Part 52: Possessed

Time to actually do what we're supposed to be doing. The chapter before this one was "Sakura", the one after is "Hinoka", and then after that there's "Ryoma". Incidentally, every time you fight Takumi instead of hearing the Hoshidan royal battle theme, you hear the purple invader theme. What could it mean???

This all sounds really obvious when I type it out and yet it did totally go over my head when I first played this game.



Confirmation that nobody with a face died last chapter. Or at least, nobody with a unique face. I do really like the generic portraits in this game, I wouldn't mind having some people who look like them in my army.



Some Nohrians support Garon, some support us. I don't really know if this goes anywhere or not, besides providing a reason for why you have enemies to fight when you turn on Iago and Hans and why the country doesn't turn on you for killing Garon in the end.

It's a shame you don't ever get to see what non-royal Nohrians really think of the war. Garon and his lackies are cartoon villains who don't exactly contradict the whole "Nohrians are evil" thing the Hoshidans are constantly telling you, but you never see what the average Nohrian is like iirc. Or maybe you do in Birthright, it's been a while since I last saw the story...



Here it is, Takumi's Wall. It has a name but I forgot what it was. This is a gruelling seize chapter where you must cross a canyon and climb up a heavily defended fortress to reach Takumi and end the chapter. It is one of the most infamous chapters in the game...

It also has 0 time pressure and is significantly easier if you play it super safe. I'm not super keen on this chapter, it simultaneously feels too easy to turtle and too hard to allow much in the way of strategy. I can imagine this chapter being super fun to play if you're trying to get the lowest turn count possible, but if your objective is just "not die" then it's very long and very boring. Slip ups towards the end can lose you an hour of progress so fun and potentially risky strategies just don't seem worth it, although they are definitely possible.



It's "Possessed", the guy from the chapter title! Takumi is here and he sucks. I genuinely think he's one of if not the worst designed boss in the entire game. The combination of Vengeance, Rend Heaven, and a high crit rate mean he has a not insignificant chance of straight up deleting a unit from full HP. You have to defeat him to beat the chapter and as far as I'm aware he'll never attack you on his turn, instead choosing to fire his ballista, meaning you'll always be at risk of Vengeance.

There are ways around him at least. One time I used Duelist's Blow Swordmaster Corrin to reduce his hit to 0%, that was fun.



If you thought Oboro was bad the last time she showed up... Counter and Warding Blow don't even factor into her scariness here, the problem is that she has high stats, Luna, and a good crit rate. She is also surrounded by many strong allies to soften you up. The way you defeat Oboro is to dismantle the group around her with turtling or staves and then smack her on player phase without giving her a chance to hit you. She and Takumi are both the type of bosses you really want Divine Pulse for, except that is not a thing that exists.

Alternatively you can use pro stratz to rush past her, beat Takumi, and then seize on the same turn. I do not have pro strats.



Hinata himself isn't that bad. His stats are straight up worse than Oboro's in every way but HP and luck, and her pair-up partner boosts her luck above his anyway. Sol and Armoured Blow make him a bit hard to take out, and Countermagic is annoying, but it's not a big deal.

What is annoying is the group he hangs out with. He and the enemies surrounding him won't move until Takumi's in range to shoot you from afar, at which point they'll all rush you at once. There are multiple rally users mixed in and combined they put out an insane amount of damage. Thankfully you can go straight past them using your fliers if you so desire, they won't chase you if you fly over the canyon right past them.



Getting up on the wall is how you reach the boss (and treasure!) but there's some guys up there who don't want you to do that. Every single enemy will aggro as soon as you scale the stairs, but they'll un-aggro when you go back down... making them very easy to turtle.

Lunatic mode makes things trickier by blocking two of the stairs with Basaras. You can spend a use of the Entrap staff to move one of them away, or you can just play around them. My Xander's bulky enough that I won't need to do that.



Many ballistae are scattered around the map to annoy you slightly. They can't kill you and they don't deal much damage, but they will limit the usefulness of your fliers. The enemies are carefully positioned so you can't take them for yourself to fire at the enemy army.



It's him... It's Rallyman! Sir Walter Rally himself. He has a bunch of rallies. If you aggro him and his squad then a whole load of reinforcements will spawn, so be careful about doing that.



From here, and also Hinata's gate. Lots and lots of paired up Masters of Arms, all of which are holding multiple Hoshidan weapons that are effective against swords lances & axes. If you can spare the units you really should have people blocking these forts before approaching Rallyman.



And lastly there's these two groups right next to where you start. Aggroing them will also spawn reinforcments from the forts, so try to take out as many of them as possible on the turn you aggro them to prevent yourself from being overwhelmed.



We get to bring everyone!!! Everyone but Kaze and Laslow, who could be useful for pair-up bonses I guess.



