LogFAQs > #936677939

And finally, a guy who has had an awful lot of appearances...

1. Camus (FE1/Mystery of the Emblem Book 1/Shadow Dragon Chapter 20)

For the sake of clarity, the chapter number is different in Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 due to it not including all chapters from the original. And I will ultimately (eventually?) be focusing on Shadow Dragon.

Camus has one hell of a history for a guy who totally, definitely only ever appears briefly in a village and then later on as a boss fight and never anywhere else, certainly not in any other games. An important character in the original Fire Emblem story, he died for sure and guys that look a bit like him and have dialogue that could fit with his story in Gaiden/Echoes and (New) Mystery are clearly just inspired by him and not at all the same person, and that's obviously believable and it's not like everyone already knows the full story on this guy. His name has come to be synonymous in the series with the common archetype of a fairly important antagonist, usually a high ranking general or equivalent in an enemy faction, who is a good person but nonetheless fights the heroes, generally out of a sense of loyalty as is the case for Camus himself. And there is definitely absolutely never any argument about how sympathetic these kinds of characters are. People also argue about how to pronounce his name sometimes.

In terms of gameplay Camus has also had a bit of an odd history. Originally, he was the actual main boss of his chapter, guarding the gate you had to seize and everything, a true pioneer in the art of capitalizing on Paladin mobility by not ever moving, and the recruitable general Lorenz was just off to the side. Then in Shadow Dragon, they decided to mix things up a bit, putting Lorenz on the gate and letting Camus have free reign to roam around...or be skipped altogether if you feel like it. Perhaps they felt like having him be skippable or at least putting him a bit closer to the coast would do more to justify his convenient survival in later games? Whatever the case may be, it creates the amusing scenario where you can avoid ever fighting him by virtue of just recruiting the "boss" in a conversation that covers pretty much the exact ground people wish would get brought up to these Camus-style characters more often and seizing.

The change in position does serve to make Camus a fair bit more threatening though. While there's a fairly easy path to the gate without entering his range, he does still cover some of the area nearby, and you'll have to go through him if you want to use the bridge to bypass the middle of the map. While Camus has always been fairly strong, being able to move will always remain more threatening than being immobile, and of course Shadow Dragon's brand new H5 difficulty amps up his stats to make him far more powerful than he's ever been in the past, though you do have access to forged Ridersbanes and the Wing Spear to help out this time around, though neither can be used to counter on enemy phase due to the 1-2 range properties of the Gradivus.

As a boss fight Camus is certainly less complicated than some of the others on this list, and many not on the list as well, but that's to be expected from a remake of the original game in the series. In a game where most playable units have somewhat questionable stats, his high speed, strength and durability is still quite tough to deal with, at least until you learn the art of forged effective weapons. He's just a strong dude that actually gets up off his ass and moves, and that's not a bad thing. On his own he's a solid boss but not spectacular (particularly since I'm mostly ignoring story here), but it's not hard to leave him off a list like this due to his long and complicated history. With a different position in a remake, appearances in other games and their remakes and an entire character concept nicknamed after him, he's certainly a major figure in the story of Fire Emblem. He's even tied with the Whitewings for appearing in the most different games in the main series!

And that...is the end of the interesting bosses list!

Up next: Thinking about what's next. Probably hard to guess what I myself do not know, huh?

---

Meow!