Part 30: Ep 29: Stealing Freege's Thunder
Final Chapter: The Last Holy War Part 2
Welcome back to the Final Chapter of FE4 Binary. When we last left our heroes, they had just finished conquering Dozel. After repairing their weapons, they're now ready to tackle Hilda's mighty Baron Legion.
They're pretty standard fare, with Thoron and Silver Lances, but few dangerous skills. What we want to do first, however, is aggro one of them.
Which technically we aggro all of them, although thay'll all stay in place once Fee flies out of range.
That rings the alarm for Scopio, whose ambush tactics are going to fall a bit flat when he finds us in formation, ready and waiting.
Scopio's group is reminiscent of his father's, all the way back in chapter 5. Brave weapons, and skills to attack a lot so they can crit more often. Hidden in there, we also have some guys with Master Bows/Swords, slightly better stats and Paragon, just to show that they're badasses.
We also have the three standard issue Renewal Valkyries with Fortifies and a magic boost.
Somehow, they decide that an approach from directly south will work better.
They get a pretty warm welcome from the magic siblings. It's a bit hard to see in the screenshots, but the Brave weapons guys (left) have a white armor, while the Master weapons ones (right) are clad in black.
Since the bulk of Scopio's troops is still hiding in the villages and forests and getting healed from afar, I just wait another turn so they end up in range to be decimated properly.
A lot of them decide to take on Ulster, who still effortlessly kicks their asses with a simple Handaxe, endgame or not.
Scopio himself tries his luck against a fully-supported Teeny and gets a mouthful of molten rocks for it. Look at him, all clad in gold and everything. What is he, a Lannister?
Aside from his rather outrageous Luck, Scopio really isn't that bad for a Master Knight. His stats aren't maxed, and his Minor Ulir only grants him half of the Yewfelle's bonuses, which he will finally drop for us. His King Sword is also rather useless, since he can't equip it for its Charisma to work.
In the series of AI oddities we've observed this playthrough, here's another one: the AI uses Fortify the way it would use Physic. It targets one unit and heals it from as far away from the fighting as it can. Nevermind the fact there are like 5 other people in need of healing, like this guy.
And now, for the most beautiful thing in the world...
Anyways, with all the mooks out of the way, I do believe we have a family dispute to settle. 4 Jungbies in our army have a word to say to their cousin.
Ladies first, of course.
Then comes Lester, who has to refrain from brutalizing him with his Gatling Bow. Gotta leave some for Faval too.
Using his father's sword to take back his mother's bow. How poetic. Farewell sir Scopio. You were no king of mine.
Hurray! Faval finally inherited his family heirloom... three castles before the end of the game. But hey, +10 Str/Spd can always prove useful here and there.
It's going to shoot exactly 7 arrows before the end of this journey. That's kinda sad.
The last Valkyrie also decides to make my job easier by simply rushing at us. Thanks!
It seemed like the perfect occasion for Faval to try out his new shiny. That's a pretty bulky bow if I've ever seen one.
I'm bored of healing people one by one, so there. Praise the sun!
Onwards to Freege, where a few surprises await us.
First off, the three Fortify Barons around Hilda have been replaced with Mage Knights. Since Hilda has 35 Magic, I'm sure she won't miss them too much. They're all unnamed mini-bosses, and pretty easy to lure out.
The first one is... Linde? Huh. Dime Thunder and Master Sword make for some high attack power and critical rates, and Prayer is always there to make my life harder.
Her portrait is actually pretty interesting. We can easily recognize her face, but they borrowed a part of Marth's cape to give her a more lordly look, then filled what was missing. The amount of effort that went into this specific portrait is honestly pretty astounding, considering what was done with Lena.
Thanks to her Prayer, she survives her encounter with a really pissed-off Fee with only 1 HP.
Fee's rage resounded so far that even the army of Barons decided to back the fuck away.
"What the..." That about sums up how it feels to get crushed by a meteor.
Shuffling around a bit more with my units, and we have the next Mage Knight, male this time.
Oh hey Reinhardt, weren't you supposed to be dead? Maybe Leif did release him after their Battle on the Big Bridge... Despite being unnamed, Reinhardt has the exact same equipment and skills he had in FE5, so we can fairly well assume that it's really him. Not quite as potent on the offensive as Linde, but he's pretty damn tanky.
Unfortunately, he gets caught by a nasty gust of wind that even his Great Shield couldn't protect him from. He may have escaped Ced's wrath in his original game, but this time is different.
"So this...is...the end..." Same death quote he had in FE5. Hopefully it really is the end, this time.
The last Mage Knight seems a bit more shy to attack (I wonder why?), so let's get working on those Barons. The fact Binary didn't really boost these guys too much almost makes this part easier than the vanilla game.
Opening the show is our usual scary couple.
Followed by Leif, who's taken a few tips from good old Oifey.
Also, I don't think I've had the chance to show off Teeny's Valflame yet. It always feels a bit odd to see it mirrored like that, when before it was always Arvis using it.
Anyways, since the beginning of the assault, Hilda has been spamming Fortify from way up north. This needs to stop.
And here's the main reason why I wanted 37 Mgc on Teeny. Having a rather tanky class plus a Dracoshield, her Vantage Hellfire attacks quickly become a real nuisance, especially with dark mages casting Sleep/Fenrir while you're fighting her. Silence makes this whole bullshit section a lot more manageable.
Also, she doesn't have that silly Major Dain anymore.
Now, before I forget, let's take care of the last remaining Mage Knight.
And that's uh... Linde again? With shorter hair. No really, she's got the exact same weapons, stats and skills. Only she has different hair.
And Seliph finishes that odd twin of hers.
"I don't want to die... help..." Neither do I. You should have picked a better House to fight for.
Well, we're pretty much done with the Gelben Ritter. At least I think that was the Gelben Ritter. Weren't they also Reinhardt's Mage Knights? Maybe Gelben Ritter is just a fancy name for everyone in the Freege Army.
No matter who they are, they don't seem to have much survival instinct.
Even Hilda comes down to say hi.
And I nearly had Finn killed there, by leaving him in the Castle boss's range.
Indeed, Baran is the most dangerous of the three color-coded Dark Bishops. Having Aether, he can easily pop two Fenrir hits, which is generally enough to kill any non-magic-tank character. We'll need to take care of him quickly, but first...
We humiliate Queen Hilda a little bit more.
Somehow, sleeping doesn't stop her from chewing the fat with her dear nephew and niece.
And with the combined power of Thunder and Fire, the evil child-hunting queen is put down. Nice contrast of colors we've got there.
Now, on to removing evil from this land.
This just never gets old.
The mages up on the cliffs try all they can to put everyone to sleep, but Faval is having none of that.
The Dark Mages themselves aren't exactly difficult, with Yotsmungand and Sleep. Their boss however...
... is Manfroy? With just Hel, Sleep, no personal skills nor Luck? Nah, that can't be right.
Begone, you foul creature. Your silly light-blue palette does not fool me. Heck, this guy doesn't even have a death quote or anything. I wonder what that was all about...
The rest of his cohorts dies just as easily. Now, before conquering Freege, we have a few things to do.
First, +3 Res for the mounted Jungby cousins couple.
Then we have our Destroyer Duo, and nothing is gained because they're way too powerful anyways.
Teeny is warped back to Dozel to repair her Silence staff, and restocks her money in the nearby villages. She'll need it.
While she returns to Freege, Altenna goes back to Edda and positions herself in this very specific spot.
All right. Thanks to the power of Dismount, I have two thirds of my army ready to crash down on Ishtar's troops.
We've only captured one castle and fought rather easy bosses, so let's keep going for a little longer. We're on a good roll. *sob*
Julia deploys and is going to be marching straight at us. I absolutely need to be done with Ishtar's troops before Julia reaches north of Belhalla. Also, all the dark mages in Velthomer are now dark bishops.
Ishtar embarks with the whole power of the Belhalla holy guard, the Weissen Ritter. The Snipers have been replaced with male Heroes and the male Forrests with female Mercs. This should be fun.
Or not. We've got Sages with long-range tomes that use a non-long-range animation, which ends up looking a little silly.
The fight is greyscaled because Aura's lime color messes with GifCam's transparency.
Purge is a new tome, with an actual new icon too. It hits as hard as a Meteor, but with +10 Hit and Crit, and that 10 crit is going to ruin more than a few playthroughs.
Those three Sages make this fight a nightmare, being one of very few enemies to move AND use long-range tomes. They have a pretty high accuracy, and most importantly can and will trigger Adept to fuck you up. Johan and Finn died so many times on this part despite Prayer, you have no idea.
It doesn't help that we're facing a group of really tough enemies, including 3 of the most annoying mini-bosses in the game at the same time. For now, the priority is to thin out their numbers while staying the fuck away from Ishtar's range.
Also, these Sages are pretty vicious compared to all the other enemies in the game who can't seem to ever coordinate their efforts.
See? Without Great Shield, I'd have another dead Johan. And that's with the Helswath's +10 Res.
We also get to see some female Mercenaries in action. They have Master Swords/Axes and the Critical skill for a 39% base crit. Their axe-throwing animation looks a bit funny, but I like it.
The Pegasus Sisters come out to play, and don't seem to choose their targets very well. They all have Leg Rings, which messes up their AI pattern like the Magus Sisters back in Ch7. So instead of trying to capture Dozel, they go for our army instead.
They also each have their own colored pegasus, which is pretty nifty. Black and brown Pegasi appeared in Elibian Nights too, now that I think about it. The first in Douglas's Tale and the second in Kent's Tale from the beta.
Meng is the leader of the three, and the one on a brown Pegasus. Her sisters are absolutely identical to her stats/skills-wise, but don't have Leadership. With maxed stats, a Critical Guard, Nihil and an Earth Sword, there is little to no way to inflict large, lasting damage on them. And every turn is a chance for them to just fly around your troops with that 11 Move and murder your Dancer or something. They're all major pains in the ass and obviously there's got to be three of them.
We also have a bit of a surprise(?) coming from the southeast. Areone pops out of nowhere to capture Chalphy. That just won't do.
Altenna was waiting in ambush, and flies right in to give the guy a firm talking-to.
Areone is still pretty boss despite the spanking he got two chapters ago. He's retrieved another Prayer Ring, and is ready to protect Altenna from anything that wishes to harm her... but that's it. Neither him nor his buddies will be going out of their way to weaken a powerful boss, even if he's in range. But hey, they can make pretty good baits I suppose.
Because, really, look at how shitty these guys are. Brave/Master Lances are cool, but they definitely don't have the stats to use them properly. 9 AS at this point in the game...
Anyways, back to the Ishtar battlefield. We survived the first turn!
Time to return the favor. This is actually a missed opportunity for me to have used the Again trick. If you remember, the Again staff lets you "Dance" one unit from afar, but only has two uses before breaking. If Lana uses Again on Leen, Leen dances for Lana (and 3 other people), Lana uses Again a second time on Leen, and Leen dances for 4 more people, I can get 7 more unit turns, and probably waltz through this part much more easily.
But that was not meant to be, so let's just weaken the sisters little by little.
Critical Guard or not, any arrow from the Yewfelle will sting like a bitch. If it even hits. That 118 Evade is just ridiculous. At least the Leadership stars are gone now.
For the other two, I pull out the big guns. They may be immune to effective damage, but Lester can still rain arrows down on them like any other unit.
Next up: the Fortify High Priests accompanying them. Although the Nosferatu/Prayer combo may suggest they're incredibly tedious to take down, their low Def makes them rather easy to defeat.
Another priority: taking down at least one of the Purge Sages so I don't have to reset a dozen times again next turn.
Shanan meets his match with the Hero guys. They all have Silver Swords/Bows and, you guessed it, the Critical skill for a 31% base crit.
It takes quite a long time and most of my units, but eventually, only Ishtar and two Sages remain. Corpul Fortifies everyone, and it's time to face Ishtar.
And damn, she's not fucking around anymore. +4 Str, +3 Mgc, +3 Skl, +1 Spd... No, that's not compared to her previous stats, that's compared to her caps. She's turned into a super 8 Leadership commander and everything. You may also notice she has a new sword.
The Tordo Sword replaces the Mjölnir we stole from her last chapter. It has 10 less Hit and one more Weight, but 5 more Crit. And it literally shoots out Mjölnirs from range. This is why she was made a Mage Fighter, by the way. Since it still gives her the Mjölnir bonuses, it's a pretty deadly weapon even at close range where it targets Def and has less might (13 instead of 25).
When used at range, it's still a whopping 55 base magic damage. Thankfully, we have an easy solution for magic shenanigans!
Oh, come on, not again! She's right there!
Luna? Astra? Anything? Well, aren't we in a bad spot.
With a bit of luck, she won't notice that she can instantly explode Finn. I guess I still have the Valkyrie staff...
I'm not sure why, but long-range guys always seem to like targetting Leif. But with just the two of them, they can't kill him without Adept.
And then... uwha? That's it?
Ishtar just skipped her turn.
Man, I guess she really was a good person after all.
It's gonna be almost painful to have to watch her die...
As per usual, Teeny has one last chat with her cousin from a few miles away.
Farewell, Goddess of Thunder. And thank you for everything. Especially that sweet magic tome. Much better than that cheap imitation of yours.
With their leader finally laid to rest, the two remaining Sages fall easily.
And Julia is still far enough from us. I fact, I think I couldn't have positionned Ares any better to lure her through the forest.
Phew, that was tense. Now all that's left is to conquer Velthomer, restore Julia's sanity, and face off with Julius and his Deadlords.
Thank god the worst bullshit is finally over...
Next time, on the Finale of FE4 Binary:
You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me!
