Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Krumbsthumbs
Oct 23, 2010

2nd Place.
1st Loser.
I think it depends on the translation you get of FE6, but Sophia does use those pauses in the copy I've played through. My brother and I first thought she just had asthma because she spoke in a manner very similar to a character on Malcolm in the Middle rather than anime shyness.

She's also an awkward unit to use and shows up at level 1 really late in the game after another person in her class shows up earlier at level 12. For this reason, a lot of people (rightfully so) don't like her.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
I think Farina has exactly the same conversation as Serra if you send her there. A very similar one, at least.

Fedule
Mar 27, 2010


No one left uncured.
I got you.

Melth posted:

the one chapter where the fight is absolutely pointless and nonsensical where you have to shove like 3 priests to get the best possible ending.

"Three".

"Three".

:shepface:

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Fedule posted:

"Three".

"Three".

:shepface:

I mean there's like 20 priests, but almost none have to be moved at all. You can treat the rest like a wall to walk around and just push aside a handful in the middle

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.
Yes but Treasure

FoolyCharged
Oct 11, 2012

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Somebody call for an ant?

Melth posted:

I mean there's like 20 priests, but almost none have to be moved at all. You can treat the rest like a wall to walk around and just push aside a handful in the middle

Well I mean you could only push three.

I mean, if you were some kind of monster that hates using shove at every opportunity, but hey I won't judge

fade5
May 31, 2012

by exmarx



How does it feel to be completely wrong, Nergal?:getin:

Seriously, it's amazing just how hard Canas invalidates so many late-game bosses with Luna. Ursula, Sonia and Limstella are all super strong Anima users, but Canas just chumps them all like it's nothing. There's just something so satisfying about nuking a boss like Limstella in one shot with Luna, especially with a gratuitous Druid critical. 75 damage.:allears:

So I guess you only get two Lunas on HHM? I thought you got three, but that might be Normal mode only and/or me usually stealing an extra Luna via the mine glitch feature (along with Vaida's Uber Spear).

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

FoolyCharged posted:

Well I mean you could only push three.

I mean, if you were some kind of monster that hates using shove at every opportunity, but hey I won't judge

Shove is pretty cool. I usually bring at least 2 people whose whole job is just shoving. On the other hand, I really don't like what happened to rescuing.

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
You could beat that chapter on turn 1 with a bolting tome or something if you really wanted to.

Lord Ephraim
Feb 22, 2008

That's one way to get ahead in life, but nothing beats an axe to the face.
Isn't there two coded female sages in the game? One called "uber" Sage (I only know the term from the FEGirls romhack) with higher caps and increased base constitution, and the class Nino uses. I wonder why HHM coded Sonia and Limstella differently from Eliwood normal and hard modes. Seems like a programming oversight.

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
Yeah, I'm sure that on the normal modes, Limstella and Sonia have defense/resistance caps of 30/30. I'm guessing their crummier stats is just a programming oversight.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Kajeesus posted:

You could beat that chapter on turn 1 with a bolting tome or something if you really wanted to.

Yeah, but then you get no treasure and it's a really easy chapter to just fight through. The only difficult part is remembering to not put a handaxe next to the one bishop who attacks.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!


Slightly cheesy title, very interesting chapter. Unless I misremember, the frequently listed requirement for unlocking it (beat Victory or Death in 20 turns or less) is incomplete. You must also have played 19x, 19xx (so it must be HM and you must have killed Kishuna in 19x and trained Nils to 7), and 23x. That makes it the most secret of all secret chapters.

It is the third, and final, Kishuna level (the first 2 having been 19x and 23x) as this time he allows himself to be killed instead of escaping as he had before. Like most of the Kishuna chapters, it really raises at least as many questions as it answers. “Solve one mystery and along comes another,” as Athos put it.

Other than Kishuna’s anti-magic field, which is now somewhat old hat but does dominate the map more thoroughly than on some previous chapters, this is a pretty straightforward battle on anything but HHM. There’s a broad array of enemy types, a couple of chests to steal, and a circular walk to get around to the boss’s chamber and then kill him.

On HHM it’s very different and much, much harder- and much more rewarding.


Chapter Summary:
Hector and company somehow either get lost right outside the Dragon’s Gate or get bored waiting for Athos and wander off and find another ruin. Inside, the morph Kishuna reflects on his wretched life and how his creator, Nergal, threw him away. He decides to let Hector and the others kill him, though his guards mount a desperate defense.




Darn it, Hector! We were at the dragon’s gate. Now we’re going somewhere else. Much like Crazed Beast, this chapter happens only in Hector’s story because he screws up or gets distracted or something.
So they come across another ruin and decide to go D&D on the place.



Of course, you ARE attacked from the rear on Light no matter what. And this justification could be used for searching the entire island.




Another Kishuna flashback. Flip back to 23x and note it’s the same portrait. It could almost be the same conversation, except that Nergal has changed completely.

It’s unclear how much time has passed between these two scenes but whereas in his early days when Nergal treated Kishuna like a human being and was interested in his opinions, now he just sees his morphs as tools.




We don’t know what Kishuna’s answer was to Nergal’s question about what Kishuna thought of his creator, but I’d imagine he viewed Nergal as either a parent or a god.




And what Nergal says to him is all too similar to Sonia’s abuse of Nino.




He throws Kishuna out, not even caring enough to kill him (or have one of his morphs kill him) and be done with it. And seemingly forgets about him.




Alone with his memories, Kishuna waits in the abandoned tower.




And then these guys kick in the door and a totally inaccurate view of the enemies present is shown!




Nils senses that something is different about Kishuna’s anti-magical aura.




No one else pays much attention since they can’t seem to feel the distinction.




Hector apparently forgets that we’re the aggressors here and ignores all talk of the enem being sorrowful and decides to just kill them all. Since Kishuna doesn’t flee, that may be what he wants anyway.


Battle Preparations & the Map:




Complete list of all Berserkers fought in every chapter in every mode up to this point:
• Georg, Valorous Roland

Complete list of all enemies on this chapter in HHM that are not Berseerkers:
• Kishuna, Magic Seal

You could be forgiven for forgetting that the Berserker class even existed up to this point. Chances are you’ll never find the Ocean Seal to promote Dart without a guide, Georg is a forgettable enemy and you’ll probably just think of him as a warrior, and Hawkeye is bad. And as far as I can remember there’s not even a single Berserker on this whole chapter on any mode but HHM.

But here in the most secret of all chapters you fight about 20-50 of them and nothing else at all mixed in. And they’re terrifying opponents. You will see your tankiest units torn in half in two blows- or one as they crit you over and over. The only safe solution is magic- and that doesn’t work.

Here are the stats on an average one (many are as high level as 20:




I have a very good, very high level Hector. He has 24 Def. My insanely defensive Heath and Eliwood have 23 and 20 respectively. That means even my toughest unit will be taking about 13 or so damage per hit, my moderately tanky ones will be taking about 1/3 their health, and anyone without spectacular Def is killed in 1-2 hits

They’re huge enough that most axes don’t slow them down and have enormous speed anyway. Not everyone on my team can double them at all- and most of my best team members can’t double them while carrying heavy weapons.

And that respectable speed plus decent defense and very high HP makes them flat-out impossible for many of my units to kill in one round even with silver weapons.

20 or so skill is enormous, and a fair number of them wield weapons with accuracy in the 80 range. That makes 120 hit. My dodgiest fighting unit that isn’t a mage is Eliwood at 73 currently. That means he gets hit 50% of the time. Even if they have one of their least accurate weapons (65 or so) that’s still 35% or so hit rate on my dodgiest warrior.

Furthermore, they have a dangerously high crit rate of 25% of so before weapon bonuses. Eliwood has enough luck that everyone has 0 against him, but for most people the net rate is about 15%. That’s a 15% chance of instant death on just about every hit.

The crit rate is hard to reduce, but the hit rate you can do something about. There are a couple of pillars on the map granting +20 avoid and +1 def. The trouble is that they aren’t located near chokepoints so you can’t stop the enemy from swarming past you to people not on pillars- unless you go really slowly and have people hang back.

But the weapon triangle, of course! Afterall, berserkers are locked to axes so every single one of them is sword-counterable, right?




Wrong! Tons of the punks- at least a fourth- have swordslayers, which are like swordreavers but with better stats (huge accuracy!) and super-effective damage vs heroes and myrmidons and Lyn and for some reason lower price. That last one is a bit of a mystery.




“She weighs 14 ambiguous weight units and hurls 200 gold, custom-tooled axes at 2 rounds per fight. It costs 4800 gold to throw this weapon for 12 battles.” –Meet the Berserker

Doubly wrong. Fully half of the berserkers are armed with tomahawks, an incredibly powerful upgrade of the already excellent handaxe. Their power is, in fact greater than a steel axe and nearly as good as a silver one with solid accuracy and a devastating 1-2 range. It doesn’t matter if using a sword takes 15 off their hit chance, they’ll all get endless free attacks against you from range and drop you in 2 hits.




Swords are good against these chumps though. Devil axes are the worst weapon in the whole game. Besides awful accuracy and preposterously high weight, enough to slow even these guys by 5, there’s the whole problem where even when you do hit there’s a 31% chance of doing the damage to yourself instead. Technically 31- your luck, but enemies in this game have 0 luck.

That maybe a third of the enemy has these things (I know my fractions add to more than 1, many enemies have 2 weapons) makes the lever MUCH easier. Of course, no Def can save you if one does land a hit.


So when facing a crowd of mixed axes and swordslayers, what’s the best weapon to respond with? Well if it’s more than 1/3 swordslayers, lances are a net profit since reaver accuracy effects are doubled. If it’s less than 1/3 swordslayers, lances are a net loss. Swords are advantageous in the reverse circumstances. Axes are always neutral. That’s a simplification of course, the reality depends on the true hit system and the exact stats of everyone involved. But there’s actually a better option: axereavers. An axereaver will get slammed by the swordslayer, but be doubly dodgy against the other axes. Now you see why I bought so many of them. I’ve got something like 8 total at this point.

