Saleh automatically joins as well. He's a Sage who comes with good weapon ranks in anima and light magic. Stats-wise, he's like Magic Gerik. He can kill anything he likes and only fears getting dog-piled by enemies.
That's a more apt comparison than you likely realize -Saleh's bases are largely within a couple points of Gerik on every stat except Skill (Where he has a decent 5-point advantage) and Resist. (Where he has a 9-point advantage) Gerik actually has 2 more HP than Saleh!
Even though Saleh ostensibly has a 10-level advantage and promotion gains.
He's no Jeigan, but Saleh tends to be pretty badly outclassed, not helped by his join time -in my runs I basically always had at least 2 magical characters who had reached level 20 and promoted by the time Saleh joined up. (This was without doing any grinding, to be clear; past my first few runs I refused to grind, and still was managing these kinds of levels) And Sage is arguably the least desirable magical promoted class in the game, so that's another reason I never motivated myself to use him.
I'll explain what I mean: this map, like Waterside Renvall, is a winding path, tightly bounded by the terrain. While the absolute number of enemies is high, they come at you in neat little waves as you advance into their range, so you can easily avoid fighting more than a few at once. The only enemies who advance on you from the very beginning are the spiders, who start deep in the peaks, where they can only move one square per turn. Hardly a devastating charge.
I actually quite like this map, and think it's one of Sacred Stones' better maps. The main thing I think it could use is having more of the reinforcements timer-based instead of invisible-line-based -as soon as I figured out that the reinforcements more or less all only spawn in response to your movement, the map shifted much more to 'boring/easy' because I could clear everything that moves, get healed and formed up and all, and advance to trigger the next set.
But I still like it as one of Sacred Stones' maps that, if you don't figure the above out, actually puts you under some time pressure on the regular so you have to do some strategic thinking but without some of the obnoxious jerk design some other maps turn to with their time pressure. And it's nice to finally have a map where flier get to stretch their wings in a substantially useful way -where Port Kiris pushes you to fly over the sea but then sets it so fliers are heading into axe-guys and archers and so on, this is a map where fliers get to just... do cool stuff with being fliers.
It's surprisingly rare for Sacred Stones to let fliers really strut their stuff like this, too. It has one of the higher proportions of indoors maps in the series, for one, and for two it's strangely reluctant to design maps so you do things like path foot troops around Peaks, where fliers could potentially take a shortcut, and Port Kiris isn't the only map where enemy placement punishes routing fliers through flier-only paths. This is the main map where I really feel a big contrast between 'taking fliers' and 'not taking fliers' without it specifically being 'not taking fliers makes various objectives literally impossible to perform'.
Anyway, Ewan cannot kill a single thing on this map because his poor little stats are so tiny. I finish the level, and we finally enter the gates of Caer Pelyn, which seems to have weathered the monster attack all right.
The Entombed in the upper right will never, ever move, and Ewan can do Actual Damage to it. You can get a lot of levels for him on this map by just pounding on the Entombed.
Having him kill it is a waste, mind, but just getting several levels softening it up is a great use of his time.
This is actually one of the few times a character gaining damage from levelups actually pains me, because if Ewan gains Magic on his first couple of levels, he'll get a lot less experience than if he puts off gaining Magic. I've gotten him to... level 8, I think, off just pounding on the Entombed? But also had times where he only gained 2-and-some-odd levels because he gains Magic off both of them and so was killing the Entombed too quickly. So there's a funky element of luck to the whole thing.
Eirika confirms that their missing dragon has been with her brother this whole time. In fact, he's currently leading an army into Grado and Myrrh is tagging along! (this is the first time the game has bothered to inform me of where Myrrh is in four chapters).
I'm going to be honest, I completely forgot this level existed and thought you just got Ewan handed to you on Eirika's route. And I can see why, there really isn't all that much going on in it.
I think that at the very least, some more aggressive reinforcements would help out with making it more interesting, by changing the narrow passes turning into traffic jams from an administrative chore to a tactical issue - if it's hard to move your people from the front to the back, who's in the rearguard and who's in the van become important questions.
Yeah, I feel like Ross joined up at the right time, but Ewan and Amelia really should have been like, two Renalian recruits that join up when Vanessa and co do, so that they actually have time to reach their classes before the game gets harder.
Yeah, I think at the absolute latest, all of the recruits should be recruited before the route switch, maybe outer Renvall at the latest.
Though ideally I think they should all join one level apart right after each other, fudging the story to make it work. Turn them into early recruits with a lot of potential if you invest in em, as opposed to dead weight unless you throw them at the tower.
It's time for grinding! Now, even if I were saving the Tower for later, I would have to engage in some of it, because a Mauthe Doog has taken up residence on the Teras Plateau and it's blocking my way to the shops where I can restock on Javelins. So I enter the skirmish map.
Geographically, it's the same as last time, with monsters instead of mercenaries. All the houses that we could visit are now ruins, though.
This is an interesting choice. I can see the Doylist reasons behind it – the dialogue from the villages is suited to the context of that chapter only, so the developers removed them from skirmish versions of the map. But, in-universe, it tells the story of a Magvel that is being ravaged by increasing monster attacks. The monsters that we can see on the world map are taking lives.
The monsters here are nothing I haven't seen before, but this one Mogall, perhaps inspired by the ballistae still on the map, has a magical siege weapon of its own:
3-10 range! It is, indeed, quite dangerous. Cool animation, though. In general the dark magic has the best animations in this game, which makes me impatient to get a Shaman of my own.
Ewan died from that. I reload and leave him in daycare on the southern plateau until Neimi can ride up and deal with that Mogall.
Another thing of note about this map is the team I brought. I was interested in using the Ballistae so I brought Innes and Neimi, and Gerik, to work on his support with Innes, and Ewan needs levels of course so I brought him, and Saleh to guard Ewan, and Garcia because I wanted an axe user to deal with the Gargoyles, and Gilliam to work on his support with Garcia, and why not Tethys too. And then, one turn in, I realized that I hadn't brought any healers. So this map is now a no-healers challenge. There are forts! I'll be fine.
Playing in such a way to minimize damage taken was interesting. Innes made great use of the southern Ballista. And, after Gilliam got poisoned by a skeleton archer, I had no way to cure it…but since you can't be poisoned twice over, I had him shield every other character from the same fate by challenging every poisonous enemy on the map.
Neimi trotted up to the northern ballistae, only to find that, for some reason, she can no longer use them now that she's a ranger. Does her horse not fit? This leaves Innes as the only ballista-using character in my entire army.
…Well, it's a skirmish map, so I can play around with silly strategies. Neimi rescues Innes and carries him up north.
Meanwhile, everyone else sits around chatting and waiting for the forts to regenerate the health they've lost. Innes mounts the ballista and takes aim at the remaining Mauthe Doogs, and when that ballista breaks, he wheels it out of the way and gets into the second one.
He lands two of his ten shots…Mauthe Doogs are dodgy. Well, the others had some good conversations (*cough* unlocked supports) while he was doing that, so it wasn't a waste of time. I finish the map and finally get access to my shops. I have a few stat boosters, too. Ewan gave me an Energy Ring, which I use on Marisa because if I'm going to be using this girl, I'd better go all out. Otherwise, I'll just be dragging around a bad unit that I resent. I sell the Secret Book for money and keep the Goddess Statue just in case.
The first two floors of the Tower of Valni are the same as ever. No interesting drops this time, save a Short Bow which is weaker and lighter than an Iron Bow but with a slightly higher crit chance. I hand it to Innes because his stats are so good he doesn't need good weapons to destroy enemies. Marisa dies once, but she levels up enough that her build is finally starting to come online, to borrow a term from a different genre.
She has the same Constitution as Ewan. With an Iron Sword her damage capacity is low. But damn, that girl can dodge. And she has enough HP now that an unlucky hit isn't the end of the world for her.
Onto uncharted territory. The third floor consists of a long hallway filled with monsters…and a side room with a treasure chest!
I keep my army together until the halfway point, then split off Colm, Lute and Vanessa to take the treasure room. The chest holds a cool 3000 gold. I'm not sure if that's worth all the weapons I used to get to this point, but it is nice.
We fight this sick-looking Elder Bael as a boss, and the map is complete.
Ewan has gotten enough exp from plinking fire off spiders that he's reached level 10 (without ever once rolling Defense on level-up, by the way. Boy still has a whole 0 Defense). Because I want to try out dark magic, I make him a Shaman.
His first point of Defense gained, and two points of Con. He may be my squishiest unit, but the game thinks he can carry heavier loads than Eirika or Marisa.
I'm looking forward to trying him out, but the thing about Shamans using Dark Magic, it turns out…well, they only use Dark Magic.
And I don't have any of those tomes with me. So Ewan's going back on the bench for now. It's only a little disappointing. I'm rotating units for every floor, you see. It's my way of trying to avoid over-levelling anyone. And it leads me to use characters I've been neglecting.
Fourth floor! This one pulls off something interesting by asking you to deploy a split team. There's a corridor filled with Mauthe Doogs, including a cool three-headed one as the boss. There are also two twisty sections to the east and west. So your teams could reunite, but not without some effort. The twisty corridors are a good place for bow-users to show off, since they can shoot through walls.
Falcoknight Tana takes the boss out with a critical hit, and I advance.
The fifth floor is kind of dumb and kind of funny. It's just…look at these screenshots!
How many revenants can you take on at once? Can you wade through this sea of enemies to get to the treasure chests? There are Entombed holding Chest Keys, but I suspect that all the enemies will make it difficult to travel between destinations on this map. So I assign one chest to Colm and the other to Gilliam, who gets a spare Chest Key from my inventory.
Gilliam gets to his destination quickly, without much trouble (the treasure is a Killing Edge, which will be appreciated by either Marisa or Eirika). Colm is…detained. There are so many enemies that he needs Neimi to shoot them out of his way. There are so many enemies that he breaks his sword before he reaches the chest.
There are so many enemies that I need Natasha to lure them away from Garcia before they overwhelm and kill him!
There are so many enemies that the enemy phase music loops! There are so many enemies that I turn off combat animations!
Marisa breaks her weapons, too. But the experience she's gotten has been such that I count this as a highly successful expedition.
Look at that speed. I'm going to try handing her heavier weapons.
Overall, I appreciated this break in the rhythm of the game. Speaking personally, Chapter 12 left me feeling kind of disgusted and tired. I didn't have the energy to move forward to a new chapter – or, rather, I want to face the new chapter with enthusiasm and my full attention. So devoting the rest of my evening to plotless challenge maps was a good fit for my energy level at the time. I unlocked nine support conversations during this whole thing, but I'll go over those in their own post.
It's time for grinding! Now, even if I were saving the Tower for later, I would have to engage in some of it, because a Mauthe Doog has taken up residence on the Teras Plateau and it's blocking my way to the shops where I can restock on Javelins. So I enter the skirmish map.
You can actually 'retreat' from monster encounters. This is a menu option that ends the encounter instantly, and a generic monster encounter is cleared by doing this.
I used this a lot to use shops without being forced into non-chapter fights.
Neimi trotted up to the northern ballistae, only to find that, for some reason, she can no longer use them now that she's a ranger. Does her horse not fit? This leaves Innes as the only ballista-using character in my entire army.
This is the one and only tradeoff to the Ranger promotion. Ballista barely appear and the most useful ones are all before you'd promote Neimi anyway, so I don't consider it a real disadvantage.
