The Let's Play Archive

Fire Emblem: Binding Blade

by Melth

Part 41: Epilogue (A Good Day to Ranking Progress)

Epilogue:










The Great Movement of Bern is a really lousy name. And it kind of leaves out the whole dragons thing which was the most notable feature of the war.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CysIc_PUsZg&list=PLwvweEKnS3AHZ4pYIYqzKdBKGFxnZNsNQ&index=49

It’s no Light to Tomorrow or main theme reprise, but I guess it works.




Dun dun dun! Oh, she just means repairing things will be hard.







She never joined Etruria! And Etruria didn’t even really help! Also, why in the world would everyone not now know about Zephiel’s evil plan? All the crazy Bern loyalists are dead and there’s tons of evidence for the truth now.




I would imagine Guinevere was pretty popular beforehand, she should do fine.




This is the first mention of either Lycia OR Eliwood since about chapter 13. And Eliwood is never mentioned again, he just vanishes. Last we heard, he was recovering from his bout of legionnaires’ disease and was successfully leading a new Lycian alliance. And then… nothing. This is absurd.







Why would that be, in any way, desirable after the last war? Hasn’t Etruria lost all of its prestige? Their court was full of traitors and idiots, their king was worse than useless, most of them are dead, their atrocities against their colonies were exposed, the country was torn to shreds, and Lycia saved the world solo.




And suddenly he’s shy and doesn’t believe in himself. He's like that in maybe 2 of his C supports and none of his other conversations. People occasionally say he lacks confidence, but it’s really just not true most of the time. And just as many people (like Cecilia) talk about how he's brimming with self-assurance. The game doesn't even get its shallow characterizations right.




And Eliwood. The more gifted leader. Who is still around as far as we know.




This exact scene basically happens at the end of FE9, but it’s better there because the characters are more interesting.







Partners in crime.




It would be nice if there was a Roy and Guinevere paired ending since they’re the most developed characters.







And the beginning of the true ending scene.




Roy has gone 1000 miles out of his way to visit Arcadia but makes some absurd remark that he had business in the area.







I would hope so! Their village is definitely known about by everyone now and they have no external enemies really. And powerful allies. Keeping the girl locked up in her room now would be even more awful than it was before.




She's his real reason for coming of course.




I get the impression that the word they translate as “soul” might actually mean something a bit different.




At least she’s not still trying to destroy the world. I don’t see how stabbing her with the Sword of Seals overrode that previous order.




Now this is a big revelation. And contradicts a lot of stuff said before (and not just by him).




They were cowardly and wanted to keep the village safe.




He transitions back to what would mark a recovery for Idoun.




Meanwhile, outside. I’m pretty sure Idoun knows what trees and so on are, so I don’t know why Fa would be explaining that.




She tries to shake it to get some fruit down.







It… might be a little more promising if she was laughing at something other than a little girl getting hit on the head.







And she excitedly runs inside.




Awww. Maybe the second best - or even the best- line of the whole game if you remember what she said about Hartmut on the final chapter. Yeah, this is a good ending.


Character Endings and Stat Outcomes:

Decimals are rounded. 0.5s are rounded away from 0.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i0C3v00a5s&list=PLwvweEKnS3AHZ4pYIYqzKdBKGFxnZNsNQ&index=51

There’s a ton of musical themes for this epilogue. Anyway, it turns out that only the 10 people you bring to the last chapter get a real ending blurb. The others get one rudimentary line.

Once again, Eliwood seems to be kind of forgotten.




Ugh. Well, at least a bad Roy doesn’t really hurt for most of the game since you never use him anyway.




At least a hundred people visited Arcadia, many lived to tell of it, and they spread to every country in the world. Hundreds of others saw Fa turn into a dragon. Roy took at least one trip- presumably not alone- out to visit. And the sandstorm that hid the village has ceased forever. In short, this epilogue is absurd.




She turned out quite nice. The speed bonus in particular is just what she needs.




Yay monarchy!




If anything, her true amazingness is underrated here since she capped speed many levels ago. This was a great Lilina.




Alright, now that’s a nice ending.




Gonzalez got some bonuses where he likes them, but was pretty much standard.







Mostly average.




