World Map?!
Not something you see in your average Fire Emblem game! Am I playing Gaiden again? Dear god I hope I don't get mobbed by Dracozombies in a volcano. You know, you'd think from my feigned surprise here that I hadn't played this game several times before. Also, I now have Vanessa and Moulder. The former is your standard weak Pegasus Knight who struggles against early game axe users but can fly so it's cool, the latter is nicknamed the Boulder by some because he's a priest with oddly high Con. And Gilliam is officially a permanent part of the team. "Yay"
Chapter 2
I have a bone to pick with the intro narration text thingy here. It refers to how this is where Eirika "sees the destruction of Renais with her own eyes", or something along those lines, but her reason for fighting in chapter 1 instead of detouring around was already that she'd seen the people suffering under the Grado invasion. Tad inconsistent. Anyway, we're trying to find the future main character now and naturally that involves fighting bandits.
In this chapter, I get Garcia, a Fighter who will chip stuff to make himself useful before getting benched forever, and his son Ross. Ross is one of the special Trainee classes, which basically means his starting level is -10. His stats are terrible and growths are actually pretty standard, only the bonus ten levels of growth let him be better at high levels. Odds are I'll be going too fast for him to gain much experience.
Standard approach to this chapter, Vanessa rescues Ross so I can recruit him, everyone charges south except Gilliam who visits villages. Eirika doesn't even manage to double the enemy bandits here because she needs to gain a point of speed from base and she hasn't leveled yet. Kind of sad. With a chip shot from Ross (gotta love the accuracy on that Hatchet) she 2HKOs one, and gains...no speed. Woops. Does get strength at least. Seth clears out the south, Garcia deals with the stuff near him except the archer, which he weakens but then runs away from to heal (stupid AI not being helpful). Vanessa gets it instead, while the Ross/Franz/Eirika team handle the two bandits who come from the mountains. All villages saved, 5 turns taken. Could have been faster but I think it would require a critical hit somewhere.
Chapter 3
We go on an epic quest to rescue...a bracelet. Okay, it ends up being more important but really, it does feel kind of goofy at this point. And we recruit the standard bad early game Archer (Neimi) and our Thief (Colm), the latter being rather handy for getting useful items.
"Seth charges" is a bit of a theme, huh? The others work at breaking down walls to clear a path, though he does get caught up killing an archer so he can't advance. Garcia gets the southern chest, Colm loots the north, Franz gets what EXP he can from the thief and southern bandit, Eirika crits a bandit to death and gets a good level then gets carried to the throne. Seize on turn 6, once again could have been faster but as long as I'm doing things at a decent pace I'm not too worried that I could have sped it up more.
--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.