The Let's Play Archive

Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword

by Melth

Part 56: Final Chapter (part 2)

Playing Through:




Besides being, you know, dumb, where does this even come from? At least it’s more in character than Eliwood saying it.




Dumber yet. You’re not fighting Lyn. You are going to carefully stay out of everyone’s way and not touch anything.







Awww.




Nils pledges his help too and says Ninian would as well.




Yes, obviously.




And now every character you chose to bring gets their own little quote or sometimes a little soliloquy. This is an awesome FE tradition and one I hope they expand on in the future.

Canas apparently gets his wish since apparently no one ever remembers this happened in 6. It’s obviously significant that Canas the scholar and historian wants something so important to be forgotten, but I’m not sure I get why he wants that.




You’re strong enough to beat Athos in a fight. Good enough for me.




Pent’s motivation is and has always been pretty stupid. I’ve said before that I really don’t like him much as a character. Such a gary stu. Erk would one-round this guy anyway.




Hm. You know, it’s really not Nergal’s fault except insofar as he set events in motion and then he could have stopped it but didn’t. That latter is also true of Athos (aware of everything on the continent, greatest archwizard, probably in contact with her archwizard family, teleports at will, never helped her in any way), Brendan, and Lloyd among others. It was Sonia, disobeying Nergal’s orders, who was really responsible for most of what she lost. Oh and Linus being a moron. Ok granted Nergal worked with Sonia to kill her original family, but she was too young to remember that and she could still have had a happy life if Sonia had done as Nergal said and raised her as if she was her daughter. It was Sonia who decided to be abusive toward her. True, Limstella is the one who actually killed Linus, but no one knows that at this point and Linus could just as easily have been killed by Eliwood and company in self-defense after he blundered in like an idiot and attacked them. Nergal had nothing to do with Lloyd’s death; Sonia had no idea where he disappeared to and he suicidally attacked Eliwood’s group and refused to listen to the truth even from Nino.




Notice that this is something of a change of heart for him. He was a deserter and before going to Bern again said he had no fond memories of the place. Evidently his brief return visit made him homesick.




Raven continues to be the cool guy who does and says the cool things.




And Sain has, I’d say, the best line of all.




Here goes! Unfortuantely, Athos says nothing. I think that’s a huge missed opportunity. As one of the 8 legends, the mentor and advisor to the heroes, most experienced veteran warrior in the room, and Nergal’s old friend AND adversary, he really could have said something memorable and deep.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4okMCBcr0Qk

Very atmospheric and menacing unique map music. Dragon’s Gate 1, you may recall, was the ominous theme that played when the party first arrived at the gate and was first beginning to grasp that they were dealing with something bigger than they understood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw9_Tdpoz5U




Sain’s defenses are lackluster and no one stands up to Uhai very well anyway.




He rides in and kills one of Uhai’s two snipers. You can see he’s still darned powerful here in the endgame.




Even though he basically hit his peak 10 levels and 20 chapters ago.




Nino runs after Sain. You may find it odd that Sain attacked with a 1-range weapon. But see, those snipers also have longbows. Further, Uhai can’t be killed by a mere javelin.




Ta-da! You can open those doors! That’s… pretty much the closest to a cool strategic trick I’ve got here. There’s not much else special you can do. Well Raven can double Ursula and Jerme and should be able to kill Ursula guaranteed on his next turn, though he’ll be badly injured.




Pent was positioned so he could run to exactly this square and use the Unlock staff.




Allowing Erk to stand exactly here. Besides being at range to fight both generals, this precise square is important for reasons you’ll see soon.




Eliwood opens the door and continues his move, thereby getting out of Ursula range.




Heath started next to the square Nils was going to run to for a reason.




Heath and Athos transport Nils to the top area of the map where he’ll have a lot of important work to do.




Canas moves up with them. He’s got flux equipped at the moment, Athos has the one Luna. That’s important because starting positions meant Athos was going to be in the back by 1 square.


Because Eliwood has an axereaver equipped, the warrior with Brendan will use a bow on him, not Canas.




Lyn is carrying some backup gear for Hector that he probably won’t use and goes with him. That’s the turn. 4 doors opened, the last ones about to be.




Erk gets a lucky dodge on Darin and then crits him. There was actually almost no luck involved here. See, if Darin did hit then unless Erk critted, the other general couldn’t attack Erk regardless. And the longbow sniper couldn’t finish him. So the only way Erk would die is if 1) Darin hit, 2) Erk critted, 3) the 20 or so accuracy second general also hit




Nice, that’s speed capped.




