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Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!


Chapter Quick Links:

Chapter 1 and The War Room Part 35 (The Goal)
Chapter 2 and The War Room Part 36 (Funds Ranking)
Chapter 3 and The War Room Part 37 (Supports in FE6)
Chapter 4 and The War Room Part 38 (Changes to Weapon Stats)
Chapter 5 and The War Room Part 39 (Estimating Enemy Hard Mode Bonuses)
Chapter 6
Chapter 7 and the War Room, Part 40 (Route Choices)
Chapter 8 and the War Room, Part 41 (Uses of Rescuing)
Chapter 8x and the War Room, Part 42 (Maximizing XP Gain)
First Interlude (Ranking Progress So Far)
Chapter 9
Chapter 10 and the War Room, Part 43 (Planning Supports)
Chapter 11 (Part 1)
Chapter 11 (Part 2)
Chapter 12 (Part 1) and the War Room, Part 44 (Split Party Battle Preparations)
Chapter 12 (Part 2)
Chapter 12x
Second Interlude (Ranking Progress Reloaded)
Chapter 13 (Part 1) and the War Room, Part 45 (Planning Rescue-Drops)
Chapter 13 (Part 2)
Chapter 14
Chapter 14x
Chapter 15
Chapter 16 (Part 1)
Chapter 16 (Part 2)
Chapter 16x
Third Interlude (Ranking Progress & the Prisoner of Azkaban)
Chapter 17
Chapter 18 and the War Room, Part 46 (Choosing Characters)
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 20x
Chapter 21
Fourth Interlude (Ranking Progress: A New Hope)
Chapter 21x
Chapter 22 (Part 1)
Chapter 22 (Part 2)
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Final Chapter
Epilogue (A Good Day to Ranking Progress)





About this Series:

Fire Emblem is a series of fantasy turn based strategy games by Intelligent Systems.You could think of it as perhaps midway between a classical strategy RPG like Final Fantasy Tactics and a traditional turn based strategy like Advance Wars (also by Intelligent Systems). Characters are persistent, level up and improve, and their deaths are permanent (Unless you restart that chapter of the game from the beginning, which you always do).

Notably, Fire Emblem games are almost completely standalone and set in different universes from each other (with a few exceptions). You do not need to know anything about the other games in the series to appreciate the story of this one. In fact, I predict that the less you know about the story of Fire Emblem/Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword/Fire Emblem 7/Not the One With Roy, the more you'll appreciate this one.


About this Game:

Fan translators can't seem to agree on whether it should be called Sword of Seals, Binding Blade, Sealed Sword, or Blinding Blade. I'm 99% sure that last one is a result of typos. The Japanese title is Fuuin no Tsurugi. If playing Yugioh in middle school taught me anything, it is that your deck should have the minimum number of cards your trading card game allows and also that "Tsurugi" means "Sword". Nevertheless I may flip a coin to decide between saying Sword of Seals or Binding Blade at any given moment, as I did for the thread title. Binding Blade is heads. Or I may just call it FE6, since this is the 6th entry in the Fire Emblem series.

This Fire Emblem was never released outside of Japan so no official translation exists, but there are several fan ones and I’ll be using the most famous of those. It’s generally regarded as one of the harder entries in the series and it has a small but fairly devoted fanbase in part because of that.

This game is erroneously referred to by many fans as the sequel to Fire Emblem 7, the first English fire emblem. Or even more erroneously referred to as the prequel to Fire Emblem 7. This game was made first, but 7's events happen first chronologically. That makes 7 a prequel to 6, and I'm pretty sure the English language has no word for what 6 is to 7. I’m going to go with "Prequel^(-1)", "Inverse Prequel", "Prequel Inverse", or maybe "Arcprequel". So this game is the arcprequel of 7, but a lot of its story and character actions don't really make sense in light of 7. I would say that this makes 7 a bad prequel, except that the changes are usually improvements in my eyes. My (contentious) preferred interpretation is that 7 should be taken as occurring in an alternate universe in which (because of the events of FE7) the events of FE6 will never happen or will happen very differently. In my opinion, both stories make more sense that way and can be better enjoyed on their own merits.

Speaking of which, debates among fans about which FE game is the best can be heated, but I categorically agree with my own arguments that it is not this game. Nonetheless, as I play this game for the fourth time, I'm going to try to take a fresh look at it and see if I can take my own advice and try to appreciate it on its own merits. These include a high overall challenge for a veteran FE player, characters bleeding, characters swearing, Hector having a stylin' beard, greater early game access to interesting and powerful weapons, no lengthy tutorial to slog through, Karla not appearing, a much more straightforward and simpler plot, the edge of your seat excitement of never knowing what kind of enemies will be coming out of nowhere to attack before your next turn, and Gonzalez.


About this LP:

Just like my first LP, this one is going to be half strategy guide to achieving the maximum ranking on the maximum difficulty and half evaluation of this game as a work of art.

Although I'm going to try to forget about FE7’s relationship with this game and just consider this game on its own, you should definitely consider reading my Fire Emblem 7 Let's Play (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3701153) first or along with this one. I went into a huge amount of detail about game mechanics and the like in that one in sections of most chapters that I called the War Room. Most of that stuff is exactly or nearly the same in this game, so I'm not going to waste pages and hours copy/pasting or rewriting my previous War Rooms when I could be writing new ones. For purposes of War Room talk and discussion of strategy in general, I'm going to assume you've read that stuff and I'll refer back to it by number. Conveniently, my table of contents in the first post of that thread includes what chapter you can find every War Room in and what each one was about.

Same as for that LP, I won't be posting the whole game script here. You can find it on several sites including Serenesforest (http://serenesforest.net/binding-blade/scripts/translation-script/) and also in Artix's LP of this very game (http://lparchive.org/Fire-Emblem-Sword-of-Seals/). Instead I'll focus on talking about important or interesting moments or lines and how they work -or fail- to develop the characters, plot, setting, and themes.


Some Rules:

I didn't really abide by my own rules about spoilers very well last time and it would have gotten in the way of what I was trying to do if I had, so I'm going to pretty much scrap that. Expect spoilers from me and possibly others about every aspect of both FE6 and FE7. Oh and the Black Knight is Glass.


Previously, on FE6:

So I've never actually max ranked FE6, but I have max ranked every mode of FE7 and beaten FE6 twice on hard mode. So in other words, I don't actually know what I'm talking about, but I might be able to convince you that I do. Don't be fooled.

First off, let me show you the ranking screen from what I think was my most recent completion of the game:




That ranking screen is full of lies.




This version is corrected. Basically, 5 out of the 6 categories were mistranslated. I'll get into the details of what these mean later, but with a few key differences they're the same as in FE7. Think of the new 'Power' ranking as Exp 2: Electric Boogaloo for now.

Each category is ranked from D to A. If you get an A in each category on normal mode you get an S overall, and on hard mode you get an SS. That's what I'm going for.

Anyway, I was just doing a fairly standard playthrough the last time except I let anyone I didn't need and didn't like die. You can see that I still did pretty well on some of the ranking categories. That's because, just like in FE7, some of the categories are trivial. It's not all the same ones though.


