Part 64: Ryoma (Gameplay)

I'm bringing all of these people, plus Jakob who does not fit on the screen. Everybody here has some sort of purpose, whether it's being a combat unit, a healer, a rallybot, or Azura. Seigbert is the one unit who has no job other than being someone's pair-up partner, but even he has Shelter to potentially do some positioning shenanigans.



Usually I go for speed and resistance meals, but there's only a single magic user in this next chapter and it's Saizo. Strength and speed should hopefully secure the ORKOs I want...



Glowing creamed beef... A message like these indicates that the chef has cooked something with an effect they normally wouldn't give. Sophisticated is good, I hope?



Very nice indeed. A shame Ophelia herself doesn't benefit from this bonus.



Oh and I guess I'll forge Camilla an Iron Axe because why not. I had a few of these spare.



Alright! No tonics, no real plan. My brain overheats if I try to plan too hard from the map screen, it's part of why I'm so bad at ironman runs. Every single enemy formation on this map is isolated, I'll take them one at a time.



Maybe some trial and error will be involved too. At least this map is short...



The left side is definitely the harder one, so it's the one I'll do first. It's also the one with the more important treasure chest, so if you're playing this chapter at all beyond killing Ryoma it's the side you want to do.



The first part of this room is fairly easy to do by luring enemies a few at a time. Nina needs a combination of a pair-up, Azura, and Rally Speed to double... She is unfortunately 1 point of speed away from doubling without a partner.



Corrin being separated from the group means the convoy is inaccessible for most of the army. Azura's holding all of Nina's gold bars to be traded over whenever she needs a Spendthrift proc. I'm a bit confused by the icon, is it 1 gold bar per item or 3?



Nina is now fast enough to double. It's good that level ups are fixed, losing this one would be very annoying.



The first couple of Master Ninjas are easy to lure from range, but this group here is positioned so you'll have to tank at least one Swordmaster as well. Taking out this many speedy enemies in one turn on player phase would be tricky...



Fortunately Nina can wait here to only be targetted by 1 Swordmaster. With Shurikenbreaker she can easily dodge the ninjas and KO them in retaliation to avoid the debuffs.



Silas is also gaining levels from this. I think he's capped his strength now?



Nina can survive a couple of hits like this. The bulk she earned as a Merchant paid off!



Luring those 3 over baited the other 2 enemies over, making them easy to dipose of. Midori deserves EXP, she's cool.



Peri too. It's a shame she spends so much time paired with Xander, she's a really good combat unit.



That was the easy part. Now for Spy Hell. These enemies won't move until someone is in range of the Spy's Yumis, at which point they'll all pounce.



This is a weirdly good level... Azura could probably survive a single round against some of the enemies in this map. Could come in handy?



It's very fortunate she got that speed, because that means she can shoot this guy down without a pair-up...



...and Silas can Shelter her, pulling her back out of spy range. I'll want to pick off every enemy I can before I try to tackle the room head on.



Hmm, there's a single tile here where no yumi can reach... If I were to put someone here, could they lure a load of enemies without getting lunged?



Nina's 8 movement combined with move + 1 and the extra point from Silas means that she can indeed get over there. Silas will be able to take out the attacking Swordmasters... If this works, it'll drag even more enemies away from the Spy Yumi Automatons. The less units they have surrounding them, the easier it'll be to rush them.



It's working! Silas getting that crit wasn't life or death or anything, but it was pretty funny. He'd have been able to clean up with a more appropriate weapon the turn after if he'd failed to kill.



This room is now a little less busy. Freezing or Entrapping the Automatons would be an easy way to get rid of them, but with the Swordmasters gone the head on option looks a lot more simple than it did.



Time for operation break-in. First of all I need someone to destroy this one tile wall. Whoever does will be in range of ninjas, but Nina does not fear them.



Big bro and sis are here to solve problems. Xander takes the frontline and defeats one spy, Camilla takes advantage of a dual attack to finish off the other one. The red area marks the range of the two Spy Yumi users in the boss room, I really don't want to stand anyone there.



