"Tired from so many long battles, Marth and the League arrive at last in Archanea, Princess Nyna's mother kingdom. Past the mountains lay the royal palace, known to some as Millennium Court; and within its walls awaited many treasures and captives the enemy had taken.
With each step, Marth draw nearer to one of the great waypoints on his journey." So we arrive on the outskirts of Archanea’s capital. Nearby is the market town of Knorda. If you remember, this is the same place where Ogma was forced to fight as a gladiator unitl Caeda saved him. This town is also important for a few other characters that we’ll see both in this game and the sequel. Archanea’s king was such a poor and neglectful ruler that a hellhole like this was allowed to exist right under Archanea’s nose.
Anyway, before we get started, we have a few things to do.
Caeda may have been dropped but we still need her for this chapter. However, it is crucial that she doesn’t stay as a Pegasus Knight unless she wants to get horribly butchered. So she is reclassed to
Myrmidon. I don’t bother with managing her inventory because if things go my way, she won’t be seeing any combat whatsoever.
Minerva also joins us for this chapter. She takes a
Silver Axe and Steel Lance to spare her Hauteclere.
Hardin’s luck is kind of awful so he grabs a Goddess Icon for
+2 luck boost.
We start at the bottom left corner and must move in the North-east direction where we reach a fork. We can go bottom to get to Knorda Market town.
The place has got a few Mercenaries hanging about as well as a village. Aside from that, one particular town is also important.
Up North and then westwards is our objective. The place is heavily guarded by Ballistae.
Hello there, recruitable character!
Our boss for this chapter. He doesn’t even have a portrait. Wow, that’s a whole new level of laziness-wait, that’s a Manakete up there. Let’s take a look.
Goddamn it, I forgot to take a screenshot. Oh well, I’ll just put a screenshot from further into the chapter.
Don’t mind Jeorge over there. Our real boss for this chapter is Khozen the Fire Dragon Manakete. Being a enemy unit that’s not a Seize Point, he moves when you get into his range. I wish more chapters did this. The boss is more often than not, the easiest part of the chapter since you can take your sweet time in dealing with them. A boss who moves whoever is fun. More challenging. Not for us though since we’re on Normal mode. We have to make a few sacrifices to be able to experience the story rich prologue and chapter challenge is one of them. Oh well.
We begin!
I...know this can't be easy for you.
...When the palace fell, many, many good Archaneans were killed. The royal family...My family were...Their bodies were hung before the gates as an example. I cannot unpaint that vivid picture, of my parents grotesquely changed...I feel as though I should cry, Marth; or scream. But no tears come, and I cannot chase away the sadness and rage...
...I cannot change the past. I can only shape the future. Lead the way, Marth. I am ready. Take me home.
Our first order of business is to check the range of those ballistae. Wouldn’t want one of more squishier characters taking a blow from a ballista, would we?
Minerva uses her mobility and heads straight for Knorda.
Some Pegasus Knights fly down and we end up within their range. Though it’s only Pegasus Knights. Meanwhile, our other units rush upwards and Frey waits within enemy range to bait them out.
These Mercenaries are no pushovers. Minerva’s high defence is her saving grace here. The enemies are fast enough to not get doubled and skilled enough to have very high hit rates.
She gets a damn good level for her trouble though. With Minerva’s shaky growths, this is a really excellent level. Frey forwards his life goal to be our best cavalier.
Using bows to destroy Peg Knights never gets old.
Lena uses her Physic staff to heal Minerva.
Bless the gods, she gained Magic!
Observe. The arrow keeps flying forward even though it hit the mercenary. What is this I don’t even.
Still moving upwards.
A ballistician attacks Sedgar. Animtion for ballistae is a bit klunky and awkward though.
Away with you!
Now we’re deep inside enemy range.
Critical! Lena heals him afterwards with Physic.
Be careful of Khozen. He can easily pick off any of your weakened units left within his range.
Haha, the guy with the killer bow didn’t get a critical hit but Jeorge did. Ridersbane is running out of uses fast. And we still stay clear of Khozen.
This place sells Rapiers. You can only buy one though. Marth will appreciate this, I’m sure. Speaking of Marth, what’s he been upto?
Village and house visiting:
A gang of ruffians have rounded up some Archanean folk and are holdin ‘em over at the edge of town. What a world it’s become, that we’ve gotta be prisoners in our own land!
This here is Knorda, Akaneia’s closest market town. Drop by the armories and vendors if you’ve an interest in rare goods.
Three ancient weapons known as the Regalia have been passed down through the generations of House Archanea: Parthia, the bow of flame; Gradivus, the lance that pierces stone; and Mercurius, the spectral sword. Only those blessed by the gods may lay hands on them- or so it goes.
Sounds interesting…
Watch out for the ballisticians. They can fire their missiles quite a long ways. If you see they’re using a weapon called an arrowspate, move your fliers out of there, before their wings get clipped! Also, ballisticians have a weapon called the thunderbolt, which is particularly effective against other ballisticians.
Remember this.
I’m sick of war. If it ain’t the screams of battle you’re hearin’ it’s the bawlin’ of the widows. You all should go home to your loved ones if you ask me.
Think of the women and children who are affected by war.
What a bitch.
I hear you are holding some Archaneans here against their will. Release them at once!
How ’bout I release my fist into yer- MunchinManaketes! The Altean army?! Aieee! Get me outta here!!!
Munching Manaketes? This localisation man, it’s the best.
Is everyone all right? I know you’ve been through a lot. Go home to your families.
...
Em? What’s wrong, lad? Why don't you go home?
Because I have no home to go to.
…
You’re a girl! Why were you dressed as a boy?
To hide, sir. My name is Linde. My father is- was- Miloah, a pontifex. I donned men’s garb to escape Gharnef, but no sooner was I away when those ruffians grabbed me.
So you’re Linde I’m glad you’re safe. Princess Nyna was worried about you, you know. Well, we’re all together now. I promise to keep you out of danger.
No! Let me fight. With Princess Nyna’s blessing, and the tome my father left me, I can wield Aura magic. Let me use it to avenge him. I want to destroy Gharnef myself!
So this is Linde, daughter of Miloah, rival to Gharner, star student of Gotoh the White Sage and wielder of Aura magic.
Aura is a damn powerful tome. It is the counterpart to Excalibur in that only women magic users having A rank in magic can use but Linde can use it right away. Aura is what makes Linde good enough to use because as you seen from her stats, she’s pretty shit right now but there’s an arena right here to help train her.
She has a event talk with Merric too.
Linde, I presume? My name's Merric. Prince Marth asked me to look after you. Not that we mages need any help looking after ourselves, mind you.
Merric is already making his move. Prince Marth gave him no such order to look after Linde.
Oh, you've studied magic?
Yes, in Khadein.
Khadein... The school? My father was a student there a long time ago.
The school is beautiful- was beautiful, until Gharnef took over and changed everything. I was blessed with wonderful teachers, and I found a healthy mix of friends and rivals in the other aspiring mages.
It sounds nice, I suppose. But my father was the only teacher and friend I ever needed.
......
I'm sorry, Linde...
Don't be. I'm tough like my father, too. ...Let's talk about you, Merric. And about Khadein. I've never been to a school before. How do they teach?
More about Gharnef and Miloah. Shame that we neve actually meet Miloah or even see his death. It would have been much better if he died during the events of the game itself because, at the very least, it would shed more light on Gharnef, Miloah and Gotoh.
You know, for the very first game in the series, the original Fire Emblem had a really good plot. I’d say it’s better than or at least on par with what we got later on. The only real negative about it is that the game itself is very poor at giving the plot to the player in a proper manner. All of this backstory was only added in Shadow Dragon and it came from Developer’s notes, stuff found in the various Art books, etc. The real shame is that even though Shadow Dragon adds some of it into the game, most of it was still left out because of IntSys’ insistence that this be a straight remake rather than a reimagining.
Archenea is chock-full of potential and most of it is wasted. In fact, the first games have much more deeper stories than the later ones in the series but like the first game, all of it is found mostly in developer’s notes, Shouzou Kaga’s personal notes, etc. Shouzou Kaga is a great world builder even he falls short on delivering the story properly and was far too ambitious for his own good. FE4/FE5 has even more potential than Archanea but the games fail miserably at getting it across. I love the story of those 2 games but my interest in them doesn’t come from the games at all. It comes from all the accompanying material. The FE4 manga, Shouzou Kaga’s notes, short stories set in the interim period of the two generations, fan interpretations and even fanfiction. Without all of those, I would probably hate FE4/FE5. There is a similar situation with FE1/FE3/FE11/FE12 but thanks to the remakes, especially FE12, you require less secondary material to truly appreciate the world of Archanea.
So anyway, let’s deal with Khozen, shall we?
Don’t ignore Jeorge this time. Even with a Silver Bow, he’s not doing too much damage. Enough to kill him in 2 rounds but Manaketes can be dangerous. But we’re on Normal mode so…
Manaketes can’t attack at range which severly hurts them.
Cain compensates for Abel’s bad level with a decent one.
Khozen moves in at melee range to attack Jeorge who can’t counterattack him.
Doesn’t do him much good though since he’s done.
Acceptable for a prepromote.
So you know why Caeda was reclassed to Myrmidon for this chapter? Because she’s the one who can recruit Jake. However, Jake has higher attack range than Caeda’ movement range and as a Ballistician carrying the Arrowspate weapon, he would absolutely destroy her.
So Caeda slowly moves towards Jake after all the enemies are deal with and-wait what? Why can’t she talk to him?
Turns out, there is another prerequisite for recruiting Jake.
A character (any character and not necessarily Caeda) must visit this house. Then Caeda can talk to Jake.
In inside is:
Take my sweetheart, Jake. He’s got a heart of gold, that one. If you see him, tell him Anna’s worried sick about him. ’Course, my Jake won’t talk to no-one but the most beautiful of women. That’s just the way he is.
It’s Anna, the Fire Emblem RNG goddess! Anna is sort of a recurring character. She appears in every Fire Emblem game, except Gaiden. Her role in each game varies. One thing that stays constant is that she’s always the one who handles all the secret shops. What are those? We’ll get to that. In FE4, she handles the item storage. In FE9/10, she handles the tutorials. In Awakening, it is revealed that Anna is the Nurse Joy of the Fire Emblem world. There a LOT of Annas running about. They are all sisters. You can even recruit one Anna who joins your team.
In the Fire Emblem fandom, Anna has long been referred to as a goddess. A running joke is that she is the one who handles the RNG and is thus, responsible for all the good AND bad levels that you get. Fire Emblem: Awakening references this meme in the last piece of DLC (Jap. Translation= The Strongest One’s Name). This DLC is by far, the hardest part of any FE game so far. The enemies have insanely high stats and the bosses, even more so. The final part of the DLC includes one Anna as the final boss. I’ll just type out her stats and such to give you an idea of what you’re up against.
Yeah…
IS has embraced Anna as the Fire Emblem Goddess. That Rightful God skill spells it out as clear as day.
She tells us a bit about Jake. Apparently, he only answers to pretty women. Well, we have awoman on our team who’s a real professional when it comes to manipulating men and swaying them to her side.
And for that matter, Jake is also a recurring character. His appearance varies in each game and he doesn’t appear as often as Anna but he’s there. In FE1/11, he’sa ballistician as we’ve seen. He was dropped in FE3 due to memory issues but was added again in FE12 where he is a Warrior. In FE4, he shows up in the second generation if you have a particular set of substitute children recruited. In an obscure corner of one map, if take a character called Linda on a particular tile, Jake will appear and mistake Linda for Linde. Linda’s brother can also meet Jake after this. FE7, Jake shows up as one of the members of the pirate crew that’s willingly to undertake a dangerous voyage to a place called Dread Isle where our heroes seek to go to. Jake doesn’t appear in Awakening.
It would appear that Jake and one particular Anna are a couple and they travel the world and across dimensions. Appropriate, as one Anna also operates the Outrealm gate in Awakening.
Anyway, that’s enough FE history lessons for the day.
Now that we’ve visited the house where Anna lives, Caeda can talk to Jake.
Hail, ballistician of Grust! Are you the one they call Jake?
Hail yourself, sugar! What's a fetching lass like you doing out here on the battlefield? And how do you know my name?
I am Caeda of Talys. An Archanean woman by the name of Anna told me about you.
Really? Anna mentioned me? ...In a good way, right?
She's very worried about you. She wants to know why such a good man is fighting for the wrong side.
Wrong side? Hmm... Well, I have to admit, I'm not too keen on kicking Archanea while they're down...
They why not fight for Archanea instead? Help us defeat Grust and Dolhr, and set the world right.
Well...I don't know. I don't think it's that simple... Hmm...
Anna would love you for it, I'm sure.
She would? Hmmm... All right, you win. But I'm doin' it for Anna- just to be clear!
You know, even though I complain about Caeda and her personality, most of it is tongue-in-cheek. In reality, I love her personality in this game. It’s a hell of a lot better than ‘Standard Love interest to Male Lead’ that she was stuck with in the original. Make no mistake though. She still recruited all of those male characters to her side just through words but the tone of her words is much different in the original. Take Roger for example. In the original, his recruitment is more about how much the women and children suffer, even though that’s a ridiculously misandric (Funfact: MS Word does not recognize Misandry or any of its forms as a real word even though it recognizes Misogyny just fine) argument. There are still hints of her being a bit manipulative but they are minor. I love what they did with her in the remakes.
So here’s Jake.
His stas are awful but he is a unique class that only one other character has. No one can reclass to this class so he retains his uniqueness. Ballisticians can attack at a range of 3-10. They cannot attack someone that’s within 2 tiles of them. Ballisticans can use the various Ballistae weapons. Right now, we only have Arrowspate, which does bonus damage to flyers. There are few more out there with different effects. Ballistician is a very fun class and I will try to make use of them as often as I can.
Lena's maxed out now. She gained 4 points in magic over the course of 17 levels. Ugh. Atleast her other stats are semi-decent.
After a bit of grinding, here is Linde and Merric to compare her to. She got more magic but slightly lower other stats. Which one you use is upto you. Both can be good although Linde requires Arena grinding.
Jeorge uses an Energy Drop to increase his Str by 2.
Marth can now talk to Jake as well.
Are you the Altean prince? The name’s Jake. I just joined up.
Many thanks, Jake.
You know, I’ve been to Altea once. Have you, uh, ever paid a visit to the ecret-say op-shay there?
The what?
The secret shop! Didn’t you know there are secret shops hidden all over the continent? Well, there’s one in Altea, too.
Oh, really? Where exactly?
If I told you, it wouldn’t be much of a secret, now would it? The entrance is disguised so you can’t find it.
Disguised?!
And they don’t let anybody in without a VIP card. So don’t expect to waltz through the door by accident.
But how do they stay in business?
Who knows! Last I heard, they were desperate for customers.
Then maybe they should reopen as a “tell your friends shop.”
Ha! Very clever. Anyway, you should drop by when you’re in the neighborhood.
But I don’t know- Ugh. Never mind.
I knew I wasn't cut out for the military. Well, too late now. I just hope Anna's OK.
Oh localisation, you so funny. “Tell you friends shop.” Hah! Jake is basically advertising his girlfriend-to-be’s shop.
You can visit Anna’s home again before recruiting Jake to get a different conversation.
I hope this warring is over and done with soon. And I hope my Jake is well.
If Jake visits Anna’s house, we get another conversation.
Jake! What are you doing back?...Oh, so you've decided to fight for the Archanean League now?...No, no, I won't stop you. Sure, I wish you'd just stay put for a change, but I know you wouldn't fight unless it were for a fine cause indeed. Go get 'em, honeycomb!
Jake can visit her house AGAIN to get yet another different conversation.
Go get 'em, Jake!
We’re done here.
Then...we've won!
Not quite yet. We can enter the palace, but Dolhr still holds strong inside her walls. Also, a number of knights are being held captive inside.
Loyal soldiers who fought for their kingdom and their people...Marth, I wish to free them as soon as possible.
I understand. We should strike now, then, before enemy reinforcements can arrive. I believe we have a good chance.
Thank you, Marth. As always, I am counting on you. Worry no more.
Character Spotlight:Linde
The hell is she wearing? How old is she? She's clearly not wearing anything underneath that dress.
Linde starts out really weak but has good growths. More importantly, she can use Aura right from the start. Aura is fucking powerful and it will serve her well till she can gain enough stats to use other kinds of tomes and still manage to do something worthwhile. She also has a nice backstory which is a plus in my book. I’ll be alternating between Linde and Merric. Both will be used.
Jake 
Jake looks really terrible doesn’t he? Bad base stats, bad growths? He has it all. Except he doesn’t care about any of htat stuff. All he cares about is his Skill stat and sometimes his Strength stat and he can good and acceptable growths in each, repectively. The reason for this is that Ballisticians are a gimmicky but fun class. Their only problem is that the more powerful Balllistae weapons have really low hit rates so a high skill stat does wonders for them. Jake also gains levels like crazy due to his low level. A single Ballistician is not worth the trouble but pair him with another Ballistician that we’ll be getting later on and they are quite useful and fun to use.
Also, Linde died once in the Arena and I had to restart everything, incuding the screenshots.
Next time: Return of the SNARF!
Grust has gathered its knights by the fortresses to the north. It's dangerous for you to stay here. Thankfully, the eastern castle has been left almost entirely unguarded; that's the place to strike. Please be careful, sire. We'll be fighting with you all the way.
Ack!
Sire, it's too dangerous to stay here. We must flee to Pyrathi. There are risks there, too- the Pyrathi king Mannu is said to be a descendant of the dragonkin, a Manakete. Still, we've no other recourse. We'll just have to take our chances... Keep your wits about you, sire.
I'm not going anywhere! I want to stay with you!
Apr 18, 2024 15:33:54 GMT -8