Translation errors or idiosyncrasies like that abound in some of the less trafficked parts of the game and range from banal to hilarious to dangerous and problematic (like that ranking screen one). Here are a few from the demo screens that play if you don't press start:







That out of my system, I'd just like to say that I appreciate the work other FE fans put into translating this and that it's perfectly reasonable for the resulting script to have some oddities, particularly in unimportant areas like this. I'll generally refrain from bringing more up unless they strike me as either particularly funny or actually important for some reason.




Oh and I'd never noticed before, but after the first wave of demos about classes, you get this interesting little series of scenes. First some people running through a fog-bound Laus.







Then a sudden transition to Marcus and Roy sparring in Pherae.




Unless that was just supposed to be a particularly painful object lesson, I'm not sure what the point in telling him that is. It's not like Roy can use anything else or can force Marcus to use an axe or sword instead.


































I've got to say, that was a pretty cool set of cutscenes even if it didn't all make sense. I'm not sure why they hid this where you would only see it if you let the gameboy idle for about 2 minutes on the menu.


In the Beginning:




I suspect I'm going to want all my save slots before this is through.




And the new file has begun!



The OrangeFluffySheep Art Gallery

OFS has drawn several great cartoons about FE6 over the course of this Let's Play. Here they are together, in the order they were drawn:


The optimal way to use Bors:





Support grinding:




A doodle of Chrom:




The maps are too darned big:




Map support growth limits:




No more than 5 support conversations per character!




The character popularity poll:




Lugh and Ray take 1:




Lugh and Ray take 2:




Zephiel's choice of minions:




Ohtz's mysterious unpopularity:




Hoarding treasure for the funds ranking:




The forecast says there's a 95% chance of a random bandit battle in the next update...

Melth fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Aug 27, 2015

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Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!


I’ve also seen the title given as Breath of Fate. Despite the name, not a lot of important stuff actually happens this time. The big plot events begin next chapter; for now it’s a bog-standard random encounter with bandits. This is the Fire Emblem equivalent of meeting in an inn or clearing the rats out of someone’s basement.


Chapter Summary:
The country of Bern (led by the evil King Zephiel) suddenly invades everyone at once, breaking a 1000 year peace. Conveniently, Eliwood (the greatest knight in all of Lycia) is down with gout, so his young and untested son Roy returns home from studying elsewhere and finds his homeland menaced by bandits as well as Bern. Roy is sent to lead his father’s army to join the rest of the Lycian League's forces while his childhood friend, Lilina, is sent home to Ostia for her safety.




Although the main theme is almost as great as usual, the music in game does not get off to a very good start with The Beginning. (#64 on this list http://serenesforest.net/music/binding-blade-game-rip/)




This is the first allusion to the event called the Ending Winter, which wasn’t really important enough to be mentioned directly in FE7, but matters somewhat more here.




You’ll note a more cartoonish sort of style to the map if you’ve played FE7 recently. That holds true of the artwork and style of the game more generally. Although it doesn’t have the glut of joke characters some later FEs had, it’s not a particularly serious entry in the series either.

And Etruria is actually going to matter in this game!




Bern makes a return as the nation of jerks we have to fight against. Hartmut must be so ashamed.




I wonder what the deal is with that little strip of land all the way down the southeastern coasts there. I don’t think we ever see a zoomed in view of that part of the map, so there’s no telling whether there are other Lycian territories there or if it’s all under the control of one of the main port cities or the like.




Ilia still might not matter!




Or Sacae might not!.




And a 1000 year peace was suddenly broken when the militaristic country of Gradaeinolhrern surprise-attacked everyone at once for reasons that will be discovered 20 chapters from now. I take it back, THIS is Fire Emblem’s “You all meet in an inn.”




Looks like a long and difficult way to go through hostile territory, but (as we’ll see) they laid the groundwork for it decently well by allying with traitorous factions in those countries. That makes invading the whole world a bit more plausible.




Those signs apparently include Bern already having invaded according to some villagers in the next chapter. It's kind of inconsistent.




Marquess Eliwood of Pherae, the greatest knight in all of Lycia, has been incapacitated by a bout of bubonic plague. His way too young son Roy was studying tactics or something in Ostia, the Lycian quasi-capital and home of Eliwood’s friend Hector.




It should say that Lilina there had traveled to Pherae, not Lycia. While Eliwood’s son was visiting Hector in Ostia, Hector’s daughter was visiting Eliwood in Pherae. Maybe. An upcoming scene will imply that that’s wrong and actually Lilina traveled back to Pherae most of the way with Roy before riding ahead to arrive early. It's only chapter 1 and the writing is already full of contradictions and plot holes.




So it’s several days at the very least from Ostia to Pherae. Perhaps it was in that time that Bern actually invaded? The distances and times are pretty vague really.




Eliwood is the greatest tactician in all of Lycia. He's perhaps the first man in Elibe who grasps that castles and fortresses are meant to be hidden inside of rather than charged out of. These bandits taking advantage of the chaos of war are stymied by his brilliant stratagem.

Oh and the FE6 version of An Unexpected Caller is playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC9Wn0ZzlbE

Like about half the FE6 soundtrack, there’s a much less scratchy and generally improved version in FE7:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cH2X0g1L-Q

Not only FE7 and FE8 but Advance Wars 1 and 2 and many other GBA games showed that its speakers and technology were capable of much better than FE6’s soundtrack, so this game is an unfortunate lapse for a series often praised for its music.




This… is the wisest thing ever said and sums up this whole game. Damas is some kind of bandit philosopher-king.




It’s the beta version of Migal! And the people of Pherae are unceremoniously put to the sword while Eliwood sits in his castle.




Thank you, Lt. Obvious. You won’t just be demoted next time.

Merlinus here is an old family friend and advisor as well as a retired merchant.




And most of his soldiers were already sent out to prepare to engage Bern. Still, even one knight of Pherae should be able to rout this group in a quarter of a second. I surmise from this that Eleanora is dead because Eliwood would never have left her unguarded.




Apparently he’s worried the poorly armed and undisciplined bandits might actually break down the gates or get over the walls or something. Bear in mind that this is probably the first time he’s put his revolutionary idea of using a castle for defense to the test and he’s not about to trust his friend’s daughter’s life to something untested.




The bandits make the number one FE6 blunder and assume they’ve won, spreading out across an indefensible and vast area. They’d have to restart the chapter in a second if a giant enemy army just spawn-moved out of nowhere. But what are the odds of that, right?




Better luck next time, Damas. Just remember what turn we showed up and try to make it to the next wave next time.




That was Lance here riding right through the enemy.




Everyone else cares more about Eliwood of course, but Bors here is Ostian and in fact was sworn to protect Lilina.




Nor should Bors. This is our first glimpse of Roy’s character and we see that he’s prone to blaming himself for everything. Eliwood was sometimes similar, but he was better about doing the apologizing after he was already fixing the problem.




