"The holy kingdom of Archanea had come into being six centuries earlier, when the region's numerous city-states were unified under one monarch. The first king, Adrah, had fought valiantly to accomplish this, wielding the three weapons he came to call his regalia- gifts from the gods, some said. The kingdom Adrah forged was pronounced holy; its kings were esteemed. With Archanea's aid, six more independent kingdoms sprang up in their own time. But Archanea was always the greatest- and now, Marth was about to take his first walk through its historic palace's halls."Finally it is time to retake Archanea.
So this is what I’ll be doing from now on. Full maps! Yay! As you can see, we must circle our way towards the throne while fending off reinforcements that will attack our rear. We will also need to rescue the prisoners of war that are being held at the top left corner of the map. They are unarmed and vulnerable so watch out for them as the enemies who guard them will begin attacking as soon as we start.
We’ve got a mini-boss too. He has a portrait and everything. And lots of treasure chests.
Only 11 characters this time. Pick carefully.
Merric uses a Spirit Dust consumable to increase his Magic stat by 2.
And we begin:
Hmm...Princess Nyna must have returned with an army in tow.
An army?! Really? Then we are saved!
Saved, perhaps...or doomed. Surely the enemy realizes we are more trouble alive than dead now.
You do not take my meaning, Bishop. By "we" I mean Archanea. Archanea is saved. If Princess Nyna has truly come to chase the enemy from our halls, to free us...Then my death will have meaning.
Ho ho...I admire your spirit, child. I always have. But think how Astram would grieve if you were to die.
I...I had hoped to see him one last time- to say goodbye. That alone I regret.
Ah, but you have not died yet. Midia. Hang on to hope.
It’s SNARF!
Indeed it is him! We’ve got all our crew from the first bonus chapter. Back then, they were useful if only because we had no one else. Now, their quite horrible.
As you can see, they’re in quite the rough situation. As Boah points out in dialogue, the enemies will attack them and they can’t take too many hits. Their positioning is also bad. The two knights with their great defence are in range of the mage who will ignore their defence and cause a lot of damage with his magic attacks because of their poor resistance. On the other side, we’ve got Boah with his good resistance but shitty defence in the range of not one but two archers. They’ll make short work of him if we leave them as is. We’ll have to be creative if they are to survive long enough for us to rescue them. We’ll get to that in a bit.
We’ve also got a standard Manakete. Don’t take him lightly.
Tucked away in the corner, there’s Heimler. After a certain point, he and his mooks will rush towards us after opening the gate with the Door Key in his possession. Strangely, even though he has name and face, he has no battle quote, death quote or any dialogue at all. It’s really a mystery as to why he even has a name and a face.
Our real boss is Volzhin. He carries the powerful Bolganone tome. He’s also quite fast.
So let’s make sure that the prisoners don’t die before we get to them, shall we? Thankfully, they’re under our control so we can move them as we like. They have no weapons or items, naturally. Now if this was Thracia 776, then the prisoners wouldn’t be under our control and would blindly stand there taking hits. I say this because there is indeed a mission where you have to rescue a prisoner who is NOT in your control and will stupidly take hits while you try to get to her. Oh, and her survival is completely luck based since she CAN die if she things don’t go her way and she fails at dodging enough hits. If every attack hits her, there’s ZERO chance of you getting to her in time.
Anyway,
Boah moves to the left. He can tank the mage all day. Well, maybe not all day but you get my point.
The Not-Twins Knights move right. They can easily take the archers’ arrows.
Midia and Tomas move back to safety.
Alright, they should be fine for now. Still don’t leave them indefinitely.
Our first order of business? Killing the thiefs. Jeorge kills one and Julian gets a poor (but STRENGTH) level for killing the other.
The rest our units move forward and do a bit of damage to the enemy knights.
Next turn, we take out the knights. The prisoners are doing well. They only take 1 HP of damage. And we move even further.
