Our first look at Lyon, everyone! His hair is messier than I expected. The sepia filter is wreaking havoc with the colors, but I summoned this guy in Heroes once so I know that his actual hair color is lavender like his father. (Don't worry that I got spoiled – I never used Lyon at all because I found Arvis prettier. Anyway, it was like five years ago.)
Eirika explains that she stayed up late deciding what to pray for at the temple, and overslept. Ephraim doesn't get why she's taking this so seriously, and Lyon recounts that the sacred flame in this temple has been burning "since the time of darkness ended" (i.e. for 800 years) and it's supposed to grant the prayers of any pilgrim who prays before it. So…are sacred flames, like, a standard feature of temples in this religion, or—sorry. I know the game won't answer that. I just really like religious worldbuilding. It's one of those "as you know" lectures where the characters state information for the benefit of the audience, even though any reasonable person in this setting would know already.
What, really don't remember anything? But everyone knows the most fun part of jumping into 20+ year old media is having the occasional random no context spoiler!
And yeah, I don't think most FE games tend to go into detail about the religious worldbuilding, a lot of the time it's just kind of a general "there's like a church to justfy healers, and they worship some saint or light or something". Notable exception goes to Three Houses, of course, considering most of the game takes place in the big head church with The Lady Pope hanging around to chat with.
Wow. Um. Robert Baratheon moment…My only objection to this plan is that Eirika would be sad if her brother moved away. But on the other hand, I'm not sure she could find enough things/people for him to fight if she were Queen.
To be honest, I'm quite glad that the game is clearly establishing Ephraim's flaws: He's book-dumb, fight-happy, doesn't care for responsibility but can't stand being bored. I was a little afraid that he was going to be characterized as the Invincible Hero Man who is Always Right, but it seems like his military hypercompetence is balanced out by the fact that he's not interested in anything else. Or, as his sister puts it, "Ephraim, you're always so full of foolish, irresponsible romanticism. Father would have a fit if he heard you."
Hah, never considered that comparison before, but Ephraim totally does have some Robert vibes doesn't he. Granted, early Robert before he became an overweight sadsack who's probably depressed and mildly suicidal. Hopefully Ephraim has a better ending coming up for him by the time we're done, hm?
Innes: Did you think Grado's slugs could touch me? With my bow, I'll take down every Grado soldier from here to the emperor's palace!
Well, that's a striking introduction! (for comparison, Ephraim's response to Tana congratulating him on getting back safely was, "I'm sorry, Tana. I didn't want for you to worry.") Innes then proceeds to glare at Ephraim like his presence is personally offensive. "It's good to see you," Eirika says politely. Innes's reply? It's his opinion that Renais fell because the kingdom was too lax in its defenses.
Thankfully, Tana jumps in and scolds him, pointing out that he just implied to the twins that their recently-dead father brought his death on himself. He has the decency to be a little embarrassed.
Innes: I'm sorry to hear of your father's death.
Innes: Hear me, Ephraim. Our most important task is to defeat Grado and end this war.
Then he storms off. Tana apologizes for her brother's behavior, but Ephraim brushes it off. Apparently this behavior – both the general assholery and the hateful obsession with Ephraim in particular – is entirely normal for Innes.
I like Innes, he's fun. Abrasive, but it's probably at least somewhat unintentional considering he tends to back off and apologize whenever he's called out.
…Yes, Eirika. You were travelling together all the way from Grado. How have you not noticed yet? Her surprise is meant to be a stand-in for the player's surprise, because it's the first time Myrrh has fully appeared on screen. But that fails to take into account that I've been seeing this in the opening every time I boot up the game:
By the way, the script is taking pains not to refer to Myrrh with any gendered language, so I'm following the same convention. I'm not sure if that's a change made by the mod or not. I'd like to hear about how the original script handled this.
Checking the original script for the chapter, Myrrh is absolutely referred to as female multiple times:
Script nabbed from Serenes Forest said:
Ephraim:
"…I can't say if it relates, but I have a story about Grado. It's…been troubling me, and I would like to share it with you all. Myrrh. Come here, please."
Myrrh (off-screen):
"Yes?"
(She comes on screen)
Hayden:
"Who's this girl?"
Eirika:
"On her back… Wings? Ephraim, who is she?"
Ephraim:
"This is Myrrh. I met here while fighting in Grado territory. Myrrh, would you please tell everyone here the story you told me?"
Myrrh:
"…… …Please, Ephraim, you tell them."
(She goes off screen)
Ephraim:
"She's a bit shy."
Ephraim:
"Very well. Myrrh tells me that she belongs to an ancient race of dragon folk. They're mentioned in a few legends. They're called the tribe of Manakete."
Eirika:
"Manakete?"
Hayden:
"Yes, their name appears several times in the tale of the Sacred Stones. It says they were neither human nor demon but a separate, aloof race."
Ephraim:
"Please, Myrrh."
(She comes back)
Myrrh:
"…… We live in the east…in Darkling Woods. One day…"
Eirika:
"Yes?"
Myrrh:
"We felt something. An ominous energy to the south."
Ephraim:
"From the direction of Grado. They felt a…force flowing out of the Grado Empire."
Myrrh:
"Saleh and I… We went to investigate this energy. But on our way down, we came across a battle and were drawn into the conflict."
Ephraim:
"Myrrh got lost and was wandering aimlessly in an isolated region near Grado's border."
Myrrh:
"I met some wicked folk there. They deceived and enchained me. They stole my dragonstone. They were preparing me for transport. It was in that moment when Ephraim appeared and rescued me."
Eirika:
"……"
Ephraim:
"I stumbled across Myrrh by chance when Grado's men had ambushed us. Everything she told me seemed beyond belief, and yet… And yet, when I saw her wings, what could I do but believe?"
Myrrh:
"This dark wave of energy still flows from the southlands. Its current is strong and runs deep. It has awakened the evil ones. I want to stop it."
Genuinely curious what the thought process behind changing this is, because I can't recall anything in the OG script implying Myrrh would care about such a thing, not to mention if you dive into supports there's even completely unrelated characters who have never met her defaulting to going "lassie".
Idunno, being charitable it really just feels like that fanfiction kind of thing where a character is arbitrarily made trans or non-binary for inclusion's sake despite zero hint in the original material? Not that this is a bad thing, but it feels like a pretty random change to make in this case.
Myrrh is – as I expected – a Manakete. In Fire Emblem games, these are a magical race that can transform into dragons by using dragonstones. They can be very fun to use in battle. They can also be…awkward, when the writers decide to indulge in some "thousand-year-old dragon loli" garbage. Hopefully this game doesn't do that!
Ah yes... Nowi. Well credit to Myrrh, at the least she's one of the more clothed Manakete in the series and Sacred Stones isn't a Pairing Simulator the way Awakening can be, so hopefully she avoids anything like that.
Wait – the Emperor wouldn't like you to kill people without cause? Selena, have you been paying attention? What do you think this war is about? Do you think Vigarde has an excellent, life-affirming reason for destroying the sacred protectors of the cosmic order that he just keeps forgetting to tell you? Fucking Caellach shows more critical thinking ability than you.
Selena is... not the brightest bulb in the box, to say the least. Nice and honorable person, I'm sure, buuuuut maybe a bit lacking in the brain cells to back that up.
So the game offers me a choice! I wonder which one to pick…oh, just kidding, it was always going to be Eirika. I would like to see Ephraim's route too, of course, but – another time.
Probably worth saving your route pick to a separate save file, so instead of needing to replay this part of the game if you go back you can just pop right in with the same party following Ephraim.
Or restart from the beginning for the fun of training different units and different promotion paths, either or.
In one more scene, just before she's set to depart, Eirika is approached by Kyle and Forde. Despite all her reassurances, her brother is still worried for her, and he's sent his two most trusted knights to serve as her companions. Exasperated, she's about to go speak with him, but the Christmas Cavs stop her.
Kyle: Prince Ephraim says he's not concerned for his own safety. These are the words our prince gave us, and we believe he means them.
Forde: No matter how close death comes, the Pale Horse will not catch him.
Understanding that Ephraim is probably too stubborn to listen to reason in this case, she accepts the gift in the spirit in which it was meant. She formally accepts them into her service.
Yeah, the devs really didn't want the route split to also potentially split your party, so... in Kyle and Forde go. As Terrabrand mentioned, it's even more silly if you chose the Ephraim route because in that case literally your entire army (including Seth) will just hop over and go "hm yes let us follow the Prince to invade Grado". It also makes it rather hilarious because this means whichever character you don't follow is running off to accomplish all their goals offscreen without your troops to support.
