Truly Grado is fortunate to have such driven, hardworking people rising to the challenges ahead, but you three need be sure you're getting enough sleep, those eye bags are making you look almost sinister!
Oh shit Sacred Stones! I've got a giant soft spot for this entry in the series and think the gameplay and writing deserve more kudos than they get!
Though @DragonUnitOmega have to agree with wanting to vibrate out of my seat to discuss Seth--purely from a gameplay perspective. Growth rates have been mentioned so might not count as spoilers? Serenes Forrest is a pretty good source for silo'ed info. Like there's a page of all growth rates without any adds or mentions of other stuff. I guess the main spoiler would be who can be recruited.
Sacred Stones supports. I cans till remember just endlessly passing turns every time I got a new unit so I could see all the Supports then go back to the real save.
GBA supports tend to grow pretty slowly, with the exception of certain characters. Compared to later games, you also have a much shorter support list with each character, pre-mod, only supporting between 3 and 7 characters. Most characters have 4-6 and only your lords have 7 options.
One other thing that's... annoying, but promotes replay is that you can get 5 support ranks total per character. So, 5 C supports would be a max, 1 A and 1 B, 1 A and 2 C's, etc.
Colm and Neimi are unique in that they start with a C if you want it, while everyone else grows slowly and you're bet is a good one for growing them. Their is a cap on how many support points a unit can gain per map as well though.
(Note: Colm and Neimi C is the only conversation I've unlocked so far, and that worries my shipper's heart. I'm used to unlocking more supports than that in the first few chapters, but then again I don't actually know how to raise support points in this game. They keep tweaking it. Fighting with another character next to you is usually a good bet, though.)
Okay so the way you build supports in the gba emblems is very specific and kinda annoying.
You have to plant the units right next to each other and they slowly gain support points every turn they're adjacent. The best way to do this is to get on a map that's either seize, or where the boss will happily sit in place for 100 turns and plant your units next to each other until they build their next support rank. You can wait even longer to get enough points to build the rank after that but you can only increase a support rank once each battle so you'd only be able to get the next rank when the next chapter rolls over. You will never build supports from playing the game normally.
Oh. Someone already explained how supports work. note from future self: nope not all of it, as you'll see from me rambling about the system lol. i enjoy these games so much
Yeah, this is what I meant by "restrictive", at most, if you want to get a paired ending, you can only have one A support and either two C's or one B. And as someone who is a sucker for supports, while I get the replay value, I'd rather have it all in one save file, especially since supports are the main way of adding more personality and such to characters that might otherwise not get it.
The speed of getting it though...my perception of fhe actual rate is very, very skewed (with 1337's post above all the more confirming it for me), because again, I tend to grind for supports, even in later games, because of how supports work in the GBA games. So I tend to get supports pretty early, like aforementioned Eirika and Seth, or at a rate that doesn't feel different from later games, despite, as 1337Procrast said, how slow it can get, because in terms of actual requirements...
C rank require 80, B require 160 in total (aka another 80), and A require 240 (i think you know the pattern now). Each unit starts with "base" support points with certain units, like Seth already has a base 25 support points with Eirika but only 15 with Franz. And only that, the amount of support points they gain per turn is different too. Typically you gain +2 each turn, but certain get more than that with certain other units, like Seth who he gets +3 every turn with Eirika or Colm and Neimi gaining +3, or Garcia, who gets +4 with Ross, though the higest number is +4. And as 1337Procrast said, the only way of raising points is standing beside each other on the map. Having more battles together does not speed it up, like in Awakening or Fates. But I don't really notice how slow it is...except in Binding Blade, because the support system is even MORE restrictive in there, iirc, which thankfully is NOT in here.
Another thing to note about supports are those symbols on the stat screens beside the category "Affinity" (or rather "Affin" on the actual status screen). These affect the bonuses units gain from each other when they raise their supports, kinda like the stat bonuses you get from pairing up in Awakening, but unlike Awakening, they're so minor it usually doesn't matter. Each affinities raises different things but there is a lot of overlap, like Light and Fire both raising +0.5 attack (aka both strength and magic). To use Colm and Neimi as an example othis time, with their Light and Fire affinities respectively, at A rank, their bonuses would be: +3 attack, +15 accuracy, +7 avoid, and +15 crit, from adding Light and Fire's bonuses and multiplied by their support level. So yeah, not much, at least compared to bonuses in later games, and I usually do supports for the story instead of gameplay anyway, so it's not a problem. But I do appreciate every little bit I can get in some cases.
Speaking of Neimi and Colm! Gameplay wise, these two are...not really the best...Neimi especially. While Colm at least has utility as a Thief that can unlock doors and chests, and can steal items and [REMOVED BY ANANKOS] (i just realized yet again i have to withhold info since later games don't really have this...i think. iirc), Neimi, while having some good growth rates on her offensive stats, comes with poor base stats and in a class that isn't really good in most games. This game is not one of the few exceptions. So most people consider her terrible. I don't blame anyone for thinking that. Me, however...I really like using her, and Colm too, even though they're not really good offensive units. In Colm's case I like raising him so I don't have to worry about my Thief dying on me while he's off looting and stealing, while Neimi, I just like using ranged when I can, not to mention the support these two have (which, well, isn't a stand-out in itself, but I'm still fond of it anyway, much like the two of them). So they were staples in my first playthrough, all the way to the endgame... Except, well, remember that one unit death I regret? The death that basically cemented in my mind that I did not want to lose any characters, even if they're not favorites? That was Neimi. She died in the second-to-last chapter in my first playthrough of the game, and normally, I'd reset. But I was a kid, the map was VERY hard to me then, and it took me hours to reach near the end, so I bitterly kept going. I thought it'd be fine. It was an old game. Surely nothing will happen because of her dying. But then, I swear, Colm's ending got affected and was different from his normal solo ending if he didn't have a support with her, like some of the character endigs in Shadows of Valentia. But since it was so long ago and I can't seem to find info on it online, I can't be sure if that's what happened (and I'll fill you guys in if I find out), but that's what I remember. Colm, with an A support with Neimi, had a grieving ending when she died, and I felt utterly terrible about it. And that was all the incentive I needed to all the more reset whenever a character dies, no matter how far into a map I get. This has caused me a LOT of frustration (like that one time I was doing a classic run of Awakening and I literally was about to beat a chapter, it was only the boss left...but my tiredness miscalculated its range and one of my units died), but never enough to change my mind about not wanting characters to die. Especially since in a later games it's easier to reset in the middle of a map/chapter if I make a mistake/miscalculation/have bad luck.
Oh, and as Graveless said, Thieves can steal non-weapons from others, so enemies can steal from you, but that means you can also steal from enemies, including bosses. I know there are items you can only get from stealing in the other GBA games, like from a certain boss in Binding Blade, but I forget if there's any in this game... All I can say is that this is one of the reason why I raised Colm. I didn't want to lose out on any rare goodies that I could only get by stealing from bosses, along with aforementioned not having to worry too much on sending my thief all on his own. Especially since I had no idea if, and when, would another Thief be available.
This was one of the supports I was worried they changed because of the one screenshot. I was worried they would outright remove Neimi's crybaby traits since I only had that one screenshot, the one shown here, and it did not instill confidence in me. But after actually reading the support log for this mod though, I found that, no, they didn't. The context from the later lines made me not mind the line change anymore, and I can see why they made it that way. I won't say anything more since that'd spoil the rest of their support, but for the most part, from what I remember and comparing it to the mod, it feels fine for me now.
Hanging back, just a little. Never speaking, never directly taking part in the action. Since they've never spoken, I've never seen their portrait, and I don't have any more details about them. But, if Emperor Vigarde really is being controlled by an evil sorcerer, wouldn't it make sense for that person to be hanging around his side at all times?
Huh. Here I thought that character already talked at that point. I must be mixing up scenes then...
Three: this is where, after my first playthrough, I'd grind Ross up with the good ol', chip the stationary boss, wait for him to heal on the "throne", rinse and repeat, strategy, because I like having him level 10 as soon as possible, but only Ross. I don't go and grind everyone else with this strat. Again, just like Ross being level 10 ASAP. I otherwise don't use this strat because of the time it takes, and I already take my time.
And four: yeah, agree with Graveless again (though in Subaki's case, he, ironically for his character, does not has very odd growth rates that end up making him not really good. For some reason. I'd suspect irony points, or encouraging you to reclass him, but considering Fates was a mess, I wouldn't be surprised if they just didn't think it through enough), pegasus knights suffer from frail defenses when in most games enemies don't use magic in their forces often, so their often high resistance isn't usually all that helpful, and so it's no surprise Vanessa keeps dying. ...though it doesn't help you can't lock in ranges in the GBA games and thus it's easy to lose track of what can kill who... They only added it starting Path of Radiance. So yeah. I'm expecting more Vanessa deaths. Hopefully not to an annoying degree, but I'm not that hopeful because...spoilers.
Though @DragonUnitOmega have to agree with wanting to vibrate out of my seat to discuss Seth--purely from a gameplay perspective. Growth rates have been mentioned so might not count as spoilers? Serenes Forrest is a pretty good source for silo'ed info. Like there's a page of all growth rates without any adds or mentions of other stuff. I guess the main spoiler would be who can be recruited.
As far as I can tell, no. They shifted some ranks to allow for new pairings, and thus endings, but in turn removed the ones from whoever they shifted from. I can't say which ones because they're all spoilers, but you can find the support log for the mod through the link to said mod in the OP of the thread, if you wanna see yourself without playing it.
And then Seth comes to the Rescue. Rescue is a mechanic in this game that lets one unit carry another. While being carried, a unit can't take turns, but they can't be targeted by enemies either. It's useful for two main purposes: shielding a character that's in danger, or ferrying low-movement units with higher-movement ones.
You list only the intended purposes: the actual uses are far more varied. Unfortunately, Rescue is possibly the most broken, mindbendingly stupid mechanic in its implications in the entire series, so I'm going to hold off on rattling off all the stupid nonsense you can get up to with Rescue, since you seem to be trying to play the game 'honestly'.
Unless you ask to hear about the nonsense, anyway.
Eirika's silk-over-steel personality is fantastic. She's probably my favorite character in all of Fire Emblem, in spite of Sacred Stones' myriad issues.
Seth is honestly far more useful completely unarmed, so you can bait out dangerous enemies safely to feed to characters who need the experience. Outside one obnoxious exception, this is completely safe for nearly half the game.
I'm sure you won't be shocked at how Eirika responds. What follows is a clever hidden tutorial (hidden, in that it involves the player being convinced to do things by events in the game, as opposed to arrows and text boxes saying 'do the thing!') that teaches the new player about rescuing, healing, unit recruitment, and the utility/weakness of flying units.
It also stealthily teaches the player that Vanessa has Canto, and so can continue moving after Rescuing. This mechanic is never explicitly explained in SS, I'm pretty sure, but you can't be entirely oblivious to it thanks to this sequence.
All mounted units have Canto, for reference, and it applies to all Rescue-related actions plus to inventory management. (By which I mostly mean trading items with other units, and interacting with the Convoy)
His class raises an eyebrow: Journeyman. I suppose he is the game's Donnel? Well, I think the proper name for the archetype is 'Est' or 'Amelia' or something, but my first FE was Awakening, so I will always associate this archetype with him: the plucky youngster, eager to prove himself, that starts horribly weak but will (ostensibly) become strong with enough careful training. However, as someone who went through a lot of pain to train Donnel and only ever got mediocre results, I don't want to go through the same thing again.
Archers are actually generally high in Strength in the GBA games, oddly. (Neimi's expected Strength when maxed under a specific promotion is less than 1 below her expected Skill, even though the Promotion's Skill cap is several points higher than its Strength cap, for example) Their effective accuracy is also sub-par since Bows don't get Weapon Triangle advantage and don't make up for it particularly in their base accuracy. (In fact, in SS Bows are generally 5 less accuracy than an equivalent Sword)
High accuracy is clearly intended to be a GBA Archer thing, but the devs didn't really land it. I'm genuinely not sure they ever noticed they didn't land it, either.
Like Archers, that's the theory, but Colm is actually a perfectly fine combatant. Enemy Thieves suck, with laughable stats and a refusal to promote in later missions, but Colm is mostly a little frail, typically, and isn't burdened with an allergy to promoting like various other player Thieves in this series, so he never falls off.
(Note: Colm and Neimi C is the only conversation I've unlocked so far, and that worries my shipper's heart. I'm used to unlocking more supports than that in the first few chapters, but then again I don't actually know how to raise support points in this game. They keep tweaking it. Fighting with another character next to you is usually a good bet, though.)
Colm and Neimi start out with exactly enough points for rank C. Other Supports start with some points in them, but nobody else is ready immediately like Colm and Neimi are.
In SS, you get points by ending turns orthogonally adjacent to each other. As in, when the player phase ends, people next to each other all gain points. (Assuming they can Support, of course) Being Rescued counts as being next to your Rescuer, at least.
Points accrue slowly, unfortunately. (2, 3, or 4 points per turn, depending on individual Support, when each rank requires 80 points) You basically have to grind for 20-40 turns per rank. And you can't do it all at once, because the points will refuse to rise high enough to reach the following rank. (That is, you grind to C, which is 80 points, and you can grind up 79 more points to do B on the next map, but any points you ground past that are wasted) So basically what you do is identify who all you want to Support, get a map close to completion, set everyone up in their positions, mash End Turn 40 times, initiate/read all the Support conversations, then win the map and repeat the process on the next map where this is possible to do.
The GBA games have awful Support mechanics, especially considering they're meant to be people bonding in battle, not people taking an extended coffee break right in front of the boss while said boss yells ineffectually at them to get over here and fight already. In their defense, Geneology of the Holy War's marriage mechanics were the only prior attempt at this concept (Support bonuses exist in other earlier games, but as static effects pre-defned by the developers, not something the player causes to happen), and its version wasn't exactly stellar either.
But they're still bad and I keep meaning to check if there's a Sacred Stones romhack that replaces them with something less stupid.
Only your primary Lord can Seize. Ephraim can Seize if you take his route, otherwise Eirika Seizes, and either way the other twin can't.
Also, non-Lords being able to Seize was in fact a crazy innovation brought in by later games. Marth's games are particularly insistent on 'you win the map by having Marth Seize', and are where the series all started.
The battle over, Neimi starts to break down, as she releases all the fear she felt for her friend. Colm finally apologizes for his actions, or one of them at least. He tries to cheer her up by showing her what he stole from the bandit lair: a mirror. Neimi's mirror, actually, inherited from her mother. And if that sounds unimpressive to any of you, just remember that in pre-modern times mirrors were expensive artisan items and usually really nicely decorated. You couldn't just slap a large mirror on your bathroom wall as a matter of course. There's a hallway lined with mirrors in the palace of Versailles, and that was King Louis XIV showing off how stupidly rich he was.
Neimi's so touched that she starts crying even harder. She can't even speak.
I like Colm and Neimi's dynamic. Colm is verbally abrasive, but clearly knows what matters to Neimi and acts in accordance to that, so you can see why she likes him enough for them to Support (They have one of the fastest-growing Supports, in fact) even though she clearly doesn't like how he talks to her.
'Actions speak louder than words' seems appropriate to bring up here.
Interestingly, Valter already referred to himself as a general when we met him in the prologue. It seems that the promotions took place during the campaign, and this meeting is simply an official welcoming ceremony of sorts. Also, the reveal of their sick new titles. I wonder if Selena, Glen and Duessel have those too?
I like your theory, but most likely this is straight-up an oversight; SS is very, very rushed, and has a lot of jank resulting from that, where the writing is unambiguously inconsistent with itself (Even aside some localization errors) and just generally progresses in odd ways.
I personally suspect a properly polished version of Sacred Stones would not have had Valter in the opening at all. I suspect the devs were thinking of the plot differently when that opening was constructed as compared against what the final product ended up being... can't really talk further on this without spoilers, though, so enough on that point!
But there's one more character in the scene, standing beside the throne. Someone in heavy robes and shoulderpads. Following a hunch, I checked my screenshots of the prologue as well, and this character (or someone in the same class) also accompanied the Gradoan soldiers when they invaded King Fado's throne room.
Hanging back, just a little. Never speaking, never directly taking part in the action. Since they've never spoken, I've never seen their portrait, and I don't have any more details about them. But, if Emperor Vigarde really is being controlled by an evil sorcerer, wouldn't it make sense for that person to be hanging around his side at all times?
You know, I think I understand now why people say that Eirika is a weak character. She can't kill an enemy in her tutorial chapter with a critical hit – she starts with 4 Strength, which is not ideal for someone who uses a sword – and is so fragile that those same enemies can kill her in two hits. Sure, they only have a 39 percent chance to land those hits, but it's still not comfortable. Let's say Eirika were to get hit during this first battle, taking 9 away from her HP and leaving her with 7. If you use Seth to then kill one of the two fighters in front of her, your turn would be over because all of your units have moved. Then, the remaining fighter would go, attack Eirika, and – if he got lucky and hit – kill her. Game over. On the tutorial battle.
I think this fandom opinion of Eirika is about 15% truth and about 85% weird, at least partially sexist thought processes I can't pretend to entirely understand.
But first, since you explicitly noted you come from Awakening-onward land, I should explain a paradigm shift in the series you're on the wrong side of:
Yes, Eirika does suck, but she sucks mostly because that's just how Lords were designed in this period of the series. Awakening and onward gives Lords (And other 'main characters', like the royals in Fates) good bases, good growths, good classes, unique powerful mechanics (eg Dragonstones in Fates), and more esoteric unique benefits. (eg how the player character can Support with literally everybody in Awakening and Fates)
When Eirika came along, though, Lords always started off bad and maybe got good eventually. She's depressing compared to Corrin or Robin or Chrom or whoever, yes, but she's honestly a far sight better than Roy, ie the Lord of two games ago, and it's Lords like Roy who are her actual peers in a design sense, not folks like Robin.
As for that 15% truth bit...
Eirika has one obvious, unavoidable, moderately severe flaw;
Her Constitution is terrible.
She has the same starting Constitution as a literal child, because the GBA games think even women who regularly swing around a heavy piece of steel in combat have all the muscle definition and body mass of a prepubescent boy. There are other characters with lower base Constitution, but Eirika is arguably the character most meaningfully hurt by her base Constitution being low. Without getting into details, other characters with low Constitution largely use lighter weapons, or don't use weapons at all, and/or have other mechanics that actually benefit from having low Constitution. For example, Vanessa has the same Constitution as Eirika, but she's mounted, and mounted units use a different Constitution/Rescue formula from foot units; Vanessa can carry a total Constitution of 20 on her pegasus, counting her own Constitution, and so her 5 base Constitution is actually freeing her up to carry up to 15 Constitution of weight. For Eirika, she instead can only Rescue people whose Constitution is lower than her own, which means literally 2 characters in the entire game.
(Incidentally, the Rescue formula is one of the most baffling bits of FE sexism, in that there's actually three Rescue formulas: one for most units, one for mounted men, and one for mounted women. Inexplicably, mounted women have 5 less carrying capacity than mounted men, even though one presumes the total carrying limit is representing the mount's ability to carry a load. Why does putting a lady on a horse actually reduce its carrying capacity by 5 units beyond her actual weight compared to if an equally-heavy man was put on the same horse? This only gets more nonsensical when you consider that FE women tend to dress more lightly than FE men...)
