Part 82: Chapter 81 (Intermission) - Their Finest Hour: Results + Credits
Update 81 (Intermission) - Their Finest Hour: Results + CreditsAlright, folks, it's time to wrap this up. First things first, we have the results from the second Their Finest Hour vote, so let's see how all our characters placed!
First up, the CO division.
In fifth place, we have:
Max, Sami and Sensei! A pretty good group of COs, I like all these guys. Sensei especially though.
In fourth place, we have:
It's kind of amusing that Colin and Lash got the same amount of votes. I'm surprised Rachel's not higher, though, I enjoyed her in this game.
In third place, we have:
Sonja! We love Sonja in this house. Her new skill makes her absolutely fucking insane, so yeah, I'm fine with this placement.
In second place, we have:
Sasha, Javier, Grit and Eagle! Damn, seems like there were a lot of people vying for first. They're some good COs, though, I'd have placed Sasha and Javier this high too. Who won, then? Jugger, my beloved?
In first place, we have:
Hawke ran away with it! I think that's fair - he's a very interesting character. Plus I got to do some interesting interactions between him, my dude and Rose.
Next we have the ACO division. I think we already know how this is going to go.
In fifth place, we have:
Petra! Our favourite Green Earth gal, I'm not surprised Petra's up here.
In fourth place, we have:
Dimitri! I'm surprised he's not higher, I absolutely love Dimitri. But hey, I guess that's the way the votes went. And to be fair, the ACOs are a well-liked group generally. This was a competitive vote.
In third place, we have:
That's right, it's Vanessa! I must admit, I love her too - she's grown on me a lot throughout the last two LPs.
In second place, we have:
The man himself, Commander my dude! I'll admit, when I first started this vote, I wasn't sure who was going to win out of my dude and the winner. You already know who that is.
In first place, we have:
Rose Kuroda, the world's greatest strategist! Was there any doubt? She won in a landslide, too - everyone that voted on the ACOs gave a vote to Rose. And why shouldn't they? She's probably one of my favourite characters, and it seems like the thread agrees. Good taste, goons. Good taste.
Next we have the Orange Star division.
In fifth place, we have:
Alfonse! He's been a very good boy throughout the three LPs, so I'm glad he got some recognition.
In fourth place, we have:
Dave! I'm actually surprised he's not ranked higher, but that's fair enough. The issue with Dave in this LP specifically was that he'd kind of finished his character development. I love the guy, but there were definitely more dynamic characters in LPAWDS.
In third place, we have:
Rin and Lena! Shame that Rin didn't pull off the win this time, but it's wonderful to see Lena ranked so highly. I was honestly really nervous about how people would react to the whole Director subplot, and whether that was tampering with the story too much, but it seems like she was fairly well-received, so I'm grateful.
In second place, we have:
Von Panzer and Selena! Wow, Von Panzer did well this time, didn't he? Good! I love that guy. He just never fucking dies, and it's great. Selena, of course, is excellent too, and I'm glad I was able to develop her so much throughout this LP after hinting towards things like her feelings towards my dude and her relationship with her family.
In first place, we have:
Lucy Ophelia Maxwell! Everyone loves the Queen of the Skies, and I can't help but agree. She's grown up so much over the last three campaigns. Proud of ya, Lucy!
So, now we have the Blue Moon division.
In fifth place, we have:
Eva, Klara, Inessa and Elena! The girls all did decently well, I'm impressed this many characters got the same amount of votes. My favourite here is probably Inessa, personally, but they're all good fun. The Blue Moon gals are great.
In fourth place, we have:
Diana! She's changed a lot throughout the last two campaigns, so it's good to see that being recognised here. Her design is great too, props to my artist for that one.
In third place, we have:
Harlow! I'm glad people liked them - they're one of the more mysterious characters, but I enjoyed writing their developing friendship with Rin. Good on you, Harlow.
In second place, we have:
Ludmilla, of course! Everyone loves Ludmilla, for two very obvious reasons: her snarky attitude and her caring side. Naturally.
In first place, we have:
Zlata! She can thank her lucky stars that Dimitri wasn't included in the Blue Moon division, otherwise he'd have run away with it. But she is a great character, so I'm glad to see her place so highly.
Next we have the Yellow Comet division. This is another one that's going to be shaken up by Rose and Vanessa not being eligible for the vote. Let's see who else placed highly!
In fifth place, we have:
Minerva, Sofia and Khepri! A good group of girls - and hey, Minerva made the list even after her passing. That's always nice to see - I feel like the same thing happened in the last LP.
In fourth place, we have:
Lysander! Silver-tongued and charming - or so he wishes. This dork's good fun, too, he had a lot of fun interactions throughout this LP.
In third place, we have:
Arqa! This is one of the placements that surprised me most. Apparently people really enjoyed the new-and-improved hardworking Arqa? I mean, sure! She was fun!
In second place, we have:
Peregrine! Truly, one of my favourite bomber pilots (after Lucy). She's plenty of fun to write, and I particularly enjoyed her bet against Lucy, and the subsequent race. That might have been one of my favourite intermissions to write.
In first place, we have:
Andromeda! And she god! Damn! Deserves it! Andromeda's the best, and I'm glad everyone else recognised it as well.
Now we'll do the Green Earth division. The top 3 for this one is not going to surprise you even slightly.
