Advance Wars 2 Snapshot: Duty & Honour

Welcome to bonus stage! Today, we will be playing one mission of Advance Wars 2, in order to show off a small segment of the game that I love without committing to going through the whole thing. AW2 isn't long, and it's an incredibly strong game from a writing standpoint, but it's much more heavily focused on character and not on plot. I would recommend playing it- although there is a remake coming out in the near future (well, hopefully).

I won't go into much detail about the nature of level selection and what information this screen is sharing with the player, since it's not particularly relevant on this micro level, but this screen is the only way to tell what mission you've selected ahead of time (you may choose which levels you want to play semi-freely in this campaign).

Before we begin, a plot summary of Advance Wars 2: Black Hole is invading Wars World, and the four countries must chase them away. We will be in Yellow Comet for this mission- the other countries are Orange Star, Blue Moon, and Green Earth.

Missions usually begin with the villains discussing their plans. This is a faceless Black Hole soldier, as weird as his sprite might be.

And this is Adder, a moderately high-ranked member of the Black Hole army. He's only said two words and I expect you've gathered a great deal of his personality from his appearance alone. This is a pretty good mission for showing off what Adder is like as a character, but he'll need to say more than "Very well" for that.

This is Flak, the lowest-ranked Black Hole CO and the dumbest character in the trilogy. Although saying that, he's not actually as dumb as he is portrayed- he's certainly a bit of an idiot, but he's clearly got some braincells to rub together here, and AW1 has some true dunderheads running around...

Narrative-wise, Adder has mounted a laser cannon of some description, and he expects Yellow Comet to come marching in to get hit by it.

Flak doesn't see any reason for Yellow Comet to swallow the bait.

That's certainly an effective bait. Although I wonder whom "the world" is. At this point in the story, the other three known nations are Orange Star (which can and has freely lent aid to repel Black Hole from Yellow Comet by this point), Blue Moon and Green Earth (who are both in the middle of repelling Black Hole invasions of their own). None of these countries are going to think less of Yellow Comet for allowing cities to be taken over.

What does Tellius tell us?

So what overarching themes are there in Tellius to talk about? What else is there woven between the depths of the pages? Let's start off, perhaps surprisingly, with Ike and Ashnard.

A Good Person: The Maiden of Dawn

So what's Micaiah's deal, then? We have the Lord (...well, Lady/Priestess) of Radiant Dawn, the girl on the cover, and... yeah, she kinda just dropped off in the end, huh? Sure, she turned out to be the person who was supposed to take Sanaki's crown and ultimately turned it down to become Daein's Queen, but, uh... Where did she go in the ending?

The Important Skill of Weaseling: Sky's Shadow

So what's Naesala's deal, then? It's clear there's something going on behind the scenes, but how much of that coloured his actions, and how much of it is on Naesala's head? Well, we're going to have to look through Naesala's actions across both games to get a grip on that.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn Compilation

Here's a medium reference list for Radiant Dawn!

Part 1: The Silver Haired Maiden

• Opening + Prologue
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Endgame Base - Combat
  
• Review
  

Part 2: Of Countries and Kings

• Prologue
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Endgame Base - Combat - Ending
  
• Review
  

Part 3: Intersecting Vows

• Prologue Base - Combat
  
• Chapter 1 Base - Combat
  
• Chapter 2 Base - Combat
  
• Chapter 3 Base - Combat
• Chapter 4 Base - Combat
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6 Battle - Conversations
• Chapter 7 Base - Combat - Conversations
  
• Chapter 8 Base - Combat
• Midway Review
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10 Base - Combat
• Chapter 11 Base - Combat
• Chapter 12 Base - Combat - Conversations
  
• Chapter 13 Base - Combat - Ending - Conversations
  
• Endgame Base - Combat - Ending - Conversations
  
• Review
  

Part 4: Gods and Men

• Intermission
• Prologue Base - Combat
  
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2 Base - Combat
• Chapter 3 Base - Combat
• Chapter 4 Base - Combat
• Chapter 5 Base - Combat

Endgame: Rebirth

• Preparation
• Part 1 - Begnion Senate
• Part 2 - Black Knight
• Part 3 Preparations - Battle - Dragon King
• Part 4 - Weeping Heron
• Part 5 - Hard
  
• Epilogue - Records
• Review 

• Sky's Shadow
• Maiden of Dawn
• Themes
• The Tower of Guidance 
  

Radiant Dawn Part 4: The War for Humanity

Although this is technically a look at Part 4, it's not really correct to look at Part 4 on its own- it's largely a wrap up of the entire setting of Tellius, looking at the plot developments of both games and breaking down what was going on there, and who it benefitted.