Anyway, this low Constitution means that Eirika suffers a Speed penalty when using any Sword heavier than an Iron Sword. Of the game's 23 Swords, only 6 of them are within her initial weight tolerance. (Mind, this is misleading: 1 of those Swords is not accessible without hacking nowadays, and one of the Swords outside her tolerance is enemy-only. It's more accurate to say she can use 5 out of 21 Swords without weight issue)
Her strength growth, however, is only 40%.
Praise the gods, for they have blessed us today. Eirika has five strength! That's just one more damage per hit – but it means she can kill an axeman on her own now! YES!!!
... her poor starting Strength and unreliable Strength growth, in that an Eirika whose Strength stays awkwardly low may find that equipping a stronger weapon to let her finish a foe isn't actually a solution: equipping a Steel Sword will raise her per-hit damage, but if it drags her Speed down far enough she's no longer doubling her target (Which is probable, given a Steel Sword is 5 points too heavy for her, and so she has to outspeed a target by 9 points to still double them), then probably it's not actually enabling a kill. That can (And has, in some of my runs) produce frustrating periods where Eirika is perpetually not only too weak to carry the day herself but in fact so weak even feeding kills to her is difficult, in turn extending this period of weakness since it slows down her leveling.
Notably, Eirika's low Constitution isn't very fixable. There's a thing you can potentially do eventually to partially ablate the issue, but the qualifiers I'm attaching to that statement should be telling all their own without need for me to do Spoiler Detail Stuff. So if you have the experience I just described, it's easy to have this impression Eirika is just Doomed To Suck for a clear mechanical reason you can look at and pin all the blame on. You can even directly compare her Constitution to, say, Roy of 2 games ago and say to yourself 'Roy has 1 more Constitution, that must be why he felt stronger in my run of his game!' and stay satisfied with the credibility of this reasonable-seeming theory.
However, you might of picked up on the fact that I'm describing a specific RNG state producing this result. An Eirika who manages to hit her Strength growth a decent amount early on -I'm talking just getting 3 Strength from her first 10 levels, even though that's actually below her Strength growth's average- does just fine. It's also not unusual for her Speed to be perpetually so high she can shrug off the Speed penalties from using a heavier weapon, so long as you don't fixate on the heaviest weapons; I've had a couple runs where Eirika's Strength was a little lower than I wanted throughout the entire run and it just meant I had her killing people with a weapon you haven't seen yet that was a little too heavy for her. No biggie.
Crucially, the Strength point is fixable; if a given run's Eirika genuinely misses her Strength growth unreasonably often, you can just feed Eirika a Strength booster or two to pull her out of the Pit Of Suck. You get opportunities at such items early enough it's only the absolute earliest missions where you might have to just put up with Eirika whiffing her Strength growth 4 times in a row.
Honestly, the actual Main Flaw with Eirika in my experience is that her base HP is genuinally dismal... and for me personally that just makes it easier to decide on who to give my first HP-boosting item to, since there's no way she'll 'waste' it by capping her HP. It's vaguely annoying in the early missions before you get your first HP booster, but those earliest missions are mostly pretty easy anyway.
(Okay, and I have things to say about her promotion, but A: Spoiler Talk, and B: Roy is more depressing)
Notably as far as weird-thought-process stuff, Eirika is actually, in terms of stats and growths, just a straight upgrade over Lyn (The immediately-previous Sword-wielding Lord lady person), being equal-or-better in every way, yet people don't regularly insist Lyn is a horribly weak Lord the way you see people claiming about Eirika. Which is especially striking when the consensus is that Lyn is in the harder, more demanding game, where you'd expect players to be quicker to judge characters as weak links that are holding the player back.
As a seemingly-random-aside: Lyn's game shoves her into the background with basically no dialogue ever again after the extended tutorial is done pretending she's in any way important to the plot, and yet rather conspicuously people broadly express great fondness for Lyn as A Great Female Representation Character. ("I love it when women are superficially played up as important and plot-central and then immediately shoved into a closet and ignored forever once Actually Important Plot starts!" -a lot of people who like Blazing Blade, apparently)
So here's Eirika, who is mechanically just plain better than Lyn (Well, I'm ignoring promotions, but without talking spoilers I'd argue Eirika's is better than Lyn's too), and unlike Lyn actually is a central driver of her game's core plot, meaning there's a very good argument she's also better than Lyn at Female Lord Representation In My Fire Emblems, but... people find critical things to say about her in a way they don't do with Lyn. Where said things are unambiguously more applicable to Lyn than to Eirika.
So the whole thing comes across to me like Eirika draws this criticism less because the criticism is accurate (Because it's really not that accurate, when it gets down to it, not in context) and more because Eirika being a prominent lady character gets her scrutinized differently from prior male Lords and also differently from the previous female Lord whose game only temporarily pretended was in any way important.
(This whole 'Eirika is so weak' thing initially just confused me, honestly; I started with Sacred Stones and then largely worked my way backwards, and was dismayed to find that almost every prior Lord was even more frustratingly incompetent/unreliable/needing substantial babying to have any chance of ever ceasing to suck. The stuff I just laid out is a theory that's slowly gelled over the years for why people might widely repeat this notion I found to be essentially counterfactual, not what I first jumped to or anything)
This was absolutely my experience in my Sacred Stones run. (which I played like two months ago?) My Eirika was speed blessed enough she just ate the steel sword penalty without complaint. She still hit a point of mediocrity but well SPOILER saved her.
I agree on a lot of the vibes of Eirika as being pretty solid? My main complaints come from comparing her to other units in SS and then getting mad about it. I fed her my first Def booster and she was solidly durable and dodgey enough to trust holding a front herself for a long while.
And god… con. I'm waiting on specific characters to show up before getting mad about con lmao.
I would say Lyn gameplay wise gets hard carried by her Special Weapon, which is also super effective against calvary and knights which her maps have aplenty. Also Lyn mode doesn't actually get a Jeigan, so everyone is forced to carry their weight.
I also think Erika gets hit hard by Sacred Stone's higher power curve in general. We aren't at Radisnt Dawn and onwards levels of number inflation but I think SS as a whole has bigger numbers for your units.
otably as far as weird-thought-process stuff, Eirika is actually, in terms of stats and growths, just a straight upgrade over Lyn (The immediately-previous Sword-wielding Lord lady person), being equal-or-better in every way, yet people don't regularly insist Lyn is a horribly weak Lord the way you see people claiming about Eirika. Which is especially striking when the consensus is that Lyn is in the harder, more demanding game, where you'd expect players to be quicker to judge characters as weak links that are holding the player back.
