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Tae posted:I would not do this, unless you understand support conversations alone are as long as a single RPG. Is yours in the archive yet Tae?
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Apr 25, 2015 00:51
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ChaosArgate posted:Alternatively, do it, but don't show off every support conversation because therein lies madness. Like 90% of them are up on the Awakening wiki now. I think the only things missing are some of the father/child conversations... which are all barely different. Just post the ones you actually go with in the LP and boom, you have 13 supports total to transcribe.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:52
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I think most FE games have something to recommend them, and which is any individual's favorite comes from a mixture of nostalgia, character preferences, and just playstyle preferences. A person who gleefully enjoys raising a dozen harbingers of death and sweeping maps will pick a different favorite than someone who likes to play the underdogs. Some games have stronger, better put together plots. Some have more in-depth support conversations. Some provide a better challenge. And there will always be those who just really connect to Eliwood as a character, vs. someone like Ike, vs. whoever. You can't really name an objectively best Fire Emblem. My personal favorite is Radiant Dawn hands down, for what it's worth, and I liked Awakening a lot too. But I can see that my priorities for enjoyment (and my tolerance of some things) are different from Melth's, and that's just fine. I've really enjoyed reading this LP, and I think it's made me think harder about strategy when I play. I just started a new playthrough of Path of Radiance and I'm already using rescue-dropping way more than I've ever used it in the past. Princey fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Apr 25, 2015 |
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Apr 25, 2015 00:56
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Worthleast posted:Is yours in the archive yet Tae? No, it's just incomplete with the way I did it (was halfway deep into the DLC) so it doesn't feel right having it archived.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:58
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 I dislike the cliché of naming the final level “light”, “sunrise”, or the like that has shown up in quite a few games. In some cases it at least sort of fits, but definitely not here. I’m going to say the last really good title was Cog of Destiny (Or Valorous Roland in Eliwood’s story). Chapter Summary: Athos at last returns, meeting the group at the Dragon’s Gate and bringing with him several more ultra weapons. Together the group confronts Nergal and after a heated exchange of words, slay him and his remaining minions. As was foreshadowed several times though, Nergal calls more dragons through the gate with his last breath and the group finds they need help not to be overwhelmed by this latest threat.  Yeah, I wonder if we should wait for the unstoppable arch-wizard with all the legendary gear and knowledge about how to beat Nergal too at a time when we’re not in a hurry. Hector being Hector is beginning to be a little bit tiresome. For some reason the Athos’s palace ambience is playing in this area. Also it looks like someone refilled those chests on the right for the next adventuring party to hit this dungeon.  He didn’t even teleport in that we see. How long has he been here? DID HE EVEN LEAVE?  A vague question.  Met with a vague answer. There’s a reason for this though.  He presents Aureola, the weapon of Saint Elimine, which he predicts will be specially effective against Nergal.  And he returns the legendary items, either saying that he or Bramimond enchanted them to be more effective against Nergal or reminding the group that their inherent power makes them good against him to begin with which was probably part of the point of fetching them to start with.  Fortunately, someone invented numbers a few thousand years back and describing the power of weapons has gotten a lot easier since then.  And he brought a really famous but non-legendary sword for Lyn, a sister blade to her Mani Katti. Shoulda got the Exaccus.  It’s clear that Athos, perhaps having done some more scrying or the like during his absence, now sees past most of Nergal’s lies and tricks. He knows Nergal is actually low on minions and he knows the legendary weapons really can harm him.  No more sidequests! Battle Preparations & the Map:  Nope! Not allowed to see the map. I never noticed that weird text in the Command Help subwindow explaining why before.  I’ve got 9 tactician stars now. 9 is the most I’ve ever gotten, but I believe 10 may be possible if I understood some talk about tactician stars I read once properly. Doesn’t really matter. Back to Chapter Summary Then:  No one has acknowledged his existence in quite a while. And there’s been no comment on the times he can’t come to a chapter I’m not really sure why there suddenly is now.  No! NO! Darn it, Hector. Not bringing Merlinus to this chapter makes it waaaaay harder than it would otherwise be. He couldn’t fight before but he was useful anyway and he would be now too. Heck, he was even useful in fights courtesy of his massive avoid.  But they’re not just ditching Merlinus, they wrote him up a letter that will help him set up shop for himself in Ostia.  Uh… yeah. Merlinus is always saying stuff like this in this game.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtC1j08xO88 A nice little arrangement of Calamity Bringing plays through this scene as the group arrives to find Nergal waiting for them. After another of Hector’s remarks about what a bad person he is, Nergal responds with this nice little speech about why he really doesn’t care about Hector’s opinion on him- or anyone else’s for that matter. Along with a scene of him talking to Ninian about why it doesn’t matter to him if she wants to help him or not as long as he can force her to that we only see in Eliwood’s story, this soliloquy is one of his better speeches.   I wonder what he means by that exactly.  This scene (along with another bit of this conversation where he remarks that good and evil are meaningless social constructs) reminds me strongly of one at the beginning of the last chapter of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Both Dr. Caulder and Nergal make 2 points: 1) I’m just doing what I feel like doing and I don’t care what you think of me 2) you don’t recognize that the whole notion of good and evil is meaningless and just something society duped you into believing in your impressionable years. I think DoR handled the whole thing better by making debate about the nature of people and society a theme throughout the game, whereas 7 focused on other themes like the nature of knowledge and to what extent it really is power.  And he springs his trap, revealing some familiar faces. I think they did a good job on the color scheme for these kind of undead looking characters. Pretty creepy. This moment is pretty cool in that on one hand it’s definitely unexpected and surprising, but looking back it’s foreshadowed in all sorts of places. Nils sensed strange energy he couldn’t identify lurking in here with Nergal (and we know from Unfulfilled Heart that Nergal has become pretty savvy about Nils’s powers and can cloak at least some of his minions from him), Renault’s story revolved around Nergal bringing back the former’s friend as some sort of cursed and soulless mockery of life, Limstella (and sometimes Sonia) went around harvesting the quintessence of most of these people, Limstella vaguely said their quintessence had “all been used” rather than “you powered yourself up with their quintessence”, and we know Nergal really enjoys mocking us and the psychological warfare. Like any great twist ending sort of story, you should have seen it coming in retrospect, but you didn’t put the clues together the first time through.  Hector is pretty stunned.  Just epic.  And in another case of what makes Nergal so great, he once again combines his grand scale villainy and awesomeness with petty personal cruelty. This is also the first time that most people realize Uther is dead. There’s a whole semi-secret chain of conversations that can follow as Hector, Eliwood, Lyn, Oswin, and others talk about this and Oswin and Hector make up.  Look at that supercilious smirk. You’d think Hector would have his angry face on by now but…  But he’s had enough of Nergal’s crap and isn’t going to give him the satisfaction of reacting to it.  Nergal explains his excuse here, he’s not a monster because Hector and the others take energy from others too. He’d have a semi-legitimate point if not for what Athos points out again now.  As Athos has pointed out before, he and Nergal differed only in their methods- not wanting more power and knowledge. I also like how he makes his point with his usual calm sagaciousness.  By taking this lazy shortcut, Nergal is not only wronging the people he kills but also failing to learn anything of value.  Nergal is unmasked! Both literally and figuratively as we now see that his calm and mocking exterior was covering his anger and pain at having been betrayed and nearly killed by Athos hundreds of years ago. There should probably have been different music playing now.  His face does look messed up pretty bad now, but oddly it really doesn’t in the unmasking painting for some reason.  Unshakeable faith is now getting kind of overplayed. It’s really great and epic sounding, but they’ve used it like 6 times now, sometimes before complete anti-climaxes like running off to do 32x suddenly. Hector’s attitude is, as usual, a stark contrast to Eliwood who tells Nergal that he pities him for having lost his humanity. Back to Battle Preparations & the Map: So a decision of mixed merits was made in this chapter to not let you view the map beforehand. This preserves the surprise and dramatic reveal pretty well, but on the other hand this is supposed to be a strategy game. Choosing units and items should happen after you know at least some of what you’re up against. At first glance the obvious solution would be to have battle preparations begin right now, rather than early, but that has the downside of killing the drama. The big scenes just happened, the big fight is just about to begin- you don’t want to interrupt that with 30 minutes of trading swords around. I don’t think there’s a good method to have it both ways here. But for purposes of this LP, I need my formation and I need my gear to be perfect for the operations I need to conduct. I can’t use a semi-random formation and no foreknowledge of enemy stats like the one I’m about to get now. Now as you’ve surely noticed, not being able to view the map on battle preparations means I can’t decide my formation.  Just what people I bring and what they have. But it’s not that bad! It’s not like the early levels where I really had no control. No, here they just don’t tell you the method you can use to take control of your formation.  Here’s what I’d start with given the exact character list I just showed you. For once, order matters. The guy in the number 6 spot on the list (Raven) ends up in that precise spot on the map. So although Hector, lyn, Eliwood, Athos, and Nils’s positions are fixed, you can change up the other 7 by selecting and deselecting them and clicking in and out of the Pick Units menu until their order corresponds to the spaces you want them in. So I’m going to look at the map, then restart the chapter and use my newfound knowledge to come up with a strategy that I think will serve as a good capstone to this LP.  Here it is, the final battle! The Dragon’s Gate looks grand, and awesome, and alien in its architecture as it always does. A very cool and unsettling and sinister place, as appropriate for a battle against something like Nergal. Much like Jerme’s version of Pale Flower of Darkness, many of the starting enemies are initially hidden from view in the rooms around the edge of the map. Having seen those people in the previous cutscene, we have some idea of who to expect, but not who’s where. This is almost a cool idea, but combined with having to go in blind the first time, it makes this chapter too reliant on the kind of guess and check gameplay I hate. It worked pretty well for Jerme’s chapter because there you 1) chose when the doors opened, allowing you to position whatever array of units you thought would help nearby first and 2) could see most of the other enemies on the map anyway. Here the doors open on their own (in a sequence that isn’t hinted at in game and you have no other revealed enemies that you could be countering at least. It’s still a pretty cool level in my opinion, but that was a bad design decision. Anyway, I’ve given the turn number of when the doors open and also circled the positions of every enemy of note. Red circles for the most dangerous enemies (due to gear or stats) and black for the less problematic ones. There are also a few reinforcements from the top and bottom after the door to Nergal opens when the last main room morph is killed, but I will beat this chapter too fast to care about those. Oh and besides the Berserk staff druid there’s a sage in the room with Nergal, but he has nothing important and is no threat. On Victory or Death the enemies weren’t more powerful but their gear was. Here there’s a MAJOR jump in enemy strength as the enemy are suddenly all level 20 promoted and armed with absolutely top notch gear- including the S-rank weapons of each category. If you try to fight them in the middle of the room, they’ll surely overwhelm you and slaughter your weak characters, so you have to spread out in several directions and take the fight to them. It’s a very dynamic and high energy map despite nothing going on but fighting and is a fun chance to really put your characters to the test against their equals to betters. Nergal himself is disappointingly easy in comparison.  Athos joins up with some fancy new toys. Here’s Forblaze, interestingly called “Dragon’s Breath” by Nergal and the Purest Fire. It’s clearly a weapon that gets a lot of respect in universe. Unlike in 6, it’s Prf to Athos. Unfortunately, it’s just not much good for him. Besides that Luna is better than everything, it’s a ton worse than Excalibur, obtained here, and also than Aureoloa, which Athos starts with. And it slows him down with him not being very fast to begin with. Also +5 Luck? I’ll pass.  Now HERE’s a weapon! Since Athos has very good Con for a mage, isn’t too fast regardless, and has the Mag and Res to really do well in giant tome slugfests, he’s a pretty good wielder of St. Elimine’s weapon. Besides being stronger and more accurate than his own weapon, it also grants +5 to a much handier stat and is super-effective AND has weapon triangle advantage against Nergal. As Athos says, it rends his dark cloak and does him much harm. He doesn’t stand a chance in fact.  The Blazing Sword itself! Durandal is an awesome weapon, hitting harder than pretty much anything in the game due to its Str bonus and massive Might, but it’s really heavy. And Eliwood isn’t that big. If you’re not doing a max ranking run, give him a Body Ring or two and his power becomes absolutely amazing.  