Yeah, Ewan is the basis of my repeated 'literal child' comments. His Pupil sprites make it clear he's a prepubescent, and mages generally get horrible Constitution, yet Marisa doesn't outmass him? Excuse me, Fire Emblem?
It's time for grinding! Now, even if I were saving the Tower for later, I would have to engage in some of it, because a Mauthe Doog has taken up residence on the Teras Plateau and it's blocking my way to the shops where I can restock on Javelins. So I enter the skirmish map.
Useful note for skirmishes and the tower both: as optional maps, these maps add a "retreat" option to your menu that you can click at any time during your turn to... well, retreat. For skirmishes this is mostly useful if you wanted to reach a shop or something without dealing with enemies since it just removes the encounter entirely, and for both it can be good for "ah geez I am miles out of position and if I keep pressing forward someone is absolutely going to die", or even just general sunk cost fallacy of getting 5-6 floors up and realizing you can't save so that's hours of lost progress on the line (less of an issue on emulator, granted).
Neimi trotted up to the northern ballistae, only to find that, for some reason, she can no longer use them now that she's a ranger. Does her horse not fit? This leaves Innes as the only ballista-using character in my entire army.
Oh yeah, I guess that never came up in the Ranger VS Sniper promotion discussions lmao
Yes, only Archers/Snipers can use Ballistae, similar to how promoting to Assassin instead of Rogue makes your Thief lose out on stealing utility. Unlike stealing, however, being able to use Ballistae comes up in like... 2 or 3 maps ever, so it's generally not something the player is going to worry about.
Ah, luck stat boosters. Luck is arguably the least important stat in the game... right up until it isn't because one of your characters has only 2 or 3 luck so they can't negate the basic crit rates of every single enemy so every combat gives them just the tiniest risk of being instantly murked. Moulder and Arthur are iirc some of the most at risk of this in Sacred Stones.
Short Bows feel so silly in Sacred Stones. In previous games at least they had the slight utility of showing up with Nomad recruits, but in Sacred Stones they're weaker Iron Bows with half the uses and a price tag of over 2000 gold. The 10% extra crit is kinda nice, but not enough to push it into reliable "I'm actively trying to make this unit get crits" territory the way say a killer weapon wielded by a Swordmaster or Berserker is.
Rom Hacks do tend to have fun playing with Short Bows, though. I've seen everything from giving them a niche as a 1-2 range bow so archers can counter at close range with them, to a hack that made Snipers a fairly viable class by giving them inate crit, the shortbow 30% crit, and also removing 1-2 range weapons like Javelins and Hand Axes from shops entirely so your best bet for physical ranged damage was almost always to just field a bow user.
I keep my army together until the halfway point, then split off Colm, Lute and Vanessa to take the treasure room. The chest holds a cool 3000 gold. I'm not sure if that's worth all the weapons I used to get to this point, but it is nice.
So checking since I thought the chests had randomized loot in the tower - this particular chest on Floor 3 always has 3000 gold, apparently, but later ones have actual loot tables. For example, on Floor 5 one chest usually has a Killer weapon and the other has a selection of magic ranging from Thunder to Luna or Recover, but both also have a small chance of a Red or Blue gem. Fun stuff on top of the already existing randomized loot in monster drops.
Ewan has gotten enough exp from plinking fire off spiders that he's reached level 10 (without ever once rolling Defense on level-up, by the way. Boy still has a whole 0 Defense)
Sounds like the true Ewan Experience to me, he's got one of the lowest defense growths in the entire game at 15% (literally only one unit with lower, though a few like Marisa match him).
And I don't have any of those tomes with me. So Ewan's going back on the bench for now. It's only a little disappointing. I'm rotating units for every floor, you see. It's my way of trying to avoid over-levelling anyone. And it leads me to use characters I've been neglecting.
Ghoul King also mentioned it, but there's an armory available in the prep screen that sells the lowest tier of every item at marked up prices, so at least in FE8 it's pretty difficult to run out of equipment entirely. Not usually worth it though considering the mark up, unless you're really desperate for equipment.
You can actually buy Flux tomes as early as Port Kiris, if you're shopping from the world map.
It's just that, like... on a semi-blind playthrough like this, why would you even think to do so? You only have your first maybe dark magic user post-chapter 12 in Ewan if you decide to train him, and otherwise have to wait even longer.
Ah, luck stat boosters. Luck is arguably the least important stat in the game... right up until it isn't because one of your characters has only 2 or 3 luck so they can't negate the basic crit rates of every single enemy so every combat gives them just the tiniest risk of being instantly murked. Moulder and Arthur are iirc some of the most at risk of this in Sacred Stones.
Eh luck in the GBA games(and I think Tellius duology too) is added fully to avoid so luck with middling speed can be surprisingly competitive in dodge tanking with speedier but unlucky characters.
Dodge Tanking is at it's strongest in the GBA games in general with the misleadingly named "True Hit"/2RN system and the formula being the highest it's been. It's Speed x 2 + Full Luck. Later games bring the either the speed and/or luck modifier down
Eh luck in the GBA games(and I think Tellius duology too) is added fully to avoid so luck with middling speed can be surprisingly competitive in dodge tanking with speedier but unlucky characters.
Dodge Tanking is at it's strongest in the GBA games in general with the misleadingly named "True Hit"/2RN system and the formula being the highest it's been. It's Speed x 2 + Full Luck. Later games bring the either the speed and/or luck modifier down
Oh yeah, luck still has some use with how it adds to avoid, it's just that it's one of those stats where you don't particularly need a huge amount even if it's nice to have. Like Skill - you want some skill or you'll never hit anything (especially in FE6 where axes and lances have some abysmal hit rates), but it's not like Strength or Speed where you're popping off every time you get it on level up.
Luck probably still comes ahead of Resistance on a theoretical "stat tier list", granted, since most enemy mages you can just smash first, and that's not even mentioning Pure Water and Barrier Staves.
The first two floors of the Tower of Valni are the same as ever. No interesting drops this time, save a Short Bow which is weaker and lighter than an Iron Bow but with a slightly higher crit chance. I hand it to Innes because his stats are so good he doesn't need good weapons to destroy enemies. Marisa dies once, but she levels up enough that her build is finally starting to come online, to borrow a term from a different genre.
Honestly given the ways in which short bows are bad it might be legitimately better to sell the thing to buy more iron bows.
Unless you specifically have an archer with such low con they can't cope with iron bows- I don't think those exist, Neimi is like the lowest con archer candidate in the game!- the lighter part is useless and crit chance isn't that good.
(sacred stones has vanishingly few candidates for bow use. It's not obvious initially because they're a bit frontloaded... but it's probably the most bow starved game in the series.)
Dangit, Sacred Stones, have your world map shops actually consistent with your in-chapter shops! This mirrors on Ephraim's route, too, where you can get an early Flux Tome if you check a specific world map shop...
Man, all that gold thrown in the trash across all those runs...
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I'd argue Luck is probably the best of the 'bad' stats, personally, but it certainly tends to feel bad. With Strength/Magic, Defense, Resist, and most obviously Speed, it's easy to see a significant performance gap off of a relatively small number swing -a character being 2 points ahead on Speed in one run vs 2 points behind on Speed in another run can easily be a contrast between someone who is never doubled and in fact doubles quite a few enemies vs never doubling anything and in fact at regular risk of being taken out in a single fight due to being doubled. Damage and damage reduction don't have explicit arbitrary thresholds like this, but the nature of simple addition/subtraction with such small numbers means you get big swings anyway, especially in conjunction with "Hit points: I still have 1 left" being true. If your Exactly On Average character expects to do, say, 12 damage to an enemy on a map who has 28 HP, and expects to be a bit short of the Speed needed to double that enemy, they'll take 3 rounds of combat to kill the target. Meanwhile, the version of them that has 2 extra Strength and Speed will take out that same enemy in a single combat! And conversely, the verson of them that's 3 points behind on Strength will suddenly take 4 rounds to kill the target. The defensive stats of course just reverse the principle.
Notably, the ability to level mid-battle leads to the game readily illustrating all this to a player, where you can be raising a character and have a couple of good levels catapult them directly from 'in constant danger of dying and requires other people set up safe kills for them' to 'can effortlessly solo most enemies on the map with no possibility of dying'; no need to actually understand the math involved to grasp the principles regardless.
Luck does actually have such an element to it, but the numbers are constructed such that this is mostly experienced in a negative way; a character who's just a little too far behind on Luck is suddenly susceptible to crits from random regular enemies, and very possibly at risk of instantly dying on any given turn as a result if allowed to be attacked at all. Being ahead on Luck almost never has the reverse benefit; most characters have good enough Luck that regular randos don't expect to have a crit chance on them, and most sources of crit boosting are so large that being a little ahead of your averages probably isn't negating the crit chance entirely, even for a character who has natively high Luck. (Not without relevant Support boosting, at least) So it's easy to have a pretty Luck-blessed character and never really feel it because you just never make decisions that hinge on this Luck blessing existing.
The evasion boost is where Luck is more likely to be legitimately great, but this relies on all the jank with True Hit, where accuracy modification is invisibly massively growing in impact the farther you move from the center. An outrageous Luck blessing of being 10 points above your average is incredible if you'd regularly be seeing hit chances of 30% or less without the Luck blessing. It's essentially doing nothing if it's pushing the enemy hit chance from 60% to 50%. And also since Speed has twice the impact on evasion, being behind on Speed can easily erode this part of a Luck blessing's value. (ie you have someone who is +5 on Luck... and -2 on Speed. At that pont their evasion is only 1% ahead of their average, even aside Speed controlling doubling) So in practice a Luck bless tends to only be pretty good if it's occurring alongside a Speed bless.
And of course Supports and class factor into this. A flier can't use defensive terrain, and someone with the wrong Affinity/Affinity in possible partners can't stack Support-based evasion. Getting a Luck and Speed bless on Tana when you've made her main Support partner Eirika will not go anywhere near as far as if you got the same blessing on Lute and had her partner up with Artur and Ross and can have Lute stand in a Forest next to her husband and friend.
(Specifically, Wyvern Knight Tana with A with Eirika and B with Literally Anyone Else In Her Support List caps out at 93 base evasion, if getting maxed Speed and Luck. Sage Lute in the above conditions, in spite of having her Speed cap 3 points lower than Wyvern Knight Tana, arrives at 127 evasion. Thanks to True Hit, the gap this produces can be much larger than comparing those two numbers sounds; say our Tana expects a given enemy to get a listed hit rate of 40%, and so our Lute expects to get a listed hit rate of 6%. That already sounds really favorable to Lute, but True Hit means this is actually a 32.4% hit chance on Tana vs a 0.78% hit chance on Lute!)
So Luck is a weird stat that's hard to get a proper read on just playing the games.
It's been a week, writing this update, and it's just the support conversations I skipped over in the last update. Ugh. It's the end of the term, you see, and I have a lot of schoolwork and not too much energy to write. Apologies.
Nine support conversations. Let's do this.
Garcia and Gilliam C:
Garcia compliments Gilliam's armor. The fact that he wears it so easily makes his strength and training obvious.
Gilliam: None of Frelia's knights can match me for strength.
Garcia: Oh, is that so? You know, in my day, they said I was without equal.
The two enthusiastically agree to arm-wrestle. They do their best, but Garcia is victorious in the end. Gilliam congratulates his opponent with grace and good sportsmanship.
Saleh and Ewan C:
Ewan approaches Saleh, who seems completely unresponsive…until Ewan yells "Teacher!" a couple of times.
It turns out that Valega is a form of meditation practiced in Caer Pelyn, where, by contemplating all of creation and its harmonious relations, one becomes enlightened. Ewan asks if it isn't hard to meditate during a war, and Saleh replies that he simply has to find time, even if that means he goes into a trance on the battlefield. "It doesn't matter where, so long as you do it."
Ewan wants to start practicing Valega himself.
Saleh: Really? And I wonder how many days you'll last at that.
Ewan: Heh. I guess you're right. Knowing the harmony of the heavens sounds tough. Do you have anything easier I could practice in the meantime?
Saleh hesitates. It's hard to think of something that Ewan could do unsupervised without hurting himself. Even the most basic of magic takes a toll on the body and soul, and Ewan has shown a remarkable tendency to take stupid risks. The very first time Saleh taught him a spell, Ewan practiced it over and over again until he collapsed. Saleh found him and brought him back to his cottage, where he slept for two days.
Saleh and Ewan B:
Ewan wants to thank Saleh for taking him in. He reminisces about the time he and Saleh first met. A few years ago, Saleh had to visit Gerik for some reason. A curious Ewan followed him back to Caer Pelyn and begged him to become his teacher.
Ewan: If that's the way you felt about it, why did you let me be your student?
Saleh: Your eyes. I saw a spark in your eyes.
Saleh sensed that Ewan has the potential to become an incredible mage, so he took on the responsibility of training him. Ewan is pleased to hear this and he keeps reminiscing.
At first, Ewan thought his teacher was scary. He's so silent and stoic, you see.
Ewan: I always thought you were angry with me, and I didn't know why.
Saleh: All that because I was so silent all the time?
Ewan: Yep. But after a while, I figured out it was just the way you were.
Saleh: Ewan, you can never find truth in words, spoken or unspoken. Truth lives within the heart.
This made me laugh, because I'd just read a paper by a social constructivist who argues that all psychosis actually comes down to disordered language. Saleh would have some beef with them. Anyway, Saleh and Ewan have a dialogue about whether or not words are necessary for communication. Saleh prods at his student to come to his own conclusions.
A third memory: A time when Saleh got truly angry at Ewan. He took a book out of the cottage to study it…and then went to play in the river…and then dropped the book in the river. Saleh clarifies that he wasn't angry that Ewan took his tome out of the cottage. It was the fact that he took it without asking, and the fact that he treated it so carelessly, that made him angry. Ewan apologizes, again, and points out that he's never made those mistakes again!
Ewan: Oh, you don't mean…that? Oh, yeah. Ha, ha, ha.
…I like Ewan. I like Ewan more than I should. I like Ewan for the idiosyncratic reason that he reminds me of my brother, specifically, on a good day. Little rascal.
Franz and Forde C:
Franz has a serious question for his brother: How does he think the war will go? Will they succeed in defeating Grado and restoring Renais?
It's phrased flippantly, but Forde clarifies that that is his serious opinion on the matter. They are a highly-skilled, elite army, but Grado has a numerical advantage and the situation overall is complex. So, he hopes they win, but nothing is certain.
Franz gets agitated, and yells that hoping isn't enough. They need to FIGHT! As Knights of Renais, they need to do everything they can. Forde realizes that he's traded one green cavalier nagging him about duty for another, and sighs.
Marisa and Gerik C:
Gerik approaches Marisa and asks how she's doing.
Marisa: Same as always.
Gerik: You're not seriously injured or ill, are you?
Marisa: No.
Gerik: I see. So you can continue on?
Marisa: Yes. Why all the questions?
Well, Gerik just feels that it's his responsibility as the commander to check on everyone. Implied, but left unstated, is the fact that Marisa is so taciturn he doesn't trust her to speak up if she needs help. This support shows her…trying to work past that, and struggling to forge a stronger connection with someone.
Unfortunately, it also suffers from a lack of periods, like someone's keyboard was having problems. Typos irritate me…
Gerik continues, saying that a lot of their comrades find Marisa scary or unapproachable. She doesn't bother him, now that he knows her – and this fact adds context to his interactions with Innes. It makes sense that Gerik deals with Innes so easily, if he has Marisa-handling experience.
Gerik: I remember, when I first met you, you were always working alone. It seemed odd to me…After all, you're beautiful. I'm sure you could have any of the men in this army, if you wanted.
Marisa: Don't need 'em. And anyway, none of them are as talented as I am.
Gerik: You see, that's what I'm talking about!
Hmm. Tell me more about how you don't need a man, Marisa. But hearing all this has made her doubt herself, a little, and want to change. She asks Gerik if he thinks she should try being more sociable.
Gerik: Uh…sure, I guess.
Gah! And now there's improper capitalization, too?
Gerik: Huh?!
Gerik, why are you shocked? The support just ends, as if on a punchline, but there's no apparent joke. I guess what's happening is that Marisa tries to adopt some friendly mannerisms that look ridiculous or fake, and Gerik is confused, and the player is meant to laugh. But the joke fails to land. This support obviously wasn't copyedited properly, but the problems go beyond that to the translation. This isn't a joke that's easy to convey in text, anyway – this is another place where Sacred Stones could benefit from voice acting.
…All those problems aside, I think the concept of this support, at heart, is compelling. A cold, aloof lone wolf deciding that she could benefit from friendship, and then struggling to put that into action.
Lute and Vanessa B:
Almost every support convo begins with the characters calling out to each other by name or otherwise saying hi.
Vanessa: Um…no.
Lute: I meant…Vanessa, right?
Vanessa: I'm happy to know that I've made such a strong impression on you, Lute.
Lute sought them out, she explains, because she's been developing an attack to get past a pegasus's resistance to magic (like Luna?). It's still in early stages. She wants to test it out on Titania!
Lute: I was joking.
This support is dedicated to exploring Lute's sense of humor. She seems to have a sense of humor that's strong, but odd, so that it's very hard for Vanessa (and me) to tell when she's joking or being sarcastic. From Lute's perspective, this conversation is a parade of jokes that just don't land; from Vanessa's, this is the weird yet useful mage being very tiresome.
(You see, if something is scary, it's not funny. It's perfectly possible to joke about doing something bad (like, say, firing magic at a beloved pegasus), but you have to make sure that your audience knows that you don't actually intend to do it. It's best if the action is something obviously out of character for you, or so extreme that no reasonable person would ever do it.)
Other Lute jokes(?) in this conversation include: Thanking Vanessa for telling her that she's hard to read, sarcastically asking why her magic can be seen from so far away on the battlefield, and claiming to be a level 98 out of 158 pegasus knight. In the end, a bewildered Vanessa just says "Let's just do our best out there, shall we?"
Neimi and Artur B
Artur!! It's been nine chapters since you joined! I know you've been deployed on the field together because it's impossible to unlock this conversation otherwise!
But I can't be too harsh on him, because I think this is another case of awkward translation. I think he's trying to compliment her archery skills in an indirect way, but it comes off like he's never seen her use a bow before.
The meat of the conversation starts when Artur notes that she's put her mother's mirror away.
The strap's broken, and she's lost it. Neimi and Artur both freak out, but when Neimi starts to cry Artur realizes he has to be the calm one and takes charge.
Artur: Don't worry. We'll look for it together. Any idea when you lost it?
Neimi: I think I…sniff…had it with me when the battle started.
Artur: Then it must be around here somewhere, right?
The two of them split up and search the area, their portraits disappearing from the screen. When they return, neither of them have found the mirror. Artur assures her that they'll surely find it eventually. But when she leaves, he sighs and says to himself:
Artur: How am I ever going to find it in the middle of a battlefield? I suppose I simply must have faith. Yes, that's it.
Oh no. I have Neimi up to a B support with both Colm and Artur, and I don't know who to give the A support to. I like the way she and Colm together highlight how they're both maturing by bringing up their childhood days, but Artur is just very good to her…and if they don't reach an A support I don't think Neimi will ever get her mother's mirror back.
But this shipping dilemma is only a pale shadow of a much worse one I faced…Who gets to support with Eirika?
I've now recruited every possible support partner for Eirika (the top spot belongs to Ephraim, whose entry is blanked out while he's away on his Gradoan adventure). This is my chance to consider all my options, fully informed.
First of all: What is Saleh doing there? I was sure that that cape-and-shoulderpads sprite belonged to Lyon. Does he not have supports with Eirika? Is he not recruitable? Why not? Saleh seems a poor replacement – what do he and Eirika have to talk about?
…Does Lyon die? Are we going to get to Grado and find out that the cult already murdered him?
Morbid thoughts aside, I can now see that, of her seven support partners, only two are women: L'Arachel and Tana. Assuming that she can strike up a romance with both of them, I need to choose one to take to an A-support. And, since Eirika already has used two of her five available conversations, I don't have much room to shop around.
I deploy all three girls to the same map in the Tower. Eirika and Tana have already spent some time together, so they reach the threshold for their C support quickly. I save, and start the conversation.
Tana invites her to take a ride on her pegasus (while indoors, in a room with monsters). During this refreshing moment, Tana tries to apologize for not being very much help in combat.
Tana: To be honest, I'm still in training, and not quite battle-ready.
Maybe that was true when she first joined – that harbor map was really not a friendly place for a pegasus knight – but now? Once Tana had a few levels under her belt, she was contributing, and as a Falcoknight she's actually one of my best units. Even if I don't end up unlocking more supports with her and Eirika, she still has a place on my team as a fast flyer.
Eirika is of a similar mind. She tells Tana that she's been more than pulling her weight, so she should put those worries to rest. Tana is grateful for the reassurance, and seems to accept it.
Tana: Even though we're the same age, you seem so much more mature.
Eirika: Hardly…
Tana: It is you who even gave me the courage to leave the castle. I wanted to be out on my own, like you, to pattern my life after yours.
*fans self* I don't know, is it romantic to tell a girl that you want to pattern your life after hers?
Eirika: Me too, Tana.
Oh, well, they're just friends, I guess! False alarm, everyone! Tana used the f-word so there is no possible way this could turn romantic! [/sarcasm]
And now, for comparison, we have L'Arachel's C support. This one took a longer time to unlock, but it was still on the same map:
L'Arachel and Eirika encounter each other on the battlefield, and the former is delighted, calling it providence.
Eirika: We agreed to meet here when we planned out our battle strategy.
(Eirika, during the strategy meeting: It is essential that I take time during our next battle to have tea with eligible noble maidens.
Seth: This course of action has my full support.
Eirika: It will be fine, Seth – wait. You don't object?
Seth: If it's planned for beforehand, we can arrange adequate protection for you, my princess. It is a risk, true, but the longer you spend without a suitable partner, the greater the risk that you will end up falling in love with one of the men closest to you.
Innes: You mean, like you?
Seth: A breach of professionalism too horrifying to contemplate.)
Back in the present – it turns out that L'Ara blithely forgot the battle plan. She and Eirika met up anyway, so their plan is working just fine, whether or not she bothers to remember what it is. The heavens are watching out for them!
…Considering how L'Arachel operated as an adventuress, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. She has no thoughts in that head of hers, and her plans are never more complex than 1. Find evil 2. Charge at it. She will accept feedback from others, on occasion, for matters such as the route she takes to charge at evil.