So what's Part 4 really doing? The main six chapters are largely just spinning wheels plot wise- throwing Disciples of Order and Senate characters the game knows you want the catharsis of killing but which the game doesn't want to dump all in one part of the Endgame (although that would be an interesting take on the Senate fight). Perhaps having Valtome, Numida and Oliver fight separately is to keep the excitement of the battles up, because otherwise the story is largely exposition.

• Prologue: Hints about Naesala's betrayal, the Blessings on both the Disciples of Order and the allies.
• Chapter 1: More Disciples of Order paranoia fuel, Kurthnaga explaining the dragon's role in the conflict.
• Chapter 2: The nature of a world of Order, Almedha explaining how her arrangement with Ashnard came about, and the results of it.
• Chapter 3: Yune reveals she flooded the world, Lekain reveals Sanaki is a fake, the Black Knight tries to take Micaiah to safety.
  
• Chapter 4: Tormod and co re-emerge, the Senate illicitly saved Oliver's life, and Rafiel reveals how his slavery to Hetzel made him such a game-changer on the world stage.
• Chapter 5: Bastian found Renning Feraled, and captured Izuka to try and get him fixed. Izuka gets to be stopped as a result.

Endgame ramps up the dramatic nature of the reveals, but the plot itself is still largely just seeing these reveals and learning how things unravelled. This isn't necessarily a bad thing- if we didn't find out how things were set up, we'd be arguing about what did happen rather than why it happened that way. This feels like a key difference between Tellius and Fodlan, in a way- Fodlan tells a great deal of its story as window dressing to a much more active plot, which can allow some of the details to escape notice without the assistance of a fine-toothed comb.

Another key comparison to Fodlan is in its approach to politics. Tellius has the same opinions about the qualities of a good ruler as Fodlan does, and it's clear that the game expects you to understand people like Sanaki, Elincia, Edelgard and Marianne are good rulers. However, Fodlan is much more hands-on in exploring how to get this to work within its setting, offering endings that explore how the Middle Ages turned into the Renaissance, and from there offering windows into later settings. Tellius largely ignores these finer details, preferring instead to show "good rulers did good things and settled the continent into a peaceful era". This is very much in line with Fire Emblem tradition, which is something Fodlan is more interested in escaping, but it's clear that the developers had ideas way back here that weren't quite explored at the time that got a new lease in a later game.

As for how the ending of Tellius runs mechanically? Part 4 is a lot like Part 3, but with enemies in line with your demands, this is where you focus more heavily on how you hit the later levels for capping, rather than just the fact that you're well and truly outclassing the enemy and happen to be capping incidental to the process. The lack of plot leading to a lack of interesting objectives gets some people, but I find my own somehow. The Endgame itself is unleashing all your finely honed warriors on an unsuspecting cast of Disciples, before bunkering down and matching the powerful dragons and Ashera's onslaught. Again, on Normal. With Yune's help, things go a lot more smoothly, and sometimes I feel like the "Easy" difficulty moniker is applying in earnest.

Radiant Dawn Records

So how did I do?

Radiant Dawn's credits work basically the same as PoR's, but the killcounts are more interesting because of the shifting perspectives. I have been just as vigilant about my Radiant Dawn records as my PoR runs, so we can do the same thing. Just doing the one run, though.

Radiant Dawn Epilogue: A tale of faith, courage and honesty

Yes, the cutscene viewer denotes this a separate cutscene. It's even called Life Returns, which Path of Radiance had already used. That makes three of Radiant Dawn's eight cutscenes occuring once you completed the gameplay (as soon as you order Ike to attack Ashera and the RNG says you hit, you're done "playing" the game).

