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  The final battle begins now! Exclamation mark!!! It's not actually the final battle, this one's a two parter. But if you do the second part in less than a single turn you're doing it wrong. Garon gets a chapter named after him like all of the royal siblings (except Elise and Takumi), although he gets to have his title included in the chapter name. If the wiki is correct then all the royal sibling chapters are titled like this in Japan, so you'd have Nohr Prince Xander instead of just Xander.  Unfortunately the Hoshidan invaders made the mistake of eating at the Nohrian royal canteen before heading to the throne room and all died from poison in their food. Can you be allegric to poison? I tried googling it and all the results are about poison ivy.   ...can someone else please cook today? Yes joking about poisoning the food and then throwing the dish that's meant to be eaten raw in the oven at 500 degrees is very haha funny but this is perhaps the worst possible time to be doing this.  It's okay, she got there eventually. If all my rice had ended up getting wasted by Rhajat's lovely food pranks right as I hit the final chapter I would have been very upset. Sweet Sushi gives +1 def speed and luck. I've managed to get this a few times now.  Lunch has been enjoyed and now we can go commit combination regicide and patricide. Kevin's gotten the Yato out just for this cutscene... From what I remember he's just going to wave it around so it can get broken.   Garon on his throne almost looks like Santa at the shopping mall. I think I like Garon's cutscene model a lot more than his portrait, at least that one where he's doing his weird grin. Garon in general gets to be a lot cooler in cutscenes, here and when he's stealing baby Corrin back in Chapter 5's flashback he gets to be menacing evil, not just cartoon evil.   Evil dad opens up with an observation that Kevin's grown much more competent in the brief period of his life in which Garon was not raising him. This is meant to be a backhanded compliment but it's more of a self-own by Garon about how terrible a father he is.  Well he's already off of his throne... Quick, go sit in it while he's standing up! That always leads to an instant Game Over when the enemy does it.    Now it's the endgame Garon isn't even going to pretend not to be the worst. Of course if you'd have played Conquest you'd know he's actually a slime monster thingy corrupted by Anankos who's long lost his humanity. Presumably before he turned into raspberry slushie he loved his kids at least a little.  Can you say that again but even louder? I don't want to fight any more Berserkers and this seems like the type of thing a soldier might be demoralised by if they heard their leader admitting it. Unlike Garon I reset when one of my soldiers dies!  tink Unfortunately nothing particularly funny happens if a non-sword wielding class uses Yato in a cutscene, there's a set of generic animations that I think all clases use here. If Kevin were in a mounted class he'd be unmounted in cutscenes as all characters are.   Oh no! Azura singing is the answer to any problem so taking her hostage is a pretty effective tactic... Unfortunately Garon is an awful negotiator and immediately ruins his own bargaining position by demanding everybody die instead of asking for something he might actually get.  But with the power of Ryoma's Rajinto, Yato becomes Blazing Yato! Although it's just known as Fire Emblem in the west.  The Blazing Yato boosts strength and speed by 4, in addition to (somewhat) nullifying the Dragonskin ability, a skill all the Chapter 27 and Endgame bosses have. Even Corrins that don't use swords can benefit from the stat boosts by just having it in their inventory, but since Kevin cannot attack at all it doesn't really help him. It's also not necessary to defeat Garon despite what this cutscene might imply, it just makes doing so a little easier.  Birthright might be the easiest of the 3 routes, but it has arguably the toughest Chapter 27 of them all. Here we have a big open room full of tough promoted enemies. Garon starts all the way at the back on a throne and is quite tough to kill. You could use a combination of Rescue and dance to reach him as early as turn 1, but cutting through his high stats and Dragonskin is tough without relying on either crits or skill procs, stat stacking through high might or brave weapons and rallies, or using a souped up Corrin with Blazing Yato.  Garon himself however is the weakest of the 3 Chapter 27 bosses, but as established it's getting to him that's the problem. His stats are still high though, and Bolverk is an incredibly deadly 1-3 range weapon you would need a lot of avoid to have any reasonable chance of dodging. His Draconic Hex skill reduces the stats of any unit who enters combat with him by 4, while Dragonskin reduces all damage in combat by 50%, in addition to providing immunity to out of combat damage and Lethality. I think it halves the effectiveness of crits and offensive skills too? Blazing Yato lowers this damage reduction effect to only 33%, so your Corrin will likely do more damage than any of your other units against him. This Garon also has very slightly less physical defense than the one you fought in Chapter 12. So if for some stupid reason you managed to grind your units up to the point they could beat him there then they'll have no trouble beating him here!    Garon's flunkies rather uncharacteristically for Birthright come with a huge set of skills to catch you off guard if you're not paying attention. None of them can move, but they're all nestled within Garon's 1-3 attack range and cannot be attacked themselves without using 3 range Spy weapons. Mostly they're just there to get in the way of your 1 range attackers.   There also also two Entrap Strategists here just to ruin your day. They won't move until quite a few turns into the map, but if you're hoping to kill Garon on enemy phase then they will interfere with your plans if left alive!  Thankfully my stat booster shopping spree has left me with some gold left for tonics. This is another meat grinder map so I want my 1-2 range damage dealers buffed up as possible. Both Midori and Rhajat get HP, def, res, speed, and luck for bulk and dodging ability. The physical bulk is specifically so they can meet certain survival thresholds I discovered through trial and error, the rest is because there's no reason not to. Of course if I were smarter I would have stocked up on some tonics for Endgame since they're wear off between Chapter 27 and then, but I didn't so I'm just going to have to deal with that.  