp they get from not having any enemy-phase presence utterly cripples them as a result. Honestly, my first instinct for how to fix archers is to combine dumping defense with globally changing the maximum standard “ranged” distance from 2 to 3. Bows are 2-3, hand axes are 1-3, magic is 1-3, longbows would be like 3-5, maybe 3-6. That way bows aren't just barely longer range than melee, so there's more of a worthwhile trade-off involved by trading melee for range, while thrown weapons aren't rendered completely irrelevant by making it useless against one of the main enemies they're intended to be used against. Thrown weapons wouldn't be outright better than bows though, since their stats would be worse than bows. As for magic... well, it'd have to be made fundamentally different from other weapons in some way in order to make them not just flat-out better than bows. I don't like the idea of having an objectively better weapon type and compensating with giving all of its users shittier stats. Allen whiffed a crucial player-phase attack, so I had to have Niime put an enemy to sleep since Rutger couldn't kill it with the not-dead enemy still in the way. I actually really appreciate how accurate the things are now that they're in my hands. Yeah, given how little manpower is at work here, maybe it was a mistake to send Allen and Lance to the west side of the map, where the deployment slots are far more limited. Allen and Rutger are really the only good combat units I have over here, and they're struggling a little. Thankfully Niime's sleep staff spared them any major issues, and it only took one use so far, but... still, not wise on my part. Lugh's reached level 20/20, and he got speed. He's still speed screwed, since he's supposed to cap instead of just being one shy, but outside of Sacae, his speed's been fine for his needs. Aside from Niime and Yoder, he's my first 20/20 unit. But Milady, Raigh and Rutger are not at all far behind. Allen, though... yeah, he's like 10 levels behind the rest of my party. I'm amazed at how useful I've still been able to make him. HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE. Something just occurred to me about the objectives here. The throne room can only be opened when you press two switches at once and then hold the Fire Emblem in front of the door? Yeah, uh... a couple things? First off, I'm going to give this game the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is not the only way to unlock this door. Because if it is, do they mean to suggest that Bern has been missing the key to the goddamned throne room for months, and that now that the doors have been activated, all Roy has to do to win this war is just leave for a few days until Zephiel starves to death? I mean obviously that would give Idunn way too much time to do her thing, but Roy doesn't know that! Second, assuming that there's another way to open it, at least from the inside, what conceivable purpose could this very specific method of disengaging the throne room's panic room mode against the king's will possibly serve!? For what ages-past, before-Zephiel-wanted-to-end-the-age-of-man purpose could this aspect of the lock possibly have been created? The best idea I can think of is so that if a usurper came to take over the castle, the rightful king of Bern, being the one in possession of the Fire Emblem, could undo the lock and reclaim his rightful throne. EXCEPT NO. Because the king doesn't keep the Fire Emblem on his person! It's stored away in a room under heavy guard when it isn't being used! If anyone managed to take over the castle, they'd almost certainly have gotten their hands on the Fire Emblem as well! And if this was created in modern times, by Zephiel, for the specific purposes of this very war effort, then why, pray tell, for fuck's sake, would he design the way to unlock his throne room to require an item that he knows has been in the hands of his enemies since the war fucking started!? AND WHY THE FUCK WOULD RANDOM SOLDIERS BE INFORMED OF THIS WAY TO UNLOCK IT IF IT'S LITERALLY OF NO USE TO THEM, AND TELLING THEM WOULD ONLY ALLOW THEM TO LEAK IT TO THE ENEMY!? ...Yeah, uh... this is complete nonsense. Absolute, unadulterated horseshit. I had to use the first use of the Binding Blade to salvage a rather embarrassing chain of misses against a hero with a killing edge while trying to feed a kill to Roy. Honestly, maybe I should stop being so stingy with the damned thing and use it more often to get Roy some training. I still have the hammerne staff at full. Might as well use it to have fun with Roy's badass animations with a really powerful weapon. Some more staff users came in as ambush spawns, right as I had split my party up to deal with the switches. Damn it. I hope this doesn't... ...No, I managed to kill them both pretty easily. They aren't even behind 2-thick walls. Looks like I was a little too slow to get to the western treasure room. A thief came out, and I figured since this was the side I had Astore on, I could afford to spare the warp staff use I'd need to kill him, and just steal back whatever he stole. I forgot it might be a weapon. Well, looks like that's one Nosferatu tome I won't be getting. Well, the treasure I did get was still nice. … ...Okay, hearing Zephiel's actual motive rant is kind of... no, really disappointing. Given everything I've seen him go through, I expected his hatred of humanity to be... a bit more original than this nonsense. Of all the reasons he could hate humanity, he hates them... because they have emotions? And he thinks that because the dragons are mindless, emotionless war machines, they'd therefore be better... rulers...? I mean what!? I mean he's just flat-out canonically insane now, and not even in a visionary way. I can't grasp what he even values or wants at this point. It's not even that he wants to undo the injustice of the Scouring. He just admires the mindless war machines that the dragons created to try to win the war, and wants to give the world to them!? He doesn't want to give it back to the real dragons, he wants to give it to their drones!? Why!? Because he just flat-out hates intelligent life because his dad was a dick!? That doesn't... that doesn't even logically follow! I don't even have a grasp of what he even admires about the concept of a world ruled by what are essentially organic machines. By what standards or values does he draw the conviction that emotions are evil and emotionlessness is good!? ...At any rate, I had to evacuate the throne room temporarily, owing to how thinly-spread my army is. Roy, Lalum, Yoder, Merlinus, Milady, Echidna, Shin and Fae are the only ones I've got at the main gate, and there are some really powerful enemies coming rushing at us. I'll have to retreat a bit to thin the numbers with enemy-phase combat. Also, I might lose Merlinus due to some poor placement, but at this point that doesn't matter, it's not like he dies for good. And I even had the foresight to get the Hammerne out in case I need to repair the Binding Blade. NOPE! Retreating is no good. They're too densely packed, and still more are coming. I'll have to take most of them out in one player-phase gambit. ...Done. Looks like training Echidna to use Armads really did come in handy! I wouldn't have been able to take out enough enemies without her. But an insane streak of bad luck with hit rates in dealing with the reinforcements forced me to use the saint's staff, after already having used it to keep everyone healthy after that first player-phase assault, and also to use the second to last use of Warp to send in Clarine and Rutger together to help back them up and wall off my vulnerable units. I was going to do that anyway though, because Rutger's easily got the best chance of taking Zephiel down. Aww... Zephiel doesn't have special battle quotes with anyone. Not with Roy... I mean maybe with Fae... I'll try that... ...Nope, too late, Rutger's got him. ...Weird. Either this entire throne room, not just the throne, has status-canceling properties, or status staves do last for fewer turns the more magically resistant someone is. Because Clarine just got silenced and then instantly healed next player phase. Well, finishing the map. Yep. So yet again more plot details are being pulled out of thin air. You know, if this information about what happens when all the holy weapons are united were told earlier, this might be an okay payoff, but as it stands... I just hope that the bad ending has at least some semblance of a clue that you need all of them to get the best one. Three more chapters to go, guys. ...Funny... I only really remember two of them... But at any rate, we're almost done here. Until next time! ...I really should come up with some kind of catchphrase to end these with, given how repetitive my endings wind up being anyway. Something to think about, at least. See ya! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 10, 2020 Share Posted March 10, 2020 For all the Mad Kings we have in the series, Zephiel is the only one to me that genuinely comes across as insane, yet I don't think he's ever actually called that in the game. It also seems to be a more realistic insanity than fiction tends to present. Usually the only dialing for insane is the bombastic over the top joker insanity, but calculating high functioning insanity is also a thing and in a way more terrifying as they are working under a logic just not one that the rest of us can grasp. That said Zephiel's logic isn't outright random. It was specifically his father's jealousy that almost killed him so wanting to do away with that makes a certain amount of sense. He's just ignoring Murdock's loyalty and all the kindness he shared with Guinevere himself. Also no battle quotes, I got you covered. (Did I post this already in this thread? Oh well even if I did I'm posting it again as I'm proud of it, even with all the typos). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emperor Hardin Posted March 10, 2020 Share Posted March 10, 2020 (edited) 2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said: ...Okay, hearing Zephiel's actual motive rant is kind of... no, really disappointing. Given everything I've seen him go through, I expected his hatred of humanity to be... a bit more original than this nonsense. Of all the reasons he could hate humanity, he hates them... because they have emotions? And he thinks that because the dragons are mindless, emotionless war machines, they'd therefore be better... rulers...? I mean what!? I mean he's just flat-out canonically insane now, and not even in a visionary way. I can't grasp what he even values or wants at this point. It's not even that he wants to undo the injustice of the Scouring. He just admires the mindless war machines that the dragons created to try to win the war, and wants to give the world to them!? He doesn't want to give it back to the real dragons, he wants to give it to their drones!? Why!? Because he just flat-out hates intelligent life because his dad was a dick!? That doesn't... that doesn't even logically follow! I don't even have a grasp of what he even admires about the concept of a world ruled by what are essentially organic machines. By what standards or values does he draw the conviction that emotions are evil and emotionlessness is good!? Zephiel basically wants to do a murder/suicide because he is sick of life itself and he blames emotions for ruining his life. Zephiel is a great villain in the series when you have played The Blazing Bladeand The Binding Blade together. He is not a power-hungry monarch, greedy noble or a vengeance seeker. He was once a kind young prince who wanted his father’s love. But because his father was close to killing him off, Zephiel was driven to insanity and he turned into a nihilist. Zephiel would later assassinate his father for the throne. As the new king, Zephiel turned Bern into a militaristic powerhouse defined by manaketes and wyvern riders. And his goal is to obliterate all of mankind by conquering the world and handing it over to the dragons, which would also lead to the collapse of the Bern empire and the death of everyone including Zephiel himself. Because to Zephiel, a world ruled by emotionless war dragons is the only method to achieve true peace. Yes, it is a mad goal. But it is a goal of a madman truly exhausted with his own life. The review from Orion at BreakingCanon, sums Zephiel very well I think. I'll also note that War Dragons aren't mindless so much as emotionless and there is one true dragon allied to Zephiel. Edited March 10, 2020 by Emperor Hardin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted March 10, 2020 Share Posted March 10, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, Jotari said: He's just ignoring Murdock's loyalty and all the kindness he shared with Guinevere himself. And Brunnya's affections, and every single soldier of his's willingness to give their lives for him. 3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said: He doesn't want to give it back to the real dragons, he wants to give it to their drones!? Why!? Because he just flat-out hates intelligent life because his dad was a dick!? That doesn't... that doesn't even logically follow! I don't even have a grasp of what he even admires about the concept of a world ruled by what are essentially organic machines. By what standards or values does he draw the conviction that emotions are evil and emotionlessness is good!? He isn't the only villain I've seen in gaming who seeks a world without emotions (hiyah Shin Megami Tensei Law faction/Reason of Shijima!). It's the equally extreme opposite of a chaotic world, a world free of the excesses of human emotion is a world of tranquility, peace. Peace is a good thing, is it not? I find a pinch of fun in pitting Zephiel on an ideological spectrum, whose opposite end is anchored by Ashnard. Ashnard loves to indulge his emotions and engage in conflict, Zephiel finds that utterly reprehensible. Two mad kings, who would only hug each other with poisoned daggers in hand. But overall, I myself don't exactly think highly of Zephiel. There are better misanthropes yearning to terminate existence out there, for me. Edited March 10, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted March 11, 2020 Author Share Posted March 11, 2020 8 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: He isn't the only villain I've seen in gaming who seeks a world without emotions (hiyah Shin Megami Tensei Law faction/Reason of Shijima!). Yeah, hence part of my issue with it. It's disappointingly generic for a misanthrope. I was hoping for more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 11, 2020 Share Posted March 11, 2020 (edited) 49 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said: Yeah, hence part of my issue with it. It's disappointingly generic for a misanthrope. I was hoping for more. What direction do you think they could have went in that would have been better with his set up? Just kill all the dragons too and leave the planet completely silent? Edited March 11, 2020 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted March 11, 2020 Author Share Posted March 11, 2020 Just now, Jotari said: What direction do you think they could have went in that would have been better with his set up? Just kill all the dragons too and leave the planet completely silent? I mean, they have a war where it's pretty heavily implied by the opening narration that the humans were in the wrong. If Zephiel admired and sympathized with the actual dragons and not their emotionless drones, and wished to betray his kind to let them rule the world again, that would be far more interesting than "I will create a world without emotion". That's what I thought motivated him this whole time. I thought Desmond just made him snap and go "humans winning the war was a mistake". And keep in mind, I say this as someone who's generally deeply annoyed by the "humans are the real monsters" trope. I would have liked that better, because Zephiel as a traitor to his people on ideological grounds with a reasonably existent foundation just strangely makes that concept compelling to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonymousSpeed Posted March 11, 2020 Share Posted March 11, 2020 Personally, this might be a controversial opinion, but I think Zephiel is supposed to be clearly irrational and, to be frank, "a little bitch." His traumatic experiences (at least when FE6 was written) are the fault of one man, yet he turns his hatred against all mankind despite most of the people in his life being very devoted to him. He's so mad about one attempted murder than he decides to attempt the maximum of murder possible. He can rant about humans being horrid because of their emotions all he wants, but his war is nothing more than an emotional decision. He's just sad, strange little self-loathing man with incredible talent he does nothing with but hurt people. His emotional weakness makes it easy for Jahn (a collected pragmatist) to manipulate him for his own purposes, and that is why Jahn is a better villain than Zephiel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted March 11, 2020 Author Share Posted March 11, 2020 5 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said: Personally, this might be a controversial opinion, but I think Zephiel is supposed to be clearly irrational and, to be frank, "a little bitch." His traumatic experiences (at least when FE6 was written) are the fault of one man, yet he turns his hatred against all mankind despite most of the people in his life being very devoted to him. He's so mad about one attempted murder than he decides to attempt the maximum of murder possible. He can rant about humans being horrid because of their emotions all he wants, but his war is nothing more than an emotional decision. He's just sad, strange little self-loathing man with incredible talent he does nothing with but hurt people. His emotional weakness makes it easy for Jahn (a collected pragmatist) to manipulate him for his own purposes, and that is why Jahn is a better villain than Zephiel. Hey, nice to see you around here again! Honestly, I find it hard to disagree with that interpretation now that I've seen how he was originally written. Ironically I think FE7 got my hopes up that his corruption would have a more sympathetic and interesting payoff, due to how sweet a kid he was and what a shock it was for younger me to learn he turned evil at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonymousSpeed Posted March 11, 2020 Share Posted March 11, 2020 Just now, Alastor15243 said: Hey, nice to see you around here again! Yeah, sorry to take. I've come in a couple times and found myself a couple pages behind, so I decided not to really comment at those times. Just now, Alastor15243 said: Honestly, I find it hard to disagree with that interpretation now that I've seen how he was originally written. Ironically I think FE7 got my hopes up that his corruption would have a more sympathetic and interesting payoff, due to how sweet a kid he was and what a shock it was for younger me to learn he turned evil at all. I think FE7 tried to make him more sympathetic like that by also making it seem like both his parents didn't treat him right. Hellene (as she came off to me) mostly favored Zephiel for political purposes and her resentment of Desmond's affairs. It's easier to imagine someone coming out marred when the dominant influences in your life either hate you or view you as a tool and also hates your half sister who is basically your best friend. I think FE7 does a lot to try and "retroactive reinterpret" FE6 and that's one of those moments, it sort of works on its own but it doesn't really mesh with the original. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boomhauer007 Posted March 11, 2020 Share Posted March 11, 2020 7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said: Honestly, maybe I should stop being so stingy with the damned thing and use it more often to get Roy some training. I still have the hammerne staff at full. Might as well use it to have fun with Roy's badass animations with a really powerful weapon. Usually I'll burn it to get him leveled, then repair it once he has decent stats. He actually levels quickly since he's comparatively low, and training him up makes the last two chapters extra easy. 7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said: Three more chapters to go, guys. ...Funny... I only really remember two of them... "Final" is, uh, easily the shortest endgame in the series. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 11, 2020 Share Posted March 11, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said: Personally, this might be a controversial opinion, but I think Zephiel is supposed to be clearly irrational and, to be frank, "a little bitch." His traumatic experiences (at least when FE6 was written) are the fault of one man, yet he turns his hatred against all mankind despite most of the people in his life being very devoted to him. He's so mad about one attempted murder than he decides to attempt the maximum of murder possible. He can rant about humans being horrid because of their emotions all he wants, but his war is nothing more than an emotional decision. He's just sad, strange little self-loathing man with incredible talent he does nothing with but hurt people. His emotional weakness makes it easy for Jahn (a collected pragmatist) to manipulate him for his own purposes, and that is why Jahn is a better villain than Zephiel. I agree with all this except with Jahn manipulating him. From what Jahn says it was entirely Zephiel's own decision. He rose the dragon temple hoping he could get something like this. Sure that's only info coming from Yahn's own mouth...but I actually trust him to be honest despite him being a villain. He doesn't really have any reason to lie. Unless it was his master plan to con Roy into sparing Idoun. 3 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said: Yeah, sorry to take. I've come in a couple times and found myself a couple pages behind, so I decided not to really comment at those times. I think FE7 tried to make him more sympathetic like that by also making it seem like both his parents didn't treat him right. Hellene (as she came off to me) mostly favored Zephiel for political purposes and her resentment of Desmond's affairs. It's easier to imagine someone coming out marred when the dominant influences in your life either hate you or view you as a tool and also hates your half sister who is basically your best friend. I think FE7 does a lot to try and "retroactive reinterpret" FE6 and that's one of those moments, it sort of works on its own but it doesn't really mesh with the original. I don't think the prequel really contradicts Binding Blade. Guinevere always did say Zephiel was a nice kid. Playing 6 without 7 could even lead one to maybe think that's bias on her part. What's wrong there is that die to the time frame they decide to set the prequel, we see the start of Zephiel's story but not the actual turning point. There's a major act missing in the middle of his transition that were only told about but don't actually see. So it's less that the prequel doesn't mesh well with Binding Blade and more that it's only half the backstory. The less important half (even though uh the same thing happens in the prequel, it's just not quite the snapping point we're told of. We just get the implication that years of his shit eventually came to a head during a bout of kidney failure nor something). Edited March 11, 2020 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonymousSpeed Posted March 11, 2020 Share Posted March 11, 2020 37 minutes ago, Jotari said: I agree with all this except with Jahn manipulating him. From what Jahn says it was entirely Zephiel's own decision. He rose the dragon temple hoping he could get something like this. True, perhaps "use" is a better term. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benice Posted March 11, 2020 Share Posted March 11, 2020 I still feel low-key bad for Zephiel; it's kind of traumatic when someone you love and care about tries to have you murdered, and I think that this, combined with everything else, caused Zephiel to snap. He's not a good guy, but I still feel bad for him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emperor Hardin Posted March 11, 2020 Share Posted March 11, 2020 Strange as it sounds, having everyone worship and expect the world from him might've also drove Zephiel crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted March 11, 2020 Author Share Posted March 11, 2020 (edited) Binding Blade Day 33: Chapter 23 Ah yes, I remember this map. This is where you get Karel. And while we're on the subject... Hey, uh, game... if you're gonna hand me a last-minute prepromote with an S-rank weapon skill and decent stats to help out in case I lost too many units, maaaaaaybe you could've given me a guy who can use a holy weapon I'm not already guaranteed to be able to use? Roy gains like three fucking weapon ranks upon promotion, it's absurd. If he had even C rank swords before promotion, he'd be able to wield not just the Binding Blade, but also Durandal, after it. Maybe an axe or a light tome user would be cool? You also need Fir or Bartre to recruit him, which... altogether makes him a pretty shitty Gotoh, honestly. Almost makes me feel like he's not supposed to even be one. Also, speaking of, it just occurred to me, regarding Karel and Bartre: Isn't it kind of amusing that the guy you can only recruit in half of your runs in FE6 became an all-routes character in FE7, while the all-routes character in FE6 became a guy you can only recruit in half of your runs in FE7? But anyway, this seemed pretty simple, all told, so I just refreshed everyone's weapon supplies, made sure the stuff I wanted to sell was in the convoy, and deployed. And honestly... Alright, I get that Brunja is the Camus of this game, and Camuses are... ...Wait a sec... is Camuses even how you say multiple Camuses? The S in Camus is apparently silent (I honestly like the American pronunciation way better, but it is a real name that really is pronounced Camoo, and also I guess Heroes is the authority (unless they blatantly contradict established canon like turning “Yunei” into “Yoon”, in which case fuck it). But my point is, you wouldn't say Camoo-es, you'd say Camoos. So what the fuck even is the proper way to write multiple of a Camus!? ...Back to my main point... ...I know Camuses are... well... notorious dumbasses, and that if you're their lord, you can have their sister raped and murdered and they'll still defend you to the death, but... yeah, I mean... from her I get a sense of genuine admiration and loyalty. Like she really admires and respects and trusts him, despite having no fucking clue what his plan even... is... ...WAAAAAAAAAAAIT A MINUTE. That big motive rant when Roy opened the door last chapter... There were... Bern soldiers... who heard him. Bern soldiers... who were in the chamber when he said that. Bern soldiers... who followed Zephiel on pure faith and confidence in his intentions... only to find out in the middle of that big climactic showdown that he wanted to exterminate all emotional life on the continent, including them. WHY THE FUCK DID THOSE GUYS NOT TURN GREEN AND SIDE WITH ME!? I mean I've been assuming all of this time that nobody actually knew what his plans were, but... like, was I right last time? I mean I was joking back then! Does Zephiel actually have Chapter Black, or... the fucking Anti-Life-Equation, and he's commanding an army of self-loathing zealots convinced humanity needs to die? ...No. Clearly Brunja values human life and wants those who have families depending on them to go back to them. That's part of what they do last-minute to show she's a good person and to make it sad that we have to fight her... but like, she's in direct communication with the leader of the war dragons. Has she really not been asking any questions about what they plan to do!? Is this a Japanese thing? Is this behavior supposed to be seen as tragic yet admirable? An unfortunate consequence of being someone who is on the wrong side of history and yet must still do their duty to their country? If these people had concrete values they were fighting for, maybe I'd get it, but she just seems like a complete and total idiot. They all do! “Because I said so” is actually enough for these people. These people are fighting, to the death, to the last fucking man, in a battle they know they are going to all die horribly in, because their king, who is now dead, simply told them to, without ANY EXPLANATION AS TO FUCKING WHY. And on the subject... what the fuck was even the point of the war to begin with? The war's complete and utter failure doesn't seem to have brought Zephiel any further from victory. Zephiel's death doesn't seem to have brought Zephiel any further away from victory. He just needs Idunn to open the dragon's gate, or... spawn war dragons, and flood the world with dragons, right? What did he need to invade the continent for? What's stopped him from doing that the whole time? What resources has he needed to gather? What time has he needed to buy? It wasn't like in Sacred Stones, where the war was so they could destroy the only things that could stop the demon king. ...Unless eliminating all access to the holy weapons was the primary purpose of the war. But then that always seemed like an afterthought. They saved the one in their own damned backyard for last, after all, and there were some they never managed to get rid of. But honestly, yeah, now that I think about it... that would make sense. But it's kinda crazy that I have to infer what his motivations for taking over the continent were. Also, on the subject... if they were willing to do the mid-cutscene surprise change in the number of enemies, if they're really going to commit doing something so annoying, surely they could have at least done something cool with it and actually placed more enemies on the preparation screen than I'd actually fight, and show the people that Brunja ordered to go back to their families actually going back to their families? Anyway, apparently despite being offered total safety if they surrendered, they're still all fighting. And Guinivere adds at least a little insight into their reasons why by saying it's out of some sense of pride in being the strongest military on the continent, and... seriously... no. That still doesn't feel remotely right. That still doesn't even begin to explain why they're so devoted to a cause when they don't even know what the cause is. But, on to the actual battle. The shops here are selling some really cool shit, which is nice, for as long as I can use it for. Might as well. Man, I'm kind of in awe of the bulk of these enemies. Even with capped strength and a silver lance, Milady still can't kill some of the wyvern riders on this map. Not the lords, the riders. I hate how you can't check the stats of ballistae when they're parts of the terrain like in the GBA games. Thanks for warning me that these are long and killer ballistae, game! Now... mind telling me what exactly that means for my army? I find something rather amusing about the fact that Karel says “A path you choose for yourself is never wrong,” and them immediately decides to join Fir on the path that she chose for herself. Then again, he did choose to do so, I guess... eh, it seemed like a funny observation at the time. So the killer ballista is apparently a misnomer. It doesn't actually have any crit rate. That, or what little it has is negated by Lalum's support bonuses. Also, she just barely survived getting hit by it. Looks like making sure she danced every turn paid off! The wyverns charging from the north are a little intimidating, but I have enough firepower to take them out. Man, FE6 bolting is so much fun to use. And since I haven't made nearly as much use of it as I could have, given I bought like 3, I've decided to go nuts and just snipe the wyvern who's hiding in the mountains like a bitch. I could use a danced Shin with a longbow, but fuck it, this is more fun. I wound up using exactly 19 uses of the Binding Blade before using Hammerne on it. Excellent. And I still have 2 hammerne uses to go! Rutger has achieved a 91% crit rate on some of these enemies with the Wo Dao. If only I managed to get a B support with someone else, I'd be able to see that legendary 100% crit rate he's known for. ...Oh shit. We, uh... may have a problem. Milady just went berserk. Over open water. Where no one can reach her to heal her. ...Thankfully, she's got plenty of enemies way closer to her to keep her occupied, but, ah... let's pick up the pace in clearing out the map, shall we? ...Wow, Apocalypse is actually kind of disappointing. Magic boost of 5 and insane might, sure, but a weight of twelve!? What a shame, what a shame... well, I'm sure he'll still be doubling dragons with it at least. And that's what it's for. ...No. He doesn't double dragons with it. It does one-shot them, which... I mean that's actually pretty cool, it means you can kill twice as many dragons with it, but still... fuckers aren't exactly known for being fast, are they? So, I'm using recover, and honestly, while I get that the sounds get higher-pitched and the bursts of light get larger the more powerful the healing staff gets... the better the healing spell, the less it actually sounds like it's healing. And when we get to recover, it sounds like something's gone seriously wrong. Thankfully, Milady does exactly what I hoped she'd do: kill the one remaining ballistician. Well done, you crazy lady. I start getting bombarded with status staves, but there's also a wyvern deep in the thick woods that only Lugh can reach at the moment. So I have Niime sleep him so that Lugh, who's closer to the action, can focus on using restore until those status staves are done. The others can deal with the remaining wyverns. FUUUUUUUUCK. I forgot where Milady was, and how fucking far she can fly thanks to those boots. Yoder strayed just barely into her flight range and got slaughtered by her. Restarting. Aaaaand restarting again. I was getting back to where I was before I realized how much enemy stats can vary, and Lalum got one-shot by one of the long-range ballistae. Fuck. Waaaaaaaiiiit... Okay, that's just flat-out not fair! I'm not even able to check what the attack stats of the ballistae are! DAMN IT! IT KILLED YODER! HOW! FUCKING! STRONG! ARE! THESE! BALLISTAE!? Okay. This doesn't seem right. The ballistae's listed damage was less than Yoder's max HP. I have to assume Yoder got hit twice and I missed it in that window I was distracted by my phone. But still, the listed damage was 29, plus Yoder's defense is 34, which is not what the archer's attack screen said his might was. So I am still very, very pissed off that this game flat out does not tell you what the stats of ballistae are. Okay, new plan: sleep the fuckers. That... wound up working. It wore off before I could completely get out of their range, but by that point I had made them use up their status staves, so Milady could rush in to take them down without getting berserked again. Oh shit, Roy has a talk with Karel? ...How many of these “talking to new recruits” conversations have I missed? ...Well if they're anything like this one, it doesn't look like I've been missing much. That is... profoundly weird. The killer bow snipers moved when I got an arbitrary distance close to them... but didn't attack. Didn't even move into a range where they could attack. They just kind of surrounded Lugh like they were trying to wall him in. Lugh and Raigh wound up breaking out their holy tomes in order to one-round Brunja. Even with bolting equipped, she's still scarily hard to kill. I spent what remained of my money, after buying some killer weapons, physics and restores, on aircalibur and nosferatu. Beyond holy weapons, those things I bought are the only things I expect to be using from here on out. Especially since it sounds like deployment's gonna be tight, if Roy and Elfin's conversation means anything. Also, if I understand correctly, that whole thing with Idunn is apparently a chapter in and of itself? It's not a two-part thing like with Nergal, Lyon and Garon? If so... I may just be finishing up tomorrow. But that's a tale for another day, my friends. For now, I'll end things here. Take care, everyone! Edited March 12, 2020 by Alastor15243 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted March 12, 2020 Share Posted March 12, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said: You also need Fir or Bartre to recruit him, which... altogether makes him a pretty shitty Gotoh, honestly. Almost makes me feel like he's not supposed to even be one. According to an interview, Roy and Karel were the only characters to survive intact as defined persons from Fire Emblem: Maiden of Darkness, the N64 game that got scrapped and radically rebuilt as the Binding Blade on the GBA. The names Idunn, Bors, Eliwood, Raigh (and Ephraim and Owain) were all written down, but none of these names were used at all as we know them now. This was old "Idunn": So, Karel's inclusion might be a reference, an intentional holdover, to that game that never came to be. 1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said: Is this a Japanese thing? Is this behavior supposed to be seen as tragic yet admirable? An unfortunate consequence of being someone who is on the wrong side of history and yet must still do their duty to their country? If these people had concrete values they were fighting for, maybe I'd get it, but she just seems like a complete and total idiot. They all do! “Because I said so” is actually enough for these people. These people are fighting, to the death, to the last fucking man, in a battle they know they are going to all die horribly in, because their king, who is now dead, simply told them to, without ANY EXPLANATION AS TO FUCKING WHY. I want to say "having to be given a good reason to fight or else I'll resist" is a modern democracy's value. I want to say that the ignorant illiterate peasants that have comprised the majority of grunts in human history didn't know and just fought to survive because they were conscripted and the alternative was execution for going AWOL. But, peasant rebellions have always been a thing, and Alexander the Great's soldiers, maybe the grunts and generals alike, complained about how far from Macedon he dragging them in the name of world domination. So, perhaps you're right and it is historically-accurate for common soldiers to question their cause. Not that FE has ever really cared about being more than superficially historical at best. 1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said: And on the subject... what the fuck was even the point of the war to begin with? The war's complete and utter failure doesn't seem to have brought Zephiel any further from victory. Zephiel's death doesn't seem to have brought Zephiel any further away from victory. He just needs Idunn to open the dragon's gate, or... spawn war dragons, and flood the world with dragons, right? What did he need to invade the country for? What's stopped him from doing that the whole time? What resources has he needed to gather? What time has he needed to buy? It wasn't like in Sacred Stones, where the war was so they could destroy the only things that could stop the demon king. Well, if you rule the world, it'll be easier to kill everyone in it. If Zephiel the Popular ordered nationwide suicide, it wouldn't bring forth his ideal no-humans world. Since no other country would go along with it and Lycian fops and Sacaen mongrels would move in and repopulate the land. And don't forget, the Dragon's Gate is with 95% certainty an FE7 invention. Arcadia was more likely than not the only FE6-intended place for the peaceful dragons to go. Maaaaaaaaybe not really, this is a terrible idea, if Zephiel thought he could do a Reverse Ending Winter wherein it culled humanity and let dragons in their true forms make babies like a bag of microwave popcorn, by collecting every Divine Weapon, he'd have a good new reason to conquer the world. But as you say, the Divine Weapon chapters are... just there, unless Zephiel knew their complete gathering would result in revealing the Dragon Temple location, or he was that concerned about them slaying his War Dragons. 1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said: So the killer ballista is apparently a misnomer. It doesn't actually have any crit rate. Killer Ballistae have never been very "Killer". In FE4, the rate is whatever tiny Skl stat the units have. FE5 oddly for all its diabolical stuff didn't have them, only standard, Iron, and one-of-kind Venin Ballistae. For FEs 6-10, the only other games with Killer Ballistae, the Crit of the weapon has always been 10. As if, someone at IS was afraid of committing to a 3-10 weapon with dangerously high chances of critting a good guy/gal. Edited March 12, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted March 12, 2020 Author Share Posted March 12, 2020 15 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: According to an interview, Roy and Karel were the only characters to survive intact as defined persons from Fire Emblem: Maiden of Darkness, the N64 game that got scrapped and radically rebuilt as the Binding Blade on GBA. The names Idunn, Bors, Eliwood, Raigh (and Ephraim and Owain) were all written down, but none of these names were used at all as we know them now. This was old "Idunn": So, Karel's inclusion might be a reference, an intentional holdover, to that game that never came to be. Man, the idea of a scrapped N64 FE game... I really wish that became a thing. It would have been fascinating, seeing how the series would have run either in old-school early stages of 3D, or with the kind of high-quality sprites the N64 could have allowed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted March 12, 2020 Share Posted March 12, 2020 (edited) 21 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said: Man, the idea of a scrapped N64 FE game... I really wish that became a thing. It would have been fascinating, seeing how the series would have run either in old-school early stages of 3D, or with the kind of high-quality sprites the N64 could have allowed. You're saying PoR isn't N64 graphics one gen late? We do have this one picture: Wasn't this the approach some games like Ogre Battle and Grandia took? Sprites and 3D graphics fitting the era. If you're looking for 64-bit era spritework, albeit on a PS1, TearRing Saga did pick that direction, no 3D models around. Berwick also stayed 2D. Some TRS portrait faces are a little too stenciled-looking (San comes to mind), and they went for more realistic-ish (but nice) sprites in battles. But the map sprites look colorful and pleasant to me, spell animations are good too, if not as over-the-top as GBA FE. Edited March 12, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted March 12, 2020 Author Share Posted March 12, 2020 49 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: You're saying PoR isn't N64 graphics one gen late? We do have this one picture: Wasn't this the approach some games like Ogre Battle and Grandia took? Sprites and 3D graphics fitting the era. If you're looking for 64-bit era spritework, albeit on a PS1, TearRing Saga did pick that direction, no 3D models around. Berwick also stayed 2D. Some TRS portrait faces are a little too stenciled-looking (San comes to mind), and they went for more realistic-ish (but nice) sprites in battles. But the map sprites look colorful and pleasant to me, spell animations are good too, if not as over-the-top as GBA FE. Fascinating... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonymousSpeed Posted March 12, 2020 Share Posted March 12, 2020 16 hours ago, Alastor15243 said: Man, the idea of a scrapped N64 FE game... I really wish that became a thing. It would have been fascinating, seeing how the series would have run either in old-school early stages of 3D, or with the kind of high-quality sprites the N64 could have allowed. Yeah, definitely would have been cool to see this, even if just to see an alternate world. Now, soldiers. Historically, soldiers aren't motivated by the cause. They weren't stupid, illiterate people, they could read in their nation's own language and didn't much like dying, but having an answer to Zero's age old question wasn't considered a necessary thing until the 18th century, to my knowledge. You could rally people around fighting for your land or your faith, but you could also...not. 16 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said: You're saying PoR isn't N64 graphics one gen late? We do have this one picture: Is that text translated anywhere? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 12, 2020 Share Posted March 12, 2020 22 hours ago, Alastor15243 said: ...Wait a sec... is Camuses even how you say multiple Camuses? The S in Camus is apparently silent (I honestly like the American pronunciation way better, but it is a real name that really is pronounced Camoo, and also I guess Heroes is the authority (unless they blatantly contradict established canon like turning “Yunei” into “Yoon”, in which case fuck it). But my point is, you wouldn't say Camoo-es, you'd say Camoos. So what the fuck even is the proper way to write multiple of a Camus!? Considering nits French, the answer is Les Camus...not too helpful for English. 22 hours ago, Alastor15243 said: Is this a Japanese thing? It's actually more of a monarchy thing. I've just finished spending a year in Thailand where the monarchy is still powerful and yeah, people can be downright insane in their loyalty, even when they don't like the guy. I actually really like Ashnard's conversation with Bryce in Path of Radiance for showing this off quite directly. Ashnard brags about how he killed his own father and hates the system of government in general and downright taunts Bryce into betraying him but Bryce simply can't do it as no matter how bad Ashnard is, he's still the king. It's hard to grasp with our modern western perspective, but monarchy is a very powerful social tool. People that were clearly born human can end up being worshipped as gods due to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonymousSpeed Posted March 12, 2020 Share Posted March 12, 2020 14 minutes ago, Jotari said: Considering nits French, the answer is Les Camus...not too helpful for English. "Those guys" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastor15243 Posted March 12, 2020 Author Share Posted March 12, 2020 Binding Blade Day 34: Chapter 24 Alright. I'm thinking this is indeed going to be the final day of the game unless this turns out to be way, way harder than I expected. It looks like this is gonna be a long, winding map of fighting off tons of dragons with legendary weapons, with a greatly-restricted roster. Which means Allen and Lance have to go, Milady's getting the Maltet, Yoder's out and Clarine's getting the important staves, and Echidna is actually getting deployed over characters like Niime and Allen and Perceval, thanks to my utterly asinine efforts to get her to S rank axes paying off. Hopefully, this will take long enough that I'll be able to get those last support points with Lalum, but if not, I'm stalling to get some closure to that story arc before fighting Idunn. Also, I just wanna have another A rank ending. And here's Jahn. Right so... looks like we'll have to seize every throne through this maze to... ...Oh no. Oh no. Is this gonna be one long, last-minute expospeak marathon in the final chapter!? Oh god. I forgot we hadn't been told about what the Demon Dragon is yet. I wish I could judge this twist based on how well it's revealed, but obviously I can't. But what I do know is that for me right now, this is... absolutely painful. This just doesn't feel right, waiting this long to reveal this much about what we're fighting. I will say, though, that now that I'm reminded about this business of destroying Idunn's soul against her will to make what's essentially a dragon Master Mold, it paints the dragons as a lot darker than the opening narration led me to believe. I mean, I still remembered that, but I remembered it being painted as more tragic and desperate, whereas... Jahn seems... scarily coldhearted about it. Honestly, it's funny that the (presumably) human narrator makes the dragons seem far more in the right than they currently appear to be. But yeah, this map design is... I mean this is entirely story over gameplay here, and given that it's not even that good of a way to tell the story... I'm gonna have to call this final map... pretty bad so far. It's just pure cinematics, and the map design makes it super tedious to get from one batch of dragons to the next, what with the bottlenecks you have to funnel your entire army through to get from throne to throne. But I got the final support with Lalum, so, sweet! No stalling necessary to get that paired ending! It is manageable! … … PFFFF- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OH MY GOD! Wow, doing this support in the final chapter with the big, dramatic music really sells this. So it starts out with Lalum getting all upset and saying she's figured out Roy's avoiding her and doesn't like being around her, building it up like they're gonna have some big heartwarming talk, and the second Roy drops his guard to tell her he doesn't hate her dancing... SHE FUCKING GLOMPS HIM AGAIN! HER SPRITE JUST ZIPS ACROSS THE SCREEN AND SHE HUGS HIM AND YELLS ABOUT HOW HAPPY SHE IS! AND THAT'S THE WHOLE SUPPORT. HOLY SHIT. I LOVE IT. I NEVER SAW THAT COMING. … ...Wow. Okay, yeah, Jahn is calling Idunn an “it”. Yeah, uh... fuck you, Jahn. Wow. Holy shit did I remember the way this