Chapter 1
Player phase music:
Not one of my favourites, but fortunately we still have the awesome Verdane army theme on enemy phase to keep us happy
Alright so this is the worst chapter in the game, for reasons I'll get to when I reach them. It. Reach it. It involves trees.
Before we get to the stupidity though, we have the introduction of the awesome FE4 arena. Unlike later arenas in the series, you don't pay money to rent a weapon and fight life or death battles against enemies who may or may not break the stat caps (say hello to those Warriors in FE6 arenas that have too much HP, or the various unpromoted enemies who manage to double people whose speed is above 16). Instead, you bring your own weapons in and fight battles that will leave you at 1HP if you lose, but you can try again if you want. There's 7 fixed opponents in each arena, each one providing you more EXP and gold on victory than the one before. With units having individual pools of money instead of it being shared amongst everyone, and money being necessary to buy the valuable skill/stat rings and weapons and keep good weapons repaired (weapons get repaired at castles instead of breaking in this game), arena prowess tends to be very important. I won't bore everyone with the full details of arena fights though, only if amusing things happen will I talk about them.
This is also our main introduction to conversations between characters that can provide items and stat boosts. The game even lists on characters status screen who they can talk to. Kind of cool. The big ones here are having Cuan provide Fin with some improved stats, Dew giving Aideen the Warp staff, Aideen giving Ethlin the Return staff (spamming these two staffs will be one of the main sources of EXP for these two ladies), and Midir chatting with Aideen to gain love points, since they'll be paired up eventually. Also we need to recruit Ayra and Jamka, both of whom can be slightly challenging to not kill/get killed by.
Oh, right. And get our units south to rescue Aideen, since that's kind of the entire plot for why we're in Verdane in the first place <_< Then we go capture the capital and will get our introduction to the dark mages of the Loputo/Lopt/Loptian/etc Sect/Church (damn translation ambiguity!).
The arena did not go too smoothly for most units. Sigurd was the only man to clear it. The only other person to make it to the 7th guy was...Ardan. What. At least everyone else can get shots at it later in the chapter once they've leveled up a bit more, maybe it will help. Some weapons get traded around too, Fin and Cuan swap Iron Lance for Steel Lance, Alec gets a Steel Sword and Iron Lance, Noish gets an Iron Lance, Sigurd buys a Javelin because why the hell not, etc.
Finally, it's battle time! Everyone travels south to intercept the first army of axe users, then we get the scene where Jamka helps Dew and Aideen escape. Those two will have some fun running away from everything. And by "fun" I mean "Dew will block a chokepoint and poke things with his pitiful strength". And by that, I mean Dew is a thief and in FE4, thieves steal money when they hit people and can give their cash to others. Always helpful.
So I set up Kinbois to be killed by Lex so he can get the Hand Axe. It's pretty terrible but it's still useful to have on someone who can use it. Sigurd charges ahead, Ayra ends up attacking Lex (not what I wanted, obviously) but it worked out, we seize the castle and she gets recruited in short order. Yay, on to the second part of the chapter, but first, our first mid-chapter intermission! These maps are big, yo.
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Mistake you're making - overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved.