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 It’s time for the best and worst map in the game! The Truth of the Legend is often said to be long, boring, repetitive, and too easy. It is all of these things and more. There never has been a more needlessly long slog of a map in the whole series. But that said, they finally started including more than just the bare minimum of dialog, so this finally starts feeling like a real fire emblem game. A few of the conversations and soliloquys on this chapter and the final one are actually quite well-written and have a surprising amount of heart to them after the drivel we’ve been putting up with for about 29 chapters. Chapter Summary: Roy has at last arrived in the ancient Dragon Temple. The last known dragon, Yahn, tries to stop him from finding and defeating the Dark Dragon. At the same time, he finally explains the truth of what’s been going on to Roy.   Of course, Roy is woefully unfamiliar with all those legends and stories of the scouring and basically knows nothing about them. Those stories being wrong was probably not much of a surprise to him since he didn’t know the wrong version to begin with.  They do a decent job of conveying that the Dragon Temple is an otherworldly and sinister place, but not nearly as good as they do for the Dragon’s Gate in 7. This place really suffers from not having its own dramatic theme music during this conversation and from there being no descriptive narration of how intimidating and weird it is. Also the architecture just isn’t as creepy as the green stone stuff in the gate.  I mean… yeah? Why wouldn’t humans stand against them again when the dragons are trying to destroy all humans again?  Except for all the others.  Roy. Listen. How many times have we been over the fact that the Dark Dragon is the girl in the black robe who’s always with Zephiel? Does this guy look ANYTHING like that?  Remember WAAAAY back when Aine was the boss and he seemed to have no personality? No? I don’t blame you. They probably should have had someone else (especially one of the Arcadians) comment about how odd it is that all these dragons we’re fighting seem identical and mindless. This just shouldn’t have come as a surprise.  You know, they did a lot more work on Yahn’s picture than most people in this game. It looks almost as detailed as some of the FE7 random thugs and whatnot.  Just like those guys who show up at the end of FE7! Anyway, this is a fairly cool moment in the story and Yahn is a pretty interesting fellow.   This might be more surprising if we hadn’t seen Idoun be completely passive all game long.  Since when? You haven’t asked any questions up till now.  This silly and out of place cliché is one of the more justly mocked parts of this chapter. For no adequately explained reason, he tells us everything in little bits ending on cliffhangers as we fight through hordes of minions in tiny groups.  And this is also a weird and silly handwave to allow them to break the exposition up like that. Battle Preparations & the Map:  Secondary Objective: Steal some elixirs (many mamkutes have them) Reinforcements: Spawn every 2 turns from the marked spawnpoint before the last throne you seized. However, I can’t find the pattern of when they START to spawn after taking a throne. Sometimes it’s immediately, sometimes it’s a turn after that. Turn Limit: 25. Nowhere NEAR enough unless you play cleverly. I really have no idea why the background colors match up so poorly in my screenshots, in game it’s a soft transition from black to blue from bottom to top. If you want a prettier map that lets you see what’s in each of those secret rooms, WoD has you covered: http://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe6/guiafe6/cap24.htm It’s kind of like the Tower of Valni floor 7 except that here the rooms are inaccessible and the bridges are always there, whereas in floor 7 the rooms are always there and the bridges only open one by one. Also this is 10x larger. The chapter’s gimmick is that you must go one room at a time in a chain fighting a handful of dragons and then having Roy seize an intermediary throne to get Yahn to tell you a bit more information and unlock the next room. What practical purpose this long, winding path of small rooms over a bottomless pit could ever have served I have no idea. Twice now I have been woefully wrong when I said a previous map was the hugest in the game. I was forgetting this one. It would take 151 squares of movement to have Roy go from his starting spot to all the thrones he must visit and then to the final one if there were no enemies at all. That would take him 26 turns of just walking. If he didn’t have his promotion movement bonus it would be 31 turns. That blows the previous record, 21 turns on chapter 21x, completely out of the water. And you know what? In truth it would take even LONGER because you have to waste some movement on some turns by stopping ON the thrones each time. So maybe 35 or so turns of doing nothing but walk through an empty map to win if Roy was unpromoted and there were no enemies. That’s insane. Even promoted it would be something like 28 or 29 of just walking. It took me 18 screenshots to completely piece this giant map together and almost all of that is quite literally empty space that you can’t even fly through (what’s up with that?). Horrible, unacceptable map design. Anyway, the enemies don’t make things much better. They’re ALL mamkutes. And despite what Elphin said, they’re not even particularly strong mamkutes at all. So the exact same boring “tactic” of just having a dude with a legendary weapon fight them that has trivialized battles with them all game will work here. Of course, mamkutes can 2-hit kill most people, so they COULD still be a challenge except that they’re really spread out so that you never, ever have to fight 2 at once if you don’t want to. Absolutely trivial. A complete waste of time. On non-ranking runs anyway. In order to reach my goal of completing this game with 100 surplus turns, I must save at least 7 turns here. The time limit is 25. And I just explained that it would take Roy more than that much to beat this chapter even if there were no enemies. I’m going to have to play darned well to pull this off, so it might actually be fun. The other important thing to note is the way reinforcements work, which is a bit odd. Essentially, after you seize one of the numbered thrones, mamkutes begin spawning every 2 turns from the spawnpoint with the same number. You’ll notice that that’s always on the platform before the throne you just got, so they’re always chasing you from behind. Once you capture a new throne, the old spawnpoint stops working and only the new one starts spawning mamkutes. Also I believe each spawnpoint can only produce up to 5 mamkutes (over 10 turns). If you wanted to fight the maximum number of total mamkutes on this chapter, I believe it would be 57. That’s enough to break all of your legendary weapons basically. Since I’m in a hurry, I won’t be fighting many of the ones from behind. My main concern will be making sure none of them spawn-move to attack a straggler. Avoiding that will take some clever strategy. And as usual, that starts with a clever formation:  Units Allowed: 8 + Roy + Fa. A big decrease from the last few chapters, so they’d better be chosen carefully. Also note that the people brought on this chapter are the ones you must use on the final chapter. Units Brought: 1) Roy. Highly effective here since every enemy is weak to the Sword of Seals and attacking at range is very nice. However, he can’t fight much since he’ll need to spend many of his turns capturing thrones. 2) Fa. Actually really bad here. She’s too slow moving to be any help to me, she can’t take hits from dragons well, and she can’t avoid being countered by them since she can’t 1-hit kill. For that matter, she has a mere 3 charges of her dragonstone left. 3) Lalum. Even more precious than usual since she is THE cornerstone of any strategy that requires you to move really fast. Without her, this would be impossible. 4) Gonzalez. Gonzalez is THE man for this job. He can tank hits from dragons like no other, he can instant kill them with crits, he can instant kill the weak ones without crits, and Armads is nearly fully charged. 5) Shin. Only Shin and Oujay have the accuracy to definitely kill mamkutes off of thrones, so he’s great for that reason alone. Even more importantly though, he is the ONLY guy in my whole roster who can carry Gonzalez around. The two of them are going to go far together. 6) Alan. I need more 8 move mounted units who can kill dragons. Alan is actually the only one who can fit that bill for reasons I’ll go into. It doesn’t hurt that Roy boosts him. 7) Clarine. Another precious 8 move mounted unit, though she can’t do anything to dragons. She CAN heal, warp, rescue, etc. and I’ll need lots of that. 8) Oujay. One of my best units, but just not quite as good as Gonzalez at this. Because of his poor movement for rushing, he will have limited use. 9) Ray. Not as good as Oujay by any means, but he’ll be handy because he can instant-kill dragons from range and Apocalypse is nearly fully charged. 10) Lilina. Incredibly valuable because I got her a B in staves, so she can use Physic. Her Physic range is basically the entire map. Plus she can slaughter dragons with ease. The only problem is she’s nearly level 20 and I still don’t want to waste XP. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Lugh and Hugh. Yes, they’re definitely better than Ray, but Forblaze is nearly broken (and Lilina has it) so Ray has a legendary weapon and they don’t. 2) Yodel. I actually did consider him until I remembered he can’t actually use Aureola and is therefore worthless. 3) Zeiss and Miledy and Tate. Maltet is nearly broken and without that even these amazingly powerful units can barely scratch mamkutes. 4) Lance. Ha! His strength has become terrible so Alan is just better. Plus his support bonuses wouldn’t really help here. 5) Chad. I actually did want to bring him to try to steal a bunch of elixirs, but I realized I couldn’t do that while still moving at the speed I need. Essentially, I decided to try to hit my arbitrary +100 turns goal instead of piling on even more funds and XP. Roy has a Wyrmslayer in addition to a few uses of the Sword of Seals. I MUST finish this chapter with at least 2 charges of that weapon. On the other hand, I really, really want him to gain 1 point of Str. That would let him 2-hit kill Idoun on his own. Ray has Apocalypse, Heal, and a few dark tomes that I’ll probably never use. Oujay’s got a wyrmslayer in addition to Durandal in case I want to conserve that. Clarine has Warp, Rescue, Physic, Hammerne, and Fire (just in case) Lilina has Physic and Bolting, so she can kill or heal from massive range, plus Aircalibur and Forblaze. Gonzalez has Armads, some killer axes, and a handaxe. Alan has Maltet (what’s left of it) and a handaxe and the remaining wyrmslayers. Shin’s got Miurgre, a brave bow, a silver bow, etc. Most people have both a vulnerary AND an elixir, just in case. Now the point of this formation is basically to get people rescued or warped ASAP because there is no time to waste. If I play my cards just right, I believe Roy can capture the throne and the first platform can be swept up on turn 2.  It’s not quite that simple though. Those of you who’ve read my FE7 LP may recall that on the final chapter (Light), you can’t choose your starting formation. Instead, the order of the people you brought on the unit list determines what spot they start in. Crazy. This chapter is even crazier. See, on this map you can choose formation but then on the NEXT map you can’t and the squares everyone stats in are determined by the unit list order on THIS map. Here’s the WoD map of next chapter showing how it works: http://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe6/guiafe6/cap25.htm So I’ve put Oujay and Ray in position to take out the 2 mamkutes and Lalum in position to dance for Roy next chapter by ordering them up like this. The Characters:  Mamkutes! Elphin said the ones in the temple would just be incredibly strong, but actually this is one of the strongest ones on the chapter and he’s the same as the guys last chapter. Many of the other ones are only level 8 and much weaker.  Hands down one of the best-developed characters in the game because he has more dialog than anyone except Roy. And maybe Merlinus. So that’s not staying much, but still. He’s a thousand years old, thinks he knows everything, and is actually kind of an idiot. How much of an idiot depends on how smart the writers were. See, a lot of the stuff he says about dragons being emotionless (among other things) flatly contradicts other things he says and does as well as every other dragon character in Elibe. Plus he claims dragons and humans could never live together in peace and denies that Arcadia could exist, but if he’s a thousand years old then he should remember that before the Scouring dragons and humans DID leave peacefully together. So either the writers are complete idiots (this conclusion is supported by all the other glaring inconsistencies in this game) or they very cleverly wrote Yahn to sound credible at first glance but actually just be a huge liar or a moron. Oddly, I kind of feel like it might be the latter. If so, nicely done. Yawn! Yahn isn’t really much stronger than any of the 30 mamkutes you just fought. Grab a legendary weapon, any legendary weapon, and one-round kill him. Playing Through:  Roy moves and Clarine sends him to this particular spot. Here he will be attacked by precisely one mamkute and can then take the throne if someone else clears it.  Shin carries Gonzalez.  With Lalum’s help, Gonzalez is immediately dropped in position to fight the other moving mamkute. Alan carries Oujay. Oh this map finally does have an almost appropriately dramatic theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RYLz7ZVEEw . There’s a unique one for the enemy turn too, but it’s not really very impressive.  Nice, nice.  Roy kills his mamkute, but he only gains about 30 XP, so he needs to kill another 2 to level.  Lilina’s range is the map.  Alan drops in this particular direction so that Lalum can move maximally far forward and then dance for Oujay.  Who kills the throne dragon.  He might actually cap his luck if he could keep going.  Alright, I guess I win the chapter!  Darn. Well the FE6 version of Shocking Truth 2 plays during all these conversations. I think it’s appropriate for the moment when you realize you’re going to have to capture 6 more identical, boring thrones to win. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ017oBjxLQ&index=59&list=PLwvweEKnS3AHZ4pYIYqzKdBKGFxnZNsNQ   Now there’s something new at last.   Yahn explains that in fact they did this to a divine dragon by force and then tells us we can only find out more by reaching the next throne.  And the next zone appears. 4 mamkutes this time, with one blocking the bridge, and the others just barely capable of attacking the first tile in the square platform. There will basically be the same exact pattern on most other platforms.  The trick to going fast is to be able to beat the bridge guy efficiently. Here Shin and Gonzalez could not quiiiite get into range.  Yeah, that mamkute spawned too early. Other ones will wait 1 turn after a throne is seized before spawning, but not all of them for some reason. Anyway, this guy will be perpetually chasing Fa and always 1 square behind.  Well the path is now clear, but Gonzalez has to spend his whole turn just moving 1 space.  So I’ll have to dance them in.  Everyone else rescues people and piles onto the path (Clarine is carrying Ray).   Nice! Alright, that’s turn 3.  With Armads, Gonzales tears up both of the non-throne dragons on this platform.  Then as the first move of turn 4, he goes for the throne dragon too.  That +Def level helped a lot.  Now how to do this with maximum efficiency?  Well the big G needs some heals.  Clarine gets a decent level from topping him off.  Shin grabs Gonzales and gets ready to head for the next platform.  I could have had Roy seize this turn, but instead I’ll use Lalum to get Alan in a better position to pick him up again after he seizes NEXT turn.  That’s better for several reasons. One is that it gives Fa another turn to get past the second spawnpoint. Another is that it just lets me get moving faster toward the next throne.  Another mamkute spawns.  Well first things first…  He begins telling us the story of the back and forths of the scouring (notably, he does NOT give an account of how it actually started. That’s kind of one of the big unanswered questions of the setting, which I think is a good choice)  Makes sense; that would help them with their numbers disadvantage. On the other hand, it’s not clear just what limits the Dark Dragon’s dragon-production capabilities, but Idoun never seems to have been able to create all that many.  It’s a bit unclear if the Divine Dragons had been fighting on their side to begin with.  Kind of like creating morphs. Really, there are a lot of similarities and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Nergal learned to create morphs from texts in the Divine Dragons’ library.  It kind of seems like the Fire Dragons might have had a bad reputation among the other kinds. The Divine Dragons apparently expected treachery and all managed to escape.  Except for one naïve one who trusted them and stayed behind.  His conversations are fully of silliness like this where he claims things like “will” and “hesitation” and other things that he clearly must have or be capable of are not things dragons understand.  Dude, you’ve said this like 6 times already.  Finally someone says so.  And even more mamkutes.  This time I’m ready. Alan breaks out Malte and opens a path.  And thus Gonzales will be able to sweep the other two moving ones immediately.  I’ll actually leave Roy alone for now and concentrate and getting the army moving along. It’s ideal for them to be a bit ahead of him.  20 range.  A dragon comes from the new spawnpoint to join the others.  I think that’s the first time anyone has dodged a dragon all game long.  Sweet! Gonzales dropped both dragons easily and that accuracy boost will be very nice too.  So next turn he’s able to immediately start moving toward the next action. Note that Clarine dropped Ray last time and is thus ready to pick up someone who moves next to her.  Like Roy.  So Alan finishes off the dragon Ray hurt and opens the throne.  Decent I guess.  Shin and Clarine get Roy ready to go and keep moving.  And Lalum dances.  But once again, I don’t seize immediately. It would hurt much more than it helps by putting reinforcements ahead of Fa and leaving me unable to move anyone into the new area anyway.  So NEXT turn he takes the throne.  Using the Dark Dragon that is.  So the humans turn them right back in an awesomely human way.  And these, of course, were the 8 legends.  So then something unexpected happened.  So this is the Ending Winter. It was mentioned in the opening scroll at the very beginning of the game and then pretty much never again, but now it finally becomes important.  Roy knows something!  I mean, it sounds like Roy’s actually half right…  So that answers that question which Elphin never actually investigated. Of course… not all of the weapons were even guarded by traps.  How didn’t Yahn know that? How in the world didn’t he know that? I mean, first of all he apparently can sense their power. Second, he’s been working with Zephiel who definitely knew that and was trying to find and destroy them.  I’m thinking some time travel is in order.  Wait, what? The dragons were already losing badly.  Well he decides it’s time for another cliffhanger and the next area opens. This one actually has a slightly unusual formation in that the top right dragon can’t actually attack the entrance square.  So this time sending Shin in is a pretty good idea since only 1 guy will be able to attack him.  Lame!  I keep Roy moving with rescues and Lalum.  And he’s already in range of the next throne.  