Several other people have to remind him that what’s important is saving Eliwood and Lilina, not saying their plight is his fault, before he gets back on track.



The War Room, Part 35

Strategy is how one uses limited resources to achieve goals. So before you can have a strategy, it’s essential to understand both your resources and your goals. I’ll talk about the goal first because it’s simplier: getting the maximum (SS) rank while getting the best ending.

What does that entail? Well to get the best ending I need to beat The Neverending Dream (Chapter 22) with the weapons Durandal, Armads, Forblaze, Aureola, Maltet, Miurgre, Apocalypse and the Sword of Seals acquired and not used up. And getting most of those requires unlocking and completing a secret chapter, each of which has its own requirements. The list is summed up here http://serenesforest.net/binding-blade/miscellaneous/gaiden-chapters/ . And I’ll go into more detail as I get to the relevant sections of the game.
Additionally, I need to kill the final boss with Roy using the Sword of Seals. That’s… uh… that’s not very difficult. No need to worry about that part.

Getting SS ranking is a bit harder. That requires 1) playing on hard mode (done) and 2) getting an A rank (the max) in each of the 6 individual ranking categories. What are those and what does max ranking them entail?

1) Survival: 0 characters must die. Restarting the level if someone dies is just fine. Not recruiting a character and letting them die is theoretically alright, but a terrible idea for many reasons.
2) Combat. At least 40% of total fights must end with the enemy dead. Remember that stuff like the enemy attacking you when you can’t fight back (e.g. the enemy attacks one of your healers or uses long-ranged magic) counts against you.
3) Tactics. Complete the game within 630 turns (the requirement would be lower if I skipped a secret quest or got the bad ending though).
4) Funds. NOT THE SAME AS IN FE7. At the end of the game, the total value of your cash on hand + 1/2 the value of all your items must add up to 84,000. The requirement seems to have been meant to be significantly higher.
6) To get the max ranking, your characters must have 50,100 total XP gained. That’s serious XP. More than was required on HHM- and actually more than I got with my 8000 or so surplus. And I have fewer chapters to get it in. This is probably the hardest category.
5) Power. The “new” requirement, it was probably removed in FE7 for being largely redundant with XP. Basically, Power means you have to get the total level of your characters up high. Which… XP already requires. Being promoted counts as being +20 levels higher. The max ranking threshold is 1001. You get 529 for free if you recruit everyone (assuming the lower level version of Gonzalez). So that’s 472 levels to gain. Put another way, it’s 47,200 XP to gain. Which is less than the XP requirement, so you get an A for power automatically if you get an A for XP (and recruit everyone)..


I’ll go into more detail on those requirements individually- and on the resources available to complete them- in the future.


Battle Preparations & the Map:

As usual for Fire Emblem, it’s not actually possible to do battle preparations in the earliest chapters. However, for several reasons, that’s not actually as big a problem in this game as it was in 7. One is that there’s much less of a time crunch. Another is that the game just gives you better starting formations in general.


Objective: Seize the gate. Actually, it’s ALWAYS seize the gate (or throne) in this game. There are no survival chapters, no rout the enemy chapters, no anything but seizing the gate.
Secondary Objective: Build some support. This is a fairly major objective and will come up in pretty much every chapter from now on for reasons I’ll get into more later.
Secondary Objective: Visit the bottom right village for 5000 gold (Oops, just noticed the number is wrong on the map)
Reinforcements: Mwahahahaha! Let’s see how YOU like it, red team! Yeah, they don't get any.
Turn limit: 12. More than enough even if you play fairly defensively (which you should).

The battle is wholly irrelevant to the story, but this first chapter is a serious fight nonetheless. The enemy has superior numbers and stronger units, but fortunately they're spread out and stupid. Winning is all about using the terrain and formations well to control the enemy and make them fight when and where and who you want them to.

Oh and note that Damas is going to move up and step onto the gate immediately, so don’t get your hopes up.


The Characters:




The enemy fighters really give this map its character, so let’s give them a big hand. It’s fine if it’s still smaller than the one in the foreground of that picture.

Those guys are better than the level 1 fighters of HHM. This is true despite the listed base stats AND growth rates for both games being exactly the same for this class. So what gives? This guy is packing about +2 HP, 1.25 Str, 1.25 Skill, 1.5 Speed, 2 luck (enemies in this game have Luck), -.75 Def, and +.25 Res over his HHM counterpart. Now some of that is random variation of course; the fighters on this level don’t all have the same stats. But it’s clear that this game’s hard mode bonuses are bigger than the 5 levels’ worth of HHM ones from FE7 (For details on that, see the War Room Part 27: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3701153&pagenumber=19#post442747858). I need to do further testing to figure it out, but it looks like about +8 levels worth of stats instead of +5. That hurts a lot at the beginning but that static edge will mean much less later in the game.




Oh and for the time being, these are the important stats: 18 damage, 76 accuracy, and 16 avoid. And too much speed to double (except maybe for Marcus).




Damas is less developed than most random bandits in other FEs even. You’d think an outlaw bold enough to actually attack Eliwood in his castle would have some kind of origin story or motivation other than just wanting money. Even Groznyi had more personality.

His stats look fierce at first, in particular that speed would let him double most people in this party.




But he’s wielding this, so he’s a joke. Steel axes are absolutely horrible in this game, worse than in 7 and 8 even. He can’t hit worth a darn and he’s too slow to be a threat.




One of many child soldiers in this game, Roy is 15 and looks 10. And acts 25 or so at least most of the time. Like his father before him, he’s very mature and a capable leader to begin with and doesn’t go through much development. But he’s a lot blander and we don’t ever really see him, say, losing (for more than like 5 seconds this one time). He’s certainly not completely without personality, but he’s more so than any FE protagonist but Marth. The main trait he does have is doubting his own abilities. Which is entirely appropriate for a 10 – I mean 15- year old son of the greatest knight in all of Lycia who’s been suddenly thrown into a leadership position in a world war. The stress never gets to him or anything though. And his advisors and soldiers and even foreign kings and generals pretty much never question him or doubt him. For that matter, he's inconsistent on whether or not he even doubts himself. Some characters remark that he's amazingly confident, others say he's shy and doesn't believe in himself.

To be honest, Roy’s blandness is one of the game’s biggest flaws. Ephraim was reckless and daring and irresponsible; Ike was actually acknowledged as unqualified for his post and incapable of holding his little band together in the impossible situation they were thrown into (as well as driven to avenge his father’s murder); Micaiah was secretive; Chrom kept getting beat and was kind of the opposite of Ike: his reputation as a great warrior was mostly undeserved but he was really good at inspiring loyalty. And most of them also had a much more interesting supporting cast.


Poor Roy was higher tier in Melee! He gets even more hate than Eliwood, but it’s actually somewhat justified.
Instead of being a fantastic all-rounder unit who just takes a while to blossom, Roy is usually outright bad. The difference isn’t stats directly though; their starting stats are EXACTLY the same except Eliwood has more Con. And their growths are nearly the same too (Roy trades 5% Str, Def, and Res for 15% luck). Then Roy gets better promotion gains!
But Roy doesn’t get a horse, doesn’t get lances (with the all-important javelin), promotes at least as late, and is up against tougher enemies.