Besides being Lightning-charged, Armads gives +5 to the very useful Def. It’s not as good on offense as Durandal – or even the Basilikos axe - actually, but Hector has the Con to wield it with only a minor speed penalty and it makes him nearly invulnerable. Rightly called a legendary weapon.  Rightly not called a legendary weapon, the Sol Katti is an absolutely horrible weapon for Lyn. It’s super-effective against wyverns (not that there are any here) and dragons, but its low Might and gigantic weight mean its terrible for that purpose. And indeed for pretty much every purpose. Lyn has 6 Con so it gives her -8 speed. Even if she has 30, that drops her low enough that many enemies on this level can double her. And she won’t double anything and takes a painful -16 penalty to avoid. Also? The silver sword has more power and only slows her by 2. This is a terrible weapon. I would rather have an iron sword for most purposes. And the Mani Katti, this weapon’s sister sword apparently (I’d like to know more about their history) is far superior. Now that I’ve looked over the new toys, here’s the formation I went with:  Objective: Kill Nergal (his chamber opens when all the morphs in the 6 mini rooms are dead) Secondary Objective: Don’t drop Uhai’s Rienfleche Secondary Objective: Don’t drop Kenneth’s Luce Secondary Objective: Don’t drop Random Druid’s Gespenst Secondary Objective: Don’t drop Darin’s Rex Hasta Secondary Objective: Don’t drop Brendan’s Basilikos Secondary Objective: Don’t drop Ursula’s Excalibur Secondary Objective: Don’t drop Lloyd’s Regal Blade Reinforcements: Besides the room opening order as noted on the map, 3 generals spawn in the south and 2 druids in the north one turn after Nergal’s door opens. That should never happen if you’re playing efficiently. Turn Limit: 10 (Technically 8 for this one and 2 for the second part of this chapter, but yeah 10. Interestingly, it’s still 10 in normal mode but with 9 for part 1 and 1 for part 2.) This is very doable, but there’s no time to waste. And it’s hard to shave turns off that time given that the final door to the morph rooms won’t open till turn 6. Units Allowed: 7 + Hector + Eliwood + Lyn + Athos + Nils. Quite a few. If all by Lyn weren’t good or great units it might feel like a much tighter limit given how many fronts have to be fought on though. Units Brought: 1) Hector. Required and great. Having at last become the prophesied steel warrior to be feared, Hector can take on any enemy or enemies on the chapter and win. So he’ll go pulverize the hardest one on the chapter. 2) Lyn. Required and useless. I’m sure she’s trying, but Lyn has been out of her league both in statistics and the story for a long time. Even if you had her 20/20 she’s not useful here and mine isn’t even quite 20 unpromoted. She can’t scratch anything and will be instant killed by everything. She can’t even rescue people around. 3) Eliwood. Required and very good. The greatest knight in all of Lycia is somewhat out of his element here since he’s best where mobility and tanking magical and physical attacks at once are important. Still, he can crush nearly anyone on the level and now has as much avoid as Nils with almost 60 HP and awesome Def and Res. He can’t be killed, he’s just not the best on offense. 4) Athos. Required and great. Brokenly powerful, he can actually solo Nergal with 100% success rate, no tricks of any kind necessary. He’s better than Canas at most of what being Canas entails, including staff use courtesy of his instant S and matchless magic power. His staff range IS the screen. Still not as fast though, that’s his weakness, and his defenses are only pretty good so I don’t want him being attacked by people with weapons. 5) Nils. Required and great. As usual, Nils is as good as the best person on the team and then some. As usual, most advanced strategies depend on him. 6) Canas. Nearly as good as Athos and still the most versatile character around, he’s fast enough to double most things, is never doubled himself, can take hits from anything, deals massive damage with flux, can kill anything in the game with a shot or two of Luna, and is the second greatest staff user available. This level really plays to his strengths too. 7) Pent. A decent mage, and a really good staff user. Mostly I want to have someone here to wield Physic and the like who has the Mag for it and doesn’t have the skills to do something more important. 8) Erk. Can actually beat Athos in an anima fight now, having pretty much capped everything. Erk is one of my strongest characters, but his lack of Luna and staves means he’s not very versatile. 9) Nino. Too low level and didn’t turn out well. Nino isn’t really useful here, but I pretty much have an extra spot on the team. And as Canas once put it, she can take care of herself and perhaps others. 10) Heath. Hard as Hector, strong as Sain, mobile as Fiora, quick as Eliwood. And not even fully grown yet. Heath is a god tier unit as usual and will have an important job backing up anyone who needs help with his high mobility. 11) Raven. The fastest team member and also one of the strongest, but he doesn’t have any of those fancy special features like a legendary weapon or 8 move or Luna or staves, so he’s really only good at one thing. 12) Sain. Sain is pretty much at the end of his rope here. If enemies could get any stronger, he’d quickly become very weak but he’s juuuuuuuuuust good enough to still be very useful. Can’t take a hit and no longer is more mobile or stronger than the other team members, but he’s still at least good in those categories. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Florina. Stopped being at all useful like 5 chapters ago. She can’t scratch anything, she gets outspeeded and 2-hit killed by everything. 2) Fiora. Fiora is usually really good here, but mine is 4 or 5 speed behind on average. So she gets doubled. That makes her not really viable except for rescue-dropping. If Nino wasn’t useful here though, I’d find a way to make her work. 3) Renault. If I found I needed more healing, I’d bring him instead of Nino. He’s good at that, just nothing else. 4) Vaida. Too slow, no res. She would be the last person I’d seriously consider for Nino’s slot if Nino didn’t work though. Everyone’s job is decided, everyone is positioned with that in mind. This will be an opening move to remember. I’ll explain their gear as it comes up so you can better see how it fits together. The most important thing is to max sure everyone who might kill someone who has an S-rank weapon has an empty inventory slot- or will have one by then. That’s harder than it sounds because Merlinus is full. Absolutely full. And so is every character’s inventory except for a grand total of 3 open slots before I started rearranging stuff. Without selling or dropping things, it’ll be hard to fit 7 new items into 3 slots. The Characters:  “…You… You truly are Roland’s children. I am old… I did not expect anything to surprise me again, and yet…” –Athos, Chapter 31 Last chapter, last new character. Athos is one of my favorite characters. He’s a lot like Marcus really, a man with contagious self-confidence derived from being a master in his field and living his life the way he wants to. He’s very wise and definitely a rather affable and even outgoing fellow despite living such a secretive life. But he also has a roguish streak that adds a lot of depth to the character. He lies, he tricks you, he jokes, and he does his own thing rather than run around solving everyone else’s problems. One of mankind’s greatest champions, but he’s living his own life rather bring completely consumed by the responsibilities of being the most powerful force for good in the setting. He has an evident love for his fellow humans, as befits one of the 8 legends, and though he says that having lived a thousand years and grown beyond such seemingly basic needs as food and sleep he’s no longer quite human, it’s clear from his lasting friendship with the other legends and the new ones he forms with the main characters that he’s still a human being in every way that really matters. He’s not unambiguously the very best magic user in the game, but he’s pretty darned close. He starts with an S rank in every type of magic and with staves, giving him remarkable versatility. In particular, his 30 Mag makes him the best user of luna and stave both. With 20 speed and an unmatched (Renault doesn’t count) 9 Con, he’s also very fast. Fast enough to double Nergal with many weapons. And he’s impervious to magic attack and highly resistant to physical ones while packing a significant amount of dodge. In short, he hits like a truck, is nearly invulnerable, is pretty fast, and has a versatility even Canas can’t match. A fantastic character.  Even better than a 20/20 Rath, Uhai is the most dangerous bow user I can recall in any FE. Nothing is capable of doubling him under any circumstances, he’s tougher than most of the tanky enemies on this chapters, and he basically can’t miss.  Thankfully this is a lie, it’s just a normal bow. But 43 damage, incredible accuracy, and the speed to double nearly anyone (even my speed-capped Heath, who’d otherwise be my best tank with a Delphi shield), combined with his massive HP and defenses makes him one of the most dangerous enemies in the whole game. It doesn’t help that he’s loose at the start and has 8 move and you can’t have Hector or Athos or the like start in range of him. Oh and the formation in his room means only 1-2 people at most can attack him and they need 8 move.  Look at that smug smirk. Kenneth thinks he’s all that, but he has a pitiful 13 speed and unimpressive damage. And high Res has been a complete non-issue since the first time we reached the Dragon’s Gate and got Luna.  The crit range on Luce would be fairly threatening if Canas and Athos weren’t impervious to magic. Indeed, it’s pretty easy to get very high Res in this game.  Uhai is tougher overall and hits just as hard with 12 more speed. And that 16 Res isn’t terrible, but it’s not going to keep him alive if I throw a magic attack his way. A simple hammer can deal massive damage to him anyway…  Since he’s lance-locked. His accuracy is low enough that you can dodge him, though you can’t count on it, Not a threat really. Nor is his one ally, though at least that guy has an axe too.  I’m not sure why Brendan has an affinity when none of these other guys do. He hits very hard and he’s fairly tough but nothing special.  This is a pretty sweet axe. It’s significantly stronger and lighter than Armads, though it has no Def bonus.  30 skill? Oh no! And he’s an assassin so half of his crits are instant kills!  Kidding. They gave him a Runesword, meaning he has 0 crit rate at all times and his serious 24 speed drops down to an easily double-able 19. Also his damage drops to 22 (targeting Res) which means it’s easily possible to field a character who’s completely impervious to his attacks. Jerme is a joke. The only thing he has going for him is that if you send someone to fight him who he can hurt, his sword will heal him by a potentially significant amount. You’ll notice, by the way, that even though you can’t fight both Kenneth and Jerme in the same playthough, they’re both dead and their quintessences used to make morphs. Just how this happened is ambiguous. One possibility is that Limstella just killed the other one when the whole fortress was comproised. Another possibility is that Harken, who was in that fortress to kill black fang leaders and is said in his supports to have killed one of them, killed the other one. And a third is that the dead one was on mission with Jaffar before Four-Fanged Offense. Whatever he was doing it was so dangerous that he, more powerful than either of them, was mortally wounded and barely limped back to collapse in front of Nino who barely managed to save his life.  When first fought, Ursula was perhaps the most powerful enemy faced to date. Now she’s back and better than ever by a ton. Except her Res is actually 1 point lower. Still better than everyone in the game except Kenneth and Nergal. You could Luna her if you have 2 tomes, but really you’re better off using that on Kenneth and his gang if you only have one. Her Def isn’t exactly soft when combined with solid speed and good HP, but it’s low enough you can deal real damage.  And this tome slows her down to a more manageable 38, though she hits harder than Kenneth and even has a crit chance. She’s probably the 3rd biggest threat on the level and not to be taken lightly.  This guy is the biggest. He doubles everything, he dodges everything, he has the best all around defenses, he has a support bonus with Linus for even more awesomeness, he can’t miss, he crits like a beast, and he deals massive damage anyway.  Tailor made for him, this sword does not mess around. Fortunately, we have the two pieces of gear needed to defeat him easily.  Almost as tough and not as easily countered, but nowhere near as much of an offensive powerhouse. The only problem is that you have to kill Lloyd first and then hack down his 63 HP with him not coming out till turn 6 and do it without Luna so that tome is ready to go after Nergal.  Oh and his weapons may not hurt, but they do make it hard to kill him. He can’t just be countered the way Lloyd can and with his tomahawk he’ll stay out of range unless you’re coming after him with magic- in which case his weapons WILL hurt.  “I have power now. Nothing else matters. I will open the Dragon’s Gate and get even more power… The power to defeat anyone. Power…” –Nergal, Chapter 19xx I’m so glad he doesn’t have 30 Def, that would just be crazy. Nergal is the biggest mage in the game and the toughest, but that counts for absolutely nothing in a game with Luna flying around. The big problem is there’s this other spell besides Luna that totally wastes him. And he doesn’t move. So there exist no circumstances under which he’s a threat at all. You have to choose to put someone he can kill in his range and you can pretty much freely rescue and heal people out of his range. Really there is no excuse ever for losing to him. Batta was more of a threat. With these stats, he could actually have been a pretty cool boss if he moved. Picture even just him as the only enemy on a maze-like part of the Dragon’s Gate armed with Berserk, Bolting, an Elixir, Nosferatu, and Ereshkigal. Moving by teleporting within 6 squares. That could be a pretty serious and cool challenge. A bit like Fomortiis actually but with the terrain not making him trivial. Fire Emblem has a serious final boss problem. The only two that were remotely interesting to fight were Fomortiis who moved and had 3 different attacks and also summoned some respectable minions but could unfortunately be blitzed and instant killed with Myrrh or the legendary weapons and Ashera who wasn’t as easy to deal with, but basically relied on the game not telling you what moves she had and randomness for all her challenge. The weird thing is it would be really, really easy to make cool final boss challenges for this kind of game. They just consistently fail to do so and we get things like Nergal more often than not.  Named for the mythological Nergal’s wife, Ereshkigal is a formidable tome. But again, it doesn’t matter. The most obvious imaginable way to beat him works with 100% certainty and there is 0 chance of him ever killing anyone unless you choose to put someone weak in his 1-2 range and then not heal or rescue them. Oh well. He was a pretty awesome villain even if he’s a lousy fight.