I'm sorry, Rennac. I underestimated just how hard this woman is to work with.
Anyway, she continues to insist that, even if it was not providence that brought her and Eirika together this day, it was definitely something "strange and wonderful" that brought them together in general. How else could two women of such rare breeding and loveliness encounter each other, when they were both travelling in secret? Then again, L'Arachel muses (and Eirika confirms this), there was no real way they could have kept their identities secret, as both of them were able to identify upon first meeting that the other was a noble.
This is because both of them are demonstrably awful at deception. But, to L'Ara, there is something else at play: the radiance of their noble blood. Their grace, beauty, and refinement speak plainly of their true status to any attentive observer. She asks Eirika to back her up on this.
Eirika: Er…Aheh…Yes, why…the very first time I met you, I could see that you…you were very far from common.
Oh dear. Well, that's the opening conversation of each support chain, viewed.
I will have to reload a save and go forward with only one of these, so it's time to make a decision. Boy, it's tough to do this with just one conversation to go off. This five-support limit is awful, and you know the developers just did it so that no one could have more than one A support.
You know, in Three Houses, characters can have an unlimited number of A supports! This...is not a perfect system, but I still prefer it because it lets you unlock more supports in one playthrough. It can be hard to predict who'll get paired endings together – it mostly comes down to total support points, but if the partner with the most support points has been claimed already by another you need to go to the next in the list, and some characters have higher priority in claiming their partners than others – but you can mostly ensure that a favored couple will end up together by keeping them together even after they reach A-rank. And unlocking multiple A supports in one playthrough does result in some story silliness as they gaze deep into each other's eyes and talk about how important they are to each other and invite their dear partner to move in together after the war, along with the four other people they've also made this offer to.
There are tradeoffs to each system…in the end, what really matters is the quality of the character writing. With that in mind, who should Eirika choose to court?
Tana, her best female friend, who speaks openly of her admiration for her? The princess of a neighboring kingdom, who gained the courage to fight by following in Eirika's footsteps? A cheerful face in a dark situation, but one who seems to have her own hidden doubts.
Or L'Arachel, the newcomer met on the road, who thinks Eirika is the best thing since herself? The…something…of Rausten (she still hasn't told us), who left home to save the innocent and smite the wicked. She has an incredibly high opinion of herself and not much to back it up. A comedy character, always good for a laugh.
Who's better wife material? That's the question I ended up asking myself. How would each one make Eirika feel if they were living together? Eirika and Tana clearly like spending time with each other already. Eirika and L'Arachel…
All Eirika's conversations with her end up the same – with Eirika awkwardly mumbling assent to whatever self-aggrandizing nonsense L'Ara is spouting. Of course she goes along with it, she's Eirika, she doesn't like fighting. I don't even think being more assertive would help – Rennac challenged her at every turn, and accomplished very little, until he got fed up and left.
Perhaps my analysis is taking the comic relief character a little too seriously. I do find her funny. But I don't want Eirika to be stressed out while I laugh; I want Eirika to find happiness.
Yeah! Tana's dialogue feels much more connected to Eirika as a person, while L'Arachel's is more about physical appearances, so I'm happy with this pairing.
Gerik: I remember, when I first met you, you were always working alone. It seemed odd to me…After all, you're beautiful. I'm sure you could have any of the men in this army, if you wanted.
Marisa: Don't need 'em. And anyway, none of them are as talented as I am.
Gerik: You see, that's what I'm talking about!
Hmm. Tell me more about how you don't need a man, Marisa. But hearing all this has made her doubt herself, a little, and want to change. She asks Gerik if he thinks she should try being more sociable.
I really like this bit, and always have. A lot of times when pop culture has an Asocial Girl Character, there's a heavy undertone of 'the girl should force herself to be more friendly'. Here, Gerik is explaining that he doesn't get Marisa, but isn't actually condemning this aspect of her behavior, and when Marisa herself is raising the idea of being friendlier Gerik non-commitally supports the impulse without really expressing an opinion. It comes across like he's fine with her as-is, but willing to support her changing herself if she really wants, and trying to not push her in any particular direction.
(To a certain extent my fondness for Marisa is less about her and more about how the game treats her, honestly)
Gerik, why are you shocked? The support just ends, as if on a punchline, but there's no apparent joke. I guess what's happening is that Marisa tries to adopt some friendly mannerisms that look ridiculous or fake, and Gerik is confused, and the player is meant to laugh. But the joke fails to land. This support obviously wasn't copyedited properly, but the problems go beyond that to the translation. This isn't a joke that's easy to convey in text, anyway – this is another place where Sacred Stones could benefit from voice acting.
I assume in the original Japanese she abruptly shifted to a speech style more associated with Social Butterfly Girls. With localization failing to come up with anything comparable drastic-seeming.
Voice acting could certainly have saved it, though, yeah.
…Considering how L'Arachel operated as an adventuress, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. She has no thoughts in that head of hers, and her plans are never more complex than 1. Find evil 2. Charge at it. She will accept feedback from others, on occasion, for matters such as the route she takes to charge at evil.
I have Thoughts on L'Arachel of relevance, but probably should save them until... later. Not entirely sure when. Should probably at least wait until your L'Arachel Support choices shake out...
The two enthusiastically agree to arm-wrestle. They do their best, but Garcia is victorious in the end. Gilliam congratulates his opponent with grace and good sportsmanship.
…I like Ewan. I like Ewan more than I should. I like Ewan for the idiosyncratic reason that he reminds me of my brother, specifically, on a good day. Little rascal.
So I actually jumped in to look up this support's original text for comparison originally because "oh hey this is giving me The Shipping Undertones", but as it turns out it looks like this was one with a decent amount of modification going on.
Gerik: Hello, Marisa. Marisa: Chief. Gerik: How're you doing? Your sword still sharp? Marisa: Same as always. Gerik: You're not seriously injured or ill, are you? Marisa: No. Gerik: I see. So you can continue on? Marisa: Yes. Why all the questions? Gerik: Oh. I'm the commander, you know? I'm supposed to check on you now and then. Well, see you later. Marisa: Wait. Gerik: Hm? Marisa: I'd like you to keep talking. I don't mind talking to you. Gerik: You know, we've known each other for a long time, so I understand you… But listen, Marisa, it wouldn't hurt you to be a bit more sociable. Not for me, mind you, but some of the others have a hard time working with you. Marisa: … Gerik: Speaking of which, when I first met you, you were always working alone. I remember thinking how odd that was. I figured a woman as beautiful and talented as you would have men all around her. Marisa: Don't need 'em. Gerik: You see, that's what I'm talking about! Your beauty belies your words. Marisa: Chief? Gerik: Hm? Marisa: Do you like sociable women? Gerik: Um…sure, I guess. I mean, doesn't everyone? If you go to an inn, aren't the sociable gals the most popular? Marisa: I understand. OK. I'll be more sociable. This better? Gerik: Huh?!
Oh no. I have Neimi up to a B support with both Colm and Artur, and I don't know who to give the A support to. I like the way she and Colm together highlight how they're both maturing by bringing up their childhood days, but Artur is just very good to her…and if they don't reach an A support I don't think Neimi will ever get her mother's mirror back.
First of all: What is Saleh doing there? I was sure that that cape-and-shoulderpads sprite belonged to Lyon. Does he not have supports with Eirika? Is he not recruitable? Why not? Saleh seems a poor replacement – what do he and Eirika have to talk about?
Having gone and looked over the Eirika/Saleh support (let's be honest you weren't going to do it this run)... it's A Support That Exists. Not bad or anything, but does feel like it's just kinda there. I dunno, I guess the dev team wanted the "route exclusive" characters to have supports with those routes lords, but at least by comparison Innes on Eirika route and [REDACTED] on Ephraim route felt like they made more sense.
Then again, random unexpected support pairings can be some of the most fun ones at times! Back in FE7, never would have expected Legault the Black Fang Thief to support with a random mercenary like Heath, or your only female Paladin in Isadora (Legault dope btw, great thief, great sprite, and totally Bi).
I will have to reload a save and go forward with only one of these, so it's time to make a decision. Boy, it's tough to do this with just one conversation to go off. This five-support limit is awful, and you know the developers just did it so that no one could have more than one A support.
I just feel like highlighting one of the most hilarious support sets based on this five support limit, from two games back in Binding Blade.
So, in Binding Blade only Roy (the main lord) gets paired endings of any kind, and each of them is with one of his numerous female support options. Of those options, Lilina his childhood friend is very, very blatantly the favored pairing - Roy and Lilina start at 56 support points and gain 4 per adjacent turn with only 200 being needed for an A rank support, and the next highest girl Cecilia starts at 20 with a +2 per turn (please don't do this support by the way it's basically Grooming: The Pairing). Every other potential girl for Roy starts even lower, and has a +1 modifier.
However, if for whatever reason you decide to support Lilina with Marcus, the Jaegan of Binding Blade, then their A support involves him supporting her romantic endeavors and telling her to push forward and go for Roy:
Lilina: Roy, he's… I've always…liked him…for a long time now. Marcus: Then why not go up to him and find out for yourself, my lady? Lilina: What…? But… Marcus: I do not have much experience in matters like this, but I have heard the maids at the castle saying that it is no longer the age that women should be sitting around waiting. Lady Lilina, if you were to advance on to him first, Master Roy would surely fall for you. Lilina: …… Yes… Yes. I'm the one who's known him the longest. I can't lose to those other girls! Marcus: That's the spirit, Lady Lilina!
But this is an A rank support. If you got this support for Lilina and Marcus, then she's already lost to the other girls she can never get an A support with Roy unless Marcus Fucking Dies lmaooooo
Anyways point is you're right, there really should have been a bit more adjustment to how earlier supports worked, although I'll at least grant that maxing at A rank instead of having singular S supports for marriage means the games could have some nice paired endings that weren't literally pairing up the characters. Things like "and then the two were bros forever" (platonically, that is... though Lucius and Raven also exist).
All Eirika's conversations with her end up the same – with Eirika awkwardly mumbling assent to whatever self-aggrandizing nonsense L'Ara is spouting. Of course she goes along with it, she's Eirika, she doesn't like fighting. I don't even think being more assertive would help – Rennac challenged her at every turn, and accomplished very little, until he got fed up and left.
Perhaps my analysis is taking the comic relief character a little too seriously. I do find her funny. But I don't want Eirika to be stressed out while I laugh; I want Eirika to find happiness.
Rip L'Arachel, I'll just have to hope best girl finds love somewhere else
Totally get it though, much as I adore L'Arachel she does tend to be predominantly a comedy character, which for shipping purposes can be a bit more bothersome than someone like Tana.
I assume in the original Japanese she abruptly shifted to a speech style more associated with Social Butterfly Girls. With localization failing to come up with anything comparable drastic-seeming.
Voice acting could certainly have saved it, though, yeah.
Seeing as the original support still has a similar ending, this seems pretty plausible; some kind of switch from Marisa's usual more brusque way of talking to imitating a more flowery type of speech, something along those lines.
Caer Pelyn offers the most extensive magic shop we've seen so far. There are tomes I haven't seen before, such as the dark magic, Luna.
…I'm not buying that. Luna, the spell that bypasses enemy resistance, has been situationally useful in other games I've played (also it tends to have real nice moon-themed animations). But here it looks like the developers were worried it would be too powerful and gave it an accuracy of 50. That's worse than a Steel Axe! That's coinflip odds! And they also went and made it the most expensive item in the game so far at 4,200 gold. I could sell a stat booster and it wouldn't be enough to cover that! The developers thought that Luna would break the game if there weren't some restrictions on it, and added enough restrictions that I'm not going to bother using it at all.
Was it in this thread that someone proposed the idea of false prophecy game design? Where developers imagine that the game will have some quality, and act to compensate for that, but do so with such effectiveness that the game no longer turns out the way they imagined? I'm certain I read about it somewhere on SV.
In the game, Eirika's party finally arrives in Jehanna – a barren land of "dancing white sands." It has few natural resources, but the Jehannans are famed as fierce warriors and many leave home to make their living as mercenaries. This has already been implied by the characters themselves. Of the Jehannan characters we know, Caellach, Joshua, and Gerik's crew all work or worked as mercenaries.
The narration turns now to Queen Ismaire (most beautiful woman in Fire Emblem), who took the throne in a somewhat-unusual manner. I love succession drama – it's my jam. It seems her husband was King before her, and she merely the consort, but after he died she stepped up as Queen Regnant. Monarchies like to pass the throne from parent to child, but all sorts of situations can arise where that doesn't happen, depending on who's available and capable to rule. In this case, there was an heir but he disappeared. Hmm. That's definitely going to be relevant later on. Otherwise the game would just have her be childless.
Are there any characters we've met who could be the lost Jehannan prince? So far, the royal heirs of Magvel have all been color-coded, in that they share a hair color with their ruling parent (see: Ephraim and Fado, Innes and Hayden, Lyon and Vigarde). There are actually four characters who share Ismaire's crimson red hair: Caellach, Tethys, Ewan, and Joshua.
Let's eliminate Tethys because she's a woman. Ewan…if he's the prince, that would make Tethys either a princess or not his biological sister. And it would be weird of the game to mention a missing prince but not his missing older sister. Ewan's so young, he would have to have been kidnapped as a baby, but I can't imagine Tethys or Gerik doing that.
Joshua? I don't have much of a read on this guy because I wasn't using him much even before I benched him in favor of Marisa. He's a wandering swordsman who likes to gamble and flirt. Not really prince material – although if he does turn out to be the prince, that will prove all of L'Arachel's assertions about nobility hilariously wrong. It's not the radiance of your bloodline, girls. It's just that you're both terrible at lying.
And then there's Caellach. A mercenary from Jehanna who made good as a general in Grado. We don't know much about his past, just that he dislikes his homeland and became a mercenary to escape. Alone of all these three possibilities, Caellach-as-prince seems to have a possible motivation. Prince Joshua would be hanging out as a mercenary Just Because, Prince Ewan would have been kidnapped by unknown people for unknown reasons, but Prince Caellach has some conflict in his past that's driving him to get as far from his old life as possible. And now, he's been sent back to Jehanna as an invader. Are we going to see a dramatic confrontation between mother and son? A bitter, bloody reunion?
Before we can find out, there's another cut-away to Grado Keep. Valter has returned to deliver the news of Glen's passing (which he was in no way responsible for). He proves it to Cormag by…showing him the mangled body?
Valter is so awful! It's entertaining. As Cormag stares, shocked and appalled, at his brother's corpse, Valter tries to…cheer him up?
Valter: But listen, Cormag. There's no reason for you to grieve. After all, who better than you to replace your brother in His Majesty's service? Picture it: General Cormag, the new and improved Sunstone, eh?
It's fascinating – Valter has proven to be a pretty good manipulator so far, but here his complete lack of empathy causes him to stumble. Normal people do not react to the death of a beloved superior – brother or not – with, "Yay, I get a promotion!" Fortunately for Valter, Cormag doesn't blow up at him. He doesn't even seem to hear this – he just demands to know who killed his brother.
Valter was probably looking forward to having a new co-worker to torment, but seeing as Cormag isn't interested, he decides to cause trouble in a different way. He tells Cormag that the identity of his brother's killer should be obvious: He was ordered to find and subdue Princess Eirika, and failed. Alas! Valter was nearby (by complete coincidence), but arrived too late to help. He was only able to watch from afar as Eirika ran her blade through Glen's chest and left him in the pitiful state he is now.
Valter makes a show of being reluctant to tell Cormag where this happened. He wouldn't want his valued colleague to run off against orders and pit himself against such a dangerous woman…
Valter tells him to look in the mountains of Eastern Carcino and he immediately leaves.
Valter: You're my foe, after all, and I do not waste my time with amateurs…
Elsewhere, in an isolated forest, a pegasus messenger from Frelia catches up with Eirika's party.
First of all, she's glad to learn that her prince is all right. When the reinforcements he called for arrived at his last known position on the Teraz Plateau, he was nowhere to be found and they feared the worst.
Innes: I'm sorry to have troubled you. But remember, the duty I bear is a harsh master. It will not let me die easily.
That's character development right there. Remember Innes's very first scene? Tana congratulated him on getting back safely and his response was, "You didn't expect less, did you?"
The main message she's here to deliver is an update on the progress of the war. Frelian forces have entered Carcino and engaged Pablo's mercenaries. With the aid of forces loyal to Elder Klimt, the coupists have been pushed back. Right now, Pablo's men are retreating southward, aiming to link up with their Gradoan allies in Jehanna.
Yeah, there's a bit of a plot hole here. This chapter, in general, is confused and confusing with respect to who knows certain information and who can send and receive communications. In this case: if Klimt has already made it to Frelia and gotten military help from them, then he would have told them about his meeting with Innes and Eirika in the process of giving his account of the situation. The messenger shouldn't be surprised that Innes is alive!
A simple way to fix this would be to split this into two messages. In chapter 11, right after Innes has joined the party, a pegasus knight (from the reinforcements sent after Innes) finds them and confirms that Innes is alive. Eirika and Innes would tell her that they don't need help right now and order her unit to find Klimt and help him clean up the mess in Carcino.
That would make this scene, in Chapter 13, a status update. While Eirika and Innes made their arduous journey through the mountains, Klimt and the Frelians have cooperated to take back control of Carcino. The messenger would also warn them that Pablo's forces are retreating in their direction.
Back in the game proper, Eirika asks the messenger what news she has of Ephraim. He's doing well, having taken the Gradoan fortress of Rigwald. He is now en route to the capital.
It's interesting of the game to nod at its other route like this. It certainly does make me wonder what Ephraim's unique battles are like. I wonder what, in parallel, Ephraim is hearing of Eirika's exploits? "Oh, she hasn't made it to Rausten yet – she was bogged down saving Prince Innes from a civil war in Carcino."
The messenger leaves, and Innes and Eirika hatch a plan to break through the Gradoan forces before them and link up with the Jehannan army. She offers L'Arachel one last chance to leave rather than involve herself with this war (they've just been fighting monsters together, so far, rather than humans). L'Arachel, of course, refuses. It is her sworn duty as a champion of justice to fight evil whatever form it takes, and preventing Grado from destroying the Sacred Stones is definitely a worthy cause.
…I had assumed that the plot to destroy the Sacred Stones was something Eirika read every party member in on. Apparently not?
The last time someone had information they shouldn't, it was the mistake that outed Orson as a traitor, but L'Arachel isn't working for Grado – she's just trying to hide her actual rank in the Theocracy of Rausten for some reason.
L'Ara: That's right…and according to that gentle breeze, there are knights riding this way from Rausten even as we speak.
Parsing her transparent lies: a messenger from Rausten arrived and told her about the Sacred Stones plot. In response, she ordered a force of knights to ride to her location and reinforce the Sacred Stone of Jehanna. I'm not sure how she managed to be subtle enough to hide this from her companions, but oh well.
There's a running theme in this chapter of time, and how Innes and Eirika have used too much of it. They faced so many delays in their journey – the ghost ship, the unrest in Carcino, and the difficult mountain route they took to avoid dealing with the unrest in Carcino – that they've both kind of failed in their missions. You'll note that the government of Rausten knows about the plot, even though it was originally Eirika's job to inform them and get them on board for an alliance. My only explanation is that, at some point, Hayden realized Eirika wouldn't get to Rausten for ages and sent another envoy. Meanwhile, it was Innes's job to rally Jehanna, but – as we learn later in the chapter – they've already been nearly overrun.
There is a scene now between Caellach and the boss for this chapter, Aias (an old mercenary connection that he's called in to help).
Caellach: I could search the continent and not find a man to best your skills.
Aias: But I've no interest in the titles and trappings of Grado's Imperial Army.
Caellach: Don't say that. You're glad you came with me, right? You know we were both sick to death of living like desert rats.
Hmm…Caellach's reference to 'desert rats' implies that he comes from poverty, which puts a dent in my 'Prince Caellach' theory.
Anyway, I feel like each Fire Emblem fan has a couple of one-chapter bosses that they like in disproportion to their screentime and importance. Mine are Raimi, Pheros, and Ladislava (feel free to comment yours) and I'm going to add Aias to the list. He's a cool guy.
You see, Caellach and Aias are discussing Eirika. If she defeated Glen, then that makes her a force to be reckoned with. Caellach asks Aias if he can handle Eirika's forces and he replies that he knows he can.
Aias: I was never once wounded on the field of battle. Not once. My skill is not garish and loud like yours, but I've never known defeat.
The two of them speak with a mutual respect and camaraderie that's at odds with what I've come to expect from the Imperial Army, where everyone is a moron, or evil, or an evil moron, and plotting against your co-workers is the norm. But Caellach trusts Aias to handle Eirika, so he leaves to head off those Raustenite knights coming from the north. Thus, the map begins.
The enemy is arrayed before us, a thick formation of knights and cavalry, with smaller groups to the north and south. The remnants of Pablo's army are retreating in this direction to link up with Aias's battlegroup, represented by reinforcements that constantly spawn from forts to the northwest. Meanwhile, Aias has plenty of men, and will call in cavalier reinforcements at the east edge of the map once he's taken enough casualties. The goal of the map is to keep your army alive until the knights of Rausten get here – that's after eleven turns.
There are a few other features that make this map interesting. There are three ballistae and the enemy has archers ready to use them, but at least two of them are in range of your cavalry.
With some help from Tethys, Gilliam disables the southern ballista on the first turn, making a safe zone for Tana. She flies down to handle the southern group of soldiers on her own.
Ewan gets one-shot by a ballista on the very first enemy phase. I'm keeping all my squishies in the safe zone until I disable the rest.
I have Garcia and Gerik block the two-tile wide chokepoint that leads to Aias's main force. They take a Halberd and an Armorslayer from the supply convoy, since I've got quite a few effective weapons and I might as well use them on a map that's so heavy with knights and cavalry.
In a squad of Soldiers, I notice a familiar portrait:
Amelia's back! I'm going to rob and kill her. Harsh, I know. But even if she could be recruited on this map, which I'm not certain of, I don't want to take on another training project after Tana, Ewan and Marisa. So Colm slips in to steal her Speedwing, and then…
Sure, Amelia. Sure you did.
Next, Colm needs to go to one of the Priests and steal a Red Gem that he's carrying.
The priest is also carrying a Physic staff, which heals allies at a distance. I want it so bad! But no, it's unstealable. There's also another priest with a Sleep staff. He uses it on Colm three times, missing each one, and then it breaks. Still not impressed.