And then there’s this! His version of the Rapier has many fewer uses and an important 2 less Might. That makes it the same as an iron sword! True, super effective Might is x3 instead of x2 in this game, but that’s still only 1 point better- and it’s actually not even better if facing weapon triangle disadvantage (which you usually will be). Plus nomads and troubadours don’t seem to count as cavalry so it’s not even useful against as many things in this game.

Fortunately, his super-weapon very late in the game is much better than Eliwood's Durandal, so he can be a decent unit for 20 hits. That's his only strength though.

Since he's required, you have to use him despite his badness. Grandpa Nergal is turning over in his grave.




It’s nice to see a familiarly cool face. The old Pherae family retainer and knight commander is back and this time it’s personal! He’s a pretty interesting character in the prequel, but has very little to say here. That’s unfortunate because he should really have some great stories to tell and advice to give on top of being so darned cool to begin with.
Apparently he’s become less wise with age since he mostly gives terrible advice to Roy in supports and is just full of bad ideas. Somehow he’s become the silly foil to the wise and reasonable 10- I mean 15- year old Roy.

His stats are lower, but he’s now fantastic. People went on and on about how good he supposedly was in 7 where he actually sucks, but here with his terrible Str he’s finally useful. You see, young Marcus 2-hit kills every early game enemy, meaning he siphons XP away from everyone else. Old Marcus leaves every enemy with 2-4 hit points on hard mode, making it really easy to feed kills to your weaker units.
What’s more, you actually need someone of his Jeiganish talents now whereas before most people could stand on their own almost immediately.




His gear is just what you’d hope for. With that iron sword he can double most normal enemies and reduce them to tiny HP. When you run into an enemy he can’t double (or one he can that you really, really need dead) you can use the silver lance. Either way, he can kill things on the rare occasions you need him to and is very good at weakening enemies for your other characters.




We’re told often that he’s “Roy’s milk-brother.” And that’s about it. The two of them don’t talk much outside supports and he pretty much fades into the background after one or two lines in the early scenes. His supports reveal that he’s not very confident that he’s helping Roy as an archer and that he wants to learn to be a non-useless class. But that’s about it.

Remember how Roy’s stats were mediocre? Wolt is worse in every way! No seriously. His bases are the same or worse and his growths are also the same or worse. He’s bad. He’s really bad.

And he’s an archer, always an absolutely horrible class. Archers are probably at their (still rather low) apex in this game, which would help except that the other archers are better than him. And the nomads outclass him completely. He’s the worst member of a sucky class and inferior to Roy statistically.




At least he has a vulnerary for someone whose life is actually valuable to drink. It’s important to know exactly what kind of gear you have and who has it when going into a chapter like this. Especially since the group can’t heal yet and I can’t use Battle Preparations to pass things around.




Young, untested, reckless, and fiery, Alan is very loyal to Roy and fond of his friend and fellow knight Lance. The two of them along with Marcus and Wolt and Merlinus form the inner circle of Roy’s advisers, such as it is. It might seem at first that he’s trying to get himself killed, but his unusually good support with Tate/Thite reveals he’s fighting so recklessly to impress and terrify the enemy so that the battle will be easier and safer for everyone else.

He’s one of the best units in the game because of his combination of decent stats, a good class, excellent supports, and early game availability when there are almost no other good characters. Relative to Lance he has more Str and Def but less Skill and Speed, but the differences are actually fairly small. Early on this gives Alan a relative disadvantage since Lance will be the first to get to double enemies. However, late in the game they’ll both be at or near the same speed cap, while Alan will have superior Str and Def. Later on he can still pull his weight, but he suffers from a case of paladin syndrome.




Nothing too impressive, but it will get the job done.




A somewhat more developed character, Lance is calmer and probably smarter (certainly more bookish and cerebral) than his partner and self-appointed rival Alan. He’s just as loyal and protective of Roy, but is a new addition to his knights- and a foreigner. I don’t think we know where he’s from, but we do know that he’s really thrown himself into proving his loyalty to his new realm. However, he still thinks that not being Pheraen makes him more expendable than the others. Alan tries to disabuse him of this notion.


Lance is fairly quick, though like most cavaliers his stats are pretty rounded all in all. Along with Alan, he’s one of the best units in the early game and he can stay useful till the middle, though in the long run his lower strength and defense can hurt him.




Now we’re talking! This team needs more javelins. It would be nice if he had an iron lance too, but having the javelin is more important right now.




A knight of Ostia, he’d been traveling back to Pherae with Roy and possibly Lilina (who he’s been charged with protecting). He may be aware of their budding romance and, unlike some knights in this series, considers obeying Lilina’s orders to be more important than being nearby to protect her. Consequently, he joins Roy’s group on her orders. He’s not very colorful, but he brings a sensible and everyday sort of practical wisdom to his relationships with most of the other characters.


He’s not unusable, but he’s bad. There’s not just one reason for this, but the biggest is his class. True, spectacular speed in completing maps is no longer as necessary as it was in my previous LP, but it’s still important to be able to get around a changing battlefield and stay in good formations. Bors’s terrible movement makes that hard.

He’s also locked to lances, which aren’t a bad weapon overall but are bad now when nearly every enemy has an axe.

Further, knights have exactly one job and that is to tank. Bors cannot do that one job. His Def base is only pretty good and his Def growth is unimpressive. What’s more, he has atrocious Res and terrible base speed (though his speed growth is good).

The upshot right now is that while everyone (including Bors) dies in 2 rounds if hit, everyone except Bors has a good chance of dodging. This makes him the squishiest, rather than the tankiest, member of the team.

And he can’t hit. And he can’t get supports with anyone here in the early group.

So what do you do with a knight who can’t take hits? Well his damage isn’t very good either and his skill is unimpressive. If you can manage to level him, his good growths and great promotion bonuses will gradually submerge his bad bases and make him a fairly respectable unit-but not strong enough.
The one thing he has going for him is that the other knights are 1) not here right now and 2) just about as bad.

I didn’t use Oswin and Oswin was pretty much the best knight in any FE relative to his game, so I’m not using the lousy Bors more than I have to.




Another vulnerary I guess. No javelin unfortunately.


Playing Through:




Luckily, Marcus can double this fighter so I don’t need to break out the silver lance to weaken him instead.




I don’t like moving next to that Forest, but the chance of getting the kill from 1 space down with the javelin is too low and wouldn’t let me wall for Wolt either.




If both enemies go for Lance and both hit, they can actually kill him, though the probability isn’t very high. But if I move Roy in here, the southern fighter will probably be lured to attack him instead.




On the enemy turn, Damas comments about the usefulness of gates and moves onto this one.




Fair enough. I knew I was going to wind up with one of these guys on the forest when I made that move last time and that’s going to be a problem, but I believe it was still worthwhile.




