Board 8 > Fire Emblem Playthrough Topic Part 2

(+) Yeah! (+)

Massive spoilers for the entire series here, needless to say

Previous topic is here:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/59937990

At least until it purges.

Let's do a little recap in case anyone new is joining the party. I have embarked on a playthrough of most of the Fire Emblem series (1, 2, and 9 are excluded), in order partially deciding by request, partially by me feeling like something was a good choice to do at the time. Here's what's come before.

First off, I played FE8, AKA The Sacred Stones. In this run, we discovered that I am not very good at playing efficiently, that Seth is God and Duessel is his prophet, that the Demon King is forever a joke, and that the Warp staff makes several chapters very trivial. Also we discovered that Ephraim's route is a step up in difficulty over the rest of the game, and that the Phantom Ship is rather troublesome when your units are underleveled due to the low turn count. And that immediately promoting Knoll for fun with summoning is surprisingly handy. In the end, Ephraim almost solo'd the final boss (with dance support of course), needing only a smack from Seth to set him up for the kill.

After that, I moved on to FE10, AKA Radiant Dawn. Edward decided to actually not suck this time around, the various overpowered units thrown at you throughout the game showed off their stuff, and I laughed at how easy the game is for Ike's group. Everything was perfectly happy except for the part where I decided that that ****ing bridge chapter with its ****ing pitfalls is a ****ing annoying ****ing piece of ****ing **** that can ****ing burn in ****ing hell. When I sleep, I have nightmares of the word BRIDGE floating through my mind, taunting me with the idea that I might have to actually play it again some day in the future.

From there, FE7, AKA...Fire Emblem. Blazing Sword is the subtitle translated from Japanese, but that's not seen on English versions because...? Anyway, the run got a bit bogged down in the middle here, but eventually it all worked out. I discovered the game is way too obsessed with fog of war in the middle section, the prepromote quartet of Hawkeye, Pent, Harken and Vaida are incredible, and Hector is a badass who tanks crits from Final chapter Lloyd and makes the other two Lords jealous of just how much better than them he is. Sadly did not manage a Luna crit on the dragon though :(

And now, we've moved on to FE4, AKA Genealogy of the Holy War, the first Japan-only game of these topics, and also my favourite game in the series. We just finished off the first generation, and I'll be starting off on chapter 6 shortly after posting this. We've seen our army build itself up from small fish in a big sea to seemingly invincible, only to have it all torn away as most of them die, including main character Sigurd, at the hands of Alvis in one of the biggest "holy ****" moments in gaming. Now it's been seventeen years, and after most of that time was peaceful, things have been getting worse and worse under his rule, and conditions in the areas outside his direct control have gotten even nastier than they already were. Why has a guy who was talking about creating an empire free of prejudice seemingly become a tyrant? What was the plan of Manfloy and the Lopt Sect? Did they succeed in resurrecting their god, Loputouso? I guess we'll just have to find these things out soon!

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

Chapter 6: Light Inheritors

Player phase music:


I'll be honest, I'm not too fond of this track, at least not after being spoiled by how awesome the music in chapters 2 through 5 were.

Anyway, we get right into the action because this is essentially the Gen 2 prologue, so there's no arena! Time to start seeing the fruits of some of my pairings. Particularly interested in how Delmud fares with Lex as his father, as well as experiencing the power of Lakche and Skasaha (I will probably misspell this guys name constantly) with Noish passing down his skills. Celice will be standard Celice, of course. And the most important thing of all is that the first boss we fight is...HAROLD. Finally, the man all those other portraits take their name from. Oh yeah, I do the save/reset trick to get Celice's leadership starts to work properly.

A few enemies die and then Lester, Delmud and Oifaye show up. Man, Oifaye has grown up a bit. Digging the mustache. Anyway, with Oifaye, Lakche and Skasaha having the critical skill, Lester having the Killer Bow, and Celice having it on his Silver Sword (which is continuing to build up kills as he murders dudes here), there's a lot of sudden death and destruction being wrought here. And we see some more of the "brilliant" FE4 AI as enemies charge into Oifaye as if that's going to lead to anything but their doom. And then Celice goes off to kill a bandit to save a village for later, and Oifaye uses his Armor Cutter to murder Harold and his guards. Alas, poor Harold. I knew him, Horatio. Then we get Julia. Hmm, memory loss, white hair and looks kind of similar to someone we've seen before, a Shaman, the holy blood screen shows major Narga and minor Fala. If the "plot twist" of her identity surprises you, please slap yourself. Lana hands her a Relive staff so she can be useful, and before long she'll have a nice weapon too.

Hooray, time to fight the axe fighters/axe knights. I'm going to recruit Johalva (the axe fighter) this time since I always recruit Johan, might as well try something different. Neither one is particularly important to have around anyway, they're just not nearly as awesome as their uncle Lex was. Then Fee and Arthur join. It's so sad to have Arthur show up and *not* have Holsety. I miss my usual pairing already and I haven't even done anything with him yet. Johan and his group die, Johalva gets recruited, everyone is happy and the mounted units head south while the foot squad waits for me to capture Isaac castle so Lana can start warping them down. Johan and Julia in particular want that warp, because the former wants to grab the Hero Axe and the latter needs to talk with Celice to get the awesome Rezire tome, since the health drain effect will make her arena life much easier (the alternative is Aura, which kind of sucks).

The long march south is not very eventful, Celice softens a lot of axe knights with the Wind Sword, Lester and Oifaye kill some, Delmud mainly just acts as a charisma-bot since having no range against hand axe users is kind of unhelpful. Fee goes bandit hunting and rescues villages, while Arthur heads south to take advantage of Danan being an idiot who didn't bother to pick up a 2 range weapon. Yay easy EXP and eventually easy boss kill! He just has to be careful to not provoke Schmidt, who is returning to the castle to get reinforcements. He comes back out and ends up standing right in the middle of my units, perfectly placed to let me set up a kill for Johalva. Yay!

Arthur keeps softening Danan and Fee eventually gets the kill. Julia grabs one last village, then Celice seizes. Yay, I win.

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

Q: How many Fire Emblem final bosses move? Which ones?

FE6, FE8, and (hard mode only) FE9. Pretty sure that's it, although maybe FE2's Doma moves too.

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I don't like this duchy. Now, it's an adventurer.

Doma does indeed move, and your answers are indeed correct.

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

I thought it was kind of cool in FE3 how you get this amazingly overpowered item, and saving it for the final boss actually helps quite a bit.

Chapter 7: Crossing the Desert

Player phase music:


Another one of my favourites, I think it's between this, Dance in the Skies and <chapter we haven't reached yet> for number one in my mind.

Anyway, we get our first 2nd gen arena! And Leaf and Nanna join us, accompanied of course by Fin! They're off on their own defending Lenster, which is not too difficult, thankfully. Of course, that will change when we play FE5 and the siege of Lenster becomes quite possibly the most awesome battle in Fire Emblem history. Oh yeah, there's Patty and Shanan doing their thing. She fails at life and he's god thanks to the Balmung.

