Everyone is here in Sienne at last!
So much for that story. "All myths are true" means everything comes to life, not that everything does what it says in the myth.
That's an interesting thing to teach a child. You've got your ABCs, the fact fire is hot, and the fact no one is allowed in that tower.
I find it interesting that they use a hitherto-unseen colour for Ashera's tower in this final map scene.
That's a map title that has one major purpose. But Endgame is going to be a lot more than a single word.
The Tower of Guidance is glowing! They like this shot of the place- this is the angle when it appeared in the PoR opening.
Perhaps we shouldn't be looking directly at it.
Soren figures that, whatever the glowing means, it's not good news, since it's probably Ashera's doing.
We haven't gotten inside the city, that's important to note to understand this opening skit.
Ike is ready to get into the tower, and considers how to open this door.
Somehow overlooking the Silver Army camped outside.
Skrimir is in Ike's shoes- ready to open the door and go do something about the Tower.
Sanaki and Micaiah talked him down.
The plan is for all three armies to work together here in Sienne.
私たちが止めた。
元より帝都は、強力な
魔道の結界によって守られ、
内部を探ることはできぬ仕組み…
Apparently Sienne also has some kind of barrier, too?
Ike goes straight to asking about the voice in Micaiah's head. Not that interested in Micaiah herself. Fair enough.
Yune has actually been on a bit of an extended leave, come to think of it...
So the Hawk Army is not answering our calls.
Skrimir suggests, to cool his impatience, they at least send some sort of scout to identify what the problem is.
Well, looks like the fight is coming to us. Prepare for Silver and Greil to work together and-
...Caineghis and the Hawk Army.
"I'm told is increasingly common", but I don't think there's actually been that much of it going around. Just Tormod, isn't it? Stefan came to check on Micaiah, Bastian and co were following Reyson and Elincia, everyone else was already here?
Ike is disappointed in himself for thinking Hawk Army wouldn't be the first to Sienne.
Skrimir is highly disappointed with this turn of events. Bit of right-hand not talking to the left-hand, though.
Yune seems fond of the Hawk Army actually getting to work, though.
All right, time for our briefing from Yune.
She wasn't actually expecting us to make it here this fast, but doesn't seem to be inconvenienced in any way by our extra effort. Perhaps it just means she was rushing to make an appearance in Micaiah before we asked "what now" openly.
Yune went looking for anything in Tellius that moved and told them to go to the Tower of Guidance.
It "looks like" this, but I do have to wonder if perhaps this isn't the case.
Yune has looked at "all the Goldoans are gone" and assumed Ashera called them. There's a non-zero chance they just went to the Tower on Ashera's side on their own.
それなら、まだよかったわね。
竜鱗族は一部の老臣を除いて
ほとんどが石になっていなかった。
There are a few "old vassals" that got petrified in Goldoa. Although these guys probably wouldn't have come to fight us anyway.
Kurthnaga and Tibarn are both terrified by this news, for vastly different reasons.
It means we're going to be fighting a lot of dragons at some point.
This has a hell of an impact on Kurth.
Well... at least we know where they are!
Good idea.
Time for our final preparations. With everyone here.
Yeah, seems right.
Five Base conversations today! All of them actually pretty interesting!
We start with the Crimeans in "Renning".
The only one of you who is invited is Lucia, and, well...
They'll be with us in spirit, at least.
Elincia is emboldened by this promise.
And Renning lends his voice to the din.
Renning is back!
That's good news personally and on a wider note.
And Renning is thankful that he can look on a strong Queen Elincia and three excellent retainers. Although considering what happened to him and his brother, I wonder what Renning's opinion of Elincia/Lucia romantically would be.
...A bit of a mouthful, but I think the idea is that while Lucia loves serving Elincia, she does have a duty to him too.
Bastian is the most ready to perform that duty, though. He's actually supposed to be 27 per the artbook, which I'm calling out, because Bastian and Renning seem far too familiar for Bastian to not have served Renning directly.
Renning has some requests.
He wants to lend a hand!
...Wait, hold on, challenge run, bad Renning.
Renning is happy Bastian managed to pull Renning's gear out of his hat. He did something similar in PoR Chapter 26 with Elincia's, come to think of it.
Elincia doesn't want him to collapse after what just happened.
That's not Renning's style.
Renning proceeds to say this. This paints Renning as a man who took the burden of being Ramon's next of kin heavily, and without Ashnard's intervention, would probably have attempted to put Elincia on the throne in his place in his own lifetime anyway.
Elincia hopes that Renning will put off the whole "dying" thing for a few decades. As her uncle, the odds of Renning dying after Elincia are slim at best- although there's no guarantee there won't be another coup attempt. Hopefully Ludveck's rhetoric is fully choked out.
Renning requests his place at his liege's side.
But Geoffrey insists that position is already taken.
I wonder how much Geoffrey has grown in the three years since they last duelled. Renning specialises in Swords, and Geoffrey has WTA on him. Although as a Gold Knight, Renning can pull out axes.
Geoffrey is prepared to show Renning a new man.
Elincia would rather they didn't bash each other's heads in over her.
Bastian is of no help whatsoever.
Lucia is not going to stop them, but she is going to be more helpful.
It could serve a bit of a therapeutic purpose, couldn't it?
Gay gay gay gay gay-
By the way, the reward for watching this conversation is the addition of Renning to the barracks. He's a Gold Knight prepromote and has all the standard asterisks associated with a prepromote. He could wield Amiti if it were possible to pry it out of Elincia's hands, though.
If Stefan has not been recruited, you get an alternative conversation called "Visitor" in which Stefan comes out of nowhere and has this exact conversation anyway. Stefan's appearance here is one of the few clues of his existence in the game.
So let's have a conversation between a goddess and one of the continent's greatest mysteries.
Let's start with the point that Yune, creator of all, doesn't know what Branded are.
That's because the story that Ashera and Yune created modern life is incorrect. Ashera and Yune created life, and life evolved into beorc and laguz.
Stefan says that "he is the same as Micaiah". That's how he talks about his Brand. Apparently, it's more explicit in the Japanese version that "Branded" is also a bit of a slur. That leaves us with no direct name for this group of people, though.
Micaiah's talents come from her Brand, and not from any divine intervention. But that does not mean all Brandeds can do what Micaiah can.
That's a quiet little thing they try to sneak by us. Amy is a Branded. How exactly Calill and Largo came by her is not explained, and I don't think either of them are fully aware of what Amy is (especially since Calill didn't seem that fond of them in her Tormod Support in PoR), but depending on when this comes out, this could have massive implications for making the Branded be seen better in the future.
"The boy who's always with Ike" is Soren, of course. Just making that clear, they're not trying to hide any other Brandeds in this line.
"There are several in my village" implies that Stefan's home has people of mixed heritage, but I always thought of it as being exclusively Brandeds. A bit like the Abyss from Fodlan, but less "ghetto artificially imposed from on high" and with the opposite sunlight problem.
The Branded stick together. They will fight against their fate.
Yune doesn't understand what he's talking about.
The fact that "Branded" is capitalised and "parentless" (the explicit slur in INT) is not kinda hints that Branded is the more correct word, but the way he phrases this sentence should be a clue that Stefan dislikes both words.
Branded is somewhat genetic. They get creative with this later, which is another reason I'm not fully sold on Brandeds as a group.
There are a select number of Branded-creating unions. They were more common in the past, but most steer well clear of it today. Because of the whole "the laguz parent stops being a laguz" thing, of course.
This is very strange. Something like this demands explanation... but it just doesn't get explained.
Once the laguz blood manifests... you're not a beorc anymore. You're a Branded.
And don't forget the aging of the Branded. Branded aren't as long lived as their laguz ancestors, but they do have longer lives in roughly the same ratios (ie Dragon Branded like Soren live longer than Beast Branded like Petrine).
Micaiah's vouching for Stefan's exposition to Yune, she's just not saying it aloud.
Beorc don't know what to make of Branded, and that scares them.
The laguz, though? Branded represent the potential extinction of laguzkind. Their backs are turned on these sins against nature.
This feels like the same sort of metaphor that's in every YA novel, but I'm not sure if they had a specific idea in mind for it here or just used it generally.
Laguz societies shun Branded entirely. You're not going to live in one of those.
Yune is horrified.
And Stefan gets to the point of this conversation: As far as he's aware, the life Stefan lives is either Ashera or Yune's fault.
He's wrong.
Stefan can't believe his ears.
Imagine, if you will, you were raised from a young age to believe in something. You never questioned it- why would you, there isn't a paper trail to follow, and why would your parents and guardians even lie to you anyway- and you followed these teachings with the respect they were owed. You yourself have complex feelings about this matter, though- they teach that to be a certain kind of person is wrong, and you believe yourself to be that kind of person. You know that you're a good person at heart, though, and want to do everything to wash yourself of this sin. No matter what you do, though, you can't escape who you really are. You believe that perhaps the world is better off without you in it.
Now imagine you get told that the thing you believe in is and always was a lie. There's a DAMN good reason that cults and false religions like the Church of Seiros are bad things.
Stefan is going to go off in a corner and feel every emotion at once for a while.
Yune wonders what it is that led to this situation. Something must have happened to ascribe that crime to her name...
The "Dragons", obviously, refer to Kurthnaga, Almedha and Ena.
Almedha looks different after this march now, though.
The lengths the writers went to make this fit both "Pelleas died and Almedha is still grieving" and "Pelleas is alive and actively putting distance between the two" is astounding. They didn't make two versions, since Pelleas's status matters very little to the overall conversation.
We're moving on to other topics.
I wonder if Kurth's hesitance here is his attempt to actively put Ena and Almedha at arm's length. Ena and Almedha are related characters, after all...
Ena is interested in talking to Almedha.
But Almedha knows Rajaion's death- the death of Ena's fiance- is on her head.
Ena doesn't care about that. Well, she probably does somewhat, but she doesn't blame Almedha for the part she played.
Considering everything that happened with that situation, Almedha's probably been blaming herself plenty for twenty years.
And if anything, Ena is proud of Rajaion for standing by his principles and going to the rescue of his nephew, even if things didn't turn out as planned.
We don't get enough of an image of what Rajaion was like in life, and we certainly don't get to know why Ena and Rajaion got engaged in the first place, but Ena admires Rajaion's strength of character all the same.
These two can make it past this. Given time.
Oh yeah, Nasir is here, too. We've got more than talking about Rajaion.
Ninety years. Nasir left Goldoa to go do his own thing with the whole "laguz and beorc unity" thing he had with his ship. He seems familiar with Almedha, which suggests that Nasir and Ena had a position in Deghinsea's company before Ena and Rajaion got engaged- or perhaps Ena and Rajaion have been engaged so long that Nasir's departure came second. I dunno, I feel like even if I were a longer-lived race, I wouldn't want to be engaged for seventy years without a wedding.
Almedha hasn't got this memo yet.
So let's see what Nasir has to say about all this, then.
And Nasir's first step is to blame everything on Almedha. That's got to be great for her self-esteem!
Get talking, you still haven't entirely recovered from the "blackmailing Soren" thing.
I get the impression he forbade the dragon tribe from doing literally anything else with non-dragons. Although perhaps this extends internally, too.
Almedha left Goldoa in direct protest of this order. Considering she went and married the most violent beorc in Tellius, one almost has to imagine this is the dragon equivalent of being a rebellious teenager. How old Almedha is supposed to be relative to the dragons is left unstated, but if Almedha is a rebellious teenager, that makes the whole "Ashnard's Branded son" thing a teenage pregnancy gone horribly awry.
This whole "Ashnard" thing caused a lot of problems.
One of the problems is that, when Deghinsea sent some dragons to look for Almedha, they got captured and turned into Ferals. Ena knowing an exact number feels like she's using her Goldoan knowledge, and knowledge of this event, to state an exact number of "dragons that could possibly be Ferals". This is potentially contradicted by gameplay numbers, but it could always be accepted as fact for narrative needs. Point is, I find it interesting that the game bothered to include an explanation for Dragon Ferals at all.
Almedha is shocked by this revelation. I wonder if she even knew about the Feral experiments. She did bump into Izuka, at least.
This is quite possibly the key point in this conversation. Ashnard actively wanted the medallion to awaken, and he believed quite firmly that it would not do so unless Goldoa was fighting too. He had to do something big to get their attention.