Now there are a few things to know about the AI on this level. First of all, almost all of those berserkers are very aggressive and will begin making for your position immediately. So will those that quickly begin spawning from the various staircases. So you COULD just grab a pillar and wait out the storm for a while in theory, but in practice the reinforcements only get quickly from behind, come from many directions, and will include far too many people using weapons no one person can deal with. Plus that takes too long on a max ranking run.

Second, a few berserkers (the two side by side in the top rightish area with handaxes and the 4 nearish Kishuna’s door) are not very aggressive and will not move until you enter their range. Meanwhile the 2 berserkers standing in the only 1 space caps in the top and left walls have tomahawks and will not move under any circumstances. Knowing who’s going to come at you and when it very important here.




Oh and here’s Kishuna himself. He’s leveled up a bit and gotten marginally tougher, but in actuality he’s pretty much the same as he was 18 chapters ago (though on a throne now). Over the course of 18 chapters, the party has gotten immensely strong (except for Sain who was the one who killed him then and is at roughly the same power now). No one can double him, but many people can hit him even on his throne now and he’ll take much more damage. Still, if you’re unlucky he can last several turns and you don’t want that.



Objective: Kill Kishuna
Secondary Objective: Get the Fortify from the top right chest
Secondary Objective: Get the Runesword from the top left chest
Reinforcements: All berserkers with mixed swordslayers, tomahawks, and devil axes. They come from the staircases in a counterclockwise sequence as marked. Additionally, starting on turn 12 every staircase will begin spawning them. And if you try to be a smarty and Warp directly into Kishuna’s room, the door opens to let the 4 charge in, 4 more appear from thin air with swordslayers AND tomahawks, and 2 more spawn from the stairs and 2 continue to spawn from those stairs
Turn Limit: 0. It’s the last 0 chapter.
Units Allowed: 4 + Hector. And THERE it is, the reason this chapter is so hard. Just a few berserkers would be nothing if you could bring a healer or two with physic or Ninian or Nils to help out and enough people to deal with attacks from all sides. But you’re going to have to make everyone count.
Units Brought:
1) Hector. Required and AMAZING. If it weren’t for his bad speed I’d say he was pretty unambiguously the best for this level. He can use swords, which are good against most berserkers, and handaxes for the rest. And he has the Def to actually take hits from them and the Con to wield huge weapons and Str to 2-hit kill with them. And mine is only slightly above average in speed and fast enough to double them.
2) Eliwood. One of my best units, though he doesn’t have the raw damage needed to down these guys quickly. 7 move is very nice and he takes (and dodges) hits very well and supports hector and can wield such handy weapons as axereavers, so he’s pretty darned good.
3) Sain. Really, REALLY cannot take a hit, but he’s highly mobile and does more damage than anyone but Hector and can use all weapon types (though he’s slowed by heavier axes). One of my best on offense, but I’ve got to make sure I keep a weapon triangle edge at all times or he’s dead.
4) Heath. Like Sain but better (There’s a scary phrase) but painfully without axes. He’s actually almost like Hector on Sain’s horse and will be getting some dangerous missions on his own as a result since almost no one can survive like he can.
5) Raven. Hits like Sain and tanks better but he’s fairly slow. Critically, he’s fast enough to still double with Blade weapons, and the silver Blade pushes him up into easy 2-hit kill territory. Lack of axereavers is painful, but being able to use axes himself helps make up for it.
Notable Units Rejected:
1) Canas. Canas is actually awesome enough that he’s surprisingly effective in this anti-magic field just running around the edges. He 2-hit kills any berserker and dodges or tanks and heals easily with physic. He did decently well in my experimental first try of this chapter and the reason I’m leaving him behind is mostly a need for more mobility on the team. If I were attempting a Warp staff approach to this chapter I would of course make him the centerpiece.
2) Nils. So close to making the cutoff. He’d probably actually beat out Canas for team member number 6 on a non-warp staff approach. Likely replacing Sain actually since Raven’s slowness would cease to be a problem.
3) Erk. Hits harder than Canas and tanks nearly as well with his superior speed (and my Canas’s awful luck). But unlike Canas he can’t use Physic or Warp, so he has none of that kind of utility. So he’d end up being deadweight way too often.
4) Any other mage. Anti-magic field and Canas is better at everything.
5) Bartre. Sucks. Would be doubled and has no weapon versatility. He’d go down in one round.
6) Fiora. With an axereaver her survivability would be good, but she can’t deal enough damage and she’s too slow. Way too slow.
7) Florina. Dead in one round, doubled, not enough damage.
8) Jaffar. He’d be coming if I didn’t have chest keys, but I have all the chest keys I can ever use and then some. His damage isn’t terrible, but it’s not enough for the speed I need and silencer is undependable (and if I wanted damage I couldn’t count on, I’d have a swordmaster on the team). And being sword-locked is terrible here with all the swordslayers.

The War Room, Part 33
The team would look VERY different on a Warp rush, but I’m not doing that because 1) I don’t need to save the turns 2) I can’t actually survive turn 2 with any unit with decent probability 3) it makes it hard to get the treasure. A lot of people do warp rushes here and probably expect one, but I’ll explain the general idea for those not in the know:

On Cog of Destiny I acquired a unique A-rank staff called Warp. It has 5 uses and costs 1500 per use, a huge amount but possibly worth it for its really remarkable effect. Warp targets an ally in an adjacent square and then lets you teleport that ally to ANY square on the map the unit can traverse that’s within the Caster’s Mag/2 spaces. So for my best user (Canas) that’s an amazing 12 squares. Adding nifty to awesome, the teleported unit can still take its own turn. There are as many applications as you have the imagination for. Here are a few to illustrate:

1) The most obvious is giving a unit like Heath an effective attack range of 22 for 1 turn, allowing you to strike down just about anyone anywhere on a map. Take out a berserk or bolting user or the like.
2) Far more useful for a ranking run, you could use it to save many turns on your tactics score by getting a unit somewhere hard to reach way ahead of schedule. For example, one could get Hector to fight Kaim in The Berserker way ahead of schedule, circumventing both enemies and terrain. Or I could have teleported a powerful unit onto the top left area of Victory or Death I had trouble storming to take control of it more quickly.
3) Really expensive trade chaining I guess?
4) There’s a similar (But basically reversed) staff called Rescue that teleports an ally from ½ Mag range to the user. Warp someone who has that and they can pull other people to them for faster transport or the like?
5) There’s this one secret shop on Sands of Time in an area you can only get to with Warp. It sells nothing good.

The trouble is most of these things are 1) prohibitively expensive 2) Not worth one of your precious 5 charges 3) A bad idea anyway. For example, skipping most of the enemies directly (or indirectly by ending the chapter before reinforcements show up) costs you XP and possibly treasure. The game’s ranking requirements are balanced around not using the Warp Staff basically and tactics is not the most difficult category to max anyway. Also you’re likely to end up feeding a ton of kills to the warped unit, overleveling them. 4) Better done in some other way (Use Silence or the like to take down enemy staff users or just use restore or whatever, use Nininian and clever rescue-chaining to move people impossibly far anyway, etc.) Oh and 4) You get Warp WAAAAAY too late in the game

Rescue is similar but less useful and with even fewer uses.

There are a few tricks for getting more utility out of them. For example, you can Warp a person who has rescued someone else, essentially getting 2 warps for the price of one (minus the ability to immediately attack a problem target). Or you could, say, Warp a person who Ninian just buffed with Ninis’s Grace or the like, allowing them to survive in an otherwise untenable position. Ultimately, these kinds of things only mitigate, rather than solve, any of the mentioned problems.

Really both are very fun and cool staves and I wish they were more available in this and other FEs in one form or another, but their usefulness is hampered by poor availability and high price and a lack of real need for them.

That said, people do use them a lot here on 32x and with good reason: it can potentially save you many turns. Teleport a unit directly to Kishuna (Remember, you can cast staves from outside the anti-magic zone IN just fine) and have that person kill him immediately or finish him next turn. The problem is the game is wise to that so there’s a hidden trap that activates. 4 super berserkers poof out of thin air in Kishuna’s room, another 2 appear on the staves and reinforcements from there start immediately, and the door opens to let more in. No one survives 10 Berserker attacks. So you’d better hope whoever you send kills Kishuna immediately. Also, this means you don’t get the valuable treasure or XP. Of course, there are several ways to improve on this little stratagem:
1) teleport someone who rescued someone else and drop them by the door. Now each only has to fight a few berserkers. The trouble is they’re still in danger and this means you don’t save many turns afterall since you have to fight through a horde of berserkers with more on the way to win. Additionally, the rescuer cannot be warped on turn 1 or their turn is already over. (Half speed is certain death in that room even if you have 60 HP, 30 Def, and 30 base speed). So you lose a turn waiting or waste Nils’s turn dancing.
2) Use Ninis’s Grace or the like on the person you teleported. That lets them survive 1 round. Then they die the next.
3) Teleport to one of the staircases. This stops some reinforcements and means you don’t have to fight as many foes at once. But they just piled up at the chokepoint and now it’ll take forever to get to Kishuna.
4) Screw Kishuna’s room. Teleport to just outside it and door key in. No BS 4 guys from thin air. That makes the fight much, much easier but again costs you much of the turn advantage that’s the whole point. This is probably the wisest overall warp option. You don’t even need to go for Kishuna right away, just open up a second front to start the killing faster. The trouble is that it’s not like you have too many guys and not enough targets in your starting area.