Since it's out of range of any ballistae and there's a fort he can hide in, I have Ewan swing down south. He sees some combat, and Saleh gets to work on his staff rank by patching him up. Is there a cap on the amount of bonus healing you get from Magic? Saleh has such a great Magic stat that I wonder if I can get away with just equipping him with a basic Heal staff.
Meanwhile, Eirika and Tana are able to take on Pablo's men pretty much alone, because they don't come in great numbers. Eirika even gets a good level out of it!
I'm feeling pretty comfortable, until a new arrival surprises me:
Hi Cormag. Eirika is…not necessarily in danger from him. She's just out of his range, she's carrying a Lancereaver that she can use to turn the weapon triangle around, and Tana is with her. Innes just broke the ballista, however, so he can't provide support. But I think I might be able to avoid fighting him at all.
As I thought. A battlefield conversation. This is how Eirika deals with her enemies, Valter.
Cormag begins thunderously, introducing himself, demanding a duel, swearing he will have vengeance for his brother. Eirika is nonplussed.
Eirika: Are you telling me General Glen is dead?
Her reaction confuses Cormag in turn, and his wrath starts to sputter. Eirika explains that, when she last saw Glen, they parted without fighting.
Cormag: You lie! Where is your proof?
Eirika: I've no proof. But…here are the words he gave me. He told me he believed I possessed a gentle heart when we met before. He said I had not lost that quality…
Cormag: I see…Those are indeed my brother's words.
But, if Eirika is telling the truth, and she did not fight Glen, then who killed him? At this point, Cormag thinks hard, and recalls that the person who recovered Glen's corpse and claimed to witness his last moments is his greatest rival and a known murderer.
Upon realizing that Valter killed Glen, Cormag immediately asks Eirika to accept him into her service, prompting her second surprised "What?" of this conversation. He explains that the struggle between nations means nothing to him; he does not care about her goals, just the fact that she's on the side opposite Valter.
Eirika seems to find his motivations a little unhealthy, but she can't really afford to turn away skilled fighters. And so I recruit Cormag, the campaign's first wyvern rider!
Meanwhile, I've cleared out the thicket of units surrounding the boss. Aias is a Great Knight, meaning he's vulnerable to both the Halberd and the Armorslayer, which is not great for him!
He dies with a compliment upon his lips that any FE player is sure to appreciate.
Gerik, please. That's all you get from killing a boss?
It turns out that killing the boss ends the map prematurely. I was only on turn seven, but a cutscene starts and the Imperial Army flees as the Raustenites appear. I'd cleared most of the high-level units, leaving just generic reinforcements, so it would have been boring to play the rest of those turns. But those weak reinforcements were perfect for training Ewan – that's my only disappointment.
At this point the commander of the Raustenites comes forward to bow before the princess…and by that I mean L'Arachel, not Eirika. Are we finally going to get an explanation of who she is? Well, she still tries to dodge the question, but Dozla pushes her to explain:
Fine. Very well. Eirika's mysterious companion is none other than...Princess L'Arachel of the Theocracy of Rausten!
…How does a theocracy have a princess?
At this point the commander pops back in to give her an allowance from her uncle, King Mansel.
…How does a theocracy have a king?
The game can't even keep his title straight! What is going on in Rausten?
Well, the Raustenites seem very confused about how to run their country, but they're good folks. Princess L'Arachel affirms her country's commitment to opposing Grado, "in the name of righteousness!"
Just then, Seth arrives with news from his Jehannan counterparts. Turns out, they took way too long to get here. The capital of Jehanna has already fallen, and the queen's status is unknown. What's more, the Gradoan forces in the capital are being led by the imperial prince, Lyon.
Is Lyon a willing participant in this war? Will Queen Ismaire survive to elevate our army with her beautiful presence? Will my crack theory about Caellach being her son be proved or disproved? Find out next time, on Restoration Queen!
For me this chapter was always a struggle back as a child.
I think you played 'too quickly' so you skipped the turn where it's revealed that that trickle of weak units from the west were just scouts and a dozen enemies including Pablo himself suddenly appear to ambush whichever units you had assigned to that corner.
…I'm not buying that. Luna, the spell that bypasses enemy resistance, has been situationally useful in other games I've played (also it tends to have real nice moon-themed animations). But here it looks like the developers were worried it would be too powerful and gave it an accuracy of 50. That's worse than a Steel Axe! That's coinflip odds! And they also went and made it the most expensive item in the game so far at 4,200 gold. I could sell a stat booster and it wouldn't be enough to cover that! The developers thought that Luna would break the game if there weren't some restrictions on it, and added enough restrictions that I'm not going to bother using it at all.
Was it in this thread that someone proposed the idea of false prophecy game design? Where developers imagine that the game will have some quality, and act to compensate for that, but do so with such effectiveness that the game no longer turns out the way they imagined? I'm certain I read about it somewhere on SV.
So, the truth is Luna was in fact, kinda broken in the previous GBA game, Blazing Sword. While you only got one Dark Magic user (in an optional chapter no less) other than the endgame "Gotoh" type unit - some FE games will give you a super powerful recruit in the last chapter or two to potentially help out players with a very messy army of corpses, - in FE7 Luna had a hit rate of 95 (highest among all Dark tomes) and a crit rate of 20. You can probably guess how having an accurate, high crit tome that ignores the resistance stat entirely would be a nightmare to fight against... and a terrifyingly effective weapon in player hands.
So a nerf was probably warranted... but Sacred Stones went a bit too far with said nerf, turning Luna from "probably the strongest dark magic tome especially late-game" to "extremely situational at best and also your dark magic users suck ass anyways". Sad times for Luna.
Are there any characters we've met who could be the lost Jehannan prince? So far, the royal heirs of Magvel have all been color-coded, in that they share a hair color with their ruling parent (see: Ephraim and Fado, Innes and Hayden, Lyon and Vigarde). There are actually four characters who share Ismaire's crimson red hair: Caellach, Tethys, Ewan, and Joshua.
I'm not commenting on who is or isn't the lost Jehannan royal, but I will note that red hair might just be more common in Jehanna specifically. Caellach does mention being a desert rat in this very chapter, and iirc Gerik's entire crew are mercenaries from the Jehanna region. No reason to think Joshua doesn't also hail from the area as a lone mercenary instead of part of a group.
Valter is so awful! It's entertaining. As Cormag stares, shocked and appalled, at his brother's corpse, Valter tries to…cheer him up?
Valter: But listen, Cormag. There's no reason for you to grieve. After all, who better than you to replace your brother in His Majesty's service? Picture it: General Cormag, the new and improved Sunstone, eh?
It's fascinating – Valter has proven to be a pretty good manipulator so far, but here his complete lack of empathy causes him to stumble. Normal people do not react to the death of a beloved superior – brother or not – with, "Yay, I get a promotion!" Fortunately for Valter, Cormag doesn't blow up at him. He doesn't even seem to hear this – he just demands to know who killed his brother.
Valter was probably looking forward to having a new co-worker to torment, but seeing as Cormag isn't interested, he decides to cause trouble in a different way. He tells Cormag that the identity of his brother's killer should be obvious: He was ordered to find and subdue Princess Eirika, and failed. Alas! Valter was nearby (by complete coincidence), but arrived too late to help. He was only able to watch from afar as Eirika ran her blade through Glen's chest and left him in the pitiful state he is now.
Valter makes a show of being reluctant to tell Cormag where this happened. He wouldn't want his valued colleague to run off against orders and pit himself against such a dangerous woman…
MY BROTHER'S MORTAL ENEMY, WHO HAS MULTIPLE TIMES EXPRESSED A DESIRE TO FIND AN EXCUSE TO KILL HIM AND PROBABLY ME AND LOVES TO MUTILATE PEOPLE HE KILLS, HAS SHOWED UP WITH HIS EXTREMELY MANGLED CORPSE
Maaaybe early on, when it was a smaller group, or just the more directly loyal members like the knights? It would probably be a bit strange to read in some characters, like why burden the literal children Ross and Ameila (who you will of course be recruiting this chapter, wow I can't wait!) with the knowledge of "BTW world might end soon".
Anyway, I feel like each Fire Emblem fan has a couple of one-chapter bosses that they like in disproportion to their screentime and importance. Mine are Raimi, Pheros, and Ladislava (feel free to comment yours) and I'm going to add Aias to the list. He's a cool guy.
Man, I love GBA Emblem and its little oneshot bosses. Back in the day, when even random bandit groups could have a bunch of funny-looking dudes with two line descriptions that you got to fight for one chapter and... you know, actually kill. Nowadays Fire Emblem I guess doesn't want to put in the resources for the extra art and models and voice acting so you get way too many cases of "URGH, I'VE BEEN DEFEATED, BUT I CAN'T FALL HERE", or just generic zombie/risen bosses.
The remnants of Pablo's army are retreating in this direction to link up with Aias's battlegroup, represented by reinforcements that constantly spawn from forts to the northwest.
I'm pretty sure it's actually represented by Pablo himself showing up with a siege tome and like a dozen high level troops on the west side of the map to spank your ass if you left anyone over there near the end of the turn limit... but apparently that didn't come up. Good ol' Kill Boss maps with a too accessible boss, having neat stuff they accidentally ruin. Hell, if you killed Aias too quickly? Cormag would proceed to never show up again for the rest of the game, guess he got tired of chasing Eirika and went to go take a nap for the next ten chapters.
Yeaaah, this here is why I didn't end up training Ewan in my ironman run. Not that it's impossible, mind you, but bringing "very squishy mageling" into a map with ballistas and reinforcements from multiple directions seemed like a good way to either get him killed, or get my better units killed trying to keep him alive.
Amelia's back! I'm going to rob and kill her. Harsh, I know. But even if she could be recruited on this map, which I'm not certain of, I don't want to take on another training project after Tana, Ewan and Marisa.
Since it's out of range of any ballistae and there's a fort he can hide in, I have Ewan swing down south. He sees some combat, and Saleh gets to work on his staff rank by patching him up. Is there a cap on the amount of bonus healing you get from Magic? Saleh has such a great Magic stat that I wonder if I can get away with just equipping him with a basic Heal staff.
Nope, no cap on the bonuses staves bring to your magic, which is one of the reasons those midgame sages like Saleh and Pent tend to be so good - they show up with a pretty good magic stat and a reasonable staff rank, so you just slap heal staves on them and they go around healing 30+ HP per turn, or having fairly good range on distant staves - generally range is Magic/2, so more range is better for these staves. I've taken the time to grind staff rank on promotes with absurd magic growths before just because then I can pull nonsense like "14-15 range Physic/Fortify".
Her reaction confuses Cormag in turn, and his wrath starts to sputter. Eirika explains that, when she last saw Glen, they parted without fighting.
Cormag: You lie! Where is your proof?
Eirika: I've no proof. But…here are the words he gave me. He told me he believed I possessed a gentle heart when we met before. He said I had not lost that quality…
Cormag: I see…Those are indeed my brother's words.
But, if Eirika is telling the truth, and she did not fight Glen, then who killed him? At this point, Cormag thinks hard, and recalls that the person who recovered Glen's corpse and claimed to witness his last moments is his greatest rival and a known murderer.
Eirika seems to find his motivations a little unhealthy, but she can't really afford to turn away skilled fighters. And so I recruit Cormag, the campaign's first wyvern rider!