And he gets the Rex Hasta. Erk had an inventory spot open to start with. Most people didn’t since you may recall I had almost no inventory slots to spare.




Barring a lucky crit, this is gonna be a long fight. But all I need is for Eliwood to get started and to tank a turn or two while other people get ready to help.




Jerme vs Raven went about as badly as it could have with Jerme hitting and Raven missing once. As the guy on my team with the lowest Res, Raven was pretty bad at this job- though still good enough. There was just no one else fast and strong enough to double Ursula and then kill her who wasn’t needed elsewhere.




The morphs aren’t very talkative but their faces are still as expressive as ever.




Oh. Well that’s pretty helpful. He could have just Silver Sworded her next turn, but this works even better.




And when they die, they all return to living facial color and smile. This suggests that these morphs actually were to some extent the trapped souls of the people used to make them. Not entirely sure how that works.




Because Raven had to use a door key to get in, he now has an open slot so he doesn’t have to drop anything.




Even with Ninis’s grace on, Uhai is pretty devastating.




Erk gets the dodge he needed after that unexpected crit, so I’m back in business.




Eliwood takes an unlucky hit from the warrior with Brendan, but it’s alright.




This right here is why it was important that Erk stand precisely there. It was the only way to lure this sniper to that exact spot. And now Uhai is finished even though I haven’t put a scratch on him yet.




Nino attacks and weakens the sniper for a future turn.




And now I have Uhai trapped (Nino couldn’t do much damage to him).




Pent heals Raven and steps out to be ready to go wherever he’s needed in the near future.




With the Brave Sword I gave him for this purpose, Raven could completely own Jerme.




But instead I’ll move the (impervious) Erk to the other edge of Jerme’s range to finish Uhai later since Sain isn’t accurate enough and have Raven go this way. Eliwood could use the help.




This fellow has a bolting and more to the point, he’s in my way.




Then Canas steps up, trades for the Luna, and unloads it on Kenneth. My next few moves will depend on how this goes. For example, Heath could fly in and finish Kenneth if Canas doesn’t crit. Or Nils could boost one of them. Otherwise, Nils will work with Hector and Heath will probably help Eliwood.




Nice, that helps. The remaining druid has Gespenst the S-rank dark tome, but he can’t hit hard enough with that to be a threat to Canas and it weighs so much that Athos will easily double him with Aureola so he’s dead next turn guaranteed. And they both have free inventory space.




So Hector opens the door. Lyn could have done it in principle, but there’s some problems with that approach. One of them is that then Hector has no free inventory space unless he stops next to her and trades with her in which case he can’t make any additional progress so there’s no profit.




The Reed brothers have support bonuses. There’ve been no enemies with those since Paul and Jasmine. These two fellows have good affinities too, so each is reaping a significant def boost among other things.




Nils is unfortunately in general range now. In retrospect, I should have checked Athos and Canas vs Kenneth first and then figured out how to move Raven Hector and Nils (and consequently Raven and Pent) in that order, but it was not at first clear that doing Raven and Pent first would in any way impact the top people.

Anyway, Hector was the two items needed for victory. First is the Swordslayer, acquired at last last chapter. This is one of the best weapons in the game. It’s like a swordreaver, but with better stats and also super-effective against mercenaries, heroes, myrmidons, swordmasters, and Lyn. The upshot is that the amazingly accurate Lloyd now faces a coin toss and will surely be hit and 2-hit killed himself.
Secondly, Hector has the Iron Rune that Lloyd himself dropped for us. This reduces Lloyd’s crit chance from about 25 to 0. That 25% could have killed Hector despite his nearly capped Def and the swordslayer. Lloyd is incredibly powerful.




Originally I had planned on Heath perhaps carrying Nils or Athos or Canas up to be in position to fight Nergal, but now it looks like I’ll finish a turn earlier than I thought so he’d actually only be slowing them down overall. He helps Eliwood with Brendan instead.




He REALLY helps Eliwood with Brendan.




So I quickly wind up with Basilikos on the enemy turn.




Hector kills Lloyd for a laaaaame last level. I so wanted to see him cap speed or at least Def or something.




A bit of a foolish risk, but it saves a whole turn actually.




A bad level!




Except he already capped everything!




A genuinely bad level for Nino as she kills the last sniper. She’s got great Def but is pretty mediocre at best otherwise.




Pent is needed for this general.