I would say Lyn gameplay wise gets hard carried by her Special Weapon, which is also super effective against calvary and knights which her maps have aplenty. Also Lyn mode doesn't actually get a Jeigan, so everyone is forced to carry their weight.
I'm not sure which parts of the online FE sphere you both are in because the parts I frequent have Lyn rated as the 5th worst unit in her game, to the point where most people say that not using her is easier than trying to use her at all. A lot of this is biased by HHM with no Lyn mode being the standard, where she's especially bad, but Eirika is an upgrade (especially in bulk).
While she's still relatively fragile, she's also a lot better off relative to her other GBA counterparts because many FE8 units are worse than their FE7 equivalent, especially once you get later in the game. Though, the legendary weapons from FE8 are so much better that it makes other aspects hard to judge.
A huge exception is Seth who's unreasonably good to the point where he's arguably the strongest unit in it entire series, but your other prepromotes are so much worse than Pent, Harken, Vaida, and Hawkeye.
Anyway, this low Constitution means that Eirika suffers a Speed penalty when using any Sword heavier than an Iron Sword. Of the game's 23 Swords, only 6 of them are within her initial weight tolerance. (Mind, this is misleading: 1 of those Swords is not accessible without hacking nowadays, and one of the Swords outside her tolerance is enemy-only. It's more accurate to say she can use 5 out of 21 Swords without weight issue)
I don't think this is a serious problem for her. Her rapier is amazing with triple effectiveness and of the other swords, the only ones I've ever felt Eirika needed to use besides Iron and Rapier were: Killing Edge, Silver Sword, Lance Reaver, and Wyrm Slayer.
The Killing Edge or Silver Sword almost never matters because by she'll have 6 more speed than almost every enemy type besides Mercs and Myrms, who she wasn't doubling even with Iron. The Lance Reaver penalty can hurt, until she promotes and gains +2 con. Wyrm Slayer is the same weight as her Rapier and that's what she could be using whenever she can get effective damage.
Also, Sieglinde is so good that an Eirika who got 0 strength levels can kill every enemy on the second to last map in two attacks.
'm not sure which parts of the online FE sphere you both are in because the parts I frequent have Lyn rated as the 5th worst unit in her game, to the point where most people say that not using her is easier than trying to use her at all. A lot of this is biased by HHM with no Lyn mode being the standard, where she's especially bad, but Eirika is an upgrade (especially in bulk).
While she's still relatively fragile, she's also a lot better off relative to her other GBA counterparts because many FE8 units are worse than their FE7 equivalent, especially once you get later in the game. Though, the legendary weapons from FE8 are so much better that it makes other aspects hard to judge.
Oh no, I'm not saying Lyn is secretly the best character. I'm saying that as a casual middle/high schooler player (and my fellow school kid FE players) Lyn "felt" more useful than Erika did and I'm listing some of the things I think are a factor in that gutfeel.
And while Eirika is objectively an upgrade the numbers are relatively minor enough that it doesn't help that much? I think even if she were Fe6 Karel levels of bonkers growths it's likely hardcore gameplay/efficiency people would say her being footlocked/swordlocked means its more efficient to treat her as a package that gets yeeted by Seth and Vanessa from the start to the seize point, while Seth kills everything. (look story and gameplay integration lol!) Since yeah pre-Awakening foot lords tend to be seen as liabilities you work around, regardless of individual stats.
Oh no, I'm not saying Lyn is secretly the best character. I'm saying that as a casual middle/high schooler player (and my fellow school kid FE players) Lyn "felt" more useful than Erika did and I'm listing some of the things I think are a factor in that gutfeel.
Ahh, yeah. Back in the day I thought all of the lords were so good and some of the best units. Though I fell in love with peg knights much more. I do still think that the combo of 3x effective damage, +1 base def and res, better def growth, and light affinity add up to Eirika being a lot better than Lyn.
For efficiency... I think Hector's the only lord not treated that way, but eventually he gets it too.
I'm not sure which parts of the online FE sphere you both are in because the parts I frequent have Lyn rated as the 5th worst unit in her game, to the point where most people say that not using her is easier than trying to use her at all. A lot of this is biased by HHM with no Lyn mode being the standard, where she's especially bad, but Eirika is an upgrade (especially in bulk).
I think this is a bit of talking past each other? When I've dipped into stuff like an LP for a Hector Hard Mode max ranking run, Lyn tended to be viewed as unbearably bad. But I'm predominately talking the 'casual' player sphere, stuff like literal first impressions, fond memories of That Game I Played A Decade Ago, players who don't preplan at all and have never played a given game more than maybe three times and so have a really low sample size when it comes to character growths and all. (And either don't check the growths manually or clearly don't really think through the implications) And in those spheres, Lyn tends to be liked a lot more than Eirika, both as a gameplay piece and, as far as I can tell, narratively. (Though this latter point is a bit hard to judge, for various reasons)
All right! I still can't believe the amount of interest in my Let's Play; I'm even getting people who've played this particular mod before! To clear up some confusion around Restoration Queen, it doesn't add any new supports. It edits the text of what supports there are; all pre-existing female/female supports now have paired endings, and some of them are explicitly romantic. Since the game apparently has a limit on the number of endings it can store, the modders had to remove some of the original endings to make way for the new ones.
I recognize that this means there are parts of the original game I won't be able to see…but, hey, with this support system, I doubt there are many players who can say they've seen every character combination.
Oh, and about going to Serenes Forest for growth rates: I'm not going to do that, because I think a list of recruitable characters does count as a spoiler. Think about it – if I see (just making something up here) Duessel, Glen, but not Selena, then I can easily figure out that Duessel and Glen defect from Grado while Selena stays loyal, is fought as a boss, and dies. That being said, if you want to talk about the stats of characters I've already recruited, go ahead. You can have your arguments about the proper use of Seth, just avoid specific situations from later in the game. You all have been very good about avoiding spoilers so far and I trust you all to continue in that vein <3
So! Back to the game! Eirika and company are still travelling through Renais, sticking to rural areas to avoid soldiers. Unfortunately, while traveling through the Za'ha Woods, they find that Gradoan soldiers aren't the only enemy they must beware of…
Our map looks like an idyllic forest bisected by a river – until some slimy things show up, like half-melted men.
Seth is equally baffled, but we soon find someone who knows what they are.
In the village to the south, a monk (Artur) is wailing about the unholy abominations on his doorstep.
Lute, this purple-haired scholar, identifies them as revenants, servants of the Demon King (which, I guess, makes them a kind of demon? Wait, is he a king of demons, or just a king who is a demon?). Anyway, the scholar proceeds to go on in gruesome detail about how they kill people with razor-sharp claws, which her friend isn't happy to hear. Artur tells Lute to stay and guard the village while he delivers a warning to the travellers outside.
