Final Holy War continued
Shanan solos the Falcoknight trio. Without Charisma or anything. Wow. Even by his standards that's pretty good.
Altenna goes off to talk to Arion and convince him to stop helping the evil dude. Sadly he doesn't become playable, but he is an NPC who will follow her around (as will his mooks). My various staffs users are all jerks who refused to get 28 magic, which is the magic number needed for a magic ring to bring you to 33, which is the magic number needed to Silence/Sleep/Berserk Ishtar here. That was my original plan, but now something a little bit more risky will be needed, as I'll either have to fight her, or exploit a neat little programming error.
So Ishtar's group approaches, Julius attacks Shanan with Meteor which gets the dark warlords moving about, and then I set up the amusement, as I pile my Charisma squad around Ishtar so Celice can land a hit with the MIGHTY SLEEP SWORD. The Sleep Sword formula (also applies to Berserk Sword) is (30-MDef)%. When you have MDef over 30, the game gets a little confused and makes it work 100% of the time. The only 30+ MDef enemies in the game are Alvis (due to +10 from Falaflame), final chapter Ishtar (27 naturally plus 5 from a Barrier Ring) and Julius (30, +5 from the Loputouso tome). I'm tempted to set up the same shenanigan on Julius, but I think I'll pay this game the respect of having a proper final boss fight instead of turning into a comedy session. Anyway her avoid is still pretty high but it's not like I don't have plenty of time to finish her off from here. Poor Ishtar, one of the nastier enemies in the game, and she dies a totally lame death.
I have Shanan lure Acht (the sage with Tornado) away from the rest of the warlords so my ranged attackers at Dozel can fight the less dangerous ones. I then get very surprised when Acht activates Continue, then Charge, then gets another Continue. Dude threw four straight Tornados at Shanan. And he...dodged them all. What a badass. Anyway Sety moves in to handle the rest of them. Time for Holsety to get a work out! I have the Charisma squad and a few others hang around to help him, while Celice, Aless, Leaf and Leen head north to loop around to Velthomer. Oh, and Tinny Silences Vier (the one with Reserve) to ensure damage I do is permanent. I'm really glad Elf and Zwei aren't as brutal as their FE5 incarnations, that would spell some trouble if they were.
Faval takes out a pair of warlords, Sety handles quite a few, and everything is looking peachy. Oh yeah. Celice gets to fight Manfloy, and he's a tough bastard, even with a Power Ring and Tyrfing Celice can't quite 2HKO him. Fitting, I guess. This is the guy who has caused the entire plot to happen. He's been manipulating events all along, he's the guy who kidnapped Deidre and erased her memories, he's the one who set up Alvis to have his family torn away from him and his goals crumble...long story short, he's a son of a ***** and it's appropriate that he won't go down without a fight. He does die in two rounds of combat though. And then Celice seizes, Aless tanks a few hits from Julia, who won't be freed from Manfloy's control until Celice speaks to her, and the last warlord dies, all around the same time. Only Julius remains!
And then after Celice lightly taps him (with the Power Ring he manages 5 damage per hit through the attack halving effect, so with dancing he can actually take Julius out himself over the course of several rounds), Julia steps in and blasts him with Narga until he dies. And just like that, victory is mine. The continent of Jugdral is liberated, the people responsible for everything have died, and Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War...is over. Awesome game, this was a ton of fun.
Shadow Dragon is next on the list, likely starting on Monday or Tuesday.
--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny