Part 1: Prologue: Birth of the Holy Knight Part 1: Chalphy-Jungby
Prologue: Chalphy-JungbyOpening Cutscene in video format:
A country in turmoil! Already we can see the love and betrayal promised in the thread title forming! We will have to wait a bit on that incest though. Ok so that very first part of the intro wasn't translated. I honestly have no idea what it says, but here's my best guess based on what I know about the game. Long, long ago there was a great war. A dark sect led by the dark dragon Loputosu oppressed the people of Judgral. Eventually the light dragon Narga along with 11 holy crusaders rose up in rebellion to free the continent. The gods gave holy weapons to the crusaders to fight Loputosu. Well actually I think the dark god Loputosu possessed the leader of the Loputosu clan and Narga along with the other gods instilled their power into the holy weapons for the twelve crusaders to use. I'm not entirely sure, but it's not really that important for now. Also I think that bit of Japanese text at the start of the chapter says something along the lines of, "Prologue: The Birth of a Holy Knight." Anyway, we'll start the chapter with a quick overview of the map.
That's our castle, Chalphy, on the right. At the south is Jungby, out current target, and towards the west is Evans, our final destination in the chapter. Those village looking things are villages and those church looking things are churches. More on those later.
Now then, let's take a look at Sigurd and his loyal knights, shall we?
This is page one of our unit page. Here you can see a unit's stats and inventory. Sigurd seems to have both a lance and a sword in his inventory, though the lance will be more or less useless due to the mechanics of this game heavily favoring swords. Sigurd has great stats. He has a high base Strength (Str), Defense (Def), and Speed (Spd), the three most important stats, high Skill (Skl) as well though that's somewhat less important, and decent Luck (Lck). His Magic (Mag) and Resistance (Res) are low, but Mag is pretty useless for most physical attackers and Res is less important than other stats.
I'll cover what exactly each stat does in a mini-update later, but for a simple explanation, Str and Mag are attacking stats, Def and Res are defending stats, Spd and Lck affect dodge chance (Spd also determines if a unit will double attack), and Skl affects hit chance.
Ok, now that all that's done with, let's continue looking at Sigurd's unit page.
Here you can see how many leadership stars a unit has, who their lover is (if they have one), who, if anyone, they want to talk to, how far they can move, how much money they have, how far they've gotten in the arena (the arena will be explained when it comes up in Chapter 1), and if they're afflicted by any status effect such as sleep or poison. On the right you can see a unit's weapon ranks. Each weapon has a rank on it and a unit needs to have a rank at least that high to use it. So Sigurd can use B rank lances and lower because he has a B rank in lances. He has a * in swords which will allow him to use any sword. We'll go a bit more into this in a moment. Beneath weapon ranks you can see what skills if any a unit has. That skill on Sigurd is called Pursuit, and it allows a unit to double attack. Those familiar with the Fire Emblem series will know that in order to double attack a unit (attack twice in combat instead of once), you must have at least four more AS than them. This game is a bit different. You only need one more AS to double attack in FE4, but you must have the Pursuit skill to be able to do this.
Money also works differently in this game than in other FEs. Instead of having a pool of money for your entire army, each character has their own separate money pool that for the most part cannot be shared with other units. More on that later.
Lastly we have the holy blood wheel. Characters can have up to two types of holy blood, and holy blood comes in two varieties: Major and minor. I'll go into this more later, but here are the key points: Major holy blood is represented by a glowing dot while minor holy blood is represented by a non glowing dot. Minor holy blood will raise a unit's weapon rank by one, while Major holy blood raises a unit's weapon rank in that type to *, letting them use every type of weapon in that category, hence Sigurd's * weapon rank. Each type of holy blood raises specific growth rates specific amounts. Major blood increases growth rates by twice as much as minor blood does.
Growth rates are kind of what they sound like: The rate at which a character grows. When a character levels up, they have a percent chance to gain a point in each stat. This specific chance is called a growth rate. These are actually hidden from the player, so you won't know them without looking them up from an outside source.
Now then, a quick summary of Sigurd in general: He is amazing. He is the best unit in the first generation of this game, and probably the best unit in the entire game. You really have to try to get this guy killed. He can pretty easily take on armies at a time and come out smelling like roses. He has great base stats and major Baldo blood to give him great growth rates. He'll have a 110% HP growth, meaning he'll always gain HP on a level up and has a 10% chance to gain two points, a 50% Str and Skl growth, a 30% Spd growth, a 40% Lck and Def growth, and a 5% Mag and Res growth. While his Spd growth is a bit low, these can easily carry him throughout the game. Now then, on to our next unit, Noish:
Noish has pretty good Str and Def and decent Skl and Spd. He'd be a good combatant if not for one glaring flaw: He lacks Pursuit, so he cannot double attack. However he has two other skills: Charge and Critical. Charge has a percent chance [User's AS-Enemy's AS+User's HP/2]% to activate an additional round of combat. This can only activate when the user's HP is at least 25, so you don't have to worry about it killing you by activating while your unit has low HP. It can actually activate up to 20 times in a row, though it's rare to see it happen more than once. Critical allows the unit to perform a critical hit.
Critical hits work a bit differently in this game than in other FEs. A unit normally cannot perform a critical hit. There are a few ways however to get a unit to crit. The first is for a unit to have the Critical skill. The second is to artificially give the unit Critical by getting enough kills with one weapon. One a weapon gets 50 killing blows, it'll give the Critical skill to anyone who uses it. You may be wondering how it's even possible to get 50 kills with one weapon when weapons don't have more than 50 durability. Well, we'll go into more detail on that a bit later, but it's not as impossible as it seems. The third way is to have a unit stand next to their lover. This will give them a 20% crit chance. For those who are interested, crit rate equals [Skill+ Weapon Kill Bonus+ Lover Bonus]. The weapon kill bonus relates to the second crit method, so we'll go into that later as well. Lastly, in more recent FE games a crit makes a unit do triple damage, however in this one it makes the unit fight with twice the attack. So if a unit with 20 Att is fighting someone with 15 Def, a crit will make them go from doing 5 damage to doing 25 damage.
Let's move on to Alec now:
Alec has so-so at best Str and Def but good Skl and Spd. He has two skills, Pursuit and Awareness. Awareness simply negates enemy combat skills. Wow these write ups are a great deal shorter when I don't have to explain basic game mechanics. So let's add a bit to it, shall we?
Alec and Noish as a whole are completely mediocre. They have mediocre starts and only get worse from there. Neither will be able to reliably kill an enemy in one round of combat (One Round Knock Out or ORKO). They have mediocre bases, mediocre growths, and no holy blood to help them out. They're actually some of the worst units in the game, which is odd because they're members of the "Red and Green Knights" archetype in FE games. This archetype usually consists of one red knight (Noish) and one green knight (Alec), one of which excels in Str and Def (Noish) while the other excels in Skl and Spd (Alec). The strange thing is that these knights are usually some of the best units in the game, while in this game the reverse is true. Go figure, eh?
Lastly we have Arden. As Alec said, he's strong, reliable, and slow. He'll be our Sword Armor for the first generation, and in Fire Emblem Armor Knights tend to have low movement. This game is no different, however because the maps in this game are so big Arden's low movement hurts him more so than it would in other games. He really won't be able to keep up with the action for most of the game movement wise. On top of that he lacks Pursuit and even Charge so he won't be doubling any enemies, and he doesn't have any holy blood to help out his growth rates, but for now because we have few units spread out over a pretty large area we can make some use of him. He has high Strength and Defense so he actually is fairly good at doing chip damage or sniping kills if he needs to, but again, his low movement kind of ruins him. He actually does have Ambush, a fairly good skill which allows the unit to always attack first when they're below half HP. Normally whoever initiates combat gets the first strike, so on enemy phase your units will normally attack second, however Ambush would allow them to attack first. Now if we manage to promote Arden (something that will never happen to be frank), he'll gain the class skill Great Shield which gives him a [Unit level]% chance to nullify all damage from an attack. Only promoted generals get this skill. What's promoting you ask? Well because all this explanation is so thick, I'm going to put that off until we actually come to it in Chapter 3.
WOW, now that we've sat through all that plot and explanation, we should probably start actually playing.
