- Pronouns
- He
So you'd say Robin woke something in you?
If you're good enough, aren't all maps that?
Let's Play Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (Restoration Queen Edit)
- Thread starter Vocalist
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Location
- Who knows?
Ah yes the chapter that introduces two of my favorite characters!!! The Mysterious Unknowable Green Haired Lady has been mentioned, but I personally have a giant soft spot for Lute. Good ol' monster nerd who loves explosions. What else can you ask for? Her sprite imo is also cute af. I admit it never really occurred to me exactly how brave Erika is being here since I'm so used to monsters popping up in these stories anyways.
And ohhhh boy so Seth. Hey you know how Jeigan characters are supposed to be at their peak and fall off later on??? Uh. Someone forgot to tell this dude that.
These are his growth rates compared to his young protegee Franz, a supposed growth unit. Seth is eating his wheeties man. And in general I have experience of training Franz and similar to Seth's equivalent level and seeing that red haired beast's Ch1 stats still beating them on vital categories.
And ohhhh boy so Seth. Hey you know how Jeigan characters are supposed to be at their peak and fall off later on??? Uh. Someone forgot to tell this dude that.
| Growth | HP | Str | Skill | Spd | Luck | Def | Res |
| Seth | 90 | 50 | 45 | 45 | 25 | 40 | 30 |
| Franz | 80 | 40 | 40 | 50 | 40 | 25 | 20 |
These are his growth rates compared to his young protegee Franz, a supposed growth unit. Seth is eating his wheeties man. And in general I have experience of training Franz and similar to Seth's equivalent level and seeing that red haired beast's Ch1 stats still beating them on vital categories.
Crimson Flight
华裔机甲迷
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I am also here to add my voice to the Seth fandom, I was there to witness this guy starting Sacred Stones and bro went from "perhaps I should feed kills to Franz" to "SETH SETH SETH SETH SETH" in like minutes.
DragonUnitOmega
Akechi/Fem!Akira gives me life
- Location
- Inaba
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Etc
Oh, the shame... Though we have been graced by the banisher of evil, alas, it was but for a moment, thus I have not been granted permission to sing my praises of the glorious light that is L'Arachel...
Sorry not sorry, but I adore L'Arachel and cannot help but get hammy when she pops up. I can't wait to get to talk about her later. (It's very obvious she'll appear later, right? So it doesn't count as a spoiler? I know I thought she'd come back later when I was a kid. I saw her and immediately went "You. I like you. You're gonna appear later, right? please join my team")
...okay. I'll do my best. Just tell me if I ended up slipping up.
So. About that stuff I wanted to talk about Seth. Mainly how he works as a "Jeigen", or Jagen as I want to spell it due to Heroes. Yes, he is intended to do as you mentioned in the first post. A powerful character that will waste a lot of early game experience if you use him too much, but when used sparingly, is a safety net for newer players, which Seth is exceptionally good at. But the thing about Jagens, or rather early Fire Emblem Jagens, is that they aren't usually "good units", usually with terrible growth rates and good enough base stats in the beginning but not enough for the end, but while FE7/Blazing Sword is when Jeigens started being "bad", Seth is when they started being "good", and the short of it is: he's broken. How broken? He can solo the entire game all by himself. Playable from the very beginning, already has A rank in his weapons, his base stats comparable to the average cavalier of this game promoted to a paladin at lvl 20, growths that let him stay on par if not better than them, good Con, and ridiculous movement thanks to Paladin class... There is a reason I said I used him even all the way to the end and that he was good. And funny thing is, I didn't know that until years later (when I looked into the speedruns of this game)! Half the reason I used him was just because I liked his character, so even if he was bad, I probably would've still used him, much like Colm and Neimi. So yeah, that's why I wanted to mention how he is in the first post.
But in that time between then and bow, it only just occured to me that...you wouldn't have had the experience of the "original Jagen" since you're coming in from Awakening onwards. So when you were calling Seth a "Jagen", you probably didn't think that at all (I think, again, presuming), because like...Awakening has Frederick, Fates it's supposed to Gunter who is more like older Jagens but you also get Jakob and Felicia who are better (at least I've liked using them; though daggers are ridiculously powerul in that game so that's probably why) and Three Houses...well. There isn't really any proper one. Engage has Vander and, as far as I know, he doesn't feel bad either, but I can't really make any impression on that since I haven't finished Engage yet (gosh dang it, i really should get back to it, i was having fun with it, but then got distracted). And even then, as I mentioned, Seth was the start of "good" Jagens, as the Jagen of the next game is also really good. So in hindsight, I don't really need to explain Seth?especially since someone beat me to it But I still wanted to because it's always funny seeing speedruns of SS essentially just have him bulldoze through the game, and there are only two other that have just an infamous broken rep as him in the older games. So yeah.
Speaking of Seth's brokeness though...
Lol
Then here, I shall make "a tag" inspired by AO3 tags: "Seth needs his own trigger warning" "how dare seth mess with my lesbian heart" "i am trying to peacefully ship femslash here" "and then THIS guy comes in" "and starts messing with my heart" "why didn't anyone tell me about this" "he really needs his own trigger warning"
-glances at support lists for both the original and epilogue- Welp. I think I have a better idea who you might choose to have as Eirika's A support/paired ending, but I'll have to wait for your reactions to other characters before I'm willing to bet on it.
Okay, now onto more quotes before I talk about other gameplay stuff.
I have a suggestion that may help, but involves mechanics and stuff that haven't popped up yet, even though they won't exactly be new to you, so I can't say it yet, but I think I can soon enough. At least before you decide you wanna start grinding for supports anyhow. I think.
I like the sounds so much too. Especially the clopping of hooves.
Lol. Honestly, I did that with pretty much every map in the older games since I wanted to get as much experience as possible. There are only a few exceptions, of which from the top of my head are mainly defend chapters, but even then I would try tokill every last one of them fight everyone.
Okay. I think that's it. So now...Artur and Lute!
Between the two, Lute is usually the stand out. She is a magic nuke (65% growth rate) that has good speed (45% growth rate) that is only really hampered by her Con, but most of the time, like Eirika, her speed usually makes up for the weight penalty. I always find magic nukes fun, and in this game magic (or more specifically, anima. magic) isn't bad like it is in, say, Radiant Dawn (which I personally never found that bad, and more everything else was way more powerful than it), so Lute is a pretty good offense. Meannwhile, Artur has light magic, and it's...not so good. Not bad, but most light tomes are pretty heavy, and magic users tend to have low con, though his at least isn't so bad. But that doesn't make Artur bad. No, I'd say he's pretty okay, with his magic growth being a respectable 50% even if his speed isn't the best, and one of his promotion classes giving him more help in offense. He's not a stand out, but I like using him, because I like using magic. And I also like Artur, and Lute, as characters, so they're used just as often as Colm and Neimi for me, though probably a little less for Artur due to...reasons. None of which are his fault, but I'll explain it soon enough.
Though about these two magic users. Fun fact, they got minorly nerfed in the English version. Artur has 1 less point in Magic and Speed, and his Magic growth is 10% less and his Res is 5% less, leaving him at (aforementioned) 50% and t 55% respectively. Lute in terms of base stats only got -1 to her Res, while her magic and res growths are 5% less, leaving her at (aforementioned) 65% magic and 40% res growth rates. I'm not sure why they did that, since Seth is broken but he didn't get any nerfs, but wanted to mention it.
Meannwhile...eeey! You now have seen the monsters! Not much to say about them...for now. When I do, it won't be that much, but most of my thoughts on monsters are tied to later ones.
As for the magic triangle, honestly, I don't have too much opinions about it. As you've said, they keep changing it constantly so no "one" really has stuck, especially specifics since, iirc, the magic triangle has appeared elsewhere but in different ways, and it hasn't really been in a game in such a way it fundamentally affected how I played. The only exception to this is something that is less "magic triangle" and more "secondary triangle", and it comes from (surprise surprise), Fates, which is honestly my favorite. I don't know how others feel about the "color triangle" from Fates specifically (which isn't helped by how much of a mess it is), but I personally really like it. Not only do the ranged options have their own triangle, but I like that I can use the "ranged" version of the triangle against the "melee" one and vice versa.
Sorry not sorry, but I adore L'Arachel and cannot help but get hammy when she pops up. I can't wait to get to talk about her later. (It's very obvious she'll appear later, right? So it doesn't count as a spoiler? I know I thought she'd come back later when I was a kid. I saw her and immediately went "You. I like you. You're gonna appear later, right? please join my team")
...okay. I'll do my best. Just tell me if I ended up slipping up.
So. About that stuff I wanted to talk about Seth. Mainly how he works as a "Jeigen", or Jagen as I want to spell it due to Heroes. Yes, he is intended to do as you mentioned in the first post. A powerful character that will waste a lot of early game experience if you use him too much, but when used sparingly, is a safety net for newer players, which Seth is exceptionally good at. But the thing about Jagens, or rather early Fire Emblem Jagens, is that they aren't usually "good units", usually with terrible growth rates and good enough base stats in the beginning but not enough for the end, but while FE7/Blazing Sword is when Jeigens started being "bad", Seth is when they started being "good", and the short of it is: he's broken. How broken? He can solo the entire game all by himself. Playable from the very beginning, already has A rank in his weapons, his base stats comparable to the average cavalier of this game promoted to a paladin at lvl 20, growths that let him stay on par if not better than them, good Con, and ridiculous movement thanks to Paladin class... There is a reason I said I used him even all the way to the end and that he was good. And funny thing is, I didn't know that until years later (when I looked into the speedruns of this game)! Half the reason I used him was just because I liked his character, so even if he was bad, I probably would've still used him, much like Colm and Neimi. So yeah, that's why I wanted to mention how he is in the first post.
But in that time between then and bow, it only just occured to me that...you wouldn't have had the experience of the "original Jagen" since you're coming in from Awakening onwards. So when you were calling Seth a "Jagen", you probably didn't think that at all (I think, again, presuming), because like...Awakening has Frederick, Fates it's supposed to Gunter who is more like older Jagens but you also get Jakob and Felicia who are better (at least I've liked using them; though daggers are ridiculously powerul in that game so that's probably why) and Three Houses...well. There isn't really any proper one. Engage has Vander and, as far as I know, he doesn't feel bad either, but I can't really make any impression on that since I haven't finished Engage yet (gosh dang it, i really should get back to it, i was having fun with it, but then got distracted). And even then, as I mentioned, Seth was the start of "good" Jagens, as the Jagen of the next game is also really good. So in hindsight, I don't really need to explain Seth?
Speaking of Seth's brokeness though...
Lol
Then here, I shall make "a tag" inspired by AO3 tags: "Seth needs his own trigger warning" "how dare seth mess with my lesbian heart" "i am trying to peacefully ship femslash here" "and then THIS guy comes in" "and starts messing with my heart" "why didn't anyone tell me about this" "he really needs his own trigger warning"
-glances at support lists for both the original and epilogue- Welp. I think I have a better idea who you might choose to have as Eirika's A support/paired ending, but I'll have to wait for your reactions to other characters before I'm willing to bet on it.
Okay, now onto more quotes before I talk about other gameplay stuff.
I have a suggestion that may help, but involves mechanics and stuff that haven't popped up yet, even though they won't exactly be new to you, so I can't say it yet, but I think I can soon enough. At least before you decide you wanna start grinding for supports anyhow. I think.
I like the sounds so much too. Especially the clopping of hooves.
Lol. Honestly, I did that with pretty much every map in the older games since I wanted to get as much experience as possible. There are only a few exceptions, of which from the top of my head are mainly defend chapters, but even then I would try to
Okay. I think that's it. So now...Artur and Lute!
Between the two, Lute is usually the stand out. She is a magic nuke (65% growth rate) that has good speed (45% growth rate) that is only really hampered by her Con, but most of the time, like Eirika, her speed usually makes up for the weight penalty. I always find magic nukes fun, and in this game magic (or more specifically, anima. magic) isn't bad like it is in, say, Radiant Dawn (which I personally never found that bad, and more everything else was way more powerful than it), so Lute is a pretty good offense. Meannwhile, Artur has light magic, and it's...not so good. Not bad, but most light tomes are pretty heavy, and magic users tend to have low con, though his at least isn't so bad. But that doesn't make Artur bad. No, I'd say he's pretty okay, with his magic growth being a respectable 50% even if his speed isn't the best, and one of his promotion classes giving him more help in offense. He's not a stand out, but I like using him, because I like using magic. And I also like Artur, and Lute, as characters, so they're used just as often as Colm and Neimi for me, though probably a little less for Artur due to...reasons. None of which are his fault, but I'll explain it soon enough.
Though about these two magic users. Fun fact, they got minorly nerfed in the English version. Artur has 1 less point in Magic and Speed, and his Magic growth is 10% less and his Res is 5% less, leaving him at (aforementioned) 50% and t 55% respectively. Lute in terms of base stats only got -1 to her Res, while her magic and res growths are 5% less, leaving her at (aforementioned) 65% magic and 40% res growth rates. I'm not sure why they did that, since Seth is broken but he didn't get any nerfs, but wanted to mention it.
Meannwhile...eeey! You now have seen the monsters! Not much to say about them...for now. When I do, it won't be that much, but most of my thoughts on monsters are tied to later ones.
As for the magic triangle, honestly, I don't have too much opinions about it. As you've said, they keep changing it constantly so no "one" really has stuck, especially specifics since, iirc, the magic triangle has appeared elsewhere but in different ways, and it hasn't really been in a game in such a way it fundamentally affected how I played. The only exception to this is something that is less "magic triangle" and more "secondary triangle", and it comes from (surprise surprise), Fates, which is honestly my favorite. I don't know how others feel about the "color triangle" from Fates specifically (which isn't helped by how much of a mess it is), but I personally really like it. Not only do the ranged options have their own triangle, but I like that I can use the "ranged" version of the triangle against the "melee" one and vice versa.
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- Location
- Wherever
You should always bring a Thief into every unknown map in the GBA games just in case. Even if no chests or stealables exist initially, reinforcements carrying something you can't loot without theft are pretty common.
SS is actually one of the better games in the series for the Archer class, especially relative to the other GBA games, mostly for several Spoiler Reasons I'll hopefully remember to get back to as they come up. Neimi has been a solid unit in every run of mine that didn't bench her by virtue of doing a gimmick/challenge run whose premise invalidated using her; I never got to the end of a run and regretted training her up. So I'm personally all for more Neimi play.
(Especially since Neimi is probably in my top 5 player characters as, y'know, a character. The bow crit animations are also all great)
This chapter, I also discovered that Canto applies after visiting villages!
Oh, right. And Talking. And Support conversations.
... whenever I haven't played a GBA FE in a year or so, I start forgetting that I have very good reasons for thinking of Canto as kind of absurdly good. It applies to a bonkers number of mechanics, giving beneficiaries a big edge in basically every mission.
Oh yeah, good point.
Yeah, previously Jeigans were defined in part by being straight-up awful, to the point that some people will deem a Jeigan an Oifey if they're not complete garbage. Seth is actually pretty jarring for veterans; your Cavaliers have decent odds of outclassing him when they catch up, but aside his HP being actually atrocious (30 HP when first promoted isn't unexpected for a frail class like Pegasus Knight, but the other Cavaliers expect to be closer to 40 if you raised them properly) Seth can easily hold his own even once everybody has caught up to his level/promoted state. Past Jeigans ranged from 'looks powerful initially, is already barely ahead of equivalents who are unpromoted level 10' to 'is barely any better than equivalents at level 1'
1337Procrast
Fire Emblem Enjoyer
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay I was gonna disagree heavily here but then I looked and realised Artur's speed growth is lower than Lute's and mine was absurdly speed blessed on top of a kinda speed screwed Lute… the wonders of RNG.
I still gotta give props to Artur's res though, res is usually not as big of a deal but having one guy who can just no damage any magic damage in the map is a very neat trick to have in your back pocket. I got very excited whenever a magic damage dealing enemy showed up lmao. ARTUR IT'S YOUR TIME BRO. YOUR TURN TO SHINE.
Both Artur and Lute will be mega squishy. Artur specifically has a massive luck problem to his name but you can use a support to fix that. The Lute and Artur support gives a very meaty crit dodge and avoid boost which made them both way more survivable for me.
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fishsicles
ate a calculator to gain its power
- Location
- Alexander Horned Earth
- Pronouns
- They/Them
To go into exactly how busted he is, Seth Solo is often considered an easier FE8 challenge run than No Seth.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Ah yes, the GBA-era support system and all its wonkiness. It's clunky, it's slow, it's needlessly limiting and despite it all I have to say I love it. Even if it made me play through every single game like this:
Like, this is a game series where two people becoming too good friends necessarily means neither of them will marry their love interests, and as a rampant Shipper I have no choice but to respect that.
... Actually, in retrospect I think a lot of my shipping tendencies can be traced back to playing Fire Emblem at an impressionable age.
Unless you are dealing with a Lord character of course, which is presumeably why God had Uriah killed and not David.
Like, this is a game series where two people becoming too good friends necessarily means neither of them will marry their love interests, and as a rampant Shipper I have no choice but to respect that.
... Actually, in retrospect I think a lot of my shipping tendencies can be traced back to playing Fire Emblem at an impressionable age.
Fire Emblem, the one game-series where Uriah gambits are not only possible, but at times necessary.
Unless you are dealing with a Lord character of course, which is presumeably why God had Uriah killed and not David.
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Chapter 5: The Empire's Reach
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
This time, I noticed L'Arachel while watching the opening. Look at that girl go!
She's ready to take on the world! She strides forth, confident that no one can stop her! Man, I'm looking forward to seeing her again.
This time, while in my inventory to make sure everyone has healing items, I notice that you can sell items on the inventory screen, even when you're not standing on a shop. I suppose Eirika's just leaving them out for the forest fairies overnight and picking up the fairy gold in the morning.
Anyway, back to the story. Lute and Artur were right, in that monsters are now appearing all over Magvel, no doubt terrorizing the surprised populace in all nations.
Our heroes finally reach the edge of Renais. At the border town of Serafew, they plan to cross into Grado. The narrator informs us that Serafew was once a symbol of "the friendship the two nations have shared these many years." Now, however, Grado has taken firm control of the place and installed a military garrison to guard the border.
We don't return to our heroes immediately; instead, this be-hatted dude (who I think I also saw in the opening, right before L'Ara) is going to gamble at the town's arena. But he pauses on his way to flirt with a "gorgeous" cleric.
Hat Man: No, pardon me! I never meant to startle you. May I offer my apologies…
Caellach, take notes. THAT is how you flirt with women. He's clearly about to invite her to have tea with him or something like that, but she makes her excuses and rushes off. Hat Man takes it in stride and returns to his original goal, the arena.
Now we get a scene in the middle of town, as two wyvern riders meet with a knight. It's Glen! Is this the chapter where we recruit him? Glen is addressing the knight – Saar, the captain of the border guards. Glen has new orders for him:
Wait, WHAT rumors? I thought we were being sneaky? I thought we were getting better at this disguise thing? Who could have spilled the beans, even? Did the news spill out of Frelia? Who has Eirika talked to that isn't recruited or dead right now? …Okay, I guess that she has saved a lot of villagers from bandits and monsters. It's possible that some of them bragged about it.
Well, the princess isn't the only one Saar is ordered to look out for. Glen explains that a "traitor to the Empire" is likely to come this way after fleeing the capital.
Saar seems...enthusiastic. Glen notes this in his comments to his companion – who is not Valter, as I initially assumed, but another wyvern rider.
His name is Cormag, and he's Glen's brother. (I suppose Glen and Valter are compensating for their mutual hatred by working apart as much as possible). Anyway, Glen tells Cormag that they're leaving to the northeast. Then we transition to our heroes.
Goddammit Glen, you had a chance right there to defect to another country (or fulfill your mission by capturing the princess, I guess). All you had to do was spend an hour eating lunch or gambling with Hat Man at the arena.
Sigh…I guess it's too early in the game for a wyvern rider, anyway.
Eirika is reminiscing to Seth about all the times she's been to Serafew. It's a place where Renaisians and Gradoans have mingled freely for generations. She says, "I remember the harmony in which the people of both countries lived. No walls divided our borders. No soldiers stood guard in high towers. It seems like something from another time. It seems lost now…forever."
Seth notes, however, that the guard isn't that heavy. That is, it's not up to the standards he would expect – as a military man – to see at the border between hostile countries. That's because the Gradoan army isn't expecting any attacks from Renais: the Renaisian army is destroyed and organized resistance to them has stopped. Therefore, he thinks they might be able to sneak through.
…Seth, dear, normally I respect your decisions, but the balance of evidence suggests that you all are not great at hiding who you are and what you're doing, so…I don't have high hopes.
At that point, another character shows up:
They all say no and he leaves to keep looking. That guy was in the intro, I'm certain of it. He'll be back. In fact, this chapter has quite a few cameos from characters who just scream that they'll be important later.
But in the moment, the guy leaves, and our heroes don't do anything about it because something else is happening:
The blonde cleric – her name is Natasha, by the way – is the traitor the army has been looking for, and she's been found. She shouts to the soldiers that they must listen to her – the emperor is no longer in his right mind! Surely they must be able to see that?
Luckily for her, Seth and Eirika were close enough to hear the exchange, and quickly decide that an enemy of the empire is a friend of theirs. Also, we can assume that Eirika is not willing to let soldiers cut a defenseless woman into pieces before her eyes. The one, seeking to enter Grado; the other, seeking to flee it. Both their paths cross at the border.
There's one more cutscene before we can start the battle: the Hat Man from before (his name is Joshua) exits the arena, lamenting that he failed to score girls or gold today. One of the soldiers sees him and yells at him to get back to his post, revealing that Joshua is one of Grado's men – more specifically, he's a mercenary hired to help garrison Serafew.
There's little camaraderie between Joshua and the regular soldiers, as this one reminds him that "filthy sellswords" like him are a dime a dozen. If he acts up, he'll just be replaced.
Joshua says, "Don't worry, little man. I won't forget," implying that he has about as much loyalty to Grado as it has to him. Then he says, to seemingly no-one but the player:
Then Natasha says:
Okay, okay! I get it! Talk to Joshua with Natasha and he'll change sides. I suppose this is for the benefit of first-time players who don't realize that sometimes you can recruit enemies, but from my perspective it's as subtle as an anvil to the head.
He's no Glen, but Joshua has killer speed and a Killing Edge, which is a powerful sword that crits often. I'm a little worried about getting attacked with that thing. Natasha is a healer. She's squishy.
This map is bigger and more complex that the ones before it. It has four 'villages' (really more like houses, since we're inside a town), two shops, and the arena which Joshua was plugging earlier. The objective is to kill the boss, Saar, a knight all the way up in the north-east.
It's also more difficult than the ones that came before. (You guys may have noticed the Deaths Counter got a whole lot more populated before I posted this.) It's an exercise in managing multiple fronts, as there are three routes the enemies can use to get to your starting position in the south, and they will come to you if you don't come to them. On the second turn, things get even more hairy as some axe-wielding brigands show up from the east, planning to loot the town while the garrison's distracted. Actually, I'm not sure how these guys heard about the fight and arrived so quickly?
Either they represent a gang internal to Serafew, or they're highwaymen who just thought they could attack a town with a Gradoan garrison and got lucky enough to arrive at just the right moment. I'm pretty sure the actual soldiers here could take them, but this game isn't coded to have enemies fight each other, so as I play bandits and town guards are perfectly happy to stand and fight side by side. True three-faction battles were introduced in Three Houses, and I find myself missing it in this moment. Can you imagine the delightful chaos as guards get distracted from the player by low-level bandits?
I'm sure there are big-brain, low turn-count strategies that zoom up the more sparsely-populated west path to bypass most of the enemies and kill the boss quickly, but I'm trying to get exp and recruit Joshua. I carefully rotate my front-liners and advance slowly along two of the routes. On the third one, the one with Joshua, I am even more cautious, trying to lure out every enemy around him while never setting foot in range of Joshua himself. He's an enemy right now, which means that it's perfectly possible for him to kill one of my units or vice versa.
Of course, as I type all this, it sounds perfectly reasonable and planned-out, but in the actual playthrough I made a lot of mistakes. First, I didn't give Garcia enough ranged support and he died under a wave of axemen.
Then I sought to support Garcia with a mage and Eirika, but Eirika…still can't get hit twice in a row.
I started over from the beginning and sent Gilliam to the eastern checkpoint, because it has the heaviest load of enemies, and sent Franz to take his place in the western route (he did very well there, by the way. Lots of levels). Things go well. Lute checks out the southern shop, which sells magical items and healing items. I buy a Heal staff for Natasha. It's less powerful than the one she starts with, but I don't want to use the good healing on minor wounds.
Then one of the axemen I've been luring from around Joshua points out that the item shop is within his range.
I reload again, and kill all the soldiers around Joshua before I visit the shop. Now that nobody's around to interfere, the only threat remaining in the central square is Joshua himself, and I have a plan to deal with him. You see, some of you have mentioned that Seth makes a superior meatshield. I have Seth send all his weapons to the convoy through Eirika, keeping his armor on (I'm watching you, you dangerous tempter!). Then I order him to sit in a patch of woods near Joshua, let his horse graze, and wait to be attacked. Natasha is waiting in the wings to swoop in and do her thing. (Wait a second, what are woods terrain tiles doing in a town? Does this place have parks?)
Joshua takes the bait, attacking…Eirika. Crap.
I thought the enemy was supposed to prioritize attacking characters who can't fight back!
Well, I made a save state right before trying this in case anything went wrong. So I reload, have Eirika and Seth do the inventory transfer from one tile further back, and try again.
Natasha asks if he's going to capture or kill her. Joshua casually confirms that, yes, he's being paid to kill her. Natasha begs him to listen before he strikes her down, for she has a very important message about the emperor. "The other nations must be warned before he extinguishes all light from our lands."
Well, Joshua doesn't give a shit about that! He's just a mercenary, he doesn't get involved in politics. He does admit, however, that killing her wouldn't entirely sit right with him. So he asks her if she likes to gamble.
I think that's called an addiction, Joshua. Anyway, he takes out a coin and asks her to pick heads or tails. Natasha is getting frustrated with him, but he asks her, "Would you rather I get on with the job I was hired for?"
There is a brief, quiet pause as he flips the coin.
Well, since he never backs out of a bet, Joshua's going to betray his employers and protect her! At first, Natasha is like, "Are you serious," but then she realizes that she really shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Natasha: Oh, thank heaven! Thank you, blessed light, for your protection!
Joshua: I've got nothing against heaven, but I'm right here if you want someone to thank…
I must say, that is not how I expected this recruitment to go...And now we've got Joshua, our first representative of the myrmidon class! Myrmidons – in Fire Emblem – are swifter, more fragile swordsmen who focus on doubling and critical hits. Joshua seems like an exemplar of the type, as the axemen nearby are willing to attest.
Or, well, they would be willing to attest if they weren't dead. His damage is so good, in fact, that it's kind of a disadvantage for him.
I'll explain: there's a certain phenomenon is FE that I call 'suffering from success'. If a character is in range of multiple enemies, then on enemy phase those enemies will move to attack, one by one. If an enemy attacks, deals a little damage, and then gets obliterated by the subsequent counterattack, the tile they occupied is now free for another enemy, who will attack, do a little damage, get destroyed…do you see where I'm going with this? Whereas if your character wasn't able to slay the first enemy, the route to attack them will be blocked. Units with superior offense, even if they have good defenses, can get their health chipped away by facing many enemies over the course of one round, where a less dominant unit would only face one. Katie Tiedrich illustrated the problem very well in this comic.
Anyway, I'm sure Joshua was comforted by the fact that it was the gorgeous lady cleric who healed him back up from 3 HP.
This account has been focused on characters dying and almost dying, but in between that I also made time to visit every building in town, which I'll describe all at once here. I normally prefer to stay more chronological, to give you guys a reading experience that's closer to my experience of completing the level, but I reloaded so many times during this map that I'm not sure what time is anymore.
The house in the south holds this pretty lady. She's a dancer and she needs to leave to her next performance. In this town, a wealthy patron left her "a small ransom in gifts," more than she wants to carry, so she graciously gives you a Dracoshield, declaring, "Wealth is useless if you can't use it to bring happiness to others." Well, seeing as this item boosts the Defense of whoever uses it by 2, I'd say that she's made me very happy.
The second house holds an old man who claims to have been a great swordmaster in his youth. He wants to pass on his techniques before he dies, so he gives you a Secret Book – this is an item that increases Skill.
The third house is home to a Renaisian man who tells you that, while the town is inhabited by a mix of Renaisians and Gradoans, the soldiers are specifically targeting Renaisians for abuse. He gives Eirika an Armorslayer – a sword that happens to be effective against Saar – and tells her to use it to kill him.
I would normally do that, but her Rapier is much lighter and just as effective against armor, so I give the Armorslayer to Joshua instead (he and Eirika and Seth are the only units with enough weapon rank to wield it, at this point).
Finally, the house up north features this military cadet of indecipherable gender and unbearable cuteness who is leaving home to join the Gradoan army. They don't actually interact with the person you send to visit the house. Instead, they leave and you find a Torch that they left behind.
…Is there a fog map coming up? I've gotta remember to keep this in my inventory, just in case.
I didn't take any screenshots of the north shop, but it has steel weapons so I buy a few of those.
Finally, there's the arena. I make a save and send Colm there to investigate. The gatekeeper explains the simple rules: Wager some gold and fight till you drop, or press the B button to yield. It seems to pair you up against a random enemy of about the same level, so Colm faces a mercenary and…
…well, you and Neimi just love breaking each other's hearts, huh? And yes, this is a permanent death, just like facing any other enemy. You also lose the gold you wagered.
The gatekeeper reacts with an unimpressed "I'd hoped for better from you," as if he's completely desensitized to seeing people die in his arena. Do the Gradoans really enjoy gladiatorial bloodsports? Wait, no. I can't just assume that the Gradoans are always evil. This town has a hybrid Gradoan-Renaisian culture, remember. Betting on life-and-death combat could be a Renaisian thing.
I reload, sending Seth in this time. He faces a Sage and bears the pain of his fireballs as he slays him to the cheers of the crowd. He is deposited back outside with 2/3 of his HP gone and a bit more gold, having used up his turn. He also levels up from the experience.
I don't use the arena again for the rest of the map. I can see how it could be very valuable for getting gold and experience, but I don't like the idea of not being able to see the stats of the enemy before I fight, and I'm not desperate for gold. Also, it just doesn't sit right with me, morally.
Saar dies quickly because that one villager reminded me that he takes extra damage from Eirika's rapier.
I really don't think your emperor deserves that much loyalty, bud.
Now that the manhunt has been called off, by virtue of everyone in the town garrison being dead or too smart to announce themselves, Natasha can finally tell someone the news she bears. She explains that she used to work at Grado's Imperial Temple, and, judging by the way she talks about him, she even interacted with Emperor Vigarde occasionally. That's how she was able to tell that his personality has completely changed.
Well then, why did she leave?
Natasha: A few days past, my mentor was arrested without warning. They executed him. They said he was a traitor…
But he wasn't a traitor.
Why, Natasha? What did he know that was so dangerous to Emperor Vigarde?
Oh. Well that…that makes perfect sense. It's established that the Sacred Stones are what seal away the Demon King. I went into this expecting an evil cult with the goal of resurrecting their dark lord to show up – it's a Fire Emblem classic – so I guess the worshippers of the Demon King have gotten their hands on the throne of Grado somehow. Now, they're invading all the other nations in order to get the Sacred Stones they keep, destroy them, and profit. I'm sure, at this very moment, Riev or Shoulderpads are explaining to a bunch of initiates how the Demon King is going to be so very grateful and reward them with hookers and booze when he turns the rest of humanity into mewling slaves. In fact, I'm willing to bet that Grado's Sacred Stone has already been disposed of. Remember Artur's line from last chapter?
The answer is that their protection has been sabotaged already! Lesser servants of the Demon King are slipping through because they're only at four-fifths power!
Our characters, of course, have never played a Fire Emblem game, and are completely at a loss to explain why anyone would want to do this. Seth even wonders if Natasha might possibly be a Gradoan spy sent to confuse them. However, they conclude that the potential consequences of the Demon King going free are so dire that they should act as though her words are true, and warn the other nations that still hold Sacred Stones.
There's one more scene: the man who gave Eirika the Armorslayer shows back up and asks if she's the Princess. "I am," she answers.
He expresses how glad he is that she's alive, and he's also grateful she put an end to Saar, who was especially brutal to the Renaisian populace.
Eirika has some strong views on the folly of nationalism, and the shared brotherhood of man, and she is willing to express those views with a rapier when necessary. More seriously, she laments that bloodshed has come to the city where she spent such happy days with her brother and Lyon. Even now, Gradoan reinforcements are surely on their way, so she can't tarry here. And when she's gone, a new commander will replace Saar, and the city will still be under occupation. She says, "There's nothing I can do for you now. Please forgive me."
He tells her that there's nothing to forgive, because she's given them hope.
Man: There will come a day when you, Prince Ephraim, and all of Renais rise up...Until that day of glory comes, we will wait unbowed and filled with hope.
I find this scene interesting as a parallel to the one back in Chapter two, the one where a village elder claimed that Renais was finished. Eirika still hasn't won any lasting victories, but she's managed to build up some hope that, in the future, if she doesn't give up, things will get better. The Empire can be resisted. Their orders can be foiled.
She's ready to take on the world! She strides forth, confident that no one can stop her! Man, I'm looking forward to seeing her again.
This time, while in my inventory to make sure everyone has healing items, I notice that you can sell items on the inventory screen, even when you're not standing on a shop. I suppose Eirika's just leaving them out for the forest fairies overnight and picking up the fairy gold in the morning.
Anyway, back to the story. Lute and Artur were right, in that monsters are now appearing all over Magvel, no doubt terrorizing the surprised populace in all nations.
Our heroes finally reach the edge of Renais. At the border town of Serafew, they plan to cross into Grado. The narrator informs us that Serafew was once a symbol of "the friendship the two nations have shared these many years." Now, however, Grado has taken firm control of the place and installed a military garrison to guard the border.
We don't return to our heroes immediately; instead, this be-hatted dude (who I think I also saw in the opening, right before L'Ara) is going to gamble at the town's arena. But he pauses on his way to flirt with a "gorgeous" cleric.
Hat Man: No, pardon me! I never meant to startle you. May I offer my apologies…
Caellach, take notes. THAT is how you flirt with women. He's clearly about to invite her to have tea with him or something like that, but she makes her excuses and rushes off. Hat Man takes it in stride and returns to his original goal, the arena.
Now we get a scene in the middle of town, as two wyvern riders meet with a knight. It's Glen! Is this the chapter where we recruit him? Glen is addressing the knight – Saar, the captain of the border guards. Glen has new orders for him:
Wait, WHAT rumors? I thought we were being sneaky? I thought we were getting better at this disguise thing? Who could have spilled the beans, even? Did the news spill out of Frelia? Who has Eirika talked to that isn't recruited or dead right now? …Okay, I guess that she has saved a lot of villagers from bandits and monsters. It's possible that some of them bragged about it.
Well, the princess isn't the only one Saar is ordered to look out for. Glen explains that a "traitor to the Empire" is likely to come this way after fleeing the capital.
Saar seems...enthusiastic. Glen notes this in his comments to his companion – who is not Valter, as I initially assumed, but another wyvern rider.
His name is Cormag, and he's Glen's brother. (I suppose Glen and Valter are compensating for their mutual hatred by working apart as much as possible). Anyway, Glen tells Cormag that they're leaving to the northeast. Then we transition to our heroes.
Goddammit Glen, you had a chance right there to defect to another country (or fulfill your mission by capturing the princess, I guess). All you had to do was spend an hour eating lunch or gambling with Hat Man at the arena.
Sigh…I guess it's too early in the game for a wyvern rider, anyway.
Eirika is reminiscing to Seth about all the times she's been to Serafew. It's a place where Renaisians and Gradoans have mingled freely for generations. She says, "I remember the harmony in which the people of both countries lived. No walls divided our borders. No soldiers stood guard in high towers. It seems like something from another time. It seems lost now…forever."
Seth notes, however, that the guard isn't that heavy. That is, it's not up to the standards he would expect – as a military man – to see at the border between hostile countries. That's because the Gradoan army isn't expecting any attacks from Renais: the Renaisian army is destroyed and organized resistance to them has stopped. Therefore, he thinks they might be able to sneak through.
…Seth, dear, normally I respect your decisions, but the balance of evidence suggests that you all are not great at hiding who you are and what you're doing, so…I don't have high hopes.
At that point, another character shows up:
They all say no and he leaves to keep looking. That guy was in the intro, I'm certain of it. He'll be back. In fact, this chapter has quite a few cameos from characters who just scream that they'll be important later.
But in the moment, the guy leaves, and our heroes don't do anything about it because something else is happening:
The blonde cleric – her name is Natasha, by the way – is the traitor the army has been looking for, and she's been found. She shouts to the soldiers that they must listen to her – the emperor is no longer in his right mind! Surely they must be able to see that?
Luckily for her, Seth and Eirika were close enough to hear the exchange, and quickly decide that an enemy of the empire is a friend of theirs. Also, we can assume that Eirika is not willing to let soldiers cut a defenseless woman into pieces before her eyes. The one, seeking to enter Grado; the other, seeking to flee it. Both their paths cross at the border.
There's one more cutscene before we can start the battle: the Hat Man from before (his name is Joshua) exits the arena, lamenting that he failed to score girls or gold today. One of the soldiers sees him and yells at him to get back to his post, revealing that Joshua is one of Grado's men – more specifically, he's a mercenary hired to help garrison Serafew.
There's little camaraderie between Joshua and the regular soldiers, as this one reminds him that "filthy sellswords" like him are a dime a dozen. If he acts up, he'll just be replaced.
Joshua says, "Don't worry, little man. I won't forget," implying that he has about as much loyalty to Grado as it has to him. Then he says, to seemingly no-one but the player:
Then Natasha says:
Okay, okay! I get it! Talk to Joshua with Natasha and he'll change sides. I suppose this is for the benefit of first-time players who don't realize that sometimes you can recruit enemies, but from my perspective it's as subtle as an anvil to the head.
He's no Glen, but Joshua has killer speed and a Killing Edge, which is a powerful sword that crits often. I'm a little worried about getting attacked with that thing. Natasha is a healer. She's squishy.
This map is bigger and more complex that the ones before it. It has four 'villages' (really more like houses, since we're inside a town), two shops, and the arena which Joshua was plugging earlier. The objective is to kill the boss, Saar, a knight all the way up in the north-east.
It's also more difficult than the ones that came before. (You guys may have noticed the Deaths Counter got a whole lot more populated before I posted this.) It's an exercise in managing multiple fronts, as there are three routes the enemies can use to get to your starting position in the south, and they will come to you if you don't come to them. On the second turn, things get even more hairy as some axe-wielding brigands show up from the east, planning to loot the town while the garrison's distracted. Actually, I'm not sure how these guys heard about the fight and arrived so quickly?
Either they represent a gang internal to Serafew, or they're highwaymen who just thought they could attack a town with a Gradoan garrison and got lucky enough to arrive at just the right moment. I'm pretty sure the actual soldiers here could take them, but this game isn't coded to have enemies fight each other, so as I play bandits and town guards are perfectly happy to stand and fight side by side. True three-faction battles were introduced in Three Houses, and I find myself missing it in this moment. Can you imagine the delightful chaos as guards get distracted from the player by low-level bandits?
I'm sure there are big-brain, low turn-count strategies that zoom up the more sparsely-populated west path to bypass most of the enemies and kill the boss quickly, but I'm trying to get exp and recruit Joshua. I carefully rotate my front-liners and advance slowly along two of the routes. On the third one, the one with Joshua, I am even more cautious, trying to lure out every enemy around him while never setting foot in range of Joshua himself. He's an enemy right now, which means that it's perfectly possible for him to kill one of my units or vice versa.
Of course, as I type all this, it sounds perfectly reasonable and planned-out, but in the actual playthrough I made a lot of mistakes. First, I didn't give Garcia enough ranged support and he died under a wave of axemen.
Then I sought to support Garcia with a mage and Eirika, but Eirika…still can't get hit twice in a row.
I started over from the beginning and sent Gilliam to the eastern checkpoint, because it has the heaviest load of enemies, and sent Franz to take his place in the western route (he did very well there, by the way. Lots of levels). Things go well. Lute checks out the southern shop, which sells magical items and healing items. I buy a Heal staff for Natasha. It's less powerful than the one she starts with, but I don't want to use the good healing on minor wounds.
Then one of the axemen I've been luring from around Joshua points out that the item shop is within his range.
I reload again, and kill all the soldiers around Joshua before I visit the shop. Now that nobody's around to interfere, the only threat remaining in the central square is Joshua himself, and I have a plan to deal with him. You see, some of you have mentioned that Seth makes a superior meatshield. I have Seth send all his weapons to the convoy through Eirika, keeping his armor on (I'm watching you, you dangerous tempter!). Then I order him to sit in a patch of woods near Joshua, let his horse graze, and wait to be attacked. Natasha is waiting in the wings to swoop in and do her thing. (Wait a second, what are woods terrain tiles doing in a town? Does this place have parks?)
Joshua takes the bait, attacking…Eirika. Crap.
I thought the enemy was supposed to prioritize attacking characters who can't fight back!
Well, I made a save state right before trying this in case anything went wrong. So I reload, have Eirika and Seth do the inventory transfer from one tile further back, and try again.
Natasha asks if he's going to capture or kill her. Joshua casually confirms that, yes, he's being paid to kill her. Natasha begs him to listen before he strikes her down, for she has a very important message about the emperor. "The other nations must be warned before he extinguishes all light from our lands."
Well, Joshua doesn't give a shit about that! He's just a mercenary, he doesn't get involved in politics. He does admit, however, that killing her wouldn't entirely sit right with him. So he asks her if she likes to gamble.
I think that's called an addiction, Joshua. Anyway, he takes out a coin and asks her to pick heads or tails. Natasha is getting frustrated with him, but he asks her, "Would you rather I get on with the job I was hired for?"
There is a brief, quiet pause as he flips the coin.
Well, since he never backs out of a bet, Joshua's going to betray his employers and protect her! At first, Natasha is like, "Are you serious," but then she realizes that she really shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Natasha: Oh, thank heaven! Thank you, blessed light, for your protection!
Joshua: I've got nothing against heaven, but I'm right here if you want someone to thank…
I must say, that is not how I expected this recruitment to go...And now we've got Joshua, our first representative of the myrmidon class! Myrmidons – in Fire Emblem – are swifter, more fragile swordsmen who focus on doubling and critical hits. Joshua seems like an exemplar of the type, as the axemen nearby are willing to attest.
Or, well, they would be willing to attest if they weren't dead. His damage is so good, in fact, that it's kind of a disadvantage for him.
I'll explain: there's a certain phenomenon is FE that I call 'suffering from success'. If a character is in range of multiple enemies, then on enemy phase those enemies will move to attack, one by one. If an enemy attacks, deals a little damage, and then gets obliterated by the subsequent counterattack, the tile they occupied is now free for another enemy, who will attack, do a little damage, get destroyed…do you see where I'm going with this? Whereas if your character wasn't able to slay the first enemy, the route to attack them will be blocked. Units with superior offense, even if they have good defenses, can get their health chipped away by facing many enemies over the course of one round, where a less dominant unit would only face one. Katie Tiedrich illustrated the problem very well in this comic.
Anyway, I'm sure Joshua was comforted by the fact that it was the gorgeous lady cleric who healed him back up from 3 HP.
This account has been focused on characters dying and almost dying, but in between that I also made time to visit every building in town, which I'll describe all at once here. I normally prefer to stay more chronological, to give you guys a reading experience that's closer to my experience of completing the level, but I reloaded so many times during this map that I'm not sure what time is anymore.
The house in the south holds this pretty lady. She's a dancer and she needs to leave to her next performance. In this town, a wealthy patron left her "a small ransom in gifts," more than she wants to carry, so she graciously gives you a Dracoshield, declaring, "Wealth is useless if you can't use it to bring happiness to others." Well, seeing as this item boosts the Defense of whoever uses it by 2, I'd say that she's made me very happy.
The second house holds an old man who claims to have been a great swordmaster in his youth. He wants to pass on his techniques before he dies, so he gives you a Secret Book – this is an item that increases Skill.
The third house is home to a Renaisian man who tells you that, while the town is inhabited by a mix of Renaisians and Gradoans, the soldiers are specifically targeting Renaisians for abuse. He gives Eirika an Armorslayer – a sword that happens to be effective against Saar – and tells her to use it to kill him.