All he needs to do is get their attention, because while the beasts and the birds need to be knocked out if their bosses decide to stop having this war, dragons go mad with Chaos.
Kurthnaga, at least, is probably feeling very relieved it's not just him.
Reread Ashnard's boss conversation with Nasir. This was terrifying.
Ashnard wanted to provoke Deghinsea. And he made it look like he butchered his children.
(Kurthnaga: "What am I, chopped liver?")
If Ashnard hadn't paid for his crimes right then and there, Deghinsea would've come in swinging.
And he would not be stopped by such petty things as allegiances and reasonable retribution.
And with such a devastating war with so much of the people in power of Tellius, Judgment would come and strike the dragons.
Thank Yune we saved the day when we did!
Thanks to Reyson and Leanne's intervention, Rajaion died a happy death in his fiancee's arms. And Deghinsea accepted that. His torturer was slain, and there was no need to start destroying everything.
The American script goes with "last child", and I think for once, they had the right idea. This would be the only part of this exposition slice that Deghinsea acknowledges he has a third child.
そう、あわやというところで…
人たちは一度、破滅を免れていた。
ラジャイオン様の亡骸は
私たちが国にお連れしました。
報告を受けたデギンハンザー様は…
怒ることも泣くこともなさらず、
ただお１人で…耐えておられました。
残された王子のため、民のために…
ご自身を鎮め戦いの道に
走ることはなさらなかった。
I think JP reflects the American version on this one.
Three years later, the buildup of the Mad King's War happened again- a war big enough that Goldoa is the tipping point.
And Kurthnaga tipped it.
Kurthnaga and Almedha try to get the blame off Kurth, although Almedha doesn't mind taking her share. Apparently losing her dragon powers also means she stops counting as a Goldoan for the medallion's purposes.
Ena insists on this point, since this is our strongest argument- we deserve a judgment with Yune involved.
Although Ena didn't see it herself, admittedly.
Nasir is interested in how this happened, but Ashera's Judgment has been made. It is too late to rescind it now.
Ena is horrified that her grandfather supports this.
Nasir is here because he wants these dragons to join his cause.
Kurthnaga would never. He believes in the inherent strength of humanity over the goddess's decision.
Ena won't yell at you, but she's chosen her side too.
Nasir tells them that they're now enemies. He's not interested in that, though.
...So long, old friend.
I almost have to wonder if you couldn't get away with making this conversation two stars of importance, since this ending is a mild gameplay hint. Not that the designation distinguishing "gameplay hints" and "pure lore" means much in the end when there's both. Designating conversations by importance relevant to the gameplay perks only may have ultimately been a mistake. I'm remembering that one Base conversation in 3-9 that was two lines long and three stars because it gave Geoffrey money.
Caineghis would like to give Ike Dad's trusty axe.
...For some reason in particular.
Instinct.
So, probably Yune.
(Also, turns out I was wrong, Caineghis and Giffca do appear in the same conversation.)
Who knows about how Dad felt about the SS Axe being left on his grave for the past three years.
Usually, Ike doesn't get to use Urvan himself. And it is in our interest to ultimately get this in someone else's hands.
Urvan has 22 Might, 110 Hit, 5 Crit, and 50 uses. This is one hell of an axe.
Ike also has a chat with the Fireman.
...Once he finds the guy.
Even Volke's gotten on talking about how big Ike's gotten over the three year timeskip.
Like father like son. Around this point in the gameplay, the question of "has Ike truly surpassed Greil after all" starts becoming a valid one. Gawain is a legendary figure and the only people who can comment on Ike's skill are people who haven't seen Gawain since Greil slashed his tendons- in many cases, years before even that.
Ike wonders why Volke's here. Volke isn't just going to broadcast who paid him to be here and why to any random fellow.
Ike doesn't mind. It turns out that Volke was actually the one to start this conversation, incidentally.
Volke has something that belongs to Ike.
Volke, for the first and last time in his life, is making a refund.
...OK, admittedly, this doesn't belong to Ike, this belongs to Daein, but Ike seized it in the Mad King's War.
Remember that Volke said his pay for his role in the Mad King's War was to be taken "out" of this 50,000. Clearly the whole thing didn't cost 50,000.
Volke is a little like Ike in that regard. He doesn't need thanks, he's just doing his thing.
