Friday, April 6, 2012

1-4: In which filler happens and the story isn't dumb

Chapter 1-4: Praise Anna!



... What that's it? You're just going to drop me in the base right away? Ok, not going to argue with that. Let's fiddle around before our next battle

We sell of some used herbs, the door key and a vulnerary. and pick up a Hand-Axe for Nolan, a Javelin for Aran and a Mend for Laura. We also finally trade Leo the steel bow I forgot to give him all last mission. Edward also sells his 18 use Iron Sword and picks up a new one.

BEXP Time! Micaiah, Leo, Edward, Nolan and Laura are all brought up to 99 EXP, and Alan gets the remainder. He also gets discipline for the map.



Nolan + Edward C Support is the only support we have. I could have made 2 supports because both Leo and Laura support with Nolan and Edward, but not each other. but hey I've screwed myself over in the past. I feel like I should drop a massive complaint about the support system and no conversations but... well we all know the complaint, Hands up who was honestly satisfied with what we got? No one. I mean the system is fine, but no support conversations? seriously? Also I'll be capping all Derpy combinations we run into during this LP. Am I missing something here...



Oh right got the info conversations, Kurth seems to want to speak so lets see whats up.



Kurths just been hanging on the fringe edge of town and thinking, he finds the desert mesmerizing and when Micaiah asks why, he states that he's never left his home before, so he's never seen anything outside of it.



He asks why Micaiah hasn't asked him anything about himself, who he is or where he's from, no one has asked about who he is. Micaiah says that he obviously doesn't want to talk about himself, and that many of them desire privacy, she's of course referring to her own situation with the brand because I'm not sure Nolan/Edward/Leonardo have enough character to have something to hide.



Overall I like that info conversation,Next up is Merchants which isn't worth a screenshot

MERCHANTS SUMMARIZED: Aimee's the Item shop, Muston's the weapon shop, Aimee sells bargain items.

Then we have More Merchants with the wonder twins and

MORE MERCHANTS SUMMARIZED: Jorge buys our shit, Selling him weapons unlocks new tiers of weapons for Daniels Forge

We still have one more conversation Though, in town.



Micaiah can tell someones following them, this isn't her empathy (Micaiah Power Count is at 3 by the by) but just that the person following them is absolutely terrible in every conceivable way. Her and Sothe notice that she isn't hostile



Oh don't worry, I don't think she could conceivably harm anyone Micaiah. Regardless having a Rogue and an Empath around makes catching her very easy. Then again having a sharp stick and a ball of Yarn would make her easy to catch.


Gah! a hideous she-demon!

Everyone give a round of applause to Meg, She's a Sword Armor who's specced like a Myrmidon coming at level 3, which is 1 level above Laura, who can only level up through Healplz. Micaiah introduces herself and Sothe, and Sothe has to remind her that they are still ON THE RUN. Much like the Laura situation however Micaiah's pretty firm on the whole "Meh, she's cool". Then again as previously stated, Meg couldn't hurt a fly. Anyway she's out here searching for her husband to be.



Lady, if a man is escaping into the DESERT to not be with you, I think you're officially a stalker. Also you don't have nearly enough fur to excite your husband-to-be.



Micaiah isn't asking her along because he thinks they can help one another mind you. She just finds it funny to see a fat girl get mauled. Anyway we've recruited Meg to our team and I can just predict you guys making me bring her along once unit choices become available.



Ah, she's come down from her high then and the auditory hallucinations are settling in. Anyway Nolan warns the rest of the Dawn Brigade To be on guard, apparently our newest recruit is being hazed by Laura and Aran so I can't just throw he into every conceivable possible trap and see if it springs.



Sothe figures the ruins were made by the Laguz and then proceeds to explain what the Laguz are. If he was being used in this chapter we still wouldn't have brought him the Beast Killer dagger that was on sale, since he can ORKO Tigers quite easily, Oh yes. We're fighting laguz this chapter.