I would normally do that, but her Rapier is much lighter and just as effective against armor, so I give the Armorslayer to Joshua instead (he and Eirika and Seth are the only units with enough weapon rank to wield it, at this point).
Finally, the house up north features this military cadet of indecipherable gender and unbearable cuteness who is leaving home to join the Gradoan army. They don't actually interact with the person you send to visit the house. Instead, they leave and you find a Torch that they left behind.
…Is there a fog map coming up? I've gotta remember to keep this in my inventory, just in case.
I didn't take any screenshots of the north shop, but it has steel weapons so I buy a few of those.
Finally, there's the arena. I make a save and send Colm there to investigate. The gatekeeper explains the simple rules: Wager some gold and fight till you drop, or press the B button to yield. It seems to pair you up against a random enemy of about the same level, so Colm faces a mercenary and…
…well, you and Neimi just love breaking each other's hearts, huh? And yes, this is a permanent death, just like facing any other enemy. You also lose the gold you wagered.
The gatekeeper reacts with an unimpressed "I'd hoped for better from you," as if he's completely desensitized to seeing people die in his arena. Do the Gradoans really enjoy gladiatorial bloodsports? Wait, no. I can't just assume that the Gradoans are always evil. This town has a hybrid Gradoan-Renaisian culture, remember. Betting on life-and-death combat could be a Renaisian thing.
I reload, sending Seth in this time. He faces a Sage and bears the pain of his fireballs as he slays him to the cheers of the crowd. He is deposited back outside with 2/3 of his HP gone and a bit more gold, having used up his turn. He also levels up from the experience.
I don't use the arena again for the rest of the map. I can see how it could be very valuable for getting gold and experience, but I don't like the idea of not being able to see the stats of the enemy before I fight, and I'm not desperate for gold. Also, it just doesn't sit right with me, morally.
Saar dies quickly because that one villager reminded me that he takes extra damage from Eirika's rapier.
I really don't think your emperor deserves that much loyalty, bud.
Now that the manhunt has been called off, by virtue of everyone in the town garrison being dead or too smart to announce themselves, Natasha can finally tell someone the news she bears. She explains that she used to work at Grado's Imperial Temple, and, judging by the way she talks about him, she even interacted with Emperor Vigarde occasionally. That's how she was able to tell that his personality has completely changed.
Well then, why did she leave?
Natasha: A few days past, my mentor was arrested without warning. They executed him. They said he was a traitor…
But he wasn't a traitor.
Why, Natasha? What did he know that was so dangerous to Emperor Vigarde?
Oh. Well that…that makes perfect sense. It's established that the Sacred Stones are what seal away the Demon King. I went into this expecting an evil cult with the goal of resurrecting their dark lord to show up – it's a Fire Emblem classic – so I guess the worshippers of the Demon King have gotten their hands on the throne of Grado somehow. Now, they're invading all the other nations in order to get the Sacred Stones they keep, destroy them, and profit. I'm sure, at this very moment, Riev or Shoulderpads are explaining to a bunch of initiates how the Demon King is going to be so very grateful and reward them with hookers and booze when he turns the rest of humanity into mewling slaves. In fact, I'm willing to bet that Grado's Sacred Stone has already been disposed of. Remember Artur's line from last chapter?
The answer is that their protection has been sabotaged already! Lesser servants of the Demon King are slipping through because they're only at four-fifths power!
Our characters, of course, have never played a Fire Emblem game, and are completely at a loss to explain why anyone would want to do this. Seth even wonders if Natasha might possibly be a Gradoan spy sent to confuse them. However, they conclude that the potential consequences of the Demon King going free are so dire that they should act as though her words are true, and warn the other nations that still hold Sacred Stones.
There's one more scene: the man who gave Eirika the Armorslayer shows back up and asks if she's the Princess. "I am," she answers.
He expresses how glad he is that she's alive, and he's also grateful she put an end to Saar, who was especially brutal to the Renaisian populace.
Eirika has some strong views on the folly of nationalism, and the shared brotherhood of man, and she is willing to express those views with a rapier when necessary. More seriously, she laments that bloodshed has come to the city where she spent such happy days with her brother and Lyon. Even now, Gradoan reinforcements are surely on their way, so she can't tarry here. And when she's gone, a new commander will replace Saar, and the city will still be under occupation. She says, "There's nothing I can do for you now. Please forgive me."
He tells her that there's nothing to forgive, because she's given them hope.
Man: There will come a day when you, Prince Ephraim, and all of Renais rise up...Until that day of glory comes, we will wait unbowed and filled with hope.
I find this scene interesting as a parallel to the one back in Chapter two, the one where a village elder claimed that Renais was finished. Eirika still hasn't won any lasting victories, but she's managed to build up some hope that, in the future, if she doesn't give up, things will get better. The Empire can be resisted. Their orders can be foiled.
- Location
- NOVA
It's not as helpful now, but something fun the GBA games did is give you "dangerous foe recruited by a kind healer" as a repeated trope and without exception they never attack the healer. You can actually march her right up to him and all he'll never attack... the other enemies though.
While some other people have already gone over how great Seth is, there is a way to make him closer to an archetypical Jagen while also meat shielding. Give him a Slim Lance or Slim Sword, which will often have low enough might that he'll leave his enemy at single digit health for someone else to finish off.
Vanessa really wants an Iron to deal any damage or Javelin to avoid being hit anyway, so her Slim Lance is free.
I mean, obviously it's because the problem dragon is simply too charismatic... At least it is in many games.
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- Location
- Wherever
You can actually access shops on the world map from any location whose map has a shop inside it. Being able to sell without going to a shop is just the game cutting out pointless busywork. (Outside some specific sequences where you don't have free mobility on the map)
Oddly, the map shops can have completely different contents from the contents within the map itself. In some cases this is probably intentional, but in other cases it looks like an accident to me.
Wait, WHAT rumors? I thought we were being sneaky? I thought we were getting better at this disguise thing? Who could have spilled the beans, even? Did the news spill out of Frelia? Who has Eirika talked to that isn't recruited or dead right now? …Okay, I guess that she has saved a lot of villagers from bandits and monsters. It's possible that some of them bragged about it.
I've never been able to decide if this 'rumors' bit is sensible writing, a side effect of the game's rushed state, or an example of the frustrating tendency for pop culture to use 'rumors say' as an unimpeachable excuse for people to do things they don't really have any obvious reason to be doing that serve the narrative's purpose. After all, rumors spreading in real life don't necessarily come from a strong foundation, so you can't argue it's unrealistic.
I don't like it in this particular case whatever the reason for it happening, though.
Joshua's dialogue is also a hint that he won't attack Natasha, making it actually easy to recruit him without danger; just peel off his buddies, then send in Natasha alone.
Wait, they were? Huh. Now I'm even more curious about Three Houses.
Joshua takes the bait, attacking…Eirika. Crap.
I thought the enemy was supposed to prioritize attacking characters who can't fight back!
They do, but kills are always the AI's number one priority.
This dialogue gains extra nuance if you do a specific Support with a specific character with Joshua, because it reveals that Joshua is a habitual cheater.
So he didn't leave this to luck; she really should just be thanking Joshua himself.
This is part of why I've never been a fan of crits in the series. It's infuriating to lose a character because they 'fortunately' got an unexpected crit that let more enemies pile in and kill them.
Just don't sell your Torch, and it'll be fine.
Arenas are just a Fire Emblem staple that, as the series progressed, got less and less common. This is good, because Arenas are dumb and awful and I hate them, and the series' design has progressed such that what legitimate value they theoretically offer is completely gone.
In short: later games let you grind more freely between maps, and so trying to grind at an Arena is pointlessly risking people dying when you can just do a My Castle battle in Fates, or whatever, anytime you feel like.
Within Sacred Stones itself, Arenas don't show up very often, but they aren't concentrated in any particular nation.
I've sometimes wondered how many players actually made this guess at this point. I found it an obvious theory in my original run, in spite of no familiarity with the series, but I don't really have a good sense of how often other players perform this kind of thinking in playing games like this.
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DragonUnitOmega
Akechi/Fem!Akira gives me life
- Location
- Inaba
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Etc
Bah, I have an impromptu trip I have to go, but I am impatient and excited as all heck, so I'mma at least say this before I do it and then have the time to say my thoughts in long form.
Joshua is one of my favorite characters in this game, and Natasha is my primary healer partially because of that. ...okay mostly because of Joshua. Because shipping. And also because I like Joshua's character.
Joshua is one of my favorite characters in this game, and Natasha is my primary healer partially because of that. ...okay mostly because of Joshua. Because shipping. And also because I like Joshua's character.
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
In this particular case, it's not actually necessary, is it? The battle doesn't start because soldiers were looking for Eirika, it starts because they were looking for Natasha. Heck, if Glen doesn't know where Eirika is, that gives him a good reason to fly off and leave - "Come Cormag, let's keep searching the Renaisian countryside for the princess!" And then the player gets to laugh at the dramatic irony.
Three-faction battles are really neat, but I don't think the game used them to their full potential. There's one big setpiece battle with three armies fighting for real and tons of named characters present, but it was kind of spoiled by the fact that, story-wise, it should have been a 2v1. Two of those armies had no reason to fight, they were just battling because 'the battlefield's foggy' and they got confused. No, it's not a fog map, that's just the explanation for why everyone's fighting.
Other than that, three-faction battles are limited to (as far as I remember) mock battles where you're fighting the other classes at school, and random encounter maps where you're fighting bandits and sometimes a monster shows up. While it is funny to see a monster eating bandits, I do wish for the mechanic to be used in a way that feels a bit more...impactful.
Hmm. But if he always knew the outcome because he rigged the coin toss, why bother doing the coin toss at all? Why not just go with Natasha when she asks him? I think the fact that he lost money on the arena today shows that he can't always be cheating.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Joshua's a sellsword, he has to sell people on his swordskills and that requires a strong brand identity.
Even if the coin-toss is rigged, the illusion of chance drives the crowds mad, you know?
Alternatively, he was hoping the literal gambling with her life would set off a suspension bridge effect in Natasha, would not be the weirdest flirting method seen in video games.
- Location
- Wherever
Yeah, that's part of why I don't like it. 'We think Eirika might specifically pass through here' isn't actually important for justifying the map happening, it's just... there.
Which, mind, is part of why I wonder if this is a side effect of the game's incomplete state. The series has plenty of dubious writing tendencies, but this isn't usually one of them.
Aww. That's a bit disappointing.
I'm still glad to hear a game in this series finally did a 3-way battle properly, mind. The series has long been plagued by the gameplay only really doing 2 sides while the writing regularly creates situations where your enemies on a map make no sense to be unified. Maybe later games will more properly iron this jank out.
Sure, but the arena isn't equivalent to a coin flip; he doesn't have the same level of potential control over the outcome.
As for why he'd bother with the pretension, I'm... not sure I can offer a satisfactory explanation. I personally, as a kid, read this as an extension of the flirting/wooing: "Clearly God/Fate/whatever religious stuff we believe in wants us together, Miss Lady Of Religion." But at this point I'm somewhat doubtful anybody involved in making this scene had such a scenario in mind at all; I don't think Joshua actually says anything like that in his Supports, for example.
My current suspicion at this point is that this is a somewhat thoughtless application of a bit of Japanese cultural norms I still have only a very partial understanding of; it's very common in Japanese pop culture for characters to do a thing for 'internal' motivations while outwardly insisting their current course is not motivated by their own desires at all, but rather is driven by 'extenal' factors they, alas, have no say in. "It's not that I would hate to see you hurt, Person I Have A Crush On. I saved you because your death would stain my family's honor, and therefore I am obligated to save you even if I personally hate you and would rather you suffer a thousand years. Do not read any personal feelings into it. It was definitely completely out of my hands."
One might argue that makes no sense to invoke here since Joshua offered the coin flip on his own, and so nobody is going to accept "I had no choice in the matter" as being applicable here, and honestly, I'd agree... but I've seen Japanese pop culture with similarly thin 'defenses' where this was unambiguously what the story was doing. So... this absolutely could be an example of this.
But as I said, I honestly don't really get this whole dynamic, so I certainly can't explain what the thought process might've been if this is indeed this trope being employed, and could easily be completely wrong about this being an example at all.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Oh boy, a Sacred Stones LP! My first FE game growing up, and while not my favorite, I do hold a great fondness for it. Also interesting to see the Restoration Queen version, I always meant to get around to giving it a try. And while I admit to being a bit concerned about how the changes might be, so far I've been impressed by what I've seen.
Fun fact, all of these clever inbuilt tutorials? If you had played at a lower difficulty they would have been very explicit, step by step text box tutorials telling you what to do. Much less impressive, but they were very helpful to tiny me.
That said, the fact that they function so well as tutorial sections without any of the dialogue gives me a new appreciation for them. There was some good design there.
It's worth noting that the reputation of being easy is in relation to the Fire Emblems of the time, and includes such scathing criticisms as "you can buy items from the world map instead of just in battles" and "there are ways to grind XP." So things that have become entirely common in the post-Awakening world. While it's not on the level of the hardeest entries even without that, there's still some decent challenge to be had.
Ah monster enemies - one of my favorite elements of SS, and something that's always felt lacking in the games that don't have them. I always felt they were a nice change of pace, and gave you different sets of enemy types to play around with. Things like flying dark magic users in mogalls and giant sacks of HP like revenants aren't exactly represented among the human enemies, and it lets you find different use cases for your own units.
He what? You mean all these hears, I've been sending a naked Seth to facetank Joshua and eating valuable Killing Edge durability all for nothing? This is crimes, I hate this.
Overall though, reading through so far and I forgot what a breath of fresh air Eirika is as a character. Someone who abhors violence, but finds the cost of standing by and doing nothing too great to bear, so she rides out to help people regardless? With a truly impressive amount of determination as she faces new horrors both human and supernatural? This girl is a fantastic protagonist, and I don't think I appreciated her enough back in the day.
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more, especially through the lens of someone new to the game. It's been a great read so far!
Edit: thinking about it, is discussing content from future supports spoilers? Because the one regarding Joshua and cheating is kind of a major character reveal for him, and especially discussing it out of context feels like it robs it of its impact.
Fun fact, all of these clever inbuilt tutorials? If you had played at a lower difficulty they would have been very explicit, step by step text box tutorials telling you what to do. Much less impressive, but they were very helpful to tiny me.
That said, the fact that they function so well as tutorial sections without any of the dialogue gives me a new appreciation for them. There was some good design there.
It's worth noting that the reputation of being easy is in relation to the Fire Emblems of the time, and includes such scathing criticisms as "you can buy items from the world map instead of just in battles" and "there are ways to grind XP." So things that have become entirely common in the post-Awakening world. While it's not on the level of the hardeest entries even without that, there's still some decent challenge to be had.