Delmud now has the Hero Sword since he'll be seeing much more use than Skasaha. I'm liking this Elite and high defense thing he has going, he's turning out to be pretty awesome so far. And that will continue since Oifaye can talk to him to give him +1 strength, skill and defense. Got to love it. Anyway, the chapter proper starts. Shanan gets the Balmung from Patty, who stays out of reach and will use her Return ring (there's a reason I always have her inherit it!) as soon as she needs it to escape. The dark mages at the start here are quite annoying, they 2HKO nearly everyone and aren't even high level so the EXP they hand out is less than stellar. Oh well, they still get killed easily enough. The only hard part here is that Shanan might eventually get hit a couple of times, and there's little you can do to prevent it besides fiddling with the order of actions you take to set the RNG into a more favourable mood.

It's kind of funny to see the first boss here having that Bargain Ring. He'll drop it if you missed it in the first generation, but since I got it, it's just sitting in his inventory looking pretty.

Anyway, Celice heads off to Yied, Fee goes over to help Shanan clean up, Fin softens stuff so Leaf can kill it, and the lack of Pursuit on Nanna is now proving to be a nuisance as she needs three hits to kill bandits, which is pretty slow when you don't double. Ends up costing me a bit of gold, but oh well. Leaf gets fed some kills, though the AI for some reason keeps trying to attack Fin instead even when it's pointless to do so. It's like the game knows I want to promote Leaf as early as I can and is actively resisting it. In any event, Shanan and Fee clean up the area around Yied, Shanan kills the boss, everyone else heads south, and Celice seizes. Pretty standard stuff.

Continuation of this will come at some time in the future that may be a few minutes from when I post this or may be tonight, I don't know.

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

Chapter 7 continued

A bit of nothing happens, then we trigger Liza's army to start approaching us. Delmud easily deals with her, while everyone else pokes away at her army, leaving only a few stragglers who ran up the cliff on the western side for reasons I can't begin to fathom. Then I have to take it a bit slower because walking into range of two ballistae plus Isthor isn't exactly a good way to prolong your life. Celice catches up more or less and Patty talks to him, giving him a Hero Sword. He may or may not hold onto it, I haven't decided yet.

Celice, Delmud and Oifaye end up making the charge to take out Ishtor, which goes smoothly enough. A few units start heading east to help with the next phase of the Lenster area, while most stay in the north to prepare to help deal with the enemies that show up when Aless joins me. Speaking of which, he joins me. Yeah. Kills a dude with the Mistoltin because he's awesome like that, then retreats. He and Shanan form a WALL OF HOLY WEAPONS to protect against enemies, although they mostly go after the other units in their reach. Fee gets in place to help deal with the mage army coming from Alster as Arthur rushes along to recruit his sister.

So Shanan, Lakche and Aless do most of the work in the north, Celice contributes less than I'd like because his speed is refusing to grow. Level 16 and still 9 speed. That is pathetic, even taking into account that Celice frequently ends up speed screwed in my playthroughs. Have to remember to give him the speed ring at some point. Anyway, things still go well enough because I have tons of firepower, it's the Lenster squad that need to be a bit more careful. Fee, Oifaye, Delmud and Fin abuse their canto to do hit and run tactics, Arthur recruits Tinny without much incident, and Julia eventually catches up to try to help out.

Celice kills Bramsel with some Silver Sword crits, Patty goes off to collect the Shield Ring village, Celice gets warped so he can head for Alster, Fin valiantly fends off the hordes of evil with minimal assistance beyond healing. Oifaye goes to clear the path to Blume, then I have to figure out exactly how to fight the guy, since he is pretty freaking powerful. Leen gets recruited and starts doing her thing. The people who joined mid-chapter do their arena fighting, which is kind of dull when Leen relies on Prayer and Patty relies on the Sleep Sword, but oh well. Nanna doesn't have the means to return herself for arena work, but she has Elite anyway so I'm not too worried.

Anyway, eventually I decide to throw Shanan at Blume. He gets OHKO'd, but the hit rate is only 58 with Celice, Delmud and Nanna around to provide leadership/charisma, and the only person who doesn't either die in one hit or get doubled is Oifaye, who can't inflict any sort of damage without using a weapon that would weigh him down too much anyway. This is why the start of turn save feature exists in this game, I think! Anyway, Shanan ends up triggering Meteor Sword to take him out. And that's chapter 7 complete!

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

Chapter 8: Dragon Knights of Thracia

Player phase music:


Nothing special, really.

So we start off with the arena work and item switching and all that. Leaf obviously gets hold of the Elite Ring ASAP because Master Knight is ridiculous. Celice promotes, Lana hits promotion level rather quickly but doesn't get to actually promote until...well, maybe later in the map I'll return her once her work is done, maybe she'll wait until chapter 9. I want to point out that Celice is still not gaining speed. And that it's annoying to have the Lenster trio not in the home castle, makes item swapping a bit more of a pain. Oh well. On plot related topics, this is where we meet Ishtar, get our first glimpse of prince Julius (Alvis' son), and see Trabant once again, as well as his son Arion. And we'll meet someone else of note too.

Let me just point out two things with regards to enemy portraits here. The general Muhammed shares the portrait of Shagaal. And the mage knight boss Ovo has THE craziest hair in the history of mankind. It's like a mohawk and a mullet had a child and the result was this giant thing that sticks out and hangs over his head. This wouldn't look out of place in ****ing Yu-Gi-Oh. I don't know whether to think he's awesome or the worst thing in the universe. Seriously, look at this:



LOOK AT THAT ****ING THING. My god.

Okay, on to the actual chapter now <_<

So Fin goes out to handle the Javelin wielding dudes with a Javelin of his own. He doesn't quite ORKO them but that's fine by me, although it does make things a bit messy. Julia takes the Warp staff for this chapter so she can gain some levels, and she sends a few people up north to help support the Lenster trio, Celice in particular because that +20 hit/avoid from leadership is delicious. Fee takes a bit of a pounding from Muhammed's squad, but I left Lana back there to support those units, and Shanan is there to Balmung them all to death if I really need him. Which is pretty much what happens, although Johalva and Fee get some decent work in too. Up north, Celice, Aless and Leaf own the mage sisters with help from Leen, who is showing off why the Leg+Knight ring dance combo is amazing. Faval is on his way and oh yeah, here comes Ishtar. She moves, wields the Torhammer, is very fast, has some nasty skills (Continue and Ambush), and is generally a major threat, which is why recruiting Faval is handy, since he can OHKO her with Ichival and with the charisma/leadership brigade in range, his accuracy against her is in the 80s.

Turns out I was wrong. He pulled 92 hit against her. Needless to say, she went down, but then DUN DUN DUN Julius shows up and escorts her away. While that's happening, Aless gets a Power Ring (I forgot it was in that village, but he might as well carry it for now), Fee tries to catch up so she can do her thing later, Oifaye follows, Shanan goes to collect a village, and the sword kids and Johalva hang around in the hopes that maybe some of the dragon knights later in the chapter will come their way. Not too likely, but they'll never catch up to the main group anyway. I guess I could have Julia sell the warp staff so Lana can buy it and begin warping them up, but I don't want to bother and it's not like the last stretch of this chapter is particularly challenging anyway, it's just mowing down weak dragon riders all day.

Turns out that when Blume gives away the Torhammer to someone else, he's not nearly as big a threat. Celice has no problem wiping him out in a crit plus a regular attack. Yay, I defeated the dude who was in charge of the occupation of the northern half of the peninsula. Up next: Moving on south!

