Poseidon is associated with horses (I forget if this is the exact reason how, but I suspect it's because of his Mycanean version being both a sea god AND a cthonic/earth and Underworld god) even though he is a sea god.
Oh oh I can chime in here! One of Poseidons most commonly used epithets is "Earthshaker." He is seen as a god of earthquakes and waves in general. I'd say his role as both earth and sea god gels a lot more when you consider the ancients Greeks, as dudes using tiny triemes to navigate the Rocky coasts around the Mediterranean, view the concept of 'Sea God' less Little Mermaid Triton style dude who rules a realm under water and more of "force in charge of what we see and use of the sea." Aka propiate him to see if he'll cool down on the shaking for this boat ride.
Also Greece is pretty prone to Tsunamis so the tying them together with earthquakes under the same conceptual entity makes more sense imo. Earthshaker moves dirt and water. For horses specifically I remember reading people though the white foam on the crest of waves resembled galloping horses hence the attribution to Poseidon.
And beyond that joke FE10 has a lot of convoluted plot stuff to ensure none of the three playable survivors are ever deployable on the same battlefield.
To be fair, having multiple FE10 dancers would be legitimately mondo broken well beyond the scope of other games' dancers, because they can target multiple allies.
9&10 go as far as to feature a genocide against that world's Dancer ethnicity
And beyond that joke FE10 has a lot of convoluted plot stuff to ensure none of the three playable survivors are ever deployable on the same battlefield.
Yes, I still remember the genocide, it's kinda hard not to with how important it is in the plot. I was more talking about the endgame, because I didn't find it that convoluted that the three dancers couldn't be deployed together plot wise. At least as far as I remember. But seeing as I initially thought that you could bring all three in endgame because of checking wikis and not understanding what it meant instead of checking gameplay footage...yeah, my memory on my favoeite game is more shoddy than I thought.
To be fair, having multiple FE10 dancers would be legitimately mondo broken well beyond the scope of other games' dancers, because they can target multiple allies.
Welcome back to Restoration Queen, where I have enough loot to sell that my money worries are assuaged…at least for now.
I think they'll be back, though. See, the thing about money in this game is that I've been getting occasional infusions of cash as the plot progresses, and the only other way to get any money is by selling your items (which doesn't add up to very much, unless it's a very special item) or the pathetically low amounts dropped on random monster maps. In modern FE, the grinding maps give enough money that they're viable for grinding money as well as experience, and the games don't rely on plot funding that much. It's been observed that this lessens the challenge, as players will never run out of money unless they're playing with self-imposed limitations. But what I'm only realizing now is the sense of anxiety that comes along with the limited money-making. In a blind playthrough, you have no idea how much money you're going to have to work with. How generous were the developers feeling? Did they tune it to my playstyle? Should I be using fewer units, spending less on equipment?
Hayden gave me 10,000G, and I understood that it would have to get me to Rausten. I was so worried about running low that I set Colm on stealing that Red Gem in Chapter 10, only for Innes to pop up like, "btw I also have 10,000, let's pool our funds."
And as an apology for getting him killed last time I promote Gerik to a Hero.
Look at those stats. We're going to have an amazing time together. Who needs Joshua? Now the group is ready to venture into the mountains in search of Saleh and Caer Pelyn. They successfully avoid encountering any more troops among the "cracked red bedrock and knife-edged peaks."
That does not mean they do not encounter trouble.
In a foggy landscape (…no wonder the Priest from last chapter dropped a Torch staff) Eirika calls to Ewan to slow down, to not get too far ahead of the group.
Innes: This fog's getting thick.
Ewan: Quit worrying, mister!
Innes: Don't speak to me, boy. I don't tolerate insolence.
Eirika: Innes, he's only a child. There's no reason to be so rude.
Ewan: That's right. Without me, you'd never get where you're going.
Ewan, please. He's so much like my little brother…I can't decide whether I like him or I can't stand him. Please note, as well, the interplay between Eirika and Innes. They have some great scenes in this chapter, and I think they really work well together.
Eirika is getting so exasperated with these two.
Well, we know by now that Innes wouldn't call a halt without good reason. There's an abandoned fort up ahead. Supposedly it's unused, but Innes hears noises coming from inside. "We've been spotted. Monsters are coming," he identifies.
Tethys grabs Ewan, and after a short argument, he agrees to retreat. Ewan will not be joining my army on this map.
Meanwhile, someone else has wandered into the fort through another entrance.
L'Arachel: I do wonder where Rennac disappeared to, though. I told him not to wander off, but…
Oh no. Has Rennac been eaten by a monster? No, they wouldn't just waste a named character like that. Is he lost somewhere on this map? Is zombie Rennac going to be the boss of this chapter?
After a bit of conversation about setting up camp for the night, L'Arachel and Dozla finally realize that they're surrounded by monsters. They are not fazed in the slightest.
L'Ara: There can be no doubt: we were brought here to destroy these foul things!
Dozla: Gwa ha ha! My heart cries out for battle!
So. This map consists of a spacious fort, containing three different treasure chests and an unknown number of monsters. The natural first impression is that the threat is the monsters inside the fort - but once you actually get inside, you can clear it out pretty easily. It's the waves of monsters coming from outside that you need to worry about, so you need to be able to secure at least some part to use as a defensive strongpoint. We start near a wide entrance, but it is possible to circle the building and enter at one of the others. Therefore, the player is free to choose a route.
One of the treasure rooms also houses L'Arachel and Dozla. Dozla is a Berseker, a super-strong axe fighter with amazing HP, but only 9 speed. L'Arachel is a Troubadour, a mounted healer.
She's level 3. Ugh. I like this character and I want to use her, but I still haven't managed to grind Natasha or Moulder up to level 10, and now I have to do it all over again?
The goal of the chapter is to slay all the enemies, which might prove a little difficult what with how I can't see where most of them are.
I decide to split my forces. The building has multiple entrances, so the bulk of my forces will go in the front while Colm unlocks a backdoor for Tana, Neimi, Innes and Gerik. This route will also get Colm to the treasure faster; I don't want to unknowingly kill the last enemy before I've gotten the loot! Sneaking around the building requires passing along a wall which a skeleton archer can shoot through, but I come up with a strategy to bypass him: first, pick up Colm with Tana and stop right at the edge of that wall. Then, have Tethys use her Dance on Tana, who will have enough movement to pass through the archer danger zone to the other side of the building. I'm a genius…
Oh no! Tana can't pass through that revenant! Oh no! Tana can't stay here! Retreat! Retreat!
So I start using Natasha's Torch staff to reveal areas before I move through them.
As usual for a fog map, movement is slow and cautious. At least the green units don't need me to rush to their aid – Dozla is capable of crushing any skeletons that come near him with his enormous axe, or possibly with his bare hands alone.
I do find it amusing that his portrait depicts him fully armored sans helmet, but his battle sprites are of a helmeted man, bare-chested. Oh, and his eyes glow. As we progress further into the game, the sprites and animations are getting more and more over-the-top. Hero Gerik just does backflips now, as part of his normal attack.
Eirika, Natasha, and the rest of their party are doing all right at the main entrance, but trying to sneak by this one wall outside is giving me so much trouble. After Gerik deals with the surprise revenant from last time and Innes deals with the archer on the other side of the wall, Tana advances again and tries to drop off Colm.
She succeeds, only for Colm's thief vision to activate and reveal a pack of monsters just ahead, including another skeleton archer. Tana retreats back to the place where we entered the map. On enemy phase, several revenants emerge from the fog and kill her.
I reload, put Gerik and Innes up there to deal with the revenant reinforcements, put Colm and Neimi at the south end of the passage to deal with the pack of monsters there, and Tana sits in the middle and drinks a Vulnerary.
The turns of defense pay off, however, as Neimi gains enough exp to reach level 12. I've been waiting for this.
Time for a battlefield promotion. Neimi's Sniper sprite looks great, but I already have Innes, so horse archer it is! Let me tell you, zooming around the map delivering death at a distance is as fun as it was in 3 Houses.
Meanwhile, Eirika's crew has reached the first treasure room, where the Torch staff reveals a new type of enemy:
These things are mighty and strong, with 7 move. They're kind of like wyvern riders, in one of the games where bows aren't great. Also, their animations are beautiful. Top-notch work, seriously. It makes them feel like even more of a threat.
But I did bring my axe-users along, so Eirika's group does alright. The enemies even drop a chest key, which I use to get the treasure. It's a Secret Book.
Down south, Colm's crew has finally fought free of that damn map-edge corridor and rounded the corner of the building. Innes stays behind to do some sniping through the walls with his longbow, and Gerik stays with him to build support – this ends up being a mistake, later.
Blithely, thinking that I've already almost won, I use the extra movement from Dancing to fly Tana into the room with L'Arachel and Dozla.
I now believe that entering this room triggers several gargoyles, skeleton archers, and another boss to spawn from the south edge of the map and begin heading for L'Arachel's location, which they can do quickly because they have 7 squares of movement.
I reload. I consider my next move. Obviously, I want to keep L'Arachel alive, but all my tanks are currently elsewhere on the map! Gerik is next to Innes to build shipping points, on the west side of the fort; Garcia, Gilliam and Seth are still handling all the enemies at the east entrance of the fort. The southern entrance is only one title wide, so I try blocking it with Tana. The Gargoyles of Death and Doom still spawn. They go after the other unit who can't defend herself: Tethys.
