Part 8: Chapter 8 and the War Room, Part 41 (Uses of Rescuing)

Now here’s a chapter that really is (partly) luck based. The boss is just too hard to kill on his throne.

The story finally begins to advance once again with Roy at last being reunited with Lilina and liberating Ostia. Unfortunately, a ton of filler is coming.

In terms of level design it’s almost a cool chapter- along the lines of Whereabouts Unknown in particular- but instead is just annoyingly long and a huge nuisance.


Chapter Summary:
Roy and his army break into the castle to defeat the rebels and save Lilina. Fortunately, Leygance still has no idea what a hostage is, so he just puts up a really lousily organized defense. After killing him, Roy informs Lilina of Hector’s death. Together they decide to travel to the resting place of Durandal, as Hector had advised with his final words.




You mean armor? I think it’s called armor.




*Snicker*




HAHAHAHAHAHA! Man, that’s a good one.




Maybe you should have actually had some men trying to stop this.




I don’t know, but he could have done it better if you didn’t have like 100 people in here doing nothing instead of helping him.




Wow, that joke just never gets old.




Also you’ll be dead. There’s that too. Weirdly actually, everything he says from this point on seems to be predicated on the unspoken assumption that we won’t actually try to fight him and his men.




You’re really starting to give Narshen a run for his money.




Smart! Maybe you could do that now. To stop us. Now is the time really. You have 5 minutes till all your men are dead.




Wait by rebels does he mean his group or the loyalist forces he’s fighting?




I guess he must mean his group? So the reason he isn’t using her as a hostage is that some of his men actually like Lilina? Why did they approve of rebelling against her and locking her up then?




Why is this random grunt the smart one?




That’s never going to work! Her cell is like 20 turns from the door. The only way we’d reach anywhere near her if he we slaughtered 90% of his men and were heading right for him already. In that case, he’s probably lost anyway. If we don’t get that far, then there’s no way anyone would have been shooting arrows anywhere near her, so it would clearly be an assassination by him. Not to mention it’s kind of implausible one would fire arrows accidentally into a completely closed and locked cell.

Also how does this benefit him in any way? We already killed half his forces and got into his castle. He’s about to have to fight for his life and it’s not looking good. Why does killing Lilina make anything better whether he wins or loses? The smart thing is definitely to use her as a hostage now and make us stand down.




Entering with his army, Roy is greeted by this mystery man.




Guess who’s going to be suspicious of him?




Alright, Merlinus doesn’t trust you, you’re in the clear.




He sure is.




Astol explains that he’s a spy.




And he knows Lilina’s location.


The War Room, Part 41


Although in the War Room Part 21 (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3701153&pagenumber=9#post442132013) I talked about the basic mechanics of rescuing, I still haven’t gotten into the strategy of it directly. It’s a very big topic and there’s so much to say that I’m not sure where to begin.

Rescuing is the only big difference between a novice and an expert at the GBA fire emblem games. Rescuing is why many players say chapters like Battle Before Dawn or chapter 7 of this game are impossible without luck, but I can complete them easily. And at least in FE7 where tactics was a difficult ranking category, max ranking the game would probably be outright impossible without making good use of rescuing.

It would not, in fact, be much of an exaggeration to say that any unit which is not fighting or healing on a turn should be either rescuing or being rescued by someone else. To explain why, I’ll talk about the tactical benefits of rescuing here and get into more detail in the future. Here are just a few of the unique advantages rescuing can give you:

1) Most obviously, it lets you protect vulnerable units. Sometimes one of your units is left in a very dangerous position (perhaps an attack that should have killed an enemy missed). If you can’t block the enemies from getting to them, you could instead use rescuing to get them out of danger. Of course, the rescuer unit might then be in danger itself due to its halved speed. You can solve that problem by having a third unit take and drop the rescued one (assuming the drop spot is out of the original danger). Here’s an example of a time I could have done this:




Roy is in range of both several troops with ranged weapons and an offscreen, hard-hitting wyvern rider. I checked the numbers and mine can survive both attacks. One person responded to say my strategy seemed to depend on a Roy who could take hits, but as I pointed out, that’s not true. At this moment, instead of having Rutger trade with Thany and Treck visit a village, I could have Treck rescue Roy and move to the space 1 right of Marcus. Then Rutger could take and drop Roy south of Marcus. Problem solved; Roy could no longer be attacked by anything.

