Ah screw the intermission, too hard to get out of an FE4 mood once I get into it.
Chapter 1 continued
Next on our list of objectives is bailing out Dew from the rather large horde of enemies he can't exactly do much to. He's gained two points of strength from leveling already and he's still only doing 5 damage to them. Kind of sad. And apparently capturing a castle several miles away means Dew now has a Warp staff to give to Aideen. Funny how that works. Oh yeah, some dudes show up to go after our home castle. That would be a problem if it weren't for the fact that Eltshan and his buddies come along to completely wipe the floor with them.
It hardly feels fair fighting these guys once my full army arrives. The only bad thing is that no one has the specific strength necessary to knock an enemy into range for Dew to kill, but oh well, you can't have everything. Once that group is dealt with, I move on to the group defending the next castle. They also get royally owned, and Sigurd eventually gets the boss kill and everyone is happy. Then we get a scene where we meet Deirdre (another name that has been translated in various ways), who will eventually join up. And by eventually, I mean in about ten minutes. And by join up, I mean randomly fall in love with Sigurd. Then we get the scene where the king of Verdane is killed by his "advisor", the dark mage Sandima, who has been causing the entire war. Then comes his little chat with the leader of the Lopt Sect, Manfloy. Definitely will be seeing him around more in the future. He's talking about reviving a "dark lord", and when that happens in a video game, you KNOW it's going to be important.
Now we reach the part I hate. The forest. We have to fight some barbarians and recruit Jamka (and find someone who can take an attack from Jamka), all while in a giant forest that cuts mobility down to nothing. Then we keep moving through the forest, because apparently wasting time is fun. This is the main reason this chapter is the worst in the game. Stupid trees. Also, once we pass the forest, Lex will have to wander off to a strange, isolated peninsula for an event that gets him the Hero Axe (what would later be called Brave Axe). Hiding the weapon that takes Lex from tank to juggernaut like that is pretty dumb.
Recruiting Jamka ends up going quite well, everyone moves out of his range, Aideen has a clear path to speak to him, she just has to face one attack with terrible hit rates that can't even OHKO her anyway from a barbarian. Then he shows off why he's awesome when he can get in range by smiting a dude. Then we finish off the enemies, Sigurd moves forward and Deidre is recruited, then Aideen and Ethlin start warping/returning dudes who won't be contributing to the final stretch, especially the ones who need to get some arena time in.
Forest forest forest. It's slow going.
We get out of the forest, Lex goes to do his thing, Deirdre silences Sandima as usual, Sigurd gets ready to do some Javelin work, Midir and Cuan try to catch up to help out, the staff users follow along to try to be useful. Well, Ethlin goes with Lex so he can get sent home to do some Hero Axe arena fighting.
Dierdre abuses Prayer a bit to kick some archer ass, and throws another silence out just for lulz (and EXP). I set her up to kill Sandima so she can get his Magic Ring, and she ends up getting our first "relationship crit" (siblings and lovers can cause crits when next to each other, and she pulled off a needless one thanks to Sigurd here) of the game. Then some more Return/Warp stuff goes on to let her arena, and then Sigurd seizes and everyone is happy. Except all the people I killed and their families, of course.
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We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny