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What would happen if you hacked the game so merlinus' inventory was entirely legendary weapons?
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Jul 11, 2015 04:29
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Cake Attack posted:What would happen if you hacked the game so merlinus' inventory was entirely legendary weapons? you wouldn't be able to discard anything and would be stuck. duh.
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Jul 11, 2015 04:38
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fade5 posted:His caps are also pretty low (I think it's 25 across the board+standard 30 Luck) so even if Roy's really blessed he can only ever end up good, not great. Yeah. Roy has a cap of 25 for every stat except Luck. I'm not really sure what they were going for with him. 25 is alright but he literally can't excel at anything and so he can never be more than decent at anything even when he's way above average. In practice, he turns out about as well as your Heroes/Swordmasters on average but you can't really use him for a lot of the game. If he were just a regular unit, I don't see any reason to use him over Dieck and Oujay only loses out on join time since they're about the same except Oujay gets axes on promotion. As for the Myrmidons, Rutger blows him out of the water until the later game and Fir is probably better with hard mode bonuses until the Swordmaster strength cap slows her down. Though they do get the crit bonus and it's possible to get 100% crit rate on the Swordmasters, so actually Roy still deals less damage even with his superior strength cap while also being a lot slower. He's not the worst unit ever or anything, but he is pretty bad and fills a redundant niche that he can never even be that good at. Should have at least given him a horse or something.
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Jul 12, 2015 09:06
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Manatee Cannon posted:As for the Myrmidons, Rutger blows him out of the water until the later game and Fir is probably better with hard mode bonuses until the Swordmaster strength cap slows her down. It's not like either of them hit the Strength cap on 20/20 average anyway. They get mad critchance though and it's not like most enemies can't be killed with 20 Strength and a crit anyway, unless you're using an iron sword or something. Bosses excepted of course.
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Jul 12, 2015 14:05
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Insurrectionist posted:It's not like either of them hit the Strength cap on 20/20 average anyway. I thoroughly hate critical hits and everything about them as a mechanic and I tend to frown on arguments that units are good because they can get a high crit chance. However, the 100% crit chance swordmasters in this game can sport are actually dependable- at least while your Wo Daos last-so even I'll admit they're pretty handy.
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Jul 13, 2015 03:15
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Melth posted:I thoroughly hate critical hits and everything about them as a mechanic and I tend to frown on arguments that units are good because they can get a high crit chance. However, the 100% crit chance swordmasters in this game can sport are actually dependable- at least while your Wo Daos last-so even I'll admit they're pretty handy. In this game at least the crit based classes get such obscene bonuses to crit that you can gamble on a crit semi reliably(About as much as you can rely on a hit early game). It's still less reliable than a better class, but then again you don't use gonzalez for reliability anyway(Swordmasters are for sissy weeboos, and I seem to be the only person that likes geese).
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Jul 13, 2015 03:20
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Manatee Cannon posted:Yeah. Roy has a cap of 25 for every stat except Luck. I'm not really sure what they were going for with him. 25 is alright but he literally can't excel at anything and so he can never be more than decent at anything even when he's way above average. In practice, he turns out about as well as your Heroes/Swordmasters on average but you can't really use him for a lot of the game. If he were just a regular unit, I don't see any reason to use him over Dieck and Oujay only loses out on join time since they're about the same except Oujay gets axes on promotion. As for the Myrmidons, Rutger blows him out of the water until the later game and Fir is probably better with hard mode bonuses until the Swordmaster strength cap slows her down. Though they do get the crit bonus and it's possible to get 100% crit rate on the Swordmasters, so actually Roy still deals less damage even with his superior strength cap while also being a lot slower. He's not the worst unit ever or anything, but he is pretty bad and fills a redundant niche that he can never even be that good at. The SoS gives +5 def/res, right? For 20 uses, Roy has a theoretical defensive cap set of 60/30/30, as well as an 18 mt two range weapon that has 54 mt against dragons. It's not enough, but he does have something to make him stand out for a small window.
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Jul 13, 2015 16:08
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You know...sometimes I like to think about how exactly I would rebalance Roy if I ever made a Rom Hack. And as I experimented, I came up with the idea of essentially making him an Est unit, except one that comes at the beginning of the game. So basically, he'd still be locked to swords, he'd still have the same terrible bases, and he might even still have the extremely late promotion (though he might promoted at Chapter 16/16x...or perhaps later if he proves too strong), but he'd also have these growths, and these capped stats to make up for it... Growths: HP: 101% STR: 51% SKL: 63% SPD: 58% LCK: 80% DEF: 33% RES: 48% Caps: HP MAX: 60 HP STR MAX: 27 STR SKL MAX: 27 SKL SPD MAX: 30 SPD LCK MAX: 30 LCK DEF MAX: 26 DEF RES MAX: 25 RES Level 20 Average: HP 37 STR: 14 SKL: 17 SPD: 18 LCK: 22 DEF: 11 RES: 9 Level 20/20 Averages: HP: 60 STR: 25 SKL: 27 SPD: 30 LCK: 30 DEF: 19 RES: 23
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Jul 13, 2015 21:32
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Est units are shiiiiit. Give me good bases and solid growths any day. Ests are shiiiit (unless they are named Ross.) A better way to balance Roy is to hand him a nice 1-2 STR bonus plus a good 5-10% on his str and def growth. Take it from his Luck. Also give him 1 more CON. Rigged Death Trap fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 22:11
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Est units are shiiiiit. Ross isn't an Est. He growths aren't that great (That speed growth!), but he has another 9 levels and a promotion on everyone else to make up the difference. The best Est in that game is probably L'arachel since she comes so late but has a great chance of capping everything but HP and Defense.
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Jul 13, 2015 22:14
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Krumbsthumbs posted:Ross isn't an Est. He growths aren't that great (That speed growth!), but he has another 9 levels and a promotion on everyone else to make up the difference. The best Est in that game is probably L'arachel since she comes so late but has a great chance of capping everything but HP and Defense. Ross isn't an Est for multiple reasons. I mean first of all, he joins so early that it's not really reasonable to call him low-level for that point in the game. Especially since he gains XP so fast that it's feasible to have him turn into a pirate right after you get him- and trivial to make him into one after chapter 4. And then yeah, his growths are bad. He's not an Est, but he's a great unit because he has sweet support options, great availability, and nearly exclusive access to one of the game's best classes. Also there aren't many people to compete with him for XP early on since most of the good people join later. At a stretch, you could call Tana an Est. Amelia doesn't really count because she sucks. I'm kind of loathe to ever call a staff-user an Est because you don't train them up like other low-level units at all, so they work on totally different principles, but L'Arachel would definitely qualify otherwise. For all that Ewan is one of my favorite units, I have to concede that his growths aren't really good enough to call him an Est. Myrrh would be one if dragons could ever reasonably be counted, but they can't. So honestly, I think Sacred Stones has kind of a lack of clear Ests. L'Arachel would definitely qualify if she weren't a staff user. The trainees look like Ests but don't actually have good growths. Tana probably qualifies though. She's only level 4, has very nice (and well-distributed) growths, and is a conventional unit who must be trained with some care in the conventional manner.
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Jul 13, 2015 23:28
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I finally got around to completing chapter 22. This game is just exhausting now that all the work to secure max ranking is done. So when I found out Zephiel has a steal-only hero crest on turn 1 with my only thief elsewhere, I didn't restart. I've played and replayed some other FEs recently though and changed my opinions on some of them, especially in light of this LP. I was too hard on Awakening before; it's actually way better than I thought on my first 3 runs. I'm now on chapter 20 of my first lunatic+ no children, no grinding, no renown or other special items run and I have to say that the game really shows that a ton of work was put into it. It's the first one in the series since FE7 that really goes above and beyond what's required to such an extent. And it does break new ground, some of it pretty interesting, with its new mechanics. At least if you play on lunatic + and don't grind, the game is a serious challenge and calls for serious strategy, so it's actually been pretty fun. On the other hand, the story is still one of the worst in the series and the character designs are horrendous and they're almost all lame joke characters and the music is mediocre. But even though it fails completely in many ways, it still shows that the designers tried really hard to make a good game. I can respect that. It's a stark contrast with FE6, which is really clearly put together sloppily. I also played through FE9 (and part of 10 again) doing a hard mode to hard mode run since I don't think I did that before. My opinion of 9 lowers every time I play it, so I now regard it as somewhat less than mediocre. The Dawn Brigade chapters in 10 are just fantastic on hard mode, some of the best FE gameplay I've seen. At least until chapter 9. What on earth were they thinking? Chapter 10 is pretty bad too.
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Jul 14, 2015 21:34
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amelia tries very hard. please do not insult her
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Jul 14, 2015 21:39
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alcharagia posted:amelia tries very hard. please do not insult her Agreed. Gambatte, Amelia!
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Jul 14, 2015 21:58
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So Melth, on the topic of games you're playing, you mentioned going through FE4 for the first time, right? If so, how far have you played, and what's your opinion on it so far?
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Jul 14, 2015 22:12
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Fionordequester posted:So Melth, on the topic of games you're playing, you mentioned going through FE4 for the first time, right? If so, how far have you played, and what's your opinion on it so far? I haven't played any more FE4, too busy working on the new FE tabletop game and playing FE6 and 9 and 13. And writing and whatnot. So I only beat the prologue and chapter 1. So far I'm not really impressed, though one of my friends recently played through all or most of it and thought it was pretty great (but no FE7).
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Jul 14, 2015 22:40
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Most of the things I personally like about FE4 are orthogonal to the things you emphasize as making a good fire emblem so I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't like it. You'd love FE5 though.
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Jul 14, 2015 22:43
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Newb question: I was still working on proofreading some of the chapters of my FE7 let's play, but when I tried to edit it today, the edit button was gone and instead there's a padlock symbol saying, "Thread is locked for archiving". What can one do to undo this?
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Jul 16, 2015 16:11
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Crud, sorry about that man. Hope you get your answers, because it looks like that's happened to my still unfinished Dragon Warrior 1 LP!
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Jul 16, 2015 19:07
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I'm pretty sure nothing can be done about that, unfortunately. The archive script malfunctioned last year so the threads aren't actually being sent to the archives at the moment but it still auto-locks the thread. If you were doing these edits in preparation for the LP Archive Baldurk might have some solution for you.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:18
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 Kind of an odd title. I mean, Zephiel’s dream totally DOES end here, no matter what. Even if you don’t get the true ending, in fact. He completely lost the war long ago and now stands no chance whatsoever of ever accomplishing what he wanted. Anyway, this is the final chapter of the game unless you knew how to unlock every single sidequest. And that’s one of the stupidest things about FE6. On the other hand, this is actually a pretty good chapter for this game. Chapter Summary: Roy crushes Zephiel in one final battle at Bern’s castle- except Zephiel sends away his last general with the Dark Dragon to continue his plans. They don’t. And Roy goes after them anyway, guided by the legendary weapons.  As you can see, we apparently went WAY out of our path to go to the Shrine of Seals (which I’m pretty sure is in a different place in FE7). Why was Bern’s whole army stationed there rather than somewhere fortified on the border? And if Roy didn’t actually even plan on taking the Sword of Seals, why did he lead us there?  Many Fire Emblem games- FE9 in particular- try to play this kind of moment up as really dramatic and dangerous when in fact the climax of the generic FE plot came long ago and the villain hasn’t had a chance for many chapters now. This game is one of the worst offenders in that regard. At least in FE9 there was still the danger of activating the medallion if the war went on too long and in FE8 there were like 5 minutes until the Demon King returned at full power. In this game there’s no time pressure of any kind. The war is over, Bern has been crushed, and the threat of the dragons has also been ended (insofar as they even were much of one to begin with). The story is basically over but they’re trying to write like we’re just now getting to the most exciting part.  Remember Brenya? Of course not! She hasn’t done anything since chapter 3. And in fact she didn’t do anything there. The whole plot thread where she doesn’t trust Idoun is dropped immediately and never mentioned again. Not even now when it would be totally appropriate to bring it up again!  What even happened to her whole army? Did she just misplace them somewhere and forget them like Narshen did? Maybe we’re supposed to think the Etrurians fought them offscreen? If so, they really should have mentioned how that campaign was going while we were fighting through Ilia. It WOULD explain how Yodel suddenly appeared with Miurgre.   This is pretty much the only plot twist in the game; you probably expected to fight Idoun right after Zephiel and maybe Brenya as a miniboss. Or maaaybe for Zephiel to run with Idoun and leave Brenya to fight like most FE villains do. Come to think of it, why DOESN’T he do that? It’s not as if Roy would just stop looking for the source of the dragons after defeating Zephiel. That would just be silly.  This would be a great point for Brenya, who never liked Idoun or understood why Zephiel was keeping her around, to demand some kind of explanation before abandoning him. If the writers remembered anything they said previously anyway.  That might be more ominous if she ever did, or was capable of doing, anything significant. Over the course of the game we’ve fought maybe 10 dragons and they were pretty much all pushovers. Idoun would be no threat at all without all of Bern backing her up. And sure enough, if you don’t get the true ending, then she apparently never does anything ever again and is just forgotten.  Who the heck are you talking to? We’re not even in the castle, let alone near the switch you’re guarding!  You could do that. Or maybe you could try to stop us at the walls or the gate.  Merlinus knows something! Apparently he knows all about this secret means to open the throne rom of Bern.  Ultimately, this switch gimmick affects nothing. It just means you have to sweep out the treasure rooms and kill all the enemies. Like you always do anyway.  Ok, better idea. What if we just walk away? The ONLY way to open the doors to where Zephiel is is to use those two switches and then the Fire Emblem. If we leave, it is completely impossible for him and his guards to escape, so he’ll starve to death. This is the worst castle ever. Unless of course he could leave by the reinforcement stairs in that room. But if that works, then we could surely enter by those stairs from elsewhere. Either way it’s dumb.  I kind of feel like they switched the dialog in this conversation. Roy is playing Merlinus's part. Battle Preparations & the Map:  Secondary Objective: Steal the Lockpick from the turn 15 thief Secondary Objective: Steal the Hero Crest from Zephiel Secondary Objective: Get the Sleep Staff from the left top chest Secondary Objective: Get the White Gem from the left middle chest Secondary Objective: Get the Nosferatu from the left bottom chest Secondary Objective: Get the Wyrmslayer from the right top chest Secondary Objective: Get the Dragon Shield from the right middle chest Secondary Objective: Get the Swordreaver from the right botom chest (Pretty awesome loot here) Reinforcements: Almost infinite, actually. Bishops wielding status staves will spawn every 5 turns in the top middle, so don’t even try to crowd control them. Then there’s a single thief on the left on turn 15 (and Cath on the right if you don’t have her). Once you open Zephiel’s door, powerful troops spawn in one wave in the bottom left and bottom right start zones. And heroes, berserkers, snipers, and druids spawn out of the stairs in Zephiel’s room every 3 turns or so. The reinforcements might end on turn 50 or something, but for all practical purposes they go on forever. The throne room ones can be pretty dangerous since they can easily focus fire you while you’re fighting Zephiel or his minions. Turn Limit: 25. That limit is fairly tight if you play conventionally due to the spread out nature of your objectives and how you can’t really rush Zephiel even after you finally open his door. Like chapter 6 and Pale Flower of Darkness, this map has a hidden room. I’ve got a map for that too, but first I’ll talk about this outside stuff. First of all, the map is pretty tangled up with walls and pretty large. But for this game, it’s really not that big and doesn’t take THAT long to walk around. Any possible epic feel is lost because they’re been wasting time with enormous maps all game long. Plus the music is the same inappropriately cheery, start of the game type stuff as last chapter. The most unusual thing about this chapter is how you open Zephiel’s door. Kind of like in Blood of Pride in the prequel, you have to have units step on multiple separate switches before it will open. But that’s not enough. You ALSO have to have Roy walk in front of the door after doing that and then either use the Sword of Seals (which heals him, costs a charge, and can only be done if he’s injured), or just equip it and wait there. If you don’t know about that option, it can be quite confusing. It’s important to notice that the map is asymmetrical. The left contingent is significantly smaller and only the right group has easy access to the boss chamber. Furthermore, the left group has a much longer path to take to get to their switch. The upshot is that the left group is the limiting factor for your speed- if you play conventionally anyway. Reinforcements play very little role in this map until the door is opened- though the more or less endless supply of staff bishops in inaccessible spots can be a minor nuisance if you have people stationed in the wrong area. So what you see is what you get, really. There’s a lot of strong enemies on this chapter but they’re fairly spread out. The only really dangerous staff user is the Berserk druid in the box.  Then there’s the throne room, which is full of terrible surprises. First, the enemies are in a good formation such that you can’t safely take them on on the turn you open it. Second, Zephiel has a steal-only Hero Crest. Why? There is nothing else you must steal on the whole chapter except one lockpick and there’s absolutely no reason to bring a thief into the middle area when the chests are on the right and left. What a nuisance of a surprise. Third, a serious wave of reinforcements will pop up in your start zones. And fourth, very powerful reinforcements come out of the stairs in a pattern people seem a bit unsure about. Maybe it’s every 3rd turn after you open the door? Other than that, there’s nothing going on here that we haven’t seen many times before (Speaking of such things, you can actually recruit Cath on this chapter if you haven’t already. What a uselessly late join time).   POOF! When you start the chapter, a whole bunch of enemies who were not on the map during battle preparations immediately spawn, possibly forcing you to rethink a bunch of stuff and restart. This sort of nonsense showed up on chapter 21 too (and actually with one brigand on 19x in HHM for some reason). Now who to bring?  This is it. There are no more people below level 16 or so. Noah and Fa are both up near there themselves and Wolt and Barth are about level 12 too. Only Wendy and Bors and Ward are truly low level. I am now scraping the very bottom of the barrel as I try to keep pulling down tons of XP.   Units Allowed: 15 + Roy. A comfortable number even for a map where you have 2 groups. Units Brought: 1) Roy. FINALLY promoted and available! Roy has not only promoted but also has the Prf Sword of Seals, which is a fairly awesome weapon. Of course, it only has 20 charges and you must save some for the final boss to get the true ending. Guess what? He’s still bad. He can’t double anything and does maybe 30% of enemy health with the Sword of Seals. And he’s still fragile. He’s much easier to train than he was before, but he’s still a terrible unit. 2) Alan. Alan and Lance are now actually 2 of my lowest-level units so it makes sense to bring them for XP. Plus paladins love these big indoor maps where they can suddenly be as good as flyers. And now that Roy is finally coming back onto the field in a serious way, their support bonuses are good again. 3) Lance. Like Alan but worse. 4) Miledy. One of my strongest units, and as usual her 8 move is very handy. I’ll want to do a lot of rescue drops, so I’m bringing a lot of mounted units. 5) Zeiss. Now stronger than Miledy, making him my second best character after Lilina. Only he has the stats to pull off the dangerous mission of shredding the bottom units alone. 6) Lilina. I don’t want to use her in combat since she’s so high level, but she remains a great backup when something goes wrong. Plus she’s the best wielder of Bolting available, and I bought a pile of them last chapter for a reason. 7) Hugh. Might actually be able to edge out Zeiss for the honor of being my second best unit due to truly phenomenal defenses on a mage. Hugh will be the right group’s main magical fighter and will back Lilina up on healing. 8) Oujay. I’d like to keep building his support with Lilina. Plus he’s at this great level of damage now where he leaves most enemies alive with 1-3 HP when using a weak weapon, which makes him very handy for training… 9) Bors. Bors is my second-lowest level unit (Wendy is 2 levels lower) and the only truly low level person who’s trainable (Wendy cannot do so much as scratch damage to any enemy on this chapter with any weapon she can wield, meanwhile Ward will be running 10% hit odds against the easiest prey). It will be tough, but I believe I can feed him at least one of the nearby mercenaries and perhaps another too. 10) Clarine. Mostly here to use the advanced staves like Warp, Physic, etc. However, she’s very low level, so I might use her in battle a bit too. And of course she’s a mounted unit, which is also handy. 11) Shin. Shin is actually the strongest unit on the left, which is something of a problem since he’s only moderately good. The trouble is that due to support groups and certain people I need for certain missions, I couldn’t really put many better people here. 12) Lugh. He’s no Lilina or Hugh, but being a magic user makes him a top notch unit. 13) Ray. He’s no Lugh, but each side needs at least 2 healers and maybe they can get some support. 14) Noah. I can’t put someone truly pitiful like Bors on the left side because I don’t have enough strong people there to baby him. I need someone like Noah who’s only pretty bad instead. 15) Cath. She’s not far from level 20 and I think I see enough opportunities to train both her and Noah up. Plus there’s a lockpick I want to steal. 16) Lalum. The left group needs to walk further, train more, and use weaker people to defeat the enemy. They definitely need Lalum more than the right people. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Chad and Astol. Level 20 and I have plenty of chest keys. 2) Fa. I kind of wanted to bring her out, but she’s low on weapon uses, required on the last chapters, and will get more XP there anyway. Plus her bad movement hurts here. 3) Wendy. Untrainable, she can’t scratch anything. 4) Ward. Untrainable, he can’t hit anything (and he’s higher level than Bors). 5) Dorothy. She’s now quite high level actually. 6) Wolt. Much higher level than Bors, otherwise I’d have brought him instead. 7) Tate. There are too many snipers around, so air units are pretty much strictly worse than cavalry here. 8) Thany. Barely capable of holding her own at the best of times due to poor Str and Def (despite being blessed in those stats). 9) Niime. Totally useless, as usual. Clarine is way better at warping and physicing on this chapter because even she has enough Mag to reach and she can move much faster and not waste XP. Now before beginning this chapter I didn’t actually know about Zephiel’s hero crest or the starting zone reinforcements, so I didn’t really plan for them. By the time I found out, I really did not feel like restarting when it had been so boring already and I was so far in. So that’s why Cath isn’t on the right side, among other things. Most people are still loaded up with the best gear they can carry (plus javelins and handaxes). I didn’t really know who would be getting the chests, so there are several sets of chest keys being traded around as I change my plans. Lugh has Forblaze because the left side needs it more than the right. Maltet isn’t in play since it’s nearly broken and I’d rather use Hammerne on something better. Other than that, the legendary weapons are in the hands of the usual suspects. Every mage has one or more Boltings since those are very handy here. Clarine has Warp, Miledy is holding onto a spare Restore for her to use later, and Lilina has the Hammerne. The Delphi Shield went to Zeiss since he’s going to need to face more sniper attacks than Miledy. The Characters:  Well, here’s the main villain and the architect of everything bad that ever happened in Elibe for the last 15 years. He’s perhaps the biggest jerk in history since at least Nergal had the excuse of being under the control of dark magic that ate his brain. And Zephiel turned out this way despite having a lot of pretty great role models around and apparently being totally cool in the prequel. Anyway his whole personality consists of nothing but hating humans because he thinks they’re jerks like him when they’re not. He’s one of the least engaging generic warlord villains in the series, and that’s saying a lot. I think there are 4 things that make a great villain: threat, vileness, charisma, and understandability. What made Sonia and Nergal so successful in my eyes was that they had all 4. A great villain needs to be a threat; victory over them needs to feel uncertain. Sonia and Nergal beat the heroes soundly on several occasions and at least held their own otherwise, plus they completely crushed or manipulated numerous other characters. They were competent enough that beating them meant something. A great villain needs to be odious. The player should viscerally want to defeat them. So Nergal snatched Elbert away from you after more than 10 chapters of trying to save him, trollishly showed up to mock Eliwood when he accidentally killed Ninian, etc. Sonia murdered sympathetic characters left and right and delighted in abusing Nino. They were easy to hate. But at the same time, a great villain needs to be interesting and fun enough that the player doesn’t want them to just go away. Sonia and Nergal were always teleporting around, doing and saying awesome stuff. Nergal had a stylin’ outfit, both of them were clever, etc. They were cool characters, so one didn’t begrudge them their screen time. And finally, they were human and understandable. Not sympathetic, but they had motives and backgrounds that made some sense. Nergal in particular had a lot of pathos to his story, particularly in that he didn’t even know who he was. Lyon and the Demon King together have all of these key traits even though they lack many of them individually. They were the best part of FE8 in my opinion, they were what gave life to an otherwise dull story. The Black Knight certainly had threat and charisma and vileness (especially in FE9), but he kind of fell apart on the human dimension because of how totally different his personality was between games and a lot of what he did never actually made sense in hindsight. Ashnard was kind of a failure across the board because he had terrible, stupid strategies, never did anything after attacking Crimea, looked stupid and said stupid things, and was just crazy and inconsistent with no real motives other than being generically evil. I guess he could maybe get a bit of credit for vile, but not much. Zephiel is kind of like Ashnard, but even more clearly non-threatening and less understandable if anything. Ashnard sat around doing nothing. Zephiel runs around directly sabotaging his own cause left and right while going on about how important it is that he not fail. He’s just kind of rude to Hector in one scene and sort of vaguely petty and arrogant otherwise, but he lacks the sort of visceral hateability that better villains have. And he has like 4 lines in the game, one of them so cliché that he himself mocks it. No charisma, no coolness. He doesn’t do or say anything interesting. And then the worst part is his ridiculous motive. His dad was almost as much of a jerk as he is, so he decided to murder everyone in the world and hand control over to a species that’s even worse. Even in this game it’s clear that he had a lot of great people in his life, and FE7 makes it even worse (assuming you take FE7 and FE6 as both canon in the same continuity, which I have argued doesn’t really make sense), so it just doesn’t make much sense for him to be such a misanthrope. There are many ways FE6’s story sucks, but that Zephiel is a lousy villain is a prominent one of them.  