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Apr 25, 2015 04:32
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Playing Through: Besides being, you know, dumb, where does this even come from? At least it’s more in character than Eliwood saying it.  Dumber yet. You’re not fighting Lyn. You are going to carefully stay out of everyone’s way and not touch anything.   Awww.  Nils pledges his help too and says Ninian would as well.  Yes, obviously.  And now every character you chose to bring gets their own little quote or sometimes a little soliloquy. This is an awesome FE tradition and one I hope they expand on in the future. Canas apparently gets his wish since apparently no one ever remembers this happened in 6. It’s obviously significant that Canas the scholar and historian wants something so important to be forgotten, but I’m not sure I get why he wants that.  You’re strong enough to beat Athos in a fight. Good enough for me.  Pent’s motivation is and has always been pretty stupid. I’ve said before that I really don’t like him much as a character. Such a gary stu. Erk would one-round this guy anyway.  Hm. You know, it’s really not Nergal’s fault except insofar as he set events in motion and then he could have stopped it but didn’t. That latter is also true of Athos (aware of everything on the continent, greatest archwizard, probably in contact with her archwizard family, teleports at will, never helped her in any way), Brendan, and Lloyd among others. It was Sonia, disobeying Nergal’s orders, who was really responsible for most of what she lost. Oh and Linus being a moron. Ok granted Nergal worked with Sonia to kill her original family, but she was too young to remember that and she could still have had a happy life if Sonia had done as Nergal said and raised her as if she was her daughter. It was Sonia who decided to be abusive toward her. True, Limstella is the one who actually killed Linus, but no one knows that at this point and Linus could just as easily have been killed by Eliwood and company in self-defense after he blundered in like an idiot and attacked them. Nergal had nothing to do with Lloyd’s death; Sonia had no idea where he disappeared to and he suicidally attacked Eliwood’s group and refused to listen to the truth even from Nino.  Notice that this is something of a change of heart for him. He was a deserter and before going to Bern again said he had no fond memories of the place. Evidently his brief return visit made him homesick.  Raven continues to be the cool guy who does and says the cool things.  And Sain has, I’d say, the best line of all.  Here goes! Unfortuantely, Athos says nothing. I think that’s a huge missed opportunity. As one of the 8 legends, the mentor and advisor to the heroes, most experienced veteran warrior in the room, and Nergal’s old friend AND adversary, he really could have said something memorable and deep.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4okMCBcr0Qk Very atmospheric and menacing unique map music. Dragon’s Gate 1, you may recall, was the ominous theme that played when the party first arrived at the gate and was first beginning to grasp that they were dealing with something bigger than they understood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw9_Tdpoz5U  Sain’s defenses are lackluster and no one stands up to Uhai very well anyway.  He rides in and kills one of Uhai’s two snipers. You can see he’s still darned powerful here in the endgame.  Even though he basically hit his peak 10 levels and 20 chapters ago.  Nino runs after Sain. You may find it odd that Sain attacked with a 1-range weapon. But see, those snipers also have longbows. Further, Uhai can’t be killed by a mere javelin.  Ta-da! You can open those doors! That’s… pretty much the closest to a cool strategic trick I’ve got here. There’s not much else special you can do. Well Raven can double Ursula and Jerme and should be able to kill Ursula guaranteed on his next turn, though he’ll be badly injured.  Pent was positioned so he could run to exactly this square and use the Unlock staff.  Allowing Erk to stand exactly here. Besides being at range to fight both generals, this precise square is important for reasons you’ll see soon.  Eliwood opens the door and continues his move, thereby getting out of Ursula range.  Heath started next to the square Nils was going to run to for a reason.  Heath and Athos transport Nils to the top area of the map where he’ll have a lot of important work to do.  Canas moves up with them. He’s got flux equipped at the moment, Athos has the one Luna. That’s important because starting positions meant Athos was going to be in the back by 1 square. Because Eliwood has an axereaver equipped, the warrior with Brendan will use a bow on him, not Canas.  Lyn is carrying some backup gear for Hector that he probably won’t use and goes with him. That’s the turn. 4 doors opened, the last ones about to be.  Erk gets a lucky dodge on Darin and then crits him. There was actually almost no luck involved here. See, if Darin did hit then unless Erk critted, the other general couldn’t attack Erk regardless. And the longbow sniper couldn’t finish him. So the only way Erk would die is if 1) Darin hit, 2) Erk critted, 3) the 20 or so accuracy second general also hit  Nice, that’s speed capped.  And he gets the Rex Hasta. Erk had an inventory spot open to start with. Most people didn’t since you may recall I had almost no inventory slots to spare.  Barring a lucky crit, this is gonna be a long fight. But all I need is for Eliwood to get started and to tank a turn or two while other people get ready to help.  Jerme vs Raven went about as badly as it could have with Jerme hitting and Raven missing once. As the guy on my team with the lowest Res, Raven was pretty bad at this job- though still good enough. There was just no one else fast and strong enough to double Ursula and then kill her who wasn’t needed elsewhere.  The morphs aren’t very talkative but their faces are still as expressive as ever.  Oh. Well that’s pretty helpful. He could have just Silver Sworded her next turn, but this works even better.  And when they die, they all return to living facial color and smile. This suggests that these morphs actually were to some extent the trapped souls of the people used to make them. Not entirely sure how that works.  Because Raven had to use a door key to get in, he now has an open slot so he doesn’t have to drop anything.  Even with Ninis’s grace on, Uhai is pretty devastating.  Erk gets the dodge he needed after that unexpected crit, so I’m back in business.  Eliwood takes an unlucky hit from the warrior with Brendan, but it’s alright.  This right here is why it was important that Erk stand precisely there. It was the only way to lure this sniper to that exact spot. And now Uhai is finished even though I haven’t put a scratch on him yet.  Nino attacks and weakens the sniper for a future turn.  And now I have Uhai trapped (Nino couldn’t do much damage to him).  Pent heals Raven and steps out to be ready to go wherever he’s needed in the near future.  With the Brave Sword I gave him for this purpose, Raven could completely own Jerme.  But instead I’ll move the (impervious) Erk to the other edge of Jerme’s range to finish Uhai later since Sain isn’t accurate enough and have Raven go this way. Eliwood could use the help.  This fellow has a bolting and more to the point, he’s in my way.  Then Canas steps up, trades for the Luna, and unloads it on Kenneth. My next few moves will depend on how this goes. For example, Heath could fly in and finish Kenneth if Canas doesn’t crit. Or Nils could boost one of them. Otherwise, Nils will work with Hector and Heath will probably help Eliwood.  Nice, that helps. The remaining druid has Gespenst the S-rank dark tome, but he can’t hit hard enough with that to be a threat to Canas and it weighs so much that Athos will easily double him with Aureola so he’s dead next turn guaranteed. And they both have free inventory space.  So Hector opens the door. Lyn could have done it in principle, but there’s some problems with that approach. One of them is that then Hector has no free inventory space unless he stops next to her and trades with her in which case he can’t make any additional progress so there’s no profit.  The Reed brothers have support bonuses. There’ve been no enemies with those since Paul and Jasmine. These two fellows have good affinities too, so each is reaping a significant def boost among other things.  Nils is unfortunately in general range now. In retrospect, I should have checked Athos and Canas vs Kenneth first and then figured out how to move Raven Hector and Nils (and consequently Raven and Pent) in that order, but it was not at first clear that doing Raven and Pent first would in any way impact the top people. Anyway, Hector was the two items needed for victory. First is the Swordslayer, acquired at last last chapter. This is one of the best weapons in the game. It’s like a swordreaver, but with better stats and also super-effective against mercenaries, heroes, myrmidons, swordmasters, and Lyn. The upshot is that the amazingly accurate Lloyd now faces a coin toss and will surely be hit and 2-hit killed himself. Secondly, Hector has the Iron Rune that Lloyd himself dropped for us. This reduces Lloyd’s crit chance from about 25 to 0. That 25% could have killed Hector despite his nearly capped Def and the swordslayer. Lloyd is incredibly powerful.  Originally I had planned on Heath perhaps carrying Nils or Athos or Canas up to be in position to fight Nergal, but now it looks like I’ll finish a turn earlier than I thought so he’d actually only be slowing them down overall. He helps Eliwood with Brendan instead.  He REALLY helps Eliwood with Brendan.  So I quickly wind up with Basilikos on the enemy turn.  Hector kills Lloyd for a laaaaame last level. I so wanted to see him cap speed or at least Def or something.  A bit of a foolish risk, but it saves a whole turn actually.  A bad level!  Except he already capped everything!  A genuinely bad level for Nino as she kills the last sniper. She’s got great Def but is pretty mediocre at best otherwise.  Pent is needed for this general.  My Pent has pretty much only gained speed. That’s fine, his starting stats are good enough anyway.  Canas and Athos make a run for Nergal. They’re an incredible team  There’s no hard counter to Linus like there is for Lloyd. I’ll just have to get started on him early and keep the heat on. Oh and put Pent in range to lure him out where other people can kill him more quickly. That’s why Hector is letting him out here.  Canas gets a sweet level from healing Raven.  On the enemy turn, linus falls for the trap.  My turn. It is only turn 4. I’m gonna kill Nergal.  Eliwood finishes off the warrior here with the Blazing Sword.  His last level is a very good one! Speed capped, Strength just about brought up to average.  Raven takes down the other hero and proves once and for all that he really is the best.  So good he already capped everything that matters.  Heath + Pent if need be make short work of Jerme.  Heath pulls down another great level. He’s totally going to cap HP, Str, Skill, Speed, AND Def.  Nergal’s door opens. The druid has Berserk. The sage has fortify and no one cares.  I’m all ready.  Since everything is done down here, I do some more pointless healing.  So look at these numbers. Aureola has weapon triangle advantage and is super effective. The result is that Athos can actually just beat Nergal in a straight fight, guaranteed, with no need for any fancy tricks at all or even knowledge that Luna exists. All he needed to stop Nergal a long time ago was to use Aureola instead of his lousy Forblaze.  Nergal just has no idea that he’s only alive because Athos didn’t know about the weapon triangle.  It’s cool vs awesome time! The ultimate light magic vs the maybe second best actually dark magic! Seeing these two guys with their unique animations and their giant spells fight it out is pretty cool.  Nergal fires back with the almost as impressive Ereshkigal.  Nergal’s unique battle theme is Everything Into the Dark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgk8SGwX2Dc It sounds awesome and it synchronizes fairly well with his animations. Also the name is great since, you know, Nergal’s whole story revolves around him discarding everything- his memories of his wife and children, his home, his old life, probably even his original name- into the dark to get more power in a self-defeating attempt to save them. Oh and “Be Prepared. You are to be witness to a power that overwhelms all!” while a bit long-winded, is my favorite battle dialogue line since “Tell me… are you afraid to die?” He really has a lot of great lines talking to various people, but unfortunately those people have no chance against him so I won’t be using them here.  He really gives it his best shot. Poor guy doesn’t know there’s a new archdruid on the block.  And then Canas wrecks him.  Just like what Teodor said. It’s this that has driven his life for 1000 years.  And then, as he dies, he finally realizes the question he’s been forgetting to ask. This is so great.  An unfortunate mistranslation. That shouldn’t say “Quintessence” it should say “Aenir”, the name of his wife. He’s briefly remembered her but even now the details are lost to him. No one ever knows his story, not even him. This death quote, by the way, is not his standard one. He gets an expanded one the more Kishuna levels you do as you uncover more of his past.  But his moment of clarity passes and he dies as he lived, being a total jerk. So… is there like a form Canas fills out first or does someone just come by and give him the trophy?  Agh. Apparently on some level he does recognize that was his dad he just saw get killed.  But they never really know and convince him it was nothing.  Not even Eliwood, who pitied Nergal, suspected.  Famous last words.  This is all your fault, Lyn! Unfortunately screen caps don’t capture the screen shaking and the dragon roaring very well.  The grop runs further in. Remember this part of the gate? This is where the first Dragon’s Gate expedition exploded in our faces. How appropriate that the final battle would take place here.  This painting puts the cool back in dragons in a big way. Actually this game does in general with the drama with which they’re always greeted and the art of the previous one too and the characters’ reactions.  At first it’s hard to understand why this would be. Afterall, the Demon Dragon is sealed away and only Athos knows where it is, the legendary weapons have been gathered and are in the hands of capable users, two of the legends are still alive, one has become some sort of demigoddess or whatever, and the Ending Winter has made it impossible to survive here long for dragons. Plus humans now have control of the whole continent and a strong economy to wage war with. My guess is Athos is assuming the dragons have been preparing seriously for war, rather than just wandering through because the door is open and they’re homesick, and that they consequently have some kind of real plan and countermeasures for what defeated them before.  