To start we're going to send Noish over to attack that bandit. The green squares represent places where Noish can and the orange squares represent places where Noish can't move but can attack to. As you can see he can move further in certain directions than others. This is because roads require less movement to cross than meadows which require less movement to cross than woods. Now then, let's have Noish move next to that axe fighter to the west.
After moving him there we can choose to have him attack the fighter or wait. Anime is supposed to be an abbreviation for animation. It's just a short cut to turn off battle animations for a specific characters.
After selecting attack we can choose what weapon to attack with. Since Noish only has one weapon, we'll have to use his Steel Sword. In the window to the right you can see the attack, accuracy, and evasion Noish will have with the Steel Sword equipped. The 50 to the right of Steel represents the number of uses left on the sword before it breaks. So on to the actual battle then:
During each battle you can see each battler's weapon, Hit [Unit's Acc-Enemy's Avo], attack, defense, and level. So we can see that Noish will do 21-5=16 damage to this fighter with the Iron Axe. This won't kill him, but it will weaken him for Alec to kill.
After the battle since Noish has a mount, he can use the rest of his movement that he didn't use before the attack, again shown by the green squares. We'll hove him further to the west. Now then we'll move Alec forward to finish off this fighter.
This is the combat window which you'll see after selecting a weapon to fight with. We can see here that Alec will do 10 damage per attack. Since he has Pursuit and higher speed than the enemy, he'll attack twice dealing 20 damage and killing the bandit.
So Alec kills the fighter and stays there, Arden moves forward, and Sigurd moves down towards Evans. We'll end our turn now.
But I've gotcha now. Die!
Well this shouldn't be too much of a problem, Gandolf only has 47 Hit and can only do 20 damage while Midir has 32 HP. He should survive for now at least.
Uh oh, looks like Gandolf got a lucky critical (which is obviously scripted, but pretend like it was surprising)!
Where are you goin'? Don't you worry. I'll be back with Kinbois and his men. Hell, we may even press on to Barhara. There'd be no one to stop us if we did! Make yourselves at home here, boys. Anything goes!Heh... you can count on us for that.
Gandolf now drags Aideen out of Jungby. By the way, if you don't remember, Barhara is the capitol of Grandbell.
She's my booty! I'm takin' her back to be my wife. She's a keeper, wouldn't ya say?
Yeah, she's makin' my mouth water.: You wipe that grin off your face! You'll get your needs met once Grandbell is ours. Show a little self-control till then.
You're all animals... Dear Lord, please instill these people with a little decency. What're you mumblin' about!? We're goin'! No fallin' behind this time!
DiMaggio has now taken control of Jungby castle. A few enemies move forward. One attacks Sigurd, but he dodges and then kills the enemy on a counterattack, and another attacks Alec. Nothing too major.
Oh no! You remember those villages Alec was talking about? Well that bandit there is burning one down! We'll have to stop him! Now then, back to our turn. Wait, what's that?
Who are those fellows coming in from the north?
He'll sure be happy to see us. You just can't stay out of these things, can you, Azel...
Yeah, but with the military on engagement to Isaac, Grandbell's completely strapped! Sigurd and the few soldiers left in Chalphy are out here fighting for their lives! I can't just leave them hanging... Oh really... I'm not quite buying your story, Azel. What aren't you telling me? Wh...what're you talking about!? I'd surmise that you're all worked up about Lady Adean of Jungby. I know you like her. Y...you're nuts! A-ha! Face is getting red there, buddy! You little player you. Lex, knock it off! Now come on, let's get going. Hahahaa... Alright, let's do this. Finally, a chance to kick some ass.Note: For the most part cutscenes will be done in a style like this rather than the video for the game's opening. During especially animated or important parts I might put cutscenes in video format, but those will be few and far between.
Well, it looks like we got some reinforcements! We'll look over them in a minute, but now...
Wow, after all that we're done with a single turn of this game. But so much of that was explanation of simple game mechanics, so it'll go much more quickly from now on. I won't say there are no more long explanations, but the ones that are there will be much less frequent than they've been up to this point. Back to the game then. Let's check out our two new units.