Xander, Camilla, and Nina are the only ones in danger range now. Xander's the only one who can be targeted by all 3 enemies, and he's probably the only unit with the bulk to survive it.



They can't damage Xander and he can counterattack, so their AI makes them attack Camilla. She eats a nasty debuff but it's fine. Without any debuffs the Swordmaster pair cannot hurt Xander, so they don't bother to attack him.



So I'll have to come to them to finish them off. Fairly easy to do without those two Automatons!



Camilla's capped her level, so her daughter can kill in her stead. I am mostly just giving her all these kills because I want to see what her levels look like.



Nice. This'll come in handy when I need to deal with Conquest's other horrible enemy-only skill...



Now to deal with these jerks. That's two Spy Yumi Automatons, a Life and Death Swordmaster, and 2 Poison Strike Seal Strength Master Ninjas. Their large danger range will make a head-on assault dangerous, and one of them could easily lunge a unit in range of the boss...



Using Freeze on the distant Automaton and having Xander take this guy out would have actually been the best option, he could have tanked the other 3 enemies. It actually did not occur to me to do that until now, and it would have caused less deaths if I had!



I was fixated on the idea of killing the second with Nina. This works fine enough, but someone has to bail her out or else she'll get killed by the Swordmaster...



This is how I did it in the end. Those two deaths at the beginning came from me figuring out how to go about getting into the throne room. It's not even the most difficult part of the map! I don't know if it's better or worse that I didn't use my Freeze staff out of forgetfulness rather than stubbornness.



Poison Strike adds up even if they enemy can't hit you. Thankfully none of the enemies can get above single digit hit against Nina so they can't finish her off...



There's the power of Inevitable End. It's going to take 11 turns for this to wear off!



Camilla cleanly OHKOs one enemy, Ophelia unfortunately takes an unlikely hit and debuff from the other. They will at least have time for the debuffs to wear off when I move my army around to the second half of the map.



Yep, Nina's definitely feeling the effects of her strength debuffs. This would otherwise be a ORKO...



It's okay, this is what the Gold Bars were for! I only brought 4 this map but now's a good time to use one.



I believe in money. This is the power of pay to win!!!



Even if this did hit it wouldn't have been scary, the flat -10 to damage taken from Spendthrift applies after Luna lowers your defense.



bonk



Yeah he's straight up dead. No retreating now, this is serious. Now if only I had done this all the way back in Chapter 17...



Doing all that took 14 turns... Ryoma's slowly losing his patience, I have 6 turns left before he starts moving. Many of those turns will be spent moving my army.



...as you can see. I think the game wants you to split your army to do this as fast as possible, but that is asking waaaay too much of the player I think. Doing this is hard enough with all of your army together on Hard, it didn't need to be harder!



Now for Kagero's gauntlet of deadly terror. Unfortunately there's no safe spaces to stand here, anywhere a ninja can attack you from a Master of Arms can also attack you from, and the latter won't move until you're in range of the former.



I think this calls for a full frontal assault. Nina's movement is so high she can get just about anywhere, she'll run ahead to dispose of this Spy Shuriken guy.



The rest of my army is not far behind. Camilla can't quite take out this one MoA, but with Lunge...



...Forrest can. I did it, I finally made use of Lunge! I told you it was a good skill. There's one unit left who can hit some of my units, but there's only one of them.



Ryoma is fed up waiting for me. I love both of his lines here. Xander in Birthright is clearly throwing his fight since he can no longer live with himself, but Ryoma genuinely wants you dead. He just needed a few turns to stew in his own rage a little.



It'll take a while for him to be able to chip down Corrin, and she's got a convoy full of healing items to use. She's not in any real danger.



He also nerfs himself by attacking thanks to Draconic Hex. If only I had Inevitable End...



Now to deal with these guys. There's some Spy Shurikens mixed up in here that once again will make luring them one by one impractical...