In fifth place, we have:
Conrad, Sebastian, and Wallace! These guys are good, so it's nice to see them up here. Conrad had some good parts this time around, his relationship with Petra was interesting to explore.
In fourth place, we have:
Ah, Quincy and Adelaide. Yeah, these two are... certainly interesting. Quincy's probably the weirdest character I've ever written (excluding, like, Raynald) but I do enjoy the scenes that she appears in. She's a very chaotic influence.
Right, ready for the most predictable top 3 ever?
In third place, we have:
Of course it's Cassandra. Beautiful, brave and talented - what's not to love?
In second place, we have:
Howard! Yeah, this should be no surprise. People love Howard, but especially his relationship with...
In first place, we have:
Mulligan! You can't keep down Mulligan - he got nearly twice as many votes as Howard. It's insane how much people like this guy. I didn't expect it at all - I presume Mull, Howard and Cass would all place relatively evenly, but nope. Mulligan's a clear winner.
So, those of you that partook in the vote may also recall that there was a choice for overall favourite character. Those votes were surprisingly varied (whoever voted for Raynald, I respect you immensely), but there was a winner amongst the votes. The overall favourite character in Let's Play Advance Wars: Dual Strike was...
Rose Kuroda! (Again.)
I'm really not surprised by this. She fucking beat my dude in this LP, verbally smacked down Kindle, won both of the final battles with a bit of help... she did a whole lot in this LP, and she's still so young. Congratulations to Rose!
So, let's move on... the end of the game, as always, comes with an overview of the campaign.
This map sure existed. It's a damn sight harder in Hard Campaign, though, as I discovered during my casual HC playthrough...
They may as well have renamed this map to Artilleries Are Broken.
Ah, here we saw the Black Bomb for the first time and discovered just how underwhelming it was.
2 days? Man, I forgot how quickly the tutorial maps went by.
Ah yes, the update where the enemy had medium tanks and I didn't. Hmph. We also met the Director for the first time here!
I... genuinely do not remember what happened in this map. I think this was where we met up with the Blue Moon COs and the Snowbound Free Company?
Ah, our first Fuck of War map, and our second encounter with the Director. Tearing this map apart was satisfying.
The first Tag Battle was definitely a hell of a map - but we got to deploy Selena and several bombers, so it wasn't that bad really.
Gah! The map where they introduced the fuckin AI-controlled fronts. Hate you. Our third encounter with the Director was here, too.
And then we acquired black botes, and proceeded to never use them in the rest of the campaign.
I'm not surprised this was an A-rank - if I recall, my victory was a very scuffed run-away-and-don't-fight kinda deal. Fog of War does this to me.
Our fight with Lightning Grimm! He's fun, and Sensei was cool too. This is where I did the fight with Rose, also, using the Hard Campaign version of this map. What a brutal defeat that ended up being...
And this was the map where my dude was unavailable. It was quite intentional that Minerva's death was during the one map where my dude wasn't present - highlighting how much the soldiers need him to keep them safe. Also this map sucked and I didn't want to reload after Minerva died.
Black bombs! They're fine when they're predeployed, funny even. But I'm not paying over 20k for one.
Dave killed a megatank. I don't think I need to expand on this.
Our next encounter with the Director, and our first encounter with Hawke. This was a fun map, actually - there was a lot going on, and doing it all smoothly was very satisfying.
fuck spiral garden
This map was really fun, both doing it the normal way and the my-dude-explains-how-we-could-have-done-it-another-way way. That part was my favourite to write in the whole LP, my dude doing impressions of the other characters was too funny an idea to pass up.
Oozium! Oozium. This was a good map to introduce oozium on, especially in Fog of War. It made them far more threatening, but not super unfair, since you generally have at least 1 vision.
This is the map that I did all that grinding. I beat this goddamn map 24 times, and not a single one was particularly interesting. Thanks for all the exp, though, oozium!
Ah, the final battle with Madam Director. Yeah, this was a fun map - I beat it deathless on my first attempt, too! That's what they get for giving me a fucking predeployed megatank.
This map was probably one of the hardest in the run. It was good, though, not unfairly difficult, in my opinion, especially if you're not doing deathless like me.
Clone Olaf sure happened, huh? This map was fine. Very weirdly laid out though.
Fuck this map. This was so god damn hard - this might beat Crystal Calamity as the hardest to do deathless. Fuck of War and tons of enemy rockets... blergh. Drake's CO Power is annoying as hell too.
This map was fun, but not nearly as hard as, like, any of the other lategame maps. It feels like it should have been earlier. I guess all the units were predeployed Kanbei units, though, which can be threatening.
This was a good one, I enjoyed beating it as stylishly as possible. Get fucked, Clone Andy.
This final map felt much more climactic than the ACTUAL final map, hence why I did the clone my dude thing on this map instead. It wasn't insanely hard, but it rewarded intelligent play. I liked this one.
Yeah this sure happened. It was fine, I guess. Very weird choice for a final map. Why the AI-controlled front, Intelligent Systems? Who hurt you?
And now we've approached the actual credits. But you know how this works by now - we don't want the actual credits, we want the LPAWDS credits!
Thus, our campaign comes to a close. Thank you all for being a part of it, and I hope you have all enjoyed it! This has been such a fun journey for me, and I'm gonna miss it, for sure. I may be back in future for Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict, but for now, this will be it, and I'm very satisfied with how these three LPs turned out.
See you all again - thanks for reading!