Reinforcements arrive. Every alternate turn for the next few turns, the exact same reinforcements will arrive and attack our rear.
The mage attacking the prisoners switched targets and attacked our main force. Bad move. Boah takes a hit from an archer. He’s also fast for an old guy, just like good ol’ Wendel and doesn’t get doubled.
Abel why?
One archer down, one to go. Marth takes a squad consisting of Hardin, Ogma and Navarre south and towards the boss. The rest of our army stays behind to deal with the constant stream of reinforcements.
Moving down enough triggers Heimler’s rush. He opens the door and his lackeys rush forwards.
Uhhh…
Marth kills one mage and Navarre breaks one his Killing Edges on killing the other.
That’s how far the manakete’s range is. I’m not sure if he moves or not and I’m not taking that chance just yet.
Our army forms a blockade as reinforcements keep arriving. The first wave hasn’t reached us yet. Julian heads up to open the cell door and free the prisoners.
We wait just outside the manakete’s range. Julian frees the prisoners and we have them rush out. None of them have any weapons. I didn’t bring a healer on this map so Boah will have to do and to do that, he need to move next to Marth to access the Convoy.
Our army moves in for the kill. Sedgar gets a critical hit too.
He gets a Sedgar Level for his effort.
The second wave moves closer. We move our army back and just outside the enemies range. Rinse and repeat.
Heimler the mini-boss attacks us. Like I said, I wasn’t sure whether or not the Manakete moves so instead of risjing a fight against both a Fire Dragon Manakete and promoted enemy paladin, I let them come to us while staying out of the Manakete’s range.
Have I mentioned that I love the Ridersbane? Have I also mentioned that I hate my luck?
Heimler’s even carrying a Master Seal. How nice. The enemy is delivering these to us instead of making us go to them. I love a good reliable delivery service.
Anyway, Marth destroys Heimler with his Rapier though he takes a lot of damage too.
Navarre takes out the other Cavalier while Ogma braves the Manakete’s flames. Meanwhile, Boah moves south.
Ignore these chumps for the rest of the chapter.
And indeed the Manakete does move. Good thing I didn’t try to take him on at the same time as Heimler.
Ogma gets a shitty level . Yay?
Midia collects basic iron weapons and a Master key from the convoy. Back to our main army. Now it’s just a case of rinse and repeat like I already said so I’m not going to show anything that isn’t a level up or something interesting. Reinforcements arrive in groups of 3s and we gang up on them. Nothing to really comment on.
Boah grabs some basic equipment in case it’s needed. Midia opens the door to the treasure room. There’s a General guarding the area but he doesn’t move and only attacks those who are in his range.
As the turns pass, our main squad moves towards the boss. Hardin acts as bait for the sniper.
As I said, this General only attacks those in his range and does not move.
Hardin is hurting really bad. Ogma deals with the Sniper and Julian unlocks chests.
Meanwhile, up top,
Good and great levels.
The Armoury down bottom has some good weapons. We buy a few.
Jeorge gets attacks the general. I guess that is the trigger for him to move. Huh. Julian is hurting really bad too.
Jeorge, I think you’ve got a bright future as far as a place on my team goes.
Bolganone has a great animation.
But good animations on your weapons won’t save you.
It’s ok, I guess.
This however…
And that’s it.
I could not have done it alone, Nyna. The whole Archanean League fought tooth and nail this day.
True, and yet all the same... I have little doubt your exploits are the ones that will live on in song. I have a gift for you, to celebrate your achievements here.
Oh, I found these great artworks. I’m not sure where they’re from. They far too high quality to be from this game. The sequel? Doubt it, since all the cutscene artwork in that game is fully coloured instead of this sepia tone we’ve got here. It might be from supplemental bonus material.
Anyway,
The other two regalia- the sword Mercurius and the lance Gradivus are not here. The enemy took them when they fled. I am sorry. I had hoped to give you all three, and thus aid you in the battles to come....
Your concern for me is more than enough, Nyna. One day, I will get your family's treasures back and use them to crush Dolhr. I swear it on this emblem of fire!
Just say Fire Emblem, Marth. No need to be fancy.
Anyway,
Parthia. It is one of the 3 Regalia of House Archanea. The other 2 are
Mercurius and
Gradivus. All 3 are ridiculously powerful and have low uses. Parthia also has another feature that isn’t advertised. You can use it, as you would a regular item and consume one usage point to temporarily raise the holder’s resistance by 7. With each passing turn, Resistance decreases by 1 until it goes back to its normal level. It’s neat I guess but isn’t useful. Gradivus’s feature is much more useful (and broken).
Aside from the 3 Regalia, there’s also the
Hauteclere which we already have. It’s not a member of the regalia and is Macedon’s treasure, not Archanea. Macedon has another national treasure called
Iote’s Shield, named after the person who led Macedon to freedom from Dolhr. Ironic that Michalis is called Iote’s Second Coming but he’s siding WITH Dolhr instead of fighting against it like his ancestor did. Despite it being pretty common knowledge that Michalis usurped the throne from his father, the fact that the people have given him the title of Iote’s Second Coming paints a disturbing picture of the Macedon civilians.
Anyway, there’s also
Excalibur and
Aura, 2 really powerful magic tomes that we’ve already discussed. Along with those, there’s
Gharnef’s Imhullu which we’ll see soon enough and
Gotoh’s Starlight which we know nothing about.
Also, we have the
Aum Staff which we'll see much later.
Above them all is the
Falchion, the divine blade crafted from one of Naga’s fangs, the local god-like entity. Falchion is the only weapon that can cause meaningful damage to Medeus and only Marth can wield it.
So there you go, a brief history on the legendary weapons of Archanea. Future games would make legendary weapons even more overpowered (most notably, FE4) but here, aside from Falchion, Gradivus and Imhullu, they’re just powerful weapons.
We’ll get to what these weapons do, aside from being powerful that is, when we get them. We only get Parthis so only its effect is given out now.
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Treasure list:
Master Seal
Bullion (L)
Arms Scroll
Silver Sword
Dragonpike
Boots
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Character Spotlight:Make way for some of the worst units we’ll be getting.
Midia 
Midia is a Level 1 Paladin that arrives in Chapter 12 with stats comparable to Jagen who joined in the Prologue . Let that sink in for a moment. She has better growths but those are on slightly lower than Cain, Abel and Frey, who joined in the Prologue and were also level 1. Level 1 Cavaliers that is. Meaning they have 20 levels of growth before their level and tier is on par with Midia. What is this I don’t even. We’re seeing the inferior replacement syndrome is full effect here.
Boah 
Remember Wrys? Imagine Wrys but with crazy speed and 20 levels higher. Alternately, imagine Wendel but arriving several chapters late. Boah is pretty horrible. But he can heal and he has a high enough staff rank. So there’s that.
Dolph
Oh wow. That’s really bad. As if Knights as a class weren’t bad enough. The last thing a Knight character needs is to be stuck with bad bases and bad growths. At least he has a defence growth. Hey, it could be worse. He could be Macellan. But Dolph is not Macellan. Macellan is Macellan. Speaking of Macellan…
Macellan
Fuck. No seriously, what in the actual fuck? Is this a joke? Am I supposed to be laughing? Well, I’m not fucking laughing. Look at this guy. Isn’t it bad enough that he joins in the exact same chapter as another shitty knight? He’s already forgettable enough as it is. But then IS gives him those base stats and those growths. Almost all of his base stats and growths are lower than Dolph. He has absolutely ZERO redeeming value. NONE. Hopefully the next unit will be better.
Tomas
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
What the fuck? Is it an intentional joke that Archanea’s Royal Knights are supposed to be complete chumps? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Anyway, you know the drill: Bad bases, bad growths, bad joining time. The perfect recipe for a shitty unit that you should avoid.
I need a break.