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

Chapter 8 continued

We enter the second part of the chapter, and alas, the mighty hair of Ovo is no longer with us. You shall be missed, brave warrior!

Hey look, Sety is defending Manster and dragon knights are incoming. This part IS better in this game than it is in FE5, simply because we don't have randomly appearing dark mages popping out of nowhere. And hey, Trabant is talking to his son and also to his daughter...Altenna. 10 points to anyone who hasn't played the game before who can tell me where we've heard that name before (and searching through the topics doesn't count!). And we've got Coruta, the third dragon knight to be a Harold. If memory serves me, he's the second last one. If I'm wrong please don't correct me, I want to be surprised by the wonders of discovering a forgotten Harold.

As we pass by Conote I send Faval in to do some arena fighting and HOLY CRAP. Why have I been running into so many glitches lately? Faval is apparently not only a powerful archer, he has also mastered the art of how not to be seen. As in, he is fighting in the arena while invisible. This is pretty amusing, I must admit. And later in the chapter it keeps happening. My army have become ghosts!

Anyway, I have my dudes who need levels rescue civilians where everyone who can already kick ass goes to "bail out" Sety. Not that the guy needs it. I finally get to see Levin!Sety in action and somehow I doubt he'll disappoint. He has been hit by the speed wrap around glitch though so he's sitting at only 15 speed. He'll still cap it eventually, and he has Holsety so it's not like he cares. Fee and Aless head down the coast to clear out enemies and save villages, because I want Aless to get the Thief Ring so he can spam Mistoltin indefinitely without worrying about cash.

And then everything goes pretty much the way I said it would. This is not a hard chapter past the initial surge of enemies going towards Lenster, and I guess the Thunderstorm barrage leading up to Conote is a bit tricky, but after that it's all smooth sailing. Altenna flies south, questioning herself for having chosen not to fight. Lots of my units are ready to promote now. Julia, Delmud and Nanna can promote as soon as chapter 9 begins, Johalva needs just one more level so the arena ought to do the trick, Leaf also needs just one more level, and Lana promoted during the chapter. Hooray for powerful units!

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

Man, I could have ended the last topic with an AWESOME post but you had to ruin everything.

--
"All video games being free is a human right." -Vlado [Evil Republican]
Play Der Langrisser.

I guess you need to be faster next time!

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

Chapter 9: For Whose Sake

Player phase music:


Bit of a change in sound from previous chapters. I kind of like it.

I could talk a lot about the plot stuff here, but I think I'll hold off for now. Remind me to do a good write up on Trabant some day, but not right now because it would fill the entire post. Up first is the typical arena procedure and some item swapping, and also the promotions foretold in the previous update. This is the chapter where we finally recruit a dragon knight (gee I wonder who, oh wait there isn't a mystery here, Fin flat out tells Leaf about Altenna) and encounter a somewhat hard to recruit general, Hannibal. Thankfully he's not nearly the headache Xavier is in FE5.

I lure in the first of Hannibal's troops with Aless right away. Fee goes off to save some villages, everyone capable of using a bow sticks around to wait for Altenna, as do the foot units. Mounted units who don't have bows will be the ones putting in work this chapter, along with Sylvia of course. Then everything gets annoying because Hannibal refuses to start his retreat until his entire army is dead, which makes it a tad more difficult to get him to not either kill someone or commit suicide into someone. This takes a few tries to get right. Eventually I just decide to wall Hannibal off with some durable units who equip weak weapons to ensure he won't die, and that works pretty well. Altenna's dragon knights are not nearly as dangerous, as several get killed by Tinny on enemy phase, the rest fall to my units on my turn, and Leaf recruits Altenna. Yay, now I wait for the next squad of dragon knights! Led by Trabant, and they're a bit tougher, but that's getting ahead of myself a little.

The mounted rush continues. The mounts who stayed behind to deal with the Altenna/Trabant sequence will get warped as soon as I conquer the castle where Corple is being held captive, ensuring I get the maximum cavalry rush. Sety will also be warped because **** fighting Arion without Holsety on your side. Dude is scary. Anyway, Disler gets killed and I seize, Corple begins his long, dull march back to his daddy, spamming staffs along the way as needed. Now I have ample time to move on to my next goal; once Trabant dies, Altenna will come out to join me, but if I seize the next castle before she does, she counts as an enemy linked to it and she will die. So that's kind of funny.

Anyway I make sure to clear a path so Trabant can die at Leaf's hands. Figure he deserves retribution for the death of his parents. I forgot about his Ambush but it's not like Leaf can't handle a hit. All but two dragon knights die on player phase, and then other decide to...attack Faval. From range. When they could have done melee instead. I'll never understand FE4 AI. With that taken care, I get to warping people and...oh wait, I'm taking a break.

On the next exciting episode of Panthera Plays Fire Emblem: We fight a scary mage knight with Tornado, many villages are claimed, and Altenna joins us!

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

Previously, on Panthera Plays Fire Emblem:

Enemies died

And now the exciting conclusion!

Chapter 9 continued

Dudes move places! Specifically, a lot of dudes go sit in the home castle, either because their work is done or because they'll be warped later. This includes Julia getting inside to sell her warp staff and also several other things (it's almost like I know she won't be playable for a while after this) so Lana can warp her south. She can talk to Celice to give him some magic defense, which is always appreciated. Not that he needs it too badly since he'll be getting Tyrfing at the end of next chapter, but hey, it might help somewhere before then.

So eventually Corple makes his way over to talk to Hannibal, which triggers the gateway to the next castle to open. It's guarded by Judah, a dark mage who takes his name from one of the main antagonists of FE2. This also triggers a big group of promoted mounted units to show up in the north, lead by the powerful Musar, who I believe is the last Harold of the game. He's got Tornado, which means he's quite fast, which means he's rather threatening. More threatening than Judah and his ballista dudes at least. They die very, very quickly and Altenna gets recruited at the last turn before I would have seized, so no delay caused by her after all.

Leaf is awesome and he tanks the hell out of Musar's squad, taking only one hit and wiping out about half of them. Fee takes another, and we're left with pretty easy clean up on the rest since the female Paladins can be left alive (they only have Relive staffs, not exactly an offensive threat, that). Leaf kills him so he can claim the Tornado tome for himself, and though he takes some damage in the process, it quickly ceases to matter when you remember that seizing Judah's castle not only kills Altenna if she's still an enemy, but also kills of Musar's squad. The remnants disappear before they could have ever posed a threat. Altenna takes the opportunity to hit the arena and easily clears it, needing the Gae Bolg only once. She picks up a Steel Sword too just to give her a weapon that doesn't weigh ten tons. Julia talks to Celice and he only gets +2 MDef instead of +3 because he was already at 16 and his class caps at 18. Yeah, even without Tyrfing he's looking pretty invulnerable to magic now.

And now Arion sends out legions of dragon knights to retake the castles! Good thing I have people in place to defend all of them. Altenna intercepts one squad and handles them fairly easily. Then I clear a path for Sety to nuke Arion, because he's a tad too dangerous to leave loose to fly around. Then Julius shows up to save him. Hmm, that guy sure is getting in the way a lot and seeming all mysterious and important. With Arion gone, the remaining dragon knights are fairly easily handled, although one manages to put Lester to sleep. That's kind of lame, but...actually I don't even care, with Sylvia factored in I have roughly double the firepower I need to finish them off. I could have been done this chapter in a very respectable 17 turns but I realized I screwed up on some item swapping and had to scramble to get it all sorted. Still did it in only 20, which is pretty nice. This is a very fun chapter to speed through, lots of decision making on who to send where and when.