Exactly one of them has a sword, but if Nina takes him out then the rest will be left to chuck shurikens at her ineffectually. If they were somehow all to hit she would be in danger, but the RNG is not that cruel.



Brass lance equipped, Vulneraries engaged. Time to wimp out on this duel until help arrives! The crit avoid and defense boost from the Brass Naginata makes Ryoma much less threatening. Weapon triangle advantage is nice too.



Next up is the Death Corridor. Those two enemies by the entrance won't move until you're in range of their weapons, which overlap with the range of the Spy Shuriken users. They won't lunge you, but they will strip away your health with the combination of Poison Strike and Grisly Wound.



Once again the best option is to go on the offensive. Do I really have to wait for this debuff to wear off?



I'm not that patient. Gold Bar time! Time is money, it's an equivalent exchange.



Silas then Shelters Nina to take her out of spy weapon range. Getting rid of him should make a frontal assault easier later.



The Master Ninja behind him doesn't move, but this one guy does aggro. Silas can easily take care of him...



Azura dances him and finally caps so I can stop having to show her pointless levels



And Nina takes the lead to take out the ninja blocking the breakable walls.



Much better! Now the enemy can only chuck Spy weapons at her, and the rest of my army can get much closer to the enemy for the eventual rush.



Huh, this pair of enemies came over to assist in a dual attack. They're out of position now, I wonder if that helps me? Regardless there are no longer any non-shuriken enemies that can hit Nina in this corridor, so she can advance forward to start picking people off in safety,.



They gladly throw themselves against her, or at least the ones with only 1-2 range weapons do. The spy guys can still annoy her from a distance.



Easy! All the ninjas are gone. The paired up guys moved back because there wasn't anything else do, but but now they're alone it'll be easy to pick them off.



It's almost a shame he never got to hit anyone with his ludicrous weapon and skill combo. Oh well.



Nina finishes his friend off for a level. That's her luck and her level capped!



The remaining enemies don't care about staying in formation and will let themselves be lured over 1 by 1.



I think Ophelia deserves a stat booster bought for her so she can cap her magic. Why not?



Here's the money for it!



Kagero's no threat, but she does have a personal skill that deals damage and debuffs dealt to her through knives back at her attacker. It would be embarrassing to forget about it and die.



This map is a fate worse than death, but you have been spared it. Nina got no EXP from this but at this point I don't care.



With the bosses dealt with, the doors open. Those flimsy wooden doors anybody with a weapon could have easily broken through...



BRING IT IN, GUYS! *every soldier from nohr suddenly bursts in with deadly weapons and capped stats*



Sure, why not, I'll turn off the magic floor- oh he's not standing on it. That's disappointing.



It's still a 1-on-1 duel, Corrin just has an audience.



I would feel sorry for him but it is his fault this chapter exists. It's a bigger war crime than everything we've done.



I normally only post the bottom screen for level ups but this quote is so wonderfully, wonderfully inappropriate. Time to go "help" Garon in the same way!



Goddddddd. This chapter is miserable. A challenge like this would be fun for a postgame style thing I think, but it's not fun to spring it on the player this late in the game. I would like to brag about not using any offensives staves to have beaten it, but I was only able to do that thanks to how overleveled by army ending up being. Had I a less optimised team I definitely would have had to burn a couple of them. The boss room on the left was the only point where I should have used one though, the rest of the map I had the tools to clear safely.

Still though, it's over! And I never have to do it again.



This is actually quite smart of Corrin, appeal to Garon's cartoon villain nature to try and get him on the throne without further bloodshed. And yes Ryoma has not actually died yet. Unfortunately the only misery Garon is after is Corrin's.



Not wanting to be subjected to one more second of Conquest's plot, Ryoma takes his own life.



And... cooks himself to death on his electric sword. What a horrible way to go. Actually seeing the smoke rise from his body is kind of... well it must smell, for one thing. I think I'm going to stop thinking about this.



Corrin capped her speed! Nice. Now she can help more folks.


Next time: Iago and Hans receive help