Somehow!  Three dragons. And not those sissy war dragons that barely even qualified as generic enemies. These are real dragons, better than Yahn.  Lyn make up for her earlier mistake.  Conceivably Athos was more powerful in the past and has no idea how little chance he stands now. Alternately (and fitting 6’s story) these dragons are way more powerful than usual. This could, in fact, be some manner of elite dragon rescue team. Consider it from the dragons’ point of view: The two ice dragons who ran the gate disappeared through it one day and were never heard from again. They were young and stupid and reckless however and without them to open the gate, there was no way through after them. Probably they just got homesick and decided to go through and stay in Elibe, which likely got them killed but nothing could be done about that. Then after most of two years, someone hears Ninian’s voice and the gate is open. A dragon goes back through to find out what’s going on. 5 minutes later, all that comes back is its mangled corpse. Clearly, someone on the other side of the gate is luring dragons through and killing them and this danger is not going away. So it would make sense to have not one but a small squad of powerful dragons on hand to charge through the gate the next time its opened to put a stop to this and find out what’s going on. It makes some sense, though it’s contradicted by Ninian[/b] saying that the dragons were just homesick and came through to do some sightseeing. On the other hand, it’s not like [spoiler]Ninian actually talked to them or knew what was going on in the other world at all.  They saved some cool animations and art for this last section here. Durandal doing that black screen slice, this awesome looking firebreath, etc. If they were capable of that kind of thing all along, why were there so many moments where this kind of animation were a complete fail instead?  Man, the whole room seems to be on fire now. Eliwood doesn’t think twice before rushing right up to two dragons to try to rescue Athos. Even Hector and Lyn aren’t that brave.  Athos wants to stand his ground here where we have every disadvantage. This is why Market gives the orders.  Did somebody say they needed some kind of help?  He’d come across as something of a deus ex machina if going to get him to help weren’t the one thing Athos explicitly said he was going to do and if he didn’t then say he’d been successful when Lyn asked if he’d done what he was trying to do. That’s probably why Athos just answered with a vague “I was” when asked if he was successful. If he gave a complete answer, it would have spoiled this moment of the cavalry arriving.  I’m… yeah I’m not sure really who he’s talking to or what he means by that.  An animation light show ensues.  And Ninian appears in the middle!  Well that’s unexpected! But actually, it kind of fits in a nice way with some things characters said previously. And it really puts Nergal in his place. He was not, afterall one of the 8 legends. He was a pretender to the title who got all his power by stealing it from other people using one ancient spell that he didn’t even invent himself and wiser people had rejected long ago. And which Athos said brings not wisdom but abomination. Renault, shouting at Nergal, says that Nergal tricked him into believing in the impossible: the return of a lost soul. And Nergal reveals that his lousy attempt was pretty much the best he could do. All he could make were wretched creatures like his morphs in the shape of the black fang leaders who couldn’t even speak and were glad to die. Nergal boasted that he had “the power to perform miracles.” But he never really did. Bramimond does. Bramimond is better than him and has always been better than him. Athos too, is able to crush him when he uses the right weapon for the job and stops hesitating because Nergal was his friend.  Nils’s reaction is kind of lame and not as amazed as it should be. On the other hand, he might just be too stunned by seeing his sister resurrected in front of him to do much but stare.  And by appease he means kill apparently.  Ninian launches the most powerful attack of all time and nearly instant kills the lot of them. Bramimond restored the power she lost when she first returned to this world too.  She apologizes for having just killed them in cold blood.  And then falls over.  It’s like déjà vu all over again! It wasn’t so long ago that Eliwood informed Nils that NInian had only fainted after rescuing her.   Bramimond out!  Alright, the second part of the chapter begins as we square off against the dragon that made its reflex save. It’s actually a big map and there are many long-ranged attacking enemies on it. However, they’re entirely irrelevant because there’s no reason to go into their range ever. You can’t even fly out and kill them for XP.  Nergal’s stats looked high. These stats are crazy. Completely off the charts. 40 Def, 40 Res. Most characters, at capped str/mag and using a silver weapon or fimbulvetyr or the like could not even scratch this creature. Most characters at average level 20/20 cannot even scratch it with the S-ranked weapons. And the legendary weapons are only 2x super-effective in this game, so they don’t even do that much damage. And just look at that HP! It’s 120 actually. A long time before I played –or had heard of- Fire Emblem or knew what an RPG was, I played the original Shining Force for the PC. I was 7 or so and wasn’t very good at it, so it took me a while to beat but at long last I got to the final boss, Dark Dragon. And there I got stuck. Because his HP was - - or ?? or something. And what’s more, it didn’t go down when my characters attacked him! After a few swings, I concluded the game was somehow bugged and gave up on it. Older and wiser at age 9, I played through again, this time old enough to figure out that actually the ?? probably meant his HP was just over the maximum 99 display and if I hit him enough times I could kill him like anything else. Sure enough, he just had 200 HP or something like that and I finally won. So besides regaling you with part of my secret origin story I’m not entirely sure what the point of that anecdote was, but Shining Force is a fairly interesting- if much less tactically rich- game and pretty fun. It has aged much, much better than the first Fire Emblem, its main competitor. I’m not quite as fond of the GBA remake, but it does add a fair amount of content and might be worth checking out on its own merits too. Think of it as like Fire Emblem 3 I guess. And it ends with a fight with a dragon that has more HP than the game can display.  That’s… a really awesome description. And a very, very important warning. This thing is Luna. It is Luna with Might. 10 Might on top of 29 net Str. And it has 1-3 range. And massive accuracy. Look at that 184. There are no characters in this case who get to 30 speed and 30 luck on average, most characters can’t even come close if they hit their caps. But a hypothetical character who does have 30 speed and 30 luck and is not slowed by a weapon has 90 avoid. That means the dragon, with true hit, has a 99.34% chance to hit them. Imagine this maximum avoid character has an affinity that grants avoid (so not wind or light) and has an A and a B with other people who have affinities other than Wind or Light. Assume the tactician actually has 10 stars and the character shares the tactician affinity and the character holds the double-dash exclusive emblem seal and the character is under the influence of Set’s Litany. Then the dragon’s hit chance is roughly 50%. In other words, you can’t dodge this attack. There’s no terrain available, it ignores the defense boost of Ninis’s Grace, and ignores Def and Res too. So you can’t reduce the damage. Bolting in the hands of Athos would do 2 damage if it hit. So you can’t avoid entering its range. If you attempt conventional tactics in this fight, you lose with 100% probability. Any character dies in exactly 2 fights, it will always target anyone it can kill, etc. Healers running in to help probably have less than 40 HP (Priscilla, Serra, and Lucius are lucky to have 40 at 20/20) so they’ll die instantly, and so on. On my first play of the game, I won by putting one person at a time in the dragon’s range and not attacking, damaging the dragon with a counterattack, and then having the character run out of range and be healed while another one ran in and also did not attacking until it was worn down. Now of course I know about things like physic and luna. Still, that isn’t enough without a very lucky critical (that dragon has serious luck). Use Athos, heal Athos, dance for Athos, use Athos again, heal Athos again, have Canas take Luna and use it and the dragon is still alive even if Canas is fast enough to double and capped his magic. Armads or Durandal can finish it off of course. I am going to beat this dragon in 1 round without Luna, criticals, supports, staves that aren’t mend, or Nils. Here’s the formation again.  First, Nino trades the Rex Hasta to Heath.  Athos attacks with Aureola, doing light but important damage.  Then Hector attacks from the bottom with Armads. Position is important.  Heath uses the Rex Hasta from the left.  Sain rescues Athos and pulls him out.  Eliwood rescues Heath and pulls him out (and moves out of support range)  Erk heals Hector (A heal staff would work just as well for less money, but Erk happened to have this and I couldn’t do any trading with every unit has a job except Lyn.)  Pent rescues Erk.  Canas takes and drops Erk.  And now Raven rescues Pent.  Game over! That dragon looks awesome! Kind of reminds me of Perfect Chaos in SA1 though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7FElFcDYYg Campaign of Fire synchronizes well with the dragon’s animation, but I’ve never honestly been fond of it. That background made of fire that flows and has heat distortion is really cool though. All backgrounds up till now have been static.  You can hear the thud whenever the axe hits the ground.  And he kills the dragon with his second counter. Round 1 win! Price: Rex Hasta x2 + Mend x1 = 1250.  The dragon is crumbling!  Everyone keeps saying this, but I’m telling you Eliwood had Birds of a Feather in the bag!  You’d think that, no matter how sick he was, Eliwood would have at least tried to ride out to help Hector in 6.  Athos congratulates him-  And collapses.  Either age or using all his power have finally caught up with Athos. Up until now it wasn’t really clear whether his relationship with Bramimond was really a friendly one at all. Certainly the two had been out of contact, Athos was unsure if Bramimond would help at all, and the two greeted each other rather coolly. It looks like Athos’s recent talk with Bramimond might have brought them back together after a thousand years on their own.  And with that, he soon departs.  Athos has had a full life and now that the world is safe from Nergal and some good people know about Arcadia, he has no regrets.  Aww.  And, as what he calls a parting gift, he shares with them his vision of the future.   Guess there’s nothing to worry about then.  That he did. Even when he was being kind of twerp, it was usually for their own good too. I like Nils’s sad posture in this painting particularly.  And even Hector’s rather disrespectful nickname for him sounds a lot more friendly now.   Now there’s an understatement.  She’s tried to apologize before, but this time he hears her out and she can tell him everything because he already knows most of what happened. She explains how living in the dragon world, they were homesick and remembered Elibe.  We know Nils didn’t fully recognize Nergal. Perhaps Ninian, having been older, did but kept the truth from him? Or more likely she just doesn’t remember as well as she thinks she does and Nergal acts and looks rather different.  And she regrets killing them for doing the same thing she did.  And then Eliwood says it’s not her fault, it’s all the fault of the ancient humans. And then he begins a speech to that effect. I really am tired of this trope in FE games. It’s always the humans who are bad and the wise human characters can be identified as the ones who say humans were in the wrong and dragons or sub-humans or gratuitous bunny people who were never in the setting before or whatever were way better and didn’t deserve what happened to them and so on. The crimes and jerkishness of non-human characters against humans are ignored or dismissed or just acknowledged to be the wrongdoing of that particular individual, but when some humans do something wrong it reflects badly on all humans. It’s kind of a tiresome Fire Emblem cliché now.  At least here he implicitly recognizes that they did do something kind of irresponsible.  He probably would. Eliwood has become, as Elbert said he would, at least as much the consummate hero and wise leader as his father was.  And he pledges that, like Athos, he will try to make the whole continent like Arcadia someday; a place where dragons and humans can coexist.  Ninian reveals that they have to return home, both to close the gate properly (and probably explain what happened) and to survive.  There’s really never a pure happy ending in FE. They’re pretty good at crafting bittersweet ones like this one, recognizing that some people will die and others will be parted and the world will never just go back to the way it was, no matter how much people might want it to after the kind of disasters FE games usually revolve around.  If you have an A support between them the conversation becomes different here and she actually chooses to stay with him.   And they prepare to leave.  So they weren’t all wiped out in the initial “skirmishes” that were mentioned.   Now that’s really generous. They’re going to try to not wipe out or marginalize the humans of their world. Or rather, the world that they seized by force from the people already living there when they came as invaders from another dimension. Unlike, say, Eliwood these two were actually there at the beginning or nearly the beginning of their species seizing a world from the other. Only now are they going to try to not be as awful as the people who drove them out of Elibe.  Hector is totally blasé about all that.  And indeed, none of these humans seems to care at all about or have any interest in the situation of the humans living in the other world.  Another good painting.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXNPp0SylJY It’s Light to Tomorrow, the same theme that played during the ending of Lyn’s story.  And there it ends!  And you get a painting that depends on who your main lord got his best support with (with Eliwood/Hector here being the default). It’s a great painting, but… Eliwood really has clawlike hands doesn’t he?  And I’ve reached the epilogue. I’ll post that in a bit. First I need to figure out by how much I exceeded the various requirements. Total Restarts: 39 (Not counting looking at the initial map to find out what picked character list spot corresponded to what square) Turn Surplus: 7 (Time limit 10, I beat it in 5. 4 or fewer might be possible with the Warp staff) 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.
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Apr 25, 2015 04:33
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Go Hector with the dragon-slaying.
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Apr 25, 2015 06:42
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And what an excellent date to end it all on. Happy Birthday, Fire Emblem 7. 
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Apr 25, 2015 08:16
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...you can open those doors early?
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Apr 25, 2015 08:20
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Cake Attack posted:...you can open those doors early? All but Nergal's!
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Apr 25, 2015 08:54
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I would have thought more people would have tried to open them, but given the awakening version of this maps insistence on the fact I guess not 
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Apr 25, 2015 13:29
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Great work punking the last boss.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:34
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Melth posted: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. Aw, does this mean you aren't doing a SS-ranking run next? 
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Apr 25, 2015 19:20
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 Excellent work Melth. It was fun (and a little terrifying) to see what it takes to S-rank FE7, and it was certainly different from how I'm used to playing (the awesomeness of Canas and Luna excepted, of course). One of these days I may try a ranking run and I'll probably use your LP as a rough guide to doing so. One thing that's kinda terrifying to realize is that the Fire Dragon you're fighting is already almost dead thanks to Ninian's ice blast. How loving strong would that dragon be at full power?  On another "strong unit" note: I have never seen an Erk this good, ever. I didn't even know it was possible for Erk to be this good. Those Afa's drops certainly did their magic on him.I also just realized that in addition to being Magic and Speed blessed, your Canas has more physical defense than both Sain and Raven, and one less Defense point than Eliwood. Magic guys are usually supposed to be squishy, but Canas never seems to get that memo. (And it is awesome.)  Finally: Francis posted:Aw, does this mean you aren't doing a SS-ranking run next? Oh, and it has Gonzales.   Basically I'd love to see what an S-ranked run of FE6 entails, but I certainly understand if you don't feel like doing it. Your FE7 S-ranked run was good enough that now I want more, which definitely shows that you did a good job in the LP, so congrats again.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:26
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Great job on the final battle, although I'd like to point out that there IS a chance of the Fire Dragon having 20 Str in HHM, meaning he does 40 damage, meaning he oneshots Athos (without an Angelic Robe). It happened to me on my first and only (so far) HHM run, and certainly stifled my strategy since I ended up with a very slow Hector 
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Apr 25, 2015 23:45
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fade5 posted:
I do love Gonzalez! I'm kind of torn with regards to early S-rank weapon access. On one hand, it IS kind of cool to get those toys like Durandal early. But on the other, FE7 really managed to make them feel legendary by spending all game building them up but not letting you actually use them until the very final level at which point they completely crush everything. I think either the fairly early access like in FE6 or the very late dramatic access of FE7 is better than the sorta late and not really treated as important legendary weapon acquisition of 8 though. Or having the legendary sword in your pack all along but never using it even after finding out how great it is till nearly the end in 9. That's almost as annoying as Ike telling Elincia to stay in the kitchen on chapter 2 or whatever and then finding out she's amazing in the last couple of chapters. And unfortunately a lot of the fun toys like long-ranged tomes are just not really very viable in a max ranking run, so you wouldn't be seeing much use of them regardless. They're too expensive to use up no matter when in the game you get them. The other thing is that FE6 doesn't really have the kind of interesting level design 7 does by and large. There are very few great chapters like Hero of the Western Isles where it would actually be cool to see how I'm going to achieve all 12 objectives while still training 2 newbs in 6 turns or whatever. Most chapters would just be me going "And with my psychic powers I know that 14 cavaliers are going to spawn over here wielding steel lances on turn 6, so I'm going to just happen to put Dieck in that useless out of the way forest with an iron axe. And up there there are going to be 6 mages with Elfire, so I'm going to send Ray that way" and so on. You win or lose based on your knowledge of reinforcements more than anything, and on a max ranking run that wouldn't be interesting. Also, I wouldn't have anything other than strategy to talk about. I couldn't gush about the story or the great characters or how X musical theme fits this moment so well or wow would you look at the beautiful painting. And there aren't any fun and interesting mysteries like Kishuna or Nergal's true past to talk about. I guess I could gripe about the moments where the story, characters, music, etc. suck but that would be really annoying both to write and to read. So in sum, you probably don't actually want the FE6 max ranking LP that I would write, although I'm flattered that you think you would. Perhaps Omni could do one? I've never talked to a bigger fan of the game.
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Apr 26, 2015 00:34
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Melth posted:I do love Gonzalez! I'm kind of torn with regards to early S-rank weapon access. On one hand, it IS kind of cool to get those toys like Durandal early. But on the other, FE7 really managed to make them feel legendary by spending all game building them up but not letting you actually use them until the very final level at which point they completely crush everything. I think either the fairly early access like in FE6 or the very late dramatic access of FE7 is better than the sorta late and not really treated as important legendary weapon acquisition of 8 though. Or having the legendary sword in your pack all along but never using it even after finding out how great it is till nearly the end in 9. That's almost as annoying as Ike telling Elincia to stay in the kitchen on chapter 2 or whatever and then finding out she's amazing in the last couple of chapters. Eh, I'd only do one as a side-by-side showcase with my hack to show all the things I changed. FE6 is a big obvious prototype to FE7, so having to tell fun stories about getting around limitatons in the system is all I'd have going for me. http://puu.sh/hqPlO/77c620724b.webm http://puu.sh/hqPmk/c52dfd21c1.webm   That and the animations.     And the new maps. The rewritten stuff... And even then it's egomaniacal to LP my own bloody hack. Lets be clear here, I like FE6, but that's in SPITE of its problems, not because I think it doesn't have them. Because if ripping out the guts of that bloody engine and trying to piece it all back together has taught me anything, it's the flaws. And besides, I'm not good at determening what good rankings will be, I need OTHERS to play though and say "Okay this is reasonable"
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Apr 26, 2015 00:48
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This one's amazing.
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Apr 26, 2015 01:17
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The Epilogue Story Section: The epilogue begins much the same way Hector’s story did.  Hector is going to have either the funeral for his brother or his own ascension ceremony or something. It’s actually a bit ambiguous, at least in this default version of the epilogue. If Hector got an A with one of his possible wives, that character will appear here too and the dialogue will be different and such. And Market has arrived for the ceremony.  But she’s leaving almost immediately. Always on the move, Market. I’m not really sure why unless this world is actually full of dozens of stories like this all the time. What else would there be for an unstoppable genius tactician to do after saving the world?  But she stays long enough to have a little talk with Hector about the future. Hector is finding the new job harder than smashing people’s faces in with his axe, as he expected.  He’s realized that Uther really gave him a lot of leeway to do whatever he wanted.  But now he’s ready to settle down and be a responsible ruler.  And he’s even realized that that’s not going to be easy or straightforward. He’s matured a lot.  It looks like Market tried to slip out after the ceremony but Hector ran out to talk to her again.  He reminds her of Athos’s prophecy that all of Elibe will be embroiled in war someday.  And asks her to return to help when that day comes.  I’m surprised Market doesn’t just stay with Hector or Eliwood or Lyn anyway. Eliwood in particular is sure to have a lot of fighting to do for the next few years stabilizing Pherae without most of his knights around to keep it secure (we saw bandits were already becoming a problem a year ago for one thing). Plus any allies of Laus who don’t know what Darin was up to might want to attack him now. And Lyn is going to go try to kill the Taliver bandits only to find Wallace stole her kills. Such a Jeigan.  A pretty painting of Hector in his formal dress bidding Market farewell.  The ending is a lot less sad if you assume Hector knows what he’s talking about for once.  Scene break to Castle Ostia in the future.  Hector and Eliwood, now looking distinctly less cool, meet up for the first time in years.  It’s a shame they can’t see each other more often than not. I’d assume there are Lycian League meetings of the marquesses and such, but apparently not.  And they talk openly about their past adventures in front of anyone around. Nor is there at any point any mention of trying to keep these things secret other than returning Armads to the cave it came from.  Even now, with all the time in the world to investigate, they’ve learned nothing of the truth. They don’t know there was ever anything else to him, nor does anyone still living.  And they were talking about Nergal in front of him, yes.   Y’know, the closest Roy has to a canonical parentage is being ½ greatest knight in all of Lycia (and ¼ his even stronger father), ¼ dragon, and ¼ second greatest dark wizard who ever lived. It’s too bad he takes after his lame grandma Eleanora.  And Lilina is introduced to Eliwood. I’d be nervous around a guy who wielded Durandal, was friends with one of the 8 legends, and cut down dozens of elite soldiers, mercenaries, assassins, bandits, and not-quite-human warrior creatures made to kill him in 3 countries too.  And the bland canon couple.  And Eliwood brings up a recent and plot significant rumor.  Hector explains more of what happened to Eliwood.  And this pretty much makes no sense. I mean, the true story is that Desmond poisoned Zephiel who barely survived and was sick for days. But Murdock conspired with Zephiel to pretend he’d actually died. Then at the funeral, he stood up in his casket and stabbed Desmond then and there. How Hector got the idea that there was only one assassination attempt and that people just got confused about who was assassinated is a complete mystery since the two incidents were spaced at least 10 days apart and bore no resemblance to each other. Also Ostia’s spies seemed to know almost absolutely everything going on in Bern – and everywhere else- in 7. How they came to be so inefficient and confused is unclear but probably has to do with Hector being dumb.  And Eliwood points out that this is clearly a sign of what Athos said about a dark star rising in Bern and embroiling all of Lycia in war. Then they apparently go on to ignore that and that they know all about the internal family politics of Bern firsthand and talked to Zephiel while saving his life and that he knows they did that and everything else. So they apparently do nothing at all. And tell no one at all in their courts what they know. Or anything that would make sense. Again, it makes more sense if you don’t treat FE6 and 7 as canon in the same continuity. There are like a zillion ways these guys could prevent the plot of FE6 from ever occurring given what they know from this game. Take your pick and assume they do that and both games make more sense.  Pony product placement.  Just think how history could have changed if they’d listened to this conversation instead of playing with ponies.  So clearly he’s not planning to just do nothing.  Meanwhile, in the castle of what is clearly not an evil king…  That candle there is actually animated, the flame wavers back and forth. Pretty cool, but it’s too bad they didn’t do more of that kind of thing before.  Yahn appears.  Zephiel is evil and out of character.  And now back to an interesting part of the epilogue. This picture of a mysterious caped man and an ice dragon only appears if you’ve done A Glimpse In Time. That plus Ninian and Nils being ice dragons and Nergal’s children lets us know that this is probably Nergal with his dragon wife, Aenir. The One Use of the Link Arena:  So I was trying to figure out the best way to check everyone’s final XP and stats since I didn’t take a screenshot of all of them right before killing the dragon. Fortunately I remembered that the link arena exists in the extras menu. It lets you access all the characters from any of your currently existing save files so you can make teams out of them and then play rather dull multiplayer matches with them.  Oh and for some reason Ninian appears in the link arena separately from Nils with the stats they had at level 1. Character Epilogues and Commentary: The game presents individual epilogues for each character (presented mostly in the order they were recruited with the lords at the end). These can be changed if some of your characters have A supports with each other. I’ve got none of those of course. I’ll also post my characters’ final stats and talk about how those compared to their averages and the impact that had. Oh and the epilogue pictures list how many times the character was in a fight, how many times they killed the opponent, and how many times they were killed (and I restarted).  It’s a shame about Leila, she and Matthew were a nice couple. Honestly, Matthew deserved at least one more scene with Hector before the end talking about Leila and Ostia and what they’ll do after the conflict ends or the like.  Quite a few battles but few kills, since his main job in fights was using his high accuracy and low damage to weaken enemies for other people to kill. HP: 2.25 Str: 0.9 Skill: -2.8 Speed: -1 Luck: 0.5 Def: -2.25 Res: 1.6 Total: -0.8 It’s worse than it looks actually. For one thing, his Str only turned around in the later levels. For another, he’s actually like 6 speed below what he should have if it weren’t for the 20 cap he’s supposed to hit fast. Not getting to 20 speed meant he was outright unusable on many chapters since he couldn’t steal items from the many 20 speed enemy thieves. He was pretty terrible really. And that hurt, but not as much as it could have since I got Legault at the point where Matthew was really going downhill.  Oswin continued to be boring and respectable. “Bern is invading? Sounds like a convenient excuse for more violence.” It does sound like Hector forgave him and the two of them worked together well enough, so Hector must have taken Eliwood’s advice to heart.  More battles than I can remember him having. HP: -0.7 Str: 0.8 Skill: -2.9 Speed: 1.1 Luck: -1.05 Def: -0.65 Res: 0.1 Total: -3.3 Not a good Oswin, though at least most of his badness was in relatively unimportant stats. It made it really hard to train him on Night of Farewells, but it was juuuuust manageable. Of course, I undid all of that to use Bartre instead when it became clear people wanted to see a run where I recruited Karla. Fortunately, his base stats are good and that’s all a slow Jeigan needs for the 2 chapters you should let him fight.  A sad ending for her without any people like Erk to torment. She was a joke character, but at least a funny one.  HP: 1.5 Str: -1.5 Skill: -0.5 Speed: 2 Luck: -1.05 Def: -0.75 Res: 0.25 Total: -0.05 About average. More Mag would have been nice for Sands of Time, Guy almost died because her Mag was so bad.  And became a more useful character in FE6. Unfortunately, like most people, he gets no depth or characterization there outside some fairly mediocre supports. He was pretty cool in FE7. And he should have some awesome stories to tell.  He has more kills than I wanted, but at least he didn’t break 20. HP: 0.35 Str: 0.7 Skill -0.5 Speed: -0.25 Luck: -0.7 Def: -0.15 Res: -0.35 Total: -0.9 One bad level.  Well that’s pretty much what he always wanted, good for him.  HP: -0.6 Str: 1.8 Skill -1.2 Speed: -0.2 Luck: -1 Def: 2.4 Res: 0.8 Total: 2 I used him about as often as I could and he turned out slightly above average, but he was still useless and not even easy to train. Lowen is much worse than I thought.   HP: -0.2 Str: 1.2 Skill -1 Speed: -0.8 Luck: 0 Def: -0.3 Res: 0.1 Total: -1 I regret every kill she got, but it was impossible to not have her be the one finishing those enemies at the time. Oh well. Slightly below average.  At long last!  HP: -0.4 Str: 0.2 Skill -0.2 Speed: 0.4 Luck: 0.8 Def: -0.25 Res: -0.95 Total: -0.4 Average. He started out surprisingly easy to train, but his terribleness rapidly made him unusable.  And you call yourself the toughest mortal enemy alive?! Bartre is a lot less of a moron in 6 but still uninteresting and not worth using.  HP: -3.4 Str: -1 Skill 1.6 Speed: -0.6 Luck: 0.8 Def: -0.2 Res: -3 Total: -5.8 A bad Bartre and that’s saying a lot. He really started off terrible but turned around rapidly in his later fighter levels, briefly becoming very good for Bartre. Anyway, a terrible character but necessary for getting Karla. Who is herself even more terrible. So he’s totally unnecesarry.  Mounted swordsman? A lot of these titles are nonsense. His epilogue seems to mix him up with Karel who ends up with the same title.  He was in many fewer battles than I expected. I suppose not that many pirates actually spawn in Crazed Beast. HP: 0.5 Str: 0.8 Skill -3 Speed: -2 Luck: -0.3 Def: -0.1 Res: -3.5 Total: -7.6 He’s a very bad Guy considering his HHM boosts but still better overall than he would be in any other mode. Which is to say still bad.  Some of these epilogues are kind of out of order since they’re shown in the order that you recruited the characters, so we hear about Erk being asked to replace Pent before Pent retiring.  207 battles, 131 wins! HP: 0.9 Str: 8.4 Skill -0.6 Speed: 2 Luck: 0.2 Def: 2.2 Res: 4.4 Total: 17.5 A better Erk is barely imaginable. As I mentioned, he could beat Athos in a battle with Fire or Thunder or the like. Erk is always a very good unit, as demonstrated I think by the fact that mine was actually not very strong until his massive growth after giving him the Afa’s drops and having him harvest all the monks on Crazed Beast. Even at level 1 it’s easy to start training him up any point in the game, same as most mages.  This implies that she ran or slipped away in search of Raven, but there wasn’t any mention of that before and she seemed to be traveling at least semi-officially with Erk as a bodyguard assigned by Lord Pent.  HP: 3.8 Str: 0.6 Skill -2 Speed: 2.6 Luck: 0.6 Def: -0.4 Res: -2 Total: 3.2 Actually a pretty good Priscilla, not that that’s saying much. And she didn’t even reach level 20 by the end of the game. Staff XP is just too slow in this game.  Even her epilogue is dominated by her one, annoying character trait! She’s like an Awakening character. I’m surprised she didn’t go back with Lyn though. Even if they have an A support they still go their separate ways.  HP: -1 Str: 2 Skill -1.5 Speed: -0.75 Luck: -1.5 Def: -2.75 Res: -0.75 Total: -6.25 Remember she had that angelic robe, so her HP is actually below average. She had a nice and necessary Str bonus but still came out terrible overall. There was no more disappointing member of my core team and her awful defense made her almost unusable later in the game.  Again, the order is confusing here so we don’t find out that Lyn abdicated till the end. Kent would make a darned good quasi-Marquess.  It really doesn’t take many wins to go from level 1 to nearly level 20 late in the game. HP: -0.45 Str: 3.2 Skill 0.5 Speed: 1.35 Luck: -0.6 Def: 0.75 Res: 2.75 Total: 7.5 A fantastic Kent. Not only is he significantly above average, but he’s above average in important stats like Str and Speed. This guy could actually have made a pretty good replacement Sain.  Aww, I guess he and Kent broke up then. That’s a shame. Sain would surely be happy as a roving knight errant though, that’s how he’s often tried to style himself.  You’ll notice that he doesn’t actually have that many battles or wins. I was careful not to overuse him and to have him fight only when it was important. And then of course the end of the game came and I could use him freely but he wasn’t that good anymore. HP: 0.4 Str: 0 Skill 0.8 Speed: 4.2 Luck: -0.2 Def: -0.4 Res: -0.4 Total: 4.4 As I said it would, his massive early game edge was gradually eroded so that now he looks only pretty good compared to his averages. What this total + or – can’t capture is that he was waaaaaay stronger at a time in the game when that was really important.  Exceeded often but never equaled! I guess he never returned to his family or Dart or Rebecca in Pherae then. That’s a shame since his supports establish that the main reason he hadn’t returned yet was that he was ashamed his adventures hadn’t gone as he’d hoped before winding up in Caelin.  He never gained a level so there’s nothing to say.  A happy ending because this means he gave up on his mis-aimed vengeance against Hector and moved on with his life. What’s more, Lucius is in Araphen so the two friends are together. Good  Note that he doesn’t have that many kills considering his level and usefulness. Much like Sain, he’s a fantastic early game unit but then he hits his important caps rather early and can stagnate a bit. What’s more, at the time I promoted him I still had lots of other important people to train, so I basically benched him for 6 major chapters or so and pulled him out to dominate the end. HP: 3.05 Str: 0.15 Skill -2.8 Speed: -1 Luck: -0.45 Def: 1.25 Res: -0.05 Total: 0.15 Pretty much average considering his HHM bonus. He got an early game Def blessing that eroded over time that was nice though.  