Wait, come to think of it, I’m 95% sure Pherae was totally untouched by the war. Bern did not come in through Pherae in their initial invasion, they went to Araphen. Then they never again did anything except have 8 guys go to Ostia to lose. And it’s not like Pherae lost its men in Araphen or anything, they hadn’t had a chance to send any yet since Roy arrived too late.




Man, this was a nice Alan. The bonuses aren’t big, but they’re where he needs them and he got them pretty early in the game.




It’s like everyone forgot the major twist where she’s General Douglas’s adopted daughter and also the closest ally of Elphin, the (presumed) new king of Etruria. Elphin is not actually mentioned at all in the epilogue because I didn’t have him as a playable character. That’s kind of a dumb oversight.




Yeah, she turned out pretty badly, but who cares?




Continued? He was never traveling as a mercenary to begin with. He was proudly a knight of Ostia.




Man, this Oujay was sweet! What I love most about him is how he pretty much came out of nowhere and became my best infantryman in one chapter. I was never planning on doing anything with him but training him to 20 before he suddenly eclipsed Rutger and Dieck.




Ray continued to be an evil jerk and brought back a soul-destroying form of magic that invariably leads to bad stuff. Yay.




You know, I think I had too high an opinion of Ray. Mine was really blessed in key areas but still pretty sucky. I guess you should still probably use him since he’s better than Niime and Sophia and you don’t want Apocalypse to go to waste, but still.




Charm and true kindness? What? They said her personality never changed.




Urgh, all my healers turned out somewhere between bad and awful. Clarine is never good in a fight regardless, but she’s definitely a hugely valuable utility unit. I should have promoted mine earlier.




For some reason, these brief epilogues for characters I didn’t bring were actually displayed much later, but it seemed appropriate to squeeze them in now.




If only you could use Aureola you could have seen some action, man.




No doubt about it, this guy was my most blessed unit. Of course, he got retired really early and wasn’t a combat unit to begin with.







Training her would have been hard enough without her getting awful Str.




Nice bonuses where he wants them, but he’s just startlingly good on average anyway. Canas is proud of you, man.







There’s not a ton of room for this guy to be above or below average. Mine got off to kind of a bad start, but he turned that around.




It’s terrifying how close to average this worthless guy is.







Man, she was something. It would have been so much funnier if she actually capped Str though.




Kind of like Zeiss, she’s pretty much always the same awesome unit. I guess mine was slightly worse off.







All of my mages turned out nicely. Lugh might have been the most blessed of them all for a while. Not shown here is that he was at like +4 Mag really early in the game and just went downhill after promoting. Lugh was probably the most usefully RNG-blessed unit I had.




Tate really got the stuff she needed! But you know what? She's still just kind of mediocre! Pegasus knights are so bad in the GBA titles.







Fir was as amazing as Fir can be. Which isn’t saying much.




This unusable guy was above average. That’s terrifying.







Noah is just the worst cavalier. Mine was decently lucky with stats but still borderline unusable.




I was sure my Lance was below average on Str, but actually I guess he was just above average previously. Mine turned out moderately poorly all in all, but he’s just an absolutely lousy endgame unit regardless. It might not even have been a good idea to promote him.




Just “armor” huh? And I guess she didn’t help rebuild Ostia with her brother.




You know, I was actually considering using the guy if he turned out well. He sure made it easy to give up on him.







“Reason Feathers”?







Even with an absolutely fantastic Str bonus, she was STILL too feeble to damage stuff. I should never have promoted her.




Good riddance.




So bad.




I said this guy was just kind of mediocre before. I take it back. He’s out and out terrible.







But even Geese has nothing on Sophia. Training her was hilarious.




Treck turned out unreasonably well, but was still just not good enough to actually use.







So my Dieck was really good but still not really usable beyond the early chapters. Odd. I always thought of him as pretty great, but this suggests he’s rather bad.




Not shown here is that Rutger was really slow but really strong for quite a while. He turned out nicely, but was still just not really good enough. Myrmidons rarely are.




So Astol disappeared, leaving behind his life as a spy. Remember that.





Astol was aggravatingly awful for a while and only turned around at the end. But thief stats barely matter anyway.




Decent I guess, but never worth using. For a while she seemed really promising with some absolutely massive early Str gains, but then she stopped getting any of that.







I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided this guy was an ok unit. Even with a spectacular speed bonus he’s still barely usable.




Well she turned out poorly overall since it was speed she needed. But she’s just a horrible unit regardless.







Remember how his first 10 levels were almost totally empty? He turned things around with some great bonuses in the last few. Still sucky. And after all I said about him being the best all-around healer!










Did his job.







It’s fitting that the personality-less Echidna is also epilogue-less.







She did her one job pretty well for one chapter.




So Igrene, who Astol was once secretly married to and who he only left because his work as a spy was too dangerous, disappeared too. Coincidence? I think not!



















“Worked on the pegasus knights”?










Interspersed with the credits are a few random pictures.




7, you may recall, was full of these and actually used them to great effect mid-story.




I guess that’s Guinevere? And I guess those 3 pictures in that style are the only ones used? That seems like a weirdly half-hearted effort.


Legendary Weapon Scoreboard:


So I’ve been meticulously tracking who killed what with what legendary weapon cumulatively as I went along. Here’s the final score:




I’m actually surprised the Sword of Seals topped Armads after that last chapter. I guess Gonzales used his killer axe too many times.

I don’t think I’ve EVER used Aureola in FE6. No good characters can ever wield it.


Ranking Results:



















There’s less to say about this than in FE7. You can see the point at which I decided to get serious and stop focusing on building supports, and from there I just have giant bonuses. I think the most impressive Tactics wins were the Infernal Element, the Truth of the Legend, and Reunion.

I did manage to get more than 100 spare turns saved up.




On the last ranking progress update I set a goal of 20,000 surplus XP relative to the ending requirement. But for some reason, I wrote down the ending requirement as 45100 that time, 5000 lower than it really is. So getting 20,000 over the true ending requirement was impossible in hindsight, but I DID manage to do better than I thought I could. In fact, I did about 3000 XP better than I thought was even possible. Nice!

Oh and in case anyone cares about the silly power score (which, remember, is totally redundant with XP), I believe my power score is 1195, with a requirement of 1001. So Power says I got 194 more levels than I needed to and XP says I got 177. Which once again just shows that all that matters is the XP ranking.




Funds is the area where I did least impressively. I did increase my endgame surplus by 20,000 since the last ranking, but that’s just not that great. I promoted a lot of guys who didn’t need promoting and I used pretty much nothing but silver and killer weapons and bolting tomes and physic for too many chapters.

Oh and here’s what I THINK my combat stats are:




Actually, I’m 80% sure the true number is higher than that and there’s some oddity with now Battles are counted, but there’s no way for me to check.

So did I get to the goal?




Yes! Mission accomplished!


Concluding Remarks:

Months ago, I did spectacularly well on Night of Farewells but commented that I still felt like I’d somehow lost.

This whole game makes me feel like that, albeit for different reasons.

I set out to max rank Fire Emblem 6’s true ending on hard mode, and I did it. I did it without RNG manipulation, arena grinding (which seems to be a cornerstone of most FE6 max rank runs), gate grinding, glitch abuse of any kind, or purchasing stat-boosters. And I finished with more than a hundred spare turns, nearly 200 more level ups than required, and more than 50,000 more capital than SHOULD have been required (more than 100,000 more than is actually required). And I only restarted 16 times, less than half as many as for my HHM run. A resounding victory by any measure.

But it feels mostly hollow.

Certainly there were isolated turns and chapters where I played very cleverly, but in general my tactics were boring and straightforward. That’s all this game calls for. The big difference between this run and my previous plays of the game wasn’t that I played smarter, it was that I looked up when reinforcements spawned. That’s where all the “difficulty” in this game comes from (beyond the first few chapters).

Certainly there were isolated moments where the game succeeded artistically, but most of the time the story was dull, poorly paced, thin, and full of massive plot holes. The art and music were similarly unimpressive and they did not work well together.

Certainly there were isolated moments where I discovered something new or learned something or even had fun, but those moments were the rarest of all.

I set out fully intending to look at this game with fresh eyes and judge it on its own merits, rather than in comparison to 7. And I succeeded. It just turned out not to have any of the merits I thought it had. I believe I have made a very strong case that this is not merely a bad Fire Emblem game, but a bad game outright. There is little satisfaction in being very good at a very bad game, but if this Let's Play encourages other people to play a good game instead, then I suppose my time was well spent.