At this point, she delivers something of a monologue on the superiority of magic, and also herself, because she is a (self-described) genius and a prodigy.
This is the chapter where the game introduces magic attacks. Lute's speech is the game's way of hinting to you that Defense doesn't do shit to protect you from magic – you need Resistance for that. Interestingly, the game does not split attacking stats in the same way – each character has either Strength or Magic, but not both, and what this means is that there are no hybrid magic-physical characters in the game. A pity, that. I love a warrior with a sword in one hand and a fireball in the other, due in no small part to Robin from Awakening.
At the edge of the forest, Artur calls out to Eirika's party, warning them to be careful – there are monsters in the woods. He advises them to stick together and flee without stopping, lest the fiends overwhelm them.
Artur doesn't really get that these are no ordinary travellers. I suppose their disguises are getting better? Well, instead of fleeing, Eirika asks for more details: "You're not talking about the same fiends that served the ancient Demon King?" Artur confirms that yes, he does mean those fiends, and protesting that they shouldn't exist outside of stories won't stop them from killing you. He explains that he was charged "by the temple" with cleansing the woods, but the situation has quickly degenerated beyond what he can handle alone.
While they talk, a mogall, a monster like a floating eyeball, approaches, and Artur turns around to kill it in a little cutscene.
Look, there – green and red arrows indicating weapon triangle advantage. This is something new to me. The lance-sword-axe triangle is stable in Fire Emblem, but the developers keep changing how other weapon types interact with it. This game, apparently, has a parallel magic triangle. Artur's light magic beats the mogall's dark magic. Dark magic beats anima (elemental) magic, and anima beats light magic. Even so, Artur can only win this with a scripted crit. Artur seems ready to sacrifice himself to get them to safety, but these are no ordinary travellers, and they quickly prepare to battle alongside him. This isn't an 'escape' map. This is a 'kill all the enemies' map.
And here it is for the first time – the battle preparation menu! So far, the game has dropped all my characters on the map in pre-selected spots. Now I get to examine the map before choosing who to bring with me. I see some enemies wielding swords, so I opt to leave behind my axe users Ross and Garcia.
Also present, and of great interest, is the Support menu. This just allows you to see which supports you have unlocked already, and my enthusiasm upon finally seeing it is dampened by the understanding of just how restricted supports are in this game. As I understand it, support points build only between units who end their turn next to each other, and it's a slow process. What's even more painful is knowing that each character is limited to five support conversations, maximum. That's not even five supports – that's one A-rank and one B-rank, or one A-rank and two C-ranks. Putting a completion percentage on the support menu is just mean when I can only unlock a fraction of those in any given playthrough.
Look at Eirika's list of potential supports. There are seven characters there! She can't even begin to unlock all of them!
I'm fearful of grinding for supports now. I fear missing out. What if a really great character joins later, but can't talk to anyone because my older characters are already paired up? …Well, I can't shy away from my favorite aspect of Fire Emblem…ugh. I'm not sure yet how I want to handle this. I may make special updates where I do off-the-books grinding in a separate save file to unlock more conversations. We'll see.
Onto the battle itself. The enemies are mostly revenants, a delightfully gross-looking zombie creature with extremely low stats but high HP. The boss is a stronger version called an Entombed (Hey! I recognize those names from Awakening!). There are also skeletons called bonewalkers, and fragile flying eyeballs that attack, as previously established, with dark magic. The map is divided in two by a river, with a village on each half; we start on the north half, but Artur informs us that he's got a recruitable friend in the southern village.
Swiftly? Sounds like a job for my flyer! I send Vanessa south, where she attacks one bonewalker in a spot where no other enemy can reach her. Artur visits the north village – I hope for a unique cutscene, but he just gets a generic one where a villager tells him about the old tree you can chop down to make a bridge that goes directly to Lute's village. Uh, is that so? Well, I already sent a pegasus over there, but – thanks for the Iron Axe, I guess. I kind of regret sending Vanessa away now, as she has the best Resistance (bar Seth) and I'm not sure who else can deal safely with the mogalls. Well, I make a defensive wall, send Gilliam to the west to deal with the revenants there, and hope for the best.
Turns out I needn't have worried, as the mogalls and revenants are both pretty inaccurate. And the revenants are so slow, Gilliam doubles them. After the first round, more monsters arrive, and I feel the pressure increasing, but I keep my cool.
And hey, look, one of them is carrying a Vulnerary! Let's try out Colm's pickpocketing skills! That poor zombie may look like he needs the medicine more than us, but I think he's too far gone for saving.
Turns out, thieves get experience for stealing. Nice! I wonder if that could be used to set up an infinite experience machine, if two thieves with equal speed kept stealing from each other.
Vanessa reaches the southern village, and Lute has a pretty funny reaction to her.
Lute, it seems, has gotten bored of standing at the village gates. Having calculated that the best defense is a good offense – in that no monsters can threaten the village if she goes and kills them all proactively – she steps out to show the world her supreme arcane might.
Gotta love that confidence. Since Lute is so sure that she can take on these enemies (and I am sure that I can position her so she only fights one at a time) I send Vanessa back up north to aid with the more numerous enemies there.
By the way, some of these enemies have lances when their sprites and portraits clearly show them wielding swords. This is terrible. My immersion is ruined. On the other hand, I really like how different characters make different sounds when they walk - the bonewalkers rattle, the revenants ooze and squish, Gilliam clanks, and so on. Immersion restored.
I am holding my own, but help conspires to arrive nonetheless, in the form of three green units atop a little plateau to the right. The music changes to a jaunty tune that clearly denotes a comedy scene, and my expectations for the quality of this help plummet.
Things start out okay: this green-haired lady declares her intention to help us. "These travelers are besieged by the agents of evil!" she says. Her mustachioed aide agrees.
The heroic lady agrees to find a nice walkable path to charge heroically to the rescue on, and the three units exit.
…Well, I didn't really need their help anyway. My heroes are so effective at mopping up the swarm of enemies up top that I swing Vanessa back around to give Lute some more help. No one dies on this map – not even Vanessa! Part of this is attributable to luck, rather than my own skill – the enemies simply missed most of the time. I have Moulder healing scratches just to give him something to do.
With supports in mind, I find myself arranging units into blocky domino chains of adjacency. I also move Artur next to Lute, thinking they might have a special conversation (they don't). This map won't end until I kill the boss and it seems disinclined to move, much like an actual corpse, so I decide to try some of this old-fashioned support grinding. I arrange my units into a chain and press End Turn five times. I'm getting bored already. Six times. Ah! Eirika and Seth want to talk!