Look at that darned hero crest! If you want that, you pretty much will have to restart the chapter after already beating it since there’s no indication he’ll have one and there’s no reason to bring thieves anywhere near him. Zephiel is finally here to stay (THIS would be a chapter where it makes sense for him to walk away from us, but I guess he got that out of his system on chapters 3 and 13). Anyway, his stats were only moderately impressive on chapter 13 and they aren’t better now, so he’s really easy to kill. For that matter, Murdock was almost strictly better. His guards are the real threat. Also he’s apparently huge, despite no one remarking on his stature. And despite being tiny in the prequel? Oh and his legendary weapon, besides not being that good, is really silly. It’s some kind of giant, ornamental staff thing the size of a person that mechanically transforms itself into a sword somehow. Melth fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Aug 27, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 00:54
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Playing Through: Lilina immediately fries the Berserk druid. She had to be on the right side to do that.  Not bad for her.  Then Clarine warps Zeiss. Even sub-par Mag for the lowest Mag staff user in the game at low level is more than enough to use Warp and Physic and the like in this game.  All the bad stats!  Zeiss kills the bishop. There are now no more status staves on the map.  Hugh heals Lilina’s level up wound.  With some rescue drops, everyone is positioned so that Bors can kill this mercenary next turn.  The left side needs to move fast, so lots of dancing and rescue-drops are in order.  They too are set up to lure a mercenary and feed it to a weak character. That’s the turn.  Pretty bad, but she’s at her caps.  Zeiss is doing a little better at slightly lower level, but is also pretty much at his caps.  He had the bad luck to get hit by every attack from every unit (and take a crit from a hero), so he’s way more injured than I expected.  The Physic druids ruin my plans by healing up the mercenaries.  Oh well, my turn, people are dropped in and Shin spends his turn weakening the mercenary all over again.  With a dance, Noah gets the kill and then a crude wall is formed. That sniper can’t quite instant-kill anyone.  I’m going to find a way to have every healer heal every turn more or less. That’s best for XP.  The paladins set up to start thinning the enemy ranged units while Miledy goes to kill the enemy knight.  Roy is just barely competent enough to be usable while he has the Sword of Seals. Even though he has maximum support and the sniper is badly weakened, he can’t even deal 21 damage with a silver sword.  Bors kills the mercenary and gets a decent level.  More heals.  And one for Zeiss. Clarine should be able to lure and finish one of the berserkers.  But instead this one just runs away from Zeiss for some reason.  Pretty bad, but he’s at his caps.  The enemy healers are becoming kind of a nuisance.  More heals.  In a chain.  This lucky mercenary dodged every attack thrown at him. And he has a lancereaver, so I can’t really give him to Bors regardless. Have I mentioned that Roy is really weak?  Zeiss is mostly done now.  I give another easy kill to Noah and he rewards me with a mediocre level.  Shin is underperforming too and this Str bonus is going to make it much harder to feed kills with him.  So the goal over here is to either kill or surround that sniper without putting someone vulnerable in range of the druid.  As it happens, Ray is just strong enough to leave this sniper at 1 HP. Man, my Ray is fast.  Whether or not Noah hits, the sniper is now locked in.  Pretty bad again.  Complete left side capping, as per usual. Now I just have to cross my fingers and hope for more Def and Res.  Even people with the worthless Light Brand pose a serious threat to Roy since they double him.  Lance has taken a turn for the disappointing.  Alan gets hit and then double-misses.  I’ve had some pretty lousy accuracy luck on this side, but the numbers of ranged enemies is down.  Alright, Zeiss is back in the game.  Several druids are taken down in quick succession. They’re the main threat remaining here and will instant-kill Noah or Cath, so they’re not good training material.  I decided to risk it on this one and Cath got a nice level for her trouble.  SWEET! That’s what I was waiting for. She has a steel sword all ready to go. Now she’ll do enough damage to be a lot easier to train.  So there goes that one too.  And Shin is patched up to keep fighting more of them.  I have had this support available pretty much all game, but I was planning on having Lilina get an A with either Oujay or Gonzalez. It’s finally become apparent that that’s just not going to happen, so I might as well get this C.  She’s the MVP afterall. That… just about sums their conversation up.  The pesky Nosferatu druid is finally dead.  Even that mercenary’s luck wears out eventually. What a pest.  There’s still lots to do.  Some chain heals.  Everyone crowds up just on the edge of the range of the next group.  Zeiss charges into battle and Clarine throws him another heal.  This whole chapter is basically just me healing stuff.  Lance continues to not be very good.  But the last ranged foe here bites the dust and I can finally move on.  Nice! Def is the only stat that matters for him now.  Noah crits an enemy I wanted to give to Cath. Oh well, it works out ok.  Just moving up with some more heals.  Huh. That’s actually a good level.  In retrospect, I’m not sure why I thought all these heals were noteworthy enough to screencap. Let it suffice to say that every single one of my 5 healers used a staff pretty much every single turn.  Time to wipe out these last few guys.  Welp.  Zeiss is nearly done.  Forblaze softens up this target.  And ultimately Noah is able to get the kill and ANOTHER bad level.  It’s proven impossible to train Bors any further, which makes Roy the lowest level unit on that side of the field. I’ve arranged a bunch of kills for him so far.  I guess that balances out the good level last time.  Hugh never disappoints though.  So the group begins dividing a bit. I’ve decided to have Miledy go for the switch, but I didn’t give her a chest key before finally deciding that, so Lilina and Oujay had to go back with a key for her to take.  Yuck.  Ok, it’s turn 8. I only have this one chance to get any left people I need over to the right side before this corridor is permanently filled with status stavers.  Sad. Know what’s worse? I don’t think she’s even behind average overall.  Shin makes the hallway safe and opens a spot for Lalum at the same time.  No surprise.  Those pests have longbows, but there’s only one real enemy left.  That fellow has a spear, so hopefully he’ll take the bait. It’s going to be a long walk to that switch.  My sages begin opening fire on these pesky snipers. I want to be able to move around freely near that door.  Everyone is trooping down.  And drops are conducted.  Apocalypse is the biggest, longest dark magic in the whole series as far as I can remember.  Miledy is working on taking that switch.  The snipers are now clear.  Ooh, another support. That finishes Lilina up.  They were talking about how he has a sister something like 10 chapters ago.   It kind of sounds like Hector has been a pretty cruddy ruler of Ostia from some of the supports about how awful life there is.  Maybe this support is based on some real practice somewhere at some point, but it comes across as a really weird idea. I mean, they have to have the money for pretty clothes and the spare time to walk presumably days to a faraway town, but not the money to buy food. And considering the Elimine church does so much work taking care of orphans and the like, you’d think they have better options.   The top right guard is dead and Miledy has capped her left side.  … darn. Just 1 turn too late, now she can’t step on the switch for 4- or open any chests for maybe 10.  Oh well, it’ll be 6 turns or so before I’m ready on this side.  Unless I use Zeiss to speed things up.  Finally some Mag.  I can’t wait 10 turns; I’m going to use a charge of this to un-sleep Miledy.   Why would it? You know there’s 2 and then Roy has to use the Fire Emblem on the door.  The Warp staff is restored once again.  There’s some good loot here, but it’s kind of late.  Not much to do but crowd in.  And now this switch is open too.  In case you didn’t have infinite money already somehow.  On second thought, I need to grab those chests faster. Bors is given a set of keys and sent in. I don’t like using Warp like that, but it’s better than wasting a pile of turns.  Ok, that’s both.   Last left chest.  So I have to switch the Sword of Seals to the top of Roy’s inventory and THEN wait.  That’s not really ironic. Also you knew he was the one in your way for forever now.  Roy is too cool for question marks when he’s asking things.  And everyone deserts him! Or not. Apparently all his troops stay for no adequately explained reason.   Dude, they ALL worked for YOU!  It’s nice that Roy recognizes how ridiculous Zephiel is too.  Ok, even if it was true that people were bad, why the heck would you put the dragons in charge? Almost all of them really ARE awful. Even Ninian and Nils are only barely willing to entertain the possibility of not exterminating all the humans in the world they invaded. The fire dragons destroy people’s souls and make soulless mockeries of life that do nothing but mindlessly destroy everything they’re pointed at. They were so bad that the Divine Dragons hid rather than work with them. And it’s not like Yahn persuaded Zephiel that dragons were good either, he’d apparently just decided that on his own despite having nothing but counterevidence to look at.  Is Zephiel even aware that those aren’t real dragons? You would think so.  Ugh, just stab the idiot already.  It’s anticlimactically easy boss battle time!   Bam! Reinforcements. I did not know those were coming and Bors is in danger. Why didn’t these guys help before?  Quite a dangerous army.  I’ll have to burn another Warp to deal with the reins quickly. Clarine gets another bad level.  I can’t charge in safely, so I’ll wall up instead.  My Oujay is so good.  I’d put him in range of only the druid and one hero at first to ensure his survival, but now he can charge in safely.  The enemy is breathing down Bors’s neck.  Alright, let’s see what I can do here.  Here’s something the Sword of Seals is actually good at.  Actually pretty good.  Hugh continues to be great.  Lance continues to be Lance.  The humble Wyrmslayer will fell this one.  Alan is a bit more respectable.  And they’re almost all dead.  But I have to burn the last Holy Maiden (don’t worry, it’s not a legendary weapon and it has a value of 0). Reinforcements are coming and I also need to cure Miledy again.  Just in time.  And here come the reinforcements. Maybe only 2 turns after the door was opened. Yeah, I’m not really sure I see the pattern.  Oujay is doing well overall, but falling behind on speed- which is kind of his thing usually.  This thief actually spawns at the END of the enemy turn, like reinforcements in good FE games instead of at the beginning like almost all the others in THIS game.  Oujay is down to one on one. It’s in the bag.  Miledy moves to engage only the druid and one hero at first, same as Oujay did. And I do NOT take the sole remaining chest. I want to leave that as bait.  You know, he was actually turning around at the end. He was above average in most of the important stats- and a lot in Def. But he was still completely worthless. Least valuable cavalier in the game, hands down.  Well the new guys should be easy to deal with now.  YES!   Ok, looking much better.  So the throne room is now clear. I don’t know if killing Zephiel stops further reinforcements, but I want to fight 1 more wave, so I won’t do it yet.  Some people ask why Roy is so bad. I think a better question is why is Skill such a bad stat in game after game?  Ugh, well that’s the last sleep and I can restore it. Note, by the way, that the hit chance would be 84 without the Sword of Seals.  Miledy needs some help.  Now she can finish that sniper off guaranteed (she doesn’t have the Delphi Shield, remember).  The reason I didn’t take the last chest was so this thief wouldn’t leave. Cath is chipping away at him for XP.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5HywJGoPBg Although I don’t like it at all, I have to concede that Zephiel’s battle theme is one of the best tracks in this game.  I found out for sure that the reinforcements will still spawn, so Roy attacks Zephiel in one final battle.  Because this is a lazy game, Roy and Zephiel don’t actually have any special dialog; this is just his death quote. Oh and look how silly his sword is.  Another empty for Miledy.  Killing this thief will take too long, I’m just going to grab the lockpick and finish things after the next wave.  Everyone gets to battle stations, pinning the reinforcements in against only foes that can smash them.  Then Bors loots the last chest. This will be handy.  The berserker bites the dust.  Lance and Alan got sucky levels this chapter. Actually, most people did.  Finally some Str though.  Lilina has the best possible excuse for her bad levels.  And turn 19 win.  Congrendulates!  Yes. Neither Idoun nor Brenya does ANYTHING if you don’t go after them.  Why does this conversation go nowhere if you don’t have every legendary weapon?  Let’s take it! It had good stats and 1-2 range and infinite uses! C’mon, please? For some reason we apparently just leave it.   That’s a stupid legend. Why would the dragon’s temple appear when the human weapons are nearby?  Apparently he STILL doesn’t even know the basic list of what the 8 weapons were.   You can call it a plot hole, but I actually think it’s a fairly cool and interesting mystery.  So the 8 legendary weapons give us directions there. Of course, the location can’t be THAT secret and it can’t have actually been below ground because Zephiel and Brenya and her whole army knew exactly where it was and Yahn and Idoun had to be able to get out of it and so on. We could have found it without them. If you don’t get the true ending, the weapons don’t glow and the group basically discusses how the true enemy may still be on the loose and then shrugs and decides to do nothing about it. And it all works out the same! And there’s no real clue that you missed several chapters and all the background and the real ending, or what you could do to unlock them next time. Terrible. Well that’s the chapter. I finished undertime, but could probably have done things a bit faster- and with less use of Warp. On the other hand, there aren’t many good occasions to use Warp left and there’s nothing better to use the Hammerne on, so why not? I did get 39 level ups by using so many low level guys. The requirement is… 10. Yeah. I’ve mentioned before that they clearly had no idea what they were doing with these ranking requirements. Anyway, that’s actually 1 level above my FE7 best (Cog of Destiny) and only 3 behind the chapter 18 level fest that astounded even me. I could have done better and probably grabbed the Hero Crest and also get Cath right to level 20 instead of just level 19 and 85 XP or something, but I really don’t want to play through it again. It’s a long, dull chapter that’s in the bag before you begin. Total Restarts: 16 (None here) Turn Surplus: +74 (+6. Not bad for a level that makes you run all around and wait for a door to open. It’s going to be really hard to hit my stretch goal of +100 though) Things I Regret Missing: A couple of uses of Marcus’s silver lance on Rude, a Chapter 5 nomad Marcus had to kill, two Chapter 12 fighters I couldn’t kill since I needed supports built elsewhere, a pirate and a wyvern rider on 14x who I didn’t have time to go after, 2 enemies in a room I didn’t have time to kill on chapter 20x, this one lazy mercenary on chapter 21x, Zephiel’s steal-only Hero Crest Legendary Weapon Scoreboard: Durandal slew Ohtz using Oujay on chapter 14x, turn 2; and the top left mamkute using Oujay on chapter 16, turn 9; and Arcard using Oujay on chapter 17, turn 16; and a bottom left paladin using Oujay on chapter 21, turn 7; and a bottom left wyvern rider using Oujay on chapter 21, turn 9. Armads slew Teck using Gonzalez on chapter 20x, turn 10. Forblaze slew the top right mamkute using Lugh on chapter 16, turn 6. Forblaze slew the left section hero using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 2. Forblaze slew the purge bishop using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 5. Maltet slew a middle area wyvern rider using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 2; and a middle area wyvern lord using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 2; and the right mamkute using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 10; and the middle right sniper using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 3; and the silence druid using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 7; and Pereth using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 14. Miurgre slew the throne room mamkute using Shin on chapter 22, turn 15. Apocalypse slew the top left general using Ray on chapter 22, turn 8. The Sword of Seals slew the right area Sniper using Roy on chapter 22, turn 2; and the top right Berserker using Roy on chapter 22, turn 6; and a top middlish druid on chapter 22, turn 7; and the right throne room mamkute on chapter 22, turn 15; and a throne room sniper reinforcement on chapter 22, turn 16; and Zephiel on chapter 22, turn 17. Melth fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Aug 27, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 00:56
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Melth posted:Oh and his legendary weapon, besides not being that good, is really silly. It’s some kind of giant, ornamental staff thing the size of a person that mechanically transforms itself into a sword somehow. That's a really weird way to spell  I dunno, I feel that Awakening's 2-range sword attacks are the silliest loving thing in the series. Especially if you proc Astra. 
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Jul 18, 2015 01:21
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Edward_Tohr posted:I dunno, I feel that Awakening's 2-range sword attacks are the silliest loving thing in the series. Especially if you proc Astra. Little did you know... I had a bag full of Ragnells just for this situation!!