But Ike wants to, because Volke did more than just his job. He told Ike something valuable about his own history.
Apparently Volke really doesn't like being thanked. I guess when your job is to kill people, your clientele thanking you is probably really awkward.
20000 is a lot of money.
Today is a lot of Bargain items. One last Wyrmslayer to prepare you for the Goldoans, a spare Peshkatz for your Thieves, a Verrine tome for Pelleas (Verrine being the S Rank tome and equivalent to Bolganone), 5 Arms Scrolls, 2 Shine Barriers and 6 Laguz Stones. Surprisingly, I'm interested in very little of this. I think I do get the spare Wyrmslayer, though.
All right, before we start shopping in earnest, the time has come to think about selling anything that doesn't seem useful. All our outclassed weapons and half-broken "decent" stuff (think those 16 use Steel Blades). Also stuff I can't use like Arbalest and the Dark tomes. And I've got a full set of Gems again. Also all our Vulneraries. Vulnerary time is over.
I had a lot of stuff that was just filling spaces in my inventory.
Both Lion Kings have joined the roster, bringing with them two Skills to harvest. Caineghis is quite possibly the most busted character in the whole game, and the real insurance that you have something that can take on Endgame. Giffca is basically the same character, but without Formshift. Skrimir has nothing to feel bad about being worse than these two. Although with that said, does Giffca really have to be a unique version of the Lion class that has Caineghis's stronger Strike and higher Spd/Luck caps?
The dragons have also joined us, and despite not actually being a useful skill in any capacity, I harvest Night Tide anyway. I'm just in the habit.
Renning has no Skills, but here's what recruiting him adds to your inventory. I knew I didn't have a Silver Sword before now...
The time has also come to harvest any Skills that aren't innate from everyone and consider which characters are going to Endgame. There won't be another chance to organise Skills until it is far too late to steal from the characters we don't bring, so we'll have to make it count.
Nihil and Parity are going to be incredibly important in the Endgame, and unfortunately, Calill and Lucia did not make the cut, so they will be sacrificing their innate skills to give the people who do get to go an extra edge.
Volke was hiding in the roster and I almost didn't harvest this off him. This Skill is going to be incredibly important for me in particular in Endgame. Remember Shade? Remember how not particularly useful it was? Stillness is Shade, but it always works. If you have Stillness on and the enemy has a choice between you and someone who isn't you, you will never get targeted. This is going on Ike, no questions asked.
No, I'm not telling you who got Skills until the big unveiling.
More ominous chiming. Different from the first, though.
What's happening is a little bit more obscure this time, though. I also notice the Tower has stopped glowing.
High contrast!
And more Disciples. That doesn't seem so bad.
...
What
This scene is fascinating from a lore perspective on what exactly the Disciples of Order are. Who's to say the Disciples we've been killing for five maps so far aren't just like these guys and are the same few people over and over?
Considering she literally made those laws, I don't think it's our place to enforce them.
Well, considering everyone is nearly unarmed for my inventory shuffle...
Good thing it's most laguz in this shot, because all the beorc are making a mockery of these Disciples.
Ike checks on Yune.
Yune is panicking. Just because she's a god doesn't mean she can match everything Ashera can throw at us.
Most people would just do a "get a hold of yourself" slap.
Ike grabbed her ears and did... something.
And gives her a more heartfelt speech to focus her attention on.
Ike has one job, and he does that job excellently. That job being to tell people with authority to snap out of their emotional piques and do their damn jobs.
This is why we're not bringing everyone to Endgame. Although nothing said these people we leave behind have to be armed, despite the fact they're clearly fighting.
And here we have one of my less favourite things about RD from a gameplay perspective.
We're sending a strike team to the most dangerous position in Tellius.
And we're bringing a grand total of seventeen people out of ~seventy. Ten of whom are down to the player's discretion. If the Part 4 opening screen is the inventory management section that takes me longest, this is a very close second- considering the literal dozens of characters who have been seeing actual use and narrowing down who gets to come down to ten people.
With that said, Ike's going to find these people Micaiah requested.
Not in the INT version. Everyone promoted a long time ago.
Although I will say one thing, I think Micaiah's Tier 3 design is the one that finally speaks to me from a design perspective. Must be the red- clearly that's why I'm on team Sanaki.