My Pent has pretty much only gained speed. That’s fine, his starting stats are good enough anyway.




Canas and Athos make a run for Nergal. They’re an incredible team




There’s no hard counter to Linus like there is for Lloyd. I’ll just have to get started on him early and keep the heat on. Oh and put Pent in range to lure him out where other people can kill him more quickly. That’s why Hector is letting him out here.




Canas gets a sweet level from healing Raven.




On the enemy turn, linus falls for the trap.




My turn. It is only turn 4. I’m gonna kill Nergal.




Eliwood finishes off the warrior here with the Blazing Sword.




His last level is a very good one! Speed capped, Strength just about brought up to average.




Raven takes down the other hero and proves once and for all that he really is the best.




So good he already capped everything that matters.




Heath + Pent if need be make short work of Jerme.




Heath pulls down another great level. He’s totally going to cap HP, Str, Skill, Speed, AND Def.




Nergal’s door opens. The druid has Berserk. The sage has fortify and no one cares.




I’m all ready.




Since everything is done down here, I do some more pointless healing.




So look at these numbers. Aureola has weapon triangle advantage and is super effective. The result is that Athos can actually just beat Nergal in a straight fight, guaranteed, with no need for any fancy tricks at all or even knowledge that Luna exists. All he needed to stop Nergal a long time ago was to use Aureola instead of his lousy Forblaze.




Nergal just has no idea that he’s only alive because Athos didn’t know about the weapon triangle.




It’s cool vs awesome time! The ultimate light magic vs the maybe second best actually dark magic! Seeing these two guys with their unique animations and their giant spells fight it out is pretty cool.




Nergal fires back with the almost as impressive Ereshkigal.




Nergal’s unique battle theme is Everything Into the Dark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgk8SGwX2Dc

It sounds awesome and it synchronizes fairly well with his animations. Also the name is great since, you know, Nergal’s whole story revolves around him discarding everything- his memories of his wife and children, his home, his old life, probably even his original name- into the dark to get more power in a self-defeating attempt to save them.

Oh and “Be Prepared. You are to be witness to a power that overwhelms all!” while a bit long-winded, is my favorite battle dialogue line since “Tell me… are you afraid to die?”

He really has a lot of great lines talking to various people, but unfortunately those people have no chance against him so I won’t be using them here.




He really gives it his best shot. Poor guy doesn’t know there’s a new archdruid on the block.




And then Canas wrecks him.




Just like what Teodor said. It’s this that has driven his life for 1000 years.




And then, as he dies, he finally realizes the question he’s been forgetting to ask. This is so great.




An unfortunate mistranslation. That shouldn’t say “Quintessence” it should say “Aenir”, the name of his wife. He’s briefly remembered her but even now the details are lost to him. No one ever knows his story, not even him.

This death quote, by the way, is not his standard one. He gets an expanded one the more Kishuna levels you do as you uncover more of his past.




But his moment of clarity passes and he dies as he lived, being a total jerk. So… is there like a form Canas fills out first or does someone just come by and give him the trophy?




Agh. Apparently on some level he does recognize that was his dad he just saw get killed.




But they never really know and convince him it was nothing.




Not even Eliwood, who pitied Nergal, suspected.




Famous last words.




This is all your fault, Lyn! Unfortunately screen caps don’t capture the screen shaking and the dragon roaring very well.




The group runs further in. Remember this part of the gate? This is where the first Dragon’s Gate expedition exploded in our faces. How appropriate that the final battle would take place here.




This painting puts the cool back in dragons in a big way. Actually this game does in general with the drama with which they’re always greeted and the art of the previous one too and the characters’ reactions.




At first it’s hard to understand why this would be. Afterall, the Demon Dragon is sealed away and only Athos knows where it is, the legendary weapons have been gathered and are in the hands of capable users, two of the legends are still alive, one has become some sort of demigoddess or whatever, and the Ending Winter has made it impossible to survive here long for dragons. Plus humans now have control of the whole continent and a strong economy to wage war with.

My guess is Athos is assuming the dragons have been preparing seriously for war, rather than just wandering through because the door is open and they’re homesick, and that they consequently have some kind of real plan and countermeasures for what defeated them before.




Somehow!




Three dragons. And not those sissy war dragons that barely even qualified as generic enemies. These are real dragons, better than Yahn.




Lyn makes up for her earlier mistake.