How do I solve this? I don't have anyone who can block the gargoyles and survive. The gargoyles will kill Tethys, Tana, and L'Arachel if they catch them. Who's near enough to intervene in time? Neimi? She'll just die too! I haven't even given her a sword yet!
…What if the gargoyles couldn't catch them?
I count movement squares from the place in the fog where I think the gargoyles are spawning. I rescue L'Arachel with Tana and flee to the far wall of the room. Neimi and Tethys flee to the west. Meanwhile, Seth pulls Eirika onto his horse and hightails it to the room where it's all happening; Garcia, Gilliam and Natasha will have to handle themselves without him. Innes and Gerik start moving, too.
If they can just hold out for one round, help will arrive.
It works. Seth, the only unit now in the monsters' range, attracts all their rage. He even survives the attacks of this monstrosity, a promoted version of the Gargoyle called a Deathgoyle.
On my following player phase, everyone else converges on the final battle. Seth and Neimi take out the Deathgoyle, and L'Arachel kindly heals the wounds he took defending her.
We're at a stage in the game where Seth is no longer invincible. While his overall performance is still superb, other characters are catching up to him in damage potential, and he no longer laughs off enemy attacks.
After I deal with that wave of enemies, the music changes to its triumphant "one enemy remaining" version. I guess that answers my question about how I'll know when I've finished the map if I can't see all the enemies. In fact, I know exactly where the last enemy is – it's an Entombed hanging out near the final treasure chest. Colm was originally planned to go there and defeat it, but I withdrew him for the all-hands battle.
Now that we've got room to breathe, Eirika talks to L'Arachel, who says it's a blessing to meet her again. Then L'Arachel talks to Dozla and they have this conversation:
Dozla: Sounds fun! What would you have me do?
L'Ara: Oh, just carry on in your normal manner: destroy, destroy, destroy. But do be sure to enjoy yourself.
Amazing. I love them. Rennac did not deserve them. As I bustle around completing my end-of-map heal-everyone grind, I reach a magnificent milestone:
Natasha is now level 10! Yes! I have a Guiding Ring waiting for her!
In other good news, Gerik and Innes have unlocked a support conversation. Gerik decided he would die for this man already, so I have high hopes.
Does Innes snap at him for addressing him informally? No. He apologizes, again.
Innes: Gerik…I'm sorry you had to see that ugly side of me.
Ack! That's an error. No way around it – Innes has never even set foot in Renvall. The battle they're talking about occurred in Carcino, at the Teras Plateau.
Innes clarifies that he's talking about the time he openly insulted Gerik and the other man stuck with him anyway. Gerik brushes it off as just doing his job (a deflection: he had literally been fired by Innes moments before) and asks the prince why he's bringing that up.
Innes: I've guided men into battle countless times before that day. I've always tried to be a model commander, to guide others by my example. But…I found that many of my soldiers desired a less severe example.
Gerik chuckles. Innes doesn't get mad.
Innes: How do you stay so composed in the heat of battle?
My good gods! It's appropriate that I've unlocked this now, as we're having a conversation in-thread about Innes's self-awareness of his own flaws. We see here that he does know that in enforcing his high standards on himself and others, he comes off as cold and unfriendly. And that's a problem for morale. So he looks to another commander, whose skill no one can doubt, who commands respect among his own followers even as he enjoys their friendship and comradery.
…But he doesn't dare ask Ephraim for advice, so he goes to Gerik instead, who is pretty similar.
I'm serious, I think Ephraim is haunting this conversation like a ghost, and not just because of the reference to Renvall. If you compare what we've seen of Ephraim and Innes in Renvall and Carcino, which were very similar situations in hindsight, you can see the differences between them and the reasons for Innes's insecurity. He keeps a formal distance between himself and others, he prefers to use more reliable strategies instead of taking flashy risks, and when he's under stress he starts lashing out.
And of course Innes doesn't want his greatest rival to find out about this. I think Innes would prefer to never admit weakness to anyone, ever. But if he has to ask someone for help…Innes fired Gerik and called him disloyal mercenary scum, and Gerik still declared he'd die for him. If anyone's safe, it's Gerik.
I ship it. I hope they have a paired ending.
Gerik doesn't really answer Innes's question, by the way.
Gerik: Long discussions on the battlefield, however, are not. Let's go already.
Colm snags the treasure before I deal with the final enemy. It's a Restore staff. From a room where every enemy inflicted poison. Hah.
The battle over, Eirika apologizes to L'Arachel for the rough night, but she brushes it off – she's on a mission to destroy monsters anyway, so it was good fortune, actually. At this point, L'Ara realizes that they have never formally introduced themselves to each other. Eirika knows L'Arachel's name, of course, because she shouts it out all the time, but it's not mutual.
Eirika: How strange…we've met so often now that I had assumed you already…Please forgive my lack of manners. My name is Eirika.
Seth: Milady…
Eirika: It's all right Seth. She's clearly not our enemy.
L'Arachel immediately identifies that she's standing before the Princess of Renais, but she's not quite sure what she's doing here.
Actually, Eirika clarifies, she's not lost, she's merely following an indirect route to Rausten. Upon being reminded that they share the same ultimate destination, L'Arachel insists on joining Eirika's party. She rejects all of Eirika's warnings about the dangerous people hunting her. L'Arachel is convinced that their repeated meetings have been a sign from on high, and her destiny is to aid Eirika on her quest.
All right, I'll add another note to the shipping chart. Right now it's L'Arachel vs. Tana for her heart.
"Are you sure this is wise, Princess?" asks Seth, silently adding L'Arachel to the list of children he babysits.
"Don't worry, Seth," replies Eirika. That might as well be her catchphrase at this point. It's not a very cool catchphrase, unfortunately. Ephraim gets "I don't pick fights I can't win," and Eirika gets "It's all right, Seth."
I think they'll be back, though. See, the thing about money in this game is that I've been getting occasional infusions of cash as the plot progresses, and the only other way to get any money is by selling your items (which doesn't add up to very much, unless it's a very special item) or the pathetically low amounts dropped on random monster maps. In modern FE, the grinding maps give enough money that they're viable for grinding money as well as experience, and the games don't rely on plot funding that much. It's been observed that this lessens the challenge, as players will never run out of money unless they're playing with self-imposed limitations. But what I'm only realizing now is the sense of anxiety that comes along with the limited money-making. In a blind playthrough, you have no idea how much money you're going to have to work with. How generous were the developers feeling? Did they tune it to my playstyle? Should I be using fewer units, spending less on equipment?
Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it since I've played the FE games enough times that I generally have some idea of how much money I have available, but I've at least had that feeling playing romhacks sometimes - especially since those are more likely to carefully limit your funds to avoid things like "and then I bought 40 killer weapons because I had so much extra cash". Suffice to say as long as you're getting every treasure chest in most maps, you should be more than fine on funds. If not, there's usually the occasional very situational item or weapon that sells well, like the earlier Rune Sword, or all non-Flux Dark Magic tomes if you don't train up a shaman. Elixirs are something I tend to end up with excess of and sell off for 1500 a pop as well.
Plus, there'll be an opportunity coming up in a few chapters that I'm sure people will hint towards which vastly increases your spending power...
Ah, the power of Early Promotion in action. Hero Gerik is a really solid unit, with the Constitution to wield whatever axes he wants and smash his way through enemies.
L'Arachel: I do wonder where Rennac disappeared to, though. I told him not to wander off, but…
Oh no. Has Rennac been eaten by a monster? No, they wouldn't just waste a named character like that. Is he lost somewhere on this map? Is zombie Rennac going to be the boss of this chapter?
Funny enough, you actually completely missed some optional scenes that detailed what was going on with Rennac back in Chapter 9. Remember that village on the left? Yeah, Rennac was hiding out there, waiting for L'Arachel to leave the area so he could bail out because he got sick and tired of being dragged around everywhere, and even bribes you with a Dragonshield to not tattle on him (and a bonus Angelic Robe if you saved both Villages after the chapter).
So presumably, Rennac is currently off in the wind somewhere, enjoying his newfound freedom from the woman that would happily try and ride off a cliff to reach monster combat sooner and her fanatically loyal probably-a-dwarf that would swiftly follow.
One of the treasure rooms also houses L'Arachel and Dozla. Dozla is a Berseker, a super-strong axe fighter with amazing HP, but only 9 speed. L'Arachel is a Troubadour, a mounted healer.
She's level 3. Ugh. I like this character and I want to use her, but I still haven't managed to grind Natasha or Moulder up to level 10, and now I have to do it all over again?
Ah, L'Arachel. I love her dearly, I took the time to train her up on my current playthrough and she's turned into a monster of a Valkyrie. I'm even meming it up and getting her S rank Light Magic instead of Staves so she'll be able to use the S rank Light Tome later (which is actually worthless on Bishops - the tome does double damage to monsters, which overrides the Bishop triple damage Slayer lmao).
But as an actual unit, well... as always, anyone is viable if you want to put in the work, my mention of using her does point that out. But she's joining as a healer at level 3 around the point where a lot of your units are starting to promote, mounted healers for whatever reason have 1 less move than in previous games so it's not nearly as much of a boon as it would be (plus Clarine and Priscilla in FE6/FE7 each join 4 chapters in, instead of 11), and to top it off L'Arachel decides to show up this late with only a C rank in staves. Fairly good growths mean she'll eventually be able to carry her weight if you do decide to train her up, and it's almost worth it entirely because of what a hilarious fun personality she has, buuuuut she's one of the lower tier characters, for sure.
As for Dozla, he's a decently solid pre-promote. Hits like a semi truck, good enough bulk and growths, somewhat comparable to an early-promoted Berserker Ross if you went that route. Main flaw is his fairly low speed, but if you go in planning to use him then just saving a Speedwings to patch that up slightly works wonders.
As usual for a fog map, movement is slow and cautious. At least the green units don't need me to rush to their aid – Dozla is capable of crushing any skeletons that come near him with his enormous axe, or possibly with his bare hands alone.
Thankfully, the map is kind enough to not have too many already-aggroed enemies at the bottom forcing you to absolutely bumrush L'Arachel's position. This ain't no Battle Before Dawn, with Nino and her goddamn "Green Unit starts within range of an enemy with crit on her" or Jaffar and his "literally making a last stand surrounded by so many enemies he broke his Killing Edge before I got there".
I do find it amusing that his portrait depicts him fully armored sans helmet, but his battle sprites are of a helmeted man, bare-chested. Oh, and his eyes glow. As we progress further into the game, the sprites and animations are getting more and more over-the-top. Hero Gerik just does backflips now, as part of his normal attack.
Man I do so love the Berserker outfits in the GBA games, even if it is kinda silly to see Dozla go from clearly armored portrait to shirtless barbarian man. If I have one occasional complaint about the GBA games, it's that I wish there were a few more "unique" class sprites for characters, like Berserker Hawkeye in FE7:
It works. Seth, the only unit now in the monsters' range, attracts all their rage. He even survives the attacks of this monstrosity, a promoted version of the Gargoyle called a Deathgoyle.
We're at a stage in the game where Seth is no longer invincible. While his overall performance is still superb, other characters are catching up to him in damage potential, and he no longer laughs off enemy attacks.
Our Lord and Savior Seth, coming in clutch Yet Again! Praise Be!
Though yeah, as you've noticed somewhere around chapter 10 or 11 is about Seth's falloff point from his initial pre-promote godhood. Not a fall into irrelevance or becoming a bad unit or anything, mind you... just as you say, he's no longer a god among men who you can toss into every enemy crowd you see and watch him slaughter his way through the enemy ranks (unless you've been feeding him a lot of kills up to this point, particularly bosses for the bonus EXP... but outside of an LTC I don't see much reason to do that personally).
I honestly had to go and double check the original support conversation script because this was ringing enough bells that I wasn't sure if it was modified for the sake of Restoration Queen Shipping lol. From what I can tell, it's the same, but still means there's something solid to build off of.
Time for a battlefield promotion. Neimi's Sniper sprite looks great, but I already have Innes, so horse archer it is! Let me tell you, zooming around the map delivering death at a distance is as fun as it was in 3 Houses.
Incidentally this reminds me that I meant to comment when you got Innes in the first place; Statistically, Innes is actually a pretty okay unit for a prepromote? Mechanically though snipers suck. Like, if you manually raise Neimi through to level 20 and then promote her to a sniper, she expects to mostly outstat him but also mostly do so by small margins. And by level 20 she expects to solidly outclass him except he's clearly overall physically tankier which is much appreciated.
Or put another way, at the starting level of 1 Innes outclasses Seth in every single stat except defense, being equal or better on everything but defense (mostly better) which he's down one point in. His growth rates are somewhat worse... But the real killer is just. Snipers suck. Seth is at least okay as a backup unit. Innes, not so much.
Rangers are vastly more useful and the fact that unlike later games like Fates there's no reclassing promoted units to alternate promotions or anything like that, so he's stuck being a Sniper which is just vastly worse than the Rangers overall better mobility and option to actually sword things.
Neimi would probably be a better choice than him even without that issue, but Innes is hard to justify as even a secondary archer because... snipers are hugely flawed and don't really offer anything to make up for it. Rangers have largely equivalent or better promotion gains and max stats alike, with limited exceptions, and the Snipers big shtick is they unreliably reliably hit, which uh 'unreliable reliable hits' is an obvious contradiction in terms. (to be more precise, they have a skill% chance to skip their accuracy check and Just Hit. But Skill is the stat that controls your base hit chance and you can never have a 100% chance to proc this, so it's only even theoretically useful to counter some ridiculous dodge enemy. It's basically just 'they're probably statistically more likely to hit, but like, by a small amount)
Meanwhile Rangers are more mobile and can swordfight, and the only serious cost they face is vulnerability to horseslaying weapons... which are all range 1 anyways so it's not like Snipers are a vastly better choice for shooting at halberd guys or whatever.
She's level 3. Ugh. I like this character and I want to use her, but I still haven't managed to grind Natasha or Moulder up to level 10, and now I have to do it all over again?
I adore L'Arachel, but man she got done dirty by that starting level. The only nice thing about it relative to the other two is that you should be table to start using staves that grant a lot more XP than heal from now on so the growth is slightly faster.
That said, on my last run of the game I promoted her at 10, and brought her into the final map as a level 3 promoted unit who was able to fight well enough that she ended the map at level 18.
I thought it would be funny for her to use the S rank weapon and had no other maps to do so... and it really was. It was so funny and actually needed for the final boss.
I adore L'Arachel, but man she got done dirty by that starting level. The only nice thing about it relative to the other two is that you should be table to start using staves that grant a lot more XP than heal from now on so the growth is slightly faster.
The surprisingly annoying part with that is the starting D rank staves getting in the way, to be honest. L'Arachel starts with Torch which is decent, but can only be used in a FoW map... which might not happen again for a while. Then, Barrier is one of the best exp grinding staves worh 17 exp per use, 15 uses, and zero requirements like "target has lost HP"... but requires C rank staves.
L'Arachel is so very fun, but they screwed her on starting stats and level. Seriously compare her to literally the next unit you get like 5 minutes later in the next chapter and tell me which is more useable at base.
I was astonished to see that name in the support and HAD to look up if that was in the original script or if that was added through the mod. And I found it very funny that it is, in fact, in the original script. Why? 'Cause there's a character with that name in another "pre-Awakening" Fire Emblem. Though thinking about it, I wonder the name being therr was because, iirc, Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance were both "coded named" as "FE8". I forget if it's because Path of Radiance was meant of be 8 but got delayed so Sacred Stones ended up being released first, or if them being both "FE8" was for a different reason entirely. Either way...as someone who has played the Tellius games, it's very funny knowing the pegasus is named Titania. XD
That's on localization, specifically. The two Titanias have different names in the Japanese versions, and localization just didn't catch that they were using this name twice.
Yes, I still remember the genocide, it's kinda hard not to with how important it is in the plot. I was more talking about the endgame, because I didn't find it that convoluted that the three dancers couldn't be deployed together plot wise. At least as far as I remember. But seeing as I initially thought that you could bring all three in endgame because of checking wikis and not understanding what it meant instead of checking gameplay footage...yeah, my memory on my favoeite game is more shoddy than I thought.
It's pretty contrived. Everybody splits into three teams on a thin justification, the leaders are defined for okay-ish reasons, and then 'one Heron per group' is decided without any narrative logic for why to split them being presented.
You can try to argue that in-universe this is so each team has access to Heron abilities, but the narrative never acknowledges the Sing mechanic's benefits and what capabilities they have that the narrative does acknowledge have no obvious motive to split them up. And two of the three Heron characters quite explicitly prefer to hang out together, and several non-Heron characters want all the Herons together. (Where they can be kept safe, for one)
So from a purely narrative standpoint, the split-up happening at all is inexplicable, and even if you accept it happening it would be more natural for the Herons to all be in one group, or maybe be split 2/1 if Grumpy Heron was adamant about not hanging with the others.
And by a similar token, that only one Heron comes into the endgame is super-arbitrary. (Mind, the endgame is super-arbitrary in general, but the Heron thing is especally glaring)
I was able to accept all this because it was really obvious all of this was driven purely by understandable game design motives, but if you pretend those don't exist then these aspects of Radiant Dawn's late-game narrative become absolutely baffling. (Not... that Radiant Dawn's late game plot makes much sense in general...)
But what I'm only realizing now is the sense of anxiety that comes along with the limited money-making. In a blind playthrough, you have no idea how much money you're going to have to work with. How generous were the developers feeling? Did they tune it to my playstyle? Should I be using fewer units, spending less on equipment?
Yeah, I think limited funding is good for making money decisions Matter, but this thing the series does of money injections at unpredictable plot-defined points is bad for the first run through a given game. The player might be punished for spending too much, or spending too little, or for buying the wrong things, with no way to tell what's liable to be right-ish.
Pre-Sacred Stones games were mostly even worse about this because shop access was also wildly unpredictable. Here you can at least count on basic purchasables at all times via the world map -you can even buy stuff in the prep screen! (Albeit at high markup)
She's level 3. Ugh. I like this character and I want to use her, but I still haven't managed to grind Natasha or Moulder up to level 10, and now I have to do it all over again?
I do find it amusing that his portrait depicts him fully armored sans helmet, but his battle sprites are of a helmeted man, bare-chested. Oh, and his eyes glow. As we progress further into the game, the sprites and animations are getting more and more over-the-top. Hero Gerik just does backflips now, as part of his normal attack.
This is probably more rushing; his combat sprite is just a palette of the generic Berserker sprite. He was probably meant to have custom spritework, like Hawkeye of the prior game.
I now believe that entering this room triggers several gargoyles, skeleton archers, and another boss to spawn from the south edge of the map and begin heading for L'Arachel's location, which they can do quickly because they have 7 squares of movement.
... the lower-right entryway? That starts as a locked door, and when you get south enough a monster opens it and these jerks pile through. You're meant to go east at the start, fight south until this door, and get rudely ambushed by this unprecedented 'enemies using keys strategically' behavior.
You screwed yourself by insisting on squeezing through the 1-tile-wide corridor an archer can constantly shoot into instead of going east to start. L'Arachel and Dozla are never in any danger if you go east like the map pushes you to do.
(I actually didn't know you could screw yourself this way. I always go east, only maybe splitting off a small elite team through the Corridor Of Death)
Dozla: Sounds fun! What would you have me do?
L'Ara: Oh, just carry on in your normal manner: destroy, destroy, destroy. But do be sure to enjoy yourself.
The surprisingly annoying part with that is the starting D rank staves getting in the way, to be honest. L'Arachel starts with Torch which is decent, but can only be used in a FoW map... which might not happen again for a while. Then, Barrier is one of the best exp grinding staves worh 17 exp per use, 15 uses, and zero requirements like "target has lost HP"... but requires C rank staves.
L'Arachel is so very fun, but they screwed her on starting stats and level. Seriously compare her to literally the next unit you get like 5 minutes later in the next chapter and tell me which is more useable at base.
She's a mounted unit who can gain experience without ever risking combat. She's incredibly useful out the box just for Rescue Shenigans, can actually keep up with faster units unlike your other healers, joins right after you've gotten a Dancer so she can grind twice as fast, is actually weirdly durable even before factoring in her utterly outrageous Luck (Why does she start with 5 Defense at level 3? Enemy Troubadours will have 1-2 Defense at that level!), and with Mend usage she'll hit C in 14 casts anyway, which can easily be less than halfway through the next map.
I find her a bit trickier to raise in Ephraim's route for a few reasons, but in Eirika's route I basically always immediately displaced whichever healer turned out worse (Outside my infantry-only gimmick run), and never regretted it.
Like, I'm sure she's undesirable in various challenge conditions, but in regular play Ross is the only character I'd say is easier to raise to initial competency, out of people who need such raising at all.
(Meanwhile, I have a very low opinion of Mystery Recruit X, but they haven't joined yet, so...)
The next sequence is significant enough that I want to discuss it in detail, so it's getting its own threadmark. I had this ready and written at the same time as the previous entry, but my home Internet, which has been flaky for a few days, decided to just completely give up the ghost for an hour and a half. And now it's working again? Mysterious.
Eirika's gang has finally arrived at Caer Pelyn, or to be more precise, they've arrived at Saleh's little cottage in the region known as Caer Pelyn, which is still some distance from the village known as Caer Pelyn. I think. This story isn't very clear about locations, sometimes.
He's not home. Ewan says he goes out sometimes to rescue people in need, like a very reclusive superhero.
Then Saleh arrives:
Where have I seen that guy? Oh, he's got a place in the opening sequence!
With that, I think we've identified all the characters who have big fancy portraits. Eirika, Ephraim, Joshua, L'Arachel, Seth, Myrrh, Tethys, Saleh. The logic behind the choice of those characters is opaque – most of them have a role to play in the broader plot, yes, but Tethys? Joshua? Joshua's just a Myrmidon with good stats! He has a death quote that implies his actual death, so no popping up in plot scenes where he's surprisingly important later on. Same for Tethys. I'd say Innes and Tana have had more lines so far, and I'm surprised that they don't have a spot in the opening credits.
But Saleh has made one other appearance, and that's how Eirika recognizes him: he popped up back in Chapter 5, asking after a missing person with indigo hair. With the information we have now, we can tell that he was seeking Myrrh. Eirika doesn't tell him that his missing companion is doing just fine, and has teamed up with her brother to lead an army into Grado and strike at the evil in the capital. Instead, she just politely asks to be shown the route through the mountains.
(If I hadn't been informed that Myrrh is currently with Ephraim, I would be so confused right now. In fact, it's still confusing that none of the characters are making the obvious Saleh-Myrrh connection. Are the writers trying to pull an Orson again? Hiding a secret from the player by having all the characters act like they just forgot the existence of someone important? If so, it had better be for a twistier revelation than "Myrrh and Saleh knew each other the whole time!!!" because the characters already revealed that.)
Well, Saleh agrees to guide them, or rather he's heading to the village of Caer Pelyn anyway and is indifferent to being followed. "We have little interest in the outside world, but we do not refuse travellers," he claims. The mountain trail is rough, so everyone agrees to rest for the night and leave in the morning. I wonder who got to sleep in Saleh's house and who slept outdoors? It's certainly not big enough to fit the whole army at this point. Oh, but Ewan is too impatient and insists on going ahead to let the village know to expect them.
*His sprite disappears*
Eirika: No, wait!
Innes: Idiotic boy. I understand his need to be helpful, but…
Saleh: Ewan knows this land well. You needn't worry about him.
Even so, I have the bad feeling that, next chapter, I'm going to find Ewan surrounded by monsters and in need of rescuing.
The next morning, they set off for the mountain passage when, suddenly, a force of wyvern riders appears.
Eirika recognizes Glen from their previous meeting. He's obviously not here just to say hi, though.
Glen: I wish our reunion could come under different circumstances. I'm to bring to justice the rebel army leader who's been terrorizing Carcino.
Glen: It's you, Eirika. They say you've been murdering innocents.
Eirika: Wait! What do you mean? I…
Glen: I know all too well that Grado has robbed you of your homeland, but even so…I do not believe revenge could drive a woman like you to such depths. And yet…here you are in Carcino with a small army under your command.
That's a good point. Eirika has a good reason to be leading a small army through Carcino, but to anyone who isn't privy to her plans, it looks suspicious. And a lot of innocent people did die in Port Kiris, because I didn't try to save the villages.
Well, Eirika composes herself and firmly denies the accusations. She would never harm innocents, and any battles she fought in Carcino were in self-defense. She explains that the destruction and collateral damage in Port Kiris was caused by mercenaries in the employ of Pablo, who also tried to kill Prince Innes. During this, Innes occasionally interjects after his own fashion:
By the end, Glen seems stunned. "…What are you saying?" he asks. Innes spells it out for him: He's been fed a pack of lies by his own liege. Obvious lies, at that, and he should be ashamed for ever believing them.
"That's enough, Prince Innes," Eirika chides. "There's no need to provoke him." Then she concludes by telling Glen that what he does next is up to him. She doesn't want a fight, but if he insists, she will give him one. And he should not assume he'll win.
Glen: I will learn the truth. Then I will once again perform the duties of my office.
Glen: If you have lied to me today, I will hound you to the very grave itself.
Eirika: Very well.
Oh no. Glen, are you actually planning to go back to the capital and confront the emperor on his actions? That's a bad idea, Glen! You will die! If you demand that the emperor give an accounting of his actions that makes sense to a reasonable person, you won't get one because it doesn't exist! If you let him know that you are no longer willing to follow orders, Grado is going to lose a general and gain a revenant. And then Cormag's probably going to have to flee for his life, too!
As Eirika and company disappear up the mountain path, Glen watches them but does not follow. Before he can take off, however, a different troop of wyvern riders touches down.
Oooh. I thought Valter's appearance last chapter was a little hard to motivate, because he didn't do anything. My only explanation was that he just likes watching Eirika because he's a creep, which is, y'know, creepy, but I can't call him a good villain if he doesn't do anything. But this puts the previous scene into context: He was refraining from interference, watching from a distance, because he was waiting for Glen. He wanted to find evidence of Glen disobeying orders.
I mean, he also gets a very creepy pleasure from watching battles, but the point is that he did have some kind of plan.
Valter tries to dangle the possibility of blackmail at Glen, but Glen has no patience for it. He tells Valter to get out of his way, because he's going to see the emperor. It turns out that Valter, too, is not really interested in their usual verbal sparring.
Glen: …What are you babbling about?
HE'S GOING TO KILL YOU, GLEN. HE HATES YOU AND HE'S BEEN LOOKING FOR AN EXCUSE TO KILL YOU.
At this point, Valter proceeds to expand on his motivations and backstory in a wild monologue, and mean "wild" both in the sense that these revelations are unexpected and that Valter is letting go of the pretense that he is a normal person who can operate in human society.
Valter: But my place among you was stolen, and I was exiled from Grado.
Glen: You slaughtered people who had no intention of fighting. The emperor's punishment was just and warranted.
Valter was a member of the Imperial Three? Valter's appointment as a general was actually a reappointment? Well this certainly casts his rivalry with Glen in a whole new light. What did Vigarde expect when he hired a Sunstone and Moonstone at the same time...
Wait, how did he get appointed as a general the first time, when Vigarde was presumably still himself? I mean, we've seen that Valter can restrain himself enough to follow orders and enact plans, but we have seen no evidence that he can refrain from being a massive smug prick. I'm just saying, I would never appoint this guy to a leadership position, and I think the fact that Vigarde did do that kind of undermines everyone's claims about how wise and peaceful he used to be.
And what about Valter's appearance in the prologue, then? If he was exiled from Grado until Evil Vigarde reinstated him, then why was he fighting with the Gradoans in the attack on Renais? He shouldn't have been part of the imperial army anymore!
Valter: After my fall from glory, only desire kept me alive. Desire for revenge. My hatred burned so fierce that I was only barely able to keep my sanity. That hatred keeps me warm still today. Oh, how it burns…
Valter: Hear me, Glen, wyvern general of the Imperial Three. I live for battle. I crave it. I have no need for peace. That is why you must die.
Glen: Cur! You're mad!
YES, GLEN! OBVIOUSLY! Is that all you have to say?
We now shift to a battle cutscene. "Come, Glen! Entertain me!" Valter calls, laughing madly.
By the numbers, their battle could have gone either way – Glen has the damage to kill Valter in three hits, while Valter would normally need four. But, like Seth before him, Glen made the mistake of trying to fight Valter with a sword. Glen misses his first attack, while Valter gets a critical hit (He's wielding a Killer Lance. "Killer". It's a pun, get it?).
As Glen falls to the ground, Valter tells his wyvern knights to go pursue the Sunstone's fleeing troops.
…So. So! I feel confident in saying, for now, that Valter is my favorite villain in the game. Good villainy is not about meeting some arbitrary standard of evilness. It's about style. It's about having an impact on the narrative. It's about making the audience interested in seeing what you'll do next.
It's a shame, though, that Valter's big scene came at Glen's expense. No, I don't mean the fact that he died; I mean the expense of Glen's existence as an interesting character. We're introduced to him in Chapter 3 as the outspoken hothead of the generals, already willing to say things like, "I fear the emperor is no longer the man we knew." Yet in Chapter 10 and 11 he's so reluctant to believe anything bad about him. If you took out the exchange with Cormag, you could replace Glen with Selena or Duessel without issue, and that's a problem! Furthermore, he barely reacts to Valter's monologue, a mad screed that is just begging to be reacted to. He's lacking presence in his own death scene.
Farewell, Glen. You could have been better. I would have liked to recruit you.
Funny enough, you actually completely missed some optional scenes that detailed what was going on with Rennac back in Chapter 9. Remember that village on the left? Yeah, Rennac was hiding out there, waiting for L'Arachel to leave the area so he could bail out because he got sick and tired of being dragged around everywhere, and even bribes you with a Dragonshield to not tattle on him (and a bonus Angelic Robe if you saved both Villages after the chapter).
So presumably, Rennac is currently off in the wind somewhere, enjoying his newfound freedom from the woman that would happily try and ride off a cliff to reach monster combat sooner and her fanatically loyal probably-a-dwarf that would swiftly follow.
Sadly, the conventions of Fire Emblem mean that most characters, once they join your army, can theoretically die. Thus, they can do and say all sorts of fantastic things when they're introduced, but immediately become mute after the moment they become playable, because the writers can't give lines to a dead person.
I am pretty sure that the reason Ewan hasn't joined the army yet is because the writers need him alive to point the way to Saleh, and now that he's fulfilled this task he'll be free to fight and/or die in Chapter 12.
Wait, how did he get appointed as a general the first time, when Vigarde was presumably still himself? I mean, we've seen that Valter can restrain himself enough to follow orders and enact plans, but we have seen no evidence that he can refrain from being a massive smug prick. I'm just saying, I would never appoint this guy to a leadership position, and I think the fact that Vigarde did do that kind of undermines everyone's claims about how wise and peaceful he used to be.
it's buried in specific supports involving exclusively characters you haven't recruited yet lmao.
Sacred stones is wacky like that.
Valter went mad after he was given a cursed lance. That's it. He was a fine, upstanding citizen as you might expect a peer of duessel and glen to be and then was given a cursed lance because He Thought He Could Handle It and alas he could not and became a mad killer.
Sadly, the conventions of Fire Emblem mean that most characters, once they join your army, can theoretically die. Thus, they can do and say all sorts of fantastic things when they're introduced, but immediately become mute after the moment they become playable, because the writers can't give lines to a dead person.
I am pretty sure that the reason Ewan hasn't joined the army yet is because the writers need him alive to point the way to Saleh, and now that he's fulfilled this task he'll be free to fight and/or die in Chapter 12.
Several games in the series actually do have specific characters allowed to die who will get Main Plot Writing if they don't die. Sacred Stones is one of those games. The series is clearly largely unwilling to have the plot react significantly to deaths -which fair enough- and so most such scenes are wholly-optional snippets whose presence can give the player additional context but which don't call for changes to the overall narrative or immediately-surrounding scenes.
You've already experienced the architecture that supports this, too; you might have noticed the game often fades out and fades back in for different conversations. This isn't just to imply the passage of time or whatever, it's because a number of these are entire separate scenes the game can turn on or off based on what has happened before, carefully compartmentalized to keep the writing simple. For example, you got an Orion's Bolt after the mountain spider hostage map -this was an optional scene that only occurred because you did in fact save the hostages. They're allowed to die; you just miss out on the reward. (And possibly feel guilty for allowing imaginary innocents to die, I suppose) Sacred Stones actually does this a lot, with many missions having 'bonus' scenes that only fire if you save every village on the map or otherwise achieve a semi-hidden 'bonus objective'. You notably missed out on a reward in Port Kiris because you allowed the Pirates to pillage to their hearts' content, and more specifically had such a scene simply be skipped.
Sadly, later entries seem to have decided to do away with this kind of thing. I liked it for several reasons, not the least being it's a decent way to ablate the 'everyone can die, so we can't count on them in major scenes' problem. Sacred Stones uses it to very good effect, and the main fault it has on this topic is that it's completely invisible; there are likely tons of players who played through Sacred Stones multiple times and never noticed this feature, as the current implementation requires multiple runs and note-taking to be liable to notice on your own. Ideally, there'd have been some 'scene tracker' widget, once you beat the game or whatever, that would let you know You Missed A Scene On That Map, and preferably be willing to eventually reveal what underlies this stuff. Or just be more up-front about this stuff -tell the player a mission has a Bonus Objective with out-of-universe info (The screen that tracks enemy counts, current turn, your primary objective, etc; add Bonus Objectives to it) and then communicate that this scene they are watching right now is playing because they succeeded in that objective.
Just cutting the whole concept feels like such a waste to me. It's not like the series didn't go on to commit to even bigger Writing Needs...
(If I hadn't been informed that Myrrh is currently with Ephraim, I would be so confused right now. In fact, it's still confusing that none of the characters are making the obvious Saleh-Myrrh connection. Are the writers trying to pull an Orson again? Hiding a secret from the player by having all the characters act like they just forgot the existence of someone important? If so, it had better be for a twistier revelation than "Myrrh and Saleh knew each other the whole time!!!" because the characters already revealed that.)
I honestly never noticed this before, but now that you mention it this scene really doesn't parse. It feels like this scene was written under the idea that Eirika never met Myrrh, honestly.
Oooh. I thought Valter's appearance last chapter was a little hard to motivate, because he didn't do anything. My only explanation was that he just likes watching Eirika because he's a creep, which is, y'know, creepy, but I can't call him a good villain if he doesn't do anything. But this puts the previous scene into context: He was refraining from interference, watching from a distance, because he was waiting for Glen. He wanted to find evidence of Glen disobeying orders.
I mean, he also gets a very creepy pleasure from watching battles, but the point is that he did have some kind of plan.
It took me a lot of runs to put together what you're talking about here, as in normal play there's a pretty big gap in these moments (Especially if you struggle a lot with the fog mission, which is probably pretty normal for first-time players) and I wish the game made more of an effort to explicitly connect the two scenes and lay out the logic.
And what about Valter's appearance in the prologue, then? If he was exiled from Grado until Evil Vigarde reinstated him, then why was he fighting with the Gradoans in the attack on Renais? He shouldn't have been part of the imperial army anymore!
Yeah, this is why I said before that I think a more polished version of the game wouldn't have had Valter in the prologue, or would've reworked the First Grado Generals Meeting Scene; because while it's technically possible to finagle these facts so they hang together, it requires making a lot of unsupported assumptions and ignoring all the contexual clues that are at odds with all the easiest ways to reconcile the info we're given.
It's a shame, though, that Valter's big scene came at Glen's expense. No, I don't mean the fact that he died; I mean the expense of Glen's existence as an interesting character. We're introduced to him in Chapter 3 as the outspoken hothead of the generals, already willing to say things like, "I fear the emperor is no longer the man we knew." Yet in Chapter 10 and 11 he's so reluctant to believe anything bad about him. If you took out the exchange with Cormag, you could replace Glen with Selena or Duessel without issue, and that's a problem! Furthermore, he barely reacts to Valter's monologue, a mad screed that is just begging to be reacted to. He's lacking presence in his own death scene.
Farewell, Glen. You could have been better. I would have liked to recruit you.
I was very carefully not saying anything about Glen, because yeah, he gets a fair amount of setup like he's going to be important to the plot, and immediately after he sets off to do something that would actually matter to the narrative Valter kills him. There's the potential for an interesting story with this character, but it goes unrealized.
(Mind, I personally found Glen kind of whatever at every step in my own play, but 'this boring guy didn't do anything of interest other than die' is a different kind of disappointing. It's still disppointing)
Glen is one case where I wish there was a developer interview or something that shed light on things, because I'd readily buy either way 'this is a casualty of the game's incomplete state' or 'the writing never had greater ambition with Glen in the first place', and I'm really curious what the answer for this bit is.
Really, jokes aside, it wouldn't even be impossible to have a "boss battle" with the characters just shown in this cutscene. You've got a healer, you've got 3 competent pre-promotes including a Sniper to shoot down the wyverns, the only real weak link would be Eirika depending on her training.
That said, Fire Emblem has attempted forced boss battles and locking characters in rooms for it before... and, well, it isn't always all that great. Path of Radiance in particular spends most of the game hyping up the fight with the Black Knight, then iirc Ike literally has a non-zero chance of losing even at maxed stats because you're both relying on your own Aether procs and hoping the Black Knight doesn't proc Luna too many times.
That's a good point. Eirika has a good reason to be leading a small army through Carcino, but to anyone who isn't privy to her plans, it looks suspicious. And a lot of innocent people did die in Port Kiris, because I didn't try to save the villages.
Oh no. Glen, are you actually planning to go back to the capital and confront the emperor on his actions? That's a bad idea, Glen! You will die! If you demand that the emperor give an accounting of his actions that makes sense to a reasonable person, you won't get one because it doesn't exist! If you let him know that you are no longer willing to follow orders, Grado is going to lose a general and gain a revenant. And then Cormag's probably going to have to flee for his life, too!
Between Glen here and Selena in Ephraim route... I suspect that the Emperor might not have done his initial hiring of generals with a minimum IQ pre-requesite. I mean I understand the reasoning that someone as loyal as Glen who iirc was raised up from a nobody orphan to his position would want to at least confirm things instead of just turning colors at the drop of a hat, but...
Glen: You slaughtered people who had no intention of fighting. The emperor's punishment was just and warranted.
Valter was a member of the Imperial Three? Valter's appointment as a general was actually a reappointment? Well this certainly casts his rivalry with Glen in a whole new light. What did Vigarde expect when he hired a Sunstone and Moonstone at the same time...
Wait, how did he get appointed as a general the first time, when Vigarde was presumably still himself? I mean, we've seen that Valter can restrain himself enough to follow orders and enact plans, but we have seen no evidence that he can refrain from being a massive smug prick. I'm just saying, I would never appoint this guy to a leadership position, and I think the fact that Vigarde did do that kind of undermines everyone's claims about how wise and peaceful he used to be.
And what about Valter's appearance in the prologue, then? If he was exiled from Grado until Evil Vigarde reinstated him, then why was he fighting with the Gradoans in the attack on Renais? He shouldn't have been part of the imperial army anymore!
Terrabrand covered this as well, but basically there's some Deep Lore ™️ stuffed away in a support conversation somewhere that talks about the reason Valter is the way he is, giving him a bit of backstory. Of course you won't know this unless you specifically train two characters, pair them up, and get their support ranks to A. Surprising amount of that in the GBA games, honestly.
By the numbers, their battle could have gone either way – Glen has the damage to kill Valter in three hits, while Valter would normally need four. But, like Seth before him, Glen made the mistake of trying to fight Valter with a sword. Glen misses his first attack, while Valter gets a critical hit (He's wielding a Killer Lance. "Killer". It's a pun, get it?).
Even beyond the raw numbers, Valter has a particular advantage on his side as the alternate promotion to a Wyvern Lord: A Wyvern Knight like Valter gives up access to swords (not a huge deal tbh) and instead gets Pierce, a level-based chance to completely ignore defense when attacking. Combined with getting a crit, and Valter probably does... oh, at least 90 damage in this cutscene?
Pierce isn't super reliable, but when it activates, whatever you've targeted is probably going to die instantly.
Or crash the game, because there's a glitch where if you attack twice in a row and the first hit is a survived pierce hit then your Wyvern Knight might attack too fast and break things. Watch out for that if you train one up, maybe turn off their animations.
Anyways, RIP to Glen, was kind of a character but not really a Camus I guess. Valter is cooler villain anyways.
Quick note on the spoilers there, there's slightly more to it.
It's not that that Valter was given a cursed lance, it's that general Duessel happens to have a cursed lance on him at all times - apparently his family has a duty to defend it at all times, and he figured keeping it on his person made sense.
In combat one day, Valter's lance broke (gameplay mechanics present in story!), and he went and blindly grabbed a lance off of Duessel, which happened to be the cursed one, which resulted in him being Like That.
Granted, it's implied Valter was never particularly well adjusted, and always enjoyed combat maybe a bit too much, but importantly he was at least able to function in polite society enough to rise through the Gradoan ranks, and said cursed lance stripped that away. Which is interesting, and I do appreciate the effort given to explain how someone like Valter could be given a leadership position.
Which, again, this is all in one support conversation between two specific people, and if I remember correctly one of them is entirely optional to recruit, which. Really is actively incredible storytelling.
And what about Valter's appearance in the prologue, then? If he was exiled from Grado until Evil Vigarde reinstated him, then why was he fighting with the Gradoans in the attack on Renais? He shouldn't have been part of the imperial army anymore!
I think the idea is when Evil Vigarde came to be, he went and searched out old Valter, assuming someone like him would be helpful in his Evil Plans, and only after rehiring him he launched his attack on Renais, at which point he pointed Valter in their vague direction and said have fun.
And after that invasion is when Valter was given his rank back, much to the consternation of everyone else in the room.
It's a shame, though, that Valter's big scene came at Glen's expense. No, I don't mean the fact that he died; I mean the expense of Glen's existence as an interesting character. We're introduced to him in Chapter 3 as the outspoken hothead of the generals, already willing to say things like, "I fear the emperor is no longer the man we knew." Yet in Chapter 10 and 11 he's so reluctant to believe anything bad about him. If you took out the exchange with Cormag, you could replace Glen with Selena or Duessel without issue, and that's a problem! Furthermore, he barely reacts to Valter's monologue, a mad screed that is just begging to be reacted to. He's lacking presence in his own death scene.
This really is the worst part here. I like Glen, I think he has an interesting role to serve among the Imperial Three, but in order for him to die here they hand him the idiot ball and strip away his personality.
Which is a shame because, they don't need to? They could've just as easily had him remain savvy of the emperor, and instead of going back for answers, his response to seeing Eirika should be "oh god oh fuck I need to get my brother out of there yesterday this is a Bad Scene."
And upon seeing Valter, he should be immediately on the defensive, ready to fight this man he hates. You can have him try to play off his soon to be desertion, ppretending he's just going back to the capital for answers or clarification, but once he realizes Valter is here to kill him, have Glen drop the pretense and take the first swing at Valter. Because he's not just going to sit there and let him kill him, and he knows what kind of person he's dealing with. Which he already does in gameplay, just have it match the dialogue!
Like you could have him remain hotheaded and with a strong moral compass, and is just tragically cut down before he can act on any of it, and it could make the scene so much stronger.
And upon seeing Valter, he should be immediately on the defensive, ready to fight this man he hates. You can have him try to play off his soon to be desertion, ppretending he's just going back to the capital for answers or clarification, but once he realizes Valter is here to kill him, have Glen drop the pretense and take the first swing at Valter. Because he's not just going to sit there and let him kill him, and he knows what kind of person he's dealing with. Which he already does in gameplay, just have it match the dialogue!
In particular, this is just a minor peeve of mine with the whole "cutscenes translated into direct gameplay fights" like with Valter hitting Seth in the prologue or killing Glen here... I'd say at least let Glen land a hit. Sure. he'll still take a crit pierce to the face and die, but let someone who's supposed to be a major general get at least one finishing blow. Instead, most of the time (at least that I recall) these in-engine FE fights are almost always "and then evil McBadguy dodges and oneshots".
Credit to romhacks on this, I've seen multiple more interesting renditions like "two way out of your league characters fight and deal big damage but fail to kill each other, then both retreat", or more recently one where an NPC fought the final boss for something like 3 or 4 rounds, getting multiple good hits in before finally being taken down.
That said, Fire Emblem has attempted forced boss battles and locking characters in rooms for it before... and, well, it isn't always all that great. Path of Radiance in particular spends most of the game hyping up the fight with the Black Knight, then iirc Ike literally has a non-zero chance of losing even at maxed stats because you're both relying on your own Aether procs and hoping the Black Knight doesn't proc Luna too many times.
Oh god that fucking fight. You're being too generous, the phrase "non-zero" implies the default is above 50%. No actually even with maxxed relevant stats (strength, speed def) and the fancy promotion skill Aether the game is obviously pushing for, it's still like a coin flip on whether Ike can mathematically take him down especially they give the fucker renewal for no good reason.
This really is the worst part here. I like Glen, I think he has an interesting role to serve among the Imperial Three, but in order for him to die here they hand him the idiot ball and strip away his personality.
Which is a shame because, they don't need to? They could've just as easily had him remain savvy of the emperor, and instead of going back for answers, his response to seeing Eirika should be "oh god oh fuck I need to get my brother out of there yesterday this is a Bad Scene."
And upon seeing Valter, he should be immediately on the defensive, ready to fight this man he hates. You can have him try to play off his soon to be desertion, ppretending he's just going back to the capital for answers or clarification, but once he realizes Valter is here to kill him, have Glen drop the pretense and take the first swing at Valter. Because he's not just going to sit there and let him kill him, and he knows what kind of person he's dealing with. Which he already does in gameplay, just have it match the dialogue!
Like you could have him remain hotheaded and with a strong moral compass, and is just tragically cut down before he can act on any of it, and it could make the scene so much stronger.
Honestly yeah this would've been a great variation on the typical "Camus" archetype, of that one enemy general who's a super great guy and sympathetic but just so happens to have the Worst Boss. I think the original worked the best since Kaga was actually trying to lean into the whole "this is medieval times baby" thing where oaths and vassalage are a Big Deal. The more recent versions of this archetypes in the more fantasy/softer settings make me kinda roll my eyes, yeah you're such a great guy who just has to serve lord baby eater.
Honestly one of my favorite recruitments in the series is in FE5 were you have an obvious Loyal Knight/Camus dude but the person speaking to him goes "The Evil Empire is literally, genuinely sacrificing kids in fucking job lots, FUCK YOUR OATHS, what the hell." Caeda's general magical army expansion rizz definitely competes for sheer hilarious Girl Boss energy.
Oh god that fucking fight. You're being too generous, the phrase "non-zero" implies the default is above 50%. No actually even with maxxed relevant stats (strength, speed def) and the fancy promotion skill Aether the game is obviously pushing for, it's still like a coin flip on whether Ike can mathematically take him down especially they give the fucker renewal for no good reason.
Yeah it's been a while so I couldn't remember how blatantly stupid it was. And that's not even getting into it's effectively a solo duel (your only support is Mist as a healer, hope you leveled her up and promoted her so she has a horse and can survive enemy reinforcements), and it takes place after an entire previous map with zero saving inbetween so you can't easily savescum it.
The FE10 remake handles it pretty well, though. The cagematch is still pretty flat, but there is a simultaneous regular chapter going on that is genuinely impacted by how the cage is a giant magic barrier that takes up most of the map. So while the 1vs1 is playing out you are fighting the rest of the enemies in the cramped lettover space.
Welcome back to Restoration Queen, everyone! This chapter starts off simply enough: The party is following Saleh through the mountains, when Eirika calls for a halt.
Saleh tries to get her going again, but Seth primly tells him, "If the princess orders us to stop, we do so, Master Saleh."
Everyone wants to know why Eirika stopped, but she can't really explain it herself. She just has some kind of…bad feeling. This place feels unsafe to her.
Saleh claims to know of no danger here besides the possibility of falling on the steep paths, and Innes observes that, yes, this terrain is very wild and difficult. Does anyone actually live here? I think Innes is suggesting that Saleh is lying to them, which could be a cool plot twist if true. Saleh responds that the village likes its isolation and they don't mind living a simple life. The budding argument ends as monsters appear, vindicating Eirika's intuition.
Saleh claims that this isn't normal – the monsters are supposed to stay in Darkling Woods, but they must have wandered out for some reason. And isn't that interesting, because Myrrh mentioned earlier that Darkling Woods is where the Manakete live. Are the Manakete acting as the monsters' neighbors, or their jailors? And what went wrong to set the monsters loose?
I'll revisit these questions later on, but for now we have a battle to fight. Before starting, I use a Guiding Ring to promote Natasha to a Bishop. This doesn't just give her the ability to use light magic in combat – it gives her effective damage against all monsters. Yes, that includes every enemy on this map!
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.
This map is also where we gain control of Ewan, as I predicted. He is being chased by monsters, also as I predicted.
I didn't predict that he would run inside one of the houses, therefore keeping him safe until you get around to visiting that part of the map. I was imagining that I would have to rush to keep him alive. It's a decision that I have mixed feelings on. On one hand, I do not relish the idea of hinging a unit recruitment on a 15 HP, 0 Defense character surviving deep in enemy territory until you can get to him. On the other hand, this map was quite boring and it could really use some side objectives to liven it up.
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.
This map is big, but this is a case where that just magnifies its flaws. It's boring, it's easy, it takes a while to play – I couldn't take this map fast even though I wanted to, because the narrow paths cause traffic jams!
To give another example, the only deaths I saw were from trying to train Marisa, who is unfortunately fragile.
I was in kind of a bad mood when I first played this. I thought, "Wow, Marisa sucks. Training her is going to be painful." But I had to set the game aside for an appointment, and when I returned the next day my determination was renewed.
Then she died again. Is her allegedly neat personality really worth this? Do I need to invest all this effort in a worse Eirika?
No, I don't need Marisa. This map is such a slog. I don't want to restart again—
Damn it! I reload. There are still no permanently dead units on my roster.
Behold the fruits of my labor. I ferried her across the map to fight an Entombed for that level.
Now, because I believe in serving the bitter with the sweet, I must mention the adventures of Falcoknight Tana, the only person on this map who had fun. Being unbound by the wretched paths of stone, Tana started the chapter by flying north to spear a Mogall, as Pegasus Knights do.
This brought her to a neat level 14, and I immediately used the Elysian Whip, kept in her inventory for the right moment when she didn't have "extra" exp that would be wasted by a promotion.
What followed was nothing less than an adventure. I sent Tana up to the northeast, originally planning to rescue Ewan – okay, take out a few of the local enemies to make the area safe for him, and then rescue Ewan – scope creep set in. There is no time pressure to save him, after all. He's perfectly safe from monsters in that house. So why not send Tana after every enemy in the mountains? Falcoknight Tana had a grand time hunting down Mogalls who couldn't really hurt her and Baels who couldn't really hit her. It involved a decent amount of thinking, too – she's not invincible and I had to monitor her HP carefully.
Tana was so occupied with her new job that Saleh ended up being the one to recruit Ewan, which did involve a unique scene:
Ewan: No way. I wanna be just like you. Why would I go study somewhere else? Take me with you! I've practiced a lot. I can already use all the magic you taught me!
This isn't the first time we've seen it hinted that Saleh's interaction with people is mostly in spite of himself. He has such a monk-like devotion to his mission – whatever it is, probably involving dragons – that he only gets involved with people who insist on seeking him out.
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.
This is the village elder. Her first concern is to ask Saleh about the Great Dragon he's been searching for. Saleh replies that, alas, he's still unsuccessful. He's just returned to Caer Pelyn to grab a few things, update everyone on his (lack of) progress, and head out again to search somewhere else. Also, this small army of strangers insisted on following him.
Innes takes the lead now. He formally introduces himself and asks permission to pass through their territory. The elder's response is probing:
Grandmother: We of Caer Pelyn have turned away from the world outside. The Great Dragon alone holds all of our honor and esteem. In this place, princes and paupers are equals. Do you have a problem with that?
Innes:…No. I understand.
She becomes much friendlier, offering them tea and telling them to call her Grandmother, and insisting that they stay a while. Not even Innes can stand up to her.
In her house, Eirika asks about the Great Dragon the villagers keep mentioning. Grandmother explains that the Great Dragon watches over them – not just the people of Caer Pelyn, but all of Magvel.
Eirika: The hero Grado used the power of the five Sacred Stones to defeat and seal away—
Grandmother: No, no, that's not right at all.
The elder explains that it's the arrogance of mankind to think that they alone were the ones to defeat the Demon King. In truth, he was sealed away by the might of the Great Dragon, who watches over the bones of the Demon King where they lie in Darkling Woods. It's the vigilance of the Great Dragon "alone" which keeps the "dark brood" from swarming out of those woods.
Now, this is so interesting, because the game is presenting us with contradictory legends and challenging us to triangulate what's actually happening. Done well, I really love it when fantasy acknowledges its debt to legend and mythology by presenting multiple stories of what's going on. Done poorly, however, it makes the audience confused, possibly because the writers/translators were confused. And Sacred Stones has not been free from awkward mistakes so far…so I'm going to be reserving judgment until I have all the clues.
See, Grandmother's story immediately invites some questions. If the Great Dragon did everything, then what are the Sacred Stones for? If the Sacred Stones don't actually hold back the Demon King, then why are the bad guys trying to break them? Is the Great Dragon just one person, or the whole Manakete tribe? If the Great Dragon is one person, singlehandedly holding back the Demon King, then are the monsters appearing because they left their post? Why would they do that? Is Myrrh the Great Dragon? If so, then how did a high-tier badass who defeated the Demon King get captured and then rescued by ordinary humans (okay, Ephraim is also a badass, but you know what I mean – it seems unlikely that early-game Ephraim could offer meaningful help to an ancient dragon on the same tier as the Demon King).
Some questions are so obvious that even Eirika has to bring them up. Politely, she asks the elder: If the Great Dragon is keeping us all safe from monsters, then why has she seen monsters all over Magvel and right here in Caer Pelyn?
The dark energy that Myrrh mentioned, located around Grado Keep. The Great Dragon left Darkling Woods to investigate it, and Grandmother volunteered Saleh as a guide and guard. However, the two were separated by the upheaval going on in Magvel and since then Saleh has been worriedly searching for the missing dragon.
It's still not clear whether there's one dragon or many; whether Myrrh leaving Darkling Woods was a cause or a consequence of the monsters breaking free of their seal. But those questions can be answered later, because Eirika is realizing something important:
Amazing! I genuinely believed that the writers had forgotten about Eirika and Myrrh's first meeting! But, no, they remember, and Eirika remembers too, finally, and it's an epistemic relief as the conversants realize they know the same person by two different names.
There's also a funny moment where Grandmother snaps at Eirika for using the word "Manakete" instead of the properly respectful "Great Dragon."
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). The elder yells for Saleh and orders him to get to Prince Ephraim, quick-quick, so he can finally fulfill his duty to the Great Dragon! Because he's a recruited character threatening to leave – and such a useful character, too! – the others all point out that the safest route to Grado from here passes through Jehanna, so he should accompany them for a while.