And hey, new recruit! Cormag is a fairly solid unit, as Wyvern Riders very much tend to be. Good stats all around other than Resistance, has a flying mount, gets Hard Mode Bonuses since he starts as an enemy unit, and in Eirika route starts high enough level to instantly promote. Fairly worthwhile both from a "train him up" and an "instantly promote and use" perspective.
Was it in this thread that someone proposed the idea of false prophecy game design? Where developers imagine that the game will have some quality, and act to compensate for that, but do so with such effectiveness that the game no longer turns out the way they imagined? I'm certain I read about it somewhere on SV.
I don't recall it being this thread but it certainly describes a lot of the problems with sacred stones and to a lesser degree the gba fire emblems in general, like how they seem to have thought of sword users as being the best but then sword users face the combined problems of:
They have generally low might weapons, when might is the most consistently important stats, and a lot of sword users trend low strength so they can easily struggle to break defense.
Lack of good access to range 1-2 weapons means they tend to be less flexible than lance and axe users. Sure, magic swords sometimes offer snazzy new utility, but even in the cases where like rune sword access or the like is a really big deal they're also rare/expensive so you have to use them sparingly.
There's actual Fuck Sword Guys In particular weapons- yeah you have reavers in general but then you have swordslayer axes that are a stronger reaver that also does effective damage against the Sword User Guy classes eg swordmaster and hero.
Net result, if you want a consistently good unit you probably want like, a Warrior or Berserker who hit hard, aren't even necessarily inaccurate, and don't have to fear any particular weapon- of promoted classes, only Warriors, Berserkers, Snipers, and foot mages do not have at least one weapon type super effective against them.
Big shock that sacred stones tends to be a bit of an axe guy and mage game in terms of what characters are most consistent.
Since it's out of range of any ballistae and there's a fort he can hide in, I have Ewan swing down south. He sees some combat, and Saleh gets to work on his staff rank by patching him up. Is there a cap on the amount of bonus healing you get from Magic? Saleh has such a great Magic stat that I wonder if I can get away with just equipping him with a basic Heal staff.
No cap, indeed Mend is in a really bad place in the GBA fire emblems in general. It only has a larger flat heal, but it also is both more expensive (and lower use count) and also requires a higher staff rank than Heal. In other words, the only time Mend is particularly good is if you have a healer who is both struggling to consistently heal enough with a Heal, but also does actually have the staff rank for mend to even be an option.
I'm not commenting on who is or isn't the lost Jehannan royal, but I will note that red hair might just be more common in Jehanna specifically. Caellach does mention being a desert rat in this very chapter, and iirc Gerik's entire crew are mercenaries from the Jehanna region. No reason to think Joshua doesn't also hail from the area as a lone mercenary instead of part of a group.
Yes and no, actually- buried in one of Gerik's supports is the revelation that he personally is not originally from Jehanna. We don't actually know where he is from, just that a friend from his home village went off to Jehanna to become a mercenary and Gerik followed to try to prevent him from getting killed.
This isn't like some major plot point even within supports, nobody mentions Gerik receiving discrimination over this or anything. He's just... not originally from Jehanna.
Yes and no, actually- buried in one of Gerik's supports is the revelation that he personally is not originally from Jehanna. We don't actually know where he is from, just that a friend from his home village went off to Jehanna to become a mercenary and Gerik followed to try to prevent him from getting killed.
This isn't like some major plot point even within supports, nobody mentions Gerik receiving discrimination over this or anything. He's just... not originally from Jehanna.
Funny enough, that makes "redheads come from Jehanna" even more true because Gerik has green hair instead of red. Can't recall if Marisa is from Jehanna, but if she is hey Pink is basically Red, right?
Funny enough, that makes "redheads come from Jehanna" even more true because Gerik has green hair instead of red. Can't recall if Marisa is from Jehanna, but if she is hey Pink is basically Red, right?
…I'm not buying that. Luna, the spell that bypasses enemy resistance, has been situationally useful in other games I've played (also it tends to have real nice moon-themed animations). But here it looks like the developers were worried it would be too powerful and gave it an accuracy of 50. That's worse than a Steel Axe! That's coinflip odds! And they also went and made it the most expensive item in the game so far at 4,200 gold. I could sell a stat booster and it wouldn't be enough to cover that! The developers thought that Luna would break the game if there weren't some restrictions on it, and added enough restrictions that I'm not going to bother using it at all.
Was it in this thread that someone proposed the idea of false prophecy game design? Where developers imagine that the game will have some quality, and act to compensate for that, but do so with such effectiveness that the game no longer turns out the way they imagined? I'm certain I read about it somewhere on SV.
In any event, while Fire Emblem is actually the series that most got me thinking about this issue in the first place (The series has so many design elements where a given game seems to expect a given idea to be Really Really Powerful and so preemptively nerf them and so they actually end up more or less useless), Luna is regular balance correction. Luna in the prior game was both awful to fight (Your introduction to it is a boss with enough Magic he's always going to have a chance to crit-kill anyone you send at him. Have fun restarting the mission when you did everything perfectly and got screwed at the literal last second by what amounts to an uncounterable instant-death effect!) and in player hands trivialized basically every enemy that's supposed to be a challenge, even if your Shaman simply refused to gain Magic from level-ups.
Note that Luna in Sacred Stones is still pretty stupid. The game is light enough on enemies with incredible defenses you can pretty easily ignore it, and thankfully it doesn't show up in enemy hands on the regular the way it did in Lyn's game, but the tuning of HP and Magic numbers is such that 'I do exactly my Magic in damage without regard for defensive stats' is just fundamentally a broken concept. And its poor accuracy holds it back less than you might expect -Supports can provide a lot of accuracy, and Sacred Stones just isn't big on highly-evasive enemies in the first place, so Luna isn't actually as unreliable relative to the prior game as you'd expect from it eating a 45 point hit to its accuracy.
Valter: But listen, Cormag. There's no reason for you to grieve. After all, who better than you to replace your brother in His Majesty's service? Picture it: General Cormag, the new and improved Sunstone, eh?
It's fascinating – Valter has proven to be a pretty good manipulator so far, but here his complete lack of empathy causes him to stumble. Normal people do not react to the death of a beloved superior – brother or not – with, "Yay, I get a promotion!" Fortunately for Valter, Cormag doesn't blow up at him. He doesn't even seem to hear this – he just demands to know who killed his brother.
This is one of my favorite moments in Sacred Stones, precisely for the empathy fail. Villains in Valter's general mold are often written as social chameleons to a pretty unbelievable extent, where their complete lack of a conscience doesn't get in the way of their ability to predict the people around them, which is just unreal. Even the part where it doesn't get in the way in this case works nicely -in real life, people who eg interact with a serial killer semi-regularly for years often have interactions where something slips through but they don't notice at the time, or do notice but don't arrive at the correct conclusion about why the person said the odd thing they said. Which is to say people at all like Valter in real life often make exactly this kind of mistake, with exactly the same 'it doesn't actually hurt their plans in the moment' outcome.
It's also nice in terms of implying possible scenarios for making Valter the historical Moonstone a more palatable scenario. You can see how Valter, back in the day, could've been just as heinous as he is now, but there still be a noticeable delay before Vigarde ended up realizing he's a monster and firing him. When Valter-esque characters aren't written as Overly-Perfect Social Chameleons, they often instead run into the problem that a given story seems to have no model in mind for how they could've been viewed as less-than-horrible for any time at any point in history; it's nice that Sacred Stones manages to wend its way into a plausible-feeling middle ground.
The game unfortunately waffles back and forth on this point; are we fighting a war where The Real Stakes are known only to a few people involved in said war who are deliberately keeping said Real Stakes hidden? Or is everybody rallying against Grado because smashing the Sacred Stones is blasphemous, evil, and stupid, so of course any reasonable person is going to oppose Grado?
I think the former scenario is probably better for the writing, honestly, but the main thing here is the game really needed to pick a scenario and stick to it... and preferably be a bit more explicit about why that scenario is playing out. Part of why the flip-flopping is hard to get a read on is that nobody has suggested we'd want to keep the Sacred Stone smashing a secret. Nobody has said anything about 'not wanting to panic the masses' or 'not wanting our enemies to realize we know their real goal', or whatever. So even if the game was actually consistent on 'we're keeping this a secret', I suspect most players would stumble over this plot bit anyway by virtue of just assuming that we're not trying to keep this a secret, what with the lack of any obvious reason to want to do such a thing.
You'll note that the government of Rausten knows about the plot, even though it was originally Eirika's job to inform them and get them on board for an alliance. My only explanation is that, at some point, Hayden realized Eirika wouldn't get to Rausten for ages and sent another envoy. Meanwhile, it was Innes's job to rally Jehanna, but – as we learn later in the chapter – they've already been nearly overrun.
You'll note that we have a Princess of Rausten running with us who quite explicitly is somehow maintaining contact with Rausten, having called for her knights to ride to Eirika's rescue this very chapter.
You can complain we don't get any explanation for why her messages are travelling so smoothly in these times, and I'd agree we really ought to have gotten a bit about L'Arachel using a magic cell phone to call up Mansel or whatever, and preferably some explanation for why said magic cell phone isn't broadly impacting communication speed and all, but there's a pretty obvious explanation that L'Arachel came upon this info somehow or another and sent the info on to Rausten, very possibly weeks before she joined Eirika's crew.
Amelia's back! I'm going to rob and kill her. Harsh, I know. But even if she could be recruited on this map, which I'm not certain of, I don't want to take on another training project after Tana, Ewan and Marisa. So Colm slips in to steal her Speedwing, and then…
You can just talk to her with Eirika or Franz here, same as last time. She's actually a lot easier to recruit here with Eirika than in Port Kiris.
I prefer to recruit her in Port Kiris anyway, mind, because keeping her alive in this mission is an actual challenge, let alone slipping in opportunities to get her experience.
This is also the last chance to recruit her, as it happens, so you're not missing out on anything except a specific Support conversation I'll be talking about as soon as the other person involved is Known To Be Recruitable.
You can't Steal weapons or Staves in the GBA games. I mostly don't mind (It's clear the games want weapons/staves to be a resource management thing, and Thracia shows quite clearly how that breaks down if basically every enemy is a new source of gear), but I do resent it when an enemy Thief is running around, looting gear and turning it impossible to get back because only the most-recently-looted thing will drop on their death -that whole mess is nonsense that makes no realistic sense and no game design sense.
Is there a cap on the amount of bonus healing you get from Magic? Saleh has such a great Magic stat that I wonder if I can get away with just equipping him with a basic Heal staff.
So I've talked about 'plot written pretty clearly first and foremost for Eirika's route', and Cormag is by far the most drastic example of this principle. You've seen his story in Eirika's route: his brother is murdered, he seeks VENGEANCE, you then recruit him by pointing him at Valter because VENGEANCE is more important to him than patriotic duty and all, there you go.
Like most characters recruited after the route split, Cormag gets recruited by whichever twin you're playing as, though. What happens in Ephraim's route?
A reasonable person might assume that this plot plays out basically the same aside Ephraim taking over Eirka's slot in the plot, just with Glen deciding Ephraim is 'too honorable' or whatever male-coded nonsense the story came up with to justify their lack of a fatal confrontation. That would be pretty silly, but functional enough, right?
Well...
In actuality, Glen's fate is never explicitly addressed in Ephraim's route. Like a lot of such route-specific details, it's treated as Cross-Route Consistency; we're clearly meant to assume that all this stuff with Glen played out the same as we see it in Eirika's route. Cormag, meanwhile, is over in Ephraim's path for... no clear reason. And talks kind of like his brother might already be dead? (Yet he's not trying to avenge him??) And can be talked into joining under particularly spoiler-y grounds so I shouldn't get into details, but it's all pretty thin and very difficult to reconcile with the Cormag we see in Eirika's route.
So everything about Cormag makes sense in Eirika's route and... not so much in Ephraim's route.
It turns out that killing the boss ends the map prematurely. I was only on turn seven, but a cutscene starts and the Imperial Army flees as the Raustenites appear. I'd cleared most of the high-level units, leaving just generic reinforcements, so it would have been boring to play the rest of those turns. But those weak reinforcements were perfect for training Ewan – that's my only disappointment.
You missed out entirely on the Real Point of the map: on turn 9, Pablo shows up with a giant army from the west, himself carrying a siege Tome (A range 3-10 tome), so you're pinned between Aias' hopefully-depleting forces and Pablo's army of instant death.
(I hate that this mission ends prematurely if you kill Aias, which is barely communicated, makes absolutely no sense, and costs you experience and loot without warning)
This also means you will likely never see a semi-unique item I referred to a while back: there's a Brigand in Pablo's forces carrying a Body Ring, which is a stat item that boosts Constitution by 2 points. (I was referring to this when talking about 'partially ablating' Eirika's Constitution problem) You'd have had to Steal it, and Body Rings largely aren't accessible; there's a Secret Shop that sells them, and they can drop very rarely from specific monsters in specific maps, but your own run will probably not find the Secret Shop in question and probably never see a monster carrying one.
Before Pablo, the map is a bit obnoxious but overall I'd say it's not actually difficult; keeping low-HP people alive is a pain with Ballistae and Sleep Staves about, and if you're not paying attention to reinforcement equipment you can have someone die to a category-slaying weapon or get in trouble from a Reaver weapon, but just bringing in a solid crew of people is most of the job done, honestly.
Pablo and his army, though, is a huge pain to fully dismantle without losing anybody, and is particularly rude if you weren't expecting it -my first time through, I had a couple of people cleaning up reinforcements from the west, who were abruptly in range of 6+ enemies apiece with nowhere good to run to and the entire rest of my army piling up on Aias, too far away to contribute against Pablo's forces in the time left. So that was a stupid restart.
I'd argue this is probably the single rudest use of reinforcements in Sacred Stones, as it's technically foreshadowed but there's really no reason to think 'Pablo's forces are retreating somewhere back in Carcino' is going to mean 'one of the bggest armies in the game is going to instantly appear from behind you late in this mission, even though you're three maps away from Carcino and Pablo's forces are supposed to be falling apart'. Seriously, why is his army of mercs more organized and elite than the actual Grado army you're supposed to be fighting a desperate, losing battle against?
'Theocracy' is not exactly a tightly-defined term. I can readily find a source that matter-of-factly presents Egypt as a theocracy, and I think a lot of people wouldn't blink at calling the Pharaoh's niece a 'princess', for example. (Honestly, you could argue every Christian King sort of government was a theocracy, when that's the single most generic form of fantasy government...) So I'm not sure why anybody is acting like this is confusing/an error.
That said, I do suspect this is in part Translation Conventions at work that probably should've been handled differently. 'Hime' is a Japanese term that tends to be translated as 'princess', but whose usage often only partially maps to how English-speakers will use 'princess'; 'hime' can be used as 'this is a woman born into a high station where it is culturally demanded most people refer to her with significantly respectful terminology', but for one thing even that usage is still broader than 'princess' normally gets used. (You normally won't call a noblewoman a princess unless they're specifically the daughter of a ruling family, or marrying into such a family. Hime can be applied much more broadly than that) There's also a bunch of aspects to modern usage of the term that I've seen various translations stumble over (In short: you can use 'hime' to communcate your personal feelings about/relationship with a person, where eg you respect a female creator's work a lot but aren't trying to suggest they are in any sense 'of noble birth'), but I don't think these are relevant to Sacred Stones in particular.
As for Mansel's terminology here, 'emperor' in originally-Japanese works is a pretty fraught term, as there's really two different main words that get translated into English as 'emperor'; one specifically for the Japanese Emperor (天皇 or Ten'nō) and one for other emperors. (皇帝 or Kōtei) Worse, the Japanese Emperor's term being translated that way is very possibly an accident of history; when Japan was forced out of isolation, lots of Big Boy Nations were being led by emperors, and this very possibly led to 'call our boss emperor' not because it was accurate but to position him as a peer to these people. (And by extension to position Japan as a peer to these nations) And the connotations of Ten'nō are acually pretty different from Kōtei.
Kōtei is what most Western folks are thinking of when they see/hear the word 'emperor'; a supreme, singular ruler who probably is really big on conquest. (The conquest thing is pretty foundational, actually; there's plenty of terms for referring to a singular ruler, such as monarch, tyrant, king... you're really only supposed to call someone an emperor if they rule an empire, which you're really only supposed to use to refer to a nation that is made of multiple nations folded together via conquest) The Japanese Emperor is absolutely not a Kōtei. You'd sooner describe various shogun as Kōtei; people like Nobunaga who tried to unite Japan by going around and conquering everybody who wasn't already loyal to them.
Ten'nō is a spiritual leader. The Japanese Emperor is, essentially, the highest of all high priests -he's more comparable to the Pope than he is to Napoleon or Julius Caesar. (Or whoever you prefer as an emperor) In large parts of Japan's history the Emperor actually had no political power whatsoever, and indeed the people who made the actual ruling decisions often endeavored to keep it that way. Many Ten'nō were put into the position as children, and pushed to make an heir and retire in opulance as soon as possible, so the current Ten'nō was perpetually a literal child who wasn't going to try to influence politics.
(For those familiar with the Tellius games: yes, Empress Sanaki is blatantly a Ten'nō, up to and including the part where she's a child and is surrounded by politicians endeavoring to keep her out of politics entirely)
This is obscured to most Westerners because World War II's Japan was the product of a Ten'nō finally seizing power and Japan itself becoming an imperialist power trying to expand its borders via military conquest, and so the Ten'nō fit inside the Kōtei definition for a while, but Japan itself clearly remains aware of the distinction, and localizers are... inconsistent about translating appropriately.
Wrapping back to Mansel: he's pretty clearly a Ten'nō. The game alternatively refers to him as Pontifex Mansel, when Pontifex is a Roman priesthood term, and in fact the Pope can be referred to as Pontifex Maximus. And everything we hear about Rausten is that it's a religious nation with no evidence of historical empire-building. So somebody on the localization team seems to have at least half-recognized the distinction, but alas, the script is... not entirely consistent on terminology here.
(Incidentally, the fact that Grado is immediately referred to as an empire feels like some manner of error to me, as it implies Grado has been expanding its borders via military conquest in recent enough memory to merit the term, yet parts of the game want us to think Magvel has experienced no war for 800 years. Inappropriate usage of the term 'empire' is so universal to pop culture I've never done more than briefly sigh at it, but if I were to write a version of Sacred Stones, I'd either not call Grado an empire immediately, or I'd drop all this nonsense about 800 years of peace -or more accurately I'd probably make it more like the Pax Romana, which was a stretch that was notable because Rome didn't fight itself. A 'pax Magvella' for 800 years where the Stones nations have all maintained peace with each other? Sure, that's acceptable. But stuff like Jehanna Is A Nation Of Mercenaries, or how many Experienced Soldiers populate the various nations, make it clear that fighting is a constant)
Sure, that's acceptable. But stuff like Jehanna Is A Nation Of Mercenaries, or how many Experienced Soldiers populate the various nations, make it clear that fighting is a constant)
And indeed several of the warrior characters have supports that explicitly state they have not only seen battle in the past but outright against each other personally. Not to mention more main plot points like how many fortresses get boasts about Never Beaten In Battle and such which would be unremarkable if the continent was at peace the whole time.
For all the claims of peace the actual writing is basically comparable to the immediately preceding Elibe games where even ally nations sometimes come to blows, let alone everyone else.
…I'm not buying that. Luna, the spell that bypasses enemy resistance, has been situationally useful in other games I've played (also it tends to have real nice moon-themed animations). But here it looks like the developers were worried it would be too powerful and gave it an accuracy of 50. That's worse than a Steel Axe! That's coinflip odds! And they also went and made it the most expensive item in the game so far at 4,200 gold. I could sell a stat booster and it wouldn't be enough to cover that! The developers thought that Luna would break the game if there weren't some restrictions on it, and added enough restrictions that I'm not going to bother using it at all.
Oh Luna. Luna Luna Luna. I'm going to be honest, the caution from the devs? It's entirely justified. In the previous game, Luna had perfectly fine accuracy, and as a result it was one of the single strongest weapons in the game. As in "oops I one-shot the final boss with Some Guy using it and kind of took the sails out of everyone with their fancy ancient sacred weapons" strong. In part, this was because it also had some natural crit for some reason? So it's a spell that bypasses resistance and is significantly more likely to crit, and as a result is incredibly dangerous to bosses. And everyone else for that matter.
Now, I think they went well overboard in the accuracy department in Sacred Stones. I think if they just stripped away the crit chance and maybe limited it by tightly controlled drops instead of a really large price tag you could do something with it, but as it is the accuracy really hurts it bad.
It's kind of unfortunate because I love Luna the spell as a concept. 0 innate might but bypassing resistance means it's obvious design niche is to be for taking out targets like pegasus knights or otber mages, who have low health pools but high Res to back it up, while being weaker against something like a general who might have a Res of 2.
In practice, the high natural magic of most dark magic users, and the fact that bosses really rely on defenses alongside health means that it tends to have a really outsized impact. Maybe just switching it from ignoring Res entirely to cutting it in half might do it? I don't know, but I like the spell and its animation and I think they really hurt it in this game.
It's fascinating – Valter has proven to be a pretty good manipulator so far, but here his complete lack of empathy causes him to stumble. Normal people do not react to the death of a beloved superior – brother or not – with, "Yay, I get a promotion!" Fortunately for Valter, Cormag doesn't blow up at him. He doesn't even seem to hear this – he just demands to know who killed his brother.
I almost have to wonder if he is doing a decent job of manipulation here, by playing up his reputation as a callous monster, in order to get Cormag worked up enough that he won't question a thing and hare off to wherever Valter points. I could see it going either way, honestly, but I'm almost leaning towards him approaching it that way.
Upon realizing that Valter killed Glen, Cormag immediately asks Eirika to accept him into her service, prompting her second surprised "What?" of this conversation. He explains that the struggle between nations means nothing to him; he does not care about her goals, just the fact that she's on the side opposite Valter.
I do like Cormag's recruitment, there's a level of believability to it. He's willing to listen to Most Evil Man In the World Valter because he's staring at bis brother's corpse and barely processing it, running off in a rage immediately. But as soon as his righteous fury is interrupted for a moment, he takes almost no time taking stock of the situation and immediately figuring out what actually happened.
He's a good boy, he's doing his best, and I'm not just biased because I love wyvern riders.
This is especially hilarious because iirc her recruitment quote talks about how all the Gradoan recruits were fed stories about the commander of the Renaisian army being a heartless killer who slaughters her way through soldiers and civilians alike.
Looks like she will not be beating the allegations from the Grado recruitment agency today.
: It sure is, Valter, it sure is!