game painted the conflict wrong. ...Alright, I'm at the third throne of what looks like seven, and Jesus Christ, imagine fucking up and having to do this chapter over somehow. That would be agonizing. But, seizing the third throne now. Let's see what we've got next. Oooooooohhhh. So it wasn't just the holy weapons that caused the Ending Winter, it was them clashing with the dragons' own immense power. Man, I've really been doing this story dirty. I wonder if that “humans started it” thing was just a terrible mistranslation, because this story... isn't focusing on it... like... at all. This, uh... honestly, I'm wondering now... if humans made these awesome weapons without any divine intervention at all... I mean that says a lot about ancient weaponsmithing “technology”. I get that they must have tried to suppress the knowledge of how to make them in order to prevent another Ending Winter (though they did a very shitty job of passing down the knowledge as to why), but you'd think that after centuries, magic technology would advance in other areas, especially since the human race no longer knows that there's any reason not to make shit like the holy weapons anymore. Honestly, there's something I wonder about dragons having to shift into human form due to the laws of nature changing... Like, how did they learn how to do it so quickly? And also, didn't the Ending Winter happen right as they were clashing at the sanctuary? I mean that was a desperation assault, and there were still plenty of dragons elsewhere, I suppose, but that's really only a side point. How did they figure out how to turn into humans so quickly, when there would hardly have been any effort or desire to pursue such technology before? And why humans? ...Were the dragons researching ways to shapeshift in order to impersonate humans, infiltrate their ranks, and destroy them from the inside out? And that magic technology had to be adapted on short notice in order to keep them alive? ...That's the only explanation that comes to mind. Or else this is supposed to be one of those rare-to-find examples of draconic genius that was mentioned before. ...I really should let the exposition finish before commenting, but honestly, this doesn't help much. “In the new laws of nature, the human form required the least energy to transform into.” Uh... that's not an explanation. That's just an extra step to the question. Why would that be the case? But yeah, okay, the “humans are racist bastards” narrative is coming back now, but it's a lot more nuanced than I remember. Also, Jahn says he, like the war dragons, is above petty emotions like hatred, but, like... ...Right, I have to remind myself that it isn't fair to blame this game for being contradicted by FE7, but at times it's hard to help it, because I like a lot of what FE7 did much, much better. But like, we see dragons in FE7. They fell in love, got married, had children with humans, and those children were just as capable of a whole slew of emotions as humans were. I get Sophia is kinda quiet and all, and I haven't seen much of her characterization so maybe half-dragon emotions really were subdued in FE6, but... I mean this is kind of confusing. I thought only war dragons were like that. Waaaaaaaaaaiiiit a second. So they hesitated because they saw not a horrible demon monster, but a cute, harmless, innocent-looking autistic girl, and decided to spare Idunn's life. Okay. Why was she in human form? Didn't this happen like literally right after the fight that caused the Ending Winter? Why would she already be in human form mere minutes to hours afterwards!? ...What I'm getting from this conversation is that if I want the good ending where Idunn lives long enough to heal, I have to finish off Idunn with the binding blade. ...Given what I've heard, that should be absolutely trivial. Oh, I only just noticed, the game's calling her Idun. What's the official...? ...Idunn. Good, I'll keep using that. Ooh! I'm gonna hear about that mysterious conversation Jahn and Zephiel had at the very, very end of FE7! I totally forgot that this got explained! Amusingly, Echidna still hasn't had an opportunity to kill any of these dragons (except for the ones in rear we're running from) due to her having basically the worst mov in the army right now. Lugh, Raigh, Milady and Shin are getting the lion's share of the kills, with Rutger and Roy getting some with help from Clarine and Lalum respectively. Fae is also basically completely useless. She's adorable and I love her, but she's just tragically worthless as a unit. Waaaaait a sec. Jahn's saying he's never left the sanctuary since the end of the scouring. So... so that means that when we see Jahn talking to Zephiel while he's sitting with that manly evil king slouch on his throne at the end of FE7... that's just... completely canon-violating bullshit. FUCK. ...Oh. No, never mind! Whew! He did it with illusion magic. Cool. Alright, that's fine. Oh wow, yeah, they did this conversation verbatim! Wow! I didn't realize! And he's narrating basically exactly what we saw that the end of FE7. Though, one thing: I seem to remember the last words of their exchange being: Zephiel: ...Who are you? Jahn: Dragon. Now, uh... I don't know if you know this, but that's uh... not... grammatically correct. And my young mind, having just beaten FE7, assumed therefore that this wasn't Jahn saying he was a dragon, but that this was some evil-chancellor-like character saying some kind of hypnotic sleeper agent trigger word that caused Zephiel to have that crazy evil smile at the end. I guess it never occurred to me that he already said “dragon” earlier in the conversation to no effect, but just saying “dragon” felt so weird to me that that was just what I assumed happened. Okay, so the only thing Idunn needed to have the will to keep making dragons after her leader's death was for here leader to say so? Which means the original leader... didn't do that. Not a plot hole so much as an intriguing insight that makes me wonder what the dragon leader's motivations were. Yeah, uh... between FE7 and... fucking FAE... I'm gonna have to assume that Jahn is just spouting edgy bullshit, that he's part war dragon, or something is going on here that is making him so cold and cruel and “you humans and your silly emotions”-y. Because this really doesn't make sense, and Jahn is the only dragon we see who's like this. I mean... I mean maybe you could argue that's the point, but if it is, they're doing a shockingly good job of making it look like they want it accepted as fact that dragons don't feel human emotions and that they just completely forgot about Fae, or that divine dragons are an exception or something. I like Jahn's battle theme. It's probably the only song that FE7 “remakes” or “reimagines” where I don't decidedly like the FE7 version better. It's held back by the limitations of its instruments, but in fairness, all of the GBA games are to varying degrees. The GBA instruments just aren't as good as the SNES ones, and a lot of the battle themes in particular suffer in fullness and intensity because of it. But damn are those battle themes still catchy. Also, I only just noticed this when the stat windows gave way to the text box for the boss, because usually this isn't even visible, but I love how the fire dragons' tail is wrapping underneath the floating platforms they're fighting on. Alright, Jahn's dead. Time to seize the throne and see that heartbreaking Fae scene I remember. “Am... Am I evil too...?” Oh my god. No, Fae, sweetheart, fluffymuffin, please, don't cry... You're actually making me tear up a bit too... Oh wow, poor thing... she's just a child (not going on that rant again), she doesn't understand what's going on. She doesn't get the politics or the history or the flat-out race war that underlies all of this... All she knows is that someone who was just like her turned into a horrible monster who's trying to hurt all of her new friends, and she's terrified that she could be next. Oh my god... that's... that's sad, but it's also adorable. Right... well... Day 34... Bonus...? ...Um... Final Chapter. Oh. ...Oh. It's not even hard to leave the final blow to Roy. He just... ...one-shots her. ...Okay. ...Alright, game. … … … … … Epilogue and Final Thoughts “The Disturbance of Bern” is a really, really understated name for a war like this, game. I mean, really. Oh my god, Fae and Idunn is just the most precious thing ever. I love it. Fae's showing her around going all “and this is a tree, and this is a lake...” Idunn finally laughing would have been sweeter if the elder hadn't said literally less than 10 lines ago that he hoped she would someday. OHMYGODFAE'SSOPRECIOUSSHE'SRUNNINGINCIRCLESAROUNDIDUNNOUTOFSHEERJOYOHMYGOD. Honestly... this is the most cinematic way I've ever seen an FE story end. Like, it actually cuts to credits after one last profound line and then Idunn just walks offscreen. It's... actually pretty cool! Alright, so, here's the final rankings: Roy: 152B, 70W, 2L ...And... no... wait, no shared ending with Lalum? That's... I could've sworn he had paired endings... Anyway, he turned out surprisingly great at the end. Largely due to that awesome sword of his, but really, he was hilariously easy to train once he promoted. Then again, he did get practicaly a full round of stat boosters that practically equaled his promotion gains... not remotely enough to excuse how terrible he was in the mid-late game, however. Holy shit. Still probably the worst lord in FE history, honestly. Fae: 16B, 15W, 1L Yeah, she... really needed more uses on that dragonstone. For real. I wish I could've gotten her to full power and had some fun with that. Clarine: 39B, 7W, 2L ...No paired ending for her, either? Also, it only seems to be going over the people I brought to the final chapters. Which sucks for Allen and Lance. Lugh: 322B, 199W, 0L Yeah, Lugh... he was amazingly useful basically from the moment I got him, and he never really stopped. He's probably one of my favorite mages in the series in terms of sheer usefulness. Raigh: 240B, 145W, 1L Raigh had a rough start, unlike Lugh, but it was well worth it to basically have a second Lugh by the end. Rutger: 304B, 162W, 0L Even feeling the need to summarize Rutger here would insult the man. ...I will comment though, that his ending basically confirms that nobody gets hitched in their A supports, which is... kinda sad. None of these social bonds had any impact on how history went at all. Milady: 351B, 132W, 2L Yeah... when you're competing with Haar and it's still hard to decide who's better? Yeah, you're doing something right. This bitch is crazy. Shin: 191B, 122W, 1L Player-phase menace. Honestly, it says a lot how much exp he managed to gain despite being basically player-phase only. He's only good because of a glitch, but that happy accident is... really insightful about game balance. I have to ask though: what's the name he's famous for? Falcon of Sacae, like the title says, or the New Silver Wolf, like his ending says? Lalum: 8B, 0W, 1L While she was far from one of the best dancers in the series, I still found her quite useful and also surprisingly easy to max out. …OH. Now they have paired endings! It doesn't say anything in Roy's, but it says it in Lalum's! Echidna: 63B, 26W, 1L Honestly, she was... a complete and total waste of time. I was only glad I trained her for literally one single round of combat. That was the only time having access to Armads came in handy. So disappointing. Alright, it looks like the rest of the character endings aren't happening. It's just the people you brought to the final battle. Now, in one sense, I like this, because it saves time and avoids having to hear about people you've put no investment into, but on the other hand, I couldn't bring everyone I regularly used into the final battle, so... kind of a letdown I don't get to hear about Allen, Lance, Perceval, Niime, Yoder or Merlinus. Fuck. I missed the statistics for Chapter 1 because I was trying to get them to the top of the screen and I underestimated the point on the screen where they start vanishing. Chapter 2: 18 turns Chapter 3: 25 turns Chapter 4: 18 turns Chapter 5: 30 turns Chapter 3: 41 turns Chapter 7: 19 turns Chapter 8: 39 turns Chapter 8x: 31 turns Chapter 9: 19 turns Chapter 10: 13 turns Chapter 11: 14 turns Chapter 12: 18 turns Chapter 12x: 15 turns Chapter 13: 23 turns Chapter 14: 18 turns Chapter 14x: 20 turns Chapter 15: 20 turns Chapter 16: 29 turns Chapter 16x: 18 turns Chapter 17: 14 turns Chapter 18: 7 turns Chapter 19: 21 turns Chapter 20: 16 turns Chapter 20x: 22 turns Chapter 21: 19 turns Chapter 21x: 30 turns Chapter 22: 27 turns Chapter 23: 12 turns Chapter 24: 22 turns Final: 2 turns Tactics: A Combat: A Survival: A Exp: E Funds: A Power: C Total: B Total playtime: 37 hours, 31 minutes, 6 seconds. I'm surprised to learn I did so poorly on exp and power. Was I supposed to be able to one-round more enemies than I did? Well, a B overall with 4 As is still pretty nice! Oh wow, so now I just have cliffnotes versions of the stories of everyone I didn't bring. I'm talking FE1 level, single-sentence summaries here. Niime: Disappeared into the mountains. Allen: Helped rebuild Pherae. And a lot of these are the exact same as each other! Basically every single Pheraean in the party “helped rebuild Pherae”. Honestly game, at that point, why even bother? Well... anyway, time for the question I know you're all waiting for. What did I think? Difficulty: This game disappointingly really only has two real ways to make things hard, and those are enemy quality and quantity. However, they do this shockingly well, way better than I expected them to. While the low accuracy of weapons means dodgetanking is disappointingly reliable and thus the enemy-phase can become kind of mindless for certain units, it also makes dealing with large hordes of enemies surprisingly complicated and mentally demanding. Honestly, if this game ended at chapter 22, I'd have said this game has a pretty damned good difficulty curve, and that it managed to have a satisfyingly hard beginning and end. Unfortunately, the last “two” chapters completely undermine that for pure cinematics, but that doesn't make the 1-22/23 experience any less satisfying. No contest, it easily goes above Dark Dragon, Gaiden, Mystery and Genealogy. The only real question is if it goes above Thracia. ...Yes. Yes it does. While Thracia's final battle was easily the toughest one in the marathon so far, a lot of the game before that was just... way too dependent on easily-counterable staff gimmicks for its difficulty, and enemy-phase combat was just overwhelmingly overpowered for the vast majority of the game whenever I wasn't trying to capture and steal shit. We have a new winner. Enjoy it while it lasts, BB. 1: Binding Blade 2: Thracia 776 3: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 4: Genealogy of the Holy War 5: Gaiden 6: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 7: Dark Dragon Ironmannability: As is pretty much inevitable whenever I get to this point in the ranking in a game with ambush spawns... I have some complaints here. Not... that many, though. Watching Mangs lose basically every unit and still somehow get a hair's breadth away from getting at least the bad ending made me hopeful, and... honestly? I wasn't too disappointed. I initially thought I'd be taking points off for hiding the full ending behind a series of side-chapters with obscure requirements, but thinking on it, it's not like you're really missing anything gameplaywise by not getting all of the legendary weapons. There's only one chapter post-22 that I'd dignify with the title of “map”, Now, with the exceptions of the Sacae route and chapter 21, they never get particularly unfair. The one in Chapter 20B is beyond unacceptable, to be sure... like, I would almost use the term vile... but this is to be tempered with the fact that we have... what... one game on this list that genuinely meets all of my benchmarks for an ironmannable game? Genealogy of the Holy War. That's it. And even then playing blind can cause... fascinating things to happen in generation 2, shall we say. But below that, we've got two games with ambush spawns, a game with ambush spawns and no ability to prevent crits, a game with no ability to prevent crits and precious little margin for error when it comes to losing units, and a game about which nothing can be said if you can't say that it wants you to die screaming. And in all five of these, you have no way of knowing without pressing start where the hell your units are going to wind up on the map. Basically, below Genealogy, this list is just one big pile of ironmannability garbage, and it's just a question of which garbage comes out smelling the worst. Keeping that shit in mind... 1: Genealogy of the Holy War 2: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 3: Binding Blade 4: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 5: Dark Dragon 6: Gaiden 7: Thracia 776 Usability: Twice in a row now, I have to interrupt the previous pattern of calling this a constant march of progress. Genealogy still wins here. Moving from the SNES to the GBA... had some consequences. Things had to be cut back, features had to be removed, things had to be simplified.The only real innovation the GBA games added over the late SNES games is the ability to control where your units start on the map, which... while deeply appreciated... unfortunately doesn't do much when it comes to competing with Genealogy, a game that technically already had that option. By making starting position irrelevant. Because it's the same starting position for all units: inside the home castle. And the GBA also paid the horrible price of dividing up their stat screens into three tiny pages, resulting in the infuriating quirk that whenever you want to determine how much damage the enemy's gonna do to you, you have to flip back and forth between multiple pages, because for the first time since proper stat windows have become a thing, calculated attack stats and the defense stat are on different damned pages. Granted, I stopped thinking about this as a concern surprisingly quickly, but that's mostly because math stopped becoming necessary because dodgetanking became so viable and doing exact calculations almost never became necessary... it's amazing that I can say that about a game that managed to be so hard. But that's hardly a point in favor of its usability score. That said, it's still better than Thracia. So in a sense it is a march forward. And given that unless I'm very much mistaken, in FE3 you have to read the guide to see what the range of siege weapons is, and checking the stats of weapons can be kinda finicky... 