Anyway, I checked pretty thoroughly and not one of my characters could last longer than 1 round with any weapon in that room. 2 if they started with Ninis’s grace. That meant something like 25% odds of killing Kishuna at a cost of about 2000 XP and 12,000 gold for 8 turns saved (terrible deal) compared to the best feasible time for just fighting through, but I should have enough turns anyway.

The ideal absolute max speed team for a warp rush that assumes average stats is probably Nils, Canas, and Guy or something. Give Guy a killing edge, have Nils use Fila’s Might on him, and have Canas warp him in. Assuming level 20 Guy with HHM bonuses you should have the speed to double Kishuna even with the 1 weight penalty. Accuracy 73 means true hit of 86 or so. Crit chance of 14 (Skill) +5 (S rank) +30 (killing edge) +15 (Class) is 64, dealing about 25 damage (with Fila’s Might) on a regular hit with HHM bonuses. It’ll be close, but that means that if either is a crit, Kishuna dies. That’s about 80% chance of a kill. Possibly it would be better to do something like dance for the warp user and warp a second person (Rebecca, Lyn, etc.) with a ranged weapon. Unfortunately, you can’t do anything like trade chain the warp staff and use it twice with 2 different characters because of the precise formation and the fact that you must bring Hector and he’s in a location such that he can’t be warped and still take his turn.

But yeah, I’m not doing that.


Back to Battle Preparations & the Map:


Exact gear really matters and it’s absolutely essential to cut no corners and not try to be thrifty. Everyone should be armed to the teeth with the absolute best available weaponry.




Everyone has a vulnerary since I can’t heal otherwise. Hector does enough damage with the Silver Blade to 2-hit kill nearly anything so he doesn’t need the Silver Blade, but another character does. He has a Killer Axe not a silver one because the reason for him not to kill things in one round is lack of speed, not power (for the same reason, the brave axe would actually be counterproductive in that it would slow him by 1 and he’s juuuuuuust fast enough to double a majority of them currently).

The handaxe is for when I don’t need a guy dead right away and the much higher priced tomahawk will allow Hector to fell the toughest opponents at range.




Unlike Hector, Eliwood uses a killer lance rather than a silver one because is failure to kill swordslayer enemies will come from not doing enough damage even with a silver lance. A crit will take care of it though.


The Silver Sword of course is the most powerful sword and will be his weapon of choice, strong enough to 2-hit kill many berserkers. He needs no axereaver because he can wield swords well instead and has spectacular dodge and doesn’t have the Con for the axereaver’s weight and needs the Silver sword’s power.




Sain desperately needs the Axereaver to survive; it will be his weapon of choice. He has enough power to 2-hit kill most axe-using berserkers with it and it will let him dodge their attacks with ease. There’s only one tomahawk and Hector will be able to kill more people with it, so Sain only gets a handaxe for ranged combat. He gets a killing edge not a silver sword because he can’t actually use a silver sword (no A rank there). The silver lance will kill any berserker he catches with a swordslayer.




Again, there’s only one tomahawk and Hector is the one who attacks the very toughest targets. The Silver Blade is the biggest, baddest sword there is and with it Raven can 2-hit kill absolutely any berserker not wielding a swordslayer on the whole map. And he can still double them, where he couldn’t with the steel blade. The seemingly weird Lancereaver is Raven’s only possible way to get weapon triangle advantage against someone with a swordslayer. I don’t expect to use it, but want the option. And for enemies who have a swordslayer while there are too many people with axes around for a lancereaver I’ve got a killer axe.




Because Heath is one of my best, he gets the worst gear. This be-mulleted prince of the skies is as tough as Hector and as fast as Raven and as strong and mobile as Sain. Cavalry type movement makes him exceptional for keeping up while looting chests and being good enough to actually survive on his own means he gets the job instead of Sain. Again, the axereaver is his bread and butter weapon, with it he can 2-hit kill most Berserkers and is nearly invincible. He can’t use a silver sword or anything like that instead. And he’s stuck with a javelin which he will probably not want to use, but it’s important to have the option. The silver lance will take care of any swordslayers.

This is the dream team. These are the 5 most badass warriors in Elibe with the best available gear for them personally for this job. They don’t need a healer or the iron rune; they’re untouchable. And they certainly don’t need some sissy warp staff to let them skip all the fighting. Bring your army of 30-40 level 14-20 berserkers with top tier weaponry on, Kishuna! This team will farm those chumps for XP!

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
Playing Through:




Hector’s slowness will be one of my biggest obstacles on this chapter, so the first thing is to rescue drop him as far as I can. That berserker has a swordslayer so Eliwood with his killer lance is a fairly natural pick (especially since Hector will be in support range). Sain or Heath with a silver lance would be even better, but Eliwood is good enough and since he’s slower I want him in this spot (the furthest he can get to).


Raven is faster than Hector and I don’t have enough people to rescue-drop them both, so he’ll be walking.




Just as planned, the group covered as much ground as possible, no one tripped over anyone else, and only the guy best prepared to deal with this berserker is in his range.




I planned to have Raven tank the chokepoint here, but just critting this guy is a nice bonus and minor time saver.




The enemy moves in and the first reinforcement spawns. Those guys up there have tomahawks, the most dangerous all-around weapon on the level. I can’t have them just attacking whoever they please and I need them cleared fast so Heath can get to work.




Raven is in the back, so he’s the natural choice for taking out the closest enemy, which he has juuuuust enough power to do.




Excellent.




These berserkers are dodge-y fellows (Eliwood weakened this one). I had to stop and rethink my exact formation here so I could accomplish the maneuver Heath and Sain now set up. It was easy to end up tripping over our own feet as it were.




Perfect! That seals the deal, this is now not merely a pretty good but a great all around Hector. He’s definitely recovered from his level 10-20 slump. His Res has always been awful, but I don’t plan on having him fight Nergal anyway.




So Heath rescues Eliwood and then Sain drops him. Only Eliwood belongs there because that berserker has a tomahawk, as do the ones on the right, and even one of the ones on the left. Now they can’t attack anyone who can’t counter and Eliwood even gets his support bonuses.




And Sain completes his move, handaxe equipped. The enemy has been nicely walled off.




Next turn, Raven kills one weakened tomahawker and Heath kills the next, pressing in close to get to the chest. Meanwhile, Merlinus is being run down by one Berserker (there’s nowhere safe for him this map, but I can get him behind Heath next turn and he can dodge well exactly as well as Kishuna on his throne).




You guys are on a roll!




Others press as far left as they can manage, using trading to keep swords equipped so the enemy can’t get any devil axe or tomahawk hits.




A pretty meh level for Eliwood. Still, more Str is helpful here in particular.




Here’s the status at the start of turn 4. Merlinus can indeed get behind Heath after Heath gets the treasure, but first Raven must move. Meanwhile, Sain and Hector and Eliwood have to do what that can to press on as fast as possible.




Another copy of the game’s best staff.




Heath flies back, Axereaver at the ready, and Merlinus takes cover.




Sain clears a berserker from the path. This level would be pretty meh if he hadn’t capped Str and Speed a long time ago.




This fellow here is the second unmoving door guard, so I need to start attacking him pronto if I want him dead.




A pretty meh level for Raven on the enemy turn as he holds the position near the stairs.




Heath clears the newest reinforcement there to destroy the long term threat, but Merlinus is still under fire. Fortunately he hasn’t been hit and could tank one anyway.




I can enter the final room now. That was pretty quick.




Another meh level for Raven, but he’s capped both Str and Speed now (as he always does early with his HHM bonuses). HP and Skill probably will too if he gets to 20. So, you know, standard Raven. Mine’s doing well on Def though and that’s his biggest weakness, so I’m glad to see that.




Yes! The one and only HHM swordslayer is mine. There were many, many times when it would have been nice to have, but none as important as the next battle.




I realize Eliwood will actually want an axereaver in particular for this next room since his goal is survival and weakening the enemy, not killing for now. A silver sword would kill more but dodge less. Sain can handaxe this guy from this spot anyway.




Eliwood took some bad hits is the reason he needs the axereaver (and this vulnerary).




Pretty awesome!




Turn 6, Kishuna’s morph army has both figuratively and literally disintegrated. He’ll get more reinforcements in the coming turns, but not enough to overcome my ability to kill them as fast as they spawn now.




Heath is guarding Merlinus and making for the next chest.




And Eliwood, Hector, and Sain sweep this room.




Excellent. He’s going to cap Str, Skill, Speed, AND Def at this rate. This is Hector at his finest.




The last berserker drops the door key. Sain sends Merlinus the killer lance he borrowed from Eliwood. It was a low priority weapon to begin with and has served its purpose.




I could have rushed to open the door immediately on 7 but that would spawn reinforcements immediately and then I’d get blocked. It’s faster to open it when everyone is ready to go.




Sain was positioned to take out this first spawn of the left stairs. Notice that even with a terrible devil axe, these enemies are always a 25% true hit chance from ruining your run if you don’t maintain the weapon triangle. Here I gambled I didn’t need it, particularly since Sain will be going to a safe environment.




Meh. I’d be loving some Def, but he’s only .2 below average there.




Heath keeps playing defense, taking out the last rear reinforcements for now, and gets another good level. Speed is capped already. Str isn’t far off. His Def has been his greatest bless so far and continues to be.




An interesting, but pricey weapon. This is the only one available in the game. And other than exactly one next chapter wielded by an enemy, it’s the only one to appear at all.




Raven opens the door.




Hector and Eliwood immediately move to control the flow of reinforcements.




Not bad! He might actually cap Luck! Just like a Sacred Stones character.




Kishuna is not impressed.




Sain’s killer axe crit does not change his mind. He’s been killed by us before. By Sain with a crit in fact. Kishuna is a connoisseur of being attacked with giant weapons at this point and a mere killer axe crit by the guy with the second highest Str growth in the game is too conventional for his refined tastes. That silver lance crit before at least had an amateurish charm to it.