Roy can’t even 2-hit kill (and doesn’t double) an enemy that Alan weakened. But he did his job of being bait so that it was less likely the more important Lance would die/be injured.




A significant enemy force is coming and that archer is trouble. It’s easy to wall out a bunch of fighters so that each of my team members can be hit at most once. But then the archer can shoot whoever ends up most injured, so it’ll be hard to not lose someone.




It’s time to break out my damage reduction techniques, as outlined in the War Room, part 18 (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3701153&pagenumber=8#post442048947) . I think this one calls for numbers 4 and 5: I’m going to try to kill most of them and use formations to prevent anyone from getting swarmed and killed by the remainder.

Bors trades with Lance to get this javelin. It will help if it hits, but isn’t necessary. He can’t be allowed to attack with an iron lance, or the counterattacks will leave him nearly dead.




And Marcus makes a perhaps unexpectedly aggressive move here. I want this archer dead fast and I also want Marcus exposed to enemy fire so that lots of guys will be injured by his counters.




Wolt finishes the archer. Notice that he would lose a straight solo fight with this level 1 archer and in fact it’s not even close. Anyway, Wolt is bad but he gets more XP from kills than Marcus does and I’m going to need all the XP I can get. Plus that archer had to die.




Alan weakens this one and Lance finishes it, forming a short wall with Marcus that leaves Marcus in the exposed position the enemy will attack most.




Roy waits here where only one person can attack him. This position ensures the woods fighter will move out of the forest so I can actually kill him and it also keeps Roy alive. That attacking Wolt is an option for one fighter should keep Bors safe.




Wolt did his job as bait.




Roy, unfortunately, was hit by the other fighter but it was bound to happen eventually.




So here’s the turn 3 setup. It looks bad, but most of those enemies are actually really injured, so the whole group is about to melt.




Precise order is going to matter and I need someone else attacking from Lance’s former spot, so he finishes this guy.




The first level of the game is pretty good! The HP is actually a surprisingly important part of that. 1-2 points of HP right now will take him from getting 2-hit killed to 3-hit killed.




This fighter here is REALLY hard to deal with because he has both too much speed and too much def. That’s why I needed Marcus to take Lance’s spot.




Looks risky, but it isn’t. If Bors hits, great, that will let Alan or Wolt or someone else use their turn more productively. If not, I can still keep him safe.




It worked! Now I don’t have to let Wolt get a kill.



Roy does instead. And that’s the turn.




Wolt is good for weakening people for Roy but that’s about it.




The Rapier is expensive and I don’t want to overuse it, so Roy trades for an iron sword to kill this guy with.




Then he immediately trades back on Lance’s move.




And he and Alan rescue-drop Roy along. Now Alan is on a forest with a sword and is the only possible target for that fighter. Marcus will move in to lure the other enemies on the left.




Now this is how I want the fights to look!




So Lance is gaining Str and Alan is getting Speed. Not sure whether that unusualness is good or bad overall.




The "use Marcus to lure the enemy" plan worked too well since several enemies that couldn’t actually hit him started running over too. Fortunately, this ruined village slows movement much like a forest would (but with no defensive bonuses).




Alright, I want to save another rapier use so I’m going to take a big risk here. Alan gives Roy his iron sword and then prepares to kill this fighter with his iron lance. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, I’m going to have to dedicate someone else’s turn to finishing this guy.




It worked! Now Marcus + the ruins + Lance will be able to keep Roy safe in what looks like a dangerous situation.




That’s Roy!




Bors can’t keep up and wasn’t useful to begin with. He gives Lance his stuff.




And at the start of next turn, he begins returning for the village.




Alright, things are actually getting tricky because those ruins have me pinned down. This guy will take some time to kill, so I need to get started on it.




But not right now. I want to weaken this archer then have Lance or Alan finish him after we kill the other fighter.




Oh. Alright. I dislike how critical hits can ruin plans like that.




Well in that case I can take it a bit easier here.




Got to feed kills to Roy while I can.




And Alan gets back his iron sword.




Lance finally gets hit. Oh and note that they used the same generic field/plain background for fights across this whole battlefield. FE7 is generally much better about having cool fight backgrounds that actually match the setting of the battle.




Why would a bunch of random thugs be able to take on knights? It’s crazy that they managed to do this well. Anyway, the map is pretty much over now, not much left to do but visit houses and villages.




Uh… maybe I’ll skip the other houses.




The true enemy here isn’t Damas, it’s the gate terrain. They aren’t as bad as thrones in this game, but they still give fearsome Def bonuses.




So Marcus keeps the heat on Damas while everyone else moves into support-building formation. You’ll notice, actually, that I’ve been keeping Alan and Lance next to each other most of the time anyway.




Finally, Alan goes for the finishing blow, with Lance ready to pull him out if he misses.




Nice! Alan is looking good.




The villagers give us 5,000 gold. People who complain about this game’s supposed difficulty should think about how fast it throws money at us. That makes 10,000 total gold on chapter 1. Compare this to Hector’s story. There we get 0 gold for the first 4 chapters. At best there’s a non-trivial to acquire red gem which can be sold (at a funds loss) for 2500. Then on 13x, a secret chapter, there’s 3000. And then pretty much no more till Kinship’s Bond 12 chapters later (and even then you have to compete with a thief to get it). This game has stronger enemies, but it’s actually easier in many other ways.




I’m just waiting turn after turn to build support. I could have seized the throne and won on turn 6 or something or maybe earlier if I’d hurried, but the time limit is huge and I’m willing to exceed it to get the significant support stat bonuses early.
So Bors visits other houses for generic early game advice.




This is the only villager who’s really in-character.




On turn 19, Lance and Alan get unlock their C support. That’s 7 turns into debt, but I’m not too worried about it. The earliest this conversation could possibly have been unlocked is turn 16, but there were 3 turns during the battle when they couldn’t be placed next to each other.




So they have their C support conversation which is just about their generic cavalier rivalry.




Roy conquers his own castle for a turn 19 win.




Lilina and Eliwood have been rescued.




Eliwood is still recovering from dysentery, so he puts Roy in charge.




Guess it’s time to take on Bern. The story really begins here.




Lilina needs to learn that it’s often better to ask forgiveness than seek permission.




Sure enough, Eliwood sends her back to Ostia to reign in her father’s stead while Hector marshalls the Lycian alliance army.




Afterall, the people will be feeling "uptight." Probably "anxious" would have been a better word, but that’s one of my favorite lines of this translation.




Quite an honor there!




Lilina can’t go with Roy but sends Bors to protect him. I’m sure she meant well.


And that’s a wrap! I have to say, after max ranking FE7 it feels REALLY weird to blitz through the chapter and then just stop and wait for more than 10 turns to build supports. I keep wanting to restart and see if I can beat it in 5 turns or something instead. But the time limits are pretty much a non-issue in this game and I should take advantage of that.


Total Restarts: 0. It’s an easy chapter.
Turn Surplus: -7 (It could totally be +7 or something instead. So weird)
Things I Regret Missing: No regrets!