1: Genealogy of the Holy War 2: Binding Blade 3: Mystery of the Emblem 4: Thracia 776 5: Gaiden 6: Dark Dragon Depth: This gains a bit of an edge due to, even if accidentally, figuring out how to make archers and myrmidons useful, something that few other games in the series can come close to boasting. But the GBA system is pretty simplistic, reminiscent of the Archanea saga. …Honestly, that's almost definitely by design, but I'm judging the results, not how close to their intentions they got. 1: Genealogy of the Holy War 2: Thracia 776 3: Gaiden 4: Binding Blade 5: Mystery of the Emblem 6: Dark Dragon Balance: My first thought upon double-checking the current list, incidentally, was “Wow, did I really put Gaiden in second? And then my second thought was “Oh. That's why.” And honestly, I'm torn here. In terms of classes, in terms of taking the best representatives of every class and comparing how they stack up with each other, the results are shockingly even. You have the usual high-rollers like the paladins and wyvern riders and magic users... but like I said, there is a myrmidon who's like top three on the current tier list. Granted, again, that's due to a glitch... ...But as I just said, I'm judging the results, not how close to their intentions they got. Aside from knights and maybe archers (Klein isn't nearly as good as Shin), I struggle to think of a single class that doesn't have a good unit in it. But on the other hand, in terms of characters, the balance is decidedly more mixed. A disappointingly small percentage of the main cast is viable in this game, given how utterly cutthroat the competition can be on hard mode. That said... I checked the current tier lists, and the lowest-ranked character I managed to make a serious mainstay of my army was Raigh, who's lower-mid. And more than half of the cast is above him. So maybe it's not as bad as my initial impressions. Another thing to consider is how often having a handful of ridiculously powerful units enemy-phase everything was the solution to my problems. And the answer to that is... almost never. Milady came the closest, but she's just one unit, and nobody else could really take nearly the amount of punishment she could. She fulfilled an important role of holding off wyvern hordes and keeping them from overwhelming me, but there was still always the entire rest of the map to deal with. I felt a tangible difference between how I used each of my units, and a tangible difference in how they fought, similar to Genealogy and Gaiden, but without the... frankly ludicrous other issues those games had (to varying degrees). Honestly, I can't expect perfection. Certainly not this early in the list. It's got its issues, but really... I've gotta give it to the game. I think we have a new winner here. 1: Binding Blade 2: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 3: Gaiden 4: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 5: Thracia 776 6: Genealogy of the Holy War 7: Dark Dragon Pacing: No reluctance here. Binding Blade wins. This is the second “normal” feeling game on this list, after Thracia. And Thracia had that absolutely agonizing map full of trap floors that took me 16 turns that felt like 60. Meanwhile, there was a chapter in this game that took 30 turns, and that felt more like 15. Honestly, From here on out it's going to get very hard to judge these things, because his is more of a “just don't suck” category, and there are plenty of games further down on this list that accomplish the mission of not sucking. And honestly, the one I most envision as “winning” this list... like, I'm not even sure if I consider that a good thing, because it does it mostly at the expense of the experience elsewhere and... well I mean I'll get to that in time. For now... like I said. Binding Blade wins. 1: Binding Blade 2: Thracia 776 3: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 4: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 5: Gaiden 6: Dark Dragon 7: Genealogy of the Holy War Writing: I consider this a step above Mystery of the Emblem... but that's as high as it goes. The Jugral games just had a more interesting narrative overall, and while I found Thracia's story to be the weaker of the two, I still consider it stronger than Binding Blade. Binding Blade is just Mystery of the Emblem reshuffled and with some more bells and whistles and some decent twists. Enough to make it decidedly better than Mystery of the Emblem, but I still find a lot of things, especially the characterization of the enemy and the lack of interesting story events from chapter to chapter, to be serious issues. 1: Genealogy of the Holy War 2: Thracia 776 3: Binding Blade 4: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 5: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 6: Dark Dragon 7: Gaiden Music: Definitely goes below Genealogy and Thracia, but beyond that...? Well I mean my main complaint, that the instruments aren't that nice-sounding... is true of all of the games below those two. So really, it all comes down to the melodies themselves. Unfortunately, Binding Blade still doesn't do so hot there. I'd definitely put Gaiden and Book 2 above this, mostly because Gaiden's got such boppin' chiptunes and Book 2 has “Liberation”. But below that? No way. Not at all. 1: Genealogy of the Holy War 2: Thracia 776 3: Gaiden 4: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 5: Binding Blade 6: Dark Dragon 7: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 Presentation: This is an extremely close one. While the SNES overall has better visual fidelity, the GBA combat sprites are absolutely timeless classics that honestly look better than the battle sprites on the later SNES games due to how big and up-close they are. Especially since, while I think the swordfighting critical animations in Genealogy can go toe to toe with the best of the GBA sprites... all the other ones... yeah... not doing so hot. Honestly, funny as it sounds... gotta go with the game on the handheld. 1: Binding Blade 2: Thracia 776 3: Genealogy of the Holy War 4: Mystery of the Emblem 5: Gaiden 6: Dark Dragon Replayability: Pretty good! It's got what's technically an extra, secret ending for people playing it again, some branching paths, and, for the first time, supports! Different pieces of dialogue you can unlock by using different characters together! While the supports aren't really... great, I'm going to give this game some credit and assume some of that was lost in translation. Plus, the punchline to the Roy and Lalum supports... Mwuh! Beautiful! So yeah, I think that's enough to edge it out over Thracia. Genealogy though... yeah, I don't think so. That crazy child system still has it beat in terms of just how much you can do differently on a replay. 1: Genealogy of the Holy War 2: Binding Blade 3: Thracia 776 4: Gaiden 5: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 6: Dark Dragon 7: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 Put them together, and what've you got? Bibbidi... Bobbidi... BOOM! Overall: 1: Genealogy of the Holy War 2: Binding Blade 3: Thracia 776 4: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 5: Gaiden 6: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 7: Dark Dragon Yeah! I'd say I'm pretty happy with this game overall. I had a lot of fun with it, to be sure, in spite of its flaws. And it does things no other game in the marathon so far has managed to do, and it did it entirely with raw number balancing, with no fancy tricks or concepts. That's pretty damned impressive! All around, a good, well-rounded, simple-but-fun experience. ...Which means that now... starting... probably Monday... ...it's time to go on to Fire Emblem 7. The first one I ever played. The one that made me fall in love with the series. The one that gave me sleepless nights curled up in bed with my original-model GBA and my big bulky fancy screen lighter, playing his game for hours into the night in my room with that bunk bed I for some reason had despite not sharing a room with my brothers, and which I mostly used as an excuse to build forts with blankets, using the top bunk as a roof. Oh god, the memories there... ...Is this game gonna live up to said memories? No. Absolutely not. There's no conceivable way. But I'm not gonna let that stop me. What I am gonna do though, and this is part of why I'm taking Friday off, is give you guys some time to give your thoughts on a question: I'm going to be doing Hector Hard Mode, Lyn Hard Mode included, and I'm gonna do my best to unlock all of the gaidens and get the secret shit. But... ...Do you want to see me ironman this? I'll have some safety nets so as not to completely ruin the run if I get in over my head. I'll have some limit on how many units I can lose before I give up on ironmanning, and if I get a single true game-over, the ironman's done and I'm doing the rest of it with resetting, but I'd love to see firsthand how well a GBA game without ambush spawns holds up for ironmanning. But I'll only do it if you guys think it's a good idea. I'm open to any arguments why it wouldn't be. So! Speak your mind... now! ...Until then, my pen's going back in the scabbard for today. Take care, everyone! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted March 13, 2020 Share Posted March 13, 2020 You're done with Binding Blade, yay! Ambush no more for the next four games, but difficulty will be on a downward spiral! 1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said: I'm surprised to learn I did so poorly on exp and power. Was I supposed to be able to one-round more enemies than I did? Well, a B overall with 4 As is still pretty nice! You need 1001 levels to A-rank Power. With 51 characters in the game per playthrough, this means if all levels were evenly distributed, everyone would end up around 20/0 for A-rank. Fortunately, prepromoted characters means the scrubs need slightly less in levels than this. For EXP, you need to gain 50100 or more for A-rank. So 501 level-ups. Probably the hardest stat to A-rank, or Tactics, balancing the playing fast for Tactics and the slow play for EXP seems to be the fundamental challenge of Ranked in any game with Rankings. 1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said: I'm going to be doing Hector Hard Mode, Lyn Hard Mode included, and I'm gonna do my best to unlock all of the gaidens and get the secret shit. But... ...Do you want to see me ironman this? Considering FE7 has nice prepromotes and far from the greatest difficulty, I think you'll end up placing this as the most ironmannable so far at the end. So go ahead and do it. Though unless you love resetting, consider writing off A Glimpse in Time at this very moment. Alternatively, if you wanted to try Ranked, Hector Hard Mode might be the game for it. By the very end, you need: < 310 turns (without 19xx) 847000 Gold (both cash and solid assets) killing the enemy in 40% of all your battles and... umm... I guess... 41150 EXP? All that EXP you need should force you to train up weaklings, making the game a bit harder. But I've never done Ranked before, so I don't really know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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