The most annoying thing about this map is nearly every single enemy than can use a 2 range weapon has got one. All the Generals and Great Knights are packing Spears, some of the Heroes and Berserkers have Tomohawks, there's Dark Knights and Bow Knights... This map might not have any reinforcements for a change, but it's also comparitiviely small and lacking in defensive terrain or chokepoints and if you start luring enemies without killing them it can get crowded very quickly. They do at least start moving in waves rather than all at once, so so long as each approaching wave gets defeated before the next one starts moving I won't have to worry about my squishy support units getting backed up against the wall.   Times like this make me wish I'd have Scarlet get Rally Defense from Wyvern Lord, or Kevin get Rally Resistance from Strategist, or that I'd really bothered with getting rallies at all. I don't even think I have Rally Magic on Orochi. Speed and luck are both nice to have for dodging, but combined I think they only give a total of 10 or 15 or so avoid? Regardless it's extra avoid on my frontliners that they would very much appreciate.  Standing here Midori manages to avoid the attacks of all enemies but the 3 Generals in front of her. If the wiki is to be believed they won't move until someone enters their range, but I'd like to them not be there so I have more room to move around. Rhajat with the Calamity Gate can ORKO them reliably but she needs to be somewhere else, so Midori's going to have to hope for crits or Lethality with her Sting Shuriken.  Mozu will only fight Berserkers if she stands here. Two of them have Tomohawks but the other two will throw themselves against Mozu and die, which is good enough for me.  And Rhajat will take out all of these. Ideally I'd clone Rhajat twice and then have her on all 3 fronts, she could take out every single one of these enemy groups so long as she had the right weapon. I guess that's what Replicate is for!  A little positioning snafu left both of my ralliers in General range but Rinkah can at least shove Azama out of the way. Caeldori can take a hit and with her Bolt Naginata she'll do decent damage back, it's not the end of the world.  Thanks to tonics Midori can survive 2 hits and then block the third with a dual guard, but ideally she'd dodge every single one of them. A combination of her and Kaze's personal skills should theoretically give her a 40 or so percent chance of surviving a lethal hit with 1 HP but I've never seen that happen.   The Great Knights don't move until baited like the Generals but they will move to participate in dual attacks too. So long as I can take them out before they move again I think luring them over is a good thing, it saves me from having to to do it later.   Funnily enough Rhajat actually does worse on this side than she would anywhere else, but she's also the only unit I have who can tank swords and axes at the same time. She wouldn't have survived this were it not for her tonics...  Now to clean up the enemies that moved but didn't die. This map might not seem so bad until you've got Bow Knights and Wyverns all attacking you in groups of 4 or 8 and nowhere to run! Having enemies attack in waves with little terrain for chokepoints is one way to make the player be proactive, in that you have to push forward to give yourself space to fall back to later, but I don't like that the ideal solution is just 1-2 range juggernauting for most of the map.  Rinkah has Death Blow but she seems really averse to critting anything with tomes. Which is annoying, because she always falls short of KOing just about anything with them! If only an enemy dropped a Mjolnir she could use.  That's Scarlet's speed capped. I feel as if these stats wouldn't look so out of place on a mid/high level Camilla? The high res is all she's missing, otherwise she has the great strength and speed but medicore HP and magic.  Now to lure over the Great Knights that didn't move last turn. At least there's no reinforcements to complicate things, the enemies you see on the map are the only ones that are there.  Really I think these enemies just have way too much HP. These guys have a whopping 53, none of my units are anywhere near that!  I guess Rhajat of all people has a decent amount, thank you Basara class. Despite hitting 32 in 3 different stats she has not yet capped any of them.   Here come the Bow Knights on the left and right sides of the map. Midori can't really tank them reliably thanks to them having both swords and bows, Rhajat can't break their high resistance. Bow units always feel much more annoying in the enemy's hands than yours.   Rhajat's inability to KO makes me think I should have paired her with Orochi instead for extra magic... but then I hammered the start button and she made the KO anyway. Sometimes it feels like watching combat makes my luck worse, all the cool crits and offensive skills seem to happen only when I'm not watching.  Midori's capped strength and skill, now she needs to get speed. This is what her levels would have looked like if Setsuna was her mum! Setsuna/Kaze was another pairing I considered, the idea being that Kaze was just there to get Midori and the dragon herbs and Setsuna wouldn't mind her support partner being benched.   Mozu and Kaden have no good 2 range counter, but if they travel together they can take out enemies on player phase while being strong enough to not care about being shot at repeatedly on enemy phase. I just need the rest of my army to keep their distance so the enemies they fail to kill don't go after them.  Here come the Maligs! Thankfully the corresponding Dark Knights on the opposite side aren't moving with them. I don't think "malig" means anything besides allowing their class name to look and sound like "malignant", but it is an anagram of Ligma.    Well done Azama, you hit something I needed you to! And then immediately screwed it up afterwards. Were his wife paired up with him he'd have no trouble with accuracy, but Setsuna has better things to do.  Here's the Waterwheel in action. Huge damage, huge defense, a mildly annoying strength debuff that's not the end of the world. I was hoping for a cool bubbly effect for some reason, like Corrin's water splashes when in dragon form.  HP yet again! It's as if Mozu was sacrificing her own health for insane gains in all her other stats, and now with no more stats to gain she's getting her health back again.  Every use of the Waterwheel halves Mozu's strength until she uses it again, but thankfully it's just her base strength value that's lowered and not the buffs on top of it. A fair bit of her damage comes from pair-up bonuses, weapon rank, and Lancefaire, and halving her strength doesn't affect those.  Baiting these Wyvern Lords from so far away I could not see them on screen reminds me that this game has a map zoom in and out feature that I never once made use of. Not only is it very helpful for seeing distant enemies whose attack radius extends beyond the screen size, it also would have been a great way for me to show off large areas of the map at once!   Luring them from as far away as possible limits them to attacking with their Spear, which Rhajat can take advantage of with her Calamity Gate. Unfortunately I got greedy and tried luring both at once, entering close quarters axe hitting range of the other. Rhajat does not appreciate axes to the face with 2x WTD working against her.   Meanwhile Kaden on the other side of the map forces Malig Knights to engage him at close quarters and subequently KO themselves by standing next to a wall and limiting the areas the enemy can attack him from. There are Wyvern Lords on this side of the map too, they're just off screen.  And here comes the Entrap Strategist on the left side of the map. She might be an issue as there's a certain group of enemies I'd rather not be forced to engage with...  These three Berserkers which all rather cruelly have been given a brutal set of skills each. Each one has a different breaker, with Swordbreaker and Tomebreaker being the most likely to screw you over. They won't move until someone gets in range, but if the Strategist warps someone over near them they are going to pounce.  Mozu and Kaden don't care so much so they'll act as bait while everyone else stays behind.  But it seems the Strategist would rather attack someone than Entrap them. I think the AI in Fates might always choose attacking when it can over using a staff, but I'm not 100% sure? It definitely seems to like attacking in situations in which using a staff could potentially be much more destructive... I'm sure someone has broken down enemy AI wrt staves in Fates and posted it online somewhere.  Just to flex I'll have Setsuna OHKO her with WTD doing the exact amount of damage necessary. Pew!  The other Entrap user hasn't moved yet so Rhajat's going to edge as close as she can to her without entering her range. She's pretty much been dealing with this side of the map herself...  Ow. 14% is still 14%, and I guess that hits over 1 in 10 times! Once again I have to say that I hate fighting Berserkers, enemies that are not threatening a huge majority of the time but have a tiny chance to ruin your day are the worst.  At least she leveled up from it. That's her level capped at 20/20, but her magic is just shy of its cap. In fact the only stat of hers that does not cap at 30 or higher in this class is defense at 29. Basaras have very balanced stats!  That one unlucky hit might have cost me this attempt if Rhajat didn't dodge these slightly more accurate sword swings. Swords are annoyingly accurate and enemy Dark Knights are generally better at making use of them than your own mixed classes might be.  But with one Berserker dying against Rhajat and the other two being enticed by a ranged dual attack on Kaden, almost every single moving enemy on this map is now ready to be killed. Just one remains out of reach, and annoyingly it's the one with Entrap.   The Pursuer turns Setsuna into a glass cannon who can deal comically large amounts of damage but also really does not want to get hit by anything in return. With a good enough dual attack partner she can defeat these Berserkers before they counterattack, but that damage still scares me...  She even gets a strength level out of it! Setsuna surprisingly enough does not have a negative modifier to her strength cap, meaning she will cap it at 31. Unfortunately she's not going to be able to reach that now.   The surviving Strategist runs away to heal but is enticed back into action by the juicy lure of being able to deal 1 damage to Kaden. With her gone I can now safely deal with Garon and his bodyguards...  Who unfortunately are all squirelled away in his mighty 3 range. A combination of strong magical and physical damage plus a unit who can debuff and heal makes them fairly well rounded, and somewhat annoying to deal with.   This did not work but it would have been really funny if it did. I could have stayed here for a few turns sniping his entourage like this...   But I decided to go on the offensive instead. I was getting very bored at this point and working under the assumption that any misplay I made could be fixed with a use of the Rescue staff. This was indeed probably true, but maybe not a very good way to play the end of a chapter...   Garon calls me out on my questionable strategy and chucks a very accurate Bolverk at Mozu. It's not enough to kill her, but it's still over half of her HP.  The resulting Draconic Hex debuff leaves her weak enough that this attack from the General next to her would have been fatal without a dual guard. If you had played Birthright before Conquest you probably would have assumed Draconic Hex was a special boss skill and been very surprised to see Corrin learn it at level 5 in Conquest!  Rather uncharacteristically of an endgame boss however, Garon is just as vulnerable to having his stats dropped and eats 3 different seal skills from Mozu. That's -6 strength, defense, and speed...   Leaving him open for the kill as soon as I've defeated his flunkies. Warding Blow in Fates gives a whopping 20 extra resistance when attacking, making up for its difficulty to obtain and the relative rarity of magical attacks. This is in stark contrast to 3 Houses's Warding Blow which only gives 6 resistance and requires mastering one of the words endgame classes in the entire game to obtain.  Boo, no defense for Rinkah... I guess capping defense was a pipe dream. I'm still proud of her!   A weakened Garon is much easier to whittle down for the final shot. Who's going to be the one making it? I feel as if you already know...  It is of course Setsuna. And if Garon gets his 1% chance crit here I promise I will end the run right here and now.  He didn't. And with this arrow to the crotch Setsuna also ensured there won't be any more dragon blooded royals to harass us further.   With that final shot Setsuna caps out her level at 20/20. All hail the new Queen of Nohr!  That's part 1 down. But what wacky tricks does old Garon have up his sleeve? Which superpowered Nohrian sibling is going to go after us now? Next time: A more traditional end to a Fire Emblem game
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Mar 26, 2022 21:57