Their C support begins with Eirika, in true Eirika fashion, asking Seth if he's doing all right. Seeing as the group's been relying on him for combat, navigation, emotional maturity, and babysitting, someone has to look after his welfare. She mentions something I had forgotten about, or rather, something I had assumed wouldn't matter – the wound he received from that duel with Valter. Sure, he was at less than half health in the prologue map, but after that I assumed he had healed. This is Fire Emblem: you can be beaten down to 1 HP and, if the map ends there, you'll be in fighting form for the next one. It's assumed that any wound you take short of death can be healed between battles.
Seth's first reaction, interestingly, is to lament that he hasn't performed better. If only he could be "as brave a knight as a Princess such as you deserves." Huh. Anyway, he assures her that his wound is healed.
Eirika isn't buying it. She orders him to show her the wound. He complies…this may involve Seth stripping down to some degree. I'm getting a bit nervous. Eirika finds that the wound is closed, but not completely healed.
Eirika tells him that she's noticed him fighting "as superbly as ever," but when he raises his lance…a flicker of pain always crosses his face. Perhaps she's imagining it?
Seth tells her that, yes, she's definitely imagining it. His wound has healed. There is no cause for concern. She has far greater matters to worry about.
Eirika: Your presence lends me much strength in this quest.
Seth: You praise me too much, my lady. And besides, my strength is nothing if it is not in service to yours.
Oh-kay...I think there are some problematic elements here we need to address, such as, who gave Seth the right to attack my heart like that?! I have a very sensitive heart, you know! There should be trigger warnings before a man this superb! I am trying to play Eirika as a lesbian, and here we have a man sneaking into my heart through the indiscriminating gap labeled "Lady-and-Knight Archetype."
I need to calm down and...take a cleansing breath. I shouldn't assume that there is sexual tension here. It's perfectly possible that Eirika's closely watching him in battle, looking out for his welfare, and and ordering him to bare his flesh to her in a platonic manner. And Seth could be putting her on a pedestal, subordinating his needs to hers, and holding himself to an impossible standard of perfection in ways that only coincidentally resemble my kinks. Their dance of politeness, paradoxically so earnest and tender even as they avoid stating directly what they mean for the sake of propriety, is just covering up care and devotion and probably no romance at all.
…I'm not going to unlock any more of their support conversations. This man is too dangerous. He could destroy me, as well as he could the enemy soldiers, if I were to use him carelessly.
Ahem. Moving on…Artur destroys the boss monster with a well-timed critical hit and the map is done. No one can shake a sense of unease after what they've just seen. Seth suggests burning the bodies to make sure they don't just get back up again, and Lute doesn't have any data for or against that but it's probably a good idea. These creatures are seemingly well-known in folklore but unheard-of in real life; Seth recalls hearing that revenants are the Demon King's lowest servants, and Lute jumps in to show off her knowledge again, listing off a half dozen varieties of monsters. If revenants, mogalls, and bonewalkers are about, then they all are, probably. And we can't assume they're limited to just this corner of Renais!
I like how the story keeps finding ways to shock and horrify Eirika, continually breaking down her world and battering her spirit with inexplicable waves of violence. Grado's invasion, her father's death, the atrocities visited on the common people, and now actual demons...the overriding mood so far is one of horrified shock, and enduring through it.
Seth uneasily proposes returning to Frelia: the situation is proving more dangerous than they knew. Eirika points out that, if their journey has gotten more dangerous, then the danger her brother's in has increased by the same amount. Therefore they still ought to keep going. Notably, even Eirika seems less sure than normal, less resolute.
On that somber note, we leave our heroes wondering…haha, just kidding, the comedy music is starting again!
The three lost heroes from before have finally found a route down from the plateau, and their leader announces that all monsters should beware!
L'Arachel: Oh…Where are the monsters?
Eirika: Well, we just finished…
L'Arachel is a bit disappointed that she missed out on the holy smiting action, but congratulates Eirika on a job well done, nonetheless. Eirika, bemused, asks who she is, and L'Arachel proclaims, "It is I, the true light and glory of the sacred realm of Rausten—" before one of her henchmen interrupts to remind her that she's supposed to be travelling incognito.
I…feel like I should know who this is, but I can't figure it out. Rausten, according to the introduction, is a theocracy, ruled by a Divine Emperor – and who knows what kind of government structure they have besides that guy. He and L'Arachel don't really have the same hair color, so I don't think they're related…
Well, in this chapter, Eirika had Artur convinced that she was completely ordinary, so…congratulations, Eirika! You no longer have the worst-kept secret identity in Magvel.
Oh-kay...I think there are some problematic elements here we need to address, such as, who gave Seth the right to attack my heart like that?! I have a very sensitive heart, you know! There should be trigger warnings before a man this superb! I am trying to play Eirika as a lesbian, and here we have a man sneaking into my heart through the indiscriminating gap labeled "Lady-and-Knight Archetype."
This is the power of Seth. My own experience was "why do people ship Eirika and Seth? I don't understand?" And then playing the game immediately put me in the shoes of a Shoujo heroine staring at the cool and valiant and high spec devoted knight who would give his everything for her (and also makes the game so much less stressful as a safety net) that I immediately bought into it. I was like "Ah Sir Seth… he's so ✨ handsome ✨ I know that he'll always protect me"
One of the funniest parts of this map to me is the way the story is like "oh no! Monsters! Dangerous!" But the entire map felt like a breather compared to the more dangerous humans. Hell Journeyman Ross can frontline against revenants! Ross!
This is the chapter where the game introduces magic attacks. Lute's speech is the game's way of hinting to you that Defense doesn't do shit to protect you from magic – you need Resistance for that. Interestingly, the game does not split attacking stats in the same way – each character has either Strength or Magic, but not both, and what this means is that there are no hybrid magic-physical characters in the game. A pity, that. I love a warrior with a sword in one hand and a fireball in the other, due in no small part to Robin from Awakening.
Mechanically, the GBA games don't have a 'Magic stat' at all. The game just does display shenanigans for magic-using characters. It's a weird, disappointing kludge, and the series took forever to stop being weird about physical/magical offense stats.
Turns out, thieves get experience for stealing. Nice! I wonder if that could be used to set up an infinite experience machine, if two thieves with equal speed kept stealing from each other.
Even if your Thief gains Speed from leveling, just pass the item to someone slow enough to still be stolen from, and you can continue forever. Theft also gives fixed experience, so being massively overleveled doesn't slow it down any. If you're (very) patient, it's quite exploitable.
By the way, some of these enemies have lances when their sprites and portraits clearly show them wielding swords. This is terrible. My immersion is ruined.
Monster sprites are in fact one of the clearest examples of the game's unfinished state. You might have noticed the Entombed is a Revenant with a different pallete applied; 'promoted' monsters are conspicuously prone to this. By contrast, regular promoted classes always have new sprites, not just new palletes.
(This is technically not strictly true re: 'non-monster promotions are always new sprites', but I can't discuss the exceptions yet)
I need to calm down and...take a cleansing breath. I shouldn't assume that there is sexual tension here. It's perfectly possible that Eirika's closely watching him in battle, looking out for his welfare, and and ordering him to bare his flesh to her in a platonic manner. And Seth could be putting her on a pedestal, subordinating his needs to hers, and holding himself to an impossible standard of perfection in ways that only coincidentally resemble my kinks. Their dance of politeness, paradoxically so earnest and tender even as they avoid stating directly what they mean for the sake of propriety, is just covering up care and devotion and probably no romance at all.
…I'm not going to unlock any more of their support conversations. This man is too dangerous. He could destroy me, as well as he could the enemy soldiers, if I were to use him carelessly.
I am trying to play Eirika as a lesbian, and here we have a man sneaking into my heart through the indiscriminating gap labeled "Lady-and-Knight Archetype."
Funny thing; I'd earnestly argue Eirika's female Supports genuinely read more as Eirika having chemistry with them than the male Supports, overall, even though base Sacred Stones never clearly accknowledges non-heterosexual possibilities directly.
So much so that when I was an autistic preteen who absolutely did not get romance, I felt that way anyway!
I…feel like I should know who this is, but I can't figure it out. Rausten, according to the introduction, is a theocracy, ruled by a Divine Emperor – and who knows what kind of government structure they have besides that guy. He and L'Arachel don't really have the same hair color, so I don't think they're related…
It's an Iron Sword that does bonus damage against monsters. (Okay, and it has 14 extra durability, I guess) It, plus equivalents in the physical weapons, could be gotten by bringing your GBA to specific events... that only occurred in Japan... and of course haven't been done in literally decades.
I really don't get the thought process behind these weapons...
Oh, this thread is a welcome surprise to find. Sacred Stones was the only Fire Emblem game I've ever played and I greatly enjoyed it. Glad to see you seem to be having a good time going through it.
…I'm not going to unlock any more of their support conversations. This man is too dangerous. He could destroy me, as well as he could the enemy soldiers, if I were to use him carelessly.
When a character is introduced ready to jump off a cliff to defend innocents, only for a saner companion to talk her out of it, you know you have a winner.
Speaking of Neimi and Colm! Gameplay wise, these two are...not really the best...Neimi especially. While Colm at least has utility as a Thief that can unlock doors and chests, and can steal items and [REMOVED BY ANANKOS] (i just realized yet again i have to withhold info since later games don't really have this...i think. iirc), Neimi, while having some good growth rates on her offensive stats, comes with poor base stats and in a class that isn't really good in most games. This game is not one of the few exceptions. So most people consider her terrible. I don't blame anyone for thinking that. Me, however...I really like using her, and Colm too, even though they're not really good offensive units. In Colm's case I like raising him so I don't have to worry about my Thief dying on me while he's off looting and stealing, while Neimi, I just like using ranged when I can, not to mention the support these two have (which, well, isn't a stand-out in itself, but I'm still fond of it anyway, much like the two of them). So they were staples in my first playthrough, all the way to the endgame... Except, well, remember that one unit death I regret? The death that basically cemented in my mind that I did not want to lose any characters, even if they're not favorites? That was Neimi. She died in the second-to-last chapter in my first playthrough of the game, and normally, I'd reset. But I was a kid, the map was VERY hard to me then, and it took me hours to reach near the end, so I bitterly kept going. I thought it'd be fine. It was an old game. Surely nothing will happen because of her dying. But then, I swear, Colm's ending got affected and was different from his normal solo ending if he didn't have a support with her, like some of the character endigs in Shadows of Valentia. But since it was so long ago and I can't seem to find info on it online, I can't be sure if that's what happened (and I'll fill you guys in if I find out), but that's what I remember. Colm, with an A support with Neimi, had a grieving ending when she died, and I felt utterly terrible about it. And that was all the incentive I needed to all the more reset whenever a character dies, no matter how far into a map I get. This has caused me a LOT of frustration (like that one time I was doing a classic run of Awakening and I literally was about to beat a chapter, it was only the boss left...but my tiredness miscalculated its range and one of my units died), but never enough to change my mind about not wanting characters to die. Especially since in a later games it's easier to reset in the middle of a map/chapter if I make a mistake/miscalculation/have bad luck.
I don't know if I'll pair Colm and Neimi, but I think I'll use both of them. I have a soft spot for thieves and assassins (they tend to have wickedly cool animations, and so far Colm is no exception). I have an even softer spot for archers. It's the fact that they can attack with no fear of reprisal, I think. As you all can probably tell from my profile picture, I like archers, especially the pathetic and weak ones. It doesn't matter if it's a game where archers are cracked, like Three Houses, or a game where archers are lame. I will doggedly drag a Sniper to the final mission, and my other units will shield them with their very bodies.
I have said before that, if I were a FE unit, I would be an NPC villager. I still stand by that, but I think if I were to be a playable character, I would be an archer.
It also stealthily teaches the player that Vanessa has Canto, and so can continue moving after Rescuing. This mechanic is never explicitly explained in SS, I'm pretty sure, but you can't be entirely oblivious to it thanks to this sequence.
All mounted units have Canto, for reference, and it applies to all Rescue-related actions plus to inventory management. (By which I mostly mean trading items with other units, and interacting with the Convoy)
Yes, Eirika does suck, but she sucks mostly because that's just how Lords were designed in this period of the series. Awakening and onward gives Lords (And other 'main characters', like the royals in Fates) good bases, good growths, good classes, unique powerful mechanics (eg Dragonstones in Fates), and more esoteric unique benefits. (eg how the player character can Support with literally everybody in Awakening and Fates)
When Eirika came along, though, Lords always started off bad and maybe got good eventually. She's depressing compared to Corrin or Robin or Chrom or whoever, yes, but she's honestly a far sight better than Roy, ie the Lord of two games ago, and it's Lords like Roy who are her actual peers in a design sense, not folks like Robin.
"Excuse me, Colm, I know you and Neimi are engaged now, but this really cool wyvern rider just joined and I think she and Neimi have a paired ending. Please leave all your weapons in the supply convoy and jump into this monster's mouth, thank you."