Ah monster enemies - one of my favorite elements of SS, and something that's always felt lacking in the games that don't have them. I always felt they were a nice change of pace, and gave you different sets of enemy types to play around with. Things like flying dark magic users in mogalls and giant sacks of HP like revenants aren't exactly represented among the human enemies, and it lets you find different use cases for your own units.
He what? You mean all these hears, I've been sending a naked Seth to facetank Joshua and eating valuable Killing Edge durability all for nothing? This is crimes, I hate this.
Overall though, reading through so far and I forgot what a breath of fresh air Eirika is as a character. Someone who abhors violence, but finds the cost of standing by and doing nothing too great to bear, so she rides out to help people regardless? With a truly impressive amount of determination as she faces new horrors both human and supernatural? This girl is a fantastic protagonist, and I don't think I appreciated her enough back in the day.
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more, especially through the lens of someone new to the game. It's been a great read so far!
Edit: thinking about it, is discussing content from future supports spoilers? Because the one regarding Joshua and cheating is kind of a major character reveal for him, and especially discussing it out of context feels like it robs it of its impact.
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Chapter 5.X: Unbroken Heart
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
We're back, distinguished readers, with a special chapter: a gaiden chapter, looking at a different group of heroes...It's finally time to get a look at Prince Ephraim!
In Renvall, where Ephraim was last seen, we see Valter talking to the officer in charge of the castle.
Tirado has not captured him; he explains that the prince has been hiding out in the woods, using guerilla tactics, and it's been impossible to pin him down. His force is tiny, but it consists of highly capable knights. He concludes, "Prince Ephraim's reputation as a superb strategist would seem to be well earned."
However, Tirado – eager to please – has come up with a plan. It's a marvellous plan. They'll take an army…head north…and find Ephraim in the woods!
Ah…Tirado, how is that any different from what you've been trying all this time? Valter does ask how the heck they'll know where to find him, and Tirado reveals his actual plan: He has a mole on Ephraim's team who will feed him that information.
This introduction hasn't given me a great impression of Tirado's competence, so I'm betting fifty-fifty odds that this 'mole' is yet another ploy of Ephraim's.
We move to the countryside, where Ephraim is getting a report from his companions, Kyle (green) and Forde (blonde). Forde states that their supplies are running low and their weapons need maintenance (it would be cool if the following chapter reflected that by having their weapons start at low durability, but alas they're all at full). He suggests restocking at a nearby village – it's ambiguous whether he means trading for what they need, or a more aggressive type of restocking. Either way, Ephraim shoots him down.
"Yeah, I knew you'd say that," Forde says. Kyle seems to have been tasked with gathering news on the broader war (no small ask for a fugitive in the middle of enemy territory) and he reports that rumors say the capital of Renais has fallen. Ephraim doesn't appear to put much stock in those rumors; he thinks his father is a better warrior than that. Even if King Fado did retreat from the capital, he believes he must still be fighting, and so their mission has not changed.
Every Gradoan soldier running around the woods searching for them is a soldier kept away from Renais; every hour the enemy generals spend grappling with Ephraim is breathing room for his father and his sister. He is, like his sister, a devoted and resolute lad.
The fourth member of their band appears. This is Orson, an older knight who was sent to scout. He reports that there are several bands of enemies nearby, and to make matters worse, a whole army has set out from Renvall – and it's heading in their direction. Their camp will be discovered if they stay put. Someone asks if the prince wants to try sneaking back across the border to safety.
While Forde doubts the prince's sanity, I see the wisdom in his plan. It's audacious, but he's using the classic guerilla tactic of not being where the enemy thinks he is. Tirado and Valter are trying to find him by blanketing the countryside in men. They want to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. But a) those numbers will avail them little if Ephraim just packs up and leaves the area before they get there and b) they drew on their garrison to get those numbers, so the castle is more lightly defended than usual! Plus, taking the castle will allow them to raid its supplies.
I'd also like to note that Tirado's vaunted mole is currently availing him nothing. In fact, considering that Ephraim was informed of Tirado's attack with enough time to get out of the way, I believe Orson's scouting trip went something like this:
Orson: Hello, Sir Tirado.
Tirado: Yes…Orson, was it? I am currently bringing this giant army to crush Prince Ephraim once and for all. Now tell me where he is, so that I may capture him and impress Master Valter!
Orson: Sure, it's that place. While I'm here, are there any other oh-so-clever plans to destroy Prince Ephraim that I can help with?
Tirado: No, not necessary.
Orson: *after riding back to Ephraim* The Gradoans are planning to attack with this giant army! Sadly, that was all the information I was able to get out of him, my Prince.
In the story, Ephraim responds to Forde's comment with a joke ("What harm could a little reckless besieging cause?") before sobering up and revealing his real analysis, which is essentially the same as what I wrote above. He adds that Renvall is an important fort for Grado's national defense, so if it's captured, the Gradoans will scramble trying to get it back. Remember, his strategic goal here is to distract, harass, and generally waste the Empire's time. It's still risky to attack a fortified location when the defenders outnumber you, but…
Gotta love that confidence.
Now, I usually pretend that I've never heard a single thing about this game before, even when I do recognize something. But here I'm going to break this rule, because it allows me to go on an amusing and pedantic digression, and also because I suspect discussion of Sacred Stones tends to lionize Ephraim more than he deserves.
I'm referring to the meme, popular in FE circles, that "Ephraim captured a castle with just four dudes!" At least once, I've met a fan who insisted to me that this was not an abstracted army moment, it was literally, explicitly, only Ephraim and his three buddies. At the time I took the claim at face value.
But after playing this chapter, I'm sorry, but that's just never borne out in the text. Ephraim's force is small, yes, that's not in doubt. Characters re-iterate that over and over. It's small enough that his victory at Renvall is an impressive tactical feat. But nowhere is it stated that there are just four of them! The closest we get is this line:
That could be referring to a group of just Ephraim, Forde, Kyle, and Orson…but the possibility of offscreen, unnamed, extra knights is never ruled out. In fact, this line seems to point to that possibility:
When estimating, it's unnatural to state a small number when you can reasonably state a larger one. I assume that Tirado isn't commanding just ten dudes. If Ephraim has four men and Tirado commands, say, 40 – still a small number when he's supposed to be garrisoning a castle and running a manhunt – then wouldn't he say something like, "We outnumber him ten times over?"
You might counter with the point that it's notoriously hard to measure the numbers of guerilla fighters, since they won't stand and fight out in the open. That's true. However, I think a group of four dudes would be easy enough to count (especially when those dudes all have different outfits and hair colors). Horses can count to four!
I don't even think it's realistically possible to storm a castle with four men unless you have some way of bypassing the outer walls, but I'm willing to brush that aside as video game logic. Finally, Seth and Eirika were ready to storm Mulan with literally just the two of them back in Chapter 1, before Franz arrived with reinforcements - so the feat isn't uniquely special even if you take the most generous interpretation.
Before the battle starts, Ephraim takes Orson aside. Apparently, he took a wound in their last engagement, which hasn't fully healed. Ephraim wants Orson to hang back for this battle.
…Frelia? Not Renais? Is Orson a Frelian knight?
No, his description labels him as Renaisian. And Ephraim, not being familiar with the situation in Renais, would have no reason to send word to King Hayden before King Fado. I think this is a straight-up error.
While we're on the subject of Orson, he has several parallels to Seth. He's a paladin with the stats to smash through the enemies effortlessly, he's older than the main characters, and he's suffering from a wound in-story (with the implication that he's usually even more powerful than this). While Seth starts with a Steel Sword and Silver Lance, Orson starts with a Silver Sword and Steel Lance. Orson is also stated to be a devoted husbandjust like I'm sure Seth would be.
I normally don't post screenshots of the character bios because they state information that's pretty obvious, but I found something interesting on Forde:
He's Franz's brother! They're both cavaliers! That's cute!
And that makes me think about archetypes again. One of FE's archetypes is the pair of Cain and Abel, or the Christmas Cavs. Cain, the red one, is more reckless, and Abel, the green one, is calmer. They're not always cavaliers and they're not always brothers, but in this case, Intelligent Systems has chosen to muddy the waters in a new way by introducing three cavaliers.
Forde is wearing red, obviously. So far, he's already shown himself the most willing to joke around and be casual with Prince Ephraim. Kyle, introduced next to him, is wearing green. He's quieter, but he reins Forde in.
But Franz also wears green! They've unbalanced the duo! You may say that a proper Christmas tree is mostly green, but I grew up in a household that overwhelmed the Christmas tree with ornaments every year, and I…have lost the thread of my argument. Oh well. They've given us three cavaliers.
Now I shall finally talk about the map itself. Our four knights start next to a treasure room, which is unlocked by keys carried by nearby enemies. Water blocks the way further into the castle (a moat?) so we need to circle around and then progress through some narrow corridors, being harassed by ranged units through the walls, until we reach an open hall filled with enemies. And then we can proceed into the throne room, kill the boss, and seize to end the map.
Well, we definitely surprised them! I have to say, I'm a bit insulted that Ephraim is fighting a lackey of a lackey this chapter, but I suppose the point was to attack when all the big shots were away.
We only have four characters to use, but they're all quite powerful, with good weapons. Ephraim has a unique spear called Reginleif that's effective against armor and cavalry units. However, our only ranged option is Forde's javelin, and the map is full of archers and mages…I think the developers realized this could potentially be very frustrating. The ranged enemies are all quite weak, and only do enough damage to be annoyances, not threatening on their own.
Similarly, our only option for healing is with items, and the developers made sure to give you plenty. We start with an Elixir and two Vulneraries, and in the treasure room Orson finds one more Elixir. The other treasure chest holds a Killer Lance. I give that to Forde because he has higher Skill than Kyle, so he should be getting more critical hits anyway.
There's not much to say about how I played. It looks hard at first glance, but the units I'm given are powerful enough that I made it through alright. One could imagine that the point of this chapter is to make Ephraim look cool – for example, there are several sword-wielding cavaliers whom he can effortlessly one-shot with Reginleif. But there are also axe-wielders that he can't take on by himself, since he only uses lances. I suppose someone trying to conserve the healing items, or avoid using Orson at all, would have a bigger challenge.
The only enemy that gave me some trouble wasn't the boss, who died in disbelief that his castle had been taken by "those numbers" - which is still no indication of just four dudes – but a measly archer.
That one all the way on the right, there.
After killing the boss, you see, I had a brain wave. I can't abide sitting around for 40 turns to build supports, but I could delay completing the map for a little while while I wrung every last drop of exp out of it. That archer all the way on the edge was the last enemy remaining, so I arranged Orson, Ephraim and Forde into a line where they could grow closer by eating the dead boss's leftover snacks, while sending Kyle over to make the last kill.
Kyle's first blow brought the archer down to 4 HP, and the poor man was, of course, unable to respond. The enemy phase started, and I waited for the archer to make his last futile attack, only for him to…back up in retreat…and heal back to full health. What? Well, it turns out this particular archer carries an Elixir that drops upon his death – a reward for players that go out of their way to hunt him down. An Elixir that was now at 2/3 uses.
I was impressed by the verisimilitude of enemies that take the time to retreat and heal when they're outmatched. But this was a problem for me. If I attacked patiently, Kyle could kill that man just by making him use up his Elixir – but then I wouldn't get it! If I wanted the item drop, I would have to kill the archer in one turn.
So I called Orson away from his snack break and obliterated the archer's face past all hope of healing. That led to another discovery, this one altogether more pleasant:
The Elixir was back at three uses when I got it! I guess the game reset its state when it dropped from the enemy. I wonder if that means weapons that drop from enemies are always at full durability? I know later games track this more consistently. Sometimes janky programming can work in the player's favor!
Anyway, with the true boss dead, I seize and end the map. Everyone is thrilled to be victorious and alive! Er, well, when I say 'everyone', that's not actually true. At no point during the following scenes does Orson appear or have any lines. Nor does any member of Ephraim's party mention him. I'll be discussing this more later – just keep it in mind for now.
Well, Kyle is thrilled to be alive, and congratulates his prince on leading them through a seemingly-doomed situation. Ephraim says they can't rest, though – he never intended to hold this castle. Because so many of the castle's soldiers were in the field, they will be able to quickly retake the place as soon as they return. Ephraim wants them to resupply from the castle's stocks and be gone before that happens. Remember, Ephraim's goal here is not to hold territory or kill enemy soldiers. It is to keep the the imperial army busy looking for him.
While I would love to know what annoying tricks Ephraim has in mind for the empire's capital, his plans are put on hold. Forde runs in to announce some bad news:
The enemy forces are back…much earlier than expected. Ephraim is now in the very situation he's been avoiding so far: an enemy with superior number knows exactly where he is.
Our heroes immediately try to leave the castle, but Renvall's defensive situation works against them here. There only way to enter or leave is by this one bridge, which is, of course, guarded by soldiers. (Look at that screenshot…the only blue sprites are Ephraim and two cavaliers. Orson isn't even escaping with them!)
Valter sallies forth and proceeds to engage in some quality villainous monologuing.
Valter: I'm General Valter, the Moonstone of Grado's Imperial Army. We've reduced your wretched home of Renais to ruin, and yet…you and your little band of bravos continue to be a thorn in our side.
Ephraim still isn't buying his claims that Renais has been conquered.
Oh. Oh, Valter is back in time to catch Ephraim because he knew…hmm. I see. The game is being deliberately coy about it (Valter refuses to answer Ephraim's question), but I think I know what's going on. I'll explain later.
At this point, Valter's monologue starts getting…indulgent.
Valter: I hold your life in the palm of my hand. Do not test my good humor. Now come over here, bend your knee, and beg for your life. Show me how Renais dogs grovel.
That's a little kinky, Valter.
Well, Ephraim's response to this is a perfectly laconic, "I think not." Then he does what egotistical villains like Valter hate: refuse to act like he's important.
Ephraim: You said your name was Valter, right? Well, I'm sorry, Valter, but I don't have time to waste playing games with you. So, we're going to knock you louts about a bit and then make our way out of here.
Valter: (very mad that Ephraim isn't intimidated) Do you truly believe that you can fight your way past my wyvern knights?
Ephraim: Watch and see. I don't pick fights I can't win.
Wow, Ephraim really is just effortlessly cool. The coolest. He even has a catchphrase. It's not that I don't think Eirika is cool, it's just—hmm. Let me put it this way. Eirika is admirable. I want to be her. Ephraim is cool. I want to watch a show about his adventures. Another difference is that Ephraim is willing to joke around a little. So far, Eirika and Seth have only been the straight (wo)men to other characters' antics. There hasn't been much comedy, anyway – the overall tone of Sacred Stones has been grave.
When they meet again, I hope Ephraim can make his sister laugh.
Anyway, as Valter fumes, Ephraim asks Kyle and Forde (just Kyle and Forde) if they're ready.
We leave our heroes on that thrilling cliffhanger. Will Ephraim escape? Will Eirika reach her brother in time? Find out next time, on Restoration Queen!
…Nah, just kidding. We need to talk about Orson.
It turns out Tirado was more competent than I thought. As I guessed, Orson was his spy. As I did not guess, Orson warned Ephraim about the army coming his way as part of Tirado's plan. Tirado, probably with Orson's help, predicted that Ephraim would take advantage of the castle being lightly defended to strike there and raid its supplies. And that became the perfect opportunity to pin Ephraim down in a single location, whose limited escape routes Tirado knows all about.
Now, if the game had explained all that when Valter arrived, it would have been a decent twist. However, the game does not do that. The game does its best to obfuscate what's going on with Orson by…not mentioning him at all. We can assume that, in-universe, Ephraim knows and cares about what Orson's doing, but that's not shown to the player. And that's a problem!
To paraphrase something @Ghoul King once wrote on the art of the twist: the twist changes things so that the story makes more sense, but the story still needs to make sense before the twist, too. It's possible to make a twist where the protagonists know things before the player does – I think Persona 5 is a good example of that, where the protagonist gets captured at the end of the second act and things look really dire for him, but his party puts into motion a complicated plan to break him out and fake his death in captivity that gets the authorities off their back. And at this point, you get flashbacks to the scenes you weren't shown the first time around, where they realize the authorities are moving to capture him and they make this plan to address that. The story still makes sense on the first go-around, when they cut around those scenes.
But this? This sequence with all mention of Orson cut out? This doesn't! Either Ephraim knows Orson sold him out, or not. I'm going to assume he really is just leaving with Kyle and Forde, and Orson isn't there invisibly. If Ephraim is leaving without Orson because he found out about the betrayal and left him behind, then Ephraim should have no need to ask Valter how he knew to surround the castle. The answer would be obvious: Orson told him. If Ephraim is leaving without Orson because Orson snuck off to do traitor things, and the party is unaware of his treachery, then they should be concerned that Orson is missing! Someone should be asking, "Hey, where's Orson? He's going to miss the chance to escape!" As it is, it looks as though the party simply forgot about one of their members, which is unbelievable when their group is so small.
There's one other possible explanation: Earlier, Ephraim gave Orson the task of delivering news of their fate if they all get captured. Since their situation right now looks pretty dire, it could be that Ephraim sent Orson out a back entrance on this task, while he and the rest distract the army at the front.
I'm going to shoot this explanation down now. First of all, what back entrance? The castle's on an island in the middle of a lake! Secondly, if there were a secret unguarded back entrance that a single rider could sneak through, Ephraim and co would be using that to escape! Thirdly, and this is admittedly a weaker reason, Ephraim doesn't strike me as someone who ever plans to be defeated. His dialogue is all about escaping, not making a doomed last stand. Fourthly, if his goal is to escape by punching through enemy lines with a charge and outrunning pursuit, it would be to his best advantage to use Orson – a mounted knight – if he could.
Finally, and most importantly of all, this explanation doesn't help the story make sense because it's not given in the story. As long as no explanation is given for Orson's whereabouts, it looks like the heroes just forgot about him, and that's what makes the pre-twist story nonsensical.
So, there you have it. Overall, I liked this chapter. I had to complete a map with limited tools, and Ephraim and Valter are both enjoyable characters. I just wish Orson had been handled better.
…Wait, I'm not getting Orson back, am I? Oh no, I left the Silver Sword in his inventory, I could have transferred that to someone else, shit—
In Renvall, where Ephraim was last seen, we see Valter talking to the officer in charge of the castle.
Tirado has not captured him; he explains that the prince has been hiding out in the woods, using guerilla tactics, and it's been impossible to pin him down. His force is tiny, but it consists of highly capable knights. He concludes, "Prince Ephraim's reputation as a superb strategist would seem to be well earned."
However, Tirado – eager to please – has come up with a plan. It's a marvellous plan. They'll take an army…head north…and find Ephraim in the woods!
Ah…Tirado, how is that any different from what you've been trying all this time? Valter does ask how the heck they'll know where to find him, and Tirado reveals his actual plan: He has a mole on Ephraim's team who will feed him that information.
This introduction hasn't given me a great impression of Tirado's competence, so I'm betting fifty-fifty odds that this 'mole' is yet another ploy of Ephraim's.
We move to the countryside, where Ephraim is getting a report from his companions, Kyle (green) and Forde (blonde). Forde states that their supplies are running low and their weapons need maintenance (it would be cool if the following chapter reflected that by having their weapons start at low durability, but alas they're all at full). He suggests restocking at a nearby village – it's ambiguous whether he means trading for what they need, or a more aggressive type of restocking. Either way, Ephraim shoots him down.
"Yeah, I knew you'd say that," Forde says. Kyle seems to have been tasked with gathering news on the broader war (no small ask for a fugitive in the middle of enemy territory) and he reports that rumors say the capital of Renais has fallen. Ephraim doesn't appear to put much stock in those rumors; he thinks his father is a better warrior than that. Even if King Fado did retreat from the capital, he believes he must still be fighting, and so their mission has not changed.
Every Gradoan soldier running around the woods searching for them is a soldier kept away from Renais; every hour the enemy generals spend grappling with Ephraim is breathing room for his father and his sister. He is, like his sister, a devoted and resolute lad.
The fourth member of their band appears. This is Orson, an older knight who was sent to scout. He reports that there are several bands of enemies nearby, and to make matters worse, a whole army has set out from Renvall – and it's heading in their direction. Their camp will be discovered if they stay put. Someone asks if the prince wants to try sneaking back across the border to safety.
While Forde doubts the prince's sanity, I see the wisdom in his plan. It's audacious, but he's using the classic guerilla tactic of not being where the enemy thinks he is. Tirado and Valter are trying to find him by blanketing the countryside in men. They want to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. But a) those numbers will avail them little if Ephraim just packs up and leaves the area before they get there and b) they drew on their garrison to get those numbers, so the castle is more lightly defended than usual! Plus, taking the castle will allow them to raid its supplies.
I'd also like to note that Tirado's vaunted mole is currently availing him nothing. In fact, considering that Ephraim was informed of Tirado's attack with enough time to get out of the way, I believe Orson's scouting trip went something like this:
Orson: Hello, Sir Tirado.
Tirado: Yes…Orson, was it? I am currently bringing this giant army to crush Prince Ephraim once and for all. Now tell me where he is, so that I may capture him and impress Master Valter!
Orson: Sure, it's that place. While I'm here, are there any other oh-so-clever plans to destroy Prince Ephraim that I can help with?
Tirado: No, not necessary.
Orson: *after riding back to Ephraim* The Gradoans are planning to attack with this giant army! Sadly, that was all the information I was able to get out of him, my Prince.
In the story, Ephraim responds to Forde's comment with a joke ("What harm could a little reckless besieging cause?") before sobering up and revealing his real analysis, which is essentially the same as what I wrote above. He adds that Renvall is an important fort for Grado's national defense, so if it's captured, the Gradoans will scramble trying to get it back. Remember, his strategic goal here is to distract, harass, and generally waste the Empire's time. It's still risky to attack a fortified location when the defenders outnumber you, but…
Gotta love that confidence.
Now, I usually pretend that I've never heard a single thing about this game before, even when I do recognize something. But here I'm going to break this rule, because it allows me to go on an amusing and pedantic digression, and also because I suspect discussion of Sacred Stones tends to lionize Ephraim more than he deserves.
I'm referring to the meme, popular in FE circles, that "Ephraim captured a castle with just four dudes!" At least once, I've met a fan who insisted to me that this was not an abstracted army moment, it was literally, explicitly, only Ephraim and his three buddies. At the time I took the claim at face value.
But after playing this chapter, I'm sorry, but that's just never borne out in the text. Ephraim's force is small, yes, that's not in doubt. Characters re-iterate that over and over. It's small enough that his victory at Renvall is an impressive tactical feat. But nowhere is it stated that there are just four of them! The closest we get is this line:
That could be referring to a group of just Ephraim, Forde, Kyle, and Orson…but the possibility of offscreen, unnamed, extra knights is never ruled out. In fact, this line seems to point to that possibility:
When estimating, it's unnatural to state a small number when you can reasonably state a larger one. I assume that Tirado isn't commanding just ten dudes. If Ephraim has four men and Tirado commands, say, 40 – still a small number when he's supposed to be garrisoning a castle and running a manhunt – then wouldn't he say something like, "We outnumber him ten times over?"
You might counter with the point that it's notoriously hard to measure the numbers of guerilla fighters, since they won't stand and fight out in the open. That's true. However, I think a group of four dudes would be easy enough to count (especially when those dudes all have different outfits and hair colors). Horses can count to four!
I don't even think it's realistically possible to storm a castle with four men unless you have some way of bypassing the outer walls, but I'm willing to brush that aside as video game logic. Finally, Seth and Eirika were ready to storm Mulan with literally just the two of them back in Chapter 1, before Franz arrived with reinforcements - so the feat isn't uniquely special even if you take the most generous interpretation.
Before the battle starts, Ephraim takes Orson aside. Apparently, he took a wound in their last engagement, which hasn't fully healed. Ephraim wants Orson to hang back for this battle.
…Frelia? Not Renais? Is Orson a Frelian knight?
No, his description labels him as Renaisian. And Ephraim, not being familiar with the situation in Renais, would have no reason to send word to King Hayden before King Fado. I think this is a straight-up error.
While we're on the subject of Orson, he has several parallels to Seth. He's a paladin with the stats to smash through the enemies effortlessly, he's older than the main characters, and he's suffering from a wound in-story (with the implication that he's usually even more powerful than this). While Seth starts with a Steel Sword and Silver Lance, Orson starts with a Silver Sword and Steel Lance. Orson is also stated to be a devoted husband
I normally don't post screenshots of the character bios because they state information that's pretty obvious, but I found something interesting on Forde:
He's Franz's brother! They're both cavaliers! That's cute!
And that makes me think about archetypes again. One of FE's archetypes is the pair of Cain and Abel, or the Christmas Cavs. Cain, the red one, is more reckless, and Abel, the green one, is calmer. They're not always cavaliers and they're not always brothers, but in this case, Intelligent Systems has chosen to muddy the waters in a new way by introducing three cavaliers.
Forde is wearing red, obviously. So far, he's already shown himself the most willing to joke around and be casual with Prince Ephraim. Kyle, introduced next to him, is wearing green. He's quieter, but he reins Forde in.
But Franz also wears green! They've unbalanced the duo! You may say that a proper Christmas tree is mostly green, but I grew up in a household that overwhelmed the Christmas tree with ornaments every year, and I…have lost the thread of my argument. Oh well. They've given us three cavaliers.
Now I shall finally talk about the map itself. Our four knights start next to a treasure room, which is unlocked by keys carried by nearby enemies. Water blocks the way further into the castle (a moat?) so we need to circle around and then progress through some narrow corridors, being harassed by ranged units through the walls, until we reach an open hall filled with enemies. And then we can proceed into the throne room, kill the boss, and seize to end the map.
Well, we definitely surprised them! I have to say, I'm a bit insulted that Ephraim is fighting a lackey of a lackey this chapter, but I suppose the point was to attack when all the big shots were away.
We only have four characters to use, but they're all quite powerful, with good weapons. Ephraim has a unique spear called Reginleif that's effective against armor and cavalry units. However, our only ranged option is Forde's javelin, and the map is full of archers and mages…I think the developers realized this could potentially be very frustrating. The ranged enemies are all quite weak, and only do enough damage to be annoyances, not threatening on their own.
Similarly, our only option for healing is with items, and the developers made sure to give you plenty. We start with an Elixir and two Vulneraries, and in the treasure room Orson finds one more Elixir. The other treasure chest holds a Killer Lance. I give that to Forde because he has higher Skill than Kyle, so he should be getting more critical hits anyway.
There's not much to say about how I played. It looks hard at first glance, but the units I'm given are powerful enough that I made it through alright. One could imagine that the point of this chapter is to make Ephraim look cool – for example, there are several sword-wielding cavaliers whom he can effortlessly one-shot with Reginleif. But there are also axe-wielders that he can't take on by himself, since he only uses lances. I suppose someone trying to conserve the healing items, or avoid using Orson at all, would have a bigger challenge.
The only enemy that gave me some trouble wasn't the boss, who died in disbelief that his castle had been taken by "those numbers" - which is still no indication of just four dudes – but a measly archer.
That one all the way on the right, there.
After killing the boss, you see, I had a brain wave. I can't abide sitting around for 40 turns to build supports, but I could delay completing the map for a little while while I wrung every last drop of exp out of it. That archer all the way on the edge was the last enemy remaining, so I arranged Orson, Ephraim and Forde into a line where they could grow closer by eating the dead boss's leftover snacks, while sending Kyle over to make the last kill.
Kyle's first blow brought the archer down to 4 HP, and the poor man was, of course, unable to respond. The enemy phase started, and I waited for the archer to make his last futile attack, only for him to…back up in retreat…and heal back to full health. What? Well, it turns out this particular archer carries an Elixir that drops upon his death – a reward for players that go out of their way to hunt him down. An Elixir that was now at 2/3 uses.
I was impressed by the verisimilitude of enemies that take the time to retreat and heal when they're outmatched. But this was a problem for me. If I attacked patiently, Kyle could kill that man just by making him use up his Elixir – but then I wouldn't get it! If I wanted the item drop, I would have to kill the archer in one turn.
So I called Orson away from his snack break and obliterated the archer's face past all hope of healing. That led to another discovery, this one altogether more pleasant:
The Elixir was back at three uses when I got it! I guess the game reset its state when it dropped from the enemy. I wonder if that means weapons that drop from enemies are always at full durability? I know later games track this more consistently. Sometimes janky programming can work in the player's favor!
Anyway, with the true boss dead, I seize and end the map. Everyone is thrilled to be victorious and alive! Er, well, when I say 'everyone', that's not actually true. At no point during the following scenes does Orson appear or have any lines. Nor does any member of Ephraim's party mention him. I'll be discussing this more later – just keep it in mind for now.
Well, Kyle is thrilled to be alive, and congratulates his prince on leading them through a seemingly-doomed situation. Ephraim says they can't rest, though – he never intended to hold this castle. Because so many of the castle's soldiers were in the field, they will be able to quickly retake the place as soon as they return. Ephraim wants them to resupply from the castle's stocks and be gone before that happens. Remember, Ephraim's goal here is not to hold territory or kill enemy soldiers. It is to keep the the imperial army busy looking for him.
While I would love to know what annoying tricks Ephraim has in mind for the empire's capital, his plans are put on hold. Forde runs in to announce some bad news:
The enemy forces are back…much earlier than expected. Ephraim is now in the very situation he's been avoiding so far: an enemy with superior number knows exactly where he is.
Our heroes immediately try to leave the castle, but Renvall's defensive situation works against them here. There only way to enter or leave is by this one bridge, which is, of course, guarded by soldiers. (Look at that screenshot…the only blue sprites are Ephraim and two cavaliers. Orson isn't even escaping with them!)
Valter sallies forth and proceeds to engage in some quality villainous monologuing.
Valter: I'm General Valter, the Moonstone of Grado's Imperial Army. We've reduced your wretched home of Renais to ruin, and yet…you and your little band of bravos continue to be a thorn in our side.
Ephraim still isn't buying his claims that Renais has been conquered.
Oh. Oh, Valter is back in time to catch Ephraim because he knew…hmm. I see. The game is being deliberately coy about it (Valter refuses to answer Ephraim's question), but I think I know what's going on. I'll explain later.
At this point, Valter's monologue starts getting…indulgent.
Valter: I hold your life in the palm of my hand. Do not test my good humor. Now come over here, bend your knee, and beg for your life. Show me how Renais dogs grovel.
That's a little kinky, Valter.
Well, Ephraim's response to this is a perfectly laconic, "I think not." Then he does what egotistical villains like Valter hate: refuse to act like he's important.
Ephraim: You said your name was Valter, right? Well, I'm sorry, Valter, but I don't have time to waste playing games with you. So, we're going to knock you louts about a bit and then make our way out of here.
Valter: (very mad that Ephraim isn't intimidated) Do you truly believe that you can fight your way past my wyvern knights?
Ephraim: Watch and see. I don't pick fights I can't win.
Wow, Ephraim really is just effortlessly cool. The coolest. He even has a catchphrase. It's not that I don't think Eirika is cool, it's just—hmm. Let me put it this way. Eirika is admirable. I want to be her. Ephraim is cool. I want to watch a show about his adventures. Another difference is that Ephraim is willing to joke around a little. So far, Eirika and Seth have only been the straight (wo)men to other characters' antics. There hasn't been much comedy, anyway – the overall tone of Sacred Stones has been grave.
When they meet again, I hope Ephraim can make his sister laugh.
Anyway, as Valter fumes, Ephraim asks Kyle and Forde (just Kyle and Forde) if they're ready.
We leave our heroes on that thrilling cliffhanger. Will Ephraim escape? Will Eirika reach her brother in time? Find out next time, on Restoration Queen!
…Nah, just kidding. We need to talk about Orson.
It turns out Tirado was more competent than I thought. As I guessed, Orson was his spy. As I did not guess, Orson warned Ephraim about the army coming his way as part of Tirado's plan. Tirado, probably with Orson's help, predicted that Ephraim would take advantage of the castle being lightly defended to strike there and raid its supplies. And that became the perfect opportunity to pin Ephraim down in a single location, whose limited escape routes Tirado knows all about.
Now, if the game had explained all that when Valter arrived, it would have been a decent twist. However, the game does not do that. The game does its best to obfuscate what's going on with Orson by…not mentioning him at all. We can assume that, in-universe, Ephraim knows and cares about what Orson's doing, but that's not shown to the player. And that's a problem!
To paraphrase something @Ghoul King once wrote on the art of the twist: the twist changes things so that the story makes more sense, but the story still needs to make sense before the twist, too. It's possible to make a twist where the protagonists know things before the player does – I think Persona 5 is a good example of that, where the protagonist gets captured at the end of the second act and things look really dire for him, but his party puts into motion a complicated plan to break him out and fake his death in captivity that gets the authorities off their back. And at this point, you get flashbacks to the scenes you weren't shown the first time around, where they realize the authorities are moving to capture him and they make this plan to address that. The story still makes sense on the first go-around, when they cut around those scenes.
But this? This sequence with all mention of Orson cut out? This doesn't! Either Ephraim knows Orson sold him out, or not. I'm going to assume he really is just leaving with Kyle and Forde, and Orson isn't there invisibly. If Ephraim is leaving without Orson because he found out about the betrayal and left him behind, then Ephraim should have no need to ask Valter how he knew to surround the castle. The answer would be obvious: Orson told him. If Ephraim is leaving without Orson because Orson snuck off to do traitor things, and the party is unaware of his treachery, then they should be concerned that Orson is missing! Someone should be asking, "Hey, where's Orson? He's going to miss the chance to escape!" As it is, it looks as though the party simply forgot about one of their members, which is unbelievable when their group is so small.
There's one other possible explanation: Earlier, Ephraim gave Orson the task of delivering news of their fate if they all get captured. Since their situation right now looks pretty dire, it could be that Ephraim sent Orson out a back entrance on this task, while he and the rest distract the army at the front.
I'm going to shoot this explanation down now. First of all, what back entrance? The castle's on an island in the middle of a lake! Secondly, if there were a secret unguarded back entrance that a single rider could sneak through, Ephraim and co would be using that to escape! Thirdly, and this is admittedly a weaker reason, Ephraim doesn't strike me as someone who ever plans to be defeated. His dialogue is all about escaping, not making a doomed last stand. Fourthly, if his goal is to escape by punching through enemy lines with a charge and outrunning pursuit, it would be to his best advantage to use Orson – a mounted knight – if he could.
Finally, and most importantly of all, this explanation doesn't help the story make sense because it's not given in the story. As long as no explanation is given for Orson's whereabouts, it looks like the heroes just forgot about him, and that's what makes the pre-twist story nonsensical.
So, there you have it. Overall, I liked this chapter. I had to complete a map with limited tools, and Ephraim and Valter are both enjoyable characters. I just wish Orson had been handled better.
…Wait, I'm not getting Orson back, am I? Oh no, I left the Silver Sword in his inventory, I could have transferred that to someone else, shit—
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- Pronouns
- She/They
Bear in mind, they did learn rumors of King Fado's fall. Even if Ephraim believes him to certainly be alive, he may well believe that Castle Renais at least is lost, and in that case Fado's current location would not only be unknown, but in flux. Getting word to King Hayden would give Orson a much more stable target, from which he could gather more information before searching for King Fado's current location.
My money's on this chapter being designed to make Ephraim look cool. We've spent some time hyping him up, and this is our chance to finally see him in action. And what an impression he makes, storming a fort with such small numbers, and plowing through its defenders!
I had always assumed that they figured Orson out by then, but given how suddenly they were surrounded, they had no time to hunt him down and demand answers - they needed to flee now or not at all. And asking Valter about how he knew could be a way of avoiding tipping his hand. Maybe he's keeping the possibility open that they might send Orson back later on, and hoping to use that instead of making it clear that Grado's asset is burnt?
It probably could have been handled clearer either way though, yeah.
I've always loved this chapter. Ephraim is a joy in combat, I like the relationship between the group here, and it provides a nice break from the main group further back. Plus paying off on the buildup they've been giving Ephraim this whole time.
- Location
- Who knows?
Oh man, this chapter! It really is peak introduction to a character. Oh Ephraim, you'd be top in many people's hearts even with just this alone. I think other things that helps are, he's a lance primary lord! The first ever! Sure some earlier games do have promotions that give lances, but swords were always primary. He has a really cool battle sprite! And spinney crit animations!
Actually, I think that's another thing that kinda works against Erika, her sprite animations kinda feel light? Unweighty? She sorta just lunges and does what appear to be a poke/slap w/ a very thin rapier. Her crit is kinda just a deep breathe and a hop back to center herself before the poke. With flashy red lights but ehhh. Yes it fits her character as "yo I'm not actually an expert violence dealer guys" but the dopamine remains unreleased regardless.
Ephraim's sprite has him with a cool big stick where he seems to lean back and brace himself before shoving it into his enemies! Okay...phallic imagery aside, he's also blessed with the good ol' FE GBA sprite art trend of adding over the top twirls and whirls to the crits.
Actually, I think that's another thing that kinda works against Erika, her sprite animations kinda feel light? Unweighty? She sorta just lunges and does what appear to be a poke/slap w/ a very thin rapier. Her crit is kinda just a deep breathe and a hop back to center herself before the poke. With flashy red lights but ehhh. Yes it fits her character as "yo I'm not actually an expert violence dealer guys" but the dopamine remains unreleased regardless.
Ephraim's sprite has him with a cool big stick where he seems to lean back and brace himself before shoving it into his enemies! Okay...phallic imagery aside, he's also blessed with the good ol' FE GBA sprite art trend of adding over the top twirls and whirls to the crits.
- Location
- NOVA
Just wait for FE6, if you get to it. If you really want to, you can field 7 cavs/paladins in that one. Though FE7 and FE8 do much more fun plays on the christmas archetype working alongside extras.
I'd forgotten that they don't call it out explicitly in this chapter, and I agree with your critique about what happened.
Also, RIP Silver Sword. I hope your took the Elixirs from him.
Ephraim gets to be one of the sources of much needed levity because damn does this game get dark a lot of the time and there're so far characters who can joke at all.
- Location
- Wherever
For reference, my People Of X Nation terminology has always been:
Grado: Gradosian.
Frelia: Frelian.
Jehanna: Jehannan.
Rausten: Raustenite. Sometimes I say 'Raustenian', but I always regret it because it sounds horrible.
Carcino: Carcinite.
Renais: Give up in disgust and talk around it.
... part of the problem is that I read Renais with a silent 's', as 'reh-nigh'. I don't think English has rules for pluralizing a silent 's', period, and the word needs to function as a plural. So... no idea how that would work! ("Renaian", maybe?)
I personally am largely not going to mention Support-based stuff because some of them are pretty big spoiler-type things, yeah, but I was willing to say the thing about Joshua because it was essentially guaranteed it would never come up in the LP itself if no one pointed it out now. Even if Vocalist Supports Joshua with the right person, far enough along, the Support system's awful grind-y nature means probably no one will even remember Joshua and Natasha's interaction here to go 'wait a second'. I only caught it because I, back in the day, triggered the relevant Support not long before going on to do another run of the game from the start and so had the information relatively fresh on my mind when I was reading through Joshua and Natasha's interaction anew.
So basically my options were to either do a minor spoiler thing, or let a cool bit of the game's writing being subtly intelligent be completely missed, and I judged the latter worse.
As a kid, I didn't think about this particularly, but nowadays I'm left confused as to how this 'we have a mole' thing is even meant to work at all. How is The Traitor supposed to share information with Tirado at all, unnoticed, when Ephraim's group is so small, and living out in the woods and all? Like, I'm struggling to articulate how unbelievable this is because it has so many hurdles to having any possibility of making sense I don't even know where to start and it would probably take ten paragraphs to go over all the vaguely sensible possibilities and then walk through how they're honestly pretty difficult to believe.
The game furthermore never proffers any kind of explanation; the audience is expected to just take it as obviously sensible, even though it isn't.
This touches on one of the main things I seriously dislike about Sacred Stones: it constantly goes out of its way to hype Ephraim as a military super-genius whose every action is far too brilliant for mere mortals. If you only play through Eirika's route, it doesn't come across too badly in this regard, as for one thing some of the dumbest hyping is exclusive to Ephraim's route... but it's laced throughout the game, and it's a topic where the game is particularly conspicuous about looking to be engaging in pretty serious sexism in regards to the twins.
I can't really get into this much because Spoiler Talk, but the short version is that when Ephraim does a thing, it gets played up as impressive and brilliant, whereas Eirika never receives similar compliments from other characters/the narrator even when she's doing things that are objectively far more impressive than anything Ephraim ever accomplishes.
And to my eternal frustration, the Default Response to this nonsense seems to be to directly imitate the game rather than going 'this is a really blatant double-standard/inconsistency, game, Not Cool'.
Hence why I talked about it in response to a quote about fans hyping Ephraim.
This only gets worse when you consider The Traitor accurately passing information to Tirado's group. Everybody (even vaguely up in the ranks) should just know exactly how large Ephraim's group is, rendering the whole 'guerrilla forces can be hard to accurately read' defense even more implausible of one.
Unfortunately, this is an entirely different frustrating thing, in that the Fire Emblem series has defaulted heavily to its Vaguely European Fantasy Settings using apparently European-style castles owned and run by people who are using European nobility titles and whatnot (Yes, including in the original Japanese), rather implying that everyone should be treating castles as invincible death fortresses that are ludicrously costly to take in an open assault if you can manage it at all...
... but the writing of the series is 100% consistent about then applying Warring States Era Japan castle logic to them, which is to say everybody treats them as mostly just a glorified barracks that might be a modest enhancement to the effectiveness to the defenders, and which people will regularly sally out of to meet the enemy in the field even if the option to hole up is clearly actually plausible to leverage.
The really sad thing is that Ephraim's route is the only time in the entire series I've ever seen one of these games meaningfully acknowledge the notion that castles are in fact supposed to be defensive strongpoints; Sacred Stones is the least bad game in the series about this particular brainbug, and it's still ramming into it hard.
(Well, least bad assuming Three Houses or Engage or whatever isn't unexpectedly better about this, but I'd be really surprised if any of the newer games did actually correct this mentality)
Yes, but you see, Eirika Is A Girl, and therefore the story plays up her Reluctance To Fight rather than playing up how impressive her Battle Feats are, and therefore lots of players turn their brains off and accept the nonsense narrative spoonfed them by the game that Ephraim is a Brilliant Battle Tactician and Eirika is Not A Brilliant Battle Tactician. Even though they're literally twins who explicitly were taught many of the same things and so honestly you'd expect them to have similar approaches to tactics, strategy, etc.
Yes, I'm bitter, why do you ask?
Y'know, I didn't ever catch that myself in my own play, too busy failing the Sally-Anne Test to realize that Ephraim should only want to send Orson to Frelia if all his bluster about not believing Renai has fallen is lies.
Wow, I didn't think I'd be learning of more plotholes in this game I've played over a dozen times.
I've honestly always disliked this particular series tradition persisting so hard in such a rigid form, and so the fact that Sacred Stones actually tries to bend the tradition a little is another contributing factor in Sacred Stones being my favorite non-Fates game.
Yep.
I spent so many years assuming that looted gear had lost charges stay lost; I only noticed that you always get a fresh version when I did my own LP and so had screenshot evidence.
It bothers the part of me that prefers 'realistic' consistency, but honestly, I think it's better for the gameplay that I don't have dumb incentives to try to specifically prevent loot-carrying enemies from landing their hit.
Sadism with ambiguous sexual undertones is Valter's thing, yes.
I've never been sure how to feel about that, in part for Spoiler Reasons so I should just put this off for now.
Yeah, Orson just dropping off the face of the planet without anybody acknowledging it makes zero sense no matter how you slice it. This is true regardless of whether Orson is The Traitor or not, it's just that Traitor Orson provides a clear explanation for why the devs would do this thing that doesn't make any sense, it doesn't cause it to make sense.
The Traitor does indeed take all their gear with them.
For a run where you know about The Traitor already, optimal play in the mission gets slightly more annoying, since you want to give them no experience and make sure to end the mission with their inventory completely empty. While not having Convoy access, and so anybody looting over their limit will force you to throw an item in the trash.
Oh hey stuff I said on Vigaroe about Bioshock. Huh. That post doesn't even have 400 views... would never have expected that to be brought up in this thread.
I love Eirika's battle animations and will argue to the death that they are some of the best combat spritework in the GBA games, because they are incredibly fluid, look physically believable, and are one of the only times I've ever seen a game make a cape animate well within spritework.
Indeed, going through the older games was enlightening to me as to why the Sacred Stones' combat spritework was so uneven and more specifically how odd the distribution was; almost everything I felt was clunky and ugly goes back to Roy's game, most of the spritework I found okay but not great was introduced by Lyn's game, and pretty much all the great combat spritework was made specifically for Sacred Stones. Which makes sense, since the devs were clearly improving their craft in various ways with each successive game, but only some of the sprites are obvious to guess as 'made for Sacred Stones' if you haven't played the other games.
Grado: Gradosian.
Frelia: Frelian.
Jehanna: Jehannan.
Rausten: Raustenite. Sometimes I say 'Raustenian', but I always regret it because it sounds horrible.
Carcino: Carcinite.
Renais: Give up in disgust and talk around it.
... part of the problem is that I read Renais with a silent 's', as 'reh-nigh'. I don't think English has rules for pluralizing a silent 's', period, and the word needs to function as a plural. So... no idea how that would work! ("Renaian", maybe?)
I personally am largely not going to mention Support-based stuff because some of them are pretty big spoiler-type things, yeah, but I was willing to say the thing about Joshua because it was essentially guaranteed it would never come up in the LP itself if no one pointed it out now. Even if Vocalist Supports Joshua with the right person, far enough along, the Support system's awful grind-y nature means probably no one will even remember Joshua and Natasha's interaction here to go 'wait a second'. I only caught it because I, back in the day, triggered the relevant Support not long before going on to do another run of the game from the start and so had the information relatively fresh on my mind when I was reading through Joshua and Natasha's interaction anew.
So basically my options were to either do a minor spoiler thing, or let a cool bit of the game's writing being subtly intelligent be completely missed, and I judged the latter worse.
As a kid, I didn't think about this particularly, but nowadays I'm left confused as to how this 'we have a mole' thing is even meant to work at all. How is The Traitor supposed to share information with Tirado at all, unnoticed, when Ephraim's group is so small, and living out in the woods and all? Like, I'm struggling to articulate how unbelievable this is because it has so many hurdles to having any possibility of making sense I don't even know where to start and it would probably take ten paragraphs to go over all the vaguely sensible possibilities and then walk through how they're honestly pretty difficult to believe.
The game furthermore never proffers any kind of explanation; the audience is expected to just take it as obviously sensible, even though it isn't.
This touches on one of the main things I seriously dislike about Sacred Stones: it constantly goes out of its way to hype Ephraim as a military super-genius whose every action is far too brilliant for mere mortals. If you only play through Eirika's route, it doesn't come across too badly in this regard, as for one thing some of the dumbest hyping is exclusive to Ephraim's route... but it's laced throughout the game, and it's a topic where the game is particularly conspicuous about looking to be engaging in pretty serious sexism in regards to the twins.
I can't really get into this much because Spoiler Talk, but the short version is that when Ephraim does a thing, it gets played up as impressive and brilliant, whereas Eirika never receives similar compliments from other characters/the narrator even when she's doing things that are objectively far more impressive than anything Ephraim ever accomplishes.
And to my eternal frustration, the Default Response to this nonsense seems to be to directly imitate the game rather than going 'this is a really blatant double-standard/inconsistency, game, Not Cool'.
Hence why I talked about it in response to a quote about fans hyping Ephraim.
This only gets worse when you consider The Traitor accurately passing information to Tirado's group. Everybody (even vaguely up in the ranks) should just know exactly how large Ephraim's group is, rendering the whole 'guerrilla forces can be hard to accurately read' defense even more implausible of one.
Unfortunately, this is an entirely different frustrating thing, in that the Fire Emblem series has defaulted heavily to its Vaguely European Fantasy Settings using apparently European-style castles owned and run by people who are using European nobility titles and whatnot (Yes, including in the original Japanese), rather implying that everyone should be treating castles as invincible death fortresses that are ludicrously costly to take in an open assault if you can manage it at all...
... but the writing of the series is 100% consistent about then applying Warring States Era Japan castle logic to them, which is to say everybody treats them as mostly just a glorified barracks that might be a modest enhancement to the effectiveness to the defenders, and which people will regularly sally out of to meet the enemy in the field even if the option to hole up is clearly actually plausible to leverage.
The really sad thing is that Ephraim's route is the only time in the entire series I've ever seen one of these games meaningfully acknowledge the notion that castles are in fact supposed to be defensive strongpoints; Sacred Stones is the least bad game in the series about this particular brainbug, and it's still ramming into it hard.
(Well, least bad assuming Three Houses or Engage or whatever isn't unexpectedly better about this, but I'd be really surprised if any of the newer games did actually correct this mentality)
Yes, but you see, Eirika Is A Girl, and therefore the story plays up her Reluctance To Fight rather than playing up how impressive her Battle Feats are, and therefore lots of players turn their brains off and accept the nonsense narrative spoonfed them by the game that Ephraim is a Brilliant Battle Tactician and Eirika is Not A Brilliant Battle Tactician. Even though they're literally twins who explicitly were taught many of the same things and so honestly you'd expect them to have similar approaches to tactics, strategy, etc.
Yes, I'm bitter, why do you ask?
…Frelia? Not Renais? Is Orson a Frelian knight?
No, his description labels him as Renaisian. And Ephraim, not being familiar with the situation in Renais, would have no reason to send word to King Hayden before King Fado. I think this is a straight-up error.
Y'know, I didn't ever catch that myself in my own play, too busy failing the Sally-Anne Test to realize that Ephraim should only want to send Orson to Frelia if all his bluster about not believing Renai has fallen is lies.
Wow, I didn't think I'd be learning of more plotholes in this game I've played over a dozen times.
I've honestly always disliked this particular series tradition persisting so hard in such a rigid form, and so the fact that Sacred Stones actually tries to bend the tradition a little is another contributing factor in Sacred Stones being my favorite non-Fates game.
Yep.
I spent so many years assuming that looted gear had lost charges stay lost; I only noticed that you always get a fresh version when I did my own LP and so had screenshot evidence.
It bothers the part of me that prefers 'realistic' consistency, but honestly, I think it's better for the gameplay that I don't have dumb incentives to try to specifically prevent loot-carrying enemies from landing their hit.
Sadism with ambiguous sexual undertones is Valter's thing, yes.
I've never been sure how to feel about that, in part for Spoiler Reasons so I should just put this off for now.
Yeah, Orson just dropping off the face of the planet without anybody acknowledging it makes zero sense no matter how you slice it. This is true regardless of whether Orson is The Traitor or not, it's just that Traitor Orson provides a clear explanation for why the devs would do this thing that doesn't make any sense, it doesn't cause it to make sense.
The Traitor does indeed take all their gear with them.
For a run where you know about The Traitor already, optimal play in the mission gets slightly more annoying, since you want to give them no experience and make sure to end the mission with their inventory completely empty. While not having Convoy access, and so anybody looting over their limit will force you to throw an item in the trash.
Oh hey stuff I said on Vigaroe about Bioshock. Huh. That post doesn't even have 400 views... would never have expected that to be brought up in this thread.
I love Eirika's battle animations and will argue to the death that they are some of the best combat spritework in the GBA games, because they are incredibly fluid, look physically believable, and are one of the only times I've ever seen a game make a cape animate well within spritework.
Indeed, going through the older games was enlightening to me as to why the Sacred Stones' combat spritework was so uneven and more specifically how odd the distribution was; almost everything I felt was clunky and ugly goes back to Roy's game, most of the spritework I found okay but not great was introduced by Lyn's game, and pretty much all the great combat spritework was made specifically for Sacred Stones. Which makes sense, since the devs were clearly improving their craft in various ways with each successive game, but only some of the sprites are obvious to guess as 'made for Sacred Stones' if you haven't played the other games.
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- Pronouns
- She/They
I'll also go to bat for Eirika's spritework any day. It's snappy, it's fluid, and it just feels nice to watch. It also has sound design going for it - there's a satisfying metallic click whenever Eirika readies her rapier just before striking, with only a short pause before driving home.
And her animation feels in line with her character. She's skilled, she knows what she's doing, she's capable of seeing it through, but she also doesn't linger on it. She doesn't do any flashy flourishes or complicated movements because she doesn't want to, she wants the fighting to be over and done with as soon as possible. There's no glorifying the act of violence in her spritework.
Yeah, I didn't notice it for the longest time, but once you go back to the other GBA games you can see the evolution of the teams animations very clearly.
1337Procrast
Fire Emblem Enjoyer
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay now that Ephraim is here I can talk more about why I think Eirika comes across as weak when she's perfectly fine.
This is because Ephraim!s bases are fucking absurd for his level. You can sit down and compare his bases with Eirika and realise that even if Eirika got a perfect level every level until level 4 he'd still beat her in performance because of his higher defence and strength stats. Even her speed advantage is weakened by his higher con. Not to mention that his special unique spear is straight up just better than Eirika's because of its higher might making its effective damage even better. Eirika is never going to oneshot enemies with her rapier but as you've seen Ephraim will straight up destroy entire swarms of cavaliers alone if you let him
It gives me a completely unreasonable dislike of Ephraim even though he's a perfectly fine character. Sometimes it makes it feel like he's the "real" main character and it sucks.
This is because Ephraim!s bases are fucking absurd for his level. You can sit down and compare his bases with Eirika and realise that even if Eirika got a perfect level every level until level 4 he'd still beat her in performance because of his higher defence and strength stats. Even her speed advantage is weakened by his higher con. Not to mention that his special unique spear is straight up just better than Eirika's because of its higher might making its effective damage even better. Eirika is never going to oneshot enemies with her rapier but as you've seen Ephraim will straight up destroy entire swarms of cavaliers alone if you let him
It gives me a completely unreasonable dislike of Ephraim even though he's a perfectly fine character. Sometimes it makes it feel like he's the "real" main character and it sucks.
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- Location
- The Great Beyond
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oh neat an LP for a game I know. Now to backread and comment on it.
I actually do want to talk about the characters in general, but before I jabber about most of what I want to talk about in that regard, I want to ask if your policy on spoilers extends to the literal manual, because Sacred Stones actually had a nice chart of what every class promoted into, which is important to my assessment of many characters in various ways not obvious at this stage but obvious when you have the manual.
So talking about promoted classes and such yay or nay, is basically my question? Particularly the generic promoted classes and not like, special stuff like lords.
One option is to grind supports but not trigger them; while you can't build points past the current conversation, you could preemptively get people to eg readiness for a C support and just not trigger it until you can see on the convenient list who you want to pair them with.
You can in principle, although it's not important in Sacred Stones. Sacred Stones is known for a lower difficulty in general, and there's one other reason I'll comment on when you get far enough for it to not be a spoiler.
Moulder healing scratches is going to be a stock experience; in the GBA fire emblems it is tremendously important to keep healers healing even when it's a waste, because otherwise they aggressively fall behind in experience. This stops being important on promotion.
In good news, I would say it is strictly optimal to use both Colm and Neimi in particular. I would argue that unless their growths are turning out remarkably badly, they are both must have characters; basically, in Colm's case it's because thieves are a must have (as usual for the GBA fire emblems) and he's the Expected Best Thief.
In Neimi's case, it's because she's a bow user, though ironically that's in spite of Sacred Stones being one of the worst entries for bows in the series.
Specifically, it's fair to say that she's arguably the best bow user in the game, and that matters.
It's actually not just one character, multiple of Joshua's supports reveal that the man cheats at games of nominal chance a lot. It's unclear if he ever doesn't cheat, but we know he does cheat even on trivial things.
Personally, I read the exchange as being a matter of Joshua either trying to preserve a certain image (as a professional mercenary etc) while doing what he actually wants to, or else as a matter of him gambling to convince Natasha to trust him; after all, he's just a weirdo firm about following bets, a betting man who sticks to his word, and not maybe trying to trick her, right?
Though of course it's always possible he just actually legitimately gambled and lost there.
I actually do want to talk about the characters in general, but before I jabber about most of what I want to talk about in that regard, I want to ask if your policy on spoilers extends to the literal manual, because Sacred Stones actually had a nice chart of what every class promoted into, which is important to my assessment of many characters in various ways not obvious at this stage but obvious when you have the manual.
So talking about promoted classes and such yay or nay, is basically my question? Particularly the generic promoted classes and not like, special stuff like lords.
One option is to grind supports but not trigger them; while you can't build points past the current conversation, you could preemptively get people to eg readiness for a C support and just not trigger it until you can see on the convenient list who you want to pair them with.
You can in principle, although it's not important in Sacred Stones. Sacred Stones is known for a lower difficulty in general, and there's one other reason I'll comment on when you get far enough for it to not be a spoiler.
Moulder healing scratches is going to be a stock experience; in the GBA fire emblems it is tremendously important to keep healers healing even when it's a waste, because otherwise they aggressively fall behind in experience. This stops being important on promotion.
In good news, I would say it is strictly optimal to use both Colm and Neimi in particular. I would argue that unless their growths are turning out remarkably badly, they are both must have characters; basically, in Colm's case it's because thieves are a must have (as usual for the GBA fire emblems) and he's the Expected Best Thief.
In Neimi's case, it's because she's a bow user, though ironically that's in spite of Sacred Stones being one of the worst entries for bows in the series.
Specifically, it's fair to say that she's arguably the best bow user in the game, and that matters.
It's actually not just one character, multiple of Joshua's supports reveal that the man cheats at games of nominal chance a lot. It's unclear if he ever doesn't cheat, but we know he does cheat even on trivial things.
Personally, I read the exchange as being a matter of Joshua either trying to preserve a certain image (as a professional mercenary etc) while doing what he actually wants to, or else as a matter of him gambling to convince Natasha to trust him; after all, he's just a weirdo firm about following bets, a betting man who sticks to his word, and not maybe trying to trick her, right?
Though of course it's always possible he just actually legitimately gambled and lost there.
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Verdant Maiden in Violet
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- By a Cedar Tree
I too read Renais as French-sounding, so I treat it like I would treat a French loanword. I got 'Renaisian' by analogy with Parisian. You see, in French all of those silent final consonants 'reappear' when you add something else to the end of the word and they're no longer final.
I think I see what you're talking about already. Eirika captures Mulan with four characters and an ambiguous number of mooks? No comment. Let's get on with the plot. Ephraim captures Renvall with four characters and an ambiguous number of mooks?
What can I say? I view commenting as a reciprocal social activity. When you started participating in my thread, I followed the link in your signature and read some of your blog posts. (Your posts about Bioshock also helped me understand some feelings about that game I was unable to put into words...That the vaunted 'moral choice' system is simplistic, and that Frank Fontaine as a villain doesn't fit with the rest of the game.)
Well, it's been a couple of years since my last playthrough of Three Houses, but from what I can remember it does treat fortifications with some amount of respect. Specifically, it's a game about tense, shifting power relations between continental powers, and so the various fortifications and natural barriers along the borders between these powers are given great weight in the story.
Then again there's also a situation where a general corners the heroes in a mountaintop fortress so that he controls the only route in or out and, instead of starving them out, decides to assault the fortress directly. He is defeated and killed and this sets off a chain of events that makes his side lose the war. So...sort of?
Really, the problem of fortifications is also fed by the fact that you can't model a siege in turn-based combat mode. Characters will give battle even when they really shouldn't, because the developers want to avoid sieges.