Chapters 13-17 have focused on what Ike found when he arrived in the Holy Theocracy of Begnion- and more specifically, how its Empress plans to use him to apologise to and form a bond of repatrition with the people Begnion had wiped out.
- Chapter 13: Meeting the Apostle. We rush to the defence of the apostle's ship as it is attacked by Daein pirates, being mislead by the Raven King to attack the Apostle for no obvious reason. Considering later revelations about Naesala's motives, I feel as if Naesala was making a calculated gambit here, but I haven't fully pieced together how that would help. This is a very top-heavy map from a gameplay standpoint, where all the important action happens in the first four turns and what happens next is a grab bag of EXP and loot you want to stay correctly on top of. The ending is also quick to characterise the apostle as willful and hard to control. Which aren't inherent flaws in leadership, but perhaps not helpful for a child leader.
- Chapter 14: The first mission. This mission is very much just about setting up Sanaki's cunning plan, and the mission itself doesn't really do much interesting aside from set up a later plot point- the Feral Ones. Sanaki's petulance in the Chapter 14 introduction has cemented her impression as a child in the minds of many people, but as of this playthrough, I feel confident in saying that it is just an act, one designed to motivate Ike to be diligent on completing the task she has set while making the Senators feel comfortable that this mission won't affect them.
- Chapter 15: The army of the disappearing cats. Still not sure where the enemies in this mission come from according to the artbook, but it's clear that the game is incentivising you to consider these laguz as worthy of not being slaughtered by the dozen, but has the misfortune of doing so on a desert map, where your tools for not dealing with them are limited, and there is plenty of treasure you'll want to be digging up with your fragile thieves. Add the fact that laguz are worth a lot of EXP on their own, and, well... this doesn't do what the devs wanted it to. On the other hand, RD does pull this mission idea off, and it sucks there, so...
- Chapter 16: The Eureka moment. Thanks to Tormod giving Ike and Soren the pieces they needed to finish the puzzle, they figure out exactly what Sanaki's plan is, and Sanaki sends them to find out what one of her Senators has been doing. One of the Senators who was quite vocal about approving of her whole childish gambit in Chapter 14, too. It seems, in the excitement, that everyone might have overlooked this whole political nugget, especially when it turns out that Oliver's been dealing in herons. From a map perspective, this map is as relatively unremarkable as Chapter 14, except it is an indoor map and it can spice things up with treasure chests to collect. The fact that Sanaki's plan to expose the Senate's slave trade collides head-first with Naesala's heron sale is, on a meta level, quite the coincidence, and ultimately, although it gave Ike a strong bond with the bird tribes that serves him well in this game, might have contributed to what happens in RD on the Begnion front...
- Chapter 17: The great heron hunt. Four consecutive chapters of battling as an exercise of your resource management and battle preparations to end off Act 2 with a bang, although these maps are quietly somewhat easier than a single map in the rest of the game. At the end of this long and gruelling slog, a tremendous moment of narrative satisfaction occurs where Sanaki and Reyson can overcome the rift between them and form a bond of trust- although Ike helping out Leanne seems to have struck the deeper chord with the birds in the end.
After this Act has closed, Sanaki will grant Ike the title of Lord and make him a General, setting the stage for Act 3 so neatly that, if this game had any sort of structure beyond just chapters, there would definitely be a transition here. It's time to bring our blades to bear on Daein coming up...
As far as the plot is concerned, Path of Radiance has largely been put on hold to tackle the beorc-laguz conflict from the perspective of Sanaki and the people wronged most by Begnion's past, and ultimately, both sides here are really building up to what will become Part 3 of Radiant Dawn: Begnion has some skeletons in their closet that really need clearing out if Sanaki's dream is to come to fruition. Sanaki's cunning plan has definitely drawn the attention of most of the characters in Ike's party, and perhaps those Senators we only saw once in Chapter 14 have escaped notice entirely... (Oh, and by the way, we're actually done seeing Sanaki entirely in Path of Radiance. Just putting that out there.)
As a huge fan of Sanaki, I feel biased saying this, but this leg of the game is probably the strongest plot in Path of Radiance. Path of Radiance, when taken on its own, is a very vanilla "save the good kingdom from the evil kingdom" Fire Emblem Plot, and its strengths are on a character level, building up a strong world in Tellius that Radiant Dawn is going to have a lot of fun playing around with when it gets its turn. This Act, here, is the Radiant Dawn writers starting to tip their hand and give a hint of what's to come, not only with what factions are going to cause trouble, but also hinting that not all battles in this war are fought with swords.
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