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Jul 18, 2015 01:45
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Zephiel's staff/sword actually rules and I want one  Sorry Melth
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Jul 18, 2015 03:17
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This map WOULD be pretty fun if it wasn't for how, once you clear out the forces on the 'outside' and start heading in towards the door, it starts feeling needlessly big. Reuniting the left side with the right by Zephiel's room is a chore, and god forbid you forget to bring keys for one side and have to send your Thief on a hazardous treck past respawning Bishops who'll sleep him like assholes on the way - not even dangerous, just time-wasting. The actual fighting is fairly fun though. And yeah, Zephiel's weapon owns, sorry.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:36
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I can't imagine how someone can dislike Zephiel's weapon. It's the perfect fit for a king, it looks like a royal scepter at first, showing the power of a ruler, then transforms into a sword, showing the power of a warrior. And then it is used by spinning like a loving top, it's awesome. I want Eckesachs in every game, with its animation growing more and more insane every time. Come on, IntSys!
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Jul 18, 2015 04:39
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 It’s a pretty generic, conventional FE battle. Hardly worth keeping secret. Story-wise it’s pretty much 100% filler as you fight an enemy who’s already been defeated and who doesn’t really have a good reason to oppose you now. However badly placed it may be though, it’s one of the game’s better-designed chapters and it’s a refreshingly fair fight after many maps of outrageous nonsense and hidden traps. Chapter Summary: Roy follows the Divine Weapons’ guidance to the allegedly secret Dragon Temple. Brenya’s whole army is waiting to attack him even though that will only be bad for them and their families. Roy trounces them and gets on with the plot.  I wonder who actually did that? It might have been nice to see some Bern citizens/courtiers reacting and such. Maybe dig up someone like Knoll in the basement to fill us in on things.  Could? It’s not even a mystery anymore. We’ve been over this.   I’m mostly just feeling pre-emptively bored. Almost every FE has one of these chapters where some “honorable” enemy leader makes you fight a totally pointless battle even though you should be on the same side. Selena, Brenya, Lloyd, Ena, a bunch of people in FE10, that alleged pacifist who actually isn’t one in 13, etc. Honestly, I find the whole trope pretty annoying. Particularly because a lot of these people aren’t just fighting for misguided or unreasonable motives like revenge for a war you didn’t start, they’re also usually endangering the whole world by deliberately trying to kill the only people working to save it.  Here Brenya is deliberately and knowingly working with one of the dragons who wants to exterminate humankind and take over the world. But we’re apparently supposed to think she’s an honorable and ok person who just loves her country and doesn’t want to admit defeat. Honestly, this chapter feels out of character for her given how upset she was at being sent away with Idoun and how she never liked Idoun or trusted her, and she certainly has expressed no desire to see the dragons take over the world again.  Surprise.   You’ve got about 5 minutes to figure things out before we’re coming after you, Yahn.  The translation has gotten worse as it went along, which makes sense I suppose.  Yeah, she told them they wouldn’t actually be executed if they fled, but what kind of situation does that really leave them in? They’d be under enormous pressure to stay and fight from all their officers and most of the other soldiers. And they probably assume Brenya has some idea what she’s doing. And they probably don’t have much of a life outside the army.  This, I’ll admit, is actually a start. She does order everyone injured and people who have dependents to leave. But… it’s really just not enough. If she actually cared about her men OR her country, she would send them home and start rebuilding instead of throwing all their lives away and allying with a person who will murder every last citizen of Bern if he can.  Roy actually offered them a chance to surrender? What happened to the Butcher of Djuto?  Screw it, they’ve sided with the dragons, let’s just kill them all already.  Maybe this whole trope goes over better in Japan, but at least from my perspective all the Brenyas and Selenas and whatnot are thoroughly contemptible.  Screw it, kill ‘em all.   We kind of already had this exact same angsty conversation when the invasion of Bern began and it worked much better then. Oh well, it’s still always nice when a real character gets lines. Battle Preparations & the Map:  Secondary Objective: Recruit Karel by visiting the village with Fir (or Bartre) Secondary Objective: Steal the Red Gem from the top rightish mamkute Secondary Objective: Steal the Blue Gem from the middle staff druid Secondary Objective: Steal the Guiding Ring from Brenya Reinforcements: None. It’s awesome! Turn Limit: 20. More than enough as usual. You know, a lot of the time the battle map seemed to correspond to part of the world map. In this case, it’s upside down. The dragon temple was clearly in some mountains SOUTH of the lake on the world map. Anyway, what you see is what you get. This map reminds me a lot of some of the decent FE7 ones. It’s only moderately too big, the enemies are actually fairly concentrated, and the ballistae and staff users are placed in interesting locations. There’s no reinforcements, no enemies that spawn right after battle preparations are finished, no traps, no fog, no hidden time limit, or anything. It’s nice. At first glance it’s an air map, but don’t be fooled. The ballistae are way too hard to get too and- worse yet- the left two are in the massive staff zones of the druids. Instead, you’ll need to make your way carefully down one of the narrow shores while dealing with flyers over the mountains. And then find a careful way to approach that tight formation of staff druids and the boss with her bolting. Good stuff. Oh and as a sidenote, like pretty much all water in the game, this is Lake rather than Ocean, so berserkers and pirates can’t cross it effectively. Also it’s surrounded by cliffs on all sides. They really worked hard to make pirates and berserkers less useful than they should have been on a lot of these chapters. Compared to chapter 21, you fight pretty much the exact same units, but things are less boring because the terrain is less annoying and huge and there are other threats to deal with. Oh and notice that there are now a pile of items to steal! FE7 often had that, and this game never had enough of it. Finding ways to steal stuff under fire is a fun little challenge.  For whatever reason, the enemy druids have had a MASSIVE gear downgrade. Now they all have Flux instead of Fenrir and Mend instead of Physic pretty much. That makes them a lot easier to deal with.  Units Allowed: 15 + Roy (More than you can effectively use) Units Brought: 1) Roy. I haven’t even used him much and he’s only level 4 or 5 or so, but the Sword of Seals is already half-broken. Oh well. He’s decently handy here because a lot of the more challenging enemies are mamkutes, which he can be super-effective against. 2) Fir. Required to recruit Karel. 3) Cath. She’s very close to level 20 and I aim to get her there. Plus there’s stuff to steal, so a thief is required. 4) Lalum. Always an excellent choice. 5) Zeiss. I need a flyer to tear up the ballistae and Zeiss is the best man for the job due to his Def. 6) Miledy. Good backup for Zeiss, even if she’s not quite as good. 7) Fa. I got confused and thought she was super-effective against wyverns, but she’s quite effective here anyway. There are only a few enemies on the left side path, and with a little bit of backup she should be able to take them out and get to level 20 due to her great tankiness. 8) Hugh. Strong enough to bolting down a ballistician, tough enough to fight wyverns without a healer, and capable of healing Fir. He’s the best choice to back her up. 9) Clarine. I’m going to need Restore users- and Physic will be handy too. Actually, there are a lot of staves that are handy here in general. Barrier will be important for approaching Brenya, Hammerne to keep the other staves intact (or fix Maltet), Warp for getting across the lake and smashing the staff users from outside their range, Rescue if a flyer gets statused over the lake, etc. 10) Lilina. My other uber staff user and also my best Bolting user in case I try to take out one of the staff druids like that. 11) Ray. Mages dominate this level, so bring all you can. Even Ray is amazingly effective. 12) Lugh. Better than Ray, as usual. 13) Gonzalez. Remember how Gonzalez slaughtered 20 or 30 wyvern riders and lords singlehandedly without taking any damage on chapter 21? This is his kind of chapter. 14) Tate. I need a flyer with Maltet to snipe some problematic enemy wyverns before they get to my squishy people. Tate can handle that well enough. 15) Dorothy. This is the last chance to train her and it’s pretty easy here since the level is 80% flyers. 16) Wolt. Like Dorothy only worse. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Bors. Incapable of doing even scratch damage to wyvern riders with a killer lance, so completely untrainable. 2) Ward. Does only 3 damage or so to wyvern riders and has <40% hit chance at the best of times, so completely untrainable. 3) Wendy. Ha! 4) Yodel. I did actually consider him since more uber staves would be handy and it would also be nice to have one person on the team who can’t be statused. And he could use Purge against the staff users and ballisticians. But he’s level 20 and I just don’t need his help that badly. 