Yeah, the devs really didn't want the route split to also potentially split your party, so... in Kyle and Forde go. As Terrabrand mentioned, it's even more silly if you chose the Ephraim route because in that case literally your entire army (including Seth) will just hop over and go "hm yes let us follow the Prince to invade Grado". It also makes it rather hilarious because this means whichever character you don't follow is running off to accomplish all their goals offscreen without your troops to support.
To be fair, the game does have lines indicating Faceless Frelian Mook Support, and one does have to accept that in Fire Emblem in general your allies constitute more than your controllable units because the scale of battles gets very silly otherwise... but yeah. It's still funny.
To be fair, the game does have lines indicating Faceless Frelian Mook Support, and one does have to accept that in Fire Emblem in general your allies constitute more than your controllable units because the scale of battles gets very silly otherwise... but yeah. It's still funny.
Yeah, fair. About the only FE game where it actually makes sense that your army is literally just the units you deploy is FE7 since it's a shadow plot with a group of assassins and all that, pretty much every other game has "and then you conquer like seventeen countries with your offscreen armies led by your super soldiers" even if they might start off smaller. Heck, I think Awakening outright has troop numbers given out during the Valm arc with things like "by god Walhart has One Hundred Thousand Dudes at his command!"
The party makes its way out of Grado, presumably without encountering resistance. They make a stop in Serafew, and the twins, walking just the two of them along familiar streets, reminisce. Ephraim asks Eirika what's on her mind, and she says she's thinking about Lyon. The prince of Grado, remember? Like Ephraim, he's going to be introduced in flashback before we actually get to see him in the present day…interesting.
They last saw him a year and a half ago, Eirika prompts. "It was at Grado Keep," Ephraim says, even though the following scene uses the same map and sure does look like it's taking place in Serafew! (But, then again, some details in the scene suggest that they're likely in the capital. I don't know, y'all, this game is a little inconsistent sometimes.)
Eirika's demeanor here is different from what I'm used to. She's…I want to say 'more assertive', but that would imply that she's normally meek, which is not true. She simply lacks her normal layers of silky politeness. She never apologizes once.
One thing I like about this interlude is that it strongly hints that the Eirika we see is a cultivated persona she wears in public. Not that I'd call it a fake personality, but I've always had the impression that Eirika's steely politeness is The Bearing Of A Princess On Display, where this scene is showing us that she's not actually politely formal 100% of the time in all contexts and we've just only seen her in contexts that demand she stay that way.
Especially since by contrast Ephraim isn't really behaving any different in this flashback from what we've seen of him so far, and the whole 'he doesn't want to be king' thing comes up; Ephraim isn't stiff and formal in the modern day because he's never really mastered proper courtly behavior in the first place.
It's all very elegantly communicated and makes Eirika come across very differently now than if you were previously taking her steely politeness as 'baseline'.
Eirika explains that she stayed up late deciding what to pray for at the temple, and overslept. Ephraim doesn't get why she's taking this so seriously, and Lyon recounts that the sacred flame in this temple has been burning "since the time of darkness ended" (i.e. for 800 years) and it's supposed to grant the prayers of any pilgrim who prays before it. So…are sacred flames, like, a standard feature of temples in this religion, or—sorry. I know the game won't answer that. I just really like religious worldbuilding. It's one of those "as you know" lectures where the characters state information for the benefit of the audience, even though any reasonable person in this setting would know already.
Uh...well, I said any reasonable person. The other two facepalm at Ephraim's ignorance, disappointed but not surprised. Apparently, he gets yelled at by their tutors frequently for not paying attention. Ephraim decides to ask his sister what wish she picked after a whole night of consideration.
This scene is done so smoothly it never actually occurred to me that this technically is an example of what drives the cringe-y 'as you know' format; giving the audience context that's so normal it largely makes no sense for people in-universe to explain it.
I especially like how Ephraim is characterized here as just not interested in that specific type of thing. Too often when pop culture falls back on 'someone is an ignoramus who needs it explained', it makes it extra-aggravating by just designating a specific individual as The Audience Stand-In for all such scenes; this works okay in eg an 'isekai' story, but in a lot of stories the result is that one person in the party (Often, the main character we're intended to find relateable) is outrageously ignorant about essentially everything for no plausible reason.
Which makes it hard to to get invested in the story like it's about real people.
Ephraim and Eirika are perfectly willing to jab at each other, and Lyon will jab at Ephraim, but the twins seem to treat Lyon more gently. I never saw Lyon jab at Eirika either, but that may be because of Sibling Insult Privileges, her gender, or she just didn't do anything to annoy him this scene. The social dynamics are complex here.
Like Eirika and Ephraim's respective personalities, I like how the story smoothly shows Lyon's personality in a fairly clear way, instead of somebody metaphorically turning to the screen and telling us X Is Lyon's Personality.
It's actually pretty good setup for, uh, Later Stuff, even if I have issues with the final product's details. But, y'know, not getting into that now.
This line here confirms that the twins are living in Grado right now, in the capital. Their father has fostered them out to a neighboring kingdom to rebuild the bonds of friendship between their nations for the next generation. Historically, a powerful foreign ruler taking custody of your heirs was as much a hostage situation as it was a bonding opportunity, but there's no sign of that here. Pre-invasion Magvel was an idyllic, peaceful place.
I have literally never seen a piece of fantasy-themed pop culture show any evidence of understanding that stuff like squiring your kids to your neighbors was in part a hostage situation thing.
So like I think your point stands as far as this fitting with other things the story is trying to claim about Magvel, but I very strongly suspect that's a complete coincidence.
Father MacGregor criticizes Ephraim a lot, but he's not their only tutor. Ephraim's been learning the spear from General Duessel and according to Lyon, the general has confided in him that he thinks Ephraim has the makings of a great king. Ephraim has a surprising reaction to this:
Ephraim: I would be happy simply taking my lance and travelling the land as a mercenary.
I'm honestly really glad Fire Emblem: Heroes took this thread and ran with it over the hills. It's a great way of properly separating Ephraim out from the many, many bland Marth-alike Lords the series is laboring under the weight of.
My thoughts on this thread in the game itself will have to wait, though.
To be honest, I find this scene a bit sugary. It's like some cliched slice-of-life anime wandered into my war story. But the bitter balances the sweet; I've been watching Eirika go through hell for the past eight chapters. I appreciate the look at how she used to live, and what she's fighting to return to. Things used to be so good, and now…
I like how it makes some attempt to show why this war is Tragic And Shocking. One of the frustrating things about the series is that it loves to present wars as occurring abruptly and unexpectedly, and then because the series tends to have at least one major antagonist group be One-Dimensional Bad Guys Who Are Completeley Incapable Of Even Pretending To Be Not Shitheads, the war starting being a big surprise is only believable if you start from assuming that all the characters we're supposed to like and respect are outrageously stupid or absurdly idealistic.
Sacred Stones is the only game in the series to use this framework where I can actually accept the premise that the war burst out of nowhere with basicaly no warning.
Ephraim knows something that may be relevant. He calls in Myrrh (you know, the little psychic child from last time).
…Yes, Eirika. You were travelling together all the way from Grado. How have you not noticed yet? Her surprise is meant to be a stand-in for the player's surprise, because it's the first time Myrrh has fully appeared on screen. But that fails to take into account that I've been seeing this in the opening every time I boot up the game:
I... could've sworn the sprite of Myrrh with her wings out was not actually used by the game. I'm not sure if it's only used in this scene and I just missed it a dozen times, or if this is a thing Restoration Queen did.
In any event: no, Myrrh wasn't just a little off-screen, her wings were outright not in her talking sprite before. She has a separate sprite for that. And zero narrative acknowledgement of the apparent ability to vanish her wings.
By the way, the script is taking pains not to refer to Myrrh with any gendered language, so I'm following the same convention. I'm not sure if that's a change made by the mod or not. I'd like to hear about how the original script handled this.
I would guess Myrrh was never explicitly gendered in the original Japanese? Like, I'm pretty sure she's meant to be a she for several reasons, but Japanese works such that it's entirely possible for an individual to get tons of screentime and absolutely nobody clearly give a gendered reference and this not look blatantly, hugely strange. (Crona of Soul Eater, for example, never has their gender identified in the orignal Japanese script) I wouldn't be surprised if Restoration Queen noticed that and decided to retain the ambiguity into English. (Notably, official localizations are -were? I haven't been watching anime much for years- prone to gendering such characters as female if they were very 'neutral' in their visuals, so my theory would be consistent on that level)
And I do have to admit in retrospect that even as a kid there were aspects of Myrrh's handling that came across as a bit 'boyish', such as the exact details of her dragon form's design.
... goddammit, now I'm not so sure Myrrh is meant to be a she. I liked some of the 'boyish' elements because I thought they were a break from idiot pop culture norms I hate, but it would make perfect sense if Myrrh's gender was actually ambiguous and that's why they don't cleave to some of these idiot pop culture norms.
aaand i have no idea how i'd go about checking this theory
Selena Fluorspar." Ooh, another gemstone! An older name for fluorite, fluorspar is famous for its fluorescence – that is, the fact that it glows in ultraviolet light. It can be found in a rainbow of colors and crystal healers say that it clears the mind of distractions. Fluorspar has been used in iron smelting for centuries because it lowers the melting point of the ore.
... huh. I'd just assumed 'Fluorspar' was chosen for the same sorts of reasons gemstone names tend to be girl's names in general, but that's... rather more meaningfully connectible to Selena in particular than I'd have assumed.
In one more scene, just before she's set to depart, Eirika is approached by Kyle and Forde. Despite all her reassurances, her brother is still worried for her, and he's sent his two most trusted knights to serve as her companions. Exasperated, she's about to go speak with him, but the Christmas Cavs stop her.
As already noted, the route you pick magically changes which twin wills their party members to the other person. Yes, this inexplicably includes Seth abandoning Eirika if you do Ephraim's route.
This aspect of the route split is low-key one of the reasons it bothers me how the game presents the twins' respective accomplishments, because the routes are implicitly presented as playing out nearly the same regardless of which twin gets a couple dozen colorful helpers. For Ephraim, this is probably not even a 1% increase in how many people are supposed to be under his command as far as the narrative goes. For Eirika, this is the difference between being literally alone vs having a modest armed escort.
So if you do Ephraim's route Eirika apparently turns ultrahardcore and accomplishes all the same things she accomplishes when you actually play her route, only now totally solo.
But the narrator wants me to think Ephraim is the terrifying one?
I would guess Myrrh was never explicitly gendered in the original Japanese? Like, I'm pretty sure she's meant to be a she for several reasons, but Japanese works such that it's entirely possible for an individual to get tons of screentime and absolutely nobody clearly give a gendered reference and this not look blatantly, hugely strange. (Crona of Soul Eater, for example, never has their gender identified in the orignal Japanese script) I wouldn't be surprised if Restoration Queen noticed that and decided to retain the ambiguity into English. (Notably, official localizations are -were? I haven't been watching anime much for years- prone to gendering such characters as female if they were very 'neutral' in their visuals, so my theory would be consistent on that level)
And I do have to admit in retrospect that even as a kid there were aspects of Myrrh's handling that came across as a bit 'boyish', such as the exact details of her dragon form's design.
... goddammit, now I'm not so sure Myrrh is meant to be a she. I liked some of the 'boyish' elements because I thought they were a break from idiot pop culture norms I hate, but it would make perfect sense if Myrrh's gender was actually ambiguous and that's why they don't cleave to some of these idiot pop culture norms.
Well I mean if your comparison is Crona later translations strictly changed to only 'they' pronouns because yes in fact Crona is officially non-binary.
I would guess Myrrh was never explicitly gendered in the original Japanese? Like, I'm pretty sure she's meant to be a she for several reasons, but Japanese works such that it's entirely possible for an individual to get tons of screentime and absolutely nobody clearly give a gendered reference and this not look blatantly, hugely strange. (Crona of Soul Eater, for example, never has their gender identified in the orignal Japanese script) I wouldn't be surprised if Restoration Queen noticed that and decided to retain the ambiguity into English. (Notably, official localizations are -were? I haven't been watching anime much for years- prone to gendering such characters as female if they were very 'neutral' in their visuals, so my theory would be consistent on that level)
And I do have to admit in retrospect that even as a kid there were aspects of Myrrh's handling that came across as a bit 'boyish', such as the exact details of her dragon form's design.
... goddammit, now I'm not so sure Myrrh is meant to be a she. I liked some of the 'boyish' elements because I thought they were a break from idiot pop culture norms I hate, but it would make perfect sense if Myrrh's gender was actually ambiguous and that's why they don't cleave to some of these idiot pop culture norms.
aaand i have no idea how i'd go about checking this theory
I'd be shocked if this is the case given her supports and endings. There's no way Dozla avoids ever referring to her with feminine pronouns, the whole point is that he seems ignorant of the whole 'holy dragon' thing.
Yeah, the devs really didn't want the route split to also potentially split your party, so... in Kyle and Forde go. As Terrabrand mentioned, it's even more silly if you chose the Ephraim route because in that case literally your entire army (including Seth) will just hop over and go "hm yes let us follow the Prince to invade Grado". It also makes it rather hilarious because this means whichever character you don't follow is running off to accomplish all their goals offscreen without your troops to support.
It's a case where there are implausibilities with both routes, isn't it? On the one hand, Seth probably wouldn't want to leave Eirika, but on the other, Natasha, Gilliam and Moulder are all high-ranking Frelian officials who should probably be with the Frelian army. If I were writing a novelization (...the idea is tempting) I would split the party, with Eirika getting a lower number of companions because her mission is ostensibly less dangerous.
Hah, never considered that comparison before, but Ephraim totally does have some Robert vibes doesn't he. Granted, early Robert before he became an overweight sadsack who's probably depressed and mildly suicidal. Hopefully Ephraim has a better ending coming up for him by the time we're done, hm?
While Ephraim and Robert share a similar attitude, Ephraim lacks Robert's propensities for drinking and womanizing. I could also compare him to Jaime; they both hyperfocus on fighting to the exclusion of their other potential, and have...idiosyncratic taste in women.
Selena is... not the brightest bulb in the box, to say the least. Nice and honorable person, I'm sure, buuuuut maybe a bit lacking in the brain cells to back that up.
No, just Eirika's before we went to a dialogue screen. Why?
...Oh gods it's him it's Shoulderpads I should have known he had those giant-ass shoulderpads in Heroes too! Damn it! I thought Shoulderpads was some kind of creepy evil sorcerer controlling the Emperor, but no, it's just Vigarde dragging his son around like some kind of job shadowing program.
That would make sense, wouldn't it? The first time we go to Serafew, Eirika notes that she spent a lot of happy times there with her brother and Lyon, then when we return, there's a flashback, set on an identical town map...but no!
Princess Eirika's Otome Adventure. There's Seth, her bodyguard, who's dependable, mature, yet emotionally closed off because of the constraints of duty. There's Ephraim, her "childhood friend" who's nursing a secret crush on her; they can interact easily as he teases her and tries to make her loosen up. More will probably show up, like a fragile, shy, unathletic boy with confidence issues but a hidden talent, and a snarky asshole who doesn't trust others because he's been betrayed in the past.
Finally, I would like to draw everyone's attention to the fact that I absolutely called Lyon and Innes's personalities, and if they can't romance her I'll eat my leather jacket.
Finally, I would like to draw everyone's attention to the fact that I absolutely called Lyon and Innes's personalities, and if they can't romance her I'll eat my leather jacket.
It's a case where there are implausibilities with both routes, isn't it? On the one hand, Seth probably wouldn't want to leave Eirika, but on the other, Natasha, Gilliam and Moulder are all high-ranking Frelian officials who should probably be with the Frelian army. If I were writing a novelization (...the idea is tempting) I would split the party, with Eirika getting a lower number of companions because her mission is ostensibly less dangerous.
Well Natasha isn't a frelian official but I'm guessing you meant Vanessa there, and definitely the others. Like, particularly Moulder: fun fact from his A support with Gilliam;
He's literally the guy who brought the crown to King Hayden for his coronation, so yes he has held some rather major responsibilities in his life.
So the game offers me a choice! I wonder which one to pick…oh, just kidding, it was always going to be Eirika. I would like to see Ephraim's route too, of course, but – another time.
To be fair, the game does have lines indicating Faceless Frelian Mook Support, and one does have to accept that in Fire Emblem in general your allies constitute more than your controllable units because the scale of battles gets very silly otherwise... but yeah. It's still funny.
It's so perplexing that they never mechanized that. It could be like a second terrain layer, only one that shifts based on your actions as mooks dash after your heroes or get messed up by enemies you ignore. You could have entire new stats and traits interacting with these things.
Japanese as a language doesn't work that way. In English, it's a pain in the ass to refer to a person at all without gendering them; 'Go get George, he's in Room X'. 'This is your new boss, Miss Sullivan.' 'Yes sir, I'll get right on that.' These all include gender as a completely incidental part of the actual point of the sentence; that's how English grammar works/was taught when I was going to school.
In Japanese, you don't even necessarily state a subject explicitly (You don't say, "I like this ice cream." You say, "Like" and expect your friend to understand from context that you are expressing fondness for the ice cream you are eating), your methods of speaking politely do not refer to other people's gender (-san is roughly analogous to miss/mrs/mister in terms of politeness, but isn't gendered), and a lot of the 'connecting language' that's gendered-by-default in English simply isn't in Japanese. ("Go get that person," where it is expected that your conversational partner will understand what person you're asking for in context, where even vaguely-worded English would be "Go get him") As a bonus, in a lot of contexts you use the family name, not the personal name; you don't even hear a girly name to then assume it's a girl being named!
So a Japanese work can just... never gender someone. (Metroid's Japanese manual does this intentionally, for example, where the English version cheats and uses masculine pronouns for Samus) This can happen on accident.
And it's so normal that if that's what happened with Myrrh, the English localization likely never made an intentional decision to diverge from the Japanese script. Same as localizations normally render every regular conversation with natural English, even when that means characters explicitly assign gender verbally in English in various conversations where the Japanese version technically didn't state such at all; that sprite is clearly feminine, so break out the feminine pronouns and so on.
And the banal normality of this whole thing makes it really difficult to find a clear answer...
It's a case where there are implausibilities with both routes, isn't it? On the one hand, Seth probably wouldn't want to leave Eirika, but on the other, Natasha, Gilliam and Moulder are all high-ranking Frelian officials who should probably be with the Frelian army. If I were writing a novelization (...the idea is tempting) I would split the party, with Eirika getting a lower number of companions because her mission is ostensibly less dangerous.
Neither route makes perfect sense, but Ephraim's is far more full of 'what?' moments. One reason I do like Sacred Stones is that -regardless of my complaints about Ephraim being hyped more- it really is written quite clearly as Eirika's story, where various elements are grounded properly for Eirika's route and not for Ephraim's route. Usually when I see a game with a comparable thing, it's very obvious the plot was written firstly for the male storyline. (eg Persona 3, where being female was an option added to later versions, and is... clunky at various points because the original version was written firmly with a male protagonist in mind) Sometimes even for a game marketed to girls!
I'll give a specific example when you've done the next mission, though.
No, just Eirika's before we went to a dialogue screen. Why?
...Oh gods it's him it's Shoulderpads I should have known he had those giant-ass shoulderpads in Heroes too! Damn it! I thought Shoulderpads was some kind of creepy evil sorcerer controlling the Emperor, but no, it's just Vigarde dragging his son around like some kind of job shadowing program.
I'm terribly amused by this response and look forward to you learning the actual truth.
(Seriously, this is hilarious and I wish I could clarify why without doing actual spoilers. Hopefully I'll remember to come back to this, y'know, later)
Finally, I would like to draw everyone's attention to the fact that I absolutely called Lyon and Innes's personalities, and if they can't romance her I'll eat my leather jacket.
It's a case where there are implausibilities with both routes, isn't it? On the one hand, Seth probably wouldn't want to leave Eirika, but on the other, Natasha, Gilliam and Moulder are all high-ranking Frelian officials who should probably be with the Frelian army. If I were writing a novelization (...the idea is tempting) I would split the party, with Eirika getting a lower number of companions because her mission is ostensibly less dangerous.
Personally if Sacred Stones had been given more time to cook (and thus, you know, more than only 20 chapters), I think it would have been neat to have a few more Ephraim chapters before the split with more recruitables on his own team. Then you could maybe swap over a few units before the split, but the ones that make the least sense might be locked in with a particular lord (like Seth).
Apparently, series original creator guy Kaga who left after FE5 pulled something like a proper route split with the army dividing during it in one of his post Fire Emblem projects, but otherwise the closest we've got is Gaiden/Echoes having two distinct armies between Alm and Celica, with a brief window where Celica can recruit a couple characters like Kliff and Faye if Alm decided not to in part 1.
Really, the answer is that the mod creators decided to make Myrrh enby because they thought it would be neat. Like, it's not a translation thing; it's an explicit, intentional change to the original canon text, which the creators admitted to doing when they made the mod. Myrrh's not even the only one in the roster to be some variety of trans in Restoration Queen, though you'll only really notice it by reading supports and paying very close attention. (I believe it's four in total, of which three have already been introduced.)
Hello everyone! We're back, with more of your favorite princess! Now that we've chosen our route the map has, ironically, opened up a bit more.
Does anyone else find Mogalls kind of cute? No? Just me?
Monsters have a chance to appear all over the map, and by visiting those locations, we can fight them! There's also an extra, optional location: The Tower of Valni. This is where the Sacred Stone of Frelia was held, and it's something of a bonus dungeon of several monster maps. Apparently, monsters just showed up immediately after the imperial army left. Perhaps they're throwing a party to celebrate the destruction of the Stone. Thus, Sacred Stones gives the player a chance to grind experience and support points before progressing the main story. This isn't really the first time in the series it's possible to level grind; arenas have existed for a while. However, I do think the 'minor monster maps' approach is much better.
I have several reasons: First, pausing to clear some wandering monsters off the road on your way to a battle (and maybe looting some gold off them) usually fits much better with the story and tone of a Fire Emblem game than "Hold on bro, I know we need to liberate this town from the Evil Empire but the arena's offering huge cash prizes for slaying gladiators in front of a crowd!" Secondly, the one-on-one battles in the arena have nothing to do with what makes FE fun – there's no skillfully using your units in combination, calculating a strategy ahead of time, or taking advantage of the terrain. If I wanted a single overpowered unit to smash each enemy one at a time, I'd do a Seth Solo run. Thirdly, aforementioned combat monsters are the only ones who can reliably use the arena to grind, as everyone else needs to either get lucky or can't kill enemies one-on-one at all. Therefore, the arena is only good for allowing already-strong units to get stronger, not for letting the weaker units catch up. Fourthly, a random monster map gives lesser-used units a chance to shine – you get completely free deployment, not even the lord is required. I often use these maps to play around with units I don't normally use, and sometimes find new favorites. Fifthly, the solo nature of arena fights means that they can't be used to grind support points, only gold and exp, which is undesirable in a game where supports grow so slowly.
Finally – and this is something I only suspect for now, I haven't entirely figured out the ins and outs - an arena offers unlimited extra fights as long as you can keep winning, which means you could use it to theoretically grind to max level. Meanwhile, the monster maps are limited, in that they disappear after you complete them. This is important because there is a kind of personality who, when offered a chance to optimize their numbers, will take it, even if it obviously makes the game less fun.
Now, I'm not vulnerable to that – if someone tells me, "Pudding Farmers are the most broken class in the game! If you just reclass everyone to Pudding Farmer and spend eight turns in a row using the Eat Pudding skill at the beginning of every battle to buff your stats to the maximum, you can effortlessly sweep even the final boss!", then I'll just respond, "Heehee, the final boss was defeated by pudding," and never use that strategy because it sounds boring as hell. But I do suspect that there are some people who spent an hour in the arena pressing A and yawning.
But what do I know? I'm the kind of person who didn't learn about Galeforce in Awakening on my first playthrough because I didn't like the Dark Flier's headdress.
While I did poke around the optional maps before progressing the story, I don't have much to say about them besides the supports I unlocked, so I'll leave that for a bonus chapter.
For Chapter 9 proper, I start by promoting a worthy soul: Gilliam, who is level 14 and has good enough stats that I don't think he needs more levels. I have two choices: Great Knight and General. It's a close decision, because the General animations I saw from Tirado looked sick, but Great Knight wins out because it turns Gilliam into budget Seth.
No, seriously, compare their stats:
…Although Gilliam's ability to Rescue has actually gone down by two points, thanks to the, uh, horse encumbrance rule. Oh, and he's got E-rank Swords, D-rank Axes, and A-rank Lances now.
I choose to continue the story at Port Kiris, where Eirika plans to take ship to Rausten. It's not a Frelian port, as I assumed; it's actually in Carcino. Carcino is a merchant republic, small in territory and lacking the long history of Magvel's other nations. As they don't have a Sacred Stone to steal, they might not be on Grado's hit list for now, but the aggressive expansion of the Empire has them worried nonetheless.
The council of Carcino is led by Klimt, a friend of Frelia, who agrees with King Hayden's program of unity in opposition to Grado. Therefore, both Eirika and Innes think it safe to travel through Carcino on the way to their destinations in the east.
Narration: Eirika believes there is nothing to fear in Carcino, but she is wrong.
Gee, thanks for letting me know Sir Narrator, I was worried the Port Kiris level would have no enemies and would just be about abusing Rescue to get all your units to a ship before it leaves. (…that might be an interesting gameplay experiment, actually.)
Before we actually reach the port, there are two short scenes. The first one is another look at the imperial capital (return of the domineering organ music). Shoulderpads is still standing next to Vigarde's throne, and still remains silent, refusing to confirm or deny my theory that he is Lyon.
Emperor Vigarde is getting frustrated that, even after completely taking over Renais, he's still failed to grasp its Sacred Stone.
You'll notice that he's very terse in this scene. His subordinates may interpret it as him running out of patience, but it might be that whoever's mind-controlling him is just sleepy today and not putting in much effort. All he gives his generals is monosyllabic orders to go there and do that. Caellach is to take Jehanna's stone, Riev is to do the same to Rausten, Duessel is to counter Ephraim's invasion, and Selena is to guard the capital. Glen and Valter, as before, are to go after the bracelets.
We get more commentary from the generals on their assignments – well, the new ones; the old guard are too professional (or mentally checked out) to say much. Valter thinks Eirika and Ephraim are "delightfully fierce" and "better prey than he imagined." We get some more oily toadying from Riev. But Caellach, Caellach has something interesting to say:
Caellach: I became a mercenary to escape that wretched place, and now I must go back?
Caellach is Jehannan! You know, I'm beginning to grow fond of this guy. He manages to surprise me every time he's on screen. Plus, his give-no-shits, just here for the money kind of attitude contributes greatly to the "evil workplace comedy" vibe that I love.
Following that is a short scene where Tana catches up to Eirika's party on her pegasus and begs to accompany them. Wait, didn't her father order her to stay in the capital back in Chapter 1?
Tana prefers asking for forgiveness, not permission. Eirika isn't pleased to hear this…for an interesting reason. She doesn't want Tana and her father to be estranged from each other – and she means this in both the physical and emotional senses. "What if something were to happen during the war? I could never forgive myself for taking you away from him."
It's unstated, but Eirika is clearly thinking of being ripped away from her own father, and not being able to say goodbye before his death. She doesn't want her friend's family to go through the same thing.
Nevertheless, Tana persists. At this point, she's just about the only royal not participating in the war. "You and Ephraim, my father and my brother…you're all fighting together, fighting for a noble cause. I cannot be left out. I will not be left out."
"All right," Eirika says. "I never could refuse you anything," she adds, and I make a note on my Shipping Chart.
Now, at last, we reach Port Kiris. It's a bustling, vibrant trade center. Seth, all business as usual, warns Eirika not to become distracted by the sights. They are here to book passage to Rausten, as quickly as possible. Eirika agrees, and, in a cute moment, practices her cover story with him.
Eirika: I'm a mercenary by the name of Erina. I'm travelling to Rausten to receive a commission.
My girl is learning! One day, she'll be able to fool someone more intelligent than Selena!
On the way to the docks, I hear a familiar musical theme, and Eirika Erina hears a familiar voice:
It's L'Arachel and her henchmen! Eirika stops to say hi, and L'Ara invites her to join them for pastries. She nearly does, but, remembering Seth's words, excuses herself, saying that she's in a rush to get to Rausten.
L'Ara: Oh dear. I'm afraid you'll find none to assist you. No ships are leaving port.
WHAT? This is a trade center! Who would dare close the port? The city must be in an economic panic!
L'Ara explains that she, by coincidence, is returning to her beloved homeland of Rausten as well. Earlier she tried to order the council (who the hell is this lady, an Archbishop?) to ready a passenger vessel for her, but they couldn't do that…
L'Arachel: Would that I could confront it, I could stop its foul villainy in a moment.
…Huh. That's a little more exciting than pirates. Anyway, no one is willing to leave port because the sea is haunted - not even with an evil-slaying heroine on board. And that's a problem, for Carcino in general and these travellers in particular. But L'Arachel is reacting with her usual bulletproof cheer. If she can't go by sea, she'll just go over land!
Eirika points out that it'll take way longer that way, and she agrees.
Rennac: Now, listen, L'Arachel! You might be thrilled about going the long way, but—
L'Arachel: Come now, we're leaving! Dozla? Rennac?
Dozla: Come on, Rennac! We run 'till we drop! The first one to collapse from exhaustion is the winner!
Rennac: Help…Why is this happening to me?
Their sprites proceed to run off the west edge of the map.
Eirika: Uh, Seth? Isn't Rausten in the other direction? Aren't they heading towards Frelia?
Seth: I am sure they will sort it out soon enough.
At this point, Eirika and Seth agree that they are not as rich as L'Arachel in time, so they must find a way to go by sea. However, their search is interrupted by this fellow with a hairy chest, which looks quite strange in a world where hair can be any color of the rainbow:
…Sigh. Have you considered wearing a wig, Eirika? A hood, perhaps? Something to keep from being instantly recognized by everyone searching for you? Seth immediately goes into Bodyguard Mode, draws his blade, and tells him to back off.
"No need to get personal," Binks says. They're just a bunch of mercenaries trying to make a living, by killing this young woman and her retinue. What follows is a map that…well, it's got an interesting design, let's say.
It's much bigger than our last urban map in Serafew, and you have to cross bridges to get over the water and reach the boss. It's a rout map that throws a huge number of enemies at you and expects you to defeat them all (with one exception that I'll go over later). It's also got a few time-sensitive side objectives. It's a map that you can play in two ways: take it slow and play defensively, and you'll win without too much trouble. But if you want all the rewards, you have to send your fast units ahead and take risks.
If you don't rush to the houses, Pirates will destroy them. The obvious way to do this is with fliers – they can fly right over that little strait! The game even gives you a Pegasus Knight, Tana, to do it with!
Yeah, but that strait is guarded by axe-using Pirates and Archers. It's like the developers are playing a joke on me: "Oh, wouldn't flyers be just the thing for completing this map? Well, how good are your flyers at dodging?" As I play the map, reinforcements keep coming for the first few turns, and the enemy counter ticks up and up. It spooks me enough that I play defensively. I watch the Pirates inch towards the houses, turn by turn, and helplessly I watch them burn.
I keep my units mostly together, Gilliam and Seth ranging ahead to get the problematic enemies.
There are a lot of problematic ones – this map (where Tana must be deployed, may I remind you) has strategic archer coverage (including a Sniper, the very first promoted non-boss enemy) and even the boss uses a bow. There's also a Myrmidon with a Killing Edge that drops, so ideally you want to kill him before he can use it on you.
Tana's stats are just a bit lower than Vanessa's at this point, so I probably wouldn't use her if it weren't for the fact she may become Eirika's wife. They spend most of this chapter standing next to each other, Tana chipping enemies with her Javelin and Eirika taking the kill. Oh, speaking of equipment, that Heavy Spear she starts with? It's another mean joke from the developers. Its weight reduces Tana to an effective Speed of 4! It does bonus damage against armored enemies, but there are none on this map!
Tana trades Gilliam for his Steel Lance first thing. Oh, but there's a glimmer of hope – an enemy way down on the southern bridge drops an Axereaver, a special lance that gets weapon triangle advantage against axes. It could let a Pegasus Knight survive in this axe-heavy map. It would be more useful if you could get it right at the beginning of the map and equip it to Tana before sending her off to protect the villages from pirates, but at least now, when I'm three-quarters of the way done, she can face—
Tana doesn't start with enough weapon rank to equip the Axereaver. Are you kidding me? Did you give me this character, with these stats, on this map, entirely to provoke frustration? I'm serious. The design of this chapter feels almost intentionally mean, like someone hated Tana and wanted players to hate her too.
Ugh. Well, while I sit in defensive rows on the bridge, characters have enough peace and quiet to talk, so I unlock two new support conversations. One is between Colm and Moulder:
What is he mad about? Well, apparently, Colm "accidentally" burned a set of Moulder's robes while lighting a torch. I have no idea how that would happen by accident, but equally I can't imagine why Colm would have it out for Moulder. Oh, but this is the second time he's done that.
Colm: Why, I'm sure you'll set the world of fashion on fire with your new look!
Moulder: That's what you said last time about the sleeves.
Colm apologizes profusely, but Moulder doesn't buy it. If he's really sorry, then he'll spend the evening in prayer, reflecting on his actions.
Man, I wish I was this good at parenting. I wish I could get my little brother to spend a quiet evening reflecting on his actions.
On the other side of the same bridge, Joshua hung back near the starting point to cover the rear from some approaching Pirates. When the area is clear, as Natasha is healing him, he decides to do some smooth talking:
According to Joshua, everyone is saying what a great healer she is. Natasha modestly says she's glad her meager efforts have been helpful, but he insists, no, she really is exceptional.
Joshua: So, I may have lost our bet, but everything seems to have turned out for the best, right?
This goes on for a few exchanges, and I'm a bit suspicious (as I think Natasha is, too, though her words are never anything but polite). What's Joshua's angle, here? Why is he trying to butter her up? Well, finally, she gives in:
Joshua: Don't be so humble. You deserve the praise.
Natasha: If…if you say so.
His plot was…to see her smile? Oh gods, that's adorable.
The map has another side objective I haven't mentioned yet. Several turns in, a group of Gradoan troops arrive. They're here to supervise the mercenaries and claim Princess Eirika/her bracelet afterwards. One of them has a portrait! It's the unbearably cute cadet who dropped a torch back in Serafew!
Apparently her name is Amelia of Silva and she's still very new to war. This introduction just screams "recruitable character" to me. Also, she's got a Speedwing, which will be mine if she switches sides.
Because I'm taking this map slowly, I let the Gradoan soldiers advance on me (Amelia stays put). They aren't too bad.
The commander orders a retreat back to Grado.
Is Amelia going to stay, by herself? Is this going to be my chance to recruit her? I wonder who can talk to her – probably Natasha, as a defector from Grado, would—
Oh wait she left.
Aw man. I wasn't going to use Amelia – her stats are low and that character design is so moe, she looks like she wandered out of the most deadly-cute grade of slice-of-life anime. The other three to four members of her afterschool dog-walking club are probably wondering where she went. But I did want that Speedwing!
Anyway, only a bit of the chapter left to go. The enemies have stopped pressuring me and it's mostly a matter of deciding who needs exp and who needs to stand next to Eirika and ask for a new weapon from her magical bag of holding.
I manage to take out the boss and his two bodyguards in one single turn, which I do feel rather proud of.
Sadly I was not able to find where he stashed that five thousand gold. Pity. I could have used it. Hell, if he'd tried to bribe me with it I absolutely would have let him live.
After the battle, Seth casts some shade on their opponents ("Judging by their crude swordplay, I'd say they're mercenaries,") before grabbing a survivor to interrogate.
Seth: *sprite moving forward menacingly* I admire your professionalism. I guess we have no use for you.
Mercenary: No, wait! I'll talk! Carcino! It was Pablo of the Carcino Council of Elders!
Now that's interesting. Frelia and Carcino are supposed to be allies. The mercenary's employer didn't feel like explaining his motives to a lowly mercenary, but he speculates that his employer simply thinks Grado is bound to win and wants to buy favor from them. Also, this Pablo has "silenced" the members of the Council who opposed him. Not looking good for Klimt, then.
They release their prisoner and he makes like a tree.
Seth grumbles for a bit about how he should have expected this from the ambitious, greedy merchants of Carcino. Of course they're willing to break promises for gold or power. In contrast, the honorable monarchies of the land will break their alliances when the monarch abruptly goes insane or becomes corrupted by a demonic cult, which is so much better.
At this point, Eirika realizes something: Wasn't Innes also travelling through Carcino? Just then, a pegasus messenger arrives to confirm that, yes, Prince Innes would really appreciate some help right now.
Ouf. Yeah fragile flyer in a map replete with axes and archers is kinda a thing. I know people swear by Florina in FE7, especially Lyn mode, but I remember maps mostly filled with axe units who's paste her immediately if I tried to use her mobility as intended.
Monsters have a chance to appear all over the map, and by visiting those locations, we can fight them! There's also an extra, optional location: The Tower of Valni. This is where the Sacred Stone of Frelia was held, and it's something of a bonus dungeon of several monster maps. Apparently, monsters just showed up immediately after the imperial army left. Perhaps they're throwing a party to celebrate the destruction of the Stone. Thus, Sacred Stones gives the player a chance to grind experience and support points before progressing the main story. This isn't really the first time in the series it's possible to level grind; arenas have existed for a while. However, I do think the 'minor monster maps' approach is much better.
I have several reasons: First, pausing to clear some wandering monsters off the road on your way to a battle (and maybe looting some gold off them) usually fits much better with the story and tone of a Fire Emblem game than "Hold on bro, I know we need to liberate this town from the Evil Empire but the arena's offering huge cash prizes for slaying gladiators in front of a crowd!" Secondly, the one-on-one battles in the arena have nothing to do with what makes FE fun – there's no skillfully using your units in combination, calculating a strategy ahead of time, or taking advantage of the terrain. If I wanted a single overpowered unit to smash each enemy one at a time, I'd do a Seth Solo run. Thirdly, aforementioned combat monsters are the only ones who can reliably use the arena to grind, as everyone else needs to either get lucky or can't kill enemies one-on-one at all. Therefore, the arena is only good for allowing already-strong units to get stronger, not for letting the weaker units catch up. Fourthly, a random monster map gives lesser-used units a chance to shine – you get completely free deployment, not even the lord is required. I often use these maps to play around with units I don't normally use, and sometimes find new favorites. Fifthly, the solo nature of arena fights means that they can't be used to grind support points, only gold and exp, which is undesirable in a game where supports grow so slowly.
Finally – and this is something I only suspect for now, I haven't entirely figured out the ins and outs - an arena offers unlimited extra fights as long as you can keep winning, which means you could use it to theoretically grind to max level. Meanwhile, the monster maps are limited, in that they disappear after you complete them. This is important because there is a kind of personality who, when offered a chance to optimize their numbers, will take it, even if it obviously makes the game less fun.
Ah yes, and now we get to what Sacred Stones is one of the only games to have until Awakening: Map Grinding.
See, Arenas have been a thing all the way back since the very first Fire Emblem, sure, but they've also always had the risk/reward of every single fight could easily be your last if you get bad RNG (it's entirely possible to get locked into a fight with someone who kills you before you retreat), and as you say, it's genuinely just... kind of boring to spend turn after turn grinding away in the arena, even if it is effectively infinite EXP and Gold.
By contrast, Gaiden and Sacred Stones have these map encounters and static area encounters like the Tower of Valni where you can grind up in... well, actual playable maps, as you said. The Tower in particular is pretty neat because it actually has multiple floors, though you only get access to one additional floor per chapter beaten (so right now post-9 you should have access to Floors 1 and 2), and you have to play through all those floors consecutively without the ability to save inbetween. Fire Emblem has a quicksave function of sorts that always tracks each action, so you can just turn off the system and return to where you were beforehand, but if you get to say floor 7 and a unit finally dies resetting means losing every bit of progress you made.
Of course, the downside of Sacred Stones having easy infinite grinding available is the fact that it takes what's already one of the easier games in the series and can potentially make it even easier because you can just level grind every character to max and they'll stomp the game. Like Gilliam, you just promoted him at level 14? Nah if you wanted could have used the tower to get him to 20, promoted him to Great Knight, then grind out another 20 levels to have a guy that can probably crunch the final boss already available in chapter 9 (I mean, a guy who can crush the final boss other than Seth). So, generally, when people talk about how good this or that unit is for Sacred Stones, the minimum assumption is you are just playing straight through the chapters and not doing a bunch of side grinding, since... well, literally anybody can be a good unit with side grinding, no point in arguing if Seth is better than Amelia when Amelia can go poke eyeballs between chapters and end up as a 10/20/20 Paladin.
For Chapter 9 proper, I start by promoting a worthy soul: Gilliam, who is level 14 and has good enough stats that I don't think he needs more levels. I have two choices: Great Knight and General. It's a close decision, because the General animations I saw from Tirado looked sick, but Great Knight wins out because it turns Gilliam into budget Seth.
I do absolutely love the General animations in the GBA games, with how they're basically armor-mechas with lances and axes they throw on a retractable chain... but as an actual promotion option, yeah, Great Knight is a vastly superior choice if you're training a knight. D rank Axes instead of E rank from General and 1 more movement along with a horse for Canto (even in GBA games Canto is ridiculous) is too much to pass up, and the only downside is as you noticed you probably end up with slightly lower rescue because of the horse formula and most great knights being pretty fat. Funny enough, this is probably also a net positive for Gilliam in terms of rescuing because General would bring him up to 15 Con instead of 13 - meaning he himself could basically only be rescue dropped by unpromoted Pegasus Knights and Cavaliers.
Caellach is Jehannan! You know, I'm beginning to grow fond of this guy. He manages to surprise me every time he's on screen. Plus, his give-no-shits, just here for the money kind of attitude contributes greatly to the "evil workplace comedy" vibe that I love.
Caellach is probably my favorite of the "new" Grado generals, for sure. Riev is just your bargain bin creepy cultist type fellow, and Valter is a psycho blood knight who really seems to want to spend time with Erika that she'd much prefer he not, but Caellach is just generally a mercenary dick and proud of it, and it makes him fun.
Yeah, I'm not even bothering to bet money on whether or not Erika/Tana is one of the potential pairings added by this mod, it's too blatantly obvious of a choice lmao.
What follows is a map that…well, it's got an interesting design, let's say.
It's much bigger than our last urban map in Serafew, and you have to cross bridges to get over the water and reach the boss. It's a rout map that throws a huge number of enemies at you and expects you to defeat them all (with one exception that I'll go over later). It's also got a few time-sensitive side objectives. It's a map that you can play in two ways: take it slow and play defensively, and you'll win without too much trouble. But if you want all the rewards, you have to send your fast units ahead and take risks.
If you don't rush to the houses, Pirates will destroy them. The obvious way to do this is with fliers – they can fly right over that little strait! The game even gives you a Pegasus Knight, Tana, to do it with!
Oh hey, we've caught up to where I jumped back in the game on an I don't even know how old Ironman file! Serafew can be remarkably brutal on Hard Mode, with just tanky enough enemies in the way to the houses and Pirates swarming in at top speed that I found basically my only option was to have Seth blast ahead for the western house. Vanessa or Tana can usually handle the southern one with some aid from Ross - If he went pirate, he can usually match up against the pirates in the ocean fairly well with his hatchet or a hand axe, and it even nets him a promotion item while the house itself can be nabbed with good ol' canto, just have a pegasus fly in and then right back out of range. Once those objectives are covered, the only time-sensitive thing is getting to Speedwings Amelia in time with Erika (or more likely, Franz since he has higher movement).
Tana's stats are just a bit lower than Vanessa's at this point, so I probably wouldn't use her if it weren't for the fact she may become Eirika's wife. They spend most of this chapter standing next to each other, Tana chipping enemies with her Javelin and Eirika taking the kill. Oh, speaking of equipment, that Heavy Spear she starts with? It's another mean joke from the developers. Its weight reduces Tana to an effective Speed of 4! It does bonus damage against armored enemies, but there are none on this map!
So, Tana compared to Vanessa. On a growths side of things, Tana is better where it counts and not worse enough in other areas that she's probably the superior unit overall... if she gets trained. Problem is, you've had 7 or 8 chapters by now to train up Vanessa against enemies actually around her level, while Tana joins somewhat underleveled on a map not well suited to her, between that Heavy Spear and her low lance rank. I ended up using both fliers for a map or two this run, but Tana caught up with better stats so she ended up taking Vanessa's place on the team.
On the other side of the same bridge, Joshua hung back near the starting point to cover the rear from some approaching Pirates. When the area is clear, as Natasha is healing him, he decides to do some smooth talking:
Don't take this seriously I'm just shitposting, he doesn't need all that extra crit. I just find it funny that of Joshua's possible supports, all but two of them have the Ice affinity (Natasha included) which means he doesn't get the maximum possible crit bonus supporting with them. Minmaxing aside, Natasha/Joshua is a fun pairing, no complaints.
Apparently her name is Amelia of Silva and she's still very new to war. This introduction just screams "recruitable character" to me. Also, she's got a Speedwing, which will be mine if she switches sides.
Ah yes, Amelia... one of the contenders for worst character in the entire game of Sacred Stones, and mostly valued for the Speedwing she joins with.
Like, in theory the trainee units are a pretty cool idea, a Tier 0 class that starts even weaker than your weakest units, but gets extra levels to grow up and a bigger selection of classes from promotion! Recruit can go Cavalier or Knight, so you can get some cool horse units!
But where Ross at least joins early enough that babying him for a chapter or two isn't that difficult, Amelia is joining at a point where promotions to second tier classes are starting to be a viable option. And contrary to what you would expect of trainees, apparently Intelligent Systems decided that those extra levels they get before becoming a Level 1 Tier 1 class are enough to make up for their abysmal starting stats, so all the trainees actually have fairly trashy growths where you'd expect them to be high. Amelia joins late, dies to basically anything that touches her in her join chapter or later, and even if she does catch up with the rest of your army she's either going to be "Horsey Squad 5: We already had Seth Franz Forde and Kyle", or "What if Knight but with way less defense and HP???"
So of course despite being on a Hard Mode Ironman I did this shit:
Only stat boosters were an Angelic Robe and a Dracoshield early on for slightly more survivability, now My Girl Is Strong.
Ouf. Yeah fragile flyer in a map replete with axes and archers is kinda a thing. I know people swear by Florina in FE7, especially Lyn mode, but I remember maps mostly filled with axe units who's paste her immediately if I tried to use her mobility as intended.
Rescue Drop utility of fliers is top tier, if used properly with Canto, but yeah Florina is particularly fragile especially if you don't have Lyn Mode thrown in the mix. With Lyn mode she's capable of being one of the best units in the entire game, without she's mostly a rescuebot.
Finally – and this is something I only suspect for now, I haven't entirely figured out the ins and outs - an arena offers unlimited extra fights as long as you can keep winning, which means you could use it to theoretically grind to max level. Meanwhile, the monster maps are limited, in that they disappear after you complete them. This is important because there is a kind of personality who, when offered a chance to optimize their numbers, will take it, even if it obviously makes the game less fun.
The TLDR of monster mechanics is that you can just grind out an unlimited number of encounters. It's been awhile so I forget if you can just infinitely pace to spawn more or if you'd have to duck into the Tower of Valni to spawn more without advancing the plot, but you can spawn monster encounters functionally at will.
Interesting thoughts. I do have zero memories of ever using Tana for anything as a child.
I have plenty of memories about using Amelia though. Iirc she keeps her red enemy colors so if she ends up as general she looks super cool. And smol gal wearing stupid amounts of armor is a wonderful aesthetic in general.
Nah the issue is precisely that for mounted units, there's a limit to who you can rescue based on the total of your constitution and their constitution which, one presumes, is meant to represent the horse's weight limit.
But for foot units, you can rescue anyone with less constitution than you.
So for foot units, promoting only ever increases your ability to rescue, but for mounted units, it actually usually decreases, and for Gilliam, he's already got a heft 14 constitution even just as a Knight so by switching to the mounted formula he's less able at rescuing. As a General he'd be better than ever at it.
Yeah, but that strait is guarded by axe-using Pirates and Archers. It's like the developers are playing a joke on me: "Oh, wouldn't flyers be just the thing for completing this map? Well, how good are your flyers at dodging?" As I play the map, reinforcements keep coming for the first few turns, and the enemy counter ticks up and up. It spooks me enough that I play defensively. I watch the Pirates inch towards the houses, turn by turn, and helplessly I watch them burn.
McFluffles also mentioned it, but this one's either a job for Ross who goes Pirate or having a flier rescue drop someone down. The pirates don't move quickly, so either Vanessa or Tana could easily thread the needle and put someone in range to help.
Oh, speaking of equipment, that Heavy Spear she starts with? It's another mean joke from the developers. Its weight reduces Tana to an effective Speed of 4! It does bonus damage against armored enemies, but there are none on this map!
Tana doesn't start with enough weapon rank to equip the Axereaver. Are you kidding me? Did you give me this character, with these stats, on this map, entirely to provoke frustration? I'm serious. The design of this chapter feels almost intentionally mean, like someone hated Tana and wanted players to hate her too.
The Heavy Spear on a peg knight is a joke they keep doing and I don't know why. That said, there are some fun things they can do on this map by pulling non-archers and then using javelins to kill lots of enemies from the sea without being able to be hit.
Is Amelia going to stay, by herself? Is this going to be my chance to recruit her? I wonder who can talk to her – probably Natasha, as a defector from Grado, would—
Oh wait she left.
Aw man. I wasn't going to use Amelia – her stats are low and that character design is so moe, she looks like she wandered out of the most deadly-cute grade of slice-of-life anime. The other three to four members of her afterschool dog-walking club are probably wondering where she went. But I did want that Speedwing!
Amelia is the second bit where the map tries to get you to play fast and risky. I think either Eirika or Natasha can recruit her, but I only remember Eirika.
She's a second Ross and, as your said, those stats are so bad that she remains a liability in a fight for a long while. Eventually she'll become slightly better than Franz, but it'll take a really long time.
Is Amelia going to stay, by herself? Is this going to be my chance to recruit her? I wonder who can talk to her – probably Natasha, as a defector from Grado, would—
Oh wait she left.
Aw man. I wasn't going to use Amelia – her stats are low and that character design is so moe, she looks like she wandered out of the most deadly-cute grade of slice-of-life anime. The other three to four members of her afterschool dog-walking club are probably wondering where she went. But I did want that Speedwing!
Amelia no! I mean, I figured she wasn't good in a serious playthrough, but she's always been loads of fun. Making her a General and giving her the boots is definitely suboptimal but it's what I did as a kid. Love the General lance attack.
Amelia is the second bit where the map tries to get you to play fast and risky. I think either Eirika or Natasha can recruit her, but I only remember Eirika.
She's a second Ross and, as your said, those stats are so bad that she remains a liability in a fight for a long while. Eventually she'll become slightly better than Franz, but it'll take a really long time.
Caellach is probably my favorite of the "new" Grado generals, for sure. Riev is just your bargain bin creepy cultist type fellow, and Valter is a psycho blood knight who really seems to want to spend time with Erika that she'd much prefer he not, but Caellach is just generally a mercenary dick and proud of it, and it makes him fun.
From what I remember you could probably weave together a 'third route' focused on Caellach as the main villain. But that's definitely spoiler territory.
I find almost all the monsters cute, especially when counting the overland sprites.
But I tend to find monsters cute in general, even when most people seem to agree they're unsettling/repulsive/whatever. (I think adult xenomorphs are cute, honestly)
Following that is a short scene where Tana catches up to Eirika's party on her pegasus and begs to accompany them. Wait, didn't her father order her to stay in the capital back in Chapter 1?
So this is a really good example of Eirika's route making more sense than Ephraim's, as Tana chases whichever twin you pick and force-joins in the first mission... but in Ephraim's route she somehow gets ahead of Ephraim's entire army without managing to find them, then gets shot down and captured by the Gradosian forces you fight in the mission. Like sure, okay, I can buy her moving faster than Ephraim's army in a general sense, but how did she not spot them while flying overhead? And the fact that she gets captured is pretty confusing -as far as I could ever tell, the Gradosians don't realize she's a potetially-valuable political hostage, they just grabbed her as a Frelian Pegsus Knight. I'd really expect her to just end up dead, if for no other reason than because she was shot out of the sky.
(The funny thing is you could swap a couple things around and the whole thing would work much better; I'd readily buy Tana missing Eirika's team and ending up flying past them)
This isn't the only example of a character who can be recruited in both routes but makes way more sense in Eirika's route, nor is it even the most egregious example!
To be fair, there's one character where I find Ephraim's route recruiting them a little more natural than Eirika's route, and I do enjoy Ephraim's recruitment of Amelia more than Eirika's recruitment, but this whole thing skews heavily in favor of Eirika's route.
It's much bigger than our last urban map in Serafew, and you have to cross bridges to get over the water and reach the boss. It's a rout map that throws a huge number of enemies at you and expects you to defeat them all (with one exception that I'll go over later). It's also got a few time-sensitive side objectives. It's a map that you can play in two ways: take it slow and play defensively, and you'll win without too much trouble. But if you want all the rewards, you have to send your fast units ahead and take risks.
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship to this map.
I like the basic idea of having a map with clear secondary objectives to pursue that require speed, where a player can challenge themselves to collect everything or play more carefully if their skills (or team) aren't up to the task.
But a lot of this map's specifics are incredibly obnoxious, like the Killing Edge Mercenary you more or less have to route a flier through the strike zone of if you want to protect the Village on the west side of the map, who hits hard enough Tana will definitely die if crit and Vanessa is very unlikely to have gotten enough Defense to not be in the same boat. So just booking a flier over is liable to be a lucky-based mission.
(In retrospect, I suspect the map was designed under the assumption the player would be very Rescue-happy, but Sacred Stones does a pretty poor job of communicating the idea that Rescuing can be a versatile and powerful part of the player's kit in general, and most missions can be done pretty easily without using it at all; as a kid, I basically played like the mechanic didn't exist outside of Rescuing Ross and Garcia))
If you don't rush to the houses, Pirates will destroy them. The obvious way to do this is with fliers – they can fly right over that little strait! The game even gives you a Pegasus Knight, Tana, to do it with!
Incidentally, this mission is why I was saying earlier I should maybe default to stuffing that first Angelic Robe down Vanessa's throat. A lot of my childhood frustrations with this mission would likely have evaporated if I'd done so back then...
Tana's stats are just a bit lower than Vanessa's at this point, so I probably wouldn't use her if it weren't for the fact she may become Eirika's wife. They spend most of this chapter standing next to each other, Tana chipping enemies with her Javelin and Eirika taking the kill. Oh, speaking of equipment, that Heavy Spear she starts with? It's another mean joke from the developers. Its weight reduces Tana to an effective Speed of 4! It does bonus damage against armored enemies, but there are none on this map!
Yeah, I don't get why the devs did this. Notably, in Ephraim's route she starts locked in a cell with no weapons, but there's conspicuously an enemy who will drop a Heavy Spear on the map, so Tana joining you is still correlated to a Heavy Spear entering your inventory. That mission at least has Knights to use it on?
Note that you can in fact mess with Tana's gear before the mission starts, in this route, and so can just take it away and give her a weapon she can actually use competently.
Tana doesn't start with enough weapon rank to equip the Axereaver. Are you kidding me? Did you give me this character, with these stats, on this map, entirely to provoke frustration? I'm serious. The design of this chapter feels almost intentionally mean, like someone hated Tana and wanted players to hate her too.
This is something of a recurring aspect to the GBA game design, for whatever reason; maps are often designed in ways that are difficult to make sense of without assuming active malice, so regularly it's a pretty difficullt impression to shake.
(Actually, I could just as easily say it's a recurring aspect of the series design... but I do personally feel the GBA games are the most consistently bad about this)
As a kid I was expecting to just hate Joshua, and then Supports like this one made me pretty okay with him. That first impression of a shallow flirt doesn't ever go away entirely, but it's not a major part of his character otherwise.
(Unlike, say, Sain in Lyn's game, who has no personality beyond 'flirts with women in ways we're apparently supposed to find funny')
But where Ross at least joins early enough that babying him for a chapter or two isn't that difficult, Amelia is joining at a point where promotions to second tier classes are starting to be a viable option. And contrary to what you would expect of trainees, apparently Intelligent Systems decided that those extra levels they get before becoming a Level 1 Tier 1 class are enough to make up for their abysmal starting stats, so all the trainees actually have fairly trashy growths where you'd expect them to be high. Amelia joins late, dies to basically anything that touches her in her join chapter or later, and even if she does catch up with the rest of your army she's either going to be "Horsey Squad 5: We already had Seth Franz Forde and Kyle", or "What if Knight but with way less defense and HP???"
She's trivially trainable on literally the mission she joins, and there's Monster grinding. For my first several Eirika runs as a kid, I'd get her to somewhere from 5 to 8 on this mission, then pop into a monster mission or the Tower or Valni's first floor to get her to 10. (I wouldn't have bothered with that much if the trainee classes had been allowed to promote mid-mission) On my last two childhood runs, I was able to get her to 10 on this very map with no danger to her.
Personally, I very much liked to promote Amelia into a Knight. Having a Knight who not only isn't widely doubled but tends to double enemies is really nice, and promoting her into a Knight props her defensive stats up enough to help offset her own statistical leanings, at least for the immediately following missions. Her tendency to have decent Resist also meant I often actually found her more useful as a tank than Gilliam once she got going in spite of her always having worse HP and usually having worse Defense -magic attackers are common in Sacred Stones!
Whatever way I took her, she was always one of my best units and always ended up in my endgame team, generally significantly outclassing all the other Cavaliers if I turned her into one. The weakest Cavalier Amelias I got were never worse than 'about as good as the other Cavaliers'.
(That said, I will readily agree she's worse off than Ross, and probably the worst-off of the trainees overall)
I have plenty of memories about using Amelia though. Iirc she keeps her red enemy colors so if she ends up as general she looks super cool. And smol gal wearing stupid amounts of armor is a wonderful aesthetic in general.
Amelia is the second bit where the map tries to get you to play fast and risky. I think either Eirika or Natasha can recruit her, but I only remember Eirika.
I have no idea how a player is supposed to guess that, mind, so I can't blame you for forgetting. I only knew back in the day from online stuff, and only remember because his Cavalier speed made him my preferred choice for doing the recruiting.