There really is no time pressure here, so you can spend multiple turns organising your army and figuring out how to do things before aggroing each group of enemies. You can just deploy everyone wherever and then spend like 10 turns arranging them before engaging a single enemy.



I'm no coward, Takumi! Now to slowly lure out your army one by one over the course of like 50 turns.



I want to wipe out both groups of enemies on the turn they aggro, which means I need two 1-2 ranged units to take the top and the bottom. The red range marks the ballista which will be slightly annoying but otherwise inconsequential, at least to my tanky frontliners.



There's like 5 enemies with rally in this chapter that you'll have to watch rally at the end of every single turn. You could capture a whole army of rallymen here.



I want Ophelia to take the bottom path, but this guy's got to die if she's going to survive it. There's a single spot she can take him out from a distance without being in range of the Snipers...



There's going to be a lot of Azura levels while I shuffle my team around to optimise rallies and positioning...



Here we go. Ophelia's under the influence of Azura's Inspiring Song and every rally I have, she'll just about be able to tank this squad.



Xander takes the top. He deliberately did not get his defense rallied because otherwise he'd be too bulky to be targetted. Incidentally, every single one of these Snipers has Counter...



One jerk has a Dual Yumi to mess with things, but otherwise Xander tanks everything fine. These Snipers all have Lunge but the only one to survive couldn't lunge him anywhere dangerous.



These guys are a bit more dangerous. The one guy with Rally Strength chose to attack Ophelia instead of rallying, making all the others a little weaker. I went with Calamity Gate over the Horse Spirit since in this case WTA trumps the extra defense in terms of damage reduction.



These four reinforcements are way less dangerous thanks to most of the enemies I aggroed now being dead. I'll just let them come to me so I can pick them off with units who want the EXP.



Ophelia is near unstoppable now. 30 is her "standard" speed cap, but Nyx as her mum pushes it a little higher.



There's no big danger in attacking a guy with Counter if the damage won't kill you, but somehow it just feels wrong to me, like I'm going to somehow mess up my calculations and take 5 times more damage than I'm supposed to. I think I'm too used to this stupid skill killing me in Awakening.

Seems like Shigure's one good level might have been a fluke. It's okay, all he needs to do is rally!



Basaras are mixed attackers but the magic of these enemy ones isn't particularly threatning. Enough to frighten Xander maybe, but low enough that Ophelia is capable of taking no damage from them at all with the right weapon.



First group taken care of! Now for Hinata and his buddies. This one guy has a Swordcatcher, but in my expeirence they don't threaten Xander much. Nobody in this group has any magical attacks so you can muscle through them with sheer physical defense.



Jakob
a
k
o
b

...some people put all their stat growths at the bottom of each update. I prefer showing them all off as they happen, but Jakob and Azura's really don't matter at all anymore.



Hinata's on a gate that improves his defenses, but he'll gladly walk off of it to fight you so there's no need to worry about it. As you can see he does not threaten Xander much.



Neither does this guy, but he seems like a good target to build dual guard gauge against. Although in retrospect I should have focused on taking out someone who could potentially be dangerous instead of this literally harmless unit.



Ohhhh I may have forgotten that these things hurt when they're not being used by generic Villagers. That's a decent amount of damage, and Xander's going to be slapped with sealed defense at the end of combat...



Thankfully he's learned the number one lesson of Conquest: they can't seal your stats if they're dead. It's pretty lucky that he hit both of these hits, I could have been in trouble otherwise!



Yeah this is my bad for not paying attention. I don't think using Xander was the wrong choice, I just should have put more thought into who I had him attack when he rushed in to aggro the squad. At least he survived!



Now to fall back and watch them all reset their positions. They'd be more threatening if they all came straight at me instead, but I'm not complaining.



Aw yeah. I almost wish I had some Talismans saved for him.



Then I just threw Xander at them until they were softened up enough to clean up with the rest of my squad. Hinata hasn't "retreated" here, he's straight up dead. Oops?



These Snipers are all midly infuriating. Counter means I can't attack them up close, but they have a nonzero crit rate against most units who attack them at range. I don't need to feed more EXP to Ophelia but it's usually the safest thing to do!



Ow. Takumi totally saw what I did to his friend from up there and now he's mad.



My less useful units will occupy these forts while I go engage Rallyman and clean up the lower level of this map. An absurd amount of tough enemies will emerge from these forts on the turn he moves.



This one Life And Death Basara makes approaching this part of the map tricky. I don't entirely know what causes the enemies surrounding the ballistae to move, but they don't tend to like moving so I'll have to come to them.



Thankfully that one guy is the only real threat so a bum rush isn't too hard to pull off.



He also has paper thin defenses so he's easy to one-shot with a little help. I'd entirely forgotten Elise learned this skill last chapter.



He's on his way! And whoops, I forgot the forts weren't the only place that reinforcements could come from... I don't think this is too bad, 4 enemies isn't too hard a thing to deal with.



I'll bust through the units approaching from the right first to stop my army from getting trapped between the two groups. Rallyman and his posse aren't so scary when they come to you.



Seems like the reinforcements are chasing after the units I left on the forts. That's not so bad, they can run away and my fliers can ferry my better units over the canyon from the top.



Oh, the Snipers are going the other way? This is perfect, if there's no bow users at the bottom then I can send my fliers over risk free.



That's her speed capped! Ophelia is absolutely popping off, damn. Even her bulk is weirdly good.



I love a clean dual strike kill. Nina's definitely going to cap something soon.



Azura gets another level and Camilla fully embraces her new class and learns Rally Defense. Her skill doesn't look nearly as bad now she's no longer a Malig Knight.



Now for this absolute nightmare. Getting through this gauntlet will be a long process of going up and down the stairs to slowly thin out their numbers. Oboro's group all the way on the left is the real danger here, Xander could tank the group on the right without too much issue.



Unofortunately these three Spear Masters have Lunge, and they will drag anyone who doesn't kill them right into Oboro's hateful embrace.



Best course of action is to pile every rally I have onto this man. These are absolutlely some Awakening endgame looking stats, but I would still feel safer if Xander had Sol.



Thankfully this guy won't even try to lunge Xander if he can't hurt him. He'll have this place cleaned up in no time, and then all my army can gang up on Oboro's squad.



Oh I guess this one jerk can hurt Xander. And he's positioned himself on the stairs for extra avoid... Why didn't I leave Xander there?



THEY CAN'T LUNGE YOU

IF THEY'RE DEAD



Yeah every jerk's going to stick themselves on the stais I left wide open now. Oops.



Peri's putting in a lot of work as Xander's support partner. Good job Peri.



That went better than it could have. Let's get out of here and wait for Oboro to retreat before I make my third stupid Xander mistake of the chapter.



The stairs are free now so I could sneak in at the back to get rid of the Snipers. Still need to wait for Oboro to retreat though.



Just a slow hit and run process of thinning out enemies and then running away. It's not the most impressive or fun strategy but it's what is safest and I don't want to replay the first half of the map again.



My other units can join in with Operation Cowardice once the enemies are thinned out a little more. I am absolutely going to give the next Speedwings I get to Corrin.



Silas skillfully dodges defense once again. I'm seriously worried about his tanking potential now... Maybe he can have the Dragon Herbs?



Okay that took many boring turns but now I am ready to fight the enemy head on. Everyone is here!



She's not so bad if you don't give her a chance to hit you. Oboro is the Cordelia of this game but unlike her she can at least marry the object of her affections if you want her to.



Elise got more skill as a Berserker than she did HP. Weird. But now she doesn't have to be one anymore!



Rallyman is dead, I have created my own to replace him. This version can fly.



Just Takumi left now. He's got a room to himself full of strong units, one of which has Lunge and Seal Defense. I don't actually think Takumi will ever choose to attack instead of shooting his ballista, but I could be wrong.



This isn't even threatening, it's just annoying!



I'll leave Xander here to soften up the enemies. If Takumi attacks, great! If he doesn't then I'll gang up on him once there's no-one else left.



Yeah I think he'd rather just shoot people from afar.



Xander has never missed a ORKO on a Spearmaster with lunge this entire map. I'm just taking it for granted at this point.



Also he's super overleveled now. Strong Riposte will help him take out lunge guys even more!



Vegeance is scary, but guess what?

You can't get revenge if you're dead.



Even managed to take him out with a Vengeance crit of my own. Byeeee!



OH GOD I almost forgot the chests!!!! Gimme gimme gimme



Give me money, give me Boots. Whoever owned these boots won't even be able to afford a replacement pair now.



Well that was long. And dumb. A couple of Xander mishaps aside, I think I played this chapter too safe to be interesting. The next chapter will be a lot harder to turtle.

If the game had Divine Pulse I'd be willing to waste a few uses on seeing if I could defeat Oboro more aggressively. She's hard to lure since Luna & high crit rate can potentially equal a OHKO that nobody could survive, but I'm sure there must be some way to do it safely. Maybe if I had sent in both Xander and Ophelia on turn 1 to take her and one other unit out on player phase at the same time?



Takumi glowed purple and then fell backwards to his death. Boy am I glad that's the last we'll see of him! Let's not look for the body, it's probably really gross.



Boots instantly go to Corrin in Conquest, no question about it. My obsessive statbooster hoarding hates using the boots most of all but I know for a fact she wants them more than anyone else, getting Corrin to the boss of Endgame as fast as possible is the only way to beat it and she may as well make use of that extra movement starting from now.

Next time: Jakob gets replaced