(Also, technically, according to the game, this should be end of the last update, but I think it's better if I put it here.)

Yune restores everyone who was turned into statues as she flies over the continent.

The first thing this laguz does on getting unpetrified is to untransform.

And start stretching. These guys were aware while petrified. He spent a good solid few weeks stuck transformed.

The Daein soldier prepares himself to kill the laguz, but doesn't seem entirely on board with the idea.

You can cut the tension with a knife.

But the laguz tells him, without a single word, "we've just spent weeks turned to stone, you want to spend our first day back fighting?"

And the weapons fall to the ground.

That's a catastrophe averted.

Radiant Dawn Endgame Bonus: A fight worthy of the gods

So, uh... here we are. Doing a backup run after all. Normal Mode Ashera kinda deserves it. So then, let's take a look at what badasses I brought with me from both genders.

Radiant Dawn Endgame Part 5: Covenant

I'm not warning you about anything this time, I just don't want the preview to show spoilers.

Despair and Judgment: The Weeping Heron

Radiant Dawn Endgame Part 4: Despair

Today, we're going to be having a deep dive into genocide. Strap yourselves in, and if you've got experience with being in the midst of so much murder you'd rather not relive, there's a part you might want to skip.

Neutrality and Obfuscation: The Black Dragon King

A man who has lived a thousand years bows to the next generation. All in all, Deghinsea doesn't seem like all that bad a fellow, but his actions have well and truly carved a dark path for his people to follow. But first, of course, his boss conversations:

Radiant Dawn Endgame Part 3.2: Peacekeeper

We have to fight roughly double our army's size in dragons. Remember those guys from 4-5? Now there are all of them.

Oh, by the way, while I'm looking around, these tiles that lead apparently to the endless abyss of "below the tower"? Those are Hades tiles. Mechanically, they're uninteresting, but that's a choice of word.

Here's the King of Dragons himself, not standing on any exciting terrain (thank Yune), but with more than enough ways to mess us up. 75 Atk, hitting Defence, means even our bulkiest unit is taking about 35 damage a hit- well, 30 with the Blessing, small comfort. 242 Hit, which means we're probably not avoiding it (imagine if he actually did hit his Skill cap!). And those Defences... Again, good thing he's not on terrain and not interested in finding some.

Now that's a class description that also tells us a bit about the man.

Here are his Skills. Shove, Formshift and Night Tide are of little interest to us, but Mantle and Ire are new.

Mantle nullifies all damage unless it's coming from one of Yune's Blessed weapons. Without that Blessing, we'd be defenceless against this guy. Imbue-for-Luck means Deghinsea heals 30 HP a turn- we've got to outdamage that if we want to overturn his 100 HP. Not mentioned: This thing is also Nihil and Fortune.

Ire is just a crit. The dragons got off bad in Masteries. But it is something we very much do not want to be hit by.

 Deghinsea is also a five star commander. Good thing Ike's in command, or else we just lost 25 Hit/Avoid across the board. We're still down 10.

Nasir and Gareth are standing behind Deghinsea, transformed. It is outright in our interest to not attack them. This also leaves us with fewer options for dealing with the man himself.

Oh, not all dragons have the Tide Skills. All the better for us, in all honesty.

Radiant Dawn Endgame Part 3.1: The Blessed Ones

Yune decides to exposit because she's bored. Because expositions are how you entertain people!

"Well, except you, Kurth, your dad is pretty old."

Chivalry and Rivalry: The Black Knight of Kadohl

And so the Black Knight has at last been vanquished. He lived an obstacle for Ike to face and died a tragedy of lost souls. Unfortunately, his choice to duel Ike and Ike alone means we won't have much to discuss from him, but Levail has some lines to sit through.

Radiant Dawn Endgame Part 2: Rivalry

I dunno, Ike, something about the "no branching paths" is telling me yes.

Although saying that, we actually see them go down stairs in transitional shots. The Tower is weird.

Ike's wondering how this whole tower fits inside what they saw from the outside.

...Good thing I'm taking pictures!