Part 29: Ep 28: Getting the Axe

Final Chapter: The Last Holy War Part 1



Welcome back to Let's Play FE4 Binary. We've finally reached the last chapter of the game, and oh boy is it going to be a crazy ride. We got a first taste of it during Chapter 10 with the three fun Deadlords, and now it's time to attack the main course.



The Vendor is out of anything to sell us, so all that's left is to tackle the Arena to maximize our funds before a long and strenuous battle.



Most our characters already capped their levels, so here are all the ones who finished their training with one last level:

: +2 HP : +1 Mgc, +1 Def : +2 HP, +1 Lck, +1 Def

: +1 HP, +1 Skl : +1 HP : +1 HP : +2 HP

Not the most fascinating levels, but hey, Ced did end up capping Defense.



As you may have already seen posted in the thread, the Arena battles were boosted with powerful cameos from FE1. Most of them were quite doable, but some were pretty much designed to alt the progression of characters without a super weapon.



Minerva, with her Sol, Great Shield and overall tankiness is consistently effective at stopping physical fighters without legendary/semi-legendary/brave weapons. She's also got a hidden Critical Guard (or should I say Iote Shield?), meaning she's a threat even to archers and completely invulnerable to critical shenanigans.



Marth is more designed towards stopping characters who aren't able to kill him fast enough. His Aether skill (that's what these pink sparkles are) is enemy-only and deals very high unavoidable damage, meaning he was the end of the line for regular magic users.

Still, I've made sure to equip most of my characters with at least one ace in the hole, and everyone managed to complete the Arena, save for Corpul and Lana who had to stop at Marth. Sylvia did need to use the Sleep Sword to beat Ogma and friends. After that, she passed it around to Nanna, Oifey and Shanan so they could get past Minerva and complete the Arena.



On top of the satisfaction of beating the hardest Arena enemies in the game, the financial rewards are quite worth the time. Remember how all the Arena rewards were doubled in Sigurd's last chapter? Well here they are tripled, insuring that most everyone in the army starts the chapter with maximum funds.



Seliph and Teeny are now full-fledged ass-kickers thanks to their new gear. Seliph's old trusty Iron Blade went to Altenna, and Teeny's Heal to her brother.



Hannibal also put some bling on with Mag/Res rings. 23 Res is sort of a magic number for capturing Edda, so Fee jumped on the Resistance train too.



Then there were a few more minor adjustments like giving the Sleep Sword to Shanan since Leen won't need it anymore. Who knows? He might put a boss or two to sleep with some luck.

As for Finn, he stopped pretending he's tanky, gave his Shield Ring to Nanna and picked Leif's Speed Ring instead.



Farewell, little Paragon Ring. You were the cornerstone of my army, and I shall never forget you.



Here comes the Finale of FE4 Binary, where all sort of crazy shit happens. Our first priority will be to strike towards Edda and decimate the cavalry squad heading for us, then find a way to somewhat go through the wall of pain that is Edda's magical defensive formation.



We also have a few dark mages stationned around Chalphy. Half are equipped with Luna/Sleep and the other half has Yotsmungand/Fenrir. Hannibal will be taking care of the ones in the north by himself.



Meanwhile, his adoptive son will be opening fire on the southern ones.



With some help from the long-range siblings, Ced and Fee easily manage to take down the remaining three.



With that out of the way, we get just in range to lure the cavalry over to us.



Meanwhile, Hannibal is shrugging off dark magic like it's a mere breeze, and two-shotting the mages in return. He's slow to move, but once he gets going, there's no stopping him.



Corpul is still leading the charge on the mercenary force. Those Forrest Knights are packing Silver Swords but aren't all that bad. The Iron Knights behind them have Vantage, but no ranged weaponry to really make use of it.



However, the Mage Knights have Prayer and Fortify staves, which is slightly more irritating. And the Bow Knights far behind have Sleep Swords.



This chapter is also the place where lovers conversation occur throughout the whole map. Today, we have the on-foot side of the Jungby cousins.



As for the two Paladins? Well, one of them is Robert, who used to command this squad. His stats are nearly maxed and he has some pretty nasty weapons to get a lot of hits in with Charge. He's also gained Luna since vanilla FE4.



The other is... "Ronald", his twin. Pretty much the same boss, but with a Master Axe. He's also the closest to our troops, so Seliph takes a stab at him before leaving his place to...



... Johan, who easily out-axes him.



"F-Frankly, I'd like to talk about what just happened! But summarizing what I want to say would be too much of a bother."

Well then. Thank you for this very insightful remark on the situation. That was certainly worth 2 screens of dialogue.



As for Robert, he takes a pre-emptive Meteor to the head. But if neither him nor his defunct brother are commanding this squad, who is?



"Rena"? Really now. There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to start. Why import Saphy's portrait specifically for this when Rena already has a prefectly fine one? How can you screw up that badly on a recolor job with only three hues to replace? More importantly, why Rena? Okay, Hardin's ghost chasing us, I can live with; random anachronistic Freege generals are odd, but not too much; Pirates from another continent, hey, they can cross water. The cameo arena battles? Eh, it's not a part of the main story. You even fight Queens and Emperors in there.

But this? Did I miss the part of FE3 where Rena suddenly became evil and flew to Jugdral?





But yeah, that... thing has Aura, Critical and Luna on one hand, a Dracoshield, 7 Leadership and Prayer on the other, meaning she's pretty darn scary in both offense and defense.

How to deal with that? Well, Seliph with his Tyrfing can negate most everything in her arsenal, but he's already busy being Charismatic.



So instead, I'll just be kind of a dick, and do this.



Where are you prayers, now?



"No way... I didn't expect that."

Well yeah, that's pretty much what I said when I checked your profile, girl.



The other paladin bro soon perishes to Delmud's Master Axe. His armor is a darker gold than his brother, but his horse is white instead of brown. In Binary, attention to detail is like wealth: some have a lot of it, but some have like, none.



Waaaaait a minute... That's another random Full Metal Jacket quote, isn't it? From this guy specifically. So in English, that would be... "Ain't war hell? Fwahaha... haaa..."

Whatever, I've stopped caring about logic at this point.



One Mage Knight barely survives thanks to his Prayer. As for his buddy, he's stuck between a rock and a hard place... and another rock, and another hard place.



None of them manages to do anything productive with their turn. It seems like I've also barely entered the danger zone of the Edda wall of pain.



Aaaand it's a dodge. These new Sleep mechanics, man.



Welcome to "the developers were in a very bad mood that day". A nice straight wall of High Priests with Sleep Staves and Bishops with long-range tomes, then two more of those pesky Fortify/Prayer female High Priests. All with Renewal of course.



But before getting there, we need to finish off the rest of Rena's squad. This is the point where having the Loptyr Sword on Fee is incredibly helpful. Just throw straight at Edda with it, and she'll remain unscathed while gleefully murdering all the powerless staffholes.



At this point, I also notice there is one mage that Hannibal won't be able to kill. Altenna flies back to aid him in that task.



First off, we need to lure all the physical units out of there. Lots of them are pretty rare classes: the Lancers on the side are dismounted Duke/Dragon Knights, and the three guys framing the Snipers are Forrests, dismounted Forrest Knights.



Their equipment entirely consists of Killing Edges, Killer Lances, Killer Bows, as well as Pursuit, Sol and Adept. Pretty threatening fellows these people are, and they certainly know how to survive.



The bait works incredibly well, if you don't count small positionning mishaps.



Time for Fee to start her guerilla tactics, striking down High Priests one at a time, then retreating to safety. The boss has much more Magic than the other guys, so it's better to stay out of his range.



In a turn of dramatic irony, most of my units suddenly decide to crit all those guys with Killer weapons.



Their boyce, Boss... uhm, their boss, Boyce, seems to have gotten a slight recolor job, going from purplish to a radiant beige. He's all sorts of ridiculously scary, yet didn't gain much since vanilla FE4 aside from Astra. He's lost his Thunder Sword too, so he's pretty easy to pin down with ranged attacks.



Arthur still doing what he does best with siege tomes. Funny how the sparkles appear in mid-air if Sol/Luna/Astra activates in-between long-range attacks.



Seliph gets the drop on the shiny swordmaster, and we're left with just the defensive wall of magicians.



As previously mentionned, the boss guarding this castle is rather annoying because of his Sleep staff and really high magic.



In fact, he even has a Magic Ring to push it up to 30. Nosferatu, Nihil, Prayer and Renewal make for a fairly undefeatable boss. Whatever shall we do?



The same thing we do every night, Teeny: try to take over... their voice I suppose.



But that's not all! The little scamp also has a sidekick.



Well, she's technically with the mercenaries we've just slaughtered, but same idea. Green-Olwen doesn't really have much going for her. Her most notable trait is that she drops the semi-legendary Excalibur tome we saw all the way back in Silesse. She also has Blizzard to tag along with the other Bishops in siege abuse, as well as Nihil.



Most of the units that don't have enough Res to resist the Sleep Priests' 23 Mgc are simply going to head back to Chalphy while the others clean up Edda.



The Green Lady tries her luck against Leif, but yields little results. Once again, that's a neat turquoise palette.



No such luck for Altenna in the west, though. It's not like she could have reached her target from outside the Sleep range anyways.



Ced, however, is perfectly able to attack from that distance, and unleashes a fucking Astra snowstorm on the poor guy.



Delmud and Ulster couldn't escape in time and were put to sleep. No matter though, our priority is to take down all the High Priests.



Hey there, neutral zone which is totally not going to spawn fliers in the near future.



Only three High Priests remain. Time to work on the other source of sleep status.



Excalibur looks like your regular old Wind spell, only with the mandatory goofy sound effect.



Using the Valflame spell also causes an amusing reaction with Excalibur's transparency, making it seem like it's got a red layer on the front.



Corpul finishes her off and finally nets himself an alright tome. It's a bit heavy, but the power of a Silver Sword + 20 crit is nothing to scoff at. A shame there are no more fliers to use it on (unless you want to fight Areone's squad before recruiting them, for some odd reason).



"It shall be true hell, after this." Way to ruin my enthusiasm.



No matter what sort of "hell" awaits, we're almost done with Edda. Just gotta survive this turn.



Leif had a few lucky shots, especially when the boss came in to say hi with his Fenrir.



I'm also getting really lucky with all those Sleep misses. At least I think? It'd be nice to know the hit rates for these things.



Since Altenna is taking a nap and Ced is terrible at hitting things, Faval takes the opportunity to shine and climbs the cliff to the last dark mage.



Back in Edda, it's cleanup time. Corpul gives a try to his shiny new tome, and soon, only the Bishop boss remains.



He gets the "repeated stabs to the face" treatment for putting me through this kind of bullshit.



Man, that place sure was hell. And to think that girl said it would only get worse...



A returning theme from vanilla FE4: there are three Dark Bishops guarding Edda, Dozel and Freege, with the exact same lines but portraits of three different colors. Binary differenciated them a bit further by giving them different skills and close-range tomes.



They're still wusses, but one can appreciate the effort.



That's about it for Edda, but not yet for this update. Everyone moves into position: most foot soldiers go to defend Chalphy while our cavalry will take care of the pass north of Edda.



Once we conquer Edda proper, Burian (Johan's elder brother) and his random moustache commander take the field.



That Fisher commander goes east to meet with my cavalry, and still hasn't promoted his troops to Great Knights. At least he's got a healer this time.

As for Burian, he-



Whoops. Looks like this part of the recording didn't make it through. What kind of LP would this be without some sort of technical difficulties?

That about sums it up, though. Burian's troops head straight down to Chalphy, meet some tough opposition called Johan, and lose one or two Great Knights.



Here is the end result. All these guys are pretty annoying, with Vantage and Skill Rings. Half of them have Brave Axes, but the others have Master Axes and are incredibly tedious to deal with. As for the three Valkyries behind them, they're obviously all equipped with Fortifies, meaning the only way to kill on enemy phase is with lucky skills/criticals.



And even on player phase, with all my powerful characters, Faval shooting from the cliffs and Hannibal rocking his Magic Ring...



... I can only take down merely 5 of the mooks.



The ones under Fisher's command ara also surprisingly resilient despite their lower class. With their black armor and Killer Axes, they resist pretty well our second team's assault.



Here as well: 5 deaths on the Dozel side.



Of course, Vantage-Rapier suicides make things a tad easier in the east.



On the Burian side, I then get incredibly lucky with criticals and Astras and manage to wipe out half of his remaining Great Knights.



To the point where a Valkyrie nearly suicides on Ulster, leaving a nice cozy spot for Burian to come close to us.



Back in the east, Fisher is still kind of a joke compared to his master, but less so than in vanilla FE4. His Tomahawk and Great Shield boost his durability a bit, and Vantage is as much of a bother as ever. But 14 Resistance is pretty easy to exploit.



Adding insult to injury. Arthur knows how to make every shot count.



With Edda conquered, we now have a heart-to-heart between the Nodion cousins. Hey, at least he did cap that Def.



With Seliph having Returned himself to Chalphy, we're back on a good track.



Glorious, glorious Hit and Avoid.



The next enemy phase doesn't turn out quite as well, with Johan getting a Master Axe critical to the face. Still, there aren't enough enemies to finish him after that happens.



And the ones who try soon understand why fighting Johan requires the ability to survive one of his Vantage crits.



Here we find out about Daggon guarding Dozel, and eat a Luna'd Fenrir for it.



His profile is roughly the same as his Yupheel buddy from Edda, with Thoron instead of Bolganone and Luna instead of Sol. At this point, you can probably guess what spell tome and skill the guy guarding Freege will have.



So that leaves only Durian and his mighty- hey, don't you think you can run away from me!



Get back here young man, we're not done yet.



But before fighting him, we can learn from his profile that he's wielding the- heeeyyy there droppable Helswath!

Burian is tough. His offense isn't exactly fantastic, but with the great boosts to Def/Res and Great Shield, he can be a bit of a tough nut to crack. Getting him to drop that wonderful axe is certainly much more difficult than going around and capturing Dozel. But oh boy, is it worth it.



Thankfully, we have Astra Forsetis to solve that whole "tough nut to crack" issue.



I believe it is time for a family reunion. For love, justice, and axes! Onward!



: BROTHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

_{No idea what's up with the green palette, by the way. Purple suited the guy just fine.}



And with that, Johan is now truly invincible. Wrath-Vantage? Check. 1-2 Range? Check. High Crit? Check. Prayer and Great Shield? Check. Insane boosts to Defense and Resistance? Check. Nothing can stop him now.



Daggon makes a nice effort at looking threatening, but meets his demise just as well. Only one Dark Mutant Ninja Bishop remains.



And with him, Dozel falls to our might as well.



: By the way, I think this is a good time to mention you've been sharing your bed with your half-sister.

: Well gee, thanks for telling me a freagin' year ago when I was flirting with her, you sick pervert!



Now that we've conquered Dozel, Hilda uses her special CO Power: "Sea of Barons". I'll have everyone repair their weapons, and then move in position to face the Jungby, Freege and Belhalla forces. See you then.

Next time on FE4 Binary:



Hmm... who might that be...?