Fa continues to be barely ahead. If a reinforcement spawns this turn she’ll be attacked. But that proooobably won’t happen since MOST reinforcements appear on the turn after the throne is taken, not the same one.  So on the next turn Shin kills the last dragon on the platform.  Crazily enough, an early capture actually means SAFETY for Fa this time, not danger. See, it will turn off the spawnpoint just barely behind Fa, from which a dragon could attack her, and turn on the one in front of her. But Oujay and Lilina can defend her easily at that one, so she’ll be fine.  So at long last we find out why dragons only began taking human form after the scouring.  One gets the impression they didn’t have a ton of time to figure out what was going on, come up with the idea of dragonstones, and adopt this new strategy. Either they knew this was coming or perhaps they already used dragonstones for some purposes.  So here he talks as though that was an unreasonable thing for them to do, then later on he says that only humans would ever be stupid enough to be merciful and he would never leave anything that could possibly be a threat to him alive.  Kind of sounds like it, but now he’ll deny it because he’s claiming dragons have no emotions.  Well humans and ice dragons and divine dragons and also that fire dragon in FE7 which is explicitly described as “hateful”.  So now we start hearing about him and Zephiel, though details will have to wait.  So you see, if I HADN’T taken that throne, Fa would have been in range and been attacked. But because I did take it, this spawnpoint is cancelled and the next one activates, and she should have time to get by there with help from Oujay and Lilina.  I can’t get in that guy’s range, unfortunately, just close.  So I’ll just grab Roy and get moving.  And Clarine and Lalum boost Ray over there so he can attack and open the bridge next turn.  Oujay is ready to help guard Fa from a dragon spawning right above him.  Now how to clear things over here?  Well Ray opens with an instant-kill.  But I still can’t quite get there. This is an unusually long path.  Using the Give command, Alan passes Roy to Clarine and then she drops him in range of the next throne.  Now Fa will be attacked this time, but that’s ok since this should be the only time.  Not bad. She has exactly 1 shot of the dragonstone left.  And now she can take another hit.  So on turn 2 it’s time to start sweeping up this platform.  Armads gets rid of the throne dragon too.  Which lets Roy both get where he needs to go and score another kill.  Lalum dances so Alan and Clarine can carry her toward the front. She’s been slowly falling behind, and it will get much easier to fight effectively when she’s back in the front.  Turn 11 and I’ve reached throne number 5.  … didn’t Brenya maybe tell you something like that when she arrived here?  Ah yes, THE Hartmut.   He knows something! Niime told him that already, but he’s forgotten nearly everything else anyone ever told him, so I’m surprised.   So they too had no idea what the Dark Dragon actually was, which is perhaps why so much inaccurate information was passed down.   Did you figure that out yourself?  The dragons don’t know what it is either! No one does.  So it turns out that the sword was intelligent enough in its own right to spare Idoun when Hartmut struck. This is a big, important clue.   Wouldn’t that include pretty much every other dragon among other things?  So Hartmut builds the Shrine of Seals, but I’m really not sure why. It doesn’t actually seem to have anything to do with anything.  So Yahn had just been hanging out here that whole time. What’s he been eating?  So he confirms that Zephiel has been telling him a bunch of stuff. And he just told us how the Sword of Seals was sealed away… but he didn’t know the weapons were sealed away? Ok, I take it back. The writers ARE just being idiots; there’s nothing clever going on here.  Well yet another platform, but this time I have Lalum in the lead.  So Gonzalez can attack immediately.  And the others can crowd in safely.  If a dragon spawns this turn, she’ll be in danger and I’ll need to bail her out. I guess it’s like a 50-50 shot because I STILL can’t figure out what makes it so the mamkutes spawn immediately sometimes but not other times.  Lilina heals Gonzales yet again.  Miurgre once again clears out a throne.  Decent I suppose.  Roy is dropped such that Lalum can just barely get to him.  And now he can seize the penultimate throne.  This throne is mostly pointless. Yahn has little else to talk about so he just tells us he’ll fight us in the next room. And that he’s recovered his power over the last 1000 years, which we already know because he told us so earlier.    Good question.  That doesn’t actually answer the question.  Ok, now he gets to something that kind of matters. A little.   Well that’s kind of creepy.  This of course is the scene we see at the very end of FE7 as a teaser for this game.  So they worked together I guess. Except Yahn seems to have done nothing. It might have been a cooler game if Yahn was with Zephiel most of the time but we didn’t find out he was a dragon till the end.    Zephiel was pretty thorough, so she’s still going to try to do what he said and destroy all humans. Of course… we know from the bad ending that she apparently doesn’t actually do that. She just stands here forever.  Yahn is kind of a twerp.  So here he claims dragons and humans can never coexist, even though they “shared a peace forged in wisdom” for ages before the Scouring, back when he was alive.  Someone finally mentions Arcadia!  And he declares that no such place can exist. Nevermind that we clearly have a divine dragon with us who’s been fighting. She can’t exist either. What an idiot.  Alright, so seizing that throne obviated the 50-50 shot of Fa being attacked by disabling that spawnpoint. But it meant I couldn’t kill this dragon, so I’ll need to just wall up.  Fa can make a clean getaway because of the early seize.  Oujay and Lilina in the middle-right room will have to deal with a spawn there for her, but that’s no problem. Anyway, you can see there’s just one room of enemies left but they’re kind of spread-out with a really long bridge for some reason.  So it’s too far to go all the way on turn 13.  Darn it! I won’t get that point of Str I was really hoping for. My Roy sucks. He’s 2-3 points behind in nearly every stat. Only his Skill is good.  Well Shin and Gonzales employ their usual tactic.  Clarine runs ahead and then uses the Rescue staff on Roy so he’s safe.  Lilina and Oujay are caught by one of the reinforcements, but that’s no problem.  And level 20. She’s the only one. Other than Niime and Yodel anyway, and they don't count.  The final bridge guardian is actually instant killed.  On turn 14, Oujay deals with their dragon.  Gonzales is dropped in.  And everyone piles up near the entrance.  Gonzales once again kills everything.  Very nice.  And turn 15. It was all for nothing, Yahn!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDJJ_C-IUEI His battle theme is pretty good.  … his dodge animation is terrible.  So Alan has to kill him with Malte.  Very nice final level for Alan.  Alas. Malte is really the most highly-used legendary weapon most of the time, even though it kind of sucks. There are just a lot more great lance-users than sword or axe ones.  So turn 15 win! WAY ahead of schedule.  At last.  No she doesn’t. This is one of those times when it REALLY hurts that this game doesn’t ever use multiple portraits for different emotions like FE7 does. They’re having a pretty good conversation here, but their expressions are all wrong.    Uh…  Maybe she believed Yahn when he said Arcadia couldn’t possibly exist.   And another clue. They do a good job of making sure you know how to get the best ending. It’s avoiding the bad ending that they do a horrible job on.  Great! I’m not really sure what the question OR answer are! Well I surprised even myself with my speed that time, I’ve saved more than enough turns to beat my crazy stretch goal. Winning in 15 when it should take 29 or so just to walk through to each throne with no enemies around was a pretty fun puzzle. I only got 13 levels, which is WAAAAY short of the required 25, but that 25 is pretty much just not feasible unless you sit in place at each platform for 10 turns and harvest maximum reinforcements. I guess the unreasonably high requirement here (and the preposterous one next level) make up for the way too low ones on the previous 2 chapters. I do kind of wish I’d been able to steal the tons of and tons of available elixirs, but in practical terms I would have had to go really slowly and I also didn’t have much inventory space available for them. Oh well, I picked tactics over funds and XP. Total Restarts: 16 (None here) Turn Surplus: +94 (100 is in the bag now!) Things I Regret Missing: A couple of uses of Marcus’s silver lance on Rude, a Chapter 5 nomad Marcus had to kill, two Chapter 12 fighters I couldn’t kill since I needed supports built elsewhere, a pirate and a wyvern rider on 14x who I didn’t have time to go after, 2 enemies in a room I didn’t have time to kill on chapter 20x, this one lazy mercenary on chapter 21x, Zephiel’s steal-only Hero Crest, a bunch of stealable elixirs on chapter 24 Legendary Weapon Scoreboard: Durandal slew Ohtz using Oujay on chapter 14x, turn 2; and the top left mamkute using Oujay on chapter 16, turn 9; and Arcard using Oujay on chapter 17, turn 16; and a bottom left paladin using Oujay on chapter 21, turn 7; and a bottom left wyvern rider using Oujay on chapter 21, turn 9; and the first throne mamkute using Oujay on chapter 2, turn 2; and the 5th platform reinforcement mamkute using Oujay on chapter 24, turn 14. Armads slew Teck using Gonzalez on chapter 20x, turn 10; and a middle right wyvern using Gonzales on chapter 23, turn 2; and the left platform 2 mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 3; and the right platform 2 mamkute using Gonzales on chapter 24, turn 3; and the platform 2 throne mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 4; and the left platform 3 mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 5; and the right platform 4 mamkute using Gonzales on chapter 24, turn 5; and the 5th platform throne mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 10; and the final platform bridge guard mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 13; and the left final platform mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 14; and the right final platform mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 14. Forblaze slew the top right mamkute using Lugh on chapter 16, turn 6; and the left section hero using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 2; and the purge bishop using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 5; and one of Brenya’s snipers using Lugh on chapter 23, turn 8; and the last staff druid using Hugh on chapter 23, turn 8. Maltet slew a middle area wyvern rider using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 2; and a middle area wyvern lord using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 2; and the right mamkute using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 10; and the middle right sniper using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 3; and the silence druid using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 7; and Pereth using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 14; and the 3rd platform bridge guard mamkute using Alan on chapter 24, turn 5; and the 3rd platform throne mamkute using Alan on chapter 24, turn 6; and Yahn using Alan on chapter 24, turn 15. Miurgre slew the throne room mamkute using Shin on chapter 22, turn 15; and the left platform 4 mamkute using Shin on chapter 24, turn 7; and the platform 4 throne mamkute using Shin on chapter 24, turn 8 and the left platform 5 mamkute using Shin on chapter 24, turn 10; and the 6th platform throne mamkute using Shin on chapter 24, turn 12. Apocalypse slew the top left general using Ray on chapter 22, turn 8; and a top rightish wyvern rider using Ray on chapter 23, turn 3; and the 5th platform bridge guard using Ray on chapter 24, turn 9. The Sword of Seals slew the right area Sniper using Roy on chapter 22, turn 2; and the top right Berserker using Roy on chapter 22, turn 6; and a top middlish druid using Roy on chapter 22, turn 7; and the right throne room mamkute using Roy on chapter 22, turn 15; and a throne room sniper reinforcement using Roy on chapter 22, turn 16; and Zephiel using Roy on chapter 22, turn 17; and the middle right mamkute using Roy on chapter 23, turn 2; and a top rightish wyvern using Roy on chapter 23, turn 3; and the Red Gem mamkute using Roy on chapter 23, turn 4; and the final mamkute using Roy on chapter 23, turn 8; and a platform 1 mamkute using Roy on chapter 24, turn 1; and the right platform 5 mamkute using Roy on chapter 24, turn 10. Melth fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Aug 28, 2015 |
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Jul 20, 2015 00:06
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 18:30 |
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Melth posted:
I said it before in OFS's LP, but it bears repeating. I loving love the implication that every enemy Roy kills with the Sword of Seals, he honestly, truly wants them to loving die. Purely because it's so far out of character for Roy and makes no sense at all when you really think about it. 
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Jul 20, 2015 00:26
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Edward_Tohr posted:I said it before in OFS's LP, but it bears repeating. Nonsense, it's his rare acts of mercy that are out of character for the Butcher of Djuto!
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Jul 20, 2015 00:42
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Speaking of things that deserved to be posted from previous threads...Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:
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Jul 20, 2015 00:55
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: I don't know when it started, doctor.
: Watch out for arrows.
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I am amused that your strategy for this chapter boiled down to "Gonzales and Shin kill everything" and other people helped. I remember that someone called this chapter the "Mamkute Infestation Pit", and drat is that an accurate description. Mamkutes aren't deadly (unless they proc that single digit critical chance), they're just annoying and everywhere. I'm not sure if there's any way to make this chapter fun without either completely redoing it or doing a self-imposed challenge like you did. Melth posted:
 Oh yeah, this gif is now on the Fire Emblem wiki's Berserker page. Glad to see Artix's work being appreciated. 
fade5 fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jul 20, 2015 |
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Jul 20, 2015 01:03
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My FE6 playthroughs usually don't make it past this map. Last one no exception. I barely remember how the final map even goes. Just pure, distilled boredom. At least your ranking-strategy made it more interesting to follow in screenshot form! Very nicely done.
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Jul 20, 2015 01:47
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So yeah someone hinted at me I should come back and post this. this is the new final map.
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Jul 20, 2015 02:40
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Yahn certainly isn't as strong as he claims to be, and there are a few possible explanations as to why that is. * He didn't actually recover from the Scouring - This would make sense, considering the environment is now actively hostile to draconic life. * He was never a real dragon in the first place - My personal choice. Like Sonia, he somehow convinced himself that he was more than a mere construct, despite there never being any reason to think so. (While this may not have been the writers' original intent, it fits very well with what FE7 shows us.) Meanwhile, I must protest against this explanation of the Ending Winter. The legendary weapons are the best weapons in the world now, yes. And they have probably degraded over time. But they were always Swords and Spears and the like - not loving nukes! I just can't believe that either they, or the dragon's powers, could possibly cause worldwide alterations like that.
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Jul 20, 2015 03:09
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I read through the previous Advance Wars 2 let's play and noticed that it isn't actually a 300 point S one. Perhaps my next project should be a perfect score run of that game. I guess other options are a video let's play of Warcraft 3 hard campaign, a video let's play of Lord of the Rings the Third Age, or a video let's play of Majesty. I'd be most interested in doing WC3, but I'm a bit leery of any of the video options since I have no experience doing that kind of thing.MightyPretenders posted:Yahn certainly isn't as strong as he claims to be, and there are a few possible explanations as to why that is. Hm, I'd say Yahn actually is about as strong as he claims to be. He says he's a "fairly powerful dragon". Not "amazingly powerful" or "the best." And he is. He's better than most of the mamkutes you fight, though not by that much. And it makes sense that the artificial dragons created only to be weapons would shape up well as fighters compared to real dragons anyway. I suggested in FE7 that the dragons seen there might be some kind of dragon special forces sent through the moment the gate opened because they knew by then that there was someone very bad and very dangerous on the other side, which would explain them being better than Yahn. I do think it's interestingly plausible that he's not a real dragon but thinks he is. That would explain why every single other dragon in the universe clearly has emotions but he says no dragons do. HE doesn't and he assumes the others are like him. And it would explain why he doesn't have any memory of dragons and humans living together before the scouring- HE wasn't actually alive then. On the other hand, I just don't think the writers had any idea what they were doing in this game. I don't have much of a problem with the whole Ending Winter cause. The weapons might well have BEEN nukes back then, afterall they were expected to- and did- annihilate vast armies of dragons. But even besides that, it's pretty explicitly magic, so there's no reason it couldn't have had that effect. What I do have a problem with is what in the world the point of the Ending Winter in the story is. The fact that it's not even mentioned or alluded to in 7 demonstrates rather nicely that it's completely unnecessary to the setting and the story of the Scouring. It's just a weird little tacked-on incident. Melth fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Jul 20, 2015 |
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Jul 20, 2015 03:16
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Melth posted:What I do have a problem with is what in the world the point of the Ending Winter in the story is. The fact that it's not even mentioned or alluded to in 7 demonstrates rather nicely that it's completely unnecessary to the setting and the story of the Scouring. It's just a weird little tacked-on incident. I think the only point of the Ending Winter is to explain why the dragons aren't flying around in dragon form all the time. I mean, without the limitation of the dragonstones, what need is there for the dragons to be in human form at all, if most the dragons you see are just weapons? I mean, it would be much more intimidating for Bern's enemies if they look up to the sky and they see these fire breathing monstrosities destroying everything, as opposed to dragons just popping out of dudes.
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Jul 20, 2015 03:35
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Mr.Morgenstern posted:I think the only point of the Ending Winter is to explain why the dragons aren't flying around in dragon form all the time. I mean, without the limitation of the dragonstones, what need is there for the dragons to be in human form at all, if most the dragons you see are just weapons? But in most FE settings, dragons don't fly around in dragon form all the time and there's no mention of an ending winter. It's just how dragons are in FE. They need dragonstones. Or a power gauge thing in the case of the sub-humans in Tellius.
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Jul 20, 2015 04:26
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Melth posted:But in most FE settings, dragons don't fly around in dragon form all the time and there's no mention of an ending winter. It's just how dragons are in FE. They need dragonstones. Or a power gauge thing in the case of the sub-humans in Tellius. LAGUZ Melth! LAGUZ! Who cares if they were as bad as the humans were?!
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Jul 20, 2015 04:50
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Fionordequester posted:LAGUZ Melth! LAGUZ! Who cares if they were as bad as the humans were?! That's a weird way to spell sub-human. Bleed the half-breed!
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Jul 20, 2015 05:13
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It's a real shame FE8 doesn't have a similar ranking system, I'd love to see you do a run trying to amass as much funds and XP in the lowest possible turns, though without the rigour of a ranking system it'd be way more work since you'd have to set up the ranks and balance them as well. Or just go for the best possible really. Might be worth considering? Plus I really like your story analyses as well.
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Jul 20, 2015 05:30
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Cat Army 
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please don't be mean to reyson, he tries very hard
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Jul 20, 2015 06:24
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alcharagia posted:please don't be mean to reyson, he tries very hard Can't the herons use the magic cards in FE10? So much for being peaceful non-combatants, haha.
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Jul 20, 2015 06:28
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Speaking of the Tellius games, I've always thought that BEXP was a much better system than the rankings. It gives you a real, tangible benefit to completing a chapter fast and completing the side objectives. I like it when a game rewards you for playing well, even if sometimes the side objectives you got BEXP for were kinda dumb.
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Jul 20, 2015 06:35
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Ephraim225 posted:Can't the herons use the magic cards in FE10? So much for being peaceful non-combatants, haha. Do you think Reyson wasn't totally psyched about that
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Jul 20, 2015 06:43
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alcharagia posted:Do you think Reyson wasn't totally psyched about that Y'know, I completed my whole normal mode run of that game without ever figuring out how to use the cards. Only later did I look it up and find out that magic-users aren't allowed to wield them. Manatee Cannon posted:Speaking of the Tellius games, I've always thought that BEXP was a much better system than the rankings. It gives you a real, tangible benefit to completing a chapter fast and completing the side objectives. I like it when a game rewards you for playing well, even if sometimes the side objectives you got BEXP for were kinda dumb. BEXP was a decent idea, though poorly implemented in 2 ways. First, of course, it was highly abusable in both games. Second, they often gave you BEXP rewards for not doing things that would give you regular XP or that you would definitely do anyway. For example, you got BEXP for not killing sub-humans in the desert level in 9, but you could just kill them and get real XP instead. And generally speaking, going for the real XP method was a better deal and easier. Even if BEXP was well-implemented though, I would not want it to replace rankings, just used alongside them. Rankings are really important imo and the post-7 FEs have been a lot more boring for me because they didn't include them. The Iron Rose posted:It's a real shame FE8 doesn't have a similar ranking system, I'd love to see you do a run trying to amass as much funds and XP in the lowest possible turns, though without the rigour of a ranking system it'd be way more work since you'd have to set up the ranks and balance them as well. Well I'm glad you like my style enough to want me to LP another FE game, but I think it would be best if I didn't do Sacred Stones- at least not now. I shouldn't have let myself get talked into this one really. FE7 was a wonderful game for me to LP and I had a ton of fun writing about it. It had a deep story and great characters I could really dig into and talk about a lot, great level design and merciless ranking requirements that meant I had to be at the top of my game, and just displayed artistry and craftsmanship I could rave about for pages and pages. In contrast, writing this LP has been a chore. So has playing the game. I was so fed up with the bad music, flat characters, lack of difficulty, lousy script, and especially the horrendous map design that I almost gave up before doing chapter 21. And being frustrated and hating the game more the more I played it cannot have made this a better LP for you guys to read. No, I think it would be best for me to stick to LPing games I actually think I could LP well from now on. Melth fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jul 20, 2015 |
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Jul 20, 2015 07:19
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Melth posted:Even if BEXP was well-implemented though, I would not want it to replace rankings, just used alongside them. Rankings are really important imo and the post-7 FEs have been a lot more boring for me because they didn't include them. Well, Fire Emblem 12 actually DOES have ranks. It ranks you on Speed (turns taken), Survivability (self-explanatory), and Tactics (recruit every character). It's a very little known fact about the game, so much so that even Serenes doesn't seem to have any documentation on them, but, there you go. That said though, I hear that the Speed rank is VERY lenient on FE12, and the other two ranks sound like something you'd do anyway, so...I dunno. Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Jul 20, 2015 |
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Jul 20, 2015 08:21
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Fionordequester posted:Well, Fire Emblem 12 actually DOES have ranks. It ranks you on Speed (turns taken), Survivability (self-explanatory), and Tactics (recruit every character). It's a very little known fact about the game, so much so that even Serenes doesn't seem to have any documentation on them, but, there you go. That said though, I hear that the Speed rank is VERY lenient on FE12, and the other two ranks sound like something you'd do anyway, so...I dunno. Having just completed a normal run of FE12, I can confirm the ranks are crazy lenient, I played like utter poo poo and my only non-perfect rank was a B for survival (Whee, casual mode!). They may scale better on higher difficulties though, and (Reverse) Lunatic are challenging enough all on their own.
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Jul 20, 2015 08:39
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 Sounds cool but… what does this title have to do with the chapter? You don’t really go beyond any darkness. This is an infamously lame and trivially easy final chapter gameplay wise, but they really did a solid job on the dialog. This chapter actually has some heart to it, on the same level that the good fire emblems have all the time. Chapter Summary:  They meet at last. Idoun’s theme plays and is really appropriate and good for this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKpQKZAZ2m4  This line kind of raises an interesting question or two. It implies that she’s capable of abstract thought and understanding other people’s motives, which is not what it sounded like when people talked about her previously.    Roy seems to notice that too and tries to reason with her.    A great line. It reminds me of what Bramimond said about Eliwood, which was one of my favorite parts of 7. Unlike Bramimond, she isn’t swayed by the memory. Come to think of it, I wonder if the whole “soul destroyed” thing is the same as what happened to dark magic users like Nergal, Bramimond, and Canas’s brothers. That’s an interesting idea.   I regard this as probably the best line in the whole game. It’s really quite evocative.   Removing her hood might be a bit more dramatic if we hadn’t seen her hoodless once or twice before.    Interestingly, she doesn’t seem to be committed to killing all humans even though that’s what Zephiel said he wanted. She’s apparently quite alright with letting us, a bunch of humans, leave.  And she’s transformed. I guess that concludes negotiations.  And now every character gets their start of battle line.  Aw.  This is of course a reference to his recruitment conversation, though it doesn’t actually make that much sense.  Well that’s a lame line. They should have just gone with one of his "... ..."s    These lines are really just not that good in general.   … what?   There we go!  They really make sure you definitely know what you need to do to get the best ending. They should have at least given some kind of clue that you should have got all the legendary weapons if you got the bad ending. Battle Preparations & the Map:  Secondary Objectives: Steal some elixirs (all mamkutes have them) Reinforcements: 1 mamkute/turn spawns from a random marked wall spot until the end of time- but only as long as there are not 2 mamkutes on the field already. Turn Limit: 10. Is it even possible to take this long? Well at long last it’s a reasonably-sized map! I don’t think we’ve seen one of those since maybe… FE7? And this is the one, the ONLY map in the game where you don’t need to seize a throne to win! Nothing interesting here other than that, really. If your Roy is not horrible, it’s trivial to win on turn 1. All you need is 16 str. My Roy does not have 16 Str because he’s far below average. 20 speed would also do it. My Roy does not have 20 speed. So I need to use Bolting or the like to make it possible, but it’s still incredibly easy. And I’m ready. I had a contingency plan in place in case Roy didn’t gain any more Str. There’s basically no opposition. The mamkutes are unusually strong, but they’re not numerous. 1 per turn will spawn out of one of the marked sections of wall at random, but only up to there being 2 mamkutes on the field, so you can never be overwhelmed or anything.  Units Allowed: The exact same ones as last time. Remember what I said last chapter: your formation for this time is determined by the order of your people in the unit list on the last chapter, you can’t change it now. That’s pretty annoying. You also can’t re-equip or anything, so nothing has changed. Anyway, my order was chosen last time so that Oujay and Ray can both walk up and kill one of the mamkutes, Lilina can step in and bolting if needed, Lalum can boost Roy up to hit Idoun on turn 1, and… that’s about it. No one else matters. The Characters:  All the mamkutes on this chapter are very strong. But still not much threat.  Kind of… heavy-handed. I must object to her being called “tragic” though. I mean, her story as we see it is kind of sad, but it’s not in any way a tragedy. Maybe if we knew more about her story or something.  Idoun is, honestly, more a plot device than a character. That’s unfortunate, because she had the potential to be quite interesting. I also think the game would have benefited a lot from making finding out her whole story difficult- like Nergal’s. I think it would be nice if you got the “good” ending automatically but had to find some sidequests revealing her background to get the true ending. Anyway, her stats are pretty solid. Notably, the legendary weapons are NOT super-effective against her. And there’s no Luna in this game. That means even, say Gonzalez can hit for only 18 damage with Armads (and she dodges decently). Lilina could hit for I think 23 with Forblaze, so that’s your best bet I suppose. A really lucky Ray might be able to manage 31 with Apocalypse actually, but he’s not realistically capping his Mag. Anyway, the point is that she’s really hard to kill… except with Roy and Fa. The Sword of Seals and Divine Stone are supereffective. This means that Roy does 24 + Str damage per hit. If he has 16 Str, he’ll kill her in 2 shots. And if he has that and 20 speed, both easily attainable, he’ll one-round kill her.  … don't get too flowery with the description. It’s true though. 20 Might and 100 hit and some crit too, that’s pretty solid. Only 1 range, but she DOES move.  As you can see, my Roy is not strong enough to 2-hit kill. He'll leave her with 1 HP. Playing Through:  Oujay easily kills the left mamkute and gets a decent level. Now as it turns out, my Ray CAN’T beat the right mamkute. He’s too slow by 1 point to double. So there’s actually no way for me to kill it while winning in 1 turn. Oh well, there’s no way I could have known how much faster than normal that mamkute would be in advance and there’s nothing I can do about it now.  One last thing to do. Clarine takes the Hammerne and hands the Warp to Lilina.  And fixes the Warp up. As I mentioned a long time ago- back in the war room part 32 in FE7 (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3701153&pagenumber=26#post444276818)- you can generate a pretty good boost to your Funds score by using the Hammerne on the right stuff. I used that Warp staff 13 times for a cost of 1800. Not bad.  So Lalum dances for Roy and he runs to attack.  Terrible sprite and animation, great theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCW7kazmmj4  Lilina helps out.  End turn…  A dragon spawns and Idoun attacks first, of course.  The animations are just… awful. This is her tail smack attack, she actually has several different ones. All have the exact same effect.  It’s dragon-slaying time!  No cool death animation or anything.  Just a pretty good death line.  And she’s a green unit now.  … I hate this cliché. It doesn’t even serve any kind of purpose here, they just felt it was obligatory to have a dungeon collapse after a boss was killed.   And he escaped. And the temple is still totally intact. So… why did they even bother with saying it was collapsing? It affects absolutely nothing and isn’t even dramatic since he’s safe and sound 2 seconds later.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOB389Ma-0c&list=PLwvweEKnS3AHZ4pYIYqzKdBKGFxnZNsNQ&index=57 As is traditional, a main theme reprise plays during part of the end. I always love that.  A nonsensical explanation of the pointless collapse.  … I guess?  I guess he wouldn’t know? He never did see her. And he didn’t hear Roy talk about trying to save her. I’m curious what happens if you stupidly bring him to the battle.  I have NO idea what he asks. There’s just a scene break. Total Restarts: 16 (None since chapter 17!) Turn Surplus: +103 (Awesome) Things I Regret Missing: A couple of uses of Marcus’s silver lance on Rude, a Chapter 5 nomad Marcus had to kill, two Chapter 12 fighters I couldn’t kill since I needed supports built elsewhere, a pirate and a wyvern rider on 14x who I didn’t have time to go after, 2 enemies in a room I didn’t have time to kill on chapter 20x, this one lazy mercenary on chapter 21x, Zephiel’s steal-only Hero Crest, a bunch of stealable elixirs on chapter 24, the right mamkute on chapter 25 Legendary Weapon Scoreboard: Durandal slew Ohtz using Oujay on chapter 14x, turn 2; and the top left mamkute using Oujay on chapter 16, turn 9; and Arcard using Oujay on chapter 17, turn 16; and a bottom left paladin using Oujay on chapter 21, turn 7; and a bottom left wyvern rider using Oujay on chapter 21, turn 9; and the first throne mamkute using Oujay on chapter 2, turn 2; and the 5th platform reinforcement mamkute using Oujay on chapter 24, turn 14; and the left mamkute using Oujay on chapter 25, turn 1. Armads slew Teck using Gonzalez on chapter 20x, turn 10; and a middle right wyvern using Gonzales on chapter 23, turn 2; and the left platform 2 mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 3; and the right platform 2 mamkute using Gonzales on chapter 24, turn 3; and the platform 2 throne mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 4; and the left platform 3 mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 5; and the right platform 4 mamkute using Gonzales on chapter 24, turn 5; and the 5th platform throne mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 10; and the final platform bridge guard mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 13; and the left final platform mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 14; and the right final platform mamkute using Gonzalez on chapter 24, turn 14. Forblaze slew the top right mamkute using Lugh on chapter 16, turn 6; and the left section hero using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 2; and the purge bishop using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 5; and one of Brenya’s snipers using Lugh on chapter 23, turn 8; and the last staff druid using Hugh on chapter 23, turn 8. Maltet slew a middle area wyvern rider using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 2; and a middle area wyvern lord using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 2; and the right mamkute using Miledy on chapter 21, turn 10; and the middle right sniper using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 3; and the silence druid using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 7; and Pereth using Tate on chapter 21x, turn 14; and the 3rd platform bridge guard mamkute using Alan on chapter 24, turn 5; and the 3rd platform throne mamkute using Alan on chapter 24, turn 6; and Yahn using Alan on chapter 24, turn 15. Miurgre slew the throne room mamkute using Shin on chapter 22, turn 15; and the left platform 4 mamkute using Shin on chapter 24, turn 7; and the platform 4 throne mamkute using Shin on chapter 24, turn 8; and the left platform 5 mamkute using Shin on chapter 24, turn 10; and the 6th platform throne mamkute using Shin on chapter 24, turn 12. Apocalypse slew the top left general using Ray on chapter 22, turn 8; and a top rightish wyvern rider using Ray on chapter 23, turn 3; and the 5th platform bridge guard using Ray on chapter 24, turn 9. The Sword of Seals slew the right area Sniper using Roy on chapter 22, turn 2; and the top right Berserker using Roy on chapter 22, turn 6; and a top middlish druid using Roy on chapter 22, turn 7; and the right throne room mamkute using Roy on chapter 22, turn 15; and a throne room sniper reinforcement using Roy on chapter 22, turn 16; and Zephiel using Roy on chapter 22, turn 17; and the middle right mamkute using Roy on chapter 23, turn 2; and a top rightish wyvern using Roy on chapter 23, turn 3; and the Red Gem mamkute using Roy on chapter 23, turn 4; and the final mamkute using Roy on chapter 23, turn 8; and a platform 1 mamkute using Roy on chapter 24, turn 1; and the right platform 5 mamkute using Roy on chapter 24, turn 10; and Idoun using Roy on chapter 25, turn 1. Melth fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Jul 20, 2015 09:03
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Hey now, Idoun's sprite is alright. At the very least the different animations are neat for existing. So is that it or were you going to analyse the rest of the epilogue?
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Jul 20, 2015 09:46
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AlphaKretin posted:So is that it or were you going to analyse the rest of the epilogue? I would assume he has at least one more post, with a final tally of his rankings. Which will be ridiculously over the top compared to the requirements. God drat you're good at this game. Excellent presentation. I am in awe a second time.
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Jul 20, 2015 10:00
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You know, it would have been cool if when we did the side quests to collect the legendary weapons, we got visited by the specters of the 8 legendary heroes who used them, and they fed us details on the Scouring so we knew more about the War Dragons and stuff.
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Jul 20, 2015 13:34
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No cool death animation my rear end.  
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Jul 20, 2015 14:11
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They screwed up her eyes 
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Jul 20, 2015 14:59
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Bellmaker posted:
To be fair, everything's flipped back and forth with FE portraits constantly anyway.
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Jul 20, 2015 15:02
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Artix posted:No cool death animation my rear end. AlphaKretin posted:To be fair, everything's flipped back and forth with FE portraits constantly anyway.   You normally don't notice it unless it's something kinda obvious.
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Jul 20, 2015 16:30
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Bellmaker posted:
The default images are on the right looking left, Idoun's portrait there is flipped.
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Jul 20, 2015 17:27
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fade5 posted:You normally don't notice it unless it's something kinda obvious. Or that they made Chrom two portraits since he has a cape on one side and the bare arm on the other, but don't do that for eyepatches like Robin and Basilio, or other things Brady's scars and Noire's feather. Y'know, showing the potential to have non-mirrored portraits but not doing it for most characters.
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Jul 20, 2015 17:54
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Lotish posted:You know, it would have been cool if when we did the side quests to collect the legendary weapons, we got visited by the specters of the 8 legendary heroes who used them, and they fed us details on the Scouring so we knew more about the War Dragons and stuff. That would indeed have been way cool; it worked pretty well in 7.
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Jul 20, 2015 17:57
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Epilogue:   The Great Movement of Bern is a really lousy name. And it kind of leaves out the whole dragons thing which was the most notable feature of the war.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CysIc_PUsZg&list=PLwvweEKnS3AHZ4pYIYqzKdBKGFxnZNsNQ&index=49 It’s no Light to Tomorrow or main theme reprise, but I guess it works.  Dun dun dun! Oh, she just means repairing things will be hard.   She never joined Etruria! And Etruria didn’t even really help! Also, why in the world would everyone not now know about Zephiel’s evil plan? All the crazy Bern loyalists are dead and there’s tons of evidence for the truth now.  I would imagine Guinevere was pretty popular beforehand, she should do fine.  This is the first mention of either Lycia OR Eliwood since about chapter 13. And Eliwood is never mentioned again, he just vanishes. Last we heard, he was recovering from his bout of legionnaires’ disease and was successfully leading a new Lycian alliance. And then… nothing. This is absurd.   Why would that be, in any way, desirable after the last war? Hasn’t Etruria lost all of its prestige? Their court was full of traitors and idiots, their king was worse than useless, most of them are dead, their atrocities against their colonies were exposed, the country was torn to shreds, and Lycia saved the world solo.  And suddenly he’s shy and doesn’t believe in himself. He's like that in maybe 2 of his C supports and none of his other conversations. People occasionally say he lacks confidence, but it’s really just not true most of the time. And just as many people (like Cecilia) talk about how he's brimming with self-assurance. The game doesn't even get its shallow characterizations right.  And Eliwood. The more gifted leader. Who is still around as far as we know.  This exact scene basically happens at the end of FE9, but it’s better there because the characters are more interesting.   Partners in crime.  It would be nice if there was a Roy and Guinevere paired ending since they’re the most developed characters.   And the beginning of the true ending scene.  Roy has gone 1000 miles out of his way to visit Arcadia but makes some absurd remark that he had business in the area.   I would hope so! Their village is definitely known about by everyone now and they have no external enemies really. And powerful allies. Keeping the girl locked up in her room now would be even more awful than it was before.  She's his real reason for coming of course.  I get the impression that the word they translate as “soul” might actually mean something a bit different.  At least she’s not still trying to destroy the world. I don’t see how stabbing her with the Sword of Seals overrode that previous order.  Now this is a big revelation. And contradicts a lot of stuff said before (and not just by him).  They were cowardly and wanted to keep the village safe.  He transitions back to what would mark a recovery for Idoun.  Meanwhile, outside. I’m pretty sure Idoun knows what trees and so on are, so I don’t know why Fa would be explaining that.  She tries to shake it to get some fruit down.   It… might be a little more promising if she was laughing at something other than a little girl getting hit on the head.   And she excitedly runs inside.  Awww. Maybe the second best - or even the best- line of the whole game if you remember what she said about Hartmut on the final chapter. Yeah, this is a good ending. Character Endings and Stat Outcomes: Decimals are rounded. 0.5s are rounded away from 0. .png) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i0C3v00a5s&list=PLwvweEKnS3AHZ4pYIYqzKdBKGFxnZNsNQ&index=51 There’s a ton of musical themes for this epilogue. Anyway, it turns out that only the 10 people you bring to the last chapter get a real ending blurb. The others get one rudimentary line. Once again, Eliwood seems to be kind of forgotten.  Ugh. Well, at least a bad Roy doesn’t really hurt for most of the game since you never use him anyway.  At least a hundred people visited Arcadia, many lived to tell of it, and they spread to every country in the world. Hundreds of others saw Fa turn into a dragon. Roy took at least one trip- presumably not alone- out to visit. And the sandstorm that hid the village has ceased forever. In short, this epilogue is absurd.  She turned out quite nice. The speed bonus in particular is just what she needs.  Yay monarchy!  If anything, her true amazingness is underrated here since she capped speed many levels ago. This was a great Lilina.  Alright, now that’s a nice ending.  Gonzalez got some bonuses where he likes them, but was pretty much standard.   Mostly average.  Wait, come to think of it, I’m 95% sure Pherae was totally untouched by the war. Bern did not come in through Pherae in their initial invasion, they went to Araphen. Then they never again did anything except have 8 guys go to Ostia to lose. And it’s not like Pherae lost its men in Araphen or anything, they hadn’t had a chance to send any yet since Roy arrived too late.  Man, this was a nice Alan. The bonuses aren’t big, but they’re where he needs them and he got them pretty early in the game.  It’s like everyone forgot the major twist where she’s General Douglas’s adopted daughter and also the closest ally of Elphin, the (presumed) new king of Etruria. Elphin is not actually mentioned at all in the epilogue because I didn’t have him as a playable character. That’s kind of a dumb oversight.  Yeah, she turned out pretty badly, but who cares?  Continued? He was never traveling as a mercenary to begin with. He was proudly a knight of Ostia.  Man, this Oujay was sweet! What I love most about him is how he pretty much came out of nowhere and became my best infantryman in one chapter. I was never planning on doing anything with him but training him to 20 before he suddenly eclipsed Rutger and Dieck.  Ray continued to be an evil jerk and brought back a soul-destroying form of magic that invariably leads to bad stuff. Yay.  You know, I think I had too high an opinion of Ray. Mine was really blessed in key areas but still pretty sucky. I guess you should still probably use him since he’s better than Niime and Sophia and you don’t want Apocalypse to go to waste, but still.  Charm and true kindness? What? They said her personality never changed.  Urgh, all my healers turned out somewhere between bad and awful. Clarine is never good in a fight regardless, but she’s definitely a hugely valuable utility unit. I should have promoted mine earlier.  For some reason, these brief epilogues for characters I didn’t bring were actually displayed much later, but it seemed appropriate to squeeze them in now.  If only you could use Aureola you could have seen some action, man.  No doubt about it, this guy was my most blessed unit. Of course, he got retired really early and wasn’t a combat unit to begin with.   Training her would have been hard enough without her getting awful Str.  Nice bonuses where he wants them, but he’s just startlingly good on average anyway. Canas is proud of you, man.   There’s not a ton of room for this guy to be above or below average. Mine got off to kind of a bad start, but he turned that around.  It’s terrifying how close to average this worthless guy is.   Man, she was something. It would have been so much funnier if she actually capped Str though.  Kind of like Zeiss, she’s pretty much always the same awesome unit. I guess mine was slightly worse off.   All of my mages turned out nicely. Lugh might have been the most blessed of them all for a while. Not shown here is that he was at like +4 Mag really early in the game and just went downhill after promoting. Lugh was probably the most usefully RNG-blessed unit I had.  Tate really got the stuff she needed! But you know what? She's still just kind of mediocre! Pegasus knights are so bad in the GBA titles.   Fir was as amazing as Fir can be. Which isn’t saying much.  This unusable guy was above average. That’s terrifying.   Noah is just the worst cavalier. Mine was decently lucky with stats but still borderline unusable.  I was sure my Lance was below average on Str, but actually I guess he was just above average previously. Mine turned out moderately poorly all in all, but he’s just an absolutely lousy endgame unit regardless. It might not even have been a good idea to promote him.  Just “armor” huh? And I guess she didn’t help rebuild Ostia with her brother.  You know, I was actually considering using the guy if he turned out well. He sure made it easy to give up on him.   “Reason Feathers”?   Even with an absolutely fantastic Str bonus, she was STILL too feeble to damage stuff. I should never have promoted her.  Good riddance.  So bad.  I said this guy was just kind of mediocre before. I take it back. He’s out and out terrible.   But even Geese has nothing on Sophia. Training her was hilarious.  Treck turned out unreasonably well, but was still just not good enough to actually use.   So my Dieck was really good but still not really usable beyond the early chapters. Odd. I always thought of him as pretty great, but this suggests he’s rather bad.  Not shown here is that Rutger was really slow but really strong for quite a while. He turned out nicely, but was still just not really good enough. Myrmidons rarely are.  So Astol disappeared, leaving behind his life as a spy. Remember that.  Astol was aggravatingly awful for a while and only turned around at the end. But thief stats barely matter anyway.  Decent I guess, but never worth using. For a while she seemed really promising with some absolutely massive early Str gains, but then she stopped getting any of that.   I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided this guy was an ok unit. Even with a spectacular speed bonus he’s still barely usable.  Well she turned out poorly overall since it was speed she needed. But she’s just a horrible unit regardless.   Remember how his first 10 levels were almost totally empty? He turned things around with some great bonuses in the last few. Still sucky. And after all I said about him being the best all-around healer!    Did his job.   It’s fitting that the personality-less Echidna is also epilogue-less.   She did her one job pretty well for one chapter.  So Igrene, who Astol was once secretly married to and who he only left because his work as a spy was too dangerous, disappeared too. Coincidence? I think not!       “Worked on the pegasus knights”?    Interspersed with the credits are a few random pictures.  7, you may recall, was full of these and actually used them to great effect mid-story.  I guess that’s Guinevere? And I guess those 3 pictures in that style are the only ones used? That seems like a weirdly half-hearted effort. Legendary Weapon Scoreboard: So I’ve been meticulously tracking who killed what with what legendary weapon cumulatively as I went along. Here’s the final score:  I’m actually surprised the Sword of Seals topped Armads after that last chapter. I guess Gonzales used his killer axe too many times. I don’t think I’ve EVER used Aureola in FE6. No good characters can ever wield it. Ranking Results:       There’s less to say about this than in FE7. You can see the point at which I decided to get serious and stop focusing on building supports, and from there I just have giant bonuses. I think the most impressive Tactics wins were the Infernal Element, the Truth of the Legend, and Reunion. I did manage to get more than 100 spare turns saved up.  On the last ranking progress update I set a goal of 20,000 surplus XP relative to the ending requirement. But for some reason, I wrote down the ending requirement as 45100 that time, 5000 lower than it really is. So getting 20,000 over the true ending requirement was impossible in hindsight, but I DID manage to do better than I thought I could. In fact, I did about 3000 XP better than I thought was even possible. Nice! Oh and in case anyone cares about the silly power score (which, remember, is totally redundant with XP), I believe my power score is 1195, with a requirement of 1001. So Power says I got 194 more levels than I needed to and XP says I got 177. Which once again just shows that all that matters is the XP ranking.  Funds is the area where I did least impressively. I did increase my endgame surplus by 20,000 since the last ranking, but that’s just not that great. I promoted a lot of guys who didn’t need promoting and I used pretty much nothing but silver and killer weapons and bolting tomes and physic for too many chapters. Oh and here’s what I THINK my combat stats are:  Actually, I’m 80% sure the true number is higher than that and there’s some oddity with now Battles are counted, but there’s no way for me to check. So did I get to the goal?  Yes! Mission accomplished! Concluding Remarks: Months ago, I did spectacularly well on Night of Farewells but commented that I still felt like I’d somehow lost. This whole game makes me feel like that, albeit for different reasons. I set out to max rank Fire Emblem 6’s true ending on hard mode, and I did it. I did it without RNG manipulation, arena grinding (which seems to be a cornerstone of most FE6 max rank runs), gate grinding, glitch abuse of any kind, or purchasing stat-boosters. And I finished with more than a hundred spare turns, nearly 200 more level ups than required, and more than 50,000 more capital than SHOULD have been required (more than 100,000 more than is actually required). And I only restarted 16 times, less than half as many as for my HHM run. A resounding victory by any measure. But it feels mostly hollow. Certainly there were isolated turns and chapters where I played very cleverly, but in general my tactics were boring and straightforward. That’s all this game calls for. The big difference between this run and my previous plays of the game wasn’t that I played smarter, it was that I looked up when reinforcements spawned. That’s where all the “difficulty” in this game comes from (beyond the first few chapters). Certainly there were isolated moments where the game succeeded artistically, but most of the time the story was dull, poorly paced, thin, and full of massive plot holes. The art and music were similarly unimpressive and they did not work well together. Certainly there were isolated moments where I discovered something new or learned something or even had fun, but those moments were the rarest of all. I set out fully intending to look at this game with fresh eyes and judge it on its own merits, rather than in comparison to 7. And I succeeded. It just turned out not to have any of the merits I thought it had. I believe I have made a very strong case that this is not merely a bad Fire Emblem game, but a bad game outright. There is little satisfaction in being very good at a very bad game, but if this Let's Play encourages other people to play a good game instead, then I suppose my time was well spent. 
Melth fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Aug 29, 2015 |
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Jul 20, 2015 19:44
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Congratulations on getting the SS rank! Well done!
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Jul 20, 2015 19:59
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Now you can check out Vilkacis' LP of FE6 and see how you can have fun with the game. You do it by changing the code whenever you can.  
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Jul 20, 2015 20:01
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A success is a success! Good fun to follow all along, especially comparing to my own run I had going when you started. Just like you I took notice of some things in the ending round-ups, and yeah, Dieck floats on having amazing bases on joining but his growths, frankly, suck rear end - he'll still often turn out a solid unit, but if the RNG doesn't like him he'll suck and it's almost impossible to have a beastly Dieck because once you get to 20/10 and on his averages are just really low (although to be fair, Echidna is hardly better and Oujay generally doesn't turn out nearly as good as yours so the Hero competition isn't too stiff). As we all know, Wolt is automatically terrible due to his class, but holy poo poo are his bases absolutely horrible. His stats aren't even really passable at 20/20, but at least they tend towards mediocre with that many levels to grow. Early game though, he's just hot garbage. IntSys really didn't know what they were doing with archers in general throughout the GBA games (or everyone in charge of design and balancing had a grudge against them). I've alway thought of Fir as fragile, but she actually has the highest HP of any GBA Myrmidon if I'm not mistaken, though Rutger's extra point on promotion means he juuust barely overtakes her HP as Swordmaster. With her vastly better Luck and better Res, she's not as far behind Rutger resilience-wise as I'd imagined (if Res was more useful she'd arguably be better before supports come into play), and HM-bonuses means they both outclass their 7 and 8 compatriots. Not actually good because sword-lock + low Strength, but it surprised me.
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Jul 20, 2015 22:34
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Something to note regarding averages and characters is that IntSys upped the growth totals by about 20% across the board and distributed them a lot better in FE7 (and FE8 added another ~10%), which is why you don't have nearly as many super-specialized units or people who have as many giant, glaring flaws where you have to pick your poison if you want, say, a myrmidon on the team. Personally I kinda like what FE6 did but it's definitely the least refined of the three games.
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Jul 20, 2015 22:58
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So I noticed that Artix included a bunch of Orange Fluffy Sheep's cartoons in his let's play's main page in the archive. I'd like to do that when this is archived, but I don't know how.
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Jul 21, 2015 04:52
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put them in the op
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Jul 21, 2015 04:55
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Either make a post that includes them all now and when you send it to baldurk ask him to include it (i think his script will automatically pick it up if it has enough images), or edit them into the OP.
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Jul 21, 2015 04:56
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