Well I could win easy now- could have won a turn or two ago probably, but I’m going to sit it out and rack up kills and levels since I have extra turns on the clock.




Operation: Cap Everything proceeds according to plan.




Heath starts flying back. Raven has the bottom left stairs controlled, but more reinforcements are about to appear elsewhere.




Many of them in fact.




This speed bless is nuts. He didn’t even have this much of an edge at the beginning of the game when he was gaining like nothing else.




Looks bad, but Str and Speed are capped.




Same, but still just not that good. Sain hit his wall a long time ago and has only been growing weaker relative to the opposition since.




Considering his HHM bonuses, he’s not so impressive except for that awesome Def (and the fact that his now average speed capped a long time ago).




Nothing else to gain. Alright, it’s turn 14, I’m out of time to kill. I’ll weaken Kishuna and then finish him. But he deserves a really special sendoff doesn’t he? Something even the master of surviving Sain criticals doesn’t see coming.
Eliwood does the honors.




And Kishuna, amazed and impressed, gives him an excellent level up. Eliwood is massively above average overall, though it’s not really well distributed.

So what did I kill him with?




Magic. I just killed Kishuna with magic!


I can’t think of a better end for Kishuna- or this LP- than killing the magic seal with a magical attack. It’ll be hard to top that.


The War Room, Part 34

I thought about putting this part in earlier, but didn’t want to spoil the ending more than I had to. I also thought about putting it way earlier in the LP but since I never used the things before now and was planning this a while it seemed premature. Plus this is the first level where one gets the Runesword, so now I can talk about the distinction.

In the GBA FE titles there are 3 types of magic swords, one for each type of magic: the Light Brand attacks with Lightning, the Wind Sword attacks with Excalibur, and the Rune Sword attacks with Nosferatu. These are very rare weapons. In fact, the Wind Sword outright does not appear and is not obtainable in FE6 or 7 (except via the double dash bonus disc which provides all sorts of unique and crazy items) in 7. I believe there is exactly on available in 8: one of Queen Ismaire’s starting items when she’s unlocked in the postgame. There are 2 light brands available in 7, I think 2 or 3 in 6, and a technically unlimited number as random drops in 8 I believe. Rune Swords are almost as rare as wind until 8 when they’re a fairly common drop. The only available one in 7 is squirreled away in this most secret of chapters and other than that it only appears in the hands of one enemy next chapter.

What’s special about these swords? Well first off, they’re versatile weapons (1-2 range). Since there is no javelin equivalent for swords, that makes them quite special on its own. But secondly, they work by unique rules all their own.

When attacking with the Light Brand or Wind Sword at 1 range, they’re normal (pretty strong) swords. But at 2 range the character uses a unique animation and does a magic attack instead. Here’s Eliwood beating down some Berserkers:




Same animation as the Lightning light spell and Eliwood holds the sword up over his head among other things. This counts as Light, not a sword, for all purposes. It has weapon triangle advantage against dark, disadvantage against anima, and no position in the mundane weapon triangle. It doesn’t give sword rank XP either. The sword’s stats (hit, weight, Might, etc.) are unchanged. However the attack still works very differently.

First, it cannot score a critical (perhaps to avoid having to make a separate critical animation for each character for each sword on top of the magic animation already).

Second, it is reduced by Resistance instead of Defense as all magic attacks are.

Third, only half of the character’s Str applies for damage.

The result is more damage if ½ wielder Str < (Enemy Def- Enemy Res) and less otherwise. As it turns out, this inequality is rarely favorable. Plus the weapons are irreplaceable and hugely expensive, so they’re not worth using except in very special circumstances like this level.

The Wind Sword also has the effect of being super-effective vs air units (like the Excalibur spell)

Oh and the Runesword is even more unique. First of all, it does a magic attack at both 1 and 2 range, never a standard weapon one. But that’s good, because its magic attack isn’t Flux, it’s Nosferatu. The wielder is healed by all damage dealt. That’s amazingly useful, gamechanging even. Unfortunately, the sword costs a huge amount per use and there’s not much time for it.


Back to Playing Through:




They’ll never really know. Hector ran in yelling ‘no mercy’ without ever knowing who he was killing. The chapter is called “The Value of Life” in part to underscore that this was wrong- just as it was for Nergal to throw Kishuna away.




Which, you see, all morphs do (And Nergal told Kishuna to go rot away into dust). This is probably tied in with them having no quintessence to harvest.




That at least they figured out.




Which is very interesting when one thinks about it. See, the characters have been assuming all morphs HAVE to look like Nergal’s generally do with golden eyes, black hair, fair skin, and red lips. Athos describes them as bewitching. Nergal describes Limstella’s beauty as well as her strength perfect and calls her a masterpiece and describes Sonia as a failed work and no match for Limstella in any way.

And when he describes Kishuna as a failed morph, he makes no mention of his different appearance having not come out right, just his weakness and inability to fight. (Contrary to the assumption by many fans that Nergal rejects Kishuna for being a magic seal, he doesn’t make mention of that at all so it might or might not have been deliberate).

Plus, of course, the morphs on the final level do not look the same as the previous ones and Nergal says he gave them the appearances they do have deliberately.

In short, it looks like almost all the morphs have black hair, gold eyes, and red lips because Nergal thinks that’s beautiful (and apparently so do several other people including Brendan and Athos). He’s been trying to make every morph look like Limstella- and getting pretty darned close. Some people suggest this is because his almost- but not quite- entirely forgotten wife Aenir looked like this. There’s really no evidence either way for or against that.




Nils confirms that it was a morph and then reveals that he could hear Kishuna’s voice- probably not a real voice since he seems incapable of speaking and since the others would have heard it too.







Hector changes the subject as fast as he can while Unshakeable Faith plays once again. The tune has lost a lot of its drama because of this badly misplaced interlude after Victory or Death. If they did have to make this sidequest spin off of Victory or Death instead of Sands of Time/Battle Preparations, they could have at least transplanted the final scenes of VoD that are supposed to lead straight to Light to after this sidequest like they do with the material from Living Legend that ends up after Genesis.



And that’s a wrap. Poor Kishuna. No one ever understood him. And given his demonstrated ability to just escape at will from what should be deadly attacks, it seems that he chose to die here at the hands of Hector and other people who just thought he was soulless and inhuman rather than linger on.

He leaves many questions, as a man who can’t talk should. One I used to wonder about is “Where do his morphs come from?” We know he can’t be creating them himself because 1) In a special dialogue on The Value of Life, Renault describes the morphs there as Nergal’s creations and 2) Nergal said explicitly Kishuna couldn’t harvest quintessence and that’s one of the things that makes him view Kishuna as worthless later.

I think there are three possible answers. By far the best is that these are other rejected morphs. Renault- who has had the opportunity to personally observe Kishuna wandering as well as other morphs on the dread isle- says that, “Those…things…that he discards… They lose their way… and wander. And he cares not.” It seems plausible that with nowhere else to go- and many of them still eager to serve Nergal- these discarded morphs band together. Nils, when Kishuna summons his band of morphs on Genesis, comments that “He’s called some friends.” I’ve always assumed Nils was just speaking figuratively and could just as easily said “allies” or “accomplices” or whatever, but since Nils apparently can sense Kishuna’s emotional state, maybe he really did mean that they were friends.

Another possibility is that they were morphs created by Nergal with the purpose of protecting Kishuna back when Nergal cared about Kishuna but realized he couldn’t defend himself. That would explain why they’re so tremendously powerful. Kishuna’s morphs are among the strongest ever fought- even the ones you go up against in 19x. If Nergal wanted to make sure Kishuna wasn’t harmed- despite his aura that makes people angry and the tendency of people to see him as a monster- he might have given Kishuna some very strong morphs whose sole purpose was bodyguarding for Kishuna and who could not be re-tasked later. The best evidence for this is just that it would have been unwise for Nergal to throw away such strong servants without cause if he could order them to serve him again. But on the other hand, Nergal is throwing away really strong morphs all the time. He doesn’t save Ephidel, he kicked out the amazingly useful Kishuna for not being powerful in the one way Nergal wanted, he kills Sonia himself for only being moderately amazing in her fight against Brendan if you don’t do Night of Farewells, he threw Denning’s whole contingent at the party just to pretend he had an infinite reserve of morphs to send after them, and he gave Limstella some kind of power that would inevitably destroy her despite her being his favorite.

Last and weakest, they might be a guard force tasked with ensuring Kishuna really does go somewhere and rot away into dust rather than causing problems for Nergal. Evidence for this is circumstantial at best. But after he screws things up for Aion, he is next seen hundreds of miles away with a much bigger and more aggressive retinue. Maybe they were jailers meant to kill him if he went near Nergal- Nergal might not be able to kill him afterall due to his anti-magic field. Or perhaps the second group was meant to force him to fight against Eliwood and co and prevent them from reaching Athos (hence they keep fighting after Kishuna abandons them if attacked except for the small group right around him who go with him, same as his original group on 19x do). When that didn’t work, Nergal just decided to keep him locked up in a nearby tower instead where at least he couldn’t do any harm. You can build a narrative out of it that makes some sense, but there’s no evidence really. And it contradicts what Renault said- on the other hand, we KNOW Renault was wrong about some of what he said. Wrong or lying.


Another interesting question is is Kishuna, in fact, the morph of Renault’s friend? Many fans have speculated this is the case, but I don’t think so myself (but not for the usual reasons exactly). The basic theory usually goes like this: Kishuna was Nergal’s first morph (explicitly wrong), Renault’s friend was Nergal’s first morph (quite possibly also wrong), so they’re the same.