Melth fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jan 4, 2016

Fedule
Mar 27, 2010


No one left uncured.
I got you.
I'm not letting you use the poo poo Post tag for this. No way.

Artix
Apr 26, 2010

He's finally back,
to kick some tail!
And this time,
he's goin' to jail!
Well now you're just trying to show me up.

Mr.Morgenstern
Sep 14, 2012

quote:

At least he has a vulnerary for someone whose life is actually valuable to drink.

:allears:

Rabbi Raccoon
Mar 31, 2009

I stabbed you dude!
I remember I actually got a really good Wolt. He got 3 perfect levels before promoting and he maxed strength, speed, and skill. That is a serious outlier though. And for once, being an archer wasn't a liability. He could be a shield that couldn't kill units one square away, which made him a great training buddy.

But then again, the RNG in these games tend to love me for whatever reason.

Also, heads up, there's a character you get next chapter whose weak to arrows.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

Quick question - are you using the old translation patch or Gringe's new and improved one? If not I recommend switching, if only for your own interest and because it cleans up lots of errors in the original translation. Your save game should, I think, still be compatible.


http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=41095

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
Yesss, you're actually doing it. Excellent!

I think I used the same translation back when I played the game. It's quite... literal. I will never understand the insistence on "social knight" or referring to lances as spears everywhere.

LordHippoman
May 30, 2013

I, frankly, want this smug Jagen to be my avatar on all forms of social media immediately.
Onto another game already? Just making me look lazy now.

(Super excited for this one, actually, because I've never beaten FE6. I got to the map with Douglas and then just kinda petered out.)

I love Bors though. Look at that man's chin. Look at it.

Ozdhaka
Oct 20, 2012
Oh, so you're actually doing this. I was about to take it as a joke, but if you're going ahead with this, I can't complain.

Just a note though: once the FE7 run shows up on the LPArchive, you might want to replace the forum links here with the archive links; once this hits the archives too everyone else will see it, but they won't be able to access the forum links, since by that time the first LP will most likely become inaccessible to those without an account with SA Archives access.

Francis
Jul 23, 2007

Thanks for the input, Jeff.
This is a bad game but I've always had a soft spot for it. Every Fire Emblem breaks horribly if you attempt LTC play or are willing to abuse arenas and other methods of farming XP. Rankings are an attempt to strike a balance between efficiency and more completionist styles of play and FE6's ranking system is the only one that actually works as designed. I expect to be proven wrong on that last point.

Anyway, thanks for doing this.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.
Melth I'm begging you just take the early promotion patch I made and save yourself some headache. It just promotes Roy at 16/x and nothing else. I know it's not a 'true' ranked run, but no one would fault you.

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!)


From the other thread but no, it's not done, it should be mostly out by the end of the year but we're being held up by our animator having gone AWOL... also new hacking tools being worked on because the current ones are so god awful (just ask the Awful Emblem team about this)


But, since we're here, I'll detail what I changed about this chapter.


Storywise:

For story I decided to bump up the invasions of Bern, since I have absolutely no love for pointless bandit chapters, Damas and his crew have been replaced by a strike-force of Bern soldiers, the boss of which is a Dracoknight. But it's fine since he's still Axe-Locked and on a throne while you have Wolt. Roy is portrayed a bit more cocky than he usually is, because to me the big arc through the game (that the game never capitalized on) is just how overwhelming the responsibilities tasked upon him are and how NOT prepared he was for them. Since Eliwood was to be a playable character, he's no longer sick, but he sends Roy on without going himself because this is all just meant to be a border squabble where Roy, under the protective care of Hector, wont be in any real danger. So Roy is set up for the fall here, he's confident and a little cocky driven by those teenage hormone things, because by chapter 3 everything is going to hell.

Also, Merlinus ceases to be a unit, existing within Roy as Roy is the storage unit, Merlinus instead is replaced gameplaywise by Erk the Mage Knight. Why? I liked Erk. Erk joins when Merlinus joins (next chapter) but equipment and stats are still being rebalanced.

Gameplay wise:

Let's see... enemies have been remixed to lose the bandit theme, the destroyed village is back, Roy has his new Prf-Sword that isn't the Rapier that comes with a ranged spell, Knights have 5 move and Sword access which increases Bors power and usefulness, Wolt's way more useful than he was. Axe-Mercenaries exist to throw off the player (Because I'm a prick), and in general it's still a pretty easy opening chapter, but it's new enough.

Oh yeah, and Supports are now gained FE9 style, not FE6 style, so no need to sacrifice turns for Supports.

Krumbsthumbs
Oct 23, 2010

2nd Place.
1st Loser.
Glad to see you moving on to FE6, I'm really curious to see how you cruise through some of the harder maps in this game.

Also, Wolt is Roy's milk brother right? Does that mean Roy was fostered with Wolt for a bit as a young child? I've heard numerous explanations of this phrase. and am curious which is the correct one.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

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

Krumbsthumbs posted:

Glad to see you moving on to FE6, I'm really curious to see how you cruise through some of the harder maps in this game.

Also, Wolt is Roy's milk brother right? Does that mean Roy was fostered with Wolt for a bit as a young child? I've heard numerous explanations of this phrase. and am curious which is the correct one.

It means he nursed on Rebecca's teets when he was a young'n. Nobles rarely nursed their own young, and since Rebecca is a servant to the family, it would have been tasked to her.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_kinship

In this case though, Wolt was Rebecca's actual child.

Rabbi Raccoon
Mar 31, 2009

I stabbed you dude!

Krumbsthumbs posted:

Glad to see you moving on to FE6, I'm really curious to see how you cruise through some of the harder maps in this game.

Also, Wolt is Roy's milk brother right? Does that mean Roy was fostered with Wolt for a bit as a young child? I've heard numerous explanations of this phrase. and am curious which is the correct one.

They were both breastfed by Rebecca, Wolt's mother. It's more or less a godmother's promotion in some cultures.

EDIT: Although in this case, yeah, it's probably the fact that nobles didn't do that sorta thing.

Zore
Sep 21, 2010
willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d’etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

Krumbsthumbs posted:

Glad to see you moving on to FE6, I'm really curious to see how you cruise through some of the harder maps in this game.

Also, Wolt is Roy's milk brother right? Does that mean Roy was fostered with Wolt for a bit as a young child? I've heard numerous explanations of this phrase. and am curious which is the correct one.

Milk brother just means his mother was Roy's wetnurse, an arrangement where someone who recently had a child would breastfeed the infant of a noble so the noble wouldn't have too.

It was a big thing in a lot of cultures up until we invented artificial breastmilk.

Krumbsthumbs
Oct 23, 2010

2nd Place.
1st Loser.
Kind of what I figured. Neat.

This is probably the most people are going to be talking about Wolt for this LP isn't it? "Outclassed" is going to come up a lot when we meet every other archer, but other than that he's going to be doing very little.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

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

Krumbsthumbs posted:

Kind of what I figured. Neat.

This is probably the most people are going to be talking about Wolt for this LP isn't it? "Outclassed" is going to come up a lot when we meet every other archer, but other than that he's going to be doing very little.