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 One last title card before the end. The few screenshots after this actually show up before this title card chronologically... It's just nicer to have these at the start of an update rather than halfway through.  Soldiers of Nohr... that I all routed before defeating Garon. I think Kevin might be speaking to a room full of corpses.   Dun dun duhhh! Of course Garon's still alive, you can't just kill a regular human and have that be the final boss of a Fire Emblem game, something weird has got to happen. Unless it's Thracia 776.   There always has to be a dragon. I just noticed, does Garon only have 1 eyeball and like 20 different eyeholes it moves between? That's even freakier than Corrin. The question is of course if Garon can do this, why can't the Nohrian siblings? Maybe his dragon blood is "purer" than theirs, maybe this transformation was bestowed on him by Anankos and does not come entirely from his own bloodline. Time to make a Birthright rewrite hack in which Elise turns into a gigantic dragon after being "killed" by Xander and eats Garon. And then maybe eats Xander too, he was being kind of a dick the entire game.  Unfortunately Kevin did not search Castle Krakenburg for the secret badge that makes the sound of a creature who's name starts with "cr" and ends in "icket" and thus takes full damage from Garon clobbering the hell out of him with his giant wing. Until I looked closely at a screenshot I thought this attack was Garon stomping with his big dragon foot. I guess this makes more sense?  There goes that cool sword Kevin just got. Narratively it feels a little strange to be given the final upgrade, immediately have it smashed, and then have it remade with the exact same stats, but I guess the devs wanted you to be able to use Blazing Yato in maps outside of the final one.   Without a weapon to fight with, Kevin's model glitches out and T-poses before ragdolling onto the ground. You should know better to try and sacrifice yourself to protect your friends when your death causes a game over!  Kevin wakes up the day after in a hospital bed. The nurse tell him he only survived thanks to an outfit transplant. Kevin asks "why isn't Jakob here?", and the nurse responds "who do you think gave you the outfit?"  But for real I do like this scene somewhat, it lands much better than the equivalent scene in Conquest where the souls of the Hoshidans you killed comforting you during your near death experience rings somewhat hollow.  As Kevin's lost siblings and allies urge him to get out of bed and go kill his dad, Garon meanwhile is menacing our allies with his all caps draconic yelling. A dragon probably would talk pretty loud but I've never liked it when games do all caps or fancy colours of text to indicate demonic speaking or any otherworldly voice or whatever during what are meant to be serious moments, it always feels a little goofy to me.   All of Kevin's friends and allies in the world of the living are here to cheer him on too. Your spouse doesn't get any special dialogue but Scarlet getting to say the name of her husband makes what she says here not seem out of place like some dialogue can.   Azama is either trolling or confirming that Kevin is going to live past the age of 90. That's pretty impressive for medieval times! Or maybe dragons just live long.  I wonder, what if Garon had showed up here? Takumi speaks to you in the afterlife in Conquest on account of his spirit having died despite his body still living, the same could happen for Garon. Of course Birthright wants to be deliberately cagey about the whole Garon situation to make you buy Conquest, but getting to see at least a glimpse of his true self would give him some characterisation he desparately needs...  The afterlife tour concludes and Kevin comes to the realisation that the world still needs him. Not just his allies in battle, but all the Youtubers who need royalty free music for their videos. Not even Garon can DMCA him!   Kevin doesn't need the Yato, he's filled with so much power now he can block attacks with his bare shoulder. This I think might be a consequence of him not being in a class that can use swords, normally Corrin would block with their sword.  Here's the final map! It is a gigantic mess of assorted enemies with the boss in attack range right from the get go. Not all of my units can reach Garon from where they're standing, but by putting high moves units at the front and using Rescue or Azura to ferry your slower units from the back you can get plenty of hits on Garon before the turn ends. Of course my ruleset forbids me from using her...  Garon might have higher stats than his human self, but the lack of a throne to sit on or a weapon to potentially give him WTA against your best attackers makes hitting him much easier. Otherwise he's basically the same deal, although his weapon only has 1-2 range rather than Bolverk's 1-3. Despite having 6 movement, Garon will not move to initiate combat until turn 11. He will start moving to activate dragon veins starting from turn 4, but even that is more than enough time to kill him. I guess you could theoretically camp outside of his range and attack him with Spy weapons... But with all the other enemies trying to kill you I don't think that counts as a cheese strat.  Each dragon vein corresponds to one quarter of the map. On turns 4, 6, 8, and 10 Garon will activate one, covering the area in terrain that will damage all units (his allies included) for 10 HP and recovering 10% of the total damage he caused. This would be an incredibly scary and frustrating gimmick were Garon tougher to take down, but as it stands it's far easier to rush him on turn 1 than it is to survive against the huge number of enemies you will have to face in this map. It is hard to imagine a situation in which you are both too weak to take him down quickly while also capable of surviving against all these foes for multiple turns. Especially considering the infinite number of reinforcements... On Hard and Normal there are signficantly less enemies and the reinforcements will stop eventually, so if you want to wait out the dragon veins it's much more pratical to do it there.     Look at all this! This is way too much to try and deal with. They won't all rush you at once, but they will move as soon as you enter their range, and it's the far moving mounted enemies who will start moving of their own accord first. Not to mention the Stoneborn who can bypass your defensive chokepoints with their ranged weapons...  My original plan was to try to hold out until turn 5 so I could show off Garon using a dragon vein, but my lack of tonics makes that even more of a daunting prospect. I did swap the game to Casual just before this so I could make map saves to try over and over without needing to replay Chapter 27, but in the end I decided it just wasn't worth it. The enemy types are so mixed up than unlike past maps it's too difficult to make sure my juggernauts are only fighting enemies they can defeat, and these enemies are uncharacteristically strong by Birthright standards at level 18. The best way to have done this probably would have been holing up in that little corridor behind my starting position to create a chokepoint. Unfortunately that would put me even further away from Garon while also requiring me to undeploy a few of my squishier units to have room to keep everyone safe, which would make the eventual boss kill much harder... A version of this chapter in which Garon were stronger and the enemies were weaker and in smaller numbers would imo be a much better way to have made this dragon vein gimmick matter, but as it stands the best way to do things is with a turn 1 kill.  Yukimura will be making his first and last appearence to boost everybody's accuracy a little. Unfortunately I don't think his personal skill works on status staves! This will be relevant later.  That won't be necessary, for Kevin has his own song, and it's more powerful than any other! I'm fed up of Ocean's Grey Waves.  Anankos disappears anyone who speaks the name Valla... That's kind of like a DMCA claim. That power won't help you against Kevin!  Forget Blazing Yato, here is Garon's true weakness: the Hexing Rod. Unlike bosses from other routes Garon lacks the Immune Status skill, and not being on a throne means he's not got the super high avoid that makes most other bosses hard to hit with staves. The Hexing Rod is unfortunately quite inaccurate and needs a B rank in staves to be used, but I've got 3 different units who can make a shot with it. And if they all miss there's always battle saves...  Shot one is unfortunately a miss. That's okay, we can try again!   Nope. If Azura were here she could have sang for Kevin so he could try again, boosting his accuracy with Inspiring Song in the process. I do at least have one more shot...  If only Mitama could have somehow gained those stats before using the staff. High level status staves are quite good for EXP!  Countermagic is like Counter but with magic. You'd think that Counter would counter physical attacks and Countermagic would counter magical attacks, but regular Counter counters anything from 1 range regardless of damage type. I guess physical damage is much more common...   Then I realised that what I should be doing is debuffing Garon's speed with Mozu first to make him an easier target. I'm fairly sure speed is factored into staff avoid in this game anyway. She can't reach him on her own, but Cordelia with the Rescue staff brings her over.  Annoyingly enough she was a single point of speed away from a double. A tonic or a better suppot partner would have fixed this, but all I needed her to do was debuff him.  Now he's looking a lot less scary! You could also do this with knives, although Dragonskin does make Garon immune to Poison Strike.   Third time's the charm. Halving Garon's max HP is effectively the same as slapping 40 damage on him at once... Unfortunately the damage Mozu did will be invalidated by this, but it doesn't matter. She was just there to slow him down a little.  There is of course only one way this could end. Don't make that face, Setsuna! I've done the calculations necessary and you will survive within an inch of your life.  What an absurdly huge bow. What's going on with the decal on the top there? That looks very unwieldy.   Even Mozu's styling on Garon right before the end. Thanks to Dragonskin critical hits only receive a 1.5x multiplier, so Mozu can only turn her 4 damage into 6.  There's the counterattack. Garon's attacks might look different depending on what range he attacks from, but I'm pretty sure both his 1 and 2 range attacks deal physical damage.   And there he goes. Setsuna KO'd the boss when his HP was full... What an OP unit!  It's not so impressive, people have killed the final bosses of these games with a completely untrained Mozu. But it's still pretty neat.   Yeah, why didn't you kill Kevin when he was a helpless baby? That's totally a cartoon villain thing to do!  So that was the plan all along. Wouldn't have worked if Garon had killed Kevin all the way back in Chapter 2 for refusing to kill some prisoners like he had originally wanted! I find it hard to believe this Garon was capable of any long term planning such as this.    Dropping one final hint that you should really buy the other routes, Garon turns into bubbles and vanishes. Now the carpet's all wet!  All this game's writing is delirious ramblings, Kevin. I wouldn't worry about it. With that I'll leave this update here. Like my last LP I'll lump the epilogue and my final thoughts all into one last update... But for now a cheesy 1 turn clear feels fitting for what I'll admit was a very low effort casual sort of LP.
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Mar 28, 2022 21:40
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I don't think I've ever not one-turned this map with the Hexing Rod. The thought of dealing with that meatgrinder is awful.
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Mar 28, 2022 22:11
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My thoughts on this update also work for the lp as a whole: Sorry Azura, Kevin's song was way better.
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Mar 29, 2022 00:05
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 Even though I have already established that Garon was defeated by the power of Who Likes To Party and not Azura singing anything, she still appears to be suffering the effects of too much Ocean's Grey Waves. Kevin's right, she's not looking good here... her hair's clipping badly through her outfit! Considering she's a main character and this outfit is designed specifically for her you'd think more care would have been made to make Azura's hair not clip through it so much, but I guess it's probably quite difficult to avoid that when her hair is huge and modelled as a single solid object.  Azura sings as a solution to basically everything in Birthright and the adverse affects of the song on her are shown off very earily in the story, so Azura's death here does not come as a surprise... And yet the exact same thing happens in Conquest despite her only ever singing twice. I guess they didn't want the Conquest route to feel "better" by having Azura live at the end of it? Got to get the hardcore Azura fan money by having her only live at the end of the route you have to buy separately.   RIP Azura, I don't particularly care for you as a character but you would have been a way more interesting Smash Bros character than Corrin. I wonder if her disappearing like this is linked to the Valla curse? Azura doesn't outright say the world Valla so she doesn't instantly disappear, but maybe the song she sings kind of toes the line and after enough prophetic plot spoiling the curse pulls the plug on her. Although I think it's her magic pendant that's doing this and not the actual lyrics of Ocean's Grey Waves.  And then Azura turned into water and it started snowing in Nohr's capital, and all the Nohrians learned the true meaning of Christmas. Hooray! That's 3 deaths of people we care about that vs 2 out of nowhere ones that were too baffling to be tragic, so I guess it more than balances out in the end. I think it was 2 anyway. Flora, Lilith... Am I forgetting someone? I honestly can't remember, I swear there was someone else...   