“Evidence” commonly presented include that we know Renault had a morph of his friend made and it was an early morph and that Kishuna was an early morph, and that Renault has a quote at the beginning of The Value of Life, and… that’s most of it actually. But Renault’s quote on this chapter has absolutely nothing to do with Kishuna. All he says is that these morphs were created by Nergal and that Nergal is not invincible and that he knows that. And like 80% of characters have a quote on the chapter after they’re recruited introducing themselves to the tactician as Renault does. But everyone says something on Light, so there’s no way to really give Renault such an introduction to the tactician quote too.

The most common “counterevidence” is that we know Kishuna was NOT the first morph because Nergal tells Kishuna that he’s the only morph (so far) he’s given emotions and that consequently he should have a name, not just a number. ““…I name you Kishuna. You are the only morph to whom I’ve given emotions. It won’t suffice simply to refer to you as a number.” –Nergal to Kishuna, Flashback, Genesis And then people arguing against the Kishuna = Renault’s friend theory say that Renault’s friend was the first morph. But that’s not really clear. The two relevant quotes are this one to Canas “When Nergal first created his morphs, he was not alone.” In a support conversation and also the battle conversation between Renault and Nergal, “You desired to bring back your dead friend. You were my experiment, and I completed my morph. I’m grateful, Renault.”
But Renault’s quote to Canas shows he was present for the creation of more than one morph- and he presumably would have left after the morph of his friend turned out to not be what he wanted, suggesting it was not the first. Also, the “experiment” in question seems to have been something done to Renault (not the creation of the morph itself)- perhaps explaining his unnatural long life and youth (like Nergal and the morphs). Recall this quote from Renault to Canas about himself, “This mercenary volunteered freely for Nergal’s experiments, knowing they would make him less than human…” The fact does remain that Nergal uses morph singularly, so if one ignores the fact that Renault says he was around for the creation of several, this could be interpreted as Nergal saying the morph of Renault’s friend was the first morph. But again, that’s at best far from explicit and at worst contradicted by Renault’s talk with Canas. It seems far more likely to me that the morph of Renault’s friend was the first successful morph by some kind of milestone of Nergal’s, with the others having been initial half-successful attempts.

Ultimately though, whether Renault’s friend was the first morph or merely a very early one is not particularly relevant. True, if Renault’s friend was merely a very early one then it MIGHT have been Kishuna, but I think there’s a fair amount of better evidence against this:
1) No interaction between Renault and Kishuna. Renault is present in the village in 19x and can be in The Value of Life and even gets a tactician intro quote where he could have said something about Kishuna, but doesn’t.
2) No flashbacks to Renault. If Kishuna had been created with Renault’s help and for Renault, wouldn’t Renault have been present for his awakening? And especially since Kishuna’s Value of Life flashback is meant to show us how horrible his life has been, wouldn’t it have been appropriate to show Renault rejecting him too? That would have added a whole other layer of pathos. And Renault describes “What you (Nergal) gave me,” stating explicitly that Nergal gave him the morph in question. I’m picturing something like Monica from FE8 myself honestly.
3) Kishuna is decidedly not soulless or an empty vessel. Nergal created him explicitly to have emotions and apparently to ask philosophical questions about the nature of a morph’s existence from its own perspective. True he can’t speak, but we know he feels. Would Renault really not have noticed that? And Nergal affirms that what he gave Renault was an empty vessel, while he had created Kishuna not to be one.
4) Nergal names Kishuna. I’m like 90% sure Renault’s friend had a name already. Nergal doesn’t say, “You are Kishuna,” or “Hey Renault, his name was Kishuna, right? And can you fetch me a beer while you’re over in the kitchen?” No, he says “I name you Kishuna.”

In short, I’m pretty darned sure that Kishuna is not Renault’s friend, but I also think it’s worth noting the usual evidence presented (that Renault’s friend was the first morph) is not necessarily true.


And for a final question, which I find most interesting of all, when did Nergal have his change of heart? In short, when does the flashback seen in 32x occur? It is entirely clear from the 23x flashback that Renault is entirely wrong when he says Nergal never cared about his morphs at all. What happened? At what point did the man Athos knew- bewitched by the power of stealing quintessence but still seemingly human in emotion and with enough affection left for his friend that Athos attacking him hurt his feelings badly and that he viewed his morphs as something like people- become the Nergal of today.

As I said before, I suspect that his “building up his power slowly” and his “power growing beyond our ability to contain him” came about because, as he had done in the past- and as all shamans do- he made more of what Teodor called “reparations to the dark”, giving up more of himself in order to grow stronger. This process made him forget his own children in the past, it could surely make him forget why he created a particular morph.

Assuming that that theory is correct and that Nergal’s slide into total jerkishness wasn’t just organic character development, when did that happen? It can’t have been just after fleeing Arcadia, badly injured- or at least not entirely, because Kishuna didn’t exist then. One plausible possibility is that it was just before opening the dragon’s gate- so a year or two ago. Afterall, he’s very cautious in dealing with dragons and would want to be “fully prepared.” Perhaps he traded in what was left of his wretched soul then for more power to make sure whatever dragons came through didn’t just obliterate him.
Another possibility is after Elbert stabbed him. He nearly died there and would have been desperate- both to survive and to gain more power. And indeed after Cog of Destiny when Nergal makes his comeback tour, Eliwood says that ““His power… It’s so much more than before.” Maybe that’s just from the quintessence of the Black Fang, but maybe that’s not all of it.

Now this last idea might seem odd to people because most assume his rejection of Kishuna occurred long ago. But did it necessarily? I used to assume so until this playthrough. Now I wonder if it actually happened between Genesis and The Value of Life. In Genesis Kishuna was apparently angry. He trapped and attacked the party with his friends and fought cleverly to kill them. Nils said he was very hostile then. Remember how Sonia put it on Night of Farewells, “You are the sinners who hurt my lord Nergal!” She goes on for a while about how much she wants to kill them over that. Evidently hurting Nergal makes the morphs who look up to him as their creator very angry. But then when Nergal recovered, Kishuna went to find him and Nergal, having made more reparations to the dark, no longer understood why he’d created him or cared about him as anything but a useless weapon. And he told him to go off and rot somewhere. Which seems to be what Kishuna is doing in 32x. He doesn’t teleport into that tower as the map begins like he does the underground area in Genesis. He’s just standing there already. And he doesn’t try to escape as we know he can.

This interpretation definitely seems to explain his behavior in Genesis and The Value of Life well and fits with a plausible time period and reason for Nergal’s change in character. But one detail that still needs to be explained is what Kishuna is doing on 19x. One explanation is that he’s out scouting for Nergal. After all, Nergal probably doesn’t fully trust the Black Fang. And he doesn’t care a whit about them. Kishuna might have gone or been sent to check out the intruders, not caring that his presence got Aion’s forces slaughtered. One possible reason is that Nergal might have assumed Athos was involved in this latest plot against him. Afterall, Athos is his greatest enemy and aware of most things that happen on the continent and also in communication with several heads of state including Uther of Ostia. Kishuna would be by far the best person to send to spy on- or kill- Athos.

This would also explain the location of Kishuna’s secret lair right next to where Athos lives which is apparently unknown even to Athos. Nergal is watching and has a trap set (Kishuna and his men) to prevent the heroes from getting to Athos since that would be disastrous. Afterall, he found out from 19x that Athos wasn’t working with the heroes then.

But why did Marquess Araphen Aion call him “That good for nothing?” Maybe the same reason he insulted Uhai. Perhaps Nergal didn’t call Kishuna a good for nothing, perhaps that’s just Marquess Araphen Aion looking down on everyone who isn’t himself. That would also explain AIon’s men not attacking Kishuna. If Kishuna was known to be a rogue agent, why tolerate his sabotaging the battle?

That’s my interpretation, although I can think of others.


Oh, and here’s a timeline of Nergal’s life (with some speculation I’ve mentioned before):

Before the Scouring – Nergal is already an adult and an accomplished scholar and sorcerer with a huge library who is married to a dragon and lives right by the Dragon’s Gate which already exists and which his children know how to operate despite the journey through being dangerous.
The Scouring- Nergal is studying magic at his library on the dread isle. Not far off, the enigmatic Bramimond is also studying dark magic, using techniques Nergal knows about and has writings about in order to trade in his self-identity for power in order to slay dragons. Some “Bad men” capture Aenir, Nergal’s ice dragon wife. These are quite possibly part of a human army, maybe led by one of the 8 legends, purging the area of dragons. Nergal leaves his children at his home with instructions to go through the gate (not being the first dragons to do so) in 10 days if he doesn’t return while he goes to rescue Aenir.
The Scouring- Nergal knows he can’t possibly match the power of the 8 legends or whoever has Aenir- particularly if it’s Bramimond- so he does the same thing Bramimond did in hopes of getting the power to save his wife, but tries to maintain enough of his identity to remember his true mission. He fails. No mention is made of an uber dark sorcerer nearly the match of Athos or Bramimond fighting on the side of the dragons, so it’s a safe assumption he never fights at all. He completely forgets what his purpose was and just wanders off. Aenir dies. Ninian and Nils pass through the gate. On the other side, they have much political power and are the ones who run the gate.