Azel here is our first Mage. He specializes in Fire, unfortunately the worst type of magic. You see Fire, Thunder, and Wind magic are all the same in every way except for one: Weapon weight. Fire is the heaviest, so it'll cause the biggest reduction on AS. Thunder is in the middle and Wind is the lightest. Luckily, Azel has good Spd and Mag, so he'll have good combat. He has Pursuit allowing him to double, so he won't really have much trouble killing things, especially with his high Mag against enemies' generally low Res. And hey, what's that? Minor holy blood! He has Fala blood increasing his Fire rank from C to B and increasing his HP and Mag growth. He has a strong 40% Mag growth and a 50% Spd growth along with a 70% HP growth. Unfortunately it's only minor blood so he won't be getting any holy weapons. Oh well, he's still a great unit.
Lex here is a surprisingly great unit. He has great Str and Def which are made even stronger by his minor Neir blood. Again, this is sadly only minor blood. He has good Spd, but Axes are heavy so it'll have a large AS reduction. Axes also have low hit, but they do have high Mt to make up for it. Now then, skills: Right away you can see he doesn't have Pursuit which would make you think he wouldn't be good in combat. Normally that'd be true, but Lex is sort of special for reasons that'll come up later. He has Ambush just like Arden, but he also has a great skill called Elite. Elite doubles all EXP that Lex gets, meaning he'll level up more frequently and grow more quickly than your other units. Lex has a bit of a slow start, but thanks to Elite and certain other things later on, he overcomes it and becomes a truly great unit.
Now the great thing about Mages is that they can attack from one or two range meaning two things: One, they will almost always be able to attack whoever they want without fearing a counter attack. This of course isn't true if the enemy also can attack from one or two range. Two, they'll always be able to counter attack the enemy unless the enemy has long range magic (something usually exclusive to bosses or minibosses). Another great thing is that in this game enemies generally have low Res, so your mages will do a lot of damage. Of course this mostly holds true for your units as well, so enemy mages might be a pretty big threat. Unfortunately Mages tend to lack in the Def department, so they function as a sort of glass cannon.
So Azel is so great that even at level one he can ORKO these enemies, something that nobody else so far except Sigurd can reliably do. Azel successfully kills the bandit about to attack this village...
And then Lex will come and visit it. As you can see when standing on a village entrance a unit will gain the Town option. This simply lets them visit the town to talk to the villagers who will generally be grateful towards us for saving them.
Swords are stronger than axes, axes are stronger than lances, and lances are stronger than swords. Keep that in mind when you're in combat. And if you find yourself hurting, the church is your one stop to full recovery. But it ain't free, mind you. The going rate is 5 gold for each hitpoint.
This villager explains the weapon triangle to us, a staple of the FE series. Now when he says certain weapons are stronger than others, he's not talking about Mt or any sort of damage. It's actually all about Hit. Having a weapon that's good against another weapon (i.e. you have a sword while your opponent has an axe) will increase your hit and avoid by 20. He also mentions Churches which are a great way to heal early on when we have few to no healers. There are also no healing items like Vulneraries or Elixers in this game like there are in other FE's, so if you don't have a healer nearby there's literally no other way to heal than to use a church.
Also out of gratitude the villagers give us 5000 Gold. Well by us, I mean Lex, because like I said everyone has separate money pools.
Alec will attack and kill the nearby enemy then move forward, Noish will attack the villager and move forward, and Arden will just slowly move forward.
Sigurd will kill the nearby enemy and then charge the enemy castle. On enemy phase two enemies attack Sigurd, both of which he kills, one attacks Azel and dies, and another attacks Alec. The rest really just charge Sigurd. Yup, that's a lot of enemies but Sigurd really won't have any problem with them, due in part to his great stats and due in part to the weapon triangle. Just about every enemy in this chapter uses axes, so all the sword units here will have a relatively easy time. Lex and Azel are both neutral towards axes in the weapon triangle, but they're strong enough that they don't really need that advantage to do well. Now Alec, Noish, and Sigurd can use lances as well, but obviously they don't want to go from having the weapon triangle advantage (WTA) to having the weapon triangle disadvantage (WTD). Now luckily we don't have anyone who only uses lances, as they would have a lot more trouble in combat in this chapter. Oh, speak of the devil...
I'm sure I can put my Live Staff to some use around here. I'm sorry to pull you into this, Cuan. I know I'm no longer a Chalphy, but I can't just sit back and do nothing. On my brother's behalf, thank you so much for coming.
You don't need to thank me, Ethlin. You know Sigurd and I go way back. Not to mention that he's my brother-in-law now. Besides, I can't have you fighting alone. I sure appreciate it, dear.
Looks like we have some more reinforcements! We have Cuan, Sigurd's best friend and prince of Lenster, Ethlin, Sigurd's sister and Cuan's wife, and Fin, Cuan's loyal vassal. Let's take a look at them in more detail now:
Cuan has great Str and Def and good Skl and Spd. Unfortunately he lacks Pursuit, so he'll never be great in combat, but he'll be able to hold his own defensively and will be able to weaken things for our weaker units to kill. He has the Continue skill which gives the user a [Spd+20]% chance to get an extra attack. Unlike Pursuit, this extra attack happens right after the first one so the enemy won't get a hit in until after the user's two attacks. If you've played FE9 or 10, you'll recognize this skill as Adept.
You'll also see that he already has a lover, Ethlin. We're not going into detail on the lover system just yet, but I'll explain some basic things real quick: When two units are in love with one another, it gives them a +10 Hit and Avo bonus when they're within three tiles of each other. They also are able to give money to one another, though you can't control how much money they give. When one unit gives money to another, they give all the money they have. The exception to this is when the money they give fills up the receiver's wallet, so to speak. You see each unit can only hold 50000 Gold (G), so if the giver has 13000 G and the receiver has 42000 G, the giver will only give 8000 G. Lastly, there's the lover crit bonus I mentioned a while ago. If two lovers are adjacent to one another they'll get a +20 crit bonus, even if they don't have the Critical skill. This also holds true for siblings, so Sigurd and Ethlin will be able to make use of it as well.
Now unfortunately Cuan can only use lances, so his combat will suffer a bit this chapter. However he does have a Javelin on him, so he'll be able to attack at 1~2 range just like Azel, so he can use that to help to counteract the -20 Avo from WTD. Lastly, you can see he has major Noba blood giving him * rank lances. This also means he'll get a holy weapon sooner or later, so we can look forward to that! On to Fin:
Fin is an interesting character. He has almost exactly the same base stats and growth rates as Alec (one less Skl but 4 more Lck; 20% more Lck), and only has access to lances, but he's a great unit. Now one reason for this is that he's a level lower when he comes in so he'll grow more quickly (units receive more EXP at lower levels), but that only helps a little bit. We'll see why he's so much better a bit later. He lacks any holy blood, but he has Pursuit and Prayer, a skill that increases a unit's Avo when they're below 11 HP by [(11 - HP) x 10] for one turn.
Lastly we have Ethlin. She's our first healer, so she'll be invaluable for the time being. As a Troubadour she can use both swords and staves, meaning she can fight and heal. Of course her low Str and Def means her combat will be really bad. To make it worse, she doesn't have Pursuit. She does have Critical, but that won't really be too helpful. She can still pick off weaker enemies to get a good amount of EXP, but for the most part she'll want to heal other units. Her Live staff heals [10+Mag] damage, so for now she'll heal 18 HP, about half of a unit's health. Being Sigurd's sister she does have minor Baldo blood giving her access to A rank Swords.
Lex and Azel attack the miniboss (well maybe not a miniboss, but he's the first enemy with a Hand Axe and that's level 10). Azel positions himself on the church so that if he takes a hit on enemy phase he'll be fully healed and ready to go.
Once a unit reaches 100 EXP they level up and go back to 0. Unlike a lot of other RPGs, every level up will always take 100 EXP, and the amount gained changes based on the enemy's level relative to your level. Now then, Azel gets our first level up of the game and gains....
1 HP and 1 Skl. Man so much for that great Mag and Spd growth. Oh well, they can't all be winners.
Alec and Noish both attack the bandit and move forward, managing to fail to kill him in the process (he's another level 10 one), while Arden goes to attack the bandit attacking the village, again failing to kill it.
Sigurd moves forward to attack, killing the enemy and then moving to the forest for some extra Avo. He levels up gaining HP and Def. Man we're getting some mediocre level ups so far.
Cuan, Ethlin, and Fin (the Lenster trio) move forward.
During enemy phase the level 10 bandit attacks Noish from 2 range, two bandits attack Sigurd, though he only kills one (the one he didn't kill was an archer who attacked him at two range), and a bandit suicides into Azel, damaging him in the process.
As you can see, the bandit damages Azel, but the damage is then healed by the church, but it'll cost Azel 90 gold (5 per HP).
Arden kills the bandit attacking the village, Noish moves forward, and Alec kills that bandit that's been plaguing us for so long. He levels up gaining 1 HP, 1 Str, and 1 Def. Wow, how is it that one of our worst units gets our best level up so far? Well, that's what you get when you play a game that works heavily off of a random number generator. Every playthrough is different* and characters who are generally bad can end up good every now and then and vice versa.
*Note: Though I say every playthrough is different, in actuality if you took one million copies and did the exact same movements on each copy, you would always get the exact same results. But for all intents and purposes, we'll say every playthrough is different.
Azel and Lex move forward to defend that village as quickly as possible.
Cuan attacks a bandit with a Javelin. Unfortunately his target has a Hand Axe so he'll be able to counter attack. Oh well. Sigurd then moves off of the forest to kill the archer, then returns to the tree for defense. Fin and Ethlin move forward, but not so far forward that two or three enemies could hit and kill them. Instead on enemy phase, one attacks each of the Lenster trio. Of course none of them are strong enough to ORKO on counter attack.
Here's a small sum of money we all pooled together. Use it how you see fit.
Please help out the other villages if you can. They're sure to appreciate it.
Arden finally visits that village to get the money there. Unlike the other one however, this one only gives use 3500 G because that bandit attacked it so much. For every time a village is hit, it'll give 500 less G to whoever saves it. Once the village takes ten hits, it along with anything it might have held (plot info, money, advice, items) gets destroyed.
Alec and Noish move towards the Church to heal since they're so damaged while Azel and Lex move to save the village.
Cuan goes to kill the bandit and then goes to talk to Sigurd. Note for a while I may not put up music cues for cutscenes like this (and the one where Gandolf took Aideen), since I don't remember exactly where which track plays and I stupidly forgot to make notes of it for the first few chapters, but it will all be added to the master list in the OP.
We heard about your skirmish with Verdane. We're here to fight.
How about Lenster? Don't you have Thracia to keep an eye on? We do. That's why I only brought Fin. My father took command of the Lance Ritter. I see... Geez, sorry to drag you in to all of this, Cuan. Sigurd! Did you already forget about our pact? Huh? Remember the academy? We all met at the military academy back in Barhara. It was the three of us. You, me, and Eltshan. We were talking late that one night. And we took a vow to help each other out if one of us was ever in a bind. That's right. No... I haven't forgotten. Ok, then. Let's get to work and rid yourself of this little nuisance. Don't forget, Sigurd. I'm always here for you. Especially in times like these.It looks like Sigurd and Cuan have a great relationship with one another, as well as this Eltshan character. Despite the relationship they establish early on, Sigurd and Cuan don't talk to each other much for most of the game. However it's important to establish it for later in the game.
Fin and Sigurd each kill a bandit and move forward, then...
Ethlin goes to heal Fin. The Live staff gives 15 EXP per use, so that'll be Ethlin's primary mode of leveling up for now.
It's no surprise as the Chalphys are all descended from Baldo, the God of Light. If we just had Lord Byron's Holy Tyrfing, those barbarians wouldn't have a prayer!
There's some subtle foreshadowing about the holy weapon Sigurd will inevitably get. Now then, Lex finishes off the bandit and visits the village. I believe before I mentioned the Tyrfing when talking about Sigurd's major Baldo blood. It looks like his dad who's off fighting the campaign in Isaac has it for now, so we might not be getting it for a while.
Azel, moves toward the southern village while Alec and Noish go to the church.
Cuan weakens a bandit for Fin to kill and Sigurd goes to attack the boss mounted on top of the castle. The Charge command is solely for, well, charging bosses of castles. It's not really any different from normally attacking, but it allows for an important distinction. Characters with 1~2 range will have both the ability to Charge the boss, and to Attack the boss. Charging will fight at one range (charging up the castle for a melee battle), while Attacking will fight at two range (since you are technically two spaces away from the boss). Anyway, let's have Sigurd Charge now. Oh but before we do, a fun fact about the enemy AI, we'll see a lot of enemies in triangle formations outside of castles like the ones outside of Jungby now. Enemies in that formation will attack anyone next to them, but won't actually move from their post unless the boss on the castle is killed. Now then, on to the attack.
I, Lord DiMaggio, will finish you! DiMaggio has 45 HP and 11 Str and Def, meaning we won't manage to kill him this round, but we'll do some decent damage and level up from it. Sigurd reaches level 7 and gains +1 HP, +1 Str, +1 Lck, and +1 Def. Now that's what I'm talking about!
And Arden slowly trudges to the west...
On enemy phase DiMaggio foolishly attacks Sigurd, ending his own life. In addition, the two guards by Jungby attack Sigurd (both surviving), a bandit attacks Azel and dies, and Ethlin and Fin are each attacked by a single bandit. For the most part this next turn is uninteresting. Azel, Alec, Noish, and Lex move towards that southern village.
Sigurd moves to kill a bandit then seizes Jungby. Let's see what happens next!
Uahhh... Sir Sigurd?? Midir, are you okay!? Where's Aideen? I don't know. Gandolf was here though... Is that right... Well, don't worry. I'll get her back. Give yourself some time to heal up. No, Sigurd. I must join you. I can't begin to tell you how worried I am about her!
Hey, it looks like Midir survived after all! That's a relief! Well, let's check him out now, shall we?
Midir is... a mixed bag, to say the least. His stats are meh, he has no holy blood, but he does have Pursuit and Charge. He's locked to bows, meaning he can attack from 2 range only, which in any other game would hurt him, but in this game you can deploy every unit on your team in every map (in contrast to other FE's where you have limited deployment slots in every chapter so most of your team will be sitting out), so not being able to do damage at 1 range on enemy phase isn't a big deal since he's not competing with other units to be deployed. On the plus, having a bow and a mount makes him good at hit-and-runs, compensating for his low Def. Still, he really is a mediocre unit for the most part. What makes him shine is his potential as a father to lady Aideen's children, but more on that later.
Now, ordinarily taking a castle would kill all the enemy units defending it, however this is one of the few times when units from one castle will be defending another castle. You see all of the enemies in this map are bound to Evans (you can see what castle an enemy is bound to by checking who their Leader is on their information page) instead of Jungby. So taking Evans would kill them all, but taking Jungby does nothing. This applies to our units as well: If an enemy manages to take Chalphy (or whatever our home castle is for any given chapter), all of our units will die and we'll get an instant Game Over. You won't run into this often, though I have had it happen once or twice in Chapter 9. Now the rest of this turn is just cleanup. Midir and Fin finish off the bandits by the castle adjacent to Sigurd then move to the bridge west of Jungby (Fin levels up, +HP, Str, Lck), Ethlin finishes off the bandit that Sigurd attacked at the start of this turn, then positions herself two spaces above the enemy archer so that this can happen:
This is the animation for a lover crit. Because Ethlin is next to Cuan when he attacks the archer, he manages to successfully crit him...
Taking his Att from 32 to 64 and wiping out that archer in one shot. Now that's about it for this turn, oh, except...
Arden is still slowly movin' on over, trying desperately to keep up with the action.
Damn it all! Go put th' bridge back up over Jun River. Let's get it right this time!
A decently sized army comes out of Evans and will soon begin to move east to meet our army. I haven't mentioned this yet, but there are actually four army phases in this game, not just two. There's Player Phase (you move your army), Enemy Phase (the enemy moves to attack you), Ally Phase (in the event that you have an ally they'll do something to help you out, generally just attack enemies), and Other Phase (units who aren't necessarily for or against you move to carry out their own agenda). As for why I bring this up, well, here we have our first Other Phase:
Sheesh... Sigurd, you don't impress me much. Ah, it looks like Lord Alvis of Velthomer has joined the fray! I wonder what it is he wants? Well, that 's a question that will have to wait for the next episode.