5) Oujay. No more support to build with Lilina and swords are not that effective here. 6) Alan. Not enough power to damage wyverns heavily and can’t wield any legendary weapon but Maltet (which Tate needs) 7) Lance. Alan but WAY worse after his cruddy levels last time. He’d be useless here. 8) Thany. Can’t do damage. So my formation here is actually clever enough to talk about for once. Basically, in order to strike down the killer ballistician on turn 1, I need to put Zeiss on the edge of the lake and have Lalum dance for him. But that would put her uselessly out of the way when I definitely want her with the main group. So I’ve positioned Clarine next to the ideal spot for Lalum to end up and can carry her out immediately, then have other people take and drop her for extra distance. Fa is in position to reach the forest and use it for defense against the first wyvern group while allowing Hugh to get up really close without being attacked. Next turn he should be able to Bolting one of the ballisticians. Then among the main group, people are positioned so that with rescue-dropping I can move Gonzalez, Tate, Lugh, and Ray up at greater than normal full speed and deploy them immediately into a wall. With regard to gear, everyone is carrying the most powerful weapons available, plus javelins and handaxes. Every sage has at least one bolting and also an aircalibur and everyone who can wield one has a Heal staff of course. Cath is keeping 3 inventory spots free to steal. Lalum is carrying some spare staves that Lilina or Clarine may want later but not right now, such as Barrier and spare Restores and the like. Clarine has Fire, Physic, Restore, Warp, and Rescue. Lilina has Aircalibur, Bolting Heal, Physic, and Silence. I realized she has 100% odds to silence any of the enemy staff users from range superior to theirs, which could be handy. The legendary weapons are held by the usual suspects. The Characters:  Arguably the worst FE7 character returns, completely different, in the prequel ^ (-1). Instead of being a murderous psycho, he’s now a more or less normal guy who’s hiding from his terrible past in this out of the way village. Oh and instead of feeling compelled to murder all members of his family, he’s now quite friendly to them and can only be recruited by them. Oh and he’s completely changed his title from the Sword Demon to Saint of Swords, which was actually Guy’s title. It's like for once it's FE7 that had no idea what it was doing. In another dramatic departure from the previous game, he’s actually not horrible in this one. I mean, he’s bad because swordmasters are a bad class and he’s not really a good swordmaster for his level, but he’s usable. As some kind of weird joke, all his growths are over 100%, but he can only gain 1 level.  Brenya is the most interesting and least annoying Bern general and – perhaps relatedly- the one who gets the least screen time. She’s semi-secretly in love with Zephiel but also distrusts and dislikes Idoun. Unfortunately neither of those traits or subplots really go anywhere because she does nothing all game. She doesn’t even show up to sabotage Narshen or other villains like Murdock does. What a waste of a decent character. Brenya is, apparently, the most powerful warrior in Bern. Just look at those stats! Capped Mag, huge speed, capped Def, capped Res, and enough skill and luck to never miss and be really hard to hit. She could absolutely flatten Murdock or Zephiel in a fight with no difficulty at all, but somehow it’s Murdock who everyone says is the strongest.  And she’s got uber gear that let her instant-kill many of your people and 2-hit kill pretty much everyone. Often from across the map. She’s definitely one of the most powerful bosses in the game, however she’s actually a bit less threatening for her point in the story than Ohtz was. For some reason, she has a Guiding Ring. Any magic user you promote now is going to be completely worthless, but I guess it’s good for your funds ranking. Playing Through:  Fa takes the lead. The only guy who can go for Hugh is this one with a javelin who I want to go after him anyway.  Notice that Zeiss was NOT the closest wyvern to this point. That would have been a waste of move.  He immediately takes down the killer ballista.  Yay!  And Clarine immediately carries Lalum back toward the front.  Roy and Cath team up to drop Lalum even further along.  Miledy gets into range of the Long Ballistae but she’s out of wyvern range, so she’ll live.  Ray moves so Tate can pick him up.  Gonzalez takes point and drops him safely.  And everyone else moves in.  This temple’s location was totally not secret.  Karel wonders how his sister is doing. Dramatic irony! This clue doesn’t really help us know who to recruit him with at all though since he doesn’t give the name of the husband or daughter (and the husband was never seen in this route anyway).  Sweet!  Fa is doing well too.  Zeiss scores a helpful crit and tears apart the enemy wyvern lord in one round.  Turn 2!  Hugh runs around to the planned Bolting spot and kills the closer ballistician. Now only one remains.  Then Fa moves by him and trades a good weapon back to the top of his inventory before firing away at the wyvern lord again. It’s fun how I was finally able to dig up a lot of the old tactics I built my FE7 run on and use them here. I’d gotten really bored with slugfest chapters where I didn’t need to do anything fancy but know where reinforcements were in advance.  Very nice.  I’m trying to figure out the true maximum range of the Berserk user. It looks like it really will completely cover this ballistician even at 2 range, so there’s no safe way to take him down with a flyer...  I want to level Roy up a fair amount. It’s really helpful if he can have 20 speed by the final chapter. My Roy is slow so I don’t think I’ll get there though.  Now my main concern is how to give some kills to my archers. I checked the numbers and figured out that Lugh can leave one wyvern just barely alive if he attacks with Fire and does NOT have Ray nearby. So I killed that Mamkute so that Clarine could run into its spot and give her Fire to Lugh.  While she’s at it, she keeps Zeiss going.  He and Miledy take down the wyverns and stand by.  Lugh weakens the target, so Wolt is able to finish it.  And then Dorothy shoots down the druid and gets a nice level for her trouble.  I need Armads mostly for accuracy rather than power since this guy has an axereaver.  Then Tate switches him back to a handaxe.  And then she flees. The wyverns can pretty much only attack Gonzales at this point and he should wreck most of them.  Hugh gets a decent level as he’s attacked. He can’t dodge to save his life.  Gonzales… totally sucked this turn actually. He got no crits and actually missed tons of attacks even though his hit chance was good. That hurts my plans a fair amount.  Well I was in no hurry to recruit Karel, so Fir only now reaches his village.  So she immediately recognizes him, remember that.  He wanted to find somewhere quiet to practice swordplay without having to actually fight anyone. Really he talks a fair amount like Renault, though unfortunately he doesn’t have any interesting secrets we can find out.  Fir tells him that Karla is dead.  And he joins for reasons that don’t really make a ton of sense.  Remember how she immediately recognized him? Yeah. The writers completely forget about things they said 4 sentences ago.  The left front is nearly empty.  Ooh, some Def, nice.  Miledy flies into Berserk range and kills the last ballista operator.  So Zeiss grabs her and then flies out! Mission accomplished.  Like Fa’s weapon, I’d forgotten that the Sword of Seals isn’t actually effective vs wyverns.  Ugh, you’re so bad, Roy. It really doesn’t look like I can get him to 20 speed in time, which will make dropping Idoun in one turn much harder. So will his cruddy Str.  Tate goes for the target only she can reasonably reach.  Wow, that’s great.  Because Gonzales killed so few guys. I need to break out the big guns to wipe these guys out.  Pure offense is what my Ray has been doing all game, and he’s way above average in speed, but still just not that good.  Even on tough turns, you have to heal while you can.  Dorothy drops one of the remaining ones and continues to be my Dorothy.  2 left. Unfortunately, I don’t really see a way to give them both to Wolt since the wyvern rider is uninjured.  Wolt continues to be my Wolt.  I thought over my options and because this wyvern rider, even with a steel lance, can double my horrible Wolt, I need it dead now. I also need to put someone in the spot Lugh is in to lure the mamkute, so my only option was to have him use Bolting.  The Mamkute obligingly arrived and I stole its red gem.  These guys will be tough customers though because they’re out over the mountains- AND in staff range.  I’ll handle the easy left front first. Hugh heals Fa BEFORE she attacks.  Because she’ll gain more HP, so now he can heal her again and I’ll get more XP overall.  I drop Miledy juuuuust into Sleep range of the middle druid- the one with the gem. I’d really like to run him out of ammo first if I can.  But I don’t really have that luxury, come to think of it.  Once again, I see a good chance to give Roy a kill.  I believe this is the true range of the closest druid, so the beserk one is 2 spaces from that.  Wolt gets a better level.  And everyone walls up in staff range.  Tate is one of the best Res tankers in the game. Even at the absolute limit of the enemy range, she can’t possibly dodge despite being really high level.  Ray, rather than Miledy, is hit with Sleep for some reason.  Sure would be nice to have the Holy Maiden Staff.  Well time for another heal, everyone starts moving up.  They’ll lure this mamkute for Fa.  Wolt kills one of the many wyverns in range. He’s actually turning around.  The immediate threat is now clear.  Time for some restoring. I only have 2 restorers and I often need to use Lalum for other stuff, so some people are going to end up still statused.  Lilina and Lugh team up and kill that dangerous wyvern lord. I am NOT going to restart over a critical on this turn if I don’t have to.  And Gonzalez takes point again.   More statuses.  Fa owns the mamkute.  Nice, nice.  Only Fa is in true Berserk range, and since she has 32 Res or more, that’s actually ok. She can’t be hit.  Now that there’s only 1 turn left of status staves, Dorothy and the others can charge in.  The last one is down.  And as turn 7 dawns, these are the only surviving enemies. They pretty much don’t even move. Now here’s the question: can I kill all of them, steal both remaining items, AND seize the throne in 3 turns?  The wyverns help Fa make a rapid advance.  Clarine gets a level from some restoring.  The Restore staff is now broken so Ray and Tate stay asleep, but I still have all the guys I need.  Did you pay any attention to ANYTHING Bern did all game long? You guys won offscreen in the prologue against useless backwater countries that aren’t even necessarily shown in game and then never accomplished anything ever again!  As you can see, these guys won’t move.  Roy blasts away.  Well… speed!  Cath can juuuust barely survive a Bolting if she has Barrier on her first, so Lalum gives that to Clarine who then uses it.  This is the edge of Bolting range. And everyone beyond there would be killed in one hit, so there they must stay (barring some rescues around the edges).  Ok, the two outer staff druids suddenly DO decide to move, but they don’t attack. Huh?  Fa is finally powerful enough to instant kill a promoted enemy.  Cath takes the next gem.  I start shredding all the enemies.  Another empty level.  Forblaze is necessary to secure the kill.  Nice.  Hugh borrows Forblaze and opens fire with it too.  Next turn, the final item is mine.  Cath finishes as bad as ever.  Dorothy kills the final druid and is my Dorothy to the end. She came out pretty bad overall, but that strength is awesome.  Brenya delivers her special line for talking to Miledy…  To ZEISS! I checked and she gives Zeiss’s line to Miledy. I don’t know if this is a translation screwup or a problem with the game itself. Either way, poorly done.  And Fa gets the kill. Brenya isn’t too hard to smash when she’s stuck with Bolting still equipped.   Not bad.  And turn 10 win; nice!  That WAS the whole point of coming here. And would explain all the dragons outside.  Elphin gives this weird spiel about how the dragons inside the temple will definitely be much stronger, so our old tactics won’t work. This is absolute nonsense; the only way to effectively beat them is to double down hard on the old tactics of using Wyrmslayers and legendary weapons.  This warning is semi-useful at least. Basically, the people you use for next chapter must be used for the final one as well. Well the chapter is over. That was pretty fun, actually. The map design is actually decent and I also liked that it gave me a chance to show off lots of the little tricks I’ve been talking about in my war rooms one last time. I won 10 turns ahead of time and stole every item and got 23 level ups (15 required) by training some really low level guys. Pretty darned successful. Total Restarts: 16 (None here) Turn Surplus: +84 (That’s 10 more gained. I can probably get 9 on the final chapter. So I need to find a way to save 7 on the next one to hit 100. That’ll be tough) Things I Regret Missing: A couple of uses of Marcus’s silver lance on Rude, a Chapter 5 nomad Marcus had to kill, two Chapter 12 fighters I couldn’t kill since I needed supports built elsewhere, a pirate and a wyvern rider on 14x who I didn’t have time to go after, 2 enemies in a room I didn’t have time to kill on chapter 20x, this one lazy mercenary on chapter 21x, Zephiel’s steal-only Hero Crest Legendary Weapon Scoreboard: Durandal slew Ohtz using Oujay on chapter 14x, turn 2; and the top left mamkute using Oujay on chapter 16, turn 9; and Arcard using Oujay on chapter 17, turn 16; and a bottom left paladin using Oujay on chapter 21, turn 7; and a bottom left wyvern rider using Oujay on chapter 21, turn 9. Armads slew Teck using Gonzalez on chapter 20x, turn 10; and a middle right wyvern using Gonzales on chapter 23, turn 2. Forblaze slew the top right mamkute using Lugh on chapter 16, turn 6; and the left section hero using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 2; and the purge bishop using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 5; and one of Brenya’s snipers using Lugh on chapter 23, turn 8; and the last staff druid using Hugh on chapter 23, turn 8. Maltet slew a middle area wyvern rider using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 2; and a middle area wyvern lord using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 2; and the right mamkute using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 10; and the middle right sniper using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 3; and the silence druid using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 7; and Pereth using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 14. Miurgre slew the throne room mamkute using Shin on chapter 22, turn 15. Apocalypse slew the top left general using Ray on chapter 22, turn 8; and a top rightish wyvern rider using Ray on chapter 23, turn 3. The Sword of Seals slew the right area Sniper using Roy on chapter 22, turn 2; and the top right Berserker using Roy on chapter 22, turn 6; and a top middlish druid using Roy on chapter 22, turn 7; and the right throne room mamkute using Roy on chapter 22, turn 15; and a throne room sniper reinforcement using Roy on chapter 22, turn 16; and Zephiel using Roy on chapter 22, turn 17; and the middle right mamkute using Roy on chapter 23, turn 2; and a top rightish wyvern using Roy on chapter 23, turn 3; and the Red Gem mamkute using Roy on chapter 23, turn 4; and the final mamkute using Roy on chapter 23, turn 8. Melth fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Aug 28, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 21:01
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Do you even need any extra levels by this point?
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Jul 18, 2015 21:25
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You know...looking at Karel's portrait, I actually feel a little bad for the guy. Look at those eyes...the bags underneath them...and how ragged his hair looks. Dude really does look like he's aged considerably by thinking on all of his crimes in the past. It's nice he's found peace, but it's still gotta stink to have to reflect on all that  ...
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Jul 18, 2015 21:48
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alcharagia posted:Do you even need any extra levels by this point? Of course he does! More levels mean more numbers!(Unless it's wolt. gently caress Wolt.) As far as for the max rank requirements I'm pretty sure he hit those half the game ago and is just going for a high score at this point.
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Jul 18, 2015 22:13
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I like this map a decent bit, although I kinda feel that other than the last group with Brenya there are never enough enemies around to challenge you, rarely need to move optimally or think about positioning much except maybe if you get bad luck with Wyverns + Ballista hits. That's if you're not stealing a stone from a Mamkute on this chapter and continuously forgetting/mistaking/running into weirdness with Thief Berserk AI combined with said Thief being one-shot by said Mamkute if given the opportunity to take damage, resulting in spending ages on a relatively simple task instead! If only I had better thieves at the time... And yeah, Dorothy had no time for petty things like 'being a good unit', too busy bulking up at the gym.
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Jul 18, 2015 23:33
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The Sword Saint thing is a mistranslation by FE7's team. In the Japanese, the ending for Karel said he became known as the sword saint, and Guy's said he became as famous as the sword saint. The FE7 localization team mistranslated it so they both say that the person was known as the sword saint. So, Karel here isn't steal Guy's title, Guy stole his.
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Jul 18, 2015 23:39
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I got curious and checked Dorothy's average stats in comparison to Melth's. +0.55 HP, +5.5 Str, -2.65 Skl, -1.65 Spd, -2.95 Lck, -0.55 Def, -0.55 Res. She's down on everything, but that's one insane Str blessing. Also I guess Fir could've seen a picture of her uncle or something.
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Jul 19, 2015 00:18
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Blaze Dragon posted:
I mean, it would have to be a painting, which would be a whole lot less helpful than a picture. And would have to be 15 ears old and thus rather inaccurate. Not to mention that when she was just a baby he was still probably a crazy murderer dude. And the whole family other than Karel and Karla, who had no friends and no connections anywhere, was dead. So I'm not really sure who would have painted him and then given the painting to Karla.
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Jul 19, 2015 02:25
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He had a blindfold on at all her birthday parties.
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Jul 19, 2015 02:29
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alcharagia posted:He had a blindfold on at all her birthday parties. He was the best there was at Pin the Shamshir on the Berserker.
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Jul 19, 2015 02:39
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Yay, it's been a long drive, but now are you ready for the most tedious, anti-climactic and poorly designed final level of the entire series 
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Jul 19, 2015 02:40
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Shiki Dan posted:Yay, it's been a long drive, but now are you ready for the most tedious, anti-climactic and poorly designed final level of the entire series Heck yeah! I just beat it!
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Jul 19, 2015 03:26
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Melth posted:Heck yeah! I just beat it! If you want to hear more of his feelings, you have to seize another throne.
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Jul 19, 2015 03:51
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