Up next: The tenth chapter, and the long, LONG awaited showdown with none other than Emperor Alvis himself

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

Chapter 10: Light and Dark

Player phase music:


It's heresy time - I do not think this is one of the best tracks in the game. It's good, but it's nothing special. Feel free to hate me now.

So here's the chapter where the game starts to get fond of status staffs. They're much more predictable in this game than in later games - if your MDef is higher than their magic, they can't hit you. Otherwise, they hit you 100% of the time. Range is fixed to 10 squares, not based on magic. We also start seeing a lot more dark magic here, which can be annoying for the fire/wind/thunder magic users who suffer WTD against them. And Julia is captured by Manfloy. Like mother like daughter, huh? Oops, I don't think we've officially been told that until this chapter, but come on, it's obvious.

Also, we meet Hilda here, who is kind of a complete ***** who more or less tortured her sister-in-law to death over the years, and is also happy to partake in the Lopt Sect's child hunts. Oh yeah, the child hunts. Children are rounded up and forced into fighting each other to the death, with the winners being indoctrinated as servants of the empire. Nasty business, and Julius seems to be orchestrating them, with Ishtar seeming slightly reluctant, and she gives us the interesting info that Alvis opposes such things. Given that they're happening anyway, this is our first hint that Alvis might not be in control anymore...But before we start dealing with all these issues, it's arena time! And I had forgotten that the Paladin boss in this chapter, Ridale, is a Harold. Yay! And while I'm making random notes, Celice with his HP having grown a lot (72 right now and he's got another level to grow, so it could even reach 74) and max MDef will, once he acquires Tyrfing, be able to survive two hits from Alvis at the end of the chapter. That's some serious durability. Shame his speed is still awful.

Well, that was a mouthful to open the chapter <_< So. Enemies. I try to eliminate the guys with Sleep, Fenrir and Hel first, and get enough of them to keep myself fairly safe. Sylvia ends up in range of a Sniper, but once Corple heals the point of HP she gained on her level up, she survives his attacks with 1HP, so if he hits her, he sets her Prayer range up perfectly. I discover that several of my characters have much less MDef than I'd like and eventually settle on Sety to get the next Barrier Ring; I need him to be nuking dudes in the final chapter, so sleep immunity (I think there's one guy who has the magic to sleep him, but he'll gain some levels before then so I hope it works out) will be very welcome. Leaf is now showing off one of the many reasons his promotion to Master Knight is so absurd - the Rescue staff. A unit with this much durability and this much ability to sit wherever he pleases and have a great enemy phase having access to this thing? Ridiculous. He can rescue Sylvia, have her dance him, then rescue her again, or someone else, or whatever else he feels like. One of the absolute best things in the entire game right here.

The foot units are really going to struggle to do much in this chapter. At some point Sylvia will devote herself to helping a few of them, but for the first stretch, it's all about a handful of horsies kicking some ass. Unfortunately, Celice gets doubled by Hilda despite his Speed Ring, so he barely survives and can't finish her off (does drop her to very low HP with a critical though). Leaf scores the kill, then Sylvia dances them both so Celice can seize and Leaf can Rescue Sety to join us for the battle against Ridale the Harold.

Next time: We fight another Harold. I like Harolds. Also I try to remember to engage in various conversations that provide stat boosts, notably a +5 (!) strength one for Fee.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

Previously, etc:

Celice has 13 speed at level 30. That is pathetic. He's at the bare minimum speed to double Alvis with the Tyrfing but without the speed ring. Of course, he does have the speed ring, because Celice struggling to double things is pathetic.

Chapter 10 continued

Sety nukes Ridale, Celice/Delmud/Arthur/Leaf/Aless combine with Leen to kill things and I realize suddenly that I've been calling Leen Sylvia for the past little while. Can you blame me though? They're rather identical. Anyway. We clean up Ridale's squad, Leaf plays with his wonderful Rescue staff toy to allow Celice to seize Rados/Lados immediately. Delmud gets dropped to 1 HP clearing out a dark mage to make it happen, but that's okay. Then everyone positions themselves to head north, where we're going to fight a cluster**** of nasty enemies, backed by a brief appearance by Ishtar and Julius. They'll leave if they kill anyone, but it's more fun to try to take Ishtar out (or to abuse one of the various tricks to beating Julius, but I'm not in the mood for that).

Hey, it's the return of Alvis' theme! He tries to call off the child hunting, but Julius intervenes. We get some exposition here; Alvis tried in the past to get rid of Julius, but apparently failed, and is little more than a puppet ruler now. Julius killed Deidre at some point in the past, and tried to kill Julia as well, but Deidre warped her away just before her death. Manfloy takes orders from Julius, who is the new host to Loputouso. They have Julia captured and are planning on executing her shortly, and we'll just have to see how that goes.

So anyway. This is a fun little batch of enemies. Sleep staffs, Fenrir, various enemies charging at you, it all adds up to some fun times. Altenna and Fee take up the duty of eliminating pesky Sleep/Fenrir mages while staying out of range of anything too nasty themselves, Sety charges wildly with Holsety in his hands, because he's going to need to make it into Ishtar's range before long. Meanwhile, Corple is warping people around a bit, and also trying to get close enough to eventually talk with Altenna at the end of the chapter, giving her some magic defense. It won't fend off a Sleep staff, but it might help survive a bit of extra damage some day.

Sety gets in place to lure in Ishtar. She pulls off Continue on him but he dodges both shots, then doubles her and gets in a Continue of his own to show her how it's done. Her and Julius retreat in shame, leaving a clear path to the next generic dark bishop boss. Delmud kills him off with his Hero Sword that has just reached critical status, and Celice seizes. Yay, time to begin the final push of chapter 10!

Up next: The...final push. Of chapter 10. Yeah. Redundant redundancy.

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

Chapter 10 continued pt. 2

And now, Alvis has the children freed and put in the care of a bishop named Palmark. He also hands Palmark something mysterious and alludes to Palmark knowing what to do with it because he served with Sigurd at one point. Bet that's going to come in handy! Then Alvis gets a reunion with Julia, but it's cut short by Manfloy, who uses her as a hostage to force Alvis to fight on. He hands her a circlet (could it be the one Deidre had? I think so), and prepares to fight his last battle, having admitted he's been manipulated all along and his plans have been undone. Hard not to feel sorry for the guy, all he ever wanted was to forge an empire that would treat its citizens fairly.

The flying units go across the sea to intercept those dark mages heading for Palmark and the kids. Everyone else prepares to cross the bridge. This is not a pitfall filled BRIDGE thankfully, but it is a bridge guarded by a lot of powerful enemies. This next segment can be one of the biggest cluster**** melees in the entire game, so let's get right into it!