Flash forward to some point in the future and Ryoma's being coronated as king. Does Hoshido stand for any of those things? I mean sure this game paints Hoshido in a much more positive light than Nohr (literally), but Hoshido's apathy to the weaker nations surrounding it and the lack of social mobility in its society are some of the few flaws we do get to see.  I guess Ryoma will be riding the coattails of this victory forever. He didn't even do anything! I think Setsuna should be queen, she would make a good ruler. And if she ever gets possessed by Anankos she'll probably end up getting stuck in a pitfall so she'll be no harm to anyone.  Camilla and Leo are here too. Who's running Nohr while they're away? Iago was Garon's advisor and presumably the person who'd run things while he's not there, but he sucks and we killed him. I can't think of any Nohrian equivalant to Yukimura who would be running the place right now...   Looks like Leo's going to be the new king. It's probably for the best. Camilla has way too much childhood trauma that Anankos could mess with... Leo's just got his inferioirty complex, and now his older brother is dead and his other adoptive older brother doesn't have to live with him. He'll be fine!  Or maybe Anankos has taken route already and in a few years time there's going to be an even bigger and nastier war. Could you just sit on that throne for a sec? With a regular screening process in place I think we can keep this place same from draconic possession for years to come.  Peace reigns forever and everybody dances. Hooray! What a good oppurtunity to listen to Who Likes To Party a third time because I can't think of anything else. This feels somewhat out of character for Hinoka to say, but at the same time I don't think I have a particularly good read on what her personality even is. Didn't I say something about not knowing enough about Hinoka's personality to judge her during the epilogue of my Conquest LP too? I even talked about the prospect of Leo or Camilla being possessed by Anankos... Oh no, I'm stagnating!  Thank you my beloved birth family that I never found out I'm not actually related to on account of never trying to marry them. Let us enjoy this incredibly flimsy peace together and try not to think about all these dangling plot threads that only ever get resolved in the other routes. Who cares about them though, they didn't do anything. Let's have a look at the real heroes of Hoshido!  I can't believe that out of all the second gen units I picked up, Selkie was the only one I didn't use. She deserved better! Unfortunately there just wasn't any place for her on my team... At least that 0 kill count means her innocence will forever remain unspoiled.  Kana's ending is sweet. I never really liked them as much as Morgan, but the idea of a dedicated Manakete unit is at least a fun one. I feel as if they made Kana too medicore in response to how incredibly good Morgan could be... If Fates had any real postgame at all then at least Kana's potential for super minmaxed stat caps would mean something.  I think this was the best Mitama I've ever had, and it came from who I thought would be her worst parent. A shame I had to recruit her so late to take advantage of Bowfaire!  There's the pickle mention. This title must be extremely confusing if like me you managed to avoid a single pickle reference in all of the Hisame supports you saw. I don't think Hinata has any right to be disappointed in anyone considering his own combat stats, but maybe he just wanted to live vicariously through his son.  Considering she killed 52 people already then Midori's medical achievements must have been really impressive, assuming lives ended cancel out lives saved. Every child with Mozu as a mum except maybe magical ones like Forrest will end up great no matter what, but this Midori felt especially good. If only she could have taken some physical defense boosters! Incidentally, the only kids I have not shown off in Fates now are Ryoma, Takumi, and Saizo's children. I may as well give my opinions of them while I'm here... Shiro is a Spear Fighter who's very strong and bulky by Birthright standards, although he's infamous for dying on turn 1 of his paralogue if you attempt it late enough, forcing you to burn at least one Rescue to save him from himself. He's not bad at all but without Rajinto he pales in comparison to his father, even if he's not using the same types of weapon as him. He's got a way better personality though, I think besides Mitama and maybe Selkie he's my favourite Hoshidan second gen. Kiragi is Takumi but with better stats in exchange for no Fujin Yumi. He's also much more well adjusted than his father, but that's because Takumi raised him well as opposed to Shiro who turned out well because Ryoma didn't raise him at all. Being good with kids is one of Takumi's established personality traits. Asugi is Gaius from Awakening except blander, which is ironic considering his sugar obsession. He's got the same super high growth total as Saizo except with an even higher focus on magic and more speed in exchange for less bulk. His magic growth is actually higher than his strength growth, although if his mother had poor magic you might not realise it. He'd probably make a good Butler if Saizo married Sakura?  I remember Hayato! He was a disappointment up until he wasn't, but I still benched him anyway. It's a shame that Rhajat did not get any cool powers as the child of both the Ice and Wind tribes.  This is a strange epilogue for Caeldori... Rather than having a Chrom obsession like Cordelia, Caeldori instead has a love for cheesy romance stories which she's somewhat embarrassed about. Which blue haired lord did Caeldori have a crush on then? Azura???  Rhajat pioneered a new social trend where you adopt a spooky aesthetic, dress in all black, and listen exclusively to royalty-free music. As odd as it is I think I'm a big fan of this colour hair for her, it makes a nice contrast.  These two defeated a lot more enemies between them than I had thought. I was looking forward to showing off Bolt Naginata Subaki, but his daughter did it much better than he could. I'm still on the fence as to whether or not bencing Orochi was a good idea.  Now hold on a second, Scarlet deserves better than this! She was the leader of a revolution!!! ...a revolution she abandoned and left surrounded by enemies in order to join up with another country's army. Okay maybe this is the nicest thing history has to say about her.  Rumours say that Azama got his act together out of fear of his incredibly strong dragon-slaying wife. I'm actually a big fan of Setsuna's unpaired ending - "After the war, Setsuna returned to her post and never left Hinoka's side. Scholars agree that while she didn't accomplish any great works, she nonetheless led a happy and fulfilled life." So many character endings have them either be hailed as a legendary hero or disappear forever, but this one is somehow pleasantly normal? Not really achieving anything but being happy and fulfilled nonetheless is a pretty good life to aspire to I think.  Mozu deserves better than being in the footnotes of a guy who might not have even existed according to history. I'd like to think all the devastation she caused on the battlefield scared royals across the world into treating the peasantry with more respect... Or that she staged a coup and ruled the world with Setsuna.  But in the end the final title card goes to the unit that defeated an entire map by himself and the unit that carried me through the first few chapters when I had no Corrin to rely on for combat. Setsuna and Mozu may have upstaged her, but in a way I think this was Rinkah's LP.  Yeah that's it. I'm bad at endings but I feel the need to say something. Hmm... I guess as much fun as I had, this LP was a bit of a mess? Doing this was very much an impulse decision I made right after finishing up Conquest, and unlike that LP I feel like I had less of a clear direction I wanted it to go in. I don't think I'll upload it to the LP Archive or anything. In the end it was a silly low effort romp and I think that's fine. Birthright is also just a game I enjoy a lot less in general, you could probably tell when I reached the second half of the game and most of my map commentary became "this map isn't very good but the ones soon after will be better", and then the better maps never really came. Still though, as questionable as Birthright's map design and character balance is, it's built upon the solid foundations of Fates's core mechanics that I really like. Revelation on the other hand does not manage to be fun in spite of those issues, and that's why I have decided I am not going to LP it, at least not in the near future. I have the basic idea for a Revelation LP - download the Gay Fates patch, leave pairings up to audience vote, and allow myself a little bit of grinding to ensure that over 50% of the cast is not unusable and a chore to force myself to use. I'm sure that's a concept someone could have fun with, just not me! But it's no coincidence that Revelation is one of the few FE games that as far as I am aware has never seen a completed LP here. One other game I don't think has a finished LP is Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. It deserves enough of one that I did think about playing it too, but at the end of the day it's a game where like 90% of the appeal is the excellent presentation and quality of writing, and doing it justice would require far more effort than I'd be willing to put in. Hell I don't even think an exhaustive screenshot LP would do it quite right either, it's the voice acting that really carries the game for me. So while the concept of a contration Echoes LP where I show off Boey's huge potential, demonstrate the power of Clive in Act 3, and maybe even not go with the standard Mage Archer Mercenary core with the Ram villagers would be fun, I don't think I'll ever do it. LPing Fire Emblem is tons of fun though. Maybe I'll be back soon. I do have a new idea in mind...  byeeeee
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Mar 31, 2022 12:07
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midnight lasagna posted:I guess as much fun as I had, this LP was a bit of a mess? Doing this was very much an impulse decision I made right after finishing up Conquest, and unlike that LP I feel like I had less of a clear direction I wanted it to go in. I don't think I'll upload it to the LP Archive or anything. Don't you dare, this deserves to be kept for eternity. Where else will we find someone that actually used Setsuna to this extent? Do you want to disappoint her, midnight lasagna? Anyways this was a fun LP! It sure let me see units I didn't use myself at all and the concept of a useless Corrin is hilarious. I genuinely feel both this and the Conquest LP deserve to be kept in the LP Archive.
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Mar 31, 2022 14:23
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Thanks for the LP! It was a cool idea, and I don't blame you for resorting to juggernauting by the end, even though the idea of the LP seemed to suggest relying less on a few powerhouse units--I did a Birthright lunatic run recently, and juggernauting really seems to be the only way to beat most of the lategame maps.
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Mar 31, 2022 14:26
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This was a great LP, thank you!
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Mar 31, 2022 15:03
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We fed Setsuna, mission accomplished!
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Mar 31, 2022 16:43
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midnight lasagna posted:LPing Fire Emblem is tons of fun though. Maybe I'll be back soon. I do have a new idea in mind...
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Mar 31, 2022 18:17
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That was fun. Birthright kind of sucks even if I do like the characters. See you in Revelation. 
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Mar 31, 2022 18:51
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Thanks for the LP.
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Mar 31, 2022 19:25
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Thanks for the LP! This is the only time I've really had a look at Birthright at all and it was definitely interesting to see how, uh. kinda-hypocritical it ended up being. 
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Mar 31, 2022 21:12
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can't wait for the Revelation LP
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Mar 31, 2022 23:35
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You guys, they said they weren't doing revelation. It's not like they said that about birthright last lp... Seriously though, it's revelation. That is a whole other ball game compared to changing their mind
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Apr 1, 2022 00:18
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Put the LP in the archives, punk.
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Apr 1, 2022 00:19
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So what's wrong with Revelation anyways? I kind of got burnt out on Fates because Birthright was so crappy, but from what everyone is saying, Revelation is the worst of the three? That.... seems like an accomplishment considering how the quality of the game can just change really suddenly even on the same route. I appreciate Conquest and all, but with it being so experimental it gets some really lovely maps on top of the good ones. But I can forgive failure based on experimentation at least. So it makes me slightly sad that Conquest is apparently the only good path, considering that it's really flawed still.
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Apr 1, 2022 09:17
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Thank you everyone! I will not be doing a Revelation LP next even though it would be extremely funny for me to start one right now on April 1st. The idea isn't off the table and I might do one eventually, but as of now I'm very burned out on Fates... Or at least I'm burned out on Fates LPs. I might be replaying Conquest right now... Honestly the biggest reason I didn't want to put this on the archive was that organising everything and getting all the links together would be a huge pain. My Conquest LP is up already, but I only managed to get it uploaded halfway through this one and I realised the way I'd organised my updates didn't mesh particularly well with how the LP archive handles pages of contents. I think I will put this on the archive eventually, it'll just be a slow process of me building a list of links whenever I feel like it. It's not a herculean task or anything, I just don't like organising and editing things I've already made because I'm lazy. Keldulas posted:So what's wrong with Revelation anyways? I kind of got burnt out on Fates because Birthright was so crappy, but from what everyone is saying, Revelation is the worst of the three? That.... seems like an accomplishment considering how the quality of the game can just change really suddenly even on the same route. For me it's a combination of 3 things. The unit balance is absolutely atrocious, with large amounts of the cast joining relatively late at very low levels. For example you've got Nyx and Shura who both join in Chapter 15, with their join stats and level taken from Conquest and Birthright respectively... meaning Nyx joins halfway through the game at level 9 while at the same time Shura joins at level 10 promoted. Hana joins one chapter later than in Birthright at the exact same level and for some reason has less strength and skill than she does there, and is incapable of hurting the axe units she has WTA against in her joining chapter. Odin shows up at level 12 in Chapter 17... There are a lot of characters who are extremely hard to use without grinding or slowing yourself down massively to feed them multiple kills in later chapters. The unit distribution is also pretty dire, with almost the entire cast of Birthright joining before you get a single Nohrian. The early few maps all take place in Hoshido too, so the game feels like a retread of Birthright for the first half. You spend a significant amount of the game with Corrin as your only decent combat unit unless you grind, so you'll end up giving a lot of your kills to one very overleveled unit who barely gets any EXP from any of them. 6 of the game's Nohrians join in Chapter 17 (the final chapter in the game before you've recruited everyone), and all of them besides Xander and Leo are underleveled and difficult to use. The maps are the biggest part though. I feel like "experimental" is a pretty good way to describe a lot of Fates's maps, but Revelation's are far more experiemental than the other two and I don't think the experiment succeeded. Nearly every single map has a gimmick, but the gimmicks are only ever either obtrusive or completely pointless, and so many of them rely on dragon veins that not having royals deployed makes them incredibly tedious. Shoutouts to Conquest's wind map except it's right at the start of the game where you barely have barely any interesting classes or skills or staves to deal with the wind gimmick and Corrin is most likely your only combat capable unit, the ice-breaking Izumo map where the entire map is covered in breakable walls that have enemies hiding inside of them you can only see until they're revealed, and you're only allowed to deploy 6 units so if you don't want to get ambushed you have to play extremely slowly, and various mid/lategame maps in which your only method of transport is very slow moving platforms or bridges that have to be manipulated by dragon veins. Basically all the complaints people might have about Birthright or Conquest (the royals are too centralising, the maps are sometimes too gimmicky/restrictive, some units aren't very good compared to others, the story makes no sense) amplified to an extreme. The game is not completely unenjoyable and if you like the characters or the core gameplay mechanics of Fates you can absolutely have fun with it, but it does feel very much like a rushed product that was not playtested and refined nearly as much as it should have been. I can imagine a hack where you fix the unit balance a little and edit some of the join times (Elise and her retainers join in Izumo, for example?) could go a long way, but you'd still have the questionable map design regardless.
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Apr 1, 2022 12:35
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Yeah that description completely destroys any possible interest I could ever have to play Revelation. Thanks for the summary and the LP as a whole, it was a good ride.
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Apr 3, 2022 09:28
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Revelations iirc suffers from a bunch of brand new people being thrown to the wolves to make its maps and…man, people might rightfully bitch about Fuga’s Wild Ride or the pacing of FE4 maps, but I think the map where you slowly shovel snow by attacking it and also you have like five deployment slots, and ALSO there’s hidden swag in the snow so you’re punished for beelining the boss, is a series low.
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Apr 6, 2022 15:38
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Last Celebration posted:Revelations iirc suffers from a bunch of brand new people being thrown to the wolves to make its maps and…man, people might rightfully bitch about Fuga’s Wild Ride or the pacing of FE4 maps, but I think the map where you slowly shovel snow by attacking it and also you have like five deployment slots, and ALSO there’s hidden swag in the snow so you’re punished for beelining the boss, is a series low. That said Rev also makes you do Fuga's Wild Ride super early and gently caress that map. In short, Revelation is a land of contrasts.
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Apr 6, 2022 16:45
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I feel like I would enjoy the snow map if they let you deploy twice as many units? A big problem with the map is that if you reveal a large amount of enemies too late in your turn then you won't have enough units left to react to them, which forces you to play very slowly and carefully if you don't know where the enemies are hiding in advance. The core map concept is still dumb and bad but at the same time there is something nice about smashing terrain to reveal goodies inside, it's like opening an advent calendar.
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Apr 6, 2022 17:42
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It also includes the line "Fire the ice bomb!" which is amazingly dumb, but endearingly so 
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Apr 6, 2022 18:04
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yeah the deployment limit in that map is ridiculously small and makes it take way too long to complete even if you don't want to collect everything Revelation is supposed to be the 'true story' that reveals everything but the map design and when they give you units feel like an afterthought. Here's all the gimmicks we couldn't fit in the other 2 games! Also we're killing off some characters for no reason other than uhh we need some people to die. for drama i guess
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Apr 7, 2022 19:42
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Given what keeps happening to Lilith, it's not like they have any idea as to how to make a meaningful death scene.
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Apr 7, 2022 20:47
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So I actually bought Revelation when it came out but never got around to playing it, do you think I'm better off taking the L on that one or is it worth a playthrough if I feel like playing FE e: I really enjoy all the gimmick maps in Conquest fwiw
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Apr 8, 2022 00:40
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I'd say play it once for The Experience™ (and some of the cross-faction supports are actually pretty good!) It really wears on you if you try to play it multiple times but once should let you get an appreciation for it, good and bad.
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Apr 8, 2022 01:16
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It's fun as a sandbox to play around with weird classes for your units and such. Also you can make Selena give birth to her own mother.
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Apr 8, 2022 01:57
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It's not atrocious, but play on, like, Hard/Casual so when you inevitably get tired of the gimmicks, you can use Necessary Sacrifices to speed through them. And don't get obsessed with marrying everyone and doing all the kid ludes and getting them all cool skillsets cause you'll never use them, dammit.
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Apr 8, 2022 05:08
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I would say it's worth playing if you've already bought it. At the very least play up until the end of Chapter 17 so you can recruit everyone besides the My Castle exclusives, if you're not having fun by that point then it's probably not worth playing the rest of it. Revelation's a lot easier than Conquest but the enemy stats are significantly higher than any other route on any difficulty besides Normal. If you just want to mess around with fun pairings and classes and not worryabout being optimal (which is by far the best way to enjoy rev imo, playing optimally just involves cheesing everything with the royals and is boring) I would play on the easiest difficulty so all the bad units the game gives have an easier time catching up with the rest.
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Apr 8, 2022 11:12
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