It looks pretty great at first glance since all Lucius has ever wanted was to help other people- especially children- and his friend Raven is there. Plus having been raised in an orphanage by a cruel and abusive man was the worst part of his life, so this is a chance for him to help people in a way that will probably seem especially important to him. But see, near the start of FE6 a bunch of children from an orphanage in Araphen are being rescued by the Elimine church after the nice man who ran their orphanage was murdered defending them from Bern soldiers. How many orphanages run by great guys with connections to the Elimine church do you think there are in Araphen? Darn it, Zephiel, he was the sweetest guy ever and you killed him! The only better ending available for Lucius is pairing him up with Raven in which case he doesn’t start an orphanage, but might survive. But he’s stuck with that jerk Raven! Poor Lucius.  Clear to 20 in just a handful of battles. Lucius is even easier than Erk to train and is a marvelously powerful and helpful unit. In retrospect, it might well have been worthwhile to get Kenneth’s level instead of Jerme’s so that I could use him and Erk more freely in the early game. HP: -0.35 Str: 0.8 Skill 4.5 Speed: 0.8 Luck: 0.6 Def: -0.7 Res: 1.8 Total: 7.45 Looks awesome at first glance and he’s well above average… but almost all of that comes from a worthless Skill blessing. Lucius is just that good. Spectacular magic, almost matchless resistance, excellent skill, and very high speed too. And he jumps to a starting C in staves when promoted, making him an excellent staff user almost right away.  For many years I was annoyed that there was no better ending for this man than to die with his wife and have his son raised by his absolutely horrible mother. But, thinking about it, dying is about the best thing that could have happened to him. Otherwise he would inevitably have lost himself more and more to the darkness and ultimately become a drooling vegetable like his brothers or a monster like Nergal. This way he can be remembered for the totally swell guy he was.  You’ll note that for a guy I brought to every single chapter except 32x and 30 and frequently touted as the best guy on my team and in the game, he has very few battles and kills. I was very careful not to ever overuse him and to outright never have him fight on many levels, just having him heal and restore and the like. And he still got to nearly level 20. Canas is incredibly easy to overlevel no matter how hard you try because he’s the best man for every job. HP: 0.7 Str: 1.95 Skill -2.6 Speed: 2.85 Luck: -0.25 Def: 4.75 Res: 1.95 Total: 9.35 One of the best Canases I’ve ever seen. But the crazy part is (other than Def) he’s not actually THAT above average. Canas is just that good. Even if he were average he’d still have smashed just about everything up just as well. As always, what really makes him amazing is what an all-rounder he is. He doesn’t have the best Mag, but he has very good Mag. Not the best Res, but very good Res. Not the best speed, but good enough speed, and so on. And he does have the best Def and HP pretty much. Oh and his caps are nice and high. The other mages are too specialized. Lucius is great on offense and with Res, but he can’t take a hit. Erk has blinding speed, but lacks power. And so on.  And his supports reveal he was actually Dan, Rebecca’s brother, from Pherae but lost his memory. This suggests he got it back and was reunited with his family- after having many adventures as he’d hoped and also repaying Fargus for Fargus saving him, again as he’d hoped. A happy ending across the board for him except for not being reunited with Wil since Wil stayed in Caelin.  Quite a few battles since he was being trained up in the early levels where things give less XP a fair amount of the time. Plus remember his fight vs all those wyverns in Four-Fanged Offense? His finesse hour, but it took like 4 rounds to kill each of them till he got his speed up. HP: 3.6 Str: 0.2 Skill 0.6 Speed: 1.8 Luck: -1.2 Def: -0.4 Res: 0.2 Total: 4.8 Pretty much average except a nice speed bonus and useless HP one. Dart is really good.  Nothing too interesting, but probably the kind of life she would have wanted.  HP: 1.2 Str: 2.6 Skill 0 Speed: -5 Luck: -1.2 Def: 1.2 Res: 2 Total: 0.8 Very unusual stats. That -5 speed hurt badly and she was suffering from that pretty much all game, but she was pretty tough and quite strong. Kind of like a sucky wyvern rider. All in all I’d say she was roughly the same power level as normal, but she played a different kind of role than she usually does.  I guess the loss in question was the Black Fang as a whole. Maybe Lloyd in particular given some of his interactions with him?  I’m surprised he got to 20 in so few fights, but thieves do gain some bonus XP. Plus he did some stealing, that might have earned him another level or so overall. HP: 1.2 Str: -1 Skill 1.4 Speed: -1.8 Luck: -0.8 Def: -1 Res: 1 Total: -1 A bad Legault. Especially because his penalties are in important places. Both my thieves turned out badly. It’s a shame because Legault is often pretty useful.  The only way to change this is for Ninian to marry Eliwood and remain behind. Nils can’t get supports with anyone.  HP: 0.85 Str: -0.95 Skill 1.05 Speed: 0.7 Luck: 2.8 Def: 2.3 Res: -0.3 Total: 6.45 He turned out well, not that that matters at all.  Presumably it was Harken she eventually married.  Never gained a level.  Wasn’t allowed to return to Bern afterall it seems. Oh well, it’s a sucky country anyway. Ilia is worse, but at least it’s full of mercenary knights who fight for justice so he’ll fit right in.  HP: 0.4 Str: -2.5 Skill -0.5 Speed: -0.15 Luck: -0.4 Def: 5.9 Res: -1.4 Total: 1.35 Doesn’t look good overall when you count his HHM bonuses but seriously, check out that def bonus! That was awesome. The other thing that isn’t shown here is that his Speed was waaaaay above average until he capped it at like level 5. He was going to cap HP, Str, Skill, Speed, and Def. And that’s not even that unusual for Heath. So awesome.  Although it isn’t obvious unless you get pretty deep into some of his supports, Rath had been banished from his tribe because it was prophesied that only if he left could he save the world from disaster (it being clear that this was the return of the dragons, though his tribe didn’t know that). He was quite unhappy living in exile, so being welcomed back is great. Oh also this means he totally told them all about his deeds. And how he saved the world. So again, there’s no way the story would remain secret.  HP: 0.6 Str: 0.5 Skill 1.2 Speed: 2.5 Luck: 3.1 Def: -0.3 Res: 1.75 Total: 9.35 Didn’t take many battles to get him to 20 and he’s looking pretty good. If I’d continued using him, he might have actually hit 30 speed! Rath is a really good promoted unit, but I already had too many promoted people on the team.  Not sure how he died before 6. His daughter is even worse and much less cool.  HP: -0.5 Str: -0.4 Skill -0.3 Speed: -0.25 Luck: 0.6 Def: -0.2 Res: -0.35 Total: -1.4 One level and it was a bad one.  He’s the kind of guy who could have appeared in 6. His somewhat similar brother did. But he just vanishes and it’s no big loss. He wasn’t exactly a boring character in his supports, but he didn’t really have any kind of role in the story.  Didn’t gain any levels.  And what the heck happened to him? Why does no one mention that someone is taking over as the new Archsage in Arcadia or that the Archsage’s existence up until a few years ago was totally known by the heads of several countries? Louise continues to have no personality or goals apart from her husband.  HP: -1.5 Str: -0.5 Skill -1 Speed: 2 Luck: -1 Def: -0.5 Res: 0.25 Total: -2.25 In theory he turned out badly, but more speed isn’t bad for him and it’s not like he’s a very good or important unit regardless.  Never gained a level.  And he maybe married Isadora? Well in Pherae working with Marcus, Isadora, and Eliwood is probably the healthiest place for him to be.  Never gained a level, remains awesome.  What cemetery do evil assassin people who died in an underwater temple fortress place with no witnesses around get buried in anyway? Or assassin warrior guys lurking around the most secret location in the country, again with no witnesses around? And who would be burying these guys anyway? I’m pretty sure Lloyd was just left to rot on top of the shrine of seals and if anything is even left of Brendan’s body after Limstella did that flashy light thing to it, I don’t know where it would have been taken to or by who. It sounds like she never did try to reconnect with Jan or what remained of her old family. On the other hand, Pherae is the place to be since it’s got the best ruler ever.  HP: 2.45 Str: -0.5 Skill -0.55 Speed: -2.6 Luck: -1.45 Def: 3.85 Res: -0.5 Total: 0.7 She turned out badly other than being really tough- which is actually pretty good overall. But she was surprisingly useless actually and never really contributed anything.  Surprisingly, he only stays with Nino (and then only before he leaves to make sure bounty hunters don’t come after their new family) if they get an A support. And this ending is probably actually the happier one.  Didn’t gain a level, is the best assassin in the game.  How in the world is it unclear which of those things happened? No one in Elibe looks or acts like she does and it’s not like peacefully joining Zephiel’s army looks like the kind of giant air battle that would be required to take her down.  Didn’t gain a level, is still very good.  No one cares.  No one cares.  This one I wonder about. He might not be immortal, but he at least ages slowly. And he was apparently an ordained bishop and everything. Plus there’d be a fair number of people (including Canas) who wanted to talk to him. Honestly, I’d guess he killed himself.  Never gained a level.  I think it would have been worthwhile to have a seen in Arcadia of Hawkeye and the others talking about his legacy. It would be good to learn more about Arcadia for one thing, but also the character just deserves a better sendoff.  (Obviously) never gained a level.  But then instead he ends up as a family advisor or something? And no longer capable of dodging things? Or necessary to bring to battles ever?  I’m confused as to why 9, rather than 10, is listed as his max level. See I didn’t bring him to 19x so as to train Canas more easily and Florina killed him on 23x, so shouldn’t he be 2 levels short of his max? HP: 0.6 Str: 0 Skill 0 Speed: 0 Luck: 0 Def: 1.4 Res: -1.3 Total: 0.7 It’s not like he can really turn out different, but good I guess?  Presumably this is after her grandfather died, though we don’t know how long it was until that happened. Seeing as absolutely no one is waiting for her on the plains and the Taliver bandits have already been killed, I guess she pretty much just goes back to sitting alone in a hut with no one around and not even Florina visiting anymore. Probably should have stayed in Caelin. Or married Hector or something.  HP: -1.2 Str: 0.6 Skill -0.6 Speed: -0.6 Luck: 0.2 Def: 0.8 Res: 5.2 Total: 4.4 She came out of Lyn’s story great but then gained pretty much nothing but Res. Doesn’t matter. Even a really lucky Lyn is still useless.  Hooray! There’s nothing better than being Elbert’s equal.  HP: 2.2 Str: -0.2 Skill -3 Speed: 1.6 Luck: 4.8 Def: 3.2 Res: 5.4 Total: 14 Massive overall bonuses, most of them not in important places but the sheer scale made him excellent. He was a very unusual Eliwood and has actually gone downhill a fair amount since he promoted. He ended up like a really good Lowen instead of his usual good Kent or Sain.  Maybe they wrote letters back and forth since they only saw each other once in 15 years.  HP: 1.2 Str: -0.8 Skill 2.6 Speed: 3.8 Luck: -1.6 Def: 2 Res: -4 Total: 3.2 A demonstration that what matters isn’t your overall plusses but their distribution and the point in the game where you get them. He needs all the speed and def he can get and if he gets them, he becomes amazing. Mine got a huge speed bless early and then briefly fell apart before his lategame comeback. But being good early and then slumping toward average late is way better than starting bad and then growing really well up to average late.  Either this ending isn’t canon or Market tied both sides in a knot so fast no one ever even mentions this war in the future. Final Results:  Obviously, this is not the Lyn’s story ranking from this run.  And the Eliwood’s normal run I did just before this. As I mentioned, it was actually more challenging in some ways. You have to do a lot of really clever tactics to steal all the extra items that show up and can still only promote a total of 4 people.  And so that you can see that the upcoming ranking screen is really from this run, here’s what this screen looked like before I finished Light. Now that I think about it, I’m not actually 100% sure I ever max ranked HHM successfully before. The reason it’s hard to check is that I’m now on my 3rd Fire Emblem cartridge because my first two started erasing all data every couple of hours, including my previous rankings. The only HHM ranking run I clearly remember as not being a different mode was my first one which actually ending in failure when I suddenly dropped 2 XP stars after Light. I’m still like 90% sure that I max ranked it successfully at least once before. Certainly I’ve done all the other modes at least once. And the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The moment all this suspense that there hasn’t actually been any of is building up to:  Hooray! Someday I should try to get more than 117 tactician stars. That’s the number I always seem to end up with. Tactics Details:  You can see here that survival chapters like The Peddler Merlinus always count an extra turn unless you can end them early by killing a boss or the like.     So Light actually ties Birds of a Father for quickest win. Cog of Destiny and Pale Flower of Darkness are the longest at 19.  The two chapters with names in red are the ones where I went overtime that weren’t 0 chapters or survival ones (in other words, the one where it’s possible not to go over the limit). I’d be interested in seeing a max ranking runner do those chapters faster while still accomplishing everything. Oh and in a BIG surprise, I’ve been wrong about my turn surplus since Crazed Beast. You may recall that on that chapter I realized I’d lost track of what turn I won on and had no way to check. I went with what I thought was the worst case scenario of having 14 turns left. Turns out I only had 12. I’m not sure how that happened, but it’s a good thing I didn’t slack off on saving turns anymore than I did. Anyway, in the end I had 5 turns to spare. Not a ton, but not nothing either. I could have easily made that 10 by not standing still and grinding XP on 32x and 13 with Victory or Death without changing anything substantive. Had I kept everything the same but not done 19xx or 32x, the traditionally skipped max ranking chapters, I’d have had 27 turns to spare at the end. Funds Details:  So the total funds listings for every chapter I did was 1,052,500. To get 5 star funds, you need at least 80% of that- so 842,000. My assets at the end were 962,693 meaning I had more than 120,000 more gold than I needed- even after spending quite a lot of it promoting people I didn’t need to promote. Farina’s true hard mode cost in assets is 38,100. She costs 20,000 in cash but with the silver card, that’s worth 40,000 in assets I acquired instead (or conversely, you have to sell 40,000 worth of stuff to get that much money). However, she has a killer lance and a javelin and a vulnerary totaling to a value of 1,900 so her true price is 38,100. Subtracting that out from my assets acquired, you can see that even if I had paid for her to join I would still have 82,593 more gold than I need. That’s enough to promote 8 people or use 10 stat boosters. Or heck promote Dart, Farina, and Lyn. XP Details:  This chart ranks every character from most XP gained to least. Everyone except Karla was used. Now XP gained in Lyn’s story doesn’t count, but the only people I used at all in Lyn’s story were Lyn, Sain, Florina, and Matthew. Sain promoted on the last turn, gaining no more XP, so there’s no doubt about how much XP he gained. However, I didn’t make a note of exactly how much XP Lyn, Florina, and Matthew ended up at, only their level. Thus I might have earned as much as 297 more XP than the minimum I know I did in Hector’s story The high estimate is probably closer to the truth. So, I netted out to have about 8,000 more XP gained in total than needed. That’s the requirement I really nailed actually. It would have been possible to do better, but not very much. Other than the archers, there just aren’t many more characters left who aren’t level 20 or promoted. Pretty much just Oswin and a couple of guys who are level 18 with 89 XP or some such thing. Oh and just to note how crazy the XP requirement of Victory or Death is, my total XP gained on Victory or Death + The Value of Life + Light –despite significant XP grinding on 32 and 32x- was not even enough to reach the 6150 required on VoD alone. And Light’s requirement is just impossible barring something silly like massive dance grinding after not using Nils most of the game. Even if every enemy on the chapter gave 100 XP. Including the impossible to reach without Warp ones! Even if I had impossibly managed to train Lyn, Priscilla, Kent, Guy, Matthew, Serra, Dorcas, Lowen, AND Oswin up the remaining XP to 20 without anyone else getting less on those 3 chapters, I would still have only barely met the XP requirement for them. Combat Details: So I’m not actually sure if there’s any other way of checking this or if it’s at all accurate, but I’ve tried to put together a chart for the combat ranking. The only data I have to work with are the listed battles and kills for each character in the epilogues. The reason I don’t trust that is that it also lists losses for each character even though those are undone every time you restart. So possibly it’s double or triple counting battles and kills just like it can count one character dying multiple times if you restart. Assuming it IS accurate though, this chart ranks every character by the number of kills they got:  My ratio was well above the required 40%. I could have fought another 900 or so battles that I didn’t get a kill in in fact. The combat ranking is pretty darned easy. Conclusion: Well I did it! Every chapter, every character (sort of) even though that wasn’t originally in the plan, no RNG manipulation, no arena grinding, no gate grinding, no mine glitch. And I finished with more than 80,000 spare funds, 8000 extra XP, and 5 turns in the bank. Not bad, but it’s definitely possible to do better a lot better. I’ve learned a lot doing this LP and talking with you guys and am a much stronger player now than I was at the beginning. If I did it all over again, I could do much better across the board. “A terrifying thought isn’t it! Ha ha ha haaa!” I hope that I’ve inspired some of you to do your own max ranking runs of this or other FE games and maybe into making your own LP. And I hope I’ve also made a good case for why I consider this little gem to be the greatest Fire Emblem to date, if not the greatest video game outright. Melth fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Apr 26, 2015 |
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Apr 26, 2015 03:10
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Remarkable work, one hell of an LP. Awesome job.
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Apr 26, 2015 03:30
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Really impressive stuff Melth. Your analysis of the story, sheer skill and those fantastic "War Rooms". I'll definitely be on the lookout for any other LPs you do!
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Apr 26, 2015 03:42
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Cat Army 
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Thanks for the awesome LP. Really a fresh look at a classic.
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Apr 26, 2015 03:43
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Congrats on finishing one crazy run Melth. You put Serra and Vaida's epilogue twice instead of their stat screens and Lyn is missing her stats. It feels kinda weird seeing green on the stat screen but you listing them as under average. I think understand why (what they could be at without a cap) but it's still weird.
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Apr 26, 2015 03:53
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It's nice to see a Good Eliwood. Also Pent is one of the few characters actually mentioned by name in FE6, so the world didn't forget about him, more likely the title of Archsage doesn't mean all that much 1000 years after the actual archsage did anything. I think it's funny how you can actually conclude most of those endings with "And then they died at Zephiels hands" Because you gotta imagine these noble people would have fought against his invasions, So Rath returned home having been considered a hero who saved the world only to be wiped out along with his tribe. And in a way I'm fine with that. Not all endings are good, even good people get a poo poo lot in life, in fact, it could be argued that had people been LESS good such as Lucius, they may have survived.Good people die, but you should always strive to be a good person. I'm also going to be honest, while I enjoyed the LP, it was wordy as hell, and that started to make it a chore. If you were to do another LP I would seriously suggest looking into getting an editing partner. You show real passion for the game which isn't bad, it's the kind of thing you NEED to LP, but at the same time, there's a lot of fluff.
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Apr 26, 2015 04:03
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Yay, you did it  ! Congratulations on getting the S rank.
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Apr 26, 2015 04:21
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Several of your assessments of characters are bizzare and wrong and Funds rank is still the stupidest thing ever but good job
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Apr 26, 2015 04:22
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Great work, Melth. Looks like S-ranking HHM really is a chore. Shining Force was my first SRPG as well, and I think that its more laid-back style is closer to my preferences than this, but it is always a treat to see something done with such consummate skill.
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Apr 26, 2015 11:21
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I'm in awe. I'd never known how to rescue-chain like that. Hell, I'd never even realized the power of trading to change what weapon people were using! I am definitely a better player for having read this LP, and learned a ton. Thank you! I look forward to whatever you LP next!
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Apr 26, 2015 20:11
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Great work! So have you S ranked all ALL modes? And unlocked all supports and all sound room songs?
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Apr 26, 2015 21:07
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Thanks for the LP! I haven't really posted, but it's been amazing to see you crush the game. FE 7 really is one of my favourite games, but I've never done HHM or any max ranking runs so this has been a fresh look at it. Great work.
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Apr 26, 2015 22:35
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Masterfully done, meticulously explained, and a fair approach to the challenge (that is to say, the whole bit about not relying on RNG and changing-up a strategy if something went wrong). I've not completed this once, because I keep dicking around reloading files in vain hopes of better stat-gains. I can't bear to see any of the characters get such awful level ups that even when everything else is going well, whoops, someone gained an empty level or a +1 Skill level. This game taught me that I hate RNG-based level ups. This was a great read, and if you happen to do anything else...well, I'll be on the lookout, especially if you go this in-depth on something else.
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Apr 26, 2015 23:31
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Melth posted:
Roy's grandpa is Canas?!!!  Anyway, fantastic work. I didn't really mind all the words. It's always nice to see more discussion about FE7. Even if I didn't always agree with your opinions or assessments, you're 100% right that FE7 is by far the best FE and one of the best games ever.
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Apr 26, 2015 23:51
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Onmi posted:It's nice to see a Good Eliwood. Also Pent is one of the few characters actually mentioned by name in FE6, so the world didn't forget about him, more likely the title of Archsage doesn't mean all that much 1000 years after the actual archsage did anything. Yeah, in general you can assume most of them died aside from the Etrurians - a significant chunk probably in the same battle that mortally wounded Hector when Bern brought out the dragons.
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Apr 27, 2015 00:31
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Canonical parentage is a weird thing, mostly because FE never really pushes any pairings as canonical except by making them mandatory I.E. Sigurd and Diedre or Cuan and Ethlin. They've proven time and again when they want a 'canon' they'll force it. So while Ninian is entirely reasonably expected to be chosen. She's no more canon than !Fiora Roy and !Farina Lilina being kissing cousins. There's almost nothing worse in the FE Fandom than Waifu Wars.
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Apr 27, 2015 00:31
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Onmi posted:Canonical parentage is a weird thing, mostly because FE never really pushes any pairings as canonical except by making them mandatory I.E. Sigurd and Diedre or Cuan and Ethlin. Well there's Levin/Fury, and Lachesis/Finwolf which become canon in thracia
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Apr 27, 2015 00:33
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Omni, is your mod for FE 6 available for public consumption? I would like to give it a whirl, if it is. (Sorry if I should have asked in a different thread!)
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Apr 27, 2015 00:40
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Kacie posted:Omni, is your mod for FE 6 available for public consumption? I would like to give it a whirl, if it is. (Sorry if I should have asked in a different thread!)
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Apr 27, 2015 00:46
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Good work. I didn't always agree with your story assessment, but hey, what does that matter? Also, I was impressed, if not alarmed, by your gameplay analysis and strategy. Looking forward to see what you do next. And I could hear that GBA speaker Fire Emblem theme in my head the entire time I was reading the last update, so I think you did something right there.
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Apr 27, 2015 00:46
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Melth's next LP has begun!
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Apr 27, 2015 00:55
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After some thought (and finding my planned The Third Age LP more problematic to begin than expected), I've decided to do an FE6 hard mode max ranking run LP next afterall: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3716259&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post444560766David Corbett posted:Great work, Melth. Looks like S-ranking HHM really is a chore. Shining Force was my first SRPG as well, and I think that its more laid-back style is closer to my preferences than this, but it is always a treat to see something done with such consummate skill. In some ways it was a chore, but all in all it was often more fun than just playing through HHM normally would be. It would have been nice if I had to do less bookkeeping and number crunching in Excel to figure out how I was doing though admittedly. I think I'll do a Shining Force LP in the future. It's a good game, though not a very tactically deep one imo. Still, that's worth talking about too. I think we can learn as much about the nature of strategy games from looking at failures as at successes. Plus it has a fair amount of nostalgia factor for me and I'm interested in seeing how I would do at it now after all these years. i81icu812 posted:Great work! Sort of, no, and no. So as I mentioned a couple of times, I mostly play FE7 on the GBA, not the emulator. However, my FE7 cartridges have a nasty habit of breaking down. I'm now on my 3rd one. Among other problems, my first two each began erasing all data whenever they were turned off. That obliterated my old records and made it impossible to create new ones. I only got the 3rd cartridge recently (the ENM max ranking run I've mentioned a few times was the first thing I did after getting it). Additionally, I lost my emulator records on two occasions when I switched computers. Anyway, the upshot is that although I've S ranked all modes, I don't think I've ever actually had one device on which all modes had been max ranked at once. Similarly, most of my support records were lost, but I never saw any point in trying to collect all of those when I could just look them up online whenever I wanted. So I once had a fairly significant share unlocked, but certainly not all of them. On the current emulator, I've never gotten Hector and Lyn an A support and had them talk in Battle Preparations, so I don't have all the songs. However I did once have everything except for 99 and 100. Those can only be unlocked if you bought Mario Kart Double-Dash and I've never really been into Mario Kart. Onmi posted:Canonical parentage is a weird thing, mostly because FE never really pushes any pairings as canonical except by making them mandatory I.E. Sigurd and Diedre or Cuan and Ethlin. They've proven time and again when they want a 'canon' they'll force it. So while Ninian is entirely reasonably expected to be chosen. She's no more canon than !Fiora Roy and !Farina Lilina being kissing cousins. True. Ninian/Eliwood doesn't even get as much canon support as Lilina/Roy and Sumia/Chrom. However, I think you'd agree there's more support for it than for any other possible Eliwood pairing. Even Lyn seems to ship the two of them. So if we're going to say any Eliwood pairing is anything close to official, it's got to be that one.
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Apr 27, 2015 01:05
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