The enemy Baron proves to be annoying by shielding three attacks, which makes him take longer to kill than I'd like. My units with weak two range go down to hide on the beach so they can soften stuff up on enemy phase, Celice and the Charisma crew get into the right position to help everyone, and Sety steps ahead of everyone and prepares to unleash the wrath of the heavens upon all who stand in his way. Oh, and Altenna attacks some dark mages and then tries to avoid getting destroyed by them on enemy phase. She ends up luring over a bow knight. What. Never seen that before. Also an enemy goes down onto the eastern part of the beach. There's no way to attack the bridge from there unless you have two range, which mister "I gots a Silver Axe" does not. Why did he go down there? Who knows. I do know that when I kill the other dude who headed that way and then stand in his place, that guy is trapped on the beach and will have no choice but to suicide into Aless on enemy phase. So I don't mind at all.

Anyway, things die, Leen sets up the murder of the Meteor mages then gets Rescued by Leaf to help Celice get to Palmark and back. Altenna flies south to get spoken to by Corple, and Aless decides that he's got what it takes to fight Alvis for a while. He doesn't do half bad, actually. He manages to land three hits before Alvis decides he's had enough and starts Big Shielding everything thrown his way. I think he's angry that I'd try to kill such an awesome characters with anyone less than the main character himself. So I indulge him, and after a few more chip shots from Aless, Celice gets to face down the man who killed his father. I sit back and listen to Alvis' awesome theme for a while, and also I should link you now to his battle music, which is pretty spiffy.



And with a few more strikes, Alvis dies at the hands of the weapon he himself arranged to hand over to Celice. I decide to see the little event where Celice speaks to the ghosts of his parents just for kicks, it nets him a second Life Ring, as if he needed it. Maybe someone else can make something of it, I don't know. In any event, we've defeated the best character in the entire series, and now all that's left is the final battle for control of the continent.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

**** it I'm way too hyped now to put this off. Also, I don't think I've linked to the Lopt Sect's theme yet, so let me do that now:


Final Holy War

Player phase music:


This is the track that competes with Dance in the Skies and Crossing the Desert for being my favourite player phase music in the game. Excellent end to the amazing soundtrack this game has.

We've got a lot of work still ahead of us. We'll be reclaiming the homelands of various characters, taking down the descendants of old foes like Langbart, Reptor and Andre, finishing off Hilda, resolving issues with Arion, finally getting our hands on the man who manipulated everyone to bring us to this point, and of course, getting Julia back just in time for our final showdown with Julius himself. And naturally, the only way to start such a grand battle...is with the final arena of FE4! It's a special one too, kind of an all-star arena. Every foe here is taken from an arena earlier in the game, except for the seventh guy, who is unique.

So to start off, I have Fee and Altenna deal with some of the southern dark mages, with Tinny Silencing the one who survived. Other ranged units get a start on dealing with the ones on the western cliff, and I set up a wall of dudes to take on the approaching armada of mounted enemies. They get slaughtered quickly, then I have Leaf show off some more of his hax. He Rescues Leen, she dances him along with Celice and Nanna, Leaf advances and Rescues Celice close enough to kill the boss and seize on turn 3. Could have been done on turn 2 I think but frankly I am not going to be disappointed at all with this speedy a completion. All those poor enemies just vanished without getting to fight me :(

Now here comes Burian, grandson of Langbart. Boy we've had a lot of interactions with this family. Anyway, he's one hell of a tank, but I'm sure I can get around him easily enough. I'm not even going to bother with the group he sends towards Edda, I'll have seize Dozel to eliminate them long before they would have arrived. We pick off some of the Great Knights to clear a path, then Leaf and Leen team up for the rescue/dance/Celice rescue chain and we seize Dozel on turn 5, eliminating Burian and the last of his troops without a fight. Hooray for that! Now I have to race to take out Hilda and conquer Freege before Scorpio and his bow knight brigade can catch up and cause problems for me (they'll stop moving once you seize).

Now we run into the one problem of Sety with Holsety, an issue I've heard about but not yet witnessed. When the enemy can't manage a hit rate above 0 on him, often they won't attack. Instead of wiping out Hilda's Baron army, they just clog up my path, and now Scorpio has arrived to bother me. Still not too likely that he'll get to do anything though. And he doesn't, because once Sety steps off his mountain, the Barons start suiciding into him (or into Aless). He and Leaf use their Recover staffs on each other, Celice seizes, Leen dances, everyone with high enough MDef starts dealing with the Sleep staff mages, Lana gets warped for Restore duty, several people gather south of Barhara to see if we can't lure in the Falcoknight trio and some of the dark warlords early and make the main group have an easier time pushing through Ishtar and her gang.

Next part coming soon!

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

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

Sety will also be warped because **** fighting Arion without Holsety on your side. Dude is scary.

He is. And I'm glad I'm not the only one whose default solution to that was "Sety! Get over here!" >_>


It's heresy time - I do not think this is one of the best tracks in the game. It's good, but it's nothing special. Feel free to hate me now.

Agreed. It's okay but definitely not one of my favorites.


I realize suddenly that I've been calling Leen Sylvia for the past little while. Can you blame me though?

I can't. I did this with practically everyone.


Then everyone positions themselves to head north, where we're going to fight a cluster**** of nasty enemies, backed by a brief appearance by Ishtar and Julius. They'll leave if they kill anyone, but it's more fun to try to take Ishtar out (or to abuse one of the various tricks to beating Julius, but I'm not in the mood for that).

I practically did it by accident on my playthrough. Who would have guessed the Sleep Sword would actually have a use? <_<

And then I did the same thing to Alvis. Had crazy good luck with the Sleep Sword that chapter.


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).

...Or, I guess not! Didn't know about this.


Shadow Dragon is next on the list, likely starting on Monday or Tuesday.

And unfortunately I've got to bail from the topic now, because I haven't played that yet. Ah, well. I'll be back for FE6 at least.

--
"The courtroom is the garden of holy judgment. Those with lechery in their hearts should leave this sanctuary at once!" ~Franziska von Karma

From: Kenri | #019
because I haven't played that yet.

Don't worry you're not missing much.


Also argh distractions, now Deus Ex is keeping me from playing FE5 <.<

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http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/2664/7b7aaa038007832d461b28c.jpg

From: Kenri | #019
He is. And I'm glad I'm not the only one whose default solution to that was "Sety! Get over here!" >_>

My default solution to any problem I even slightly question my ability to handle is "throw Holsety at it". Except Alvis, because that doesn't tend to work very well.

I have to say, I'm not that impressed with Levin!Sety. Sure he destroys things, but Levin!Arthur does that too, and gets a horse. Sety can't really contribute unless Leen/Leaf devote themselves to dragging him along. That's doable, but it's much smoother with Arthur since you don't have to keep track of his movement so much (you just track the movement of one of the horse units and boom, you know them all minus some slight adjustments due to roads and forests), and he has a WAY easier time getting into dance formation while fighting enemies to ensure you can get a full dance square in the place you want. In addition, the somewhat lower magic stat and much lower MDef vs Claude!Sety got on my nerves (he needed that Barrier ring to avoid Sleep, and there were some guys that could hit him with it anyway), especially when he couldn't Silence Ishtar for me and I had to set up a stupid 50/50 accuracy Sleep Sword hit. I think I've now proven to myself what I suspected before, that Arthur is the undisputed best Holsety user unless you're capable of completing 1st gen too fast for the pairing to happen.

On other pairings, Lachesis/Lex was a lot better than I expected. With the Pursuit Ring Delmud had no problem ever killing things. His huge early defense (due to high growth plus Elite) let him chew through arenas with basic weapons, so he had no struggle to make the money to afford better weapons even if I hadn't gotten Lex the Silver Blade for him to play with. Chapter 7 has a second Hero Sword available for him to pick up anyway. Nanna had pretty lame combat, but I've always used her primarily for staff use and Charisma anyway so I didn't notice it all that much, and every now and then she got to use her durability to tank with the Earth Sword. She was also level 28 or something by the end of chapter 8, pretty nuts.

Noish/Ayra worked out...well, I see why it's great. Lakche destroyed things with ease to say the least, but Skasaha somehow got massively RNG screwed. You'd think a guy with 55% strength growth and 50ish defense would be a powerhouse, but he gained something like four points of strength total all game, and his defense I think only went up once or twice. It was quite pathetic, but on the plus side, he still cleared every arena fight, rarely even needing a weapon beyond a Steel Sword, because Critical and Meteor Sword on a high skill character is just that broken.

Tiltyu/Azel was a pleasant surprise. They promoted later than I would have liked, but both were able to handle themselves quite well in combat when they managed to see it. Tinny ended up capping her speed and having high magic, which I was quite happy to see, especially when she used it to Silence a dark warlord. I feel that if I'd put a bit more effort into feeding them kills when the opportunity presented itself (like having them fight Muhammed's squad and then go to lure the western dragon knight squad in chapter 8 instead of dragging them along behind the main group, where they managed like three attacks between them) they could have proven pretty useful.

Everything else was pretty standard stuff for me, so no fresh new commentary on it.

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

I don't think I want to do H5 mode, never played it in full yet, will do so someday, but it might bog me down with disinterest right now. I just have to decide if I want to do normal and laugh the whole way through or go H1 so at least there's a vague danger to me occasionally.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

And also deciding if I'm going to have most of the cast kill themselves (presumably in shame) to get the side chapters or not, and if yes, then who I'm going to keep alive (spoilers it wouldn't be a very radical set of choices).

No, I'm definitely not stalling on actually starting this, why do you ask?

<_<

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

If you have not played Shadow Dragon (or recruited Norne) before: pick normal so that you get the Prologue, kill off Jagen/Gordin, get Norne. If you have played it before, pick H1. In either case, regularly cull the army of worthless meatsacks that are of no use to Marth the Tyrant, so that bonus chapters can get you... more worthless meatsacks to unequip and send screaming into oblivion.

I think Medeus might actually be the hero.

P.S. Use at least one ballistician, they're the coolest thing in Shadow Dragon.

--
I don't like this duchy. Now, it's an adventurer.

H1 it is then! And I've never played a Shadow Dragon file where I didn't use Beck permanently (except for the one time I used Jake instead, but I tend to just kill him because his recruitment is kind of lame)

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

The only thing about it is, if you end up killing off so many units that you don't even have enough to bring the maximum number of units to a chapter, the game gives you generic units to fill out your roster. To get most of the bonus chapters, you need to have 15 or fewer units, and there are a number of chapters where the number of units allowed is above 15, so if you try to get the bonus chapters, be prepared to see a lot of generic units. (And generic units count towards your total of 15, so make sure to kill them off right away.)

--
Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher
Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?

Yeah, I'm no stranger to wiping out legions of generic mooks at the altar of side chapters that I don't even care about anyway because I'm just going to kill whoever would have joined me in them. Stupid requirement, but oh well. I think I'll do the 24x trick for Tiki, Nagi and the true Falchion, just because I can. Anyway, starting up momentarily.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

SD, huh? Well....have fun with that. Are you going to do much reclassing?

--
Everyone has a right to sarcasm. It's like murder, except legal. - MYC

The only problem with New Mystery of the Emblem if it were to come over is that everyone would judge it because it's related to Shadow Dragon. Which I suspect (along with Nintendo wanting to move on to the 3DS) is the reason it's not coming out here.

It's a pretty great game, though. Fixes most of what I thought was wrong with Shadow Dragon.

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http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/2664/7b7aaa038007832d461b28c.jpg

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon

Chapter 1

Hey, back to playing a physical copy.

So this chapter is a spectacular pain in the ass on H5 mode, but on H1 it's not too bad. My units mostly can't double but it's not that big a deal. Abel gets us off to a nice start by crit-killing the nearby Thief on turn one, then the usual process of advancing and poking at dudes from range to set up a kill begins. Marth visited the village on turn one to get money so I could buy some weapons, naturally. I try to get a Marth a few kills because he tends to fall behind very quickly if he doesn't get some decent level ups early. It's not too important to have him be good, but it does help out. The cavaliers are the next priority targets, then Caeda because it's not like she won't be able to gain ridiculous levels once we start encountering the legions of cavaliers and knights this game is fond of throwing at us.

I get a tad over aggressive approaching the final stretch of the map, but it's not like it's any real danger, just means that Caeda has to take a hit from the last enemy still alive on the map (besides the boss). Speaking of the boss, chipping him with Javelins is a pain in the ass due to low accuracy, but enough hit and Jagen with his Silver Lance softens him enough for Marth to take the kill.

Chapter 2

Yay, it's Ogma time! He and possibly Barst and Cord will be sticking around with me while others are being killed off.

Marth positions himself so Darros can recruit himself and promptly get hit hard by the enemies he betrayed. He's going to die as soon as I can manage it, which happens to be...on turn 2, when he lures in a pirate that doubles him to finish him off. That's your punishment for not being a good character! Anyway Caeda and Marth use their effective weapons to great effect on the two cavaliers here, gaining a level up each that produces...1 luck for Marth, 1 luck and 1 skill for Caeda. Well that kind of sucks.

I lure in Castor so he can commit suicide immediately. Such a proud life he had! Then I have Gordin use the save point because I've got a bit of a cluster**** of pirates around me to deal with. They go down fairly easily though, because Ogma is awesome mainly, but also because I have tons of dudes to throw at them. Marth visits the village, someone irrelevant visits the armory, and we begin the "fun" process of fighting another boss who does not like to get chipped easily enough for my liking. Unsurprisingly, the solution is "Jagen with a Silver Lance", with a liberal dose of Ogma smacking him on the head and a few more attacks.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

From: Cybat | #028
SD, huh? Well....have fun with that. Are you going to do much reclassing?

I haven't decided yet. I'll definitely do some, but I have to make up my mind on whether I want to do a fairly "intelligent" approach to reclassing (as in, do it to fix problem stats or improve characters in general) or go for random idiocy and make changes all the time for no reason.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

Chapter 3

In this chapter, we fight more dudes with axes. Didn't see that coming!

Caeda gets shot by the northern hunter because I didn't bother to position her properly, but she lived, countered with a Javelin, then killed him on her turn. This also lured the enemy fighters to come towards her, meaning that when she recruited Navarre, they only had the two thieves to deal with. Kind of nice. Draug, Cord and Gordin hang around to deal with those fighters while everyone else goes to fight the boss, clearing out everything along the way. Oh, and Caeda flies over the mountains to visit the armory, just to see what it may contain.

I let Gordin die here because he sucks. Ogma scores a lucky 5% critical on the boss which makes my life a lot easier (saves me from wasting time getting Navarre to walk over and give him his Killing Edge, because a crit is kind of needed to handle this guy effectively since he's durable AND annoyingly fast so he doubles most units, preventing the usual chip shot strategy). Marth finishes the job and gets another terrible level up. All of my units are getting **** stats it seems, I might use Wolf and Sedgar just for the sake of seeing those little green "+1" symbols because I'm clearly not getting enough of them anywhere else.

And now is where I'll actually have to make up my mind about reclassing, since chapter 4 is when that option becomes available.

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

Yea I like Claude/Fury the best for Sety and Fee. Having Fee with B Level Staffs is sick.

--
Whatever...

Chapter 4

I make Jagen a Dracoknight here. And Bord becomes a Dark Mage. Yeah, he's dying this chapter. I also forget to forge the Wing Spear (or Rapier) prior to beginning this chapter. Kind of a shame, but I'm sure I can make do.

Jagen, Draug, Ogma, Barst and Cord handle the guys coming from the north, everyone else prepares to head off the approaching cavaliers and avoid killing Matthis. I don't know why. He's the guy we get the term "Matthis Syndrome" from. He's pathetic. And yet I'm going to recruit him and then have him commit suicide right after because apparently that's how I roll. And then after saying that I mix up which healer was going where so Lena is nowhere near him to recruit him. Oh well, the EXP he gives me is worth more than he could ever contribute on his own anyway. He's that bad.

After clearing up the cavalier rush, Abel lures in the bow units with a Javelin, taking one out on his own while Jagen and Caeda fly across to kill one of the Horsemen. They'll have to eat a hit from the other but both have enough HP/Def to handle it. Caeda gained strength on her level up, which was also probably the first truly good level up I've seen. Hooray! Oh, and Marth recruits Merric. Also hooray.

Once you cross the little bridge, the map is a joke. There's a cleric to kill for whoever wants free WEXP, Marth goes off to visit a village, and the boss is an idiot who lacks range so Abel throws a Javelin at him, Merric blasts him, and Caeda finishes him off and gains another HP/Str/Skl/Spd/Lck level. I knew there was a reason I liked her. Anyway, this chapter actually screwed me up once or twice by killing Julian but then I remembered to stop being a moron who tries to do everything on player phase and just let Caeda do some enemy phase nuking with Wing Spear and everything was happy

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

Oh right, forgot to mention a fun little thing. When the chapter ends, you get told you're heading off to bail out Hardin and to give him a Silver Sword. Funny part is, he doesn't have the weapon rank to actually use it.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

Chapter 5

The 10 unit limit on this chapter is kind of a pain for gaiden-chapter playthroughs, doesn't leave much room to bring death fodder. Fortunately I got my killing done in previous maps so I'm not going to be hurting on the numbers front. Also, this chapter has Hardin join us. It really does amuse me a bit to think of how many people know of him as just a random guy that joins in this game and not as the "main villain" of FE3.

Jagen carries a few superfluous weapons so he can give them to Hardin, Sedgar and Wolf. The other two guys are death fodder. Caeda lures and nukes some horsies, Merric helps out because he has to head that way to recruit Wendell, everybody else focuses on the task of hunting down those thieves so Marth can rescue the village. I don't think it contains anything I even want (a Firestone, I believe) but I'm going for it anyway. And I get it. Yay?

Roshea and Vylland die. I'm not even sure I spelled their names correctly, that's how worthless they are. Anyway, Hardin gets hurt but he has room to retreat, and I have enough people around to help bail him out. Lots of enemies die, Caeda ends up dodging a bow attack that would killed her because I forgot the dude had a Steel Bow instead of an Iron one. Woops. Good thing I got lucky there. Aside from that, everything went perfectly, things died, and my level ups continued to be mostly awful.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

So I guess I'll probably post my intended team for this run.

1. Marth (shocking choice!)
2. Caeda
3. Abel
4. Cain
5. Hardin
6. Lena
7. Merric
8. Ogma
9. Barst
10. Cord
11. Beck
12. Bantu (*sigh*)
13. Tiki (until she gets sacrificed <_< But I'll resurrect her at least!)
14. Julian
15. ???

I'm thinking Wendell for the final spot, but I'm not really decided. Might go with Minerva instead. I wish I didn't need to drag Bantu along all game long just so he can recruit Tiki, and there aren't really any good options (are there any options at all?) to replace him once he dies shortly after. Maybe I'll use a generic >_>

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

Chapter 6

Oh look a castle. Going to be sacrificing a fair number of dudes this map - Wrys, Jagen and Navarre.

I forge the Ridersbane even though it's not entirely necessary and have Lena Warp Hardin north so he can kill the two cavaliers up there and prevent enemy Thieves from escaping with any loot. The sacrificial lambs lead the way so they can die and get out of my life ASAP.

You know, once you clear out that initial little chokepoint, this chapter is pretty simple. Nothing too noteworthy happens, Hardin eats a crit from a Thief but he has plenty of HP to spare so it's not a problem, and the other Thieves can't hurt him. We do get a cool little sequence heading into the final room - Abel dodges attacks from both a knight and an archer (he had the HP to survive both hits anyway) and he scored a double critical on the knight, killing it with ease. Nice going. He even leveled up and got strength and speed (and other stuff) from it. I'm impressed. This sets up Merric, Wendell and Barst to team up to kill the boss. These bosses with no ranged attacks are pretty wimpy, I must say.

Chapter 6x

Wolf goes General, Sedgar goes Hero, everyone in this chapter who isn't on my side yet goes DEAD. Draug also gets dragged along to die, he's no longer of use to me.

This chapter is pathetic. Enemies are spaced out a lot and not overly threatening. There's a bit of an initial surge towards you but even that is easily turtled, only a challenge if you try to push through a bit, which I do just for fun. I try to feed some kills to Merric here because he's underleveled. Marth takes a few dudes north to visit the village that contains a person I will immediately be having killed. So much point to this! Everyone else heads south and lazily mows down enemies while they wait for Marth to be anywhere near seizing. Athena gets recruited then takes three turns to get killed by an archer. Merric, Ogma and Sedgar do the honours of killing the boss while I wait.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

There's no need to assign Bantu and Tiki seperate slots. Keep Bantu around until he recruits her, then kill him. Problem solved! Since this frees up a slot for your team, I recommend Fighter Roger.

--
I don't like this duchy. Now, it's an adventurer.

Chapter 7

Hey, it's some people I can recruit later. Shame I can't just kill them now since it's not like any of them besides Minerva have a shot at being left alive when I get them anyway. Also worth pointing out that last chapter, Cain FINALLY hit D Lances so he can start using Javelins. Should have been trying some Iron Lance shots against axe users earlier in the game I guess, wish he'd had it sooner (especially since his stats have been going better than Abel so far), but at least it's here now. I have to say, weapon rank is THE most underrated stat, at least among people new to the series.

I open the door and have Barst kill a guy over the wall with a Hand Axe, then Sedgar walks in to start smacking dudes. Everything in that little area dies, and I retreat to start absorbing the abuse of the draco/pegasus knight brigade. Good thing the Whitewings sisters leave when Minerva is defeated, or they could get on my nerves. Merric takes her out with Excalibur to end the threat, then it's just the two mook air horsies and the generic dracoknight to take out. The draco is taken out by a few chip shots and oh Barst crits it. So many random critical hits this playthrough, feels especially weird after FE4 where you don't crit without the skill or weapon (and the guys who get those can manage absurd enough activation rates that you come to feel like it's just ordinary). One peg dies to Caeda, the other goes after Merric who still has Excalibur out. Yeah that didn't end well for her.