(All of this suggests that Nergal and his wife were involved in operating – or maybe even creating- the gate. He was afterall a great scholar and sorcerer and lived right near it at the time and his children knew how to use it and even ran it or helped run it on the other side. That would also explain why Nergal’s wife in particular was targeted. She had important knowledge about the gate and where the dragons were going and if they were coming back and so on. Nergal might also have known Bramimond. That or the two greatest dark wizards who ever lived studied similar techniques at the same time on an island like 10 miles in radius and never talked to each other)

500 years later- Nergal has forgotten who he originally was and never returned to his library. His children and any dragons who knew him assume he’s dead. He’s started a new life as a traveling wizard. In the well-known wizard hangout Nabata, he happens to run across Athos. The two have no idea they were ever on opposite sides of the war and Athos probably has no idea Nergal is already 500 years old at all. The two are both equally powerful and knowledgeable, suggesting Nergal has been hard at work studying those 500 years. Athos’s grammar leaves it unclear whether it was just one or both of them who were idly wandering the Nabata desert at the time. POSSIBLY Nergal had built the lair in the desert that Kishuna used 500 years later at this point and just never brought it up. Pent is just wrong in that case with his guess that the magic seal built it. None of them known Kishuna was a morph at that point though, so they don’t know the connection to Nergal. POSSIBLY Nergal had actually been living in Bern. We know he has a lair there later and it seems to be his home base when not on Valor. As far as Athos knew, Nergal had no connection to Valor. Otherwise he might have seen the whole Dragon’s Gate thing coming. WILD SPECULATION: the water temple is Nergal’s lair or was built by him. The aesthetics seem more than superficially similar to Athos’s water temple place in Nabata – not just in that it’s a giant underground area full of appearing and disappearing bridges but also in that the backgrounds when Nergal is in his lair talking to his morphs look exactly like Athos’s palace backgrounds but more dimly lit. Maybe Athos’s palace was built in large part by Nergal when they were friends and inspired by his own.
Some time later- Athos and Nergal have become friends. They are charting the desert and may have been for a while. Then Athos finds Arcadia. They build an oasis and hide the town and are greeted and taken in as friends by the villagers. They find very good libraries there and begin studying furiously and learning all kinds of things.

At least 200 years later, possibly much more- Nergal has begun draining human quintessence using dark magic he learned in Arcadia. Presumably these same books contain knowledge of creating morphs, hence Nergal knows a lot about it in theory. Perhaps, as books of draconic knowledge, these secrets are in some way related to creating War Dragons or other artificial beings. Both seem to be regarded as abominations and defying the natural order by the divine dragons. The divine dragons and Athos join forces and attack Nergal, nearly killing him. Conceivably some divine dragons are killed in the process, helping explain why there are so few later and why Athos is confident that Nergal believes Nergal could kill them and take their quintessence in battle if he returned.

All the remaining time but 20-30 years later- Athos believed Nergal was dead. In fact, Nergal hides out in Bern, concealing his existence (and that he’s slowly regaining and increasing his powers) from Athos.
He has NOT created morphs in this time. He does that only with Renault, and he works with Renault only starting less than 30 years ago.


30 years ago- Renault is an honorable and respected mercenary in service to house Caelin. That is the last time Wallace saw him. Possibly the battle in which he lost his friend happened immediately, possibly he was just campaigning or serving elsewhere for a while.
Lucius’s age -3 to 30 years ago- Renault’s friend dies in battle (Possibly in Bern?). Renault is horrified and would do anything to bring him back. Including agreeing to work with a dark sorcerer who claims he can restore the man to life. Nergal needs someone strong- like the legendary mercenary Renault- to do experiments on and to kill powerful people for quintessence. Renault fits the bill. Nergal’s experiments allow him to collect quintessence and prevent him from aging- just like Nergal himself and his morphs do not age. This is why he looks so similar to Wallace years later- so much so that Wallace says it cannot be him, he should be an old man now. Renault runs around killing people for Nergal harvesting quintessence. Athos is apparently unaware of this- which may be part of the point.
Lucius’s Age -3 years ago- Renault murders Lucius’s father, a mighty warrior, in front of Lucius. Lucius assumes that he’s a thief, not the minion of the greatest dark wizard in history out to steal a life force Lucius doesn’t even know exists.
Lucisus Age- 3 to over 13 years ago- Nergal is able to create the first morphs. Renault leaves his service in disgust.
Still over 13 years ago- Nergal creates Kishuna. Nergal is not without human feeling and finds morphs existence and nature philosophically interesting. Without Renault or any others he may want companionship.
13 years ago- Sonia has been created. Limstella seemingly has not. Jaffar is only a few years old and has been recruited by Nergal somewhere around this time. Nergal and Sonia go to the house of a famous family of mages in Lycia knowing that they know the secrets of the dragons (Whatever exactly those are). They kill the family but take the infant Nino.
Nergal continues to build up his morphs and his personal power. Somewhere in the window from 13 to about 2 years ago, Athos learns of Nergal’s return. Probably much closer to 2 years.
10 years ago- That moron Brendan Reed forms the Black Fang as a league of allegedly heroic but actually awful murderers for hire with a good PR division
At least 2 years or so ago- Nergal has created Limstella (and probably Ephidel). He and Sonia are evidently separate enough and have been for long enough that he’s mostly forgotten about Nino
Around 2 years or so ago maybe- Athos decides Nergal is probably going to make a move for Arcadia next to get dragon quintessence and sets a trap for him. Nergal does not show up. Nergal instead goes to the Dragon’s Gate and calls out to the dragons. On the other side of the gate, Ninian and Nils hear the voice of their father- perhaps only partially remembered. Ninian has been one of the people maintaining the gate and an oracle. They open and pass through. Nergal and Limstella are waiting for them. But they don’t have much quintessence to steal so Nergal has to come up with new plans.
About a year and a fraction ago- Nergal has Sonia marry the Black Fang. Jaffar may have already joined the group. Ephidel exists by now probably. Nergal begins taking control of the fang.
Just over a year ago- Ninian and Nils escape and are pursued. Ephidel begins visiting various Lycian marquesses to foment rebellion.
Just under a year ago- After meeting Lyn, Ninian and Nils are captured by the Black Fang now under Nergal’s command.
6 months ago- Elbert is attacked by Nergal and vanishes.



Total Retarts: 39 (I’m not counting various 1 turn checks of probabilities of surviving the first turn with a warp rush I wasn’t going to use)
Turn Surplus: 2 (I could have saved many turns but decided to farm XP).
Things I Regret Missing: The lockpick on chapter 11, that darned archer on chapter 11, this one brigand who attacked Marcus on chapter 12, 2 more brigands who ignored everyone else to attack Marcus on chapter 13x, and 2 archers who ignored Hector and Dorcas (DORCAS!) to attack Marcus on chapter 14, like 10 more enemies I could have killed if Hector could have survived one more turn on chapter18, Uhai who decided to take a 100% chance of death to Sain over a free hit on Hector, the chance to finish shopping properly with my silver card on chapter 21, the armorslayer that I would have acquired if not for a stupid minor mistake on chapter 22, these 3 wyvern riders who decided they preferred a 0% chance to hit Isadaora and then 100% chance of death against her to fighting a low level Heath, those 2 pegasus knights at the end of Crazed Beast that I just didn’t have enough time to feed to Bartre, the confused pirate and final archer on Night of Farewells, like 5 charges of Fila’s Might and a Luna tome I should have Hammerned on Cog of Destiny, the Pure Water on The Berserker, and the 2 or 3 Victory or Death Valkyries who only lived because Erk’s Elfire broke just before the last turn.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.
I still maintain a better purpose for Kishuna would be that he was planned as an Anti-Athos morph. I mean if you pony up that Athos can't scry for Nergal and then say that Kishuna (being the Anti-Magic Morph) is the reason, then you also have Kishuna appearing in Nabata, either to kill or block off Nergal. In fact for a persons project (To which their basic goal is abridging FE7 into about 13 chapters) my main suggestion was using Kishuna and Vaida in the desert as a Tag Team. as Kishuna's anti-magic would negate Athos's known advantages, while Vaida's Wyvern allows her to completely ignore the disadvantages of being a physical unit in the desert.

I dunno, the whole thing comes across as really unexplained, how did Kishuna wind up with an anti-magic field. Just because he had emotions?

Actually, I'm going to go and pitch this as my official theory

Kishuna is an Anti-Athos morph that failed because he couldn't fight and couldn't collect quintessence

For starters, let's assume that the generic morphs cannot in fact collect Quinetessence, that's for Limstella to do, and maybe Ephidel, I don't think Sonia actually can do it. So this assumed, the Anti-Magic field could not have been an accident, and if it was, Nergal should still see how valuable having a "You can't cast" morph is when his only known fear is the loving Archsage. So assuming he was made this was on purpose, Nergal's plan was to kill Athos and take his Quintessence, at least early on.

Except there was a flaw, Kishuna can't collect Quintessence, in fact he can't fight period. Maybe the fighting period was known from the beginning, maybe Nergal decided then that Kishuna still had worth as a seal, so long as he had the bodyguard morphs... Except since Kishuna can't collect it for whatever reason (let's again, assume that it's magical in nature, so Limstella couldn't have just tagged along as well) then his entire purpose is worthless to Nergal.

Now the obvious flaw is.... well you're still killing your only threat, why would you not go through with it.
parallel counter, that's what Kishuna is doing in Nabata, trying to fulfill his mission despite the fact he'd been rejected.

In the end, there's too much guess work to ever get a definitive answer.

Bellmaker
Oct 18, 2008

Chapter DOOF



A correction to this update: Enemies DO have Luck, but morphs do not.

Luck being something that isn't quantifiable about a person, like quintessence, mayhaps?

Keldulas
Mar 18, 2009
It amuses me a great deal that your Raven has better defense than Sain.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Bellmaker posted:

A correction to this update: Enemies DO have Luck, but morphs do not.

Luck being something that isn't quantifiable about a person, like quintessence, mayhaps?

Nope, most enemies have no luck either. The only exception are bosses who aren't morphs. For example, here's a bishop miniboss on Crazed Beast;




It's the only non-morph chapter i have a save file of atm, but you can also check back to some previous updates and see the same thing. For example, you can see the Black Fang valkyrie stats in cog of destiny. Search for "And the Valkyries appear" on page 25.



Onmi posted:

I still maintain a better purpose for Kishuna would be that he was planned as an Anti-Athos morph. I mean if you pony up that Athos can't scry for Nergal and then say that Kishuna (being the Anti-Magic Morph) is the reason, then you also have Kishuna appearing in Nabata, either to kill or block off Nergal. In fact for a persons project (To which their basic goal is abridging FE7 into about 13 chapters) my main suggestion was using Kishuna and Vaida in the desert as a Tag Team. as Kishuna's anti-magic would negate Athos's known advantages, while Vaida's Wyvern allows her to completely ignore the disadvantages of being a physical unit in the desert.