Conceivably Athos was more powerful in the past and has no idea how little chance he stands now. Alternately (and fitting 6’s story) these dragons are way more powerful than usual. This could, in fact, be some manner of elite dragon rescue team. Consider it from the dragons’ point of view:
The two ice dragons who ran the gate disappeared through it one day and were never heard from again. They were young and stupid and reckless however and without them to open the gate, there was no way through after them. Probably they just got homesick and decided to go through and stay in Elibe, which likely got them killed but nothing could be done about that.

Then after most of two years, someone hears Ninian’s voice and the gate is open. A dragon goes back through to find out what’s going on. 5 minutes later, all that comes back is its mangled corpse.
Clearly, someone on the other side of the gate is luring dragons through and killing them and this danger is not going away. So it would make sense to have not one but a small squad of powerful dragons on hand to charge through the gate the next time its opened to put a stop to this and find out what’s going on.

It makes some sense, though it’s contradicted by Ninian saying that the dragons were just homesick and came through to do some sightseeing. On the other hand, it’s not like [spoiler]Ninian actually talked to them or knew what was going on in the other world at all.




They saved some cool animations and art for this last section here. Durandal doing that black screen slice, this awesome looking firebreath, etc. If they were capable of that kind of thing all along, why were there so many moments where this kind of animation were a complete fail instead?




Man, the whole room seems to be on fire now. Eliwood doesn’t think twice before rushing right up to two dragons to try to rescue Athos. Even Hector and Lyn aren’t that brave.




Athos wants to stand his ground here where we have every disadvantage. This is why Market gives the orders.




Did somebody say they needed some kind of help?




He’d come across as something of a deus ex machina if going to get him to help weren’t the one thing Athos explicitly said he was going to do and if he didn’t then say he’d been successful when Lyn asked if he’d done what he was trying to do. That’s probably why Athos just answered with a vague “I was” when asked if he was successful. If he gave a complete answer, it would have spoiled this moment of the cavalry arriving.




I’m… yeah I’m not sure really who he’s talking to or what he means by that.




An animation light show ensues.




And Ninian appears in the middle!




Well that’s unexpected!

But actually, it kind of fits in a nice way with some things characters said previously. And it really puts Nergal in his place. He was not, afterall one of the 8 legends. He was a pretender to the title who got all his power by stealing it from other people using one ancient spell that he didn’t even invent himself and wiser people had rejected long ago. And which Athos said brings not wisdom but abomination.
Renault, shouting at Nergal, says that Nergal tricked him into believing in the impossible: the return of a lost soul. And Nergal reveals that his lousy attempt was pretty much the best he could do. All he could make were wretched creatures like his morphs in the shape of the black fang leaders who couldn’t even speak and were glad to die. Nergal boasted that he had “the power to perform miracles.”

But he never really did. Bramimond does. Bramimond is better than him and has always been better than him. Athos too, is able to crush him when he uses the right weapon for the job and stops hesitating because Nergal was his friend.




Nils’s reaction is kind of lame and not as amazed as it should be. On the other hand, he might just be too stunned by seeing his sister resurrected in front of him to do much but stare.




And by appease he means kill apparently.




Ninian launches the most powerful attack of all time and nearly instant kills the lot of them. Bramimond restored the power she lost when she first returned to this world too.




She apologizes for having just killed them in cold blood.




And then falls over.




It’s like déjà vu all over again! It wasn’t so long ago that Eliwood informed Nils that NInian had only fainted after rescuing her.







Bramimond out!




Alright, the second part of the chapter begins as we square off against the dragon that made its reflex save.


It’s actually a big map and there are many long-ranged attacking enemies on it. However, they’re entirely irrelevant because there’s no reason to go into their range ever. You can’t even fly out and kill them for XP.




Nergal’s stats looked high. These stats are crazy. Completely off the charts. 40 Def, 40 Res. Most characters, at capped str/mag and using a silver weapon or fimbulvetyr or the like could not even scratch this creature. Most characters at average level 20/20 cannot even scratch it with the S-ranked weapons. And the legendary weapons are only 2x super-effective in this game, so they don’t even do that much damage.

And just look at that HP! It’s 120 actually. A long time before I played –or had heard of- Fire Emblem or knew what an RPG was, I played the original Shining Force for the PC. I was 7 or so and wasn’t very good at it, so it took me a while to beat but at long last I got to the final boss, Dark Dragon. And there I got stuck. Because his HP was - - or ?? or something. And what’s more, it didn’t go down when my characters attacked him! After a few swings, I concluded the game was somehow bugged and gave up on it. Older and wiser at age 9, I played through again, this time old enough to figure out that actually the ?? probably meant his HP was just over the maximum 99 display and if I hit him enough times I could kill him like anything else. Sure enough, he just had 200 HP or something like that and I finally won.

So besides regaling you with part of my secret origin story I’m not entirely sure what the point of that anecdote was, but Shining Force is a fairly interesting- if much less tactically rich- game and pretty fun. It has aged much, much better than the first Fire Emblem, its main competitor. I’m not quite as fond of the GBA remake, but it does add a fair amount of content and might be worth checking out on its own merits too. Think of it as like Fire Emblem 3 I guess.

And it ends with a fight with a dragon that has more HP than the game can display.




That’s… a really awesome description. And a very, very important warning. This thing is Luna. It is Luna with Might. 10 Might on top of 29 net Str. And it has 1-3 range. And massive accuracy. Look at that 184. There are no characters in this case who get to 30 speed and 30 luck on average, most characters can’t even come close if they hit their caps. But a hypothetical character who does have 30 speed and 30 luck and is not slowed by a weapon has 90 avoid. That means the dragon, with true hit, has a 99.34% chance to hit them. Imagine this maximum avoid character has an affinity that grants avoid (so not wind or light) and has an A and a B with other people who have affinities other than Wind or Light. Assume the tactician actually has 10 stars and the character shares the tactician affinity and the character holds the double-dash exclusive emblem seal and the character is under the influence of Set’s Litany. Then the dragon’s hit chance is roughly 50%.
In other words, you can’t dodge this attack.
There’s no terrain available, it ignores the defense boost of Ninis’s Grace, and ignores Def and Res too. So you can’t reduce the damage. Bolting in the hands of Athos would do 2 damage if it hit. So you can’t avoid entering its range.

If you attempt conventional tactics in this fight, you lose with 100% probability. Any character dies in exactly 2 fights, it will always target anyone it can kill, etc. Healers running in to help probably have less than 40 HP (Priscilla, Serra, and Lucius are lucky to have 40 at 20/20) so they’ll die instantly, and so on. On my first play of the game, I won by putting one person at a time in the dragon’s range and not attacking, damaging the dragon with a counterattack, and then having the character run out of range and be healed while another one ran in and also did not attacking until it was worn down.

Now of course I know about things like physic and luna. Still, that isn’t enough without a very lucky critical (that dragon has serious luck). Use Athos, heal Athos, dance for Athos, use Athos again, heal Athos again, have Canas take Luna and use it and the dragon is still alive even if Canas is fast enough to double and capped his magic. Armads or Durandal can finish it off of course.


I am going to beat this dragon in 1 round without Luna, criticals, supports, staves that aren’t mend, or Nils.




Here’s the formation again.




First, Nino trades the Rex Hasta to Heath.




Athos attacks with Aureola, doing light but important damage.




Then Hector attacks from the bottom with Armads. Position is important.




Heath uses the Rex Hasta from the left.




Sain rescues Athos and pulls him out.




Eliwood rescues Heath and pulls him out (and moves out of support range)




Erk heals Hector (A heal staff would work just as well for less money, but Erk happened to have this and I couldn’t do any trading when every unit has a job except Lyn.)




Pent rescues Erk.




Canas takes and drops Erk.




And now Raven rescues Pent.




Game over! That dragon looks awesome! Kind of reminds me of Perfect Chaos in SA1 though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7FElFcDYYg

Campaign of Fire synchronizes well with the dragon’s animation, but I’ve never honestly been fond of it. That background made of fire that flows and has heat distortion is really cool though. All backgrounds up till now have been static.




You can hear the thud whenever the axe hits the ground.




And he kills the dragon with his second counter. Round 1 win! Price: Rex Hasta x2 + Mend x1 = 1250.




The dragon is crumbling!




Everyone keeps saying this, but I’m telling you Eliwood had Birds of a Feather in the bag!




You’d think that, no matter how sick he was, Eliwood would have at least tried to ride out to help Hector in 6.




Athos congratulates him-




And collapses.




Either age or using all his power have finally caught up with Athos. Up until now it wasn’t really clear whether his relationship with Bramimond was really a friendly one at all. Certainly the two had been out of contact, Athos was unsure if Bramimond would help at all, and the two greeted each other rather coolly. It looks like Athos’s recent talk with Bramimond might have brought them back together after a thousand years on their own.




And with that, he soon departs.




Athos has had a full life and now that the world is safe from Nergal and some good people know about Arcadia, he has no regrets.




Aww.




And, as what he calls a parting gift, he shares with them his vision of the future.







Guess there’s nothing to worry about then.




That he did. Even when he was being kind of twerp, it was usually for their own good too. I like Nils’s sad posture in this painting particularly.




And even Hector’s rather disrespectful nickname for him sounds a lot more friendly now.







Now there’s an understatement.




She’s tried to apologize before, but this time he hears her out and she can tell him everything because he already knows most of what happened. She explains how living in the dragon world, they were homesick and remembered Elibe.




We know Nils didn’t fully recognize Nergal. Perhaps Ninian, having been older, did but kept the truth from him? Or more likely she just doesn’t remember as well as she thinks she does and Nergal acts and looks rather different.




And she regrets killing them for doing the same thing she did.




And then Eliwood says it’s not her fault, it’s all the fault of the ancient humans. And then he begins a speech to that effect. I really am tired of this trope in FE games. It’s always the humans who are bad and the wise human characters can be identified as the ones who say humans were in the wrong and dragons or sub-humans or gratuitous bunny people who were never in the setting before or whatever were way better and didn’t deserve what happened to them and so on. The crimes and jerkishness of non-human characters against humans are ignored or dismissed or just acknowledged to be the wrongdoing of that particular individual, but when some humans do something wrong it reflects badly on all humans.

It’s kind of a tiresome Fire Emblem cliché now.




At least here he implicitly recognizes that they did do something kind of irresponsible.




He probably would. Eliwood has become, as Elbert said he would, at least as much the consummate hero and wise leader as his father was.




And he pledges that, like Athos, he will try to make the whole continent like Arcadia someday; a place where dragons and humans can coexist.




Ninian reveals that they have to return home, both to close the gate properly (and probably explain what happened) and to survive.




There’s really never a pure happy ending in FE. They’re pretty good at crafting bittersweet ones like this one, recognizing that some people will die and others will be parted and the world will never just go back to the way it was, no matter how much people might want it to after the kind of disasters FE games usually revolve around.




If you have an A support between them the conversation becomes different here and she actually chooses to stay with him.







And they prepare to leave.




So they weren’t all wiped out in the initial “skirmishes” that were mentioned.







Now that’s really generous. They’re going to try to not wipe out or marginalize the humans of their world. Or rather, the world that they seized by force from the people already living there when they came as invaders from another dimension. Unlike, say, Eliwood these two were actually there at the beginning or nearly the beginning of their species seizing a world from the other. Only now are they going to try to not be as awful as the people who drove them out of Elibe.




Hector is totally blasé about all that.




And indeed, none of these humans seems to care at all about or have any interest in the situation of the humans living in the other world.




Another good painting.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXNPp0SylJY

It’s Light to Tomorrow, the same theme that played during the ending of Lyn’s story.




And there it ends!




And you get a painting that depends on who your main lord got his best support with (with Eliwood/Hector here being the default). It’s a great painting, but… Eliwood really has clawlike hands doesn’t he?




And I’ve reached the epilogue. I’ll post that in a bit. First I need to figure out by how much I exceeded the various requirements.


Total Restarts: 39 (Not counting looking at the initial map to find out what picked character list spot corresponded to what square)
Turn Surplus: 7 (Time limit 10, I beat it in 5. 4 or fewer might be possible with the Warp staff)
Things I Regret Missing: The lockpick on chapter 11, that darned archer on chapter 11, this one brigand who attacked Marcus on chapter 12, 2 more brigands who ignored everyone else to attack Marcus on chapter 13x, and 2 archers who ignored Hector and Dorcas (DORCAS!) to attack Marcus on chapter 14, like 10 more enemies I could have killed if Hector could have survived one more turn on chapter18, Uhai who decided to take a 100% chance of death to Sain over a free hit on Hector, the chance to finish shopping properly with my silver card on chapter 21, the armorslayer that I would have acquired if not for a stupid minor mistake on chapter 22, these 3 wyvern riders who decided they preferred a 0% chance to hit Isadaora and then 100% chance of death against her to fighting a low level Heath, those 2 pegasus knights at the end of Crazed Beast that I just didn’t have enough time to feed to Bartre, the confused pirate and final archer on Night of Farewells, like 5 charges of Fila’s Might and a Luna tome I should have Hammerned on Cog of Destiny, the Pure Water on The Berserker, and the 2 or 3 Victory or Death Valkyries who only lived because Erk’s Elfire broke just before the last turn.