When it comes time to leave, Innes and Eirika thank the elder. She tells Eirika privately to look after Saleh. Although everyone calls her Grandmother, he is actually her grandchild by blood and she cares for him. That makes me revise my estimate of his age downward a bit, as I have been thinking of him as a grumpy greying hermit this whole time. Now he seems more like Myrrh's Seth.
And with that, I proceed – backwards, to do a bunch of grinding, because I want to get Ewan and Marisa and L'Arachel to more useful states. What awaits in the Tower of Valni? Can I avoid getting too powerful? Will Eirika finally unlock a support with a girl? Find out next time, on Restoration Queen!
I'll revisit these questions later on, but for now we have a battle to fight. Before starting, I use a Guiding Ring to promote Natasha to a Bishop. This doesn't just give her the ability to use light magic in combat – it gives her effective damage against all monsters. Yes, that includes every enemy on this map!
Awwww yeah, Bishops Time. Arguably, making Natasha a Valkyrie instead of a Bishop is a viable option because Horse (where Arthur and especially Moulder have little reason to go Sage when instead they could be getting that triple damage against monsters), but I'd still probably make Natasha a Bishop myself if I were using her. L'Arachel also has Valkyrie as an option, after all, which has exactly the same stat gains and caps as Mage Knight but gives Light Magic in a game heavily dominated by Dark Magic as you get farther in (even if Anima tomes are generally a bit better than their Light equivalents).
But anyways, prepare for Natasha to now be able to absolutely nuke any monster units she approaches... though of course, she's still a remarkably squishy unit, so probably make sure she's the one initiating the combat.
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.
Yeaaaah, when I was talking before about maps and objectives and boring maps... Chapter 12 is a stick in the mud for Eirika route, after 9, 10 and 11 were all pretty good about things like splitting your forces for multiple timed objectives. In particular, until recently I thought that at least some monster types like Baels might be able to destroy villages. That, at least, would put Ewan under the timed threat of the spiders slowly skittering down the mountains towards his location, but nope. Just a slog of narrow peaks to aw
No matter how good or bad a unit is supposed to be... there's always a part of the brain that pops off when you get a perfect or near perfect level, that's for sure!
Of course there's also the opposite when someone you're training levels up, looks at the screen and says "sorry, just Skill/Luck". Or even better, an empty level.
This brought her to a neat level 14, and I immediately used the Elysian Whip, kept in her inventory for the right moment when she didn't have "extra" exp that would be wasted by a promotion.
What followed was nothing less than an adventure. I sent Tana up to the northeast, originally planning to rescue Ewan – okay, take out a few of the local enemies to make the area safe for him, and then rescue Ewan – scope creep set in. There is no time pressure to save him, after all. He's perfectly safe from monsters in that house. So why not send Tana after every enemy in the mountains? Falcoknight Tana had a grand time hunting down Mogalls who couldn't really hurt her and Baels who couldn't really hit her. It involved a decent amount of thinking, too – she's not invincible and I had to monitor her HP carefully.
Oh, we're going with Falco Knight Tana? Neat, and honestly more fitting than the fact that for some reason your pegasus knights can spontaneously go "yo fuck dis shit I want a WYVERN". Wyvern Knight is generally a better promotion because swords aren't particularly needed and the additional +3 Constitution in comparison is great for a class that uses heavier weapons (no more getting slowed down by freaking iron lances), not to mention Pierce being occasionally useful when it procs.
Or it procs on a ranged attack and crashes your game, either or whoops
Somehow, someway, I managed to grind up Ewan to level 10 on this map - mostly through the use of a LOT of unarmed meatshields, and most hilariously grinding out his Anima rank to D against the boss just so he could upgrade to Thunder to do the 1-2 damage necessary for chip EXP.
But yes, Ewan joins far too late to be particularly useful as a trainee without either a metric ton of babying (which I wasn't willing to do and ended up dumping him next chapter), or of course outside grinding like the Tower of Valni. That said he is one of your very few dark magic options if you make him a Shaman instead of a Mage, which is probably worthwhile considering you already have multiple Mage/Sage/Mage Knight options on the table. Plus, Shaman's promotions if you do decide to grind Ewan out... well, Druid is just "Bigger Shaman" as you'd expect, but the other option is one entirely unique to this game that has some absolutely wild capabilities you can abuse.
The elder explains that it's the arrogance of mankind to think that they alone were the ones to defeat the Demon King. In truth, he was sealed away by the might of the Great Dragon, who watches over the bones of the Demon King where they lie in Darkling Woods. It's the vigilance of the Great Dragon "alone" which keeps the "dark brood" from swarming out of those woods.
Now, this is so interesting, because the game is presenting us with contradictory legends and challenging us to triangulate what's actually happening. Done well, I really love it when fantasy acknowledges its debt to legend and mythology by presenting multiple stories of what's going on. Done poorly, however, it makes the audience confused, possibly because the writers/translators were confused. And Sacred Stones has not been free from awkward mistakes so far…so I'm going to be reserving judgment until I have all the clues.
See, Grandmother's story immediately invites some questions. If the Great Dragon did everything, then what are the Sacred Stones for? If the Sacred Stones don't actually hold back the Demon King, then why are the bad guys trying to break them? Is the Great Dragon just one person, or the whole Manakete tribe? If the Great Dragon is one person, singlehandedly holding back the Demon King, then are the monsters appearing because they left their post? Why would they do that? Is Myrrh the Great Dragon? If so, then how did a high-tier badass who defeated the Demon King get captured and then rescued by ordinary humans (okay, Ephraim is also a badass, but you know what I mean – it seems unlikely that early-game Ephraim could offer meaningful help to an ancient dragon on the same tier as the Demon King).
Personally, I'd guess it's somewhere inbetween - the Great Dragon was in fact forgotten by everyone else, but I doubt they were single-handedly responsible for beating down the Demon King and his monster armies. Otherwise, why would things like the Sacred Stones and Legendary Weapons even exist?
L'Arachel's perfectly timed blink for this screenshot giving me some "Eirika hold me back I'm going to beat this old woman senseless with my staff" energy
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.
On one hand, I do not relish the idea of hinging a unit recruitment on a 15 HP, 0 Defense character surviving deep in enemy territory until you can get to him.
Now, because I believe in serving the bitter with the sweet, I must mention the adventures of Falcoknight Tana, the only person on this map who had fun. Being unbound by the wretched paths of stone, Tana started the chapter by flying north to spear a Mogall, as Pegasus Knights do.
I only mostly joke, but Tana's been the MVP of most challenge runs of Sacred Stones that I've done(besides the no mounted units run where Gerik won that trophy).
What followed was nothing less than an adventure. I sent Tana up to the northeast, originally planning to rescue Ewan – okay, take out a few of the local enemies to make the area safe for him, and then rescue Ewan – scope creep set in. There is no time pressure to save him, after all. He's perfectly safe from monsters in that house. So why not send Tana after every enemy in the mountains? Falcoknight Tana had a grand time hunting down Mogalls who couldn't really hurt her and Baels who couldn't really hit her. It involved a decent amount of thinking, too – she's not invincible and I had to monitor her HP carefully.
Now, this is so interesting, because the game is presenting us with contradictory legends and challenging us to triangulate what's actually happening. Done well, I really love it when fantasy acknowledges its debt to legend and mythology by presenting multiple stories of what's going on. Done poorly, however, it makes the audience confused, possibly because the writers/translators were confused. And Sacred Stones has not been free from awkward mistakes so far…so I'm going to be reserving judgment until I have all the clues.
I really like this aspect of it and shall not comment either way about how well it's maintained.
In general, I find the better written FE games play a lot with different cultures looking at the same event different in myth and most often all of them are partially correct and partially wrong.
I'll revisit these questions later on, but for now we have a battle to fight. Before starting, I use a Guiding Ring to promote Natasha to a Bishop. This doesn't just give her the ability to use light magic in combat – it gives her effective damage against all monsters. Yes, that includes every enemy on this map!
yeah this is what I've been alluding to with Bishops having a special skill and it being too useful. Big shock, in the game where the narrative has the big mystery be WHY ARE THERE MONSTERS EVERYWHERE and where we keep hearing about a demon king, triple damage vs monsters is a lot more useful than practically anything any other class brings to the table.
(okay. It's triple might for weapons, if you want to be technical. This is even important due to the fact that: A, it means Bishops get disproportionate benefit from stronger tomes, and B: there's a tome that already does effective damage vs monsters but only x2 that the bishop bonus of x3 does not override)
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.
Incidentally Saleh is the character with the worse growths in the game, which excellently demonstrates why growth rates are particularly not important in Sacred Stones compared to things like base stats and class features. Sure, on average he'll gain one whole stat point less than Erika each level, but it's far more important whether he happens to level well or not, the fact that his growth rates are a little poor isn't to any real extent what will hold him back.
(that's things like the fact that a properly leveled level 1 Sage Lute is better than him on average in every area but skill and HP. That he grows a bit slow is mostly to his detriment in that he's unlikely to turn things around if someone else in the same class has passed him, but growths really don't matter very much to overall character quality/who you should use in sacred stones)
Aaahh this map consistently competitive in the list of "Worst Map" due to being a very narrow corridor that you slowly march through, with a small "engagement" perimeter so yeah like you said it's not really threatening, just a slog. I guess if you have Vanessa and Tana trained up you can try javelining half the map as the poor non flyers trundle forth but eh.