Basically, Wolt's only real claim to fame is that he's a support who can keep up with Roy. But he's also Ice and thus garbage.

MarquiseMindfang
Jan 6, 2013

vriska (vriska)
Oh yay, more Fire Emblem! Good stuff.

A couple things:

Only one of the bandits' units is actually a bandit.

The Rapier is E ranked, which is weird. It's still locked, but I guess they didn't come up with the idea of Prf ranks yet. Or it's a translation quirk.

If you're really, really worried about that exp rank: the very last chapter has infinite reinforcements for you to spend your turn surplus on. One per turn, but they're level 18 manaketes.

ed; Oh, and if promoted units count as level +20, can you just promote a bunch of level 10 dudes to cheaply gain 10 levels? Not that you'd need to.

MarquiseMindfang fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Apr 27, 2015

fade5
May 31, 2012

by exmarx
Well this both a pleasant surprise and much faster than I expected. I know you said Status Staves/Long Range tomes aren't cost effective, so I'll settle on saying that I expect to see lots of Gonzales on this run.:getin:

The Iron Rose posted:

Quick question - are you using the old translation patch or Gringe's new and improved one? If not I recommend switching, if only for your own interest and because it cleans up lots of errors in the original translation. Your save game should, I think, still be compatible.

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=41095
Agreed, definitely use the new patch. The old patch worked, but man it was pretty stilted/glitchy/messed in places, which you've already pointed out:


Another minor glitch (of like 100 various minor glitches) that was fixed is this:

Notice the vertical lines behind "Possession"? That's because the Rapier's full description is actually "Strong against armored and mounted units", but the "and mounted units" is a second line that's cut off, which results in a graphical glitch.

Also the patch updates the names to their Awakening localizations, weird as some of them are.

fade5 fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Apr 27, 2015

Dr Pepper
Feb 4, 2012

Don't like it? well...

Wait, so let me see if I got this straight.

In this game the Funds rank takes half your items cost into account, or in other words, their sell price.

So buying items, rather then being neutral, actually decreases your Funds ranking?

Eagerly awaiting to see how Bad Roy can get.

Zytix
Aug 16, 2013

Dr Pepper posted:

Wait, so let me see if I got this straight.

In this game the Funds rank takes half your items cost into account, or in other words, their sell price.

So buying items, rather then being neutral, actually decreases your Funds ranking?

So I'm guessing buying stuff is pretty much off the table until you get a Silver Card then?

NeoRonTheNeuron
Oct 14, 2012
Glad you're playing FE6 through too! The max rank requirements are much more lax than FE7. An average of 20 turns a chapter is a lot. Out of curiosity, how did you find out the turn limit for Chapter 1?

As before, you'll want to limit your purchases until you get the Silver Card. At least the game gives plenty of gold and treasure.

From Serenes Forest, and my own experience playing through the bonuses for FE6 HM are 3+ceiling(chapter/2). Oh, and for the first 5 chapters, the hard mode bonus is doubled because of a bug with having no Battle Preparations. Good luck! :)

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Fedule posted:

I'm not letting you use the poo poo Post tag for this. No way.

Newb question: what does this mean?



Rabbi Raccoon posted:


Also, heads up, there's a character you get next chapter whose weak to arrows.

Ah! Thanks for the timely reminder. I was just about to hand her a javelin and have her tank against some archers before you warned me.



The Iron Rose posted:

Quick question - are you using the old translation patch or Gringe's new and improved one? If not I recommend switching, if only for your own interest and because it cleans up lots of errors in the original translation. Your save game should, I think, still be compatible.


http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=41095

The old one I believe but I'm not entirely sure I want to switch.. Having the people of Ostia be uptight without their Marquess and having my social knights "Cnt" their "possession items" is part of the game's charm.


Ozdhaka posted:


Just a note though: once the FE7 run shows up on the LPArchive, you might want to replace the forum links here with the archive links; once this hits the archives too everyone else will see it, but they won't be able to access the forum links, since by that time the first LP will most likely become inaccessible to those without an account with SA Archives access.

Yes, I figured I'd need to do that. But I have a lot of proofreading to do before I can ask for the previous one to be archived really.



Francis posted:

FE6's ranking system is the only one that actually works as designed. I expect to be proven wrong on that last point.


Oh it completely doesn't work as designed. A poorly thought through quirk of the way Funds works makes the requirement absurdly low but only if you get the best ending. And the power requirement is completely redundant with XP as long as you recruit everyone.. Meanwhile the tactics requirement is mostly a non-issue.

I'd say the ENM/EHM ranking system works more as intended.

Onmi posted:

Melth I'm begging you just take the early promotion patch I made and save yourself some headache. It just promotes Roy at 16/x and nothing else. I know it's not a 'true' ranked run, but no one would fault you.


Bah! Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to stagnation. If I don't beat this game the hard way, I not only haven't really beaten it but I won't improve as much either. Roy was evidently intended to be sucky, but even if he wasn't and the designers just screwed up big time, the game is still perfectly completable with him as a lovable loser. Thanks though.



MarquiseMindfang posted:


If you're really, really worried about that exp rank: the very last chapter has infinite reinforcements for you to spend your turn surplus on. One per turn, but they're level 18 manaketes.

ed; Oh, and if promoted units count as level +20, can you just promote a bunch of level 10 dudes to cheaply gain 10 levels? Not that you'd need to.

One could also arena grind or the like, but I won't be doing that.

And you're almost right, but it's actually +11 levels. See you go from level 10 to level 1+ 20 = 21. The trouble is that doesn't actually help with max ranking overall, because that doesn't count as gaining 1100 XP. Completing the XP ranking while recruiting everyone will automatically complete the power ranking, but you can use early promotions to complete the power ranking while badly failing XP.



Dr Pepper posted:

Wait, so let me see if I got this straight.

In this game the Funds rank takes half your items cost into account, or in other words, their sell price.

So buying items, rather then being neutral, actually decreases your Funds ranking?



Exactly. There are a bunch of other interesting implications too, I'll be getting into those in a bit. Interestingly, this was kind of the way I used to assume Funds worked in 7. I assumed that the more cash you had, the higher your funds ranking, so I did things like sell all the gems and spare crests and not buy anything. Which of course is counterproductive. The funds ranking system in 7 is weird (But I still think it works pretty great when you know how it works).

So in 7, buying things was neutral while selling things hurt. But the silver card created money from thin air. Now selling things is neutral while buying things hurts, but the silver card makes buying things harmless.

Of course, to play 7 seriously you had to sell things regardless. Just like you had to use weapons more expensive than iron axes. So I'm going to buy whatever I need to play efficiently. Short run, that's going to mean some more iron weapons so everyone has one of every type they can use and also at least one javelin for everyone who can wield them. I may put the big M himself on the job depending on how useful he'd be elsewhere.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

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

Melth posted:


Bah! Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to stagnation. If I don't beat this game the hard way, I not only haven't really beaten it but I won't improve as much either. Roy was evidently intended to be sucky, but even if he wasn't and the designers just screwed up big time, the game is still perfectly completable with him as a lovable loser. Thanks though.


If that's your decision I can hardly stop you.

one day

David Corbett
Feb 6, 2008

Courage, my friends; 'tis not too late to build a better world.
You're actually doing it? Man, good for you. I liked your FE7 LP, and it'll be a real privilege to see a game that wasn't released here.

i81icu812
Dec 5, 2006
What's wrong with 'chronological sequel'?


Aside from the numerous plot holes I guess...

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

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

i81icu812 posted:

What's wrong with 'chronological sequel'?


Aside from the numerous plot holes I guess...

There aren't really any plotholes. 20 years is a long time. I mean they clearly intended to do 7, since Hector and Eliwood both have affinities in the game, a trait only shared by player characters And Gale, who was intended to join and has unique growths

Princey
Mar 22, 2013
Ooh, nice. I was all ready to be sad that your last LP was over and I wouldn't get that nice hit of FE tactics talk anymore.

And since I've never played this one and have zero emotional attachment, I can enjoy the snark this time around!

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
So the big question at this point is exactly what rules I'm playing by this time.

Obviously max rank and hard mode and getting the best ending, that's the whole point. I'm also going with no mine/PWASE glitch, recruiting everyone, no RNG manipulation (and coming up with new strategies if one fails due to RNG issues, same as I did for 7), and no arena use (it sounds like using arenas heavily is really common in max ranking this game, but I bet I can do without it if I work at it).

I'm thinking of also trying to not only max rank funds but get to the amount of funds (150,000 instead of 84,000) that seems to have been intended. And I think I'll try to shave a bunch of time off my tactics. Maybe try to save 100 or 200 turns for a random starting goal, no idea how feasible that is.

Edit: Oh, I won't buy stat boosters either.

What about support grinding? Should that be legal? Like what I did at the end of chapter 1 where I just waited 10 turns with them next to each other (and Roy) to get their supports early.

Melth fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Apr 27, 2015

Mr.Morgenstern
Sep 14, 2012

Onmi posted:



one day

Is that Lyn?

Dr Pepper
Feb 4, 2012

Don't like it? well...

Melth posted:

What about support grinding? Should that be legal? Like what I did at the end of chapter 1 where I just waited 10 turns with them next to each other (and Roy) to get their supports early.

Frankly I think if you actually manage to get Supports using the hideously slow GBA Support System and still manage to SS Rank it I'll be impressed.

Kacie
Nov 11, 2010

Imagining a Brave New World
Ramrod XTreme
Personally, if you can manage to both support grind AND do everything else?

Go for it.

I view this as teaching everyone how to be excellent at the game, and support grinding isn't a cheat. Supports are core to most of the FE games in one way or another, and you're balancing the gains of supports against the limited resource of turns.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

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

Melth posted:

So the big question at this point is exactly what rules I'm playing by this time.

Obviously max rank and hard mode and getting the best ending, that's the whole point. I'm also going with no mine/PWASE glitch, recruiting everyone, no RNG manipulation (and coming up with new strategies if one fails due to RNG issues, same as I did for 7), and no arena use (it sounds like using arenas heavily is really common in max ranking this game, but I bet I can do without it if I work at it).

I'm thinking of also trying to not only max rank funds but get to the amount of funds (150,000 instead of 84,000) that seems to have been intended. And I think I'll try to shave a bunch of time off my tactics. Maybe try to save 100 or 200 turns for a random starting goal, no idea how feasible that is.

What about support grinding? Should that be legal? Like what I did at the end of chapter 1 where I just waited 10 turns with them next to each other (and Roy) to get their supports early.

Go for it, this isn't LTC it's Max Rank. If you wanted to do an LTC run you could always do it, but Max Rank has no such limitations.



Yeah 20 years and getting shanked by Zeph is a hell of a drug.

i81icu812
Dec 5, 2006

Onmi posted:

There aren't really any plotholes. 20 years is a long time. I mean they clearly intended to do 7, since Hector and Eliwood both have affinities in the game, a trait only shared by player characters And Gale, who was intended to join and has unique growths


Eh. I guess Melth can give his two cents when he gets there. I'm pretty ambivalent and only responded to the intro writeup--though I think chronological sequel is the right way to describe FE6 relative to FE7.

i81icu812 fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Apr 27, 2015

TheOneAndOnlyT
Dec 18, 2005

Well well, mister fancy-pants, I hope you're wearing your matching sweater today, or you'll be cut down like the ugly tree you are.

Melth posted:

Translation errors or idiosyncrasies like that abound in some of the less trafficked parts of the game and range from banal to hilarious to dangerous and problematic (like that ranking screen one). Here are a few from the demo screens that play if you don't press start:


To be fair to the translators I don't think either of these are actually their fault. Japanese FEs love using English in their demo screens because Intelligent Systems is just weird like that, and I don't think either of these have actually been changed from the original, as evidenced by one of them still having Japanese characters in it. I do know for a fact that Cavaliers have always been called Social Knights in Japan since FE1. Not as in the name translates to "social knight", but as in the Japanese actually sounds out to "social knight".

Anyway, nitpicking aside, I really liked your FE7 LP and I'm glad to see you're continuing on with this one. I'll be following this.

Melth posted:

Newb question: what does this mean?
It means you didn't give your thread a tag (the image you see to the left of the title in the thread list). If you don't pick one it becomes "poo poo post", and you can't edit the tag once the thread is posted. Fedule is a moderator and changed it to "strategy" for you because he's nice like that.

Mr.Morgenstern
Sep 14, 2012

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:

Japanese FEs love using English in their demo screens because Intelligent Systems is just weird like that,

Nam sicut anglicus in quibus frustra uti Latinis sed videri sapiens.

It's just like in English wherein we like to use Latin for no reason but to appear intelligent.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:


It means you didn't give your thread a tag (the image you see to the left of the title in the thread list). If you don't pick one it becomes "poo poo post", and you can't edit the tag once the thread is posted. Fedule is a moderator and changed it to "strategy" for you because he's nice like that.

Ah, good to know. And thanks, Fedule.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

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

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:

To be fair to the translators I don't think either of these are actually their fault. Japanese FEs love using English in their demo screens because Intelligent Systems is just weird like that, and I don't think either of these have actually been changed from the original, as evidenced by one of them still having Japanese characters in it. I do know for a fact that Cavaliers have always been called Social Knights in Japan since FE1. Not as in the name translates to "social knight", but as in the Japanese actually sounds out to "social knight".

It's their fault for not translating it



The new translation patch shows that off. The old translations being poor hack jobs never ceases to piss me off.

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TheOneAndOnlyT
Dec 18, 2005

Well well, mister fancy-pants, I hope you're wearing your matching sweater today, or you'll be cut down like the ugly tree you are.

Onmi posted:

It's their fault for not translating it



The new translation patch shows that off. The old translations being poor hack jobs never ceases to piss me off.
I mean, yeah, but the class demo screen is probably way, way down on the priority list for things to translate. It's not surprising that early patches didn't care about it.

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