'There is no reason to use Seth unless your whole team got killed', not check.
'anyone who uses Seth is playing the game in a objectively suboptimal way', also not check!
'the wide community consensus that he's a good unit is just wrong and you are right', also miraculously not check.
Quote the things you claim I hold as my positions or admit you are wrong. It's every single thing I contested missing, so yes. I was right to call you out on this.
'There is no reason to use Seth unless your whole team got killed', not check.
'anyone who uses Seth is playing the game in a objectively suboptimal way', also not check!
'the wide community consensus that he's a good unit is just wrong and you are right', also miraculously not check.
Quote the things you claim I hold as my positions or admit you are wrong. It's every single thing I contested missing, so yes. I was right to call you out on this.
"Seth is okay, not good, okay, if the random number gods rolled in and went 'yeah fuck you, your franz, forde, and kyle all suck'... He is a mediocre that you can count on existing as a fall back if you don't get him killed early, but he is, at best, mediocre"
Well, it wasn't literally "everyone else is dead", but it sure does sound like you're only saying he should be used as a last resort.
"It's viscerally unpleasant and mechanically suboptimal and largely unneeded to have Seth fight anything ever, given it wastes EXP, until people have largely caught up to him at which point he sucks."
I suppose there's a distinction between "objectively suboptimal" and "mechanically suboptimal", but as we are discussing mechanics, there's not much of one.
"the wide community consensus that he's a good unit is just wrong and you are right"
Admittedly, it's a bit of a stretch to say that your multiple arguments that citing outside resources like community tier lists or wider consensus is an invalid appeal to popularity was making this argument (never minding that everyone who brought this up also made more complicated arguments, making it less a point and more just a strengthener), so I'll give you this one.
"Seth is okay, not good, okay, if the random number gods rolled in and went 'yeah fuck you, your franz, forde, and kyle all suck'... He is a mediocre that you can count on existing as a fall back if you don't get him killed early, but he is, at best, mediocre"
Well, it wasn't literally "everyone else is dead", but it sure does sound like you're only saying he should be used as a last resort.
"It's viscerally unpleasant and mechanically suboptimal and largely unneeded to have Seth fight anything ever, given it wastes EXP, until people have largely caught up to him at which point he sucks."
I suppose there's a distinction between "objectively suboptimal" and "mechanically suboptimal", but there's not much of one.
"the wide community consensus that he's a good unit is just wrong and you are right"
Admittedly, it's a bit of a stretch to say that your multiple arguments that citing outside resources like community tier lists or wider consensus is an invalid appeal to popularity was making this argument, so I'll give you this one.
Your quotes are 'seth is only the best paladin if you get unlucky and wind up with no better paladin'. There wasn't even a reference to team deaths in that. Fail.
'It's mechanically suboptimal and not needed to have seth fight things' is not 'people using Seth are playing in an objectively suboptimal way'. I'm neither arguing that playing to mechanical optimality is the optimal way to play in the first place nor am I saying that using Seth at all ever is playing in a mechanically suboptimal way in the first place. I did say it's largely uneeded for a reason.
So once again: fail, fail, and fail. None of these are things I said or positions I actually hold.
it always was. People, as I keep saying, keep attributing positions to me I do not hold and then act like I'm doing something wrong when I don't defend those or when other people attack me out of the blue. You included.
The fact that you are now 'out' rather than admitting you were in fact wrong is sure convenient for you, I guess, but I rest my case that I've been getting shit merely for not being enamored of Seth as some great unit rather than for any position in specific I hold, because every argument against me has been either false or not against a position I actually hold.
The fact that this includes people constantly trying to get me to own up to 'my wrongdoing' or something while refusing to either admit their own mistakes or get on the case of other people doing this shit sure is fun, if you're not the one being mobbed for Bad Opinion, though!
Yay! I'm back from my trip! And I can finally talk about one of my favorite characters!
-sees the discussion about whether seth is a good or bad unit and what came from it-
Uh.
Okay.
Um...
Ahem. trying and massively failing to smoothly transition from that
Before I get to talking about the updates though, something occured to me while I was reading through the thread.
The more I read people's experiences with playing the game, the more I am realizing how differently I play compared to others, and how casual it is.
I mean, I knew I did play differently considering I have no qualms about using casual mode on Awaknening and Fates to have access to the "mid chapter save" system which I had the impression that most don't really use, but like, it's other more subtle(? let's just go with that) things that I didn't even realize were vastly different. First how I didn't realize how long it took to get supports because I would "optimize" as best as I could about grinding while playing, and now I learned that grinding to 20 before promotion is kind of not as common (anymore?) and that I play FE a lot less than you guys seem to have. The most I've done are three completed playthroughs of one FE game, and that is Sacred Stones. One when I was a kid, two for when I was older for reasons that may or may not be obvious at this point (because the page for the mod outright says one of those reasons why I did two playthroughs). I've started other playthroughs of Conquest and Awakening, but I haven't completed them, and Radiant Dawn would be next/tied with SS because I'm hoping to replay it to get er...something NG+ related, even though I've already seen it, depending on if I still have my save data from my first completed run of RD. So yeah. I'm realizing I'm...I guess, a lot more "casual" about playing these games than I thought I was.
I will be perfectly blunt, when I play Fire Emblem (and especially when I played Fire Emblem back in the day) I entirely ignore stats and just use whatever characters I happen to like.
It probably should've been obvious how casual I am about this series. I use the characters that I like, and thus bench characters not because they're good, but just because I don't want to use them. But generally, if the game is in any way like Awakening, I will try to use everyone, because that's just how I am with RPGs that have characters like this. If I can use them all, I will use them all. Because who knows? Maybe I end up liking someone more than I initially thought I would. That has happened plenty of times before. But hindsight is 20/20 and...I don't know. For some reason it feels kinda eye opening about myself because I never would've realized if I hadn't read other's experiences on this thread? Idk. I'm starting to feel silly now...
So moving along! Now we talk about my experience with the game and characters in relation to the last two updates.
First off. I don't like Arenas. Yeah, they were the only way to grind characters in old games, from my own experience I used the Arena in Genealogy of the Holy War a lot for this reason among others and in Fates I use it for getting more resources in Conquest, but I still don't really like them, and even for Conquest I deliberately keep it not maxed because I don't want the enemies too strong. Because again. Units could die because you decided to take the risk (and in the Conquest example I'm 75% sure the only reason I didn't have any consequences is because I was playing casual, but I've only played Fates on casual and not classic). So I'm personally happy they phased out as time went on...though I think there's some kind of Arena like mode in Engage? Still need to play through it to be sure.
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.
Huh. Interesting. I didn't really think about it being odd. Because my impression was something like Omegahugger's take. Ever since I found out while playing as a kid, I always took the whole "cheating" bit as, well, him making an exception because, when it comes down to it, he won't let his gambling habit overturn what he thinks is right/what he actually wants to do. In the same way that a mercenary that generally only cares for money...makes an exception by still asking money but it's actually a lot cheaper than their usual rate but the other character doesn't know that. Not sure if that still holds up, it probably doesn't, but that was what I had thought.
Lol
I'd be too paranoid of the slight HP difference making all the difference between living and dying to leave poison alone like that. Still very funny.
Okay next...I'll talk about the gaiden chapter first. I'll leave my favs last.
I remember being so "what in the world? what is this???" when I was a kid when I reached this chapter. Because this was the first time I've seen a gaiden chapter in FE. Though I don't remember if I played this before or after Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, so I'm not sure if this gaiden chapter was my first time dealing with it ever. I do remember I did use Orson "regularly", because I was a kid that, though while I did figure out that some evil force has taken over Grado and that's why the monsters are out, I didn't put two and two together and figured out about Orson's betrayal until literally right before the actual in-story reveal because it was a whole lot more obvious at that point. I could say my thoughts on the characters that popped up in this chapter, specifically every playable that isn't Orson, but...we don't get much on their characters here, so I can't say much. What I can say ahead of time is that I barely use Kyle and Forde. I think I tried Kyle on one of my playthroughs? But considering I'm having trouble remembering, I may have not. It's not that I dislike them, but uh...I never had a reason to use them, since, character wise, I liked Seth and even Franz more. So they're my personal least favorite Cain and Abel duo because of me not using them at all.
All right. NOW I'm gonna talk about what happened in the chapter before the gaiden.
By talking about Natasha and Joshua.
Remember I said I have never used Moulder? I only really used him in the first few chapters. Why? Because Natasha, who is also a healer, came along. Not only was she another girl to add to the party, in a time when I hadn't known many female characters I actually liked (at least as far as I remember; it's been a long time so I'm very likely fudging details), but she was a woman who, despite being defenseless because of being a cleric, was willing to "defect" from her country because she was one of the people who knows something is wrong and doesn't want to let it continue...but she also happens to run into Joshua, who has a fucking cool design that I absolutely adore (its the hat; that fucking hat is so good), is a swordsman that I think is really cool, and, from initial impression, is pretty chill and cool dude. So, of course, kid me immediately decided to keep both of them because of their respective characters (Natasha because of her "defecting" because she cares about her home, Joshua because he was just plain cool) and their connection. And that fondness just kept getting bigger and bigger the more I used them...and when I saw more of their supports. And I liked them. A lot. Add in spoiler stuff involving Joshua and...yeah. That's why I always use Natasha as my main healer. Because I adore Joshua and I like his support with Natasha the most so I always use her. Much like how I always use Colm and Neimi together.
Also this chapter, or rather set of characters, is the last of the "chapters I hope you get through before your vacation ends" because, yup, they all had characters I'm really fond of. It'll be a bit before we get a chapter that has a character I'm excited for.
For the sake of a bit of positivity on that front, I like Moulder a lot, both as a unit and as a character. I like any character in an FE game who doesn't fit the usual mold of a youthful conventionally-attractive teen-to-twentysomething (Xavier, Wendell, Niime, Jagen), and a shabby-looking middle-aged priest with a mustache is definitely that. And then you read his supports, and he just comes off as the sweetest, humblest, most genuine person you've ever met, a guy who has been assigned the role of Party Dad and taken to it happily. That final support with him and Gilliam where it's just two older guys who have been friends for years recalling better days, it's very heartwarming.
Also, "Moulder the Boulder" is a top-tier Sacred Stones meme.
YES IT IS. Oh man I love that damn hat. His sprite in general is also cool and yeah lol I also had Neimi/Colm and Natasha/Joshua glued to each other in my playthroughs.
I know I generally would go yaaayyyy whenever poison came up cause it meant more healer exp
I start the chapter as usual, by going through what's available at the shop and organizing my inventory. We can get steel weapons, now – but their greater weight and lowered accuracy means upgrading is not without its caveats. And Franz is still at E rank swords, so he's got to stick with iron for the time being despite being one of the people who I think could really use a Steel Sword. I do switch out Vanessa's Slim Lance for an Iron one, though. Thank you to whoever alerted me that she had the constitution to wield it. Huh. Torches and status effect removal are also for sale. Well, that stuff's really situational, and it's expensive, so I'll refrain for now. It'll be fine…right?
More excitingly, the Renaisian elder gave me a Guiding Ring last chapter. This turns out to be a promotion item! I can use it on a unit who's reached level ten to promote them to an advanced class…as long as they're some kind of magic wielder OR a troubadour. That wording's a little odd. Trobadours are mounted staff users, so is it saying that infantry healers like Moulder and Natasha can't use it? Class-specific promotion items are new to me, as the modern games all use a single item to promote. It does mean that the game developers can essentially control how many of certain classes you have. I'll keep that in mind as I play – it's a very different dynamic from the modern games, where class-changing is easy enough that players are encouraged to experiment with various team compositions.
If nothing else, I suppose it makes it impossible to field a team of nothing but Wyvern Lords.
I also have two stat-boosters, one for Defense and one for Skill. I agonize over the Secret Book for a while before deciding to save it for later – none of my units could obviously use it right now. I agonize over the Dracoshield for a little less time before giving it to Garcia. He has high HP, but enemies chew through it relatively quickly because he has low Defense for a frontliner. This seemed to help with that – I would like to point out, he did not die once in the following chapter!
Others died, but Garcia was not one of them….this was a tough one, folks.
After fleeing Serafew, Eirika's company continues to make its way to Ephraim's last known location.
They are travelling through the Empire, and its dangers are different from those of Renais. The resistance they face will be more organized, and the locals less friendly. They keep to remote areas to try and avoid detection, but all for naught…
Creepiest Man Alive Riev is talking to his somewhat-less-creepy underling Novala. Novala explains that his men followed the heroes from Serafew. They've plotted out their route and set up an ambush on the road for them. When Riev points out that Eirika and her team are pretty strong ("They say her paladin withstood Valter's lance, and her sword the attack of bandits") Novala proudly claims that he has procured something special in Renais that will certainly be her downfall.
Now this – in contrast to the "rumors say Eirika is coming" in Chapter 5 – this, I can accept. There was a bloody battle in the center of town and Eirika personally killed the commander and absconded with someone Emperor Vigarde himself wants dead. Of course the higher-ups noticed and there were enough witnesses to figure out the identity of that dashing rapier woman. And Riev was charged with defending the home territory back in 3.X, remember, so it makes perfect sense that he would have some people in an important border checkpoint like Serafew.
Oh, and it may seem questionable that Novala had time to go on a shopping trip in Renais and still get to the ambush site ahead of the heroes, but a later scene shows that he has teleportation magic.
Furthermore, I find it interesting that Riev is taking it upon himself to catch Eirika here, involving only his own men, rather than alert one of the two generals specifically tasked with finding her. It seems as though he wants the credit all to himself. If you read that above line as sarcastic, then he's happy to be pissing in Valter's cheerios. The evidence certainly suggests that Grado's high command is…dysfunctional. For example, upon being invited to stay, Riev responds:
Riev: Unlike two other layabouts I know, I do not have such time to waste. My time is far too precious to waste on the likes of that royal whelp. Trifles such as these are best left in the hands of servants…such as you.
Novala: Y-yes, of course…Then…Travel well.
Contrast this with the easy camaraderie shown by Glen, Selena and Duessel. As you may have guessed, I love it when the forces of Evil operate like a dysfunctional office comedy, so I look forward to seeing these morons screw over their own side through selfishness and short-sighted ambition.
Yes, like that!
Another note: Riev and Novala both refer to their "master" here. That could simply mean Emperor Vigarde…but since their designs scream that they're members of the evil cult (that hasn't yet been shown to exist in story but c'mon, ten percent of their lines are "heh heh heh") I suspect that they have another master in mind.
And with that, we cut to—
It's a fog map! Ah ha ha, I am so glad I got that torch.
Novala teleports right in the path of Eirika, an interesting green sprite in two. Oh, is that a child?
Is the game seriously going to—
Eirika is understandably shocked by a creepy dude appearing right before her, and demands to know who he is. Novala demands her bracelet. Seth barges in, all, "She will do no such thing," but Eirika is curious, and asks why he wants it.
"His Majesty desires it. That's reason enough," Novala says.
Well, Eirika needs better reasons than that, and refuses. Novala tries his next trick: Convincing her there's no reason to keep fighting, because her brother has already been captured. "As we speak he wastes away in a cell in Renvall, meekly awaiting his execution."
So Novala brings out his ace. And I chose that metaphor deliberately. The ace has the smallest numerical value, you see, and Novala's ace is…quite…small.
Novala: Look familiar? He's a citizen of your precious Renais. Now give me the bracelet. Do it, or the child dies!
Eirika: ...You win. But I must have your word the child will suffer no harm.
Seth: Princess, wait. That bracelet—
Eirika: Whatever hidden value it holds, it's not worth a child's life.
…Novala wasted his time and magic on that shopping trip. Eirika would respond the same way to a Gradoan child from the village down the road.
Now Novala, still holding onto the boy, orders them to lay down all their weapons. At this point Seth takes charge and tells him he might as well pound sand, because they're not gonna do that.
Novala: Well then, my hostage has no more use to me, does he? Ah, such a waste. Have you heard of the giant spiders prowling about this region?
You piece of shit, don't tell me—
Novala: They'd appreciate a nice, hot meal, wouldn't you agree?
Boy: Nooo!
Novala: Ha ha! This will be a delight to watch!
By all the good gods.
I know I've been directly transcribing more text than usual for this scene, but that's because I think summarizing it would greatly weaken the moral outrage and sheer disgust that it's building. Am I weird for being so affected by this scene? Looking back through my screenshots makes my guts go cold.
Eirika seems to be having a similar reaction, at least. She sputters out a question, both horrified and baffled that someone could be this pointlessly cruel.
With his thoughtless, shameless, pointless actions, this no-name mid-boss has accomplished something no one else in Magvel has done so far.
He's made Eirika furious.
Eirika: I – We, the people of Renais, have long honored our alliance with the Grado Empire. And you invaded without warning. You ravaged our land. You killed my father…Even then, I told myself I must not hate Grado or her people. If I gave in to my hate, the bond between our lands would be lost forever. I refused to hate. Instead, I lived for the day our nations would know peace again.
Eirika: But…So long as this is Grado's true face…
Eirika: If you can extinguish Renais without pity, without remorse…
Eirika: While this is the case, there is no room in my heart for forgiveness.
This is a very good speech. Slightly marred by the fact that "this is unforgiveable" is a very Japanese way of telling someone "I'll make you pay for this!" but still, very good.
Novala is unimpressed, because he's an arrogant moron who doesn't realize that he could have gotten away with the bracelet scot-free if he just kept his word and resisted the chance to be evil. He teleports away with the child, to a clearing in the (spider-infested) woods, and now we find out that he didn't just kidnap one Renaisian child, but a whole family.
Then he orders all his soldiers to spring the prepared ambush and kill the heroes, and settles in with some snacks to watch the carnage….Novala is an arrogant moron who could have gotten away with the bracelet scot-free by just leaving right now, but no, he needs to get his sick kicks by staying to watch.
Okay. Deep breath. The map.
It's covered in fog, which means I can see terrain, but not enemies. Every unit can only see a three-tile distance away. I've finally accessed the in-game guide, which informs me that I can use torches (I have one) or the Torch Staff (I don't have one) to lift the fog in an area around the user. Also, thieves have better vision in the fog for some reason. Maybe they're used to working in the dark?
All the way on the east side are the three civilians, who are visible no matter what so the player can keep track of how spider-nibbled they are.
The obvious way to keep them safe is to send three mounted units straight there and rescue them all as soon as possible. I do not do this. It is a trap. Past painful experience has taught me that, on a fog map, you should act as if there's always a swarm of enemies just outside your field of vision. Because there probably is a swarm of enemies just outside your field of vision.
Oho! What's that, Colm? A line of enemies? A line of enemies placed just so that their attack ranges converge on that fort, such that any unit who moves into that tempting defensive terrain will be swarmed and surrounded? You don't say, Colm!
Oho! And is that a fighter with an anti-cavalry axe? Such that, if you decide to cross the distance between the defensive forest and the defensive fort in one turn by using a mounted unit, that unit will likely die?
The developers were a bit dickish when designing this chapter. I don't really mind; it's clear they were having fun. It's kind of like having a joke played on you by a friend. I know that some players hate fog maps because they're full of surprises. When you don't have complete information on a map, you can't treat it like a puzzle to be mathematically solved. Whereas I customarily blunder about, solving maps by trial and error, so a fog map doesn't force me to change my usual playstyle too much.
There is, however, one annoyance to this map that I think is just a glitch, not intentionally designed. It involves Halberd Man. You see, that in that screenshot up above the Halberd is highlighted in green, indicating that it drops upon the enemy's death. However, if the fighter equips the Halberd, that status switches to his other held item – meaning he drops the much less valuable Iron Axe.
And the Halberd has 1 more might than the Iron Axe, so the AI considers it a stronger weapon. So he will always equip the Halberd to attack your units, be they cavalry or not. Therefore, the only way to get this Halberd would be to attack the man before he attacks you, by moving in from outside his range and defeating him in one round. And the only way to feasibly do that…is with a cavalry unit! (Theoretically, Colm has the movement to do it, but his damage output is too weak to one-round this guy).
(Flash-forward: I do not ever manage to get the Halberd.)
I approach this map cautiously, at first. I keep everyone together, stick to the forest terrain when possible, inch forward little by little. Because I can trust him on his own, I send Seth down to the village, where a little girl cheerfully informs him that the man-eating spiders in this area are also venomous. She gives him one of her Antitoxins to help out.
Yaay. Thanks, little girl.
I keep my units arranged defensively. Colm and Neimi hold the north, Franz, Gilliam and Garcia the center, and Lute and Vanessa the south. Vanessa seems to be coming into her own this chapter, successfully not dying. It helps that she faced a mage, which is where pegasus knights shine.
After a couple of turns, I hear the sound of hooves from the north. Then from the west, where I don't have a defensive line. I think I actually muttered a curse when that happened. Oh, and one of them was a troubadour. Did I mention that this is the chapter where enemies start healing each other?
Needless to say, I'm in a bit of a tight spot.
But – BUT! – I come up with a brilliant plan. It'll let me kill a maximal number of enemies while healing Eirika. The key is for Eirika to move one tile west and kill one enemy. Then Neimi and Franz will move to kill the other one. The other cavaliers can't cross the mountains, so Natasha will be able to safely move north and heal the princess. It's a perfectly workable plan. Eirika can one-round these cavaliers by doubling with her rapier. All she needs to do is dodge one counterattack with a measly 30% chance to hit. She can do it. I believe in her.
Okay sometimes you just get unlucky. I reload a save I made at the beginning of the round and move everyone in a different order, to rejigger the random number generator.
[please imagine a nearly-identical screenshot here]
Damn it! Come on, Eirika! Renais is counting on you! Ephraim is counting on you!
YESSSSS!!!!
Colm died twice, actually, but I'm trying to keep to a screenshot limit here.
It's at this point that I decide to seriously reconsider my approach to this map. Novala intends to make sure Eirika is dead by sending wave after wave of soldiers at her. I've been holing up, afraid to venture out into the fog, but that's not working. I was thinking that I would move forward in force to rescue the civilians as soon as the enemies let up, but it's not clear that the enemies ever will let up. And it's not clear that the civilians even need rescuing. Oh, I know what the story says, and I don't expect the game is lying to me about giant spiders being here somewhere – but I lost count of the number of turns I clung on to life, and those villagers didn't see a single hairy leg. Boredom seemed a bigger threat to them. I wonder if the spiders are only coded to attack when a player unit draws close? If so, that would be an unexpectedly nice move on the part of the developers.
At this point I recall that the goal of this map is to kill the boss. Most of the time, 'kill boss' can be interpreted as 'kill all enemies for exp, save the boss for last,' but sometimes the developers really mean it. If I can't stay put, and if drawing close to the villagers is what puts them in danger, then I'll go all in on killing Novala.
Eh, well, but there's a wrinkle introduced by the fog. You can't beeline straight for the boss because you don't know where he is.
Seth! Your princess needs you.
I restart the level. I give the Torch to Seth and upgrade him from a Slim Lance to an Iron Lance because he's going to need at least 10% of his full power. My plan is to have Seth ride around the map, using the torch and swatting aside anyone who tries to interfere until he finds where Novala is hiding, whereupon he is to introduce that wretch to his just fate. I'm going to ignore the village – if the spiders aren't going to show themselves, I won't need an antitoxin. There is one enemy with a Poison Axe, but his hit rate is atrocious. (Not a single character gets poisoned in all my attempts at this map.)
Meanwhile, the rest of the party will adopt a defensive formation much like before and just try to hold out until Seth's success. I adjust the defensive formation by placing Eirika more aggressively, because I know she can handle the sword cavaliers with her Rapier.
By the way, minor nitpick, the description for the rapier? "Effective against infantry"
It's wrong. That description had me confused about how to use it for the early chapters. It's only now, with this battle, that I'm absolutely certain that it works like the rapiers I'm used to (i.e. effective against armor and cavalry).
Well, back to the battle. Seth circles around the hills (which horses can't cross) and rides along the north edge of the map. This brings him into contact with the swarm of cavalry – turns out they were there on the map the whole time – but he ignores their provocations and rides on, lighting his torch again.
There he is. The boss. Novala.
Oh, the torch reveals another old foe, too: Halberd Man. Remember, the axe that's effective against cavalry?
Halberd Man dies, unable to kill him. His attacks only do 30 damage, you see, and Seth has 31 HP. It's the rest of the swarm of enemies that kill him.
I think the developers may have anticipated this strategy as well. Seth dies a second time before I decide to restart the chapter again and send Seth around the south side of the map, just to avoid Halberd Man. At least I know where the boss is now.
Seth rides through the south, incidentally attracting the attention of a lot of the enemies and slaying them casually. The defensive portion of this run is noticeably lower-pressure, because Seth is handling a lot of it pre-emptively by himself. As I circle around to Novala, the torch reveals one more delicious trick from the level designers.
See that lone knight? He's armed with a Horseslayer. When I thought sending all of my cavalry to rescue the civilians was a trap, I was right on the money.
Seth does not, however, see a single spider. Where are they? Oh, who cares. It's time, Novala. Pick a god and pray.
He dies unmourned and Seth picks the bracelet off of his corpse.
The civilians, who all survived, give Eirika an Orion's Bolt in thanks for saving them from that monster (I mean Novala. The spiders, contrary to reports, were too scared to approach humans). This item lets an archer promote, and I earmark it for Neimi.
Now, it's time. I, and Eirika, have been waiting for this moment.
He starts off by bringing up the fact that Renais possesses one of the Sacred Stones. Eirika knows this, of course. It's in the big temple in the capital. She's seen it. It protects the nation from evil.
It's not really in the temple, he tells her. That's a forgery. A decoy.
Secretly, a long time ago, a sovereign of Renais hid the Stone in a secret place beneath Castle Renais so that no one would interfere with it. Apparently, the great power within the Sacred Stones has the potential to be used by humans, and therefore, misused. Seth is vague about the details – I do wonder what exactly Eirika's ancestors feared, though. It's probable that this is esoteric stuff, and few people alive would know exactly how to mainline the holy power of the righteous cosmic order. (Except, perhaps, members of a secretive mystery cult that's been waiting for the Demon King's return for 800 years?) Perhaps drawing on that power at all would weaken the Demon King's prison and lead to monsters popping up such as what we're seeing now.
The Stone of Renais was itself sealed away with powerful magic, so you can't just get at it by digging. The seal has two keys, and won't open without both of them. And, as an extra security measure, the keys were made to look like...bracelets. Yes, those bracelets.
The secret of the Stone is normally passed only from monarch to monarch, but King Fado told Seth in anticipation of his death. Specifically, he said, "They must know nothing of the bracelets. Tell them only if some great peril strikes."
…I have my opinions on that decision. On all these decisions, actually. Let's go through them one by one.
First of all, hiding the Stone and displaying a decoy to the public? A reasonable decision, given that they're apparently vulnerable to human interference. If it's somewhere in the palace, then the nation can still benefit from its protection, and it removes the possibility of random demon cultists walking up to its public resting place and unleashing monsters.
Secondly, making two keys for the seal is also a smart move. If at least two trusted people need to be in agreement to access the Stone, then that suggests that the seal will only be unlocked when it's truly necessary. Plus, it means that any thief (or invading empire) needs to get their hands on both keys to do something nefarious with the Stone. Nations in our world use a similar system to control access to their nuclear weapons.
Even keeping this a secret from everyone is a good idea, in general. The decoy in the temple is an extra layer of defense. Keeping your security systems secret means that your enemies won't know exactly how to subvert them. Similarly, forging the keys into bracelets obfuscates where the keys are by making them look like ordinary objects.
Handing those keys to your children…is where I object. It's unclear how old, exactly, the twins were when they received their bracelets. Eirika just says, "Father gave me this bracelet when I was a child." Now, I don't have children myself, but my brother was born when I was almost sixteen, and so I learned a thing or two from taking care of him. And let me tell you, if you have something valuable, something irreplaceable, something less than completely unbreakable – you do NOT hand it to a young child! They lose things, they drop things, they break things because they're curious and take them apart and now our gramophone doesn't work anymore because Young Vocalist pushed the pin so deep into the couch upholstery that it can't be retrieved (true story). They don't understand value, and they don't understand which actions an object can tolerate and which will make it break.
As a child gets older, you can trust them a progressive amount. You can hand them a precious gift while looking them straight in the eyes and telling them sternly that it's one of a kind and they need to take good care of it. Sometimes they'll still lose it.
I always had gold jewelry as a child, passed down through the family as gifts to me, but until I was ten my mother kept it in her safe. At that point, I was trusted to keep my jewelry in my own room. When you can trust a child to handle something, that's when you let them handle it, and not before.
Handing your child a precious thing and then not telling them about it because you don't think they're ready to handle it is dumb. If they're not ready to handle it, don't give it to them! All you've done is given the key to your country's anti-demon defense system to someone who won't take proper care of it.
Now, don't misread my tone here. I don't think this is bad writing in the way "Ephraim and co just forgot about Orson" is. This doesn't make King Fado look unforgiveably stupid. It makes him look mundanely stupid. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Fado, enamored with the symbolism of having twins and unfamiliar with the realities of childcare, handed his precious keys over to them in a grand ceremony and planned to tell them the truth when they were adults.
But there is one thing…If the secret of the hiding place is passed down from monarch to monarch, then Fado really should have told his daughter when he saw his death coming. But he told Seth instead, because the writers wanted to delay the revelation, to make it a mid-arc plot surprise.
Therefore, Prince Ephraim knows nothing of his bracelet's significance. Seth and Eirika are the only people who know the secret. At least, that's the way it should be.
So Emperor Vigarde, or whoever's controlling him, somehow knows about the secret way to access the Stone of Renais. And since his goal is to destroy all of them, he needs those bracelets. That is why the Empire has been so doggedly hunting the twins.
In fact, in their encounter with imperial forces this chapter, Novala seemed to place absolutely no importance on keeping Eirika alive once he had her bracelet.
…Hey, remember what he said about Ephraim earlier?
Sure, Novala might have been lying. He had every reason to lie. But if he wasn't lying, then Ephraim's current life expectancy is solely dependent on how long Valter finds it entertaining to gloat to a fallen enemy.
More excitingly, the Renaisian elder gave me a Guiding Ring last chapter. This turns out to be a promotion item! I can use it on a unit who's reached level ten to promote them to an advanced class…as long as they're some kind of magic wielder OR a troubadour. That wording's a little odd. Trobadours are mounted staff users, so is it saying that infantry healers like Moulder and Natasha can't use it? Class-specific promotion items are new to me, as the modern games all use a single item to promote. It does mean that the game developers can essentially control how many of certain classes you have. I'll keep that in mind as I play – it's a very different dynamic from the modern games, where class-changing is easy enough that players are encouraged to experiment with various team compositions.
AFAIK this is a translation issue. If my memory is correct, the JP version talked about "magic users" in a way that implied infantry, which is why troubs are counted separately. Regardless of the particulars of the phrasing, the Guiding Ring absolutely does promote Priests/Clerics as well.
I do switch out Vanessa's Slim Lance for an Iron one, though. Thank you to whoever alerted me that she had the constitution to wield it. Huh. Torches and status effect removal are also for sale. Well, that stuff's really situational, and it's expensive, so I'll refrain for now. It'll be fine…right?
Er, haven't checked every post in the thread but that might be misinterpreting it slightly? Vanessa has 5 Constitution and Iron Lances weigh 8, so she gets weighed down for 3 points when wielding one. Granted this is... pretty standard for GBA Pegasus Knights to be absurdly tiny and weighed down by anything not a slim lance, so they usually end up fine anyways because the end result is "still has enough speed to double everything in sight" making the iron lance a better idea that only costs some slight avoid, but still something to keep in mind if you ever want Vanessa to run through enemy territory more interested in not getting hit than killing things outright.
More excitingly, the Renaisian elder gave me a Guiding Ring last chapter. This turns out to be a promotion item! I can use it on a unit who's reached level ten to promote them to an advanced class…as long as they're some kind of magic wielder OR a troubadour. That wording's a little odd. Trobadours are mounted staff users, so is it saying that infantry healers like Moulder and Natasha can't use it? Class-specific promotion items are new to me, as the modern games all use a single item to promote. It does mean that the game developers can essentially control how many of certain classes you have. I'll keep that in mind as I play – it's a very different dynamic from the modern games, where class-changing is easy enough that players are encouraged to experiment with various team compositions.
If nothing else, I suppose it makes it impossible to field a team of nothing but Wyvern Lords.
I also have two stat-boosters, one for Defense and one for Skill. I agonize over the Secret Book for a while before deciding to save it for later – none of my units could obviously use it right now. I agonize over the Dracoshield for a little less time before giving it to Garcia. He has high HP, but enemies chew through it relatively quickly because he has low Defense for a frontliner. This seemed to help with that – I would like to point out, he did not die once in the following chapter!
Yup, GBA Fire Emblems tend to hand out promotion items around pre-determined points (and some might even be more difficult to obtain with things like racing thieves to treasure chests or needing to steal them from a boss). Sacred Stones is iirc still fairly lenient about handing them out overall, but there's also games like FE6 which does things like "okay but what if it took until chapter 15 to get your second knight crest despite having 4 cavaliers and 3 knights by that point", or "You'll only get two guilding rings before you can just purchase them outright at a point where everyone else is promoted, hope you didn't want to use too many of your 8-odd magic users".
On that note, Guilding Ring is basically a one size fits all promotion item for any magic users, so yes you could use that on Moulder, Lute, Artur, or Natasha when the time comes. Healers in particular do tend to benefit the most from getting a Guilding Ring a bit earlier, promoting before level 20 because of somewhat lower EXP gain due to lacking combat capabilities, so the early promotion gives them some nice stat boosts and magic use, so personally my first one tends to be reserved for Moulder or Natasha... though of course it's entirely up to you if you'd rather promote someone else first, or even just wait until Level 20 on healers to promote them.
As for stat boosters like the Skill Book... well, one bit of fun advice: In GBA Fire Emblem, stat boosters tend to sell for something like 4000 gold. While this probably isn't worth it for some obviously more useful stats like Speed, Defense, or Strength/Magic, things like Skill Books or Luck Boosters often make good gold fodder if you don't see much use in giving them to anyone. Promotion items also sell for a hefty sum, but that tends to be more something that comes up in the late game when your final team is basically decided and the game is still handing out the occasional knights crest or whatever.
Ah yes, Fire Embelm enemy casters and cutscene teleportation magic so they can pop over to Cause Plot and taunt the heroes before going to sit in a stationary position all chapter and not bother using it to retreat from death when surrounded, name a more iconic duo.
Another note: Riev and Novala both refer to their "master" here. That could simply mean Emperor Vigarde…but since their designs scream that they're members of the evil cult (that hasn't yet been shown to exist in story but c'mon, ten percent of their lines are "heh heh heh") I suspect that they have another master in mind.
Oho! And is that a fighter with an anti-cavalry axe? Such that, if you decide to cross the distance between the defensive forest and the defensive fort in one turn by using a mounted unit, that unit will likely die?
The developers were a bit dickish when designing this chapter. I don't really mind; it's clear they were having fun. It's kind of like having a joke played on you by a friend. I know that some players hate fog maps because they're full of surprises. When you don't have complete information on a map, you can't treat it like a puzzle to be mathematically solved. Whereas I customarily blunder about, solving maps by trial and error, so a fog map doesn't force me to change my usual playstyle too much.
There is, however, one annoyance to this map that I think is just a glitch, not intentionally designed. It involves Halberd Man. You see, that in that screenshot up above the Halberd is highlighted in green, indicating that it drops upon the enemy's death. However, if the fighter equips the Halberd, that status switches to his other held item – meaning he drops the much less valuable Iron Axe.
Ah, Halberd Fighter, crusher of my hopes and dreams on my first Sacred Stones Ironman back in the day.
As for the drop thing, it's consistent across all three GBA games so I can only assume it's intentional - for whatever reason, enemies coded to drop an item on death will always drop whatever item is at the lowest position in their inventory. For general items like promotion seals or stat boosters or whatever this is never really an issue, but when an enemy has multiple weapons they can wield like this it does tend to mean you either need to blitz them to get the one you want (in this case, something like Colm + Seth/Franz running over to murk him would probably net you the halberd but also might leave them in danger of a counterattack), or manipulate their AI to put the item you want at the bottom - say, a stationary boss who has a javelin for 1-2 range and a Silver Lance. Obviously, one of those is more valuable than the other, so you would want to intentionally leave someone at 2 range to take a javelin to the face, then have The Squad move in for the kill before the boss can swap.
Okay sometimes you just get unlucky. I reload a save I made at the beginning of the round and move everyone in a different order, to rejigger the random number generator.
So, if you're already willing to play with savestates, fun thing of note - in GBA emblem, it's actually really easy to rig the RNG because while everything is selected from a predetermined list (to the point that speedruns can use this to force specific outcomes by starting a new file and getting the same RNs every time), some actions on the map will waste an RN or three. In particular, if you take the movement arrow of a character's path to its maximum range then move to a different spot, if there's more than one potential path to the new spot, then the game will need to use RNG to determine what direction the arrow path takes. This is as incredibly silly as it sounds, but quite effective.
And it's not clear that the civilians even need rescuing. Oh, I know what the story says, and I don't expect the game is lying to me about giant spiders being here somewhere – but I lost count of the number of turns I clung on to life, and those villagers didn't see a single hairy leg. Boredom seemed a bigger threat to them. I wonder if the spiders are only coded to attack when a player unit draws close? If so, that would be an unexpectedly nice move on the part of the developers.
Since you blitzed the map with Best Boi Seth, it never actually came up, but there is in fact a spider up in the mountains above programmed to slowly advance on the villagers. It can only move one mountain tile at a time though, so you'll still have a few turns warning that it's coming as the civilians spot it entering their vision range and start to scream in panic.
Hilariously, iirc this event is programmed as taking place when the spider reaches that specific tile, not actually if the villagers can see it, so in one run I sent Vanessa over to rescue and ferry the family to safety... resulting in the camera centering on a fogged up tile and going "OH MY GOODNESS GIANT ENEMY SPIDER!".
As I said earlier, the bane of my first Ironman - I didn't properly scout this part of the map and just figured "oh yeah Seth can take it he's Seth"... and I 100% believe the devs accounted for this with their first Fog of War map, the fact that Seth is a severely dominant force at this point in the game. So you get Halberd Man hiding in the fog, ready to crunch your best and until now nearly unstoppable unit.
As a side note, I don't know if you did this, but Torches can actually be used by thieves to even further increase their vision range specifically - so on one hand, it might be good to have a torch in someone else's hands (I usually use Franz or Vanessa for their mobilty with it), but on the other hand, Colm can see basically everything if given a torch here.
Handing those keys to your children…is where I object. It's unclear how old, exactly, the twins were when they received their bracelets. Eirika just says, "Father gave me this bracelet when I was a child." Now, I don't have children myself, but my brother was born when I was almost sixteen, and so I learned a thing or two from taking care of him. And let me tell you, if you have something valuable, something irreplaceable, something less than completely unbreakable – you do NOT hand it to a young child! They lose things, they drop things, they break things because they're curious and take them apart and now our gramophone doesn't work anymore because Young Vocalist pushed the pin so deep into the couch upholstery that it can't be retrieved (true story). They don't understand value, and they don't understand which actions an object can tolerate and which will make it break.
As a child gets older, you can trust them a progressive amount. You can hand them a precious gift while looking them straight in the eyes and telling them sternly that it's one of a kind and they need to take good care of it. Sometimes they'll still lose it.
I always had gold jewelry as a child, passed down through the family as gifts to me, but until I was ten my mother kept it in her safe. At that point, I was trusted to keep my jewelry in my own room. When you can trust a child to handle something, that's when you let them handle it, and not before.
Handing your child a precious thing and then not telling them about it because you don't think they're ready to handle it is dumb. If they're not ready to handle it, don't give it to them! All you've done is given the key to your country's anti-demon defense system to someone who won't take proper care of it.
It probably would have made more sense if Fado had only recently handed off the bracelets, yeah. Something like giving one to Ephraim before he left, and giving the other to Erika as she evacuated the castle with a "no time to explain". Would make Erika having no idea but Seth being formerly read in on the situation make more sense.
Oh, I know what the story says, and I don't expect the game is lying to me about giant spiders being here somewhere – but I lost count of the number of turns I clung on to life, and those villagers didn't see a single hairy leg. Boredom seemed a bigger threat to them. I wonder if the spiders are only coded to attack when a player unit draws close? If so, that would be an unexpectedly nice move on the part of the developers.
Not only is the game not lying to you, the spider starts the map spawned, in the mountains to the north of the villagers. It will make a beeline for those poor fools, but it's movement in mountains is only something like two tiles a turn.
So it absolutely can gobble them up if you play very defensively and wait long enough - which I did a couple times in the past, I admit. Of course, the spider is both a) a physical unit on the map, and b) singular in nature, so it's entirely possible to head on over and kill it to remove the time pressure (though of course, not the pressure of the great press of hostiles). When I want to get all the XP I can off the map, my usual play is to have Vanessa grab the antitoxin from the village and hug the south towards the villagers, then head north into the mountains to kill the spider. After that, you just need to have Everyone Else survive.
Of course, the Seth Solo is also viable here, though the halberd is the main obstacle to that. The best move there is to give him a sword for a bit of extra avoid against it, and consider dodging the halberd swing a successful mission.
But yeah, honestly this is one of my favorite missions in hindsight, I think. On lower difficulties, this is where you're really leaving tutorial country, and thrown into a problem to solve, and unlike something like Serafew there are few obvious chokepoints or means of approach. You're thrown into an open field with incomplete information and a time crunch, and asked to figure it out. Especially after the power trip that is Ephraim's gaiden chapter, this is where it really starts to feel like the game is saying you're ready to face some proper challenges.
As for the bracelets, well, you're right on the money on those. I mean, we've seen twice now Eirika say "it's just a bracelet who gives a shit," and it's only pure happenstance that she kept it this long. Honestly, I think it's possible that the twins' mother died early on, and Fado really did have no idea how to raise children properly, with giving them the bracelets like that. Frankly I'm surprised Seth isn't prematurely gray from keeping the twins from doing something with the bracelets like "see how far we can throw them from the parapets of Castle Renais."
Ultimately I think it's serviceable as a plot beat, but really one of the more jarring "this was entirely done for drama" choices the writers made.
Frankly I'm surprised Seth isn't prematurely gray from keeping the twins from doing something with the bracelets like "see how far we can throw them from the parapets of Castle Renais."
Seth was only recently read into the importance of that trinket Erika honestly doesn't really care about. So less "quiet suffering over the years" and more he spent all of the prologue quietly remembering all those barely averted "hey do you feel like seeing how far we can chuck this shit," contests.
Do you think prolonged stress or sudden acute stress is more likely to cause ulcers
Seth was only recently read into the importance of that trinket Erika honestly doesn't really care about. So less "quiet suffering over the years" and more he spent all of the prologue quietly remembering all those barely averted "hey do you feel like seeing how far we can chuck this shit," contests.
Do you think prolonged stress or sudden acute stress is more likely to cause ulcers
Option C: Fado is explaining how important the bracelets are, and Seth is just sitting there sweating bullets because he knows the twins yeeted that shit three years ago for fun and lost them in an aqueduct and he had to buy some cheap replacements from the village market.
Mechanics thing I should've talked about earlier, since Colm+Neimi and Seth+Eirika made it relevant!
While building Supports requires units are right next to each other, benefiting from Supports uses a more generous 3-tile radius. (I don't get why Support-building doesn't use this same radius, honestly) This mechanic is in no way communicated by the game except that the combat predictor will accurately show the final numbers, resulting in new players tearing their hair out trying to figure out why a unit sometimes has 7 more evasion that isn't reflected by their stat screen and doesn't come from their equipment.
The bonuses themselves are controlled by the rank of the Support in a linear manner (+1 damage at C? Then +2 at B and +3 at A) and by the otherwise-irrelevant Affinity... thingy. Like, Eirika has an icon on her screen of a yellow-white diamond thinger; this represents that her Affinity is Light. Each of the 7 Affinities provides a different combination of 4 stats;
Each involved character provides their Affinity's bonus to both characters, with the final bonus rounded down if it results in a fraction... 'final' is after calculating all Support bonuses a character is benefiting from, note. 2 C Affinities could add 1 point of damage to a character where neither partner is gaining damage, for example.
The whole thing is an interesting puzzle for optimizing your party and seems to be partially a personality thing? I'm not a fan of it in practice (For one thing, the Affinities are pretty uneven in quality), but I do find it a more compelling foundation than, say, Fates' approach. (Which basically is 'look up a fansite if you want to understand what's happening and why') And it's certainly better than how the pre-GBA games invisibly apply arbitrary minor bonuses with zero indication that this is a thing at all. You can at least figure out Affinities without code-diving or the like. (I did, back in the day, aside not figuring out the rounding-down behavior)
More excitingly, the Renaisian elder gave me a Guiding Ring last chapter. This turns out to be a promotion item! I can use it on a unit who's reached level ten to promote them to an advanced class…as long as they're some kind of magic wielder OR a troubadour. That wording's a little odd. Trobadours are mounted staff users, so is it saying that infantry healers like Moulder and Natasha can't use it?
It works on all magic users. For whatever reason, the GBA games just... have a lot of incorrect statements in them.
I'd say 'in the English versions', but while there's plenty of localization issues too, the original Japanese has plenty of such mistakes, some of them actually fixed in other versions.
I know I've been directly transcribing more text than usual for this scene, but that's because I think summarizing it would greatly weaken the moral outrage and sheer disgust that it's building. Am I weird for being so affected by this scene? Looking back through my screenshots makes my guts go cold.
I personally roll my eyes at this entire chapter. Yes, if a real person were to do this in front of me I'd be pretty appalled, but the way this plays out is so arbitrary and forced I can't take it at all seriously. If I was Novala, Evilest Teleporting Shaman To Ever Live, I'd use teleportation to grab Eirika herself, or try to figure out if I can snatch her/her bracelet with my Arbitrary Plot Teleportation. If I couldn't manage that, I'd try to murder-ambush Eirika using my Arbitrary Plot Teleportation. If I was a giant coward who wasn't willing to put myself in any risk like that, I wouldn't be teleporting right in front of Eirika with my stolen kid to taunt her with in the first place, because I'd be terrified one of these people might be willing to just fire an arrow or lob a magic bolt or whatever at me, hostage be damned; if I misjudge the personality of any of these people I have literally never met, I could very abruptly end up dead!
This is all happening because of an intersection of Gameplay Conventions (Novala is a boss character, so he's going to stand in a corner and wait for you to come to him, for example) and writing crap that fails the Sally-Anne Test. (The player has already been shown that Eirika and her crew are the sort of people hostages might work against. But Novala doesn't have any of that information)
I'm pretty difficult to provoke this kind of outrage from in the first place, admittedly, but I'm somewhat doubtful I'm actually all that odd for just rolling my eyes at this entire chapter and pretending it essentially doesn't actually exist in the narrative.
This is a very good speech. Slightly marred by the fact that "this is unforgiveable" is a very Japanese way of telling someone "I'll make you pay for this!" but still, very good.
Actually, the word that basically always gets translated as 'unforgiveable/I won't forgive you/etc' can alternatively be accurately translated as 'I forbid it/won't allow it/similar sentiments'.
Learning this changed my read of a number of scenes I found weak in various Japanese works. Some lady angrily charging at someone and declaring their sin 'unforgiveable' is inane to me. (The bad guy doesn't care about your forgiveness, why are you telling them this?) "You'll do (X horrible thing) over my dead body" is much stronger, and probably much more accurate to the intent of such scenes.
In this particular case, Eirika is most likely, in the original Japanese, basically pledging that the civilians will live if she has any say in the matter. With an implied 'and Novala will die for his crime' too, yeah.
The series has always conflated the Thief class with subterfuge and spywork. Sacred Stones is weird for being one of the only entries -I wanna say the only entry, but I'd have to recheck a bunch of games and that's not happening right now- where nobody in the Thief class is/turns out to be a spy or the like.
Oho! And is that a fighter with an anti-cavalry axe? Such that, if you decide to cross the distance between the defensive forest and the defensive fort in one turn by using a mounted unit, that unit will likely die?
This guy is so rude. He's carefully designed to ensure Seth will probably die if you're relying on him to do much of anything, with zero warning.
Notably, in every Fire Emblem I have any familiarity with, the AI has zero respect for the Fog of War. You can move Seth somewhere absolutely no enemy should have vision on but that Halberd Guy can walk next to and Halberd Guy will unerringly charge out of the fog and kill Seth, no need for any other enemies to move about and spot Seth first.
The fact that the AI cheats on fog maps is a big part of why I hate them, personally, especially as many of the maps are carefully designed to maximize the relevancy of this cheating (eg Halberd Guy here), and every single entry in the series makes it sound like fog affects everybody, not just the player. In conjunction with the fog of war itself hiding a lot of information, it's easy to go a long time figuring that, say, an enemy Thief is in the fog, or that some enemies are using Torches, or whatever, for why you have enemies lunging out of the darkness and attacking when your current information implies they shouldn't be able to see the guy they just attacked, and therefore not realize the AI just cheats.
I'm more sympathetic to how in, say, the first Advance Wars game -also by Intelligent Systems- the AI ignores the fog of war entirely, as later entries do eventually fix it, suggesting this was a coding issue. I'm willing to believe the first Advance Wars game was supposed to have fog apply to the AI fully and they ended up having to ship before they could finish making the 'AI in fog' logic behave properly and so the tremendously rude design of some of its fog missions isn't actually intentional.
I'm much less willing to believe something equivalent for the Fire Emblem games, between how many games in a row never made the slightest attempt to reduce the cheating, and how many games in a row kept being designed around the AI cheating.
There is, however, one annoyance to this map that I think is just a glitch, not intentionally designed. It involves Halberd Man. You see, that in that screenshot up above the Halberd is highlighted in green, indicating that it drops upon the enemy's death. However, if the fighter equips the Halberd, that status switches to his other held item – meaning he drops the much less valuable Iron Axe.
That's not a bug, that's just how the GBA games work. Plenty of individual missions in these games clearly design individual enemies as micro-puzzles where you have to either deliberately bait them into switching weapon to get the one you really want, or kill them without ever letting them attack so they won't switch to using (And thus not dropping) the one you want.
I do wonder if this particular individual was designed this way on accident, like whoever made this map was not personally familiar with the drop rules. On the other hand, he's so deliberately obnoxiously-designed I would just as readily buy that he was made this way as one extra bit of spite.
After a couple of turns, I hear the sound of hooves from the north. Then from the west, where I don't have a defensive line. I think I actually muttered a curse when that happened. Oh, and one of them was a troubadour. Did I mention that this is the chapter where enemies start healing each other?
A point of note that is weird and janky about fog: you actually get to see enemy reinforcements showing up in the fog.
Not that the game reveals their sprites automatically or anything, of course, but the camera will conspicuously, right before the enemy turn ends, bounce over to where the reinforcements spawned, same as it does in non-fog missions, when otherwise the camera only moves in response to visible enemy action.
If you notice this it can make some of the ruder fog surprises of the series slightly less rude, such as how this mission spawns cavalry reinforcements from the west side of the map after a few turns. (There's initially no enemies on the west side)
I wonder if the spiders are only coded to attack when a player unit draws close? If so, that would be an unexpectedly nice move on the part of the developers.
It's in the upper-right corner, sloooowly making its way through the Peaks. Peaks are some of the roughest terrain in the game; only one non-flying player class can enter them at all, plus Brigands (Which are enemy-only) and the giant spider enemy you unfortunately didn't actually see, and they eat up so much movement to enter that all these units crawl at a meager 1 space per turn.
You have something like 8 turns before the spider will actually be in reach to attack anyone. Assuming you didn't just fly Vanessa over and draw its attention away with her to stall for yet longer, which you absolutely can do and is what I basically always do.
Note that Torches are way more effective when used by a Thief (Or more accurately any class with enhanced sight) than when used by most classes. Their effect is straightforward addition, and with line of sight's mechanics that means that you're uncovering a lot more tiles if you're adding to an already-high vision than if you're adding to the default vision amount.
By the way, minor nitpick, the description for the rapier? "Effective against infantry"
It's wrong. That description had me confused about how to use it for the early chapters. It's only now, with this battle, that I'm absolutely certain that it works like the rapiers I'm used to (i.e. effective against armor and cavalry).
Yep. That inexplicable localization error was introduced by the previous game, and then Sacred Stones didn't fix it.
What's particularly bizarre is the the Rapier-adjacent weapons (eg Reginleif on Ephraim) do not suffer from this localization error.
This is especially unfortunate in Sacred Stones since you get multiple Knight bosses early on while cavalry take longer to start showing up in enemy hands, and so it's easy to think maybe it does only get bonus damage against infantry. And then struggle to figure out what's going on that Knights count as infantry, but not Fighters, Brigands, Thieves, Archers...
Now, don't misread my tone here. I don't think this is bad writing in the way "Ephraim and co just forgot about Orson" is. This doesn't make King Fado look unforgiveably stupid. It makes him look mundanely stupid. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Fado, enamored with the symbolism of having twins and unfamiliar with the realities of childcare, handed his precious keys over to them in a grand ceremony and planned to tell them the truth when they were adults.
I think this is pretty bluntly driven by The Needs Of The Writing, personally, where the devs want this to be a secret that gets Dramatically Revealed, and have made other decisions that have undermined their ability to produce a more natural flow of events. (To wit: Ephraim and Eirika start out separated, so the plot can't have Fado shove the bracelets at them and rush them out while saying 'no time to explain!', and therefore Ephraim having his bracelet requires it's just on him already)
That said, I'll admit this still kind of holds up as plausible for the reasons you're saying. And it does make sense to me that Fado wouldn't have told the children much earlier; this is a vitally-important state secret the safety of the world hinges on, and it'd be potentially very bad if l'il Ephraim were to blurt out that his bracelet is a super-valuable thing his dad entrusted him with because it's so special.
That Seth didn't reveal this information at some earlier point is, however, difficult for me take as anything other than Needs Of The Writing. Seth nearly died evaccing Eirika, and there's no backups with them who know about the bracelets. (There's no reason to think that Franz knows the secret, for example) If I were Seth, I would've told Eirika about the importance of the bracelet no later than at Hayden's place, because I'd be aware that otherwise the secret might die with me, and would not consider that an acceptable outcome if I were in Seth's postion.
While building Supports requires units are right next to each other, benefiting from Supports uses a more generous 3-tile radius. (I don't get why Support-building doesn't use this same radius, honestly) This mechanic is in no way communicated by the game except that the combat predictor will accurately show the final numbers, resulting in new players tearing their hair out trying to figure out why a unit sometimes has 7 more evasion that isn't reflected by their stat screen and doesn't come from their equipment.
If I could take exactly one change from a later FE game and implant it into the GBA titles, Path of Radiance's support system just being "characters have both been deployed on the same map X times" to trigger support conversations would absolutely be a top contender, that's for sure. Not only does it get rid of that awkward "try to keep two units adjacent to each other constantly while playing or press end turn 300 times in boredom", it also let the devs actively plan supports to tie around story events.
Of course, PoR also had base conversations for that. Great game, Path of Radiance, love almost everything about it except actually playing it and having enough downtime during individual enemy turns to go make dinner.
The series has always conflated the Thief class with subterfuge and spywork. Sacred Stones is weird for being one of the only entries -I wanna say the only entry, but I'd have to recheck a bunch of games and that's not happening right now- where nobody in the Thief class is/turns out to be a spy or the like.
Off the top of my head:
FE1/FE3/FE11/FE12 (there's been a lot of games and remakes with the Marth Crew) only have two thieves, and both are... well, literally just thieves who join up with the group for their own reasons rather than any kind of spies.
FE4 I know at least your first thief is basically some random kid, not sure about the second one.
Gaius in Awakening is basically Just Some Dude who got roped into the whole "let's assassinate Emmeryn" thing and promptly changed sides because he wasn't big on the idea. Otherwise, still a normal thief without any other major affiliations he's hiding.
Rest of the games... yeah, there's usually at least one thief who's actually a spy or assassin or someone's retainer or whatever else.
More excitingly, the Renaisian elder gave me a Guiding Ring last chapter. This turns out to be a promotion item! I can use it on a unit who's reached level ten to promote them to an advanced class…as long as they're some kind of magic wielder OR a troubadour. That wording's a little odd. Trobadours are mounted staff users, so is it saying that infantry healers like Moulder and Natasha can't use it? Class-specific promotion items are new to me, as the modern games all use a single item to promote. It does mean that the game developers can essentially control how many of certain classes you have. I'll keep that in mind as I play – it's a very different dynamic from the modern games, where class-changing is easy enough that players are encouraged to experiment with various team compositions.
Sacred Stones is honestly an excellent example of why Master Seal only became normal. Master Seals already exist as a catchall promotion item, but then you have a pile of varyingly more specific promotion items, and in Sacred Stones especially these are... uneven and pretty crazy. Some promotion items you don't get enough of to promote every example they're applicable to without employing some Master Seals or maybe buying them up, others pop up so much that given the limited list of characters they affect you'll straight up wind up with spares unless you manage to miss multiple of them.
As to specifics, in a spoiler in case you don't want to read the lists or at least not right now;
Hero Crests promote all Myrmidons, Fighters, and Mercenaries.
Knight Crests promote all Knights and Cavaliers.
Orion's Bolt is for exactly and exclusively Archers. It made more sense in the preceding games as you had the bow wielding Nomads also use it, but they don't exist in Magvel.
Elysian Whip promotes Wyvern Knights and Pegasus Knights.
Guiding Ring promotes Mages, Shaman, Monks, Priests, Clerics, and Troubadours. Yeah. Bit stacked.
Ocean Seal promotes Thieves and Pirates.
There's no actual spoilers there, and if you care to look at it to know who's going to be competing for promotion items, it's an option.
Special note: I mentioned before that Ross will automatically promote to your choice of Pirate and Fighter when he reaches level 10? Uniquely to Ross, one factor to your decision making to consider is that unlike the other examples of such trainee classes, these are not classes that promote with the same item, so depending on what you snag and who else you want to promote, you might care about that.
(though personally berserker is just so useful that I'd generally advise making him a pirate and items be damned, but it's there as a factor)
Well, back to the battle. Seth circles around the hills (which horses can't cross) and rides along the north edge of the map. This brings him into contact with the swarm of cavalry – turns out they were there on the map the whole time – but he ignores their provocations and rides on, lighting his torch again.
Fun fact, Horses can cross hills... or rather, promoted horses can. Unpromoted cavalry like Cavaliers and troubadours literally can't, but promoted Cavalry like Paladins can. It costs them an immense 6 movement (5 for the Ranger, which uses a slightly different movement type), but they can cross hills if needed.
If I could take exactly one change from a later FE game and implant it into the GBA titles, Path of Radiance's support system just being "characters have both been deployed on the same map X times" to trigger support conversations would absolutely be a top contender, that's for sure. Not only does it get rid of that awkward "try to keep two units adjacent to each other constantly while playing or press end turn 300 times in boredom", it also let the devs actively plan supports to tie around story events.
Of course, PoR also had base conversations for that. Great game, Path of Radiance, love almost everything about it except actually playing it and having enough downtime during individual enemy turns to go make dinner.
Off the top of my head:
FE1/FE3/FE11/FE12 (there's been a lot of games and remakes with the Marth Crew) only have two thieves, and both are... well, literally just thieves who join up with the group for their own reasons rather than any kind of spies.
FE4 I know at least your first thief is basically some random kid, not sure about the second one.
Gaius in Awakening is basically Just Some Dude who got roped into the whole "let's assassinate Emmeryn" thing and promptly changed sides because he wasn't big on the idea. Otherwise, still a normal thief without any other major affiliations he's hiding.
Rest of the games... yeah, there's usually at least one thief who's actually a spy or assassin or someone's retainer or whatever else.
I'd say it's about a 60-40 ratio at minimum between "thieves that are just criminals of varying backgrounds who hook up with the party" and "thieves that are actual trained assassins or clandestine operatives with some kind of agenda." The FE4 thieves are all just regular thieves who steal stuff, though Patty has some royal heritage. FE5 is another game where none of the thieves involved are meant as stealth operatives or anything like that: Lifis and Pahn are local crime bosses, and Lara is part of a rebel group but is really just treated as a pickpocket who joined up with a good cause. FE6 is the first game where one of the thieves (Astore) gets that treatment.
Claiming that prepromotes are actually valuable in their own right is the newer opinion, and it became the newer opinion because people backed it up with better results. They cracked open the game's math, they did runs of the games that turned growths off entirely, they started measuring turncounts, and the prepromote-heavy strategies consistently outperformed all expectations.
I'm sorry for returning to the topic, but this thing has been bugging me since I started playing FE6 (and dipped my toes in a few romhacks) about a month ago. The thought of 'prepromotes are good if not better actually' is making me feel worse somehow. Before getting into the discourse I was playing (what I thought) normally - using Marcus to weaken enemies for others to kill safely and a few times as a panic button. But after reading way too many Reddit threads about his archetype, I started to doubt myself.
As it was said in this thread, using a weaker unit (like the red/green cavs) just steals XP from those already good while not guaranteeing that they will be worth it. What's the point of raising anybody but the lord, the healer, and maybe an early flyer if midgame recruits will probably blow the rest of the cast out of the water?
I must say that this is probably due to my rather pessimistic and absolutist way of thinking, but still, I can't really shake this nervousness off.
I'm sorry for returning to the topic, but this thing has been bugging me since I started playing FE6 (and dipped my toes in a few romhacks) about a month ago. The thought of 'prepromotes are good if not better actually' is making me feel worse somehow. Before getting into the discourse I was playing (what I thought) normally - using Marcus to weaken enemies for others to kill safely and a few times as a panic button. But after reading way too many Reddit threads about his archetype, I started to doubt myself.
As it was said in this thread, using a weaker unit (like the red/green cavs) just steals XP from those already good while not guaranteeing that they will be worth it. What's the point of raising anybody but the lord, the healer, and maybe an early flyer if midgame recruits will probably blow the rest of the cast out of the water?
I must say that this is probably due to my rather pessimistic and absolutist way of thinking, but still, I can't really shake this nervousness off.
The thing I was trying to emphasize there was that, in fact, you don't need to agonize about XP management to the point of not using a unit. It's fine to let prepromotes take kills. You don't want them to hoover up all the XP on the map, but if there's a problem you need to solve and the prepromote is the tool for that job... then, well, use the prepromote.
For that matter, using Marcus for that "weaken enemies" purpose is, in fact, the normal way to play FE6 and probably the best way. Marcus is a very different animal from Seth. He's worse in just about every way, from bases to growths to weapon ranks, and he's in a game where those statistical shortcomings will actually start to bite him before long, because FE6 Hard makes FE8 Hard look like Candy Land. (For some idea: the level 14 cavaliers in FE8 Chapter 15 have the same stats as the level 4 cavaliers in FE6 chapter 4.) If you try to solo the game with Marcus and you're not very clever about it, you're going to hit a brick wall before long. He is, however, your guardian angel for that early bit, and the fact that he can weaken enemies enough to let your units with better long-term prospects kill them is a huge part of that.
That said, I'd really rather not get back into this whole debate, either, so if you want to continue that whole mess, please PM me instead.
Apologies for the double-post, but the whole "class promo item" thing has a pretty wonky history. It was one of those things that made sense in its original context but became increasingly bizarre as time went on.
See, the first Fire Emblem game, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, had a very different idea on how promotion would work compared to the games to follow. (As should not be surprising; it was the first game, after all.) Shadow Dragon has most of the classic promotion items: Knight Crest for Cavalier to Paladin, Orion's Bolt for Archer to Sniper, Hero Crest for Mercenary to Hero, Bishop Ring for Cleric or Mage to Bishop, and Skydrake Whip for Pegasus Knight to Dracoknight. However, you might be noticing among them that there's some classes missing--and that's true. In Shadow Dragon, the majority of classes cannot promote and are not part of any promotion path: Fighter, Pirate, Hunter, Horseman, Knight, General, Shooter, Thief, Manakete, Commando, and even Lord. Yes, this means Marth, the main character, can't promote. How can this be?
Well, in FE1, you don't actually need to promote that much. Enemy stat scaling in FE1 is quite low, barring some occasional spikes in the lategame, so you don't need the extra 20 levels to be competent. Moreover, stats cap at 20, so there's not that much room to grow, and the extra 20 levels is just to let you max out everything rather than merely being strong enough to wipe out whole squads solo. On top of that, in FE1, statboosting items provide very large gains (a Speed Ring boosts your speed by +6), so if a unit gets stat-screwed, it's pretty easy to patch them up.
In short, the whole concept of promotion was kept reserved to a handful of units and tied to specific items because not being able to promote wasn't seen as a death sentence. It was seen as more of a cool bonus that those units could do rather than a core part of them. In fact, without the Secret Shop, you couldn't promote everyone even if you wanted to, since in the whole game, you only get four Knight Crests, one Orion's Bolt, and two of everything else.
Now, you might be thinking, "okay, but why have separate items for every class? Why not just have a single item that promotes every character capable of doing so?" And that's a valid question, albeit one with a very simple answer: not all promoted classes in FE1 were created equal. Hero is functionally identical to Mercenary, just with better stats. Paladin gains one point of Movement, but is otherwise, again, just Cavalier but with an all-around statboost. Sniper is a substantial upgrade on Archer, gaining two movement and some very hefty statboosts, but Archer is inherently a bit of a limited class, so its full power is rather curtailed. Furthermore, in FE1, you didn't get flat stat increases upon promotion: instead, you had your stats set to the bases of your new class, unless they were higher. This means that if you raised Ogma or Navarre to level cap, it was pretty feasible that the only thing they'd get out of promotion was the ability to level up again.
Meanwhile, you have Dracoknight and Bishop. Dracoknight has the highest movement of any class in the game, can fly, uses every melee weapon worth using, and has the same Defense as General... which is an even bigger problem when it promotes from Pegasus Knight, a class whose main weakness is supposed to be middling defense. And then there's Bishop: not only does Bishop have 8 Defense (same as Hero and one less than Paladin, on a magic class), but it also has 14 Speed, putting it level with Sniper and Hero. With the right tome, a base Bishop can double almost every standard enemy in the game. Oh, and on top of that, in FE1, weapon ranks weren't tracked separately, meaning a Bishop with 10 or more Weapon Level can use every single tome and staff in the game that isn't character-locked. Three guesses what the base Bishop Weapon Level is! It's probably rather indicative that two of the strongest characters in FE1 are considered to be Minerva, a base-level Dracoknight, and Wendell, a base-level Bishop.
Basically, while for some characters, being able to promote would provide only a marginal benefit (Mercenaries) or turn a sucky character into a fairly good one (Archers), providing a promotion item to the game's Mages and Pegasus Knights would make them totally broken. The Mages would gain significant bulk and access to the entire staff catalogue, while the Pegasus Knights would turn into monstrous flying tanks that are also incredibly fast. Hence, the game was deliberately a lot stingier with handing out promotion items for those classes. The Hero Crest first shows up in chapter 10, and the Knight Crest and Orion's Bolt show up in chapter 12. Meanwhile, the Bishop Ring and Skydrake Whip first show up in Chapter 19; at that point in the game, the whole army is probably maxing out, so there's not much shame in giving your favorite character a leg up.
Really, in those days, the whole division between a promoted class and an unpromoted class didn't exist. All classes gain XP at the same rate, and there are no special benefits or mechanics conferred to Paladin over Cavalier other than that it's somewhat better. In fact, if you compare the base stats of Dracoknight to those of Pegasus Knight or Sniper to Archer, they come off as more different classes entirely. This, I suspect, is the origin of the whole term of "class change"--the designers didn't see Dracoknight as the upgrade of Pegasus Knight, but more its own thing, which certain Pegasus Knights could become under the right circumstances.
In short, locking promotions behind certain items was a way to make sure that the strongest promotions were reserved to the lategame, but the player would still be able to mess around with the mechanic relatively early on.
So what happened in future games? Well, in FE2, promotion worked entirely differently. FE3 was a fairly close remake, so it had to keep the systems relatively similar, with the only tweaks it made being changing the way the stat boosts worked, adding some earlier promotion items to Book 2, and linking together Knight and General along with Hunter and Horseman. In FE4, promotion worked entirely differently again. And FE5 brought back the FE3 system, but changed it so that nearly every class could promote, and they all promoted using the same item (barring the Lord, whose promotion is plot-linked). FE6, meanwhile, was a very conscious attempt to go back to FE3 after the prior games had been so experimental, and so brought back the same promotion system, albeit letting nearly every class promote this time. And since the FE6 engine was used for FE7 and FE8, they shared that same system. FE7 actually doubled down on the whole idea by adding the Ocean Seal, Heaven Seal, and Fell Contract.
However, by that point, a lot of the design assumptions that had caused the promotion system in FE1 and FE3 to work the way it did had eroded. In the GBA games, every single promotion represents a large increase in power for the user, enemy stat scaling is much faster, meaning that you need to be able to promote to keep level with the curve, and most newly-promoted characters are going to be roughly equal in power (sure, Wyvern Lords are still going to be busted, but that's because they have really good stats to start with). As a result, the system is more annoying than anything else.
It's pretty indicative that when they went back to the Marth games for the DS, they did away with class-based items and instead used the Thracia system. Admittedly, it would be impossible to enforce class-based items in the DS games, but that's neither here nor there.
There is, however, one annoyance to this map that I think is just a glitch, not intentionally designed. It involves Halberd Man. You see, that in that screenshot up above the Halberd is highlighted in green, indicating that it drops upon the enemy's death. However, if the fighter equips the Halberd, that status switches to his other held item – meaning he drops the much less valuable Iron Axe.
This isn't a problem in the Japanese version I've heard. You see the localisers decided to give this guy an iron axe just so he can deny you the halberd drop. I don't know why, for kicks I guess?
This isn't a problem in the Japanese version I've heard. You see the localisers decided to give this guy an iron axe just so he can deny you the halberd drop. I don't know why, for kicks I guess?
The FE8 localisation rebalances a few enemy inventories and changes a few stats around; it was still in the days of FE difficulty getting turned down a bit for Western releases. I assume the axe was added because they didn't understand the AI and the drop mechanics, and didn't want the AI using durability on the dropped weapon (weapons in FE8 are restored on drop).
Most infamously, it also introduces a bug with the Wyvern Knight class that can hardlock the game if they use a Brave Lance or otherwise attack an enemy who doesn't counterattack.