Our Micaiah is pretty perfect, it's not too late to get her to actually pull her weight on this team, but she is operating from a distinct disadvantage. She at least caps Speed higher than Laura.
Yune is ready.
We're not. We still have to make our choices!
As opposed to any other time? But in all seriousness, RD in general is actually pretty lax about deployment requirements. Think about how few missions before now we had to not deploy people for lack of room. A normal playthrough isn't much worse. I don't think normal runs hit the deployment caps in Part 4, there's just not enough EXP to go around.
We start with the first 10 people in Silver Army selected, which funnily enough, meant Leonardo started on the team. I assure you it is far too late to start training him.
Time for the statups. Sanaki and Elincia get the other two Robes, although I always did think Leanne was due for one mentally before now. She doesn't care that much practically, but still. At any rate, since it's so easy to ram caps, there are a lot of people who have already capped HP in this army. As a matter of fact, these are not only to reinforce the bulk of these two, but to cap their HP and help their other stats out.
These two need the damage badly.
This actually caps Strength for Elincia, but everyone else was capped already.
Sanaki's the only person really worried about her Skill. Why do I only have one of these, though?
There's something weird going on when you give these to your pegasus knights.
This is a little more normal.
This is just to cap her Resistance.
I notice, after all this BEXP is distributed, that there's enough left over that I feel no guilt doing this.
I didn't screenshot Ike's levels at all, he just needed stats for his purpose. The most important worry he had was Luck, and he used three of the Ashera Icons to reach the benchmark he needs to meet.
I had these saved in case Ike needed them for any reason, but he's fine, so Ena can take them. That actually caps Ena's Speed... at 26 transformed. Ena won't be great. The worst part is, there are slower characters than this.
Ike gets to keep Urvan for now, but I will be passing it along later. Here are his new stats, and he's going to have use for them. Stillness means he won't use them unless required.
Micaiah needs to raise her stats and rank somewhat, as a freshly minted third-tier unit, and she's focused on doing that.
Sanaki's at the level cap and missed out on Skill/Def by one point each. Shame, but omnicapped Sanaki is a bit of a pipe dream with that huge Strength demand. Maybe some day.
Ena, too, needs stats and Strike grinding, but her default Skill build limits what skills she gets off the bat. Renewal may also get taken off at some point, but since she's a physical unit whose White Dragon blood gives her a strong Magic stat, she's almost designed for the Imbue skill. Reminder Magic doubles on transformation.
Starting off the list of "characters I get to choose" and we brought... Sigrun? Sigrun may be the worst Seraph Knight, but I have one specific reason for bringing her in particular, and with those statups and a few well-placed levels, she'll be able to omnicap just fine. For now, though, that Resolve isn't just there for show.
Jill is not the only Axe user we'll be bringing to Endgame, but she'll be our primary axe user. She'll also wield Urvan when Ike's done with it. Cancel is mostly as a Haar reference.
I was so close to dropping Ilyana for my 11th pick, but the Thunder power was too important in the end. Ilyana is ready to drop down all the crits. Wrath is almost entirely for show, although her Speed (and Avoid) are one of the worst in this selection.
I wasn't worried about Mist! She's just fine on hitting her omnicaps. And yes, she's going to be the main user of Vague Katti! How about that.
Nailah is the main nuclear option for All Girls, and she is going to crush any issues we bump into. She's actually a little light for Smite, but might as well be as prepared as possible.
Meg still has some room to get some Lance EXP, which I can work on as I go, but she's one heck of an armour knight.
Nephenee is still catching up in Strength and Defence, but she'll get there on time. These two are both here mainly because I want their A Support. I think without that objective, one or even both of them would hit the bench. I think Nephenee usually winds up benched because I like me some other SS Lance users.
Elincia really isn't in a position to omnicap, but we can do our best impression as we go. She's also pretty far behind on Magic, come to think of it, but she does suprisingly well with just the stat she has.
Astrid is already done, and our sole Bow user here, but she has a key role to play, with Nihil helping her play it.
Oh yeah, it's completely redundant and not particularly helpful, but with stats like this, who wouldn't bring Lyre? This is entirely to flex on the game, by the way, but I would sooner bench Neph, Meg and Ilyana than her.
And here's Leanne. She's the ultimate user of Celerity as well as the Boots and even found a Miracle scroll, but Endgame isn't really a place where Movement is king. Still, Leanne has the most to gain from getting to and from places. She has Laguz Stones to use her Shifted state, but I don't think that will happen often.
Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. If I had one extra space, just one, you would fill it in a heartbeat. Yes, despite already having Sigrun- with her and Elincia, Sigrun actually gets better because Triangle Attacks are so powerful. I at least had Forges to give to the people I wasn't bringing in the end. As for the name "Volleyball", well... seemed fitting.
Tanith wasn't exactly bad off either. She was actually a candidate for replacing Sigrun just for her mechanical advantage. Ultimately, I went with Sigrun, because I knew statups could save her and I wanted her more than not.
Ah, Titania. After the levels you got in 4-4, there was just no justifying you over Jill, and no real room to use you besides Jill. But that's not to say you weren't in demand. She gets an Axe to say goodbye with.
Mia is actually pretty good because of her high Speed as a beorc unit, but ultimately, I don't think she's as valuable on Easy Mode as she is on Normal. Funny to think, that. If Meg got dropped, though, I think she might've come along just to keep up the number of SS Sword users.
Heather's number one problem is the fact Sothe is forced into the Endgame party. Even in this playthrough, though, Heather faces her number two problem: 28 Strength and 18 Might Baselard isn't impressive in Endgame. She can do some damage, but she's hard to fit on a team so starved for space.
Lucia, Lucia, Lucia... I've had good Lucias that actually got into the Endgame team over Mia completely legitimately- she has a Res advantage over Mia that, with a demand for Res in Endgame and with most of the other stats being capped anyways, she actually turns out to be the best Trueblade, and again, Trueblades are good things to bring to Endgame. This Lucia, probably because she went west in 4-5 instead of with Lethe, where all the respawning Ferals were, just didn't get the EXP to prove herself. She gets another Forge with a name like "Espionette". I wanted to try and give a name with the same meaning as the other three, but I couldn't come up with a clever way to do it in time. Of course, between recording and updating, one has occurred to me...
Fiona really kicks ass. She still has HP to gain as well as her other stats, but ultimately, since Movement doesn't have the power it does, her lower stat caps than someone like Nephenee weaken her claim to a seat. Although if the pegasi weren't hogging the lance positions, maybe I'd bring her because of that Res.
Calill's entire problem is Sanaki. Sanaki not only does Calill's job in a forced slot, but mine also does it better. Sanaki's Magic cap is higher, and she has the same Speed. She gets the fourth Forge, and shows off that Mages, who already have it bad enough, don't get teched-up Forges and have to work from the basic E Rank tome. Pelleas, incidentally, cannot Forge any Dark tomes, since there isn't even an equivalent spell for Dark. Worm, the weakest Dark spell, is technically an El-tome equivalent.
Lethe's problem is Lyre. Lyre and that one missing point of Skill. You had Blossom!
Laura's problem is her 31 Speed cap. And also there's no real reason to bring your own Light tome user when Micaiah and Sanaki are both forced. But still, she did great in Part 3, and that's what counts.
I had to fish up an older image of Vika from before when everyone else got theirs, which is why she's still holding items. How silly of me. Being a laguz without Formshift demands bringing Laguz Gems- we have two in total (the second one was in Giffca's inventory), and excuses to not use them in all maps, but Vika just isn't worth bringing on top of her transformation baggage.
The game is going to make absolutely sure that you don't bring multiple herons, and puts your heron in a dialogue option. This also has the side effect of forcing you to bring a heron at all. I don't think anyone had the slightest doubt who I was bringing.
[Leave it to me!]
Somewhat hilariously, I think Leanne is actually the best heron from the perspective of using Cards as weapons. Reyson has a lower Magic cap and Rafiel can't fly or use Canto. Rafiel's "always uses Galdrar on four people" and Reyson's "uses Galdrar on four people when tranformed" usually beats out Leanne's "always uses Galdrar on two people" for most players.
This is going to be a massive update overall. It's not really one final map, but five maps total, all requiring roughly the attention of a normally sized chapter. This'll be a fun week.
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