I dunno, the whole thing comes across as really unexplained, how did Kishuna wind up with an anti-magic field. Just because he had emotions?

Actually, I'm going to go and pitch this as my official theory

Kishuna is an Anti-Athos morph that failed because he couldn't fight and couldn't collect quintessence

For starters, let's assume that the generic morphs cannot in fact collect Quinetessence, that's for Limstella to do, and maybe Ephidel, I don't think Sonia actually can do it. So this assumed, the Anti-Magic field could not have been an accident, and if it was, Nergal should still see how valuable having a "You can't cast" morph is when his only known fear is the loving Archsage. So assuming he was made this was on purpose, Nergal's plan was to kill Athos and take his Quintessence, at least early on.

Except there was a flaw, Kishuna can't collect Quintessence, in fact he can't fight period. Maybe the fighting period was known from the beginning, maybe Nergal decided then that Kishuna still had worth as a seal, so long as he had the bodyguard morphs... Except since Kishuna can't collect it for whatever reason (let's again, assume that it's magical in nature, so Limstella couldn't have just tagged along as well) then his entire purpose is worthless to Nergal.

Now the obvious flaw is.... well you're still killing your only threat, why would you not go through with it.
parallel counter, that's what Kishuna is doing in Nabata, trying to fulfill his mission despite the fact he'd been rejected.

In the end, there's too much guess work to ever get a definitive answer.


Yes, I agree with most of this.

One sidenote though, it's explicit that Sonia can collect quintessence. If you don't do Night of Farewells, she presents Brendan's quintessence to Nergal herself. I'm not sure about Ephidel. You could maybe interpret the red flash and Elbert being hurt at the dragon's gate as Ephidel taking some of his quintessence while he's still alive or something. On the other hand, we never see Ephidel actually say anything about quintessence or the taking thereof or the like. And he doesn't do things like pop in after you kill Boies. Also his only form of attack seems to be knifing people with his noodly mage arms. Maybe he can do it but he's dumb enough to forget to.

If Nergal hadn't intended for Kishuna to be a magic seal, Nergal would probably be yelling about how now he can't do magic and that's a problem in at least one of the flashbacks. Or he would mention this issue Kishuna causes for him when he's rejecting Kishuna. Actually, I'm not 100% convinced that Nergal COULDN'T do magic in the magic seal field since he says nothing about that and since Kishuna can. So yeah, Kishuna was probably a magic seal deliberately. And the most obvious use of that would be to take out Athos. Even if Nergal can't cast either, Nergal could smash Athos in a fistfight. Plus he'd have all his fighting morphs around. And giving Kishuna serious fighting morph bodyguards could protect him from Athos hiring a bunch of mercenaries or bringing along some divine dragons.

And then of course Kishuna has a secret lair that even Athos does not know about like 2 blocks from Athos's house. Athos never wandered into that area, so they do the next best thing by trying to kill Hector and company as they're walking to meet Athos. Nergal would really, really not want Athos and them to join forces so killing them there is his best option. Kishuna might or might not have been operating on his own on Nergal's behalf at that point. I've said I think Nergal didn't reject him until after that level, but it's plausible he's already been kicked out.

And as I said, fitting with my Kishuna and Nergal are still working together until Genesis theory, Kishuna might have been sent out on 19x to watch the party and determine if the archsage was with them (and use his small squad of morphs who would totally wreck your party in a real fight to kill Athos if so). This explains Aion not having his men attack Kishuna, Kishuna leaving after a few turns, and more.

However, I think it's clear that beating Athos was not Kishuna's ONLY purpose. Nergal gave him emotions and wanted to talk to him. He wanted a friend or at least a minion who wasn't like Denning as well as a useful ally. And he evidently liked this idea enough that he kept giving many of his future morphs emotions.

Melth fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Apr 23, 2015

Rosalie_A
Oct 30, 2011
Killing Kishuna with magic. I don't think anything in Light is going to top that, unfortunately, though I'm sure you'll try.

TheOneAndOnlyT
Dec 18, 2005

Well well, mister fancy-pants, I hope you're wearing your matching sweater today, or you'll be cut down like the ugly tree you are.
Minor nitpick: you don't actually need to do 19xx or 23x to unlock this chapter. I've gotten it every time I've played through Hector's mode, and I've never actually done 19xx or 23x. I think the 20-turn limit on Victory or Death is all you need.

Cake Attack
Mar 26, 2010

Yeah what he said

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:

Minor nitpick: you don't actually need to do 19xx or 23x to unlock this chapter. I've gotten it every time I've played through Hector's mode, and I've never actually done 19xx or 23x. I think the 20-turn limit on Victory or Death is all you need.

Interesting. I was unsure about that. When I first started playing FE, most sites and guides said you have to do 19xx and 23x to unlock this one but most sites now say just beat Victory or Death in under 20 turns. I didn't have a way to check which was true this time but since some of Nils's dialogue explicitly references the events of 23x and other people mention 19x, I figured the original supposed requirements were correct.

Bellmaker
Oct 18, 2008

Chapter DOOF



Melth posted:

Nope, most enemies have no luck either. The only exception are bosses who aren't morphs. For example, here's a bishop miniboss on Crazed Beast;




It's the only non-morph chapter i have a save file of atm, but you can also check back to some previous updates and see the same thing. For example, you can see the Black Fang valkyrie stats in cog of destiny. Search for "And the Valkyries appear" on page 25.

Hmm, you may be right, but don't forget Sonia said she had been slowly replacing most of the Black Fang with her minions to Brandon...

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Bellmaker posted:

Hmm, you may be right, but don't forget Sonia said she had been slowly replacing most of the Black Fang with her minions to Brandon...

Nah, it's just a thing in this game. To cite some more examples: in previous chapters I posted pics of the stats of New Resolve pegasus knights and wyvern riders, allied Ostian knights in Kinship's Bond, and a few other places. all 0 luck. You can also see that the enemy has 0 luck everywhere else if you check the skill of the characters after their most recent level up and then look at their crit rate in fights. For example, Pent starts with 21 skill and you can see he has 10 crit vs the wyvern rider bandits in chapter 23. Since crit rate is 1/2 Skill - enemy luck (plus support, weapon, and other bonuses that don't apply in that example), the enemy wyvern must have 0 luck.


To be honest, I don't know why that is. See, the class base stats (http://serenesforest.net/blazing-sword/classes/base-stats/) start with 0 luck, but the growth rates )http://serenesforest.net/blazing-sword/classes/growth-rates/) should give some. But they never do.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
Here's a few more pictures I couldn't find a good place in the LP for of me playing around with the anti-magic field.








Who's the bringer of silence now? As long as you have at least 22 Mag, you can stand outside his zone and hit him with status staves or the like. Even with less Mag you can obviously hit his minions if they're closer.




He's got awful Res so it has 100% accuracy




But he gets cured instantly on his turn- just as if the time had run out on the debuff.




Oh and I checked that the Light Brand worked pretty much first thing. You can also see it demonstrated here that it counts as light, not a sword, at range for the weapon triangle.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.

Melth posted:

Here's a few more pictures I couldn't find a good place in the LP for of me playing around with the anti-magic field.








Who's the bringer of silence now? As long as you have at least 22 Mag, you can stand outside his zone and hit him with status staves or the like. Even with less Mag you can obviously hit his minions if they're closer.




He's got awful Res so it has 100% accuracy




But he gets cured instantly on his turn- just as if the time had run out on the debuff.




Oh and I checked that the Light Brand worked pretty much first thing. You can also see it demonstrated here that it counts as light, not a sword, at range for the weapon triangle.

That's cause he's on a throne and thrones heal status effects. This has been true since FE5

Cake Attack
Mar 26, 2010

Onmi posted:

That's cause he's on a throne and thrones heal status effects. This has been true since FE5

thrones give immunity to status effects in thracia, but yeah

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Cake Attack posted:

thrones give immunity to status effects in thracia, but yeah

Interesting. I don't think I ever tried to status someone on a throne since I almost never use status staves. I'd be interested in double-checking on Genesis to see what happens when you status Kishuna off a throne, but I don't have a save file (or characters) that would let me do that.

Cake Attack
Mar 26, 2010

a question, if you don't mind me asking:

how do you feel about the other fire emblem games specifically? I've already gathered you don't like awakening and 6, but i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the other games

no need to write an essay each or anything, just a brief opinion works fine for me

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Cake Attack posted:

a question, if you don't mind me asking:

how do you feel about the other fire emblem games specifically? I've already gathered you don't like awakening and 6, but i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the other games

no need to write an essay each or anything, just a brief opinion works fine for me

I don't really think Fire Emblem 1, Fire Emblem 1 2: Electric Boogaloo, Fire Emblem 1 3: Beyond Thunderdome, and Fire Emblem 1 4: the Revenge are worth talking about or having an opinion on. 1 was a good game for its time but has not aged well and did not deserve to be remade again and again and again.

2 gets a lot of hate but I give them respect for trying something semi-new at least, even if it didn't work so well. This series is too formulaic.

4. I've heard good things about but not yet played past the first couple of (unimpressive to me so far) levels because until a few weeks ago I had no idea where to find a translation of the prelude text.

5's challenge is respectable but that's pretty much all its known for and not without reason. I want to play 4 before I really judge it though.