Moving past the save point triggers the reinforcements to start showing up on enemy phase. I kind of wish I had Jagen as a Dracoknight here (or had switched Wendell for the lulz) to fly over terrain and plug one of the hard to reach forts, but oh well. Caeda goes for one herself to solve that problem, and the rest of the reinforcements are EXP fodder anyway besides the ones that show up with Ridersbanes. And after a screw up where I left Hardin in its range and he died, I sent Caeda to block that fort instead and everyone was happy. Except for me because I have to lug Bantu around all game and he sucks.

Ogma manages to miss two shots with an Armorslayer against the boss. Oh well, Merric lands an Excalibur crit to end it.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

From: MalcolmMasher | #039
There's no need to assign Bantu and Tiki seperate slots. Keep Bantu around until he recruits her, then kill him. Problem solved! Since this frees up a slot for your team, I recommend Fighter Roger.

I have never actually used Roger. Hmm. I usually recruit Tiki as the last thing in that chapter, but I guess I could spare an enemy long enough to get him killed. Alright, I already am using two Fighters but hell, Fighters suck in most games so let's enjoy being able to make them useful. Roger better be thanking you for saving his life.

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

Actually no, I'm going to kill Cord, he's falling behind too much anyway. Wolf also dies this map, freeing me up to keep Wendell around because damn it, I like the old guy with the Pope hat. He's always served me well in this game and in FE3.

Chapter 8

This is a pretty easy map to handle as long as you know where you can and can't go before the reinforcement swarms get triggered. The two new recruits join Wolf and Cord in getting killed right away, and Hardin is ahead of the curve too much so he gets to take on the duty of buying stuff.

The act of getting my guys killed is oddly enough the real danger here, because they end up distracting the enemies enough that they all get clogged up instead of trickling to me in a more orderly fashion, so it's actually a bit harder to set up a good defensive position that won't end up killing Roger. It more or less works out in the end though. Then I lure in all the enemies in the north western area for no reason beyond masochism. This gets ugly really fast since I also trigger the reinforcements. Yay me and my BRILLIANT TACTICAL MIND. It would have been okay if I had just moved Sedgar far enough out of reach to not be killed by a Horseman. Wow, I just had to restart one of the easiest chapters in the game. I didn't need to do that even on my aborted H5 playthrough. This is pathetic.

Repeated attempt goes pretty much the same up until the part where I'm not an idiot this time. I lure the hordes on the same turn I kill the boss with Marth and Caeda (Marth missed though, the lazy bastard). That way I can pick them off for EXP without worrying about safety because I'll seize on the same turn. And that I do. Yay, now I can pretend I don't completely suck at this game.

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

I've heard H1 is basically normal without the prologue. Should have at least done H2. <_<

Chapter 9

Oh boy, I get to fight a dragon. Good thing I can utterly exploit its lack of range with Excalibur. This is a bit of a nightmare map on H5 but a fair bit more manageable on this difficulty. Still, the pirates here are fairly strong so it's good to be careful. Or be aggressive so you win before reinforcements show up and make life miserable. Whichever works. I get my first generic replacement unit here! Unil the Curate, you are welcomed into the fold, and I dedicate your sacrifice to our Lord the RNG.

Roger the Fighter is kind of weak, but very nice speed. Looking forward to seeing how he performs.

Marth gets escorted to the village by Abel, who can mow down the pirate/thief in the way. Jorge gets recruited, he puts his bows in the convoy (they'll be sold, at least the silver one, since no one I use will ever have the weapon rank for it) and then tries to find the nearest way to die. Julian does some looting and I'll use a Warp staff charge to get the southeastern treasure. The rest of the team is devoted to getting me to the boss and killing him as quickly as I can.

Everything goes according to plan except Roger keeps missing, which bothers me, but he still manages to kill a dude and get a decent level up. Cain gets warped as soon as the Thief loots the Wyrmslayer; I won't get to use it on the boss but I'll have it for the future when it will certainly come in handy. The reinforcements show up a bit before I can kill the boss or seize, but I'm close enough to not mind, and I could have used more Warp if I really needed to. In any event, they end up dying besides the ones who kill of Jorge for me, and then I manage to set up the boss kill for Roger, just for amusement. Had about three people in range to finish it had he missed both his attacks, so it was no real danger. Yay, I win.

--
Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

From: Xuxon | #043
I've heard H1 is basically normal without the prologue. Should have at least done H2. <_<

Oh well. I still have FE5 looming so if you just like seeing me rage, that should be plenty for you!

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We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny

Well, I haven't played FE5 so I won't be reading that part. And it's not that I like seeing rage, I just think it'd be boring for you to play H1, especially with that team.

Eh, boredom isn't much of an issue. When it's a more casual playthrough it might be, but for the purposes of this topic, it's actually a lot more annoying to have written up events as they happen only to have a stupid death at the very end that forces me to restart and render everything I just typed invalid. It's hard to motivate myself to re-write everything when it's pretty much all the same except for very minor differences, so me winning without too much difficulty makes for better reading than "I ****ed up so the next time stuff happens and I win"

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Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

From: Panthera | #047
render everything I just typed invalid.

uh what? you don't need to delete anything just cause you died. and if it more or less happens the same way without the death, just say that!

I do, usually, but I like to include a few specific events (bits of particularly good or bad luck, the oddly large number of glitches I've been hitting in this series, etc) and it feels cheap to leave them in if they didn't technically happen in the final run.

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Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.

Alright, moving on. For some reason I don't like this next chapter very much.

Chapter 10

Most eventful first turn ever. No one can even get in range to fight an enemy.

That changes on turn 2 of course. Two cavaliers go down to Hardin and Caeda with effective weapons immediately, then Marth and Roger team up to take out a third and the fourth eats yet another of those surprisingly frequent random crits from Abel. Merric and Ogma kill the thief and prepare to start clearing out the interior of the building so Marth can go recruit Sacrifice...er, Maria. A few units stick around to deal with the approaching flying units and make some progress towards the boss.

Caeda crits a Dracoknight AND Barst crits a Knight on the next enemy phase. This is starting to get a bit silly now. It does make my life a lot easier though since Barst makes the little gauntlet of archery much easier by killing part of it and hurting another member. The outside team goes after the boss and also the stores while the indoor squad continues to advance steadily and try to recruit the M sisters (that's Maria and Minerva for those who aren't capable of understanding things unless they're actually said intelligently). Then the big bunch of reinforcements show up and I decide Caeda can handle the boss and his buddies easily so the rest of Team Outside goes back to prevent those jerks from screwing things up for Team Inside.

Caeda kills yet another boss, to no one's surprise. Gains a point of strength from it too, as well as capping her speed. I'm okay with that. Meanwhile the reinforcements run into some heavy resistance. As in, they die. The knights live a while because of their low movement, but the cavaliers and Horsemen find out that Ridersbane plus general badassery (it's a word) and Sedgar scoring random crit #429 all adds up to me winning. In the north, Maria gets recruited then immediately meatshields against the powerful enemy Hero, who destroys her. Despite watching her sister die before her eyes, Minerva has no problem flying up to Marth and recruiting herself. Yay! Oh, and then Ogma and Merric combine to drop the Hero and get me my first Master Seal.

From then on, it's just waiting for Marth to walk to the long since vacated castle gate.

--
We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny