The Let's Play Archive

Fire Emblem: Binding Blade

by Melth

Part 32



A horrible chapter. Who in the world though the map design was a good idea? This chapter is a boring waste of time. It’s not challenging, there’s nothing interesting to do, there’s no way to farm much XP, there are no fun treasures to acquire, or anything. It’s just a pointless slog hacking through dozens of walls.

Anyway, this is the second to last legendary weapon sidequest and it’s remarkable mainly for being the only one without a trap gimmick. Its gimmick is cracked walls instead. We’ve seen them before. Five times by my count. But they were always in important places and opening them or not was a strategic choice. Now the map consists of nothing else.

Even the legendary weapon is a really boring one; +5 skill is just +10 hit and +2.5 crit.

Chapter Summary:
Roy gets another legendary weapon from another generic Bern commander. Guinevere finally finishes telling Zephiel’s story.




Good old Castle Eldessa. I like it so much better than Edessa. Or all the other alternate spellings. They really get noticeably sloppy with the translation in this chapter and spell Maltet at least 3 different ways by my count.




So Bern had a big army of seriously strong troops in these ruins right next to Edessa. They could have helped Roartz. They didn’t.

Elsewhere, Bern troops had been ordered to do anything necessary to destroy the legendary weapons. They freed notorious bandits to get manpower to seal one up, devoted half their army in Arcadia to doing nothing but trying to destroy Forblaze (even dying to give the others more time to work), and their allies put a crazed rogue Bishop in charge of guarding the tower where Aureola was kept. This weapon has been in their power for months, and they could easily have destroyed it. They didn't.

The writers weren't even trying when they made this game.




Uh…




Murdock is as lousy a general as Narshen. Every order he gives is either stupid or outright treasonous.




What? Why would we? This is the second time someone has staked their entire battle plan on us just getting bored and walking away from an objective we have to have! Granted this chapter is REALLY boring. But we CAN’T skip it.




Prince Mildain remains the go-to guy for knowing stuff. Niime belongs in these conversations, as do several other people who should know a lot about Maltet. Like Zealot. This ruin is right next to his castle. But Roy only talks to Mildain because this game is committed to a destructive policy of never including dialog for any people who might conceivably be dead. Except for Sophia that one time.




Another spelling.




Some praise of Barigan as the greatest knight ever follows. What about Roland?!




Most buildings do. But he’s right. This one consists of basically nothing but walls.


Battle Preparations & the Map:



Secondary Objective: Absolutely none. Hope you like attacking walls!
Reinforcements: None. Hope you like attacking walls!
Turn Limit: 25. More than enough time even if you REALLY like attacking walls and decide to destroy them all.

Screw this map! I’m had more than enough of it playing through and I don’t feel like talking about it. It’s absolutely terrible, one of the worst in the series. That’s all I have to say.





Ugh, fine. Look, there’s a bunch of walls everywhere. The enemy will not break them. This means you must move at a snail’s pace, spending 2-3 attacks (out of only 3 units at most in the top two groups) to break open a door, another turn or two fighting through the weak enemies who block your path, unable to help each other, and then restart the process.

There’s no challenge because the enemy is locked into the rooms and never breaks the walls, so they’re totally unable to help each other. Even the numerous longbows on the snipers are at worst a minor nuisance.

The enemies are weak too. Poorly armed and low level by and large.

So there are no circumstances under which you should be at risk of losing a unit here.

The only lasting obstacles are defenseless walls and boredom. Oh and two staff druids. They aren’t even strong staff druids. And you can completely control their targets because their range just barely reaches you.




For some reason, there’s like one high level guy among the level 5 promoted enemies. Ooh, scary. Except he’s got a hammer (a terrible weapon in this game). Oh and we fought a guy (2 actually) almost precisely this strong 11 chapters ago as a reinforcement in the battle in Djuto.

This is what passes for difficulty here. One enemy as strong as a guy fought half the game ago wielding a terrible weapon and waiting meekly in a box for you to kill him- or skip him outright- at your leisure.




A bad joke of a chapter like this deserves a bad joke of an army. I’m running out of weak people though. This is EVERYONE who is unpromoted and not level 20 (Oh except Fir who’s level 19 with 86 XP). And Roy, who’s level 20 but can’t be excluded from the list.

Geese is level 18 with a bunch of XP, Treck and Cath aren’t far behind. Noah and Sophia and the archers are all over 10. Only Ward and Bors and Wendy are truly low level.

Anyway, the party is split into 3 groups which are spread out over a gigantic area. The top left and top right groups only get 3 people, so there’s no way for them to really cover all the bases or operate efficiently. Here are the formations I went with:









Units Allowed: 12 + Roy. That's plenty, the problem is that there are 2 isolated groups of only 3 people. They're not going to be effective fighting forces.
Units Brought:
1) Roy. Required. Can’t do much. He’s good at feebly poking enemies into low HP for units I’m giving XP to though.
2) Niime. Because I didn’t get serious about training a real staff user, Niime is actually my only option for one job I need done to complete this chapter efficiently.
3) Gonzalez. I need one strong guy with an axe for it too.
4) Lalum. Can’t do anything interesting without her.
5) Treck. One of my best and most trainable lowish-level units.
6) Ward. One of my worst and least trainable low-level units. For that reason, I am determined to train him here.
7) Zeiss. Mostly I just want to promote him so I don’t need to spend a turn on that next chapter. He’ll also be reasonably good backup when the weaklings get in trouble.
8) Ray. Every group needs a healer. Ray is my lowest level one.
9) Wolt. Almost as worthless as Ward. He must be leveled to show my derision.
10) Sophia. I WILL get Sophia to level 20 even though she’s a bad unit and has turned out awfully so far.
11) Lilina. I want to get a bit of staff XP here. She’s not far from a B rank already.
12) Noah. Actually not strictly worse than Treck for once. See, he has a C in swords and can therefore use a handy Killing Edge. Treck is stuck with iron and javelins.
13) Dorothy. Only a little better than Wolt.
Notable Units Rejected:
1) Wendy. Not even usable here! Not even on a chapter where I can engineer opportunities to train WARD! She’s just too slow-moving and annoying to deal with and there are too many axe-users.
2) Bors. Like Wendy but he’s already disappointed me with several bad levels when I tried to use him.
3) Barth. He's a bit better but not even actually low-level.
4) Cath. She’s outright high level already. I’m going to get her to 20. But not here.

Some thought went into the exact group structure, though in retrospect I probably should have switched the places of Dorothy and Wolt as well as Noah and Treck.

Gonzalez is armed to the teeth with axes. Iron, hand, swordreaver, hammer, and Armads. Each to deal with one particular foe on his mission.

Niime has Flux, Eclipse (a remarkably good tool for quickly disposing of walls), Heal, Physic, and Warp.

Zeiss has an iron lance, javelin, vulnerary, killer lance, and Elysian Whipe.

Lalum is carrying a Restore for Niime and an iron sword for Zeiss.

Gear for Roy is his usual: iron sword, killing edge, light brand, and vulnerary.

Ward can’t use any interesting axes, so he just has iron and hand. Treck has fairly generic cavalier gear.

Ray has Flux and Nosferatu and Heal.

Sophia has Flux and Nosferatu.

Wolt and Dorothy can’t use many bows, so each has iron and steel and long.

Noah has generic cavalier gear + a Killing Edge.

And Lilina has Heal, Restore, and Fire.

Thus every team has a healer, most have a restorer, nearly everyone can fire over walls or past each other, and I’ve got a plan to eliminate the staff enemies quickly.


The Characters:




A generic general and General. He’s more or less strictly worse than Roartz last chapter. Not a problem and not even really a character. I think he's even the 3rd or 4th boss to have this face.


Playing Through:




Zeiss moves and promotes. Nice bonuses. You can see that the whole left side is already close to capped.




Next Gonzalez attacks the wall with his handaxe. It had to be this wall and the precise move order and positioning is critical here.




Because now Lalum can trade Zeiss his iron sword and dance for Gonzales at the same time.




Which allows Niime to warp him in- juuuuust barely, he had to stand in that row- ready to move.




He scores a decent level killing the Berserk druid. On anyone else, this would be pretty great.




The rest move in, Ward opens the wall up, and Treck blocks the axe users.




The right crew break a wall and Dorothy takes a shot at the enemy.




The left side's broken wall is less conveniently located and the team is also weaker. Wolt and Sophia will both be doubled or instant killed or both by even the feeblest enemies here. I must make sure they’re never attacked or countered. Even Ray is pretty fragile.




I’d been worried about an attack on Gonzales, but the sleep druid uselessly targets Zeiss instead.




Noah weakens this target for Dorothy and then Lilina heals. This is a new turn, by the way. I’m going to just blur through turns here; there’s very little to say.




On the left, Wolt and the others are unsafe but I’ve found a way to feed at least one kill to them instead of Ray.




Gonzalez kills the Sleep druid with his Swordreaver at the ready.




Lalum gets the Restore to Niime in exchange for the Warp she no longer needs and she fixes Zeiss.




Treck gets a bad level fighting the tough warrior.




The left side is really struggling. They’re incredibly weak.




The right side can at least break walls.




I arrange for Treck to kill the warrior and he gets a sweet level. Treck did quite well. He’s just not quite good enough to make the team anyway.




Gonzalez has had poor luck dodging and worse hitting, so I pull him back for some Physicing.




Joy.




Gonzalez continues to do rather badly.




As I was saying.




Lilina tanks for the right group.




Ray gets a bad level. Due to some unexpected hits and misses, my plan to give one of the kills to Wolt or Sophia has been set back.




Sophia gets this one at least, but I’d had a chance at 2.




The next wall is weakened but not yet broken.




Ward is borderline untrainable, as you can see. Those are actually about the best odds of winning you can possibly get. I mean, he needs to miss and then be hit twice to die.




Screw you, man! It wasn’t easy giving you that XP!




Gonzalez finally kills the swordmaster.




Treck is actually safe in this position. Only 2 of the enemies can hit him and it would take all 3 to kill him.




Lilina gets a bad level, but she’s already capped the important stuff, so that’s ok.




This enemy will stand there like a slack-jawed idiot and not run to make room for his ranged allies as Wolt chips him down.




He gets a lousy level off the first chip.




Lilina fed a warrior to Dorothy, who is becoming absurdly strong.




Still, they’re not making much progress. No one is.




Niime does both close and long ranged healing this turn and then is dropped to safety.




Gonzalez picks a fight with a new group.




Wolt is still chipping away as his buddies move in.




It’s tricky to weaken this guy without killing him or putting someone in the Sniper’s longbow range.




More heals.




Nice!




Dorothy finally gets the kill and some stats that aren’t str.




And that room is cleared.




No more longbow; they can advance safely.




These guys haven’t even broken one wall.




Treck is easy to feed compared to the rest.




Roy himself is beginning to fight through. He has to reach the throne eventually.




Gonzales kills another Longbow user.




Man, he’s doing badly this chapter.




Time to get to safety.




And pinned! Now I can give Ward the kill. Of course, he whiffs several times first.




Right group is mostly moving down, Dorothy chipping away at a myrmidon.




Wolt finally drops a target- stepping back to attack from safety with his longbow- and gets a decent level.




Sophia got a kill too. Both have been chipping away for a while.




Speed, that’s a good stat.




Just moving down.




They move into the room they emptied.




Finally a good level on Ward when he drops the archer at last.




Treck is the only one pulling down real levels consistently.




A path has been cleared for Roy.




Well that’s terrible.




Dorothy is still trying to fight.




And failing to level.




Noah is ready for his next target.




Weapons and patience mostly. Gonzales is wielding Armads because his hammer can’t hit. There’s no reason not to kill this guy early since there's no reinforcements it could stop.




Moving down.




The way is opened for Roy.




Gonzalez takes a while, but finally kills Teck.




There we go. That’s a good level for this guy.




The last few enemies are too scattered to hunt down efficiently.




Well that’s awful.




Zeiss gets another bad level from one of the last few enemies.




And turn 13 win. There are 2 enemies left, but killing them would take way too long to be worth it.




And spelled in yet another way.




How? Did they have others who weren’t even in this ruin and didn’t help in either battle?




Merlinus wants to attack the people fleeing. Therefore that’s a bad idea, as Roy immediately concludes.




Considering how fanatical many of these people turn out to be, this is kind of a bad idea.




About time! We’ve spent all game waiting for this to finally begin.




She gets back into Zephiel’s story. Once again, they have to give us a recap because it’s potentially been so long since the last part. That really should have told them they were doing something wrong.




Roy immediately realizes the man was jealous.




To punish his son, Desmond declared that the throne would pass to Guinevere’s husband instead of Zephiel.




How? How is that bad at all? This whole hereditary monarchy thing is stupid to begin with.




Zephiel actually reacted reasonably.




The story finally goes somewhere. It’s been at least 3 chapters.




This time frame (and everything else about this incident actually) makes it rather implausible how in 7 Hector and Eliwood get such totally confused reports.




Somehow.




Desmond decided to just kill Zephiel, his wife, Murdock, and everyone else too.




Zephiel finally responds with a scheme of his own.




It’s implied that Zephiel sat up and stabbed him from his coffin or something, though not explained exactly.

That reminds me of a legendary viking raid on the Italian city of Luna. Seeing that the city was far too well defended for them to attack, the raiding party put their leader in a coffin and wept as they walked up to the gate unarmed. They asked for the bishop and lords of the city to give their lord the proper funeral a man of his stature deserved. At the funeral, their “dead” leader sat up and killed the bishop and revealed weapons stashed beneath him inside his coffin, at which point his men were able to capture the rulers of the city and sack it from inside.




And then Zephiel was evil!




What? No you didn’t. That was like 10 years ago or something. You didn’t decide to do anything until he started this war, you said so yourself.




Suddenly, the Fire Emblem theme is playing. At long last, the game actually uses good music at an important point. Granted it’s not a unique theme for this scene as it would be in a better game in the series, but it’s something at least.




This just sounds silly. As far as he knows at the moment, the Fire Emblem is just a random jewel.


Total Restarts: 16 (None here)
Turn Surplus: +48 (+12 here)
Things I Regret Missing: A couple of uses of Marcus’s silver lance on Rude, a Chapter 5 nomad Marcus had to kill, two Chapter 12 fighters I couldn’t kill since I needed supports built elsewhere, a pirate and a wyvern rider on 14x who I didn’t have time to go after, 2 enemies in a room I didn’t have time to kill on chapter 20x.
Legendary Weapon Scoreboard: Durandal slew Ohtz using Oujay on chapter 14x, turn 2; and the top left mamkute using Oujay on chapter 16, turn 9; and Arcard using Oujay on chapter 17, turn 16. Forblaze slew the top right mamkute using Lugh on chapter 16, turn 6. Forblaze slew the left section hero using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 2. Forblaze slew the purge bishop using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 5. Armads slew Teck using Gonzalez on chapter 20x, turn 10.