2) Moving slow units more quickly. Mounted units or others with high movement can rescue slow troops and carry them along until it’s time to fight. I’ll be making extensive use of that in this chapter. Here’s an example from FE7’s chapter 13 though:













So Marcus and Oswin were both far from the action and had no fighting to do for a while. Thus I rescued Oswin and carried him for several turns until he could be dropped on this fort to do an important job. Any time there isn’t much fighting for a couple of turns, you should ALWAYS be doing this. Oswin got to move at a speed of 8 squares for several turns here and that’s pretty amazing.


3) Moving units vast distances in a single turn. Often called “Rescue Chaining”, this involves using several mounted units (often with one extra non-mounted unit at the end) with positions set up beforehand to rescue a unit, move with it next to the next rescuer, have that next rescuer take the rescued unit, move next to the next rescuer, and so on.



















In that giant chain, I looted a chest and then moved Matthew more than 37 spaces in one turn so he could loot the other set of chests promptly. It’s most often thieves who need transport like that, but sometimes a lord or other person who needs to reach a particular spot soon does too. To do one of these with more than 2 mounted units is typically a huge investment since a sizable number of troops must do nothing but sit around and wait for the others to be in position. But shorter ones can be done all the time. Here's a fairly impromptu rescue chain from chapter 6 of this game:







The troops weren’t in good position so this one didn’t go far, but it was quite effective for an impromptu rescue chain and got Sue exactly where she needed to be.










Just a few turns later they did it again, better executed this time.


4) Besides letting slow units be moved farther by fast units, rescuing can outright create bonus movement out of thin air. See, the rescued party basically moves for free into the square of the rescuer and then into the square they’re dropped into. Every additional person in a chain carrying the rescued person adds another square of free movement. And since units can be picked up into or dropped into any kind of terrain they can cross, these bonus squares could conceivably be worth many points of movement:













All of these guys have 5 movement, but rescuing allowed them to go a total of 20 points worth of move instead of 15 that turn. Extra points of movement were simply created ex nihilo by the magic of rescuing. In another case, something similar saved me many turns:











Rivers normally cost Hector a full 5 move to get into- and most people can’t traverse them at all. But Oswin was able to drop him into the river as easily as into that house next to him, essentially saving an extra 4 squares. That trick saved me MANY turns on this chapter.


5) Offensive rescuing. Sometimes you want to kill an enemy but can’t get enough people into attack range to do so. Depending on the circumstances, rescuing one person out after he attacks could allow an extra person to step up and kill the otherwise unkillable enemy.




In this picture, I want that mage on the left dead but only one person can attack it and I’ll need at least 2 attacks to finish it. One solution would be to have Sue shoot it, have Lot rescue Sue, then have Lance step into Sue’s spot an throw a javelin for the finisher.


6) Benefitting from different movement types. The most obvious example of this is having air units carry ground units over impassable or difficult terrain, as in this example (which also demonstrates clever use of 4) to surround and thereby disable some enemies):













Canas was carried to an island he could never reach at all otherwise. Air units are only the most obvious case though. You could move someone next to a river, then have a pirate standing on the river pick them up, then anyone on the other side take and drop them. Or have a mage carry someone through a desert. Or any number of other such uses.


There are, of course, other unique benefits you can reap from rescuing. Really the power of rescues is limited mainly by your tactical imagination, which might well exceed mine. In the future, I’ll talk about the best ways to set up and execute rescues once you know what you want.


Battle Preparations & the Map:



Secondary Objective: Talk to Roy with Lilina for a free Thunder Tome
Secondary Objective: Talk to Cath with Roy to recruit her later
Secondary Objective: Steal Cath’s lockpick
Secondary Objective: Steal the other thief’s lockpick
Secondary Objective: Steal the north middle knight’s chest key
Secondary Objective: Steal the south middle knight’s chest key
Secondary Objective: Build some supports
Secondary Objective: Kill all reinforcements
Secondary Objective: Get the Light Brand from the chest
Secondary Objective: Get the Killer Bow from the chest
Secondary Objective: Get the Elfire from the chest
Secondary Objective: Get the Guiding Ring from the chest
Secondary Objective: Get the Secret Book from the chest
Secondary Objective: Get the Silver Axe from the chest
Secondary Objective: Get the Elysian Whip from the chest
Reinforcements: A thief and Cath from the southern stairs on turn 10. A mixed group in the top left from 15-18. Archers and mercenaries from the southern stairs from 16-19. Soldiers and knights from the bottom left area from 16-19.
Turn Limit: 25. Believe it or not, this is actually really, really hard to make. It’s just too far to go with too many fights on the way. And the boss is too hard to kill.

The map is too huge! If there were no enemies to fight and you took the most efficient possible route, it would take Roy nineteen turns just to walk to the throne, nevermind fighting the boss on it. That’s crazy! Victory or Death would take only 12 turns for Hector to walk across! Whereabouts Unknown would take 10. I don’t think there’s a more time-consuming map in the GBA titles. Heck, I’m not sure there’s one that takes longer to walk across in FE4 because most maps there are wide open.

Furthermore, the enemies are really spread out, so you never have a real fight but can never stop fighting either. The result is a chapter with no real challenge to it but so much stuff to do spread over such a long slog that you can never relax and have to use all your skills just to not take 30 turns to reach the end. Playing it is about as fast-paced and fun as wading through waist-deep mud.

Anyway there's tons of stuff to do. There are 8 chests- 4 of them another 3-4 turns or so beyond the throne area, 5 new characters, 2 lockpicks to steal, 2 chest keys to steal, about 10 turns of reins in three places, and generally just a lot to take care of. It’s a giant, messy, tricky map. Not because the fighting is remotely hard but just because you have to move a giant group efficiently through narrow hallways

Kind of like Whereabouts Unknown but more so, this is a cavalry map. If most of your troops aren’t mounted, you’ll never get anywhere. Plus cavaliers are pretty effective or very effective against almost all the enemies. And much like Whereabouts Unknown, lots of rescuing and carrying are in order.



Units Allowed: 11 + Roy + Astol + Lilina + Wendy + Barth + Oujay. That’s 17. Many of them useless. And having so many is more of a nuisance than an asset at times.
Units Brought:
1) Roy. Required and mostly useless. Too many enemies with lances and he’s too slow. Just here to provide support bonuses and talk to people.
2) Astol. Required. As a second thief, he’s completely indispensable here. There’s so much stuff to steal and loot.
3) Lilina. Required, mediocre, and can’t actually be used till the chapter is basically over.
4) Wendy. Required and useless.
5) Barth. Required and only slightly less useless. This map is not good for people with 4 move.
6) Oujay. Required and trainable, if not good.
7) Alan. My best mounted unit. He’ll do a lot of the fighting and a lot of rescuing.
8) Lance. Not as good as Alan, but comparable.
9) Treck. A low level, usable cavalryman. Of course he’s coming.
10) Zealot. Better than Marcus and I need more cavalrymen. Plus I want more people capable of using armorslayers and hammers and he can do both.
11) Thany. There are a bunch of archers, but usually in the open where she can wreck them. And she’s a low level cavalrywoman.
12) Sue. A low level cavalrywoman.
13) Clarine. A healer and a cavalrywoman.
14) Chad. A second thief is desperately needed.
15) Lugh. Extremely effective against all enemies on the chapter.
16) Lot. Extremely effective against all enemies on the chapter.
17) Saul. A second healer is necessary.
Notable Units Rejected:
1) Marcus. Too weak to be any help at all.
2) Noah. Not as good or as low level as most of the other cavaliers or mounted units.
3) Dieck. I can’t bring many infantry units and he’s sword-locked on a level where almost every enemy has a lance or a ranged weapon.
4) Rutger. I can’t bring many infantry units and he’s sword-locked on a level where almost every enemy has a lance or a ranged weapon.
5) Ellen. I can’t bring many infantry units and this many healers should be just enough.

The thieves are keeping some inventory space open for stealing. Zealot has the armorslayer, Lot has the hammer. Everyone else has fairly standard gear.

In this formation, the infantry can move up past or to the cavalry, who can then rescue them and carry them and drop them with maximum speed. I’ll need to keep something like that up all chapter long.


The Characters:




Roy’s quasi-official love interest is Hector’s daughter. She was seen briefly at the end of FE7 where we learn she and Roy have been friends since they were very young. Like her father, she tries to be stoic and emotionally strong for others, but (also like him) her retainers try to shelter her from unpleasant truths and deaths in the family. She’s a good deal smarter and more knowledgeable than either Hector or Roy from what we see and is extremely kind and accepting of others. A bit bland, but still more developed than most people in this game.


Lilina is one of the worst mages I’ve seen, but that still makes her pretty good. She starts off completely sucky but will grow into a solid unit if trained, courtesy of massive Mag and ultimately solid speed and luck. Her low starting speed is her greatest disadvantage and the main obstacle in training her. Generally Lugh is better, but she’s still good if she gets going.




Though he is an Ostian thief and spy, Astol is no Matthew. He’s characterized almost entirely differently in each of his supports from serious and hardworking to lazy and from polite to rather rude among other things. Not consistent at all. Still, each of them individually are unusually good supports.


He can’t fight nearly as well as Chad, but he takes hits a lot better and can wield bigger weapons. Ultimately, he does his job of opening chests and stealing things well but that’s about it.




Bors’s sister, Wendy is a young knight still in training. She doesn’t get much respect from the other Ostians, but she works hard.


Knight is and remains a terrible class. And Wendy isn’t even good at being one of those. Her growths are actually pretty darned good, but her bases so awful that that barely matters. If you can somehow take her to 20/20 she’s a solid all-rounder, but not good enough to be worth the trouble. And again, knights have only one real job and she’s not good at it.




A serious, blunt, and respected Ostian knight. That’s about it.

If you want to use a knight, he’s probably your man actually. He joins at the same level as Oswin and with only slightly worse stats all in all. He’ll never be even acceptably fast, but he hits hard and has very respectable Def. Like most knights, his promotion gains are amazing.




A young Ostian knight who is not, in fact, a knight. This pretty much automatically makes him better than the rest of his squad, but they don’t see it that way since he’s still the newest member. He became a warrior to help his very poor family back home and… that’s about it. He doesn’t get much respect from the others, but he’s working hard and proud of his skills.

Oujay is actually quite a solid unit, but he’s no Raven. He’s not even a Dieck really. Probably he’s the third best sword user in the game overall after Dieck and Rutger. His bases are decent and his growths are quite good, but he’s not really amazing at anything and he doesn’t have Dieck’s con.




The generic rebel general, Leygance is an arrogant idiot like most villains in this game.

However, he’s WAY harder to kill than most bosses up till now despite his mediocre gear:




That’s because you can't scratch him without armorslayers and hammers, but those are inaccurate. With his solid speed and luck and his throne, you're unlikely to break 40% hit. He can't be killed without luck and that's really annoying.


Playing Through:




Lilina is threatened by this archer, but there’s always one safe spot available. Just don’t forget about her.




Now it’s time for some rescuing.




I want to establish a front line of nothing but 1-2 range attackers to deal with the ranged enemies as fast as possible. So both these guys have javelins.




I also want ranged attackers along the left wall to deal with the archer there.




Just got to drop every important infantry unit up.







I’ve realized I actually can’t quite get an all 1-2 attacker front line that’s also safe and stable, so I’ll compromise and put Roy here. That gives me a safe space for the others to move in.




Even Astol gets in on the rescuing, helping with Saul.




Other than Roy, who the enemy won’t like targeting due to his solid defenses, everyone in range has a javelin or handaxe.




This line again. This isn’t the last time we’ll see it either.




Chad was the furthest back, so he runs up first to attack. This is typically good policy. In this case it’s particularly important since it will enable me to rescue and carry him along more efficiently.




So of course Astol weakens the next one.




A freshly healed Lugh is immediately hit again, but at least he finishes the soldier.




And Lot finishes the archer. The infantry wiped out the enemies. Now the cavalry can focus on keeping the group moving and establishing a new front line.




Again I want 1-2 ranged attackers only in the front and along the left wall. Lance stopped 1 short so that after this Alan can move 1 left and complete the line.




So thieves and others are dropped back where it’s safe.




You can see that the price of fighting while continuing to move is that my formation is breaking down into a mess. This will continue.




Turn 3 begins. This guy here is important to pay attention to.




He has both a very dangerous weapon and a chest key to take, so caution is required.




Once again, the people in back are the ones who get the first kills while moving up as far as possible.




Or as far as possible while still attacking anyway.




A pretty standard Sue level. Well I’m not going to complain after the Str blessing she got early.




Zealot weakens this knight...




... so that it only takes one hammer blow to kill.




Got to keep tabs on this archer since it didn’t die.




The difficulty of killing the knight means my formation is going to be a complete mess from now on, but I’ve got to keep everyone moving as well as possible.




This random pile of units is all that’s left of my careful battle preparations. If it was just one big fight to deal with, I could fight it and then maintain good organization. But needing to fight every turn and then try to grab everyone up to continue just makes it impossible to keep things running smoothly.




Here’s the enemy troops disposition now. 4 people between the treasure rooms and everyone south of the boss are stationary, so there’s really only a handful of people left but they’re spread out.




Lugh is just short of enough mag to kill this knight, which works for me.




Lance easily downs this soldier with his support boosts.




Then this thief switches him to his javelin and takes the chest key.




Sue finishes the knight off as everyone piles in. I can’t even attempt mass rescues this time, but there’s nowhere to go anyway with that archer coming.




This is one rescue I can do at least.




Notice that Alan stops just short of his max range. There are two reasons for that. One is to maintain support bonuses.




The other is so that after taking and dropping Astol, Zealot can still move 1 more space- and therefore can block the path for the archer.




Now it can’t avoid javelin damage.




There’s always a safe spot. And that’s the turn.




Any time you have a chance to steal something, you might as well- even if it’s something as cheap as a vulnerary.




It seems like I’m always one damage short of killing things conveniently.




These guys would be too if they didn’t have their support bonues.




Roy is dropped along. I’ve been having trouble keeping people healed since Clarine is needed for carrying people and Saul can’t keep up. Fortunately the fighting has been light.




Lilina moves to avoid danger again.




Ah our reinforcements have arrived. What are they doing here? I have no idea. At all. Apparently the three of them- two in giant armor- either sneaked into or were just hanging around in castle Osia under the rebels' noses.







Pretty sure those are just the lines of mortar between the bricks, man. This is the first in-character acknowledgment of cracked walls in this game. And it makes no sense. Apparently a wall having a crack means that if you hit it with a spear it will just explode and turn into a hallway.




Well his items are welcome to join the party; I need more armorslayers.




This is a particularly fragile wall. Even Wendy here can break it easily.




Oujay’s first move is to help Zealot drop Roy along.




Treck gets a kill that should give him his first level.




Good start! Speed is what he really needs most right now.




Thany finishes the archer for a fantastic level. She’s pretty much above average across the board.




There’s no fighting to be done, so most of the party is just carrying people at this point.




And then I explode an army out of nowhere to fill that hallway. This isn’t as dangerous as it looks because the enemy can’t choose their turn order. In fact, it’s almost perfectly safe (Lot could die if he’s very unlucky and everyone focuses on him).




To nobody’s surprise, he gains more speed as he fights.




So as turn 9 dawns, there’s quite a jam here.




First I need movement room. Lance opens a space near Alan.




Alan moves and weakens a knight so that a thief can open the door. To get this giant group moving efficiently, I should probably use both hallways.




Oujay finishes the freshly exposed mage.




Lot kills a knight and the enemy formation begins to crumple.




Thany joins in from max movement range.




Roy gets a kill and a terrible level.




So does Treck. I’m making sure to leave no one without a javelin in range of that mage.




And Lugh finishes up.




Sweet!




Next turn, that pesky mage is still alive! Alan moves here where he can aggro 2 mages at once.




The useless Wendy takes the chest keys from Thany (I’ve been trading them around).




And Chad and Astol move into the treasure room.




The enemy thieves are coming soon. I must leave at least one chest in here unopened for a while to make sure they go the right direction.




Ready to kill some mages.




Cath beat us here and is once again trying to loot the place.




Wendy opens another chest.




And the others run out of the treasure room to intercept the thieves.




The last mage is down thanks to Lot; Thany carries him onward.




And Clarine heals him for a pretty bad level.




So here it is, turn 11, and I’m still trying to get out of those darned hallways.




Lockpick 1 stolen.




Now that Cath is under control, Wendy steals the last chest in that room.




Lance and Alan start running back. I’m going to use them + Barth to deal with the top left reinforcements.




Roy moves to bait the knight down there. It has a chest key I need to steal.




Thany kills the thief.




Amazing!




Lance and Alan continue up with Barth.




Cath’s lockpick is mine (I surrounded her and she doesn’t fight so it was easy to take).




And Lilina is freed. She starts off as a blue unit, so you can just have her run out and go where you want immediately. However, she doesn't start with a weapon (but will get one for free if Roy talks to her).




I THINK I talked to Cath but I don’t have a screenshot of it. Anyway, this is next turn and Lilina now talks to Roy.




The two are reunited.




Roy is the real mage here; he just created a spellbook out of thin air.




And it’s a pretty good one too.




The chest key is mine!




The knight is then easily dispatched and everyone just moves in as fast as they can. That whole rigmarole took too long




The first set of keys are passed to Chad who will use his superior movement to keep the trade chain going so they end up in worthy hands.




Turn 15, I’m mostly past the stairs. Reinforcements start next turn.




Alan and Lance get to work on the top left reinforcements.




Not bad.




Better!




It soon becomes apparent that I have not stationed enough people here.




But I still barely have enough on this side to down the reinforcements coming there too.




In order to not prevent any spawned reinforcements, I need to move back from the archer stairs.




Fighting up top continues.




Sue gets a Sue level from dodging an attack.




Sue has the chest keys and is moving in, as are the thieves. Meanwhile, Lugh moves to trap the next reinforcement (and Lot will intercept the bottom one).




Nice.




These mercenaries are just too good. But the archers are even more of a problem. They all have steel bows and those hurt.




Next turn, Thany uses a vulnerary because Saul is going to be busy.




Meanwhile, Sue gets another chest.




Zealot lands a hit on Leygance on turn 19 (I’ve been trying to hit him for a while, but it’s just too hard!)




Wendy and the others barely dispatch one archer and contain the next. These things can 1-hit or 2-hit kill any of my units except Treck, so this is a problem. Still there should only be one wave left.




Thany is Thany, though she’s actually a bit ahead of schedule capping her speed here.




More boring fighting in the top left gets Alan a nice level. More speed!




And, anticipating a win any turn now if I can just hit, I enact my plan to steal everything that remains.







Just as planned. I could totally win right now on turn 20! With every reinforcement dead except 1 soldier after these next few moves…




Lance finishes the last ever top reinforcement.




Nice! This is now a good Lance once again; his speed has returned to average.





Just 2 guys left; I can do this even with this weak crowd.




But the Throne is just too strong to beat. Lot and Zealot keep passing the hammer and still can’t hit.




Back in the rightish stair area, Oujay gets his first level from blocking the mercenary and it’s a great one. Way to go Oujay!




Clarine gets her first semi-decent level. Still no Mag in forever. Disgustingly, she’s only 1 point behind in that stat.




Still can’t hit the boss! He’s regened all the damage from that first blow.




Zealot gains a bad level after missing once again.




Treck does too as I continue to chip away at the sole remaining enemy.




Nice! Even a level of nothing but speed would be great for this young lady.




That finished the mercenary off so Saul gets with the healing. There are now no enemies but the boss left anywhere. But I’ve been hacking at him for 4 turns now with no progress.




Saul continues to get sucky levels. He’s behind on pretty much everything but HP.




It just goes on and on! Nothing that can hit Leygance can damage him. There’s nothing to do but wait to get lucky. This turn I hit him with the hammer but missed with the armorslayer. I hit him earlier too but he regened it all back before I did again.




At long last, I get my chance and rush in for the kill with anyone handy after Zealot lands a blow 1 turn after Lot did.




Bad level but I totally don’t care!




Yes, turn 23 win! Sure I could have won on 20 if the boss was hittable, but at least I came in under time.




We’ve finally found the plot again!




Uh oh.




Roy, after some dithering, reveals the bad news. I have absolutely no idea how Lilina wouldn’t have heard from SOMEONE by now. I mean, we really took our time getting here and surely Bern would have publicized their huge win.




And he tells the story of the battle of Araphen.




Like her father, she tries not to let people know when she’s sad or what she’s feeling.




And like her father, people don’t tell her things anyway.




Roy says he’s there for her and let’s her know he understands.


Well, I’ve just realized that I might have somehow forgotten to talk to Cath, but I suppose that’s no big deal. I did get every single item on the level including all valuable stealables and even some vulneraries, completed it under time despite bad luck with the dodging boss, killed every single reinforcement, and did it using several low level characters. No way am I playing this wretchedly dull chapter again just to recruit a useless character a couple of chapters early.

Total Restarts: 3. On my first run of this chapter it took me till turn 42 to win. Leygance had broken his javelin and I just couldn’t hit him with anything. It was ridiculous. I’ll be honest; if I couldn’t beat him within 10 turns of fighting this time, I was going to restart and RNG abuse to kill him on my third attempt just like I would against Kishuna on 19x. Oh and for the record, the longest I spent on ANY FE7 chapter was 19 for Pale Flower of Darkness. Just by being stupidly huge, this map took longer than any of those epic endgame chapters. Without being fun or interesting at all.
Turn Surplus: -10 (Making progress even on an awful level)
Things I Regret Missing: A couple of uses of Marcus’s silver lance on Rude, a Chapter 5 nomad Marcus had to kill