Apparently Sothe was a racist against Laguz, this is news to me because Sothe never once mentions the word Sub-Human during Path of Radiance. It's not that this so much annoys me as I am left wondering something else. Why do Edward, Nolan and Leonardo apparently feel nothing about Laguz. During their supports (LOLSUPPORT SYSTEM) they react no differently to the Laguz, even when Muarim and Vika show up they don't change their attitudes or have a talk conversation. They are all native Daeins, and Jill explains that children were taught to hate and despise the Laguz, and to even hunt them periodically. I realize that asking about character background in Radiant Dawn is akin to honestly believing in Santa Claus, but after Jill, Shinon and Soren, you think they would have included a single talk topic.

Meh.

Anyway, Sothe mentions that he got over it thanks to Ike's influence which upsets Micaiah because it's related to Ike.



There are Mutually exclusive things now? Well I guess Ike is kind of a dunce but he's pretty funny when he wants to be... in Path of Radiance that is, but we're still a ways off from Part 3. One group of meat shields at a time. Micaiah goes on to list that she knows Ike was a good MentorFatherBrother to Ike, but to her he's the enemy. Because he's the one who let it be possible for Begnions occupation. I understand these feelings, though it is funny seeing Micaiah get her panties in a twist whenever Sothe brings him up.

Regardless Micaiah senses something up ahead and she walks ahead to find...



Fucking Jackpot. Sothe wonders if Micaiah wasn't being guided so they can go and grab a shittonne of treasure when we're interrupted by a voice.



Hey look it's Maggie and Rose I mean Jasmine and Paul PAIN AND AGONY... wait seriously? that's what we're going with? Anyway Sothe realizes we're fighting walking mounds of EXP and tells Micaiah to give the signal



She raises her hand, does that light flash from the opening cinema and...



HOW DID WE WIND UP FUCKING SURROUNDED?! Also how does a flash of light serve as an effective signal under ground unless it's meant to emit a large sound? anyway it's time to deploy and kickass. Here's our lineup.




TURN 1
.

First things first we'll send Ilyana to the south to weaken that Tiger with Thunder, and Aran follows after to clean up the kill



Leo snipes through the wall at another tiger with his new fangled bow for yet another level.



Feeling blessed Leo? either way Nolan spots a cat and charges down axe in hand.



Pretty Res blessed there Nolan? anyway after a few actions here's the formation on Turn-1.



I was trying to get the Coin pick-up through luck and not have Sothe delayed, unfortunately I wasn't lucking out and it wound up costing me more turns, I didn't reset because... well... Praise Anna!

TURN 2.

Ilyana zaps yet another Tiger and manages to level herself up, So shall we praise Anna again?



Ilyana!

Damn it woman! Well thankfully that's the only shitty level we get this run. Except for that time Micaiah got the exact same level THAT NEVER HAPPENED!



Meg comes up and finishes off the Tiger, no level but we do give her a mild round of applause for not dying to a stiff breeze. Leo keeps sniping the Tiger for easy experience and it's time for this chapters MVP to make his appearance.



Edward hits twice with the Wind Edge and gets a damn good level, this is a common occurrence through the map to the point that even his 'Bad' Levels make him more of a killing machine .Laura comes in to heal the HP Growth difference and-



Hot damn woman you can level. On the Enemy Phase the Tiger attacks Edward and Edward wrecks his shit with a Wrath Powered Critical



Turn 3.



Ilyana moves to the right and weakens a third tiger for the chapter, meg then moves down and slices it to pieces allowing Aran to move in and kill the Cat for a level.



PRAISE ANNA! and have you spotted our conundrum? Edward can't kill the Tiger without eating the counter, if he eats the counter he dies so we need to weaken the tiger while healing Edward. So how do we go about doing this?



Step 1. Micaiah Pushes Edward, with him out of the way, Leonardo is free to weaken the Tiger.



Step 2. Leonardo chips the Tiger. With that, Edward can ORKO, but he still needs the HP to face the next turn.



Step 3. Laura heals Edward. This way if there are anymore enemies with bright ideas to attack the MVP, He'll be able to survive the attack and counter. Which of course leaves us with one last step




Step 4. Edward kills the Tiger. and invalidates all my careful planning by critting anyway.



Edward then has to heave his massive balls over to fight Agony, who just noticed that Edwards been killing all his guys, Edward dodges his attack anyway (again, invalidating all my planning) and decides it's time to level up again.



Anna, the goddess of RNG, smiles upon me.

TURN 4.

On Turn 4 Edward attacks Agony again and eats the counter hit, and we wind up having to play another shoving game. Leonardo snipes at Agony, putting him in the kill zone, Micaiah shoves Leo out of the way so Laura can move in and heals Edward.



Everyone else simply moved towards their respective spots, That choke point to the right went to Aran, and Sothe moved along the left as I hoped to pick up Beastfoe early. Lets just say I kinda screwed myself in getting the 10 Turn count and all the treasure because of this and something else.

On the enemy phase, Agony goes for Edward and-




-Gets his shit absolutely wrecked. That's one boss down, and you may have realized why I failed to hit the turn count. I only attacked transformed Laguz unless I wouldn't kill them. needless to say I was ALWAYS ORKOing the untransformed Laguz. Unfortunatly EXP meant more than BEXP and Laguz are a damn fine source.

Turn 6.

Micaiah takes over Leonardo's old sniping hole and Thani's a Tiger, this is her first action in the stage to EARN EXPERIENCE to my surprise (and considering she's one of the lower leveled characters I'm not sure why)



Eh, it's decen, I've kind of been spoiled by Anna to really appreciate it.



Leo snipe-kills a Tiger for a level to put Micaiah to shame, and then it's Edwards turn to bat with a different one.



An average level that makes him more dodgy and critty, I find it hard to complain. Also you may have noticed that Nolan isn't anywhere near Edward despite the fact that I supported them together, clearly I'm a brain trust!



Here's the map on Turn 6, Nolan was trying to find a coin but failed, Sothe's path got cut off so he doubled back and just grabbed the coin, and was heading for the Master Crown. Aran is tanking a cat like a boss so he decides to Javelin Pain and see the results.




The results kick ass and we Praise Anna again.

Turn 7.



Nolan moves close to Edward to FINALLY begin benefiting from their support, and various characters are moved around, Sothe aims for more treasure, and Leonardo remembers "Oh shit! I have the Chest Keys still and heads off with him, Megs there to... Meg at things? On the enemy phase we get reinforcements and a Cat tries to step up to Edward the Laguz Slayer.



She just makes him MORE deadly! Pain however moves in on Aran and he's not... quite up to snuff of taking a Tiger Boss yet. The tiger from the south moves to engage Nolan, but he handles it like an expert.

Turn 8.

Nolan finishes his Tiger and gets healed by Laura, Edward moves north east hoping to secure the treasure chest (with his non-existant treasure keys) and nothing much else happens besides Aran necking a Vulnerary to survive pains next onslaught. Micaiah Also Thani's Pain (?)

I'm a little confused, my screenshots show Micaiah able to move with Pains death on Turn 9, which means she must have Thani'ed on Turn 8, but why didn't I just kill Pain then? probably didn't want to risk it or I already had Aran neck the Vulnerary.

Turn 9-11. The reason for the name 9-11 is I've lost track of where we are in the screens until turn 12, I'm missing quite a few actions

Nolan and Edward get their Derps on



And Sothe grabs the Northern Chest in no way making it to the Seraph Robe in time for the Turn limit. Aran's had enough of the bosses shit and rams an Iron Lance through... it's throat.




Perfectly serviceable level. Micaiah, uses Sacrifice to make Aran more hardy, And everyone else just moves. On the enemy Phase another Tiger goes after Aran and suffers a hit.



Micaiah Thani's the Tiger for a kickass level, Meg turns her attention to the Cat near her and Leonardo and decides to attempt to earn favor by attempting to kill it.



Praise Anna Meg, it dies by the way and Leo caps it between the eyes

Turn 12-15.

God wow was that a confusing (kinda) rush, this is the end of Turn 12 though



Well Can anyone see the problem here? On one side we have Sothe, the only one who can open chests, and standing in his was is an untransformed cat, and due to my neverending intelligence, I decide to focus fire and kill the transformed cat first.

This leads to 2 turns of Edward baiting the cat without a weapon, all so it would get out of the way. and now on Turn 15



This would be particularly cute until you remember that Micaiah will say this to anyone, even someone she met in 4-E-1. Then you realize why it's so derp.
Anouleth pointed out correctly that this is actually a Semi-Unique support response from Micaiah.

Sothe grabs the robe, Nolan kills the cat and gets the final level up of the map



Praise Anna, our RNG Goddess, for she has seen fit to bestow upon me POWER.



With the battle now over, Micaiah calls out to her damn bird, and makes Meg question whether or not she's gone insane for talking to an animal.



Yeah Sothe's just jealous, maybe he'll go talk about that jealousy with Ike. you know for a 23 (minimum) year old you're kind of a bitch Micaiah. (20 years from PoR is the Serenes Massacre, That's when Micaiah disappeared, But that means there was 10 years without an Apostle on the throne since Sanaki is 10 in Path of Radiance, Look, Radiant Dawn isn't too hot on the whole 'Time' thing, but this means Micaiah had to have been a new born during the Massacre, and only 15 or so when she found Sothe, but it does potentially put my original Guesstimate of 30-40 kind of off, depending on how old she was during the event. If she was 10 she would be 33 now)

Anyway Micaiah hears singing and follows it with Sothe in close proximity, I guess the rest of the dawn brigade broke out a deck of cards and smokes while those two ran on ahead.




They find a Heron, Rafiel, and two Wolf Laguz, Volug and Tits McGee Naliah.



Micaiah again lacks any sort of danger sense (Okay she has auto-empathy I'm making a joke) and immediately calls out too the two wolves and birdman after having fought her way through a bunch of tigers and cats.



No, She may be an Empath Seer Healer but she draws the line at Telepath, dirty telepaths. Sothe correctly identifies the Laguz and asks if Rafiel is related to Reyson, when Rafiel shows confusion over the implication his brother is alive, Sothe tells him that last he checked so was Leanne and the king. Rafiel breaks down into tears of joy over the knowledge, since he figured he was all that remained.



Naliah introduces herself and Volug, since Volus can't actually speak the Tellius language, She calls herself queen of the Hatari and when asked what the hell a Hatari is, she says it's a country across the Desert of Death. I'm going to stop here for a second and say I have no problems with the Wolf Laguz.

On first pass, they feel like a cop out "Oh shit we kinda showed everywhere in Tellius and we have no place for Wolf Laguz... here's an entire colony across the desert of death" But it actually explains a plot hole in Path of Radiance. See we know the Fire Emblem will release Yune if the entire world is at war, and we have everyone in that final battle, Dragons, Lions, Tigers, Cats, Crows, Hawks, Heron, Crimeans, Daeins, Begnions, everyone. all nations represented, and despite the fact that it was a large enough battle that it required 3 other field commanders not including Ike's strike force, it's not like the Size of the war was lost in scale. And yet... nothing? Did the battle end to quickly? did not enough people die? The simplest explanation is that someone wasn't present.

Did it not count the dragons? no, because Kurth said he wasn't doing what he was as a Goldoan when he entered battle, but the Medallion didn't care, So Nasir and the Feral One dragons still count. It's the Wolves, The simplest explanation is they weren't in the battle, and so the seal never broke and would never have broken that way. The war lasts an entire year by the way, before someone wonders if 'Time' is a factor.

The Hatari explain away that plot hole nicely, In fact this entire sequence and chapter have been pretty damn good all around. This is certainly not 1-2's level of mind fuck. If there's one criticism I have to level at the chapter it's that it's kind of filler and could have been skipped. But that's a very minor complaint.

Anyway back to the cutscene



So yeah as I mentioned, Naliah and the Hatari didn't know anyone existed beyond the Desert of Death, until they found Rafiel. Naliah eventually asks Rafiel to control himself



Sothe says that it's too dangerous for the Laguz to travel Daeins countryside, of course when we see Naliah's stats the only 'Danger' would be Rafiel moving to slow, and Naliah killing half the country, He says they can escort them to Crimea which would let them meet with the man who can get them to Gallia, Ike.




What was that about jealousy Micaiah? I can't hear you over the sound of your hissy fit.



Bah, Terrible, still Anna saw fit to bestow awesome level ups so I can't complain. See you all next time in 1-5

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