6 is a bad game. I've played through it 3 times (once on normal, twice on hard mode so I could have done every possible level on hard mode). At no point did I ever have fun, I just slogged through it so I could say I'd completed it fully. The story is completely formula, the characters are mostly flat (though not to the extent as in, say, Awakening), the music and art are markedly inferior to 7, and there's just no polish on it. 7 succeeds in large part because there's so much extra content, so many great hidden conversations and extras, and much more attention to detail. They put in more work than they needed to everywhere and it shows. 6 did not get that kind of treatment. Further, while 7 was much too easy, nearly all of its difficulty was legitimate. 6's difficulty is 90% fake. It relies too heavily on surprise reinforcements that spawn-move and the like. My second hard mode run I finished in like 2 days. The first took a huge amount of time. The difference was I remembered roughly who and what spawned where (and I also knew what characters could hack it later in the game). Additionally, there are far too many ways to unknowingly screw yourself out of any kind of conclusion to the story unless you've played before or read a guide.

7 is a magnificent work of art. It has flaws to it; it could be improved in many places, and I've tried to point some of those out as I went through this LP. But I've played many video games and none can really compare to the breadth and depth of its musical, artistic, narrative, emotional, thematic, and metatactical success. 12 years and 3 broken cartridges later I'm still playing it and still loving it and still learning more about it.

8 I'm unsure about, my opinion has changed back and forth many times. One thing is clear: it is ugly. I loathe the color scheme and I have from the second I turned it on. No, before that. From the second I looked at the instruction manual. Ugh. Sacred Stones is much criticized for being too easy. There's some truth to this, however a fair amount of criticism in that regard amounts to "There is infinite, optional grinding available, therefore it is too easy." That's absurd. I wholeheartedly approve of including optional features like the nearly free gold and XP of the tower of Valni for the benefit of new players, but I am also in favor of making the hardest difficulty borderline uncompletable even for experts- as long as that difficulty comes from requiring clever strategy rather than luck or guess and check). The ideal game can present a satisfying but not overwhelming challenge for a player of any skill. Adding things like optional XP grinding is a key part of letting people customize the challenge for their skill level. That tangent aside, I was totally unimpressed by Sacred Stones the first time or two I played it. Then after not playing it for about 7 years or so, I came back to it after playing 6 and was blown away by how much better the story and characters were than I remembered. Suddenly it jumped up to my second favorite fire emblem- albeit by a looooooong way. I even decided it wasn't quite as easy as people said after experiencing a significant challenge on a no grinding hard mode play. Then I played it again in about 2 days a month or two ago while considering what game to LP next and I was largely unimpressed. The story and characters remain probably the second best in the FE series imo and there's a fair amount of depth to them, but the gameplay is way too easy and most chapters are wretchedly boring. Oh the music is really good. I like that at least.

9 is decent. The thing is, the first part (up to arriving in Begnion or so) is waaaaaaay better than everything after arriving. After that the plot slows to an absolute crawl and in fact 90% of what remains feels like filler to me. The plot is mostly formulaic, but with a few semi-interesting twists and turns. And the personal struggle of Ike vs the Black Knight is unimpressive, but at least it's nice to see a subplot in the game. Of course, 10 made it all pointless. Anyway, great music. Surpassing 8 to rival 7 even. 7-9 was the golden age of FE music imo, completely blowing almost every other videogame I ever played out of the water. Also the characters and maps and color scheme are beautiful again. That's a big plus. Anyway, most of the fringe characters are pretty flat but the core group of Greil mercenaries is pretty cool and pretty well developed. They remind me a lot of the main characters of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, which i loved. Not quite that good. One reason the second half of the game is so much less engaging is that most of the interesting characters are shoved aside in favor of annoying ones. Oh, the Black Knight is one of the lamest villains ever. Like you have to work hard to make a black knight not amazingly cool but they somehow managed it. I'm impressed. I totally hate his presence in the story and he really drives my opinion of the game down. So yeah, good artwork and music and the first half is engaging but the rest is junk. And too easy. Easier than sacred stones, even. And I hated the sub-humans and everything about them and their presence in the game. Bleed the half-breed!

10 I have mixed feelings about. What I like most about it is that it tried new things and broke some real ground. Of course, most of those new things turned out to kind of suck, but again I give major points for trying. The story was not formulaic. That's awesome. That's so awesome for this repetitive and uncreative series. Oh it was hideous. Maybe uglier than sacred stones. The music took a nosedive, consisting largely of inferior rehashes of 9 music (at least 7's rehashes were better), and the golden age came to an end. I hated the sub-humans and the black knight even more and they were both even more prominent. 10 was a terrible sequel. Characterization for many people and even whole countries was totally inconsistent, the entire plot of 9 was largely ignored, and indeed everything you'd accomplished in every plot and subplot in 9 was made totally unsatisfying. Only the dawn brigade chapters were interesting or fun, but they were pretty great by and large. And the challenge level was nice with nearly all the difficulty being legitimate. That's the game's greatest strength. So pretty good game, but bad story (at least a new bad story!) and characters and such basically. The opposite of Sacred Stones.

13 is an abomination.

Melth fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Apr 24, 2015

Sankara
Jul 18, 2008


What's wrong with The Black Knight?

Rigged Death Trap
Feb 13, 2012

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Melth posted:

13 is an abomination.

Elaborate?

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.


Doctor Reynolds posted:

What's wrong with The Black Knight?

Addendum, answer these two questions, in 250 words or less TOTAL.

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
What's good about the black knight, other than his theme song?

Dire Wombat
Oct 29, 2011

In this world, there is no truth. The truth is made later on and overwrites what comes before it. Real truth doesn't exist anywhere.
The only way the Black Knight could be more cliched is if he were Ike's father/brother. I think I have to agree that Nergal is the best FE villain.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.

Dire Wombat posted:

The only way the Black Knight could be more cliched is if he were Ike's father/brother. I think I have to agree that Nergal is the best FE villain.

Nergal is just Gharnef with Anakin Skywalker. Ashnard is at least entertaining.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Story is a mess, the art style is pretty unattractive, and there's next to no legitimate difficulty - it's all artificial all the way down.

Silver Falcon
Dec 5, 2005

Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and barbecue your own drumsticks!

Melth posted:

13 is an abomination.

13 is my favorite Fire Emblem. Fight me. :colbert:

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Onmi posted:

Ashnard is at least entertaining.

Ashnard was almost great. For a while people kept calling him mad, but they mostly did so while mentioning his "bizarre" policy of letting non-noblemen have positions of power and running things based on merit. On my first play I figured he was actually a militaristic but entirely sane king who was in fact really enlightened and ahead of his time and it was just hardline monarchist propaganda that he was crazy. That would have been cool. You know, a villain who's done some legitimately bad stuff but is actually more reasonable than the protagonist's ruler and totally has a point. I thought that was a really awesome spin on the traditional FE story.
But then we meet him and... no. He's just a giggling madman with no personality other than being a giggling madman and liking fighting. He's totally inconsistent in what he says his goals are and what he does (For example, he says sub-humans (he even calls them "Laguz") and humans should have an equal playing field with only strength, not species, determining who gets social status. And then he makes his society one in which the sub-humans are killed on sight or murdered in torturous experiments at the hands of much weaker people and even rides around on the supremely strong prince of the dragon sub-humans like he's a wyvern rather than something approaching an equal and so on).

What looked like a brilliant twist just turned out to be a completely flat and generic FE villain. Less interesting than Walhart even!

Dire Wombat posted:

I think I have to agree that Nergal is the best FE villain.

I actually prefer Sonia myself, but Nergal is pretty great too.

Kajeesus posted:

What's good about the black knight, other than his theme song?

His battle theme!



Rather not. I don't enjoy talking about things I hate. If I wanted to talk about why I think Awakening is awful, I'd have made a thread about that.



Onmi posted:

Nergal is just Gharnef with Anakin Skywalker.

Other than being a dark wizard and having plans that involve dragons, he's not like Gharnef at all. Other than being a dark wizard and having plans that involve his children, he's not like Anakin Skywalker at all.

And the latter, at least, is a far more interesting villain that most FE fare anyway. Which isn't saying much.

In my opinion Nergal is a pretty great all around villain for several reasons: he's got some sweet theme music, looks cool, presents a credible threat, is proactive and takes the offensive when he can rather than just sitting around waiting for you to hit level 20 grinding off his minions, outsmarts just about everyone at least once, has some interesting minions, has a fair amount of charisma and does some cool stuff, is enough of an rear end in a top hat that one has some emotional investment in killing him off, has interesting relationships with several of the protagonists, doesn't always win up until the final battle, and has this really interesting tragic history to him which not even he knows.

Maybe you disagree with some or all of those points I like about him and think Calamity Bringer sounds lame, turbans are SO last season, gaining unlimited power by stealing the life force of dragons is a sucky plan, he spends too much time sitting around, is dumb as a post, exclusively employs people lamer than he is, is really annoying and never does anything of note, is a remarkably polite and friendly model citizen who totally didn't deserve to die, never interacts in an interesting way with the protagonists, wins way too many pre-final battle dealings with him, and ... actually I guess the last one is just kind of a factual thing mostly.

That's fine. But he's not "just Gharnef with Anakin Skywalker" anymore than Zephiel is just Hardin with Sauron. Those comparisons are not good ones.

Melth fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Apr 24, 2015

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Artix
Apr 26, 2010

He's finally back,
to kick some tail!
And this time,
he's goin' to jail!

Silver Falcon posted:

13 is my favorite Fire Emblem. Fight me. :colbert:


The Iron Rose posted:

Story is a mess, the art style is pretty unattractive, and there's next to no legitimate difficulty - it's all artificial all the way down.

Not to mention that the map design is awful past the halfway point, there is no middle ground between "can do this blindfolded" and "lol Lunatic bullshit", the pacing is awful, you get absolutely no new recruits outside of the children in the second half (aside from two literally two chapters before the end of game who aren't even that good), Pair Up is the most broken mechanic they've ever introduced... I mean, I could go on if you really wanted to. Awakening is a baaaaad game.

  • Locked thread