Part 5: It's For Real This Time

I decided to cut this update into two because this would've gotten really long otherwise.

Update 5: It's For Real This Time

Welcome back folks, we've got actual story again this time, but maybe not that many words. (It's a lie, there will be many words)



Spent the rest of our exp on leveling engineers. Got a relatively bad order in return.


The first real thing on our schedule is that Avan was voted to be a shocktrooper so he could become a gunner and play only a defensive role in our military. Let's do that.


Welp, that's about it.


His health is still beefy and his class potentials changed. I know he has Close Combat, but I really didn't bother checking.

Done with that, let's get going!


Anyways, it's snowing at Lanseal and we need to go to class. Let's do that.

--

Music: Everyday Life of the Class




You can see most of Class G in here. Try and see if you can pick out who's who.

: Barf. History is like my worst subject.


...That was a pretty good burn, not gonna lie.

: Hey, shut up!
: Mm? Avan, you dropped this photo.
: Oh, man! Thanks for catching that. It must have fallen out of my notebook.


Yep, it's time for another round of "Leon's the bestest".

: Yup! That's my big bro, Leon!

They're really trying to make sure we remember him.

: He's amazing at everything. He's totally my hero.

...And that's precisely why Leon is a boring subject. We really don't seem to learn anything about him aside from how great he was.

: I mean, he's strong, super dependable, and smart too! And he's like the nicest--

Avan's really letting his inner fangirl out here.

: Pipe down. Class is about to start.


Alright, I guess I can get behind some--

*Loud tower bell ringing*









*Various murmurs of "Huh" and "what"*

Music: War Preparedness


Rene: Here we go...
Magari: What?
Reiner: Not again.


*Spoken by Avan*

Alexis: You heard the bells.





*Spoken by Brixham*


Gah, what happened to you, Brixy?




: The Lanseal Royal Military Academy is responsible for policing southern Gallia.

Yeah, they're sending in a bunch of misfit high schoolers into potentially lethal battle.

Lanseal sucks.

: It falls on us to address any threats that arise in our jurisdiction.
: But wait, you can't mean--


Yeah, pretty much.

: That is correct.
: What?! But that's... We're not...
: Two years after peace with the Empire, Gallia's defenses are still ragged.


: That leaves you cadets. The creme de la creme of Gallia's youth.

Just wait, it gets better. And by that, I mean worse.


: War is not so kind as to spare those with no will to fight.

: Rrgh. I guess there's no getting around it.

I figured Avan would protest this more, but then again, he's a rash kid who looks up to his war hero brother.

: Meet me in the briefing room as soon as you're prepared to leave.



--


No reason to hesitate, let's get at it.

--

Music: Royal Military Academy


: As class chair, command in the field falls to you, Avan.

I'd like to note that it's probably not the best idea to send a kid with one month of military training to command a unit, but whatever.

: Right, I gotcha.
: Your mission today is to drive the rebels out of the Arlem region.





: I expect you to win. Thinking of how to go about that is your job.

Yeah, they're sending a bunch of teenagers out to fight a tank, with no help. Lanseal is still incredibly irresponsible, even if Gallia's backed up against a wall with this civil war.

Also, Brixy sucks too for being no help in this.

: That's easy for you to say! Their lives are all hanging on this!
: Such is the nature of war. The exact same applies ot the rebels as well.
: If you don't wipe them out, they'll gladly see you dead.
: You act like it's easy. Fine! I'll get us through this without a scratch.

That we will. This mission is really a pushover if you have experience with the game and you know how to approach it.



Yeah, Brixy has eyes. He only opens them when he gets serious.



Music - The Rebel's Assault

-Incoming war crimes-











: With me!




: Treated like objects, just because they're Darcsens...
: Hey, we've got an incoming rebel squad!
: We'll never make it against a group that big. We're all gonna die.


Real inspiring words there, Avan.

: "It'll work out"? How can you say that with no grounds to back it up?

Music: Theme of Class G


: "The most violent waves lay bare a man's worth the fastest."

Unfortunately, Avan, they're kinda looking for assurance of your worth as a leader right now.

: Those are my brother's words. Now listen good-- you give up and it's over.
: And if I know anything, it's that we weren't meant to die here today.
: That means we can't give up, which means we fight! Those are my grounds.

I don't find Avan's speech here to be particularly rousing- it's kinda basic and boils down to "Watch me, I'll be a good leader! We ain't dyin' here today!"


: It's like Avan says. So long as we don't give up, there's still hope.


And for some reason, I find Cosette's mini-speech somewhat more inspiring. Maybe it's just because I like her and Avan is still, well, Avan.

: I'm with you. I'm no ready to end it here. I'll fight.
: Just how exactly is that speech supposed to get us through this alive?
: An appeal to emotion and some circular reasoning? You've got to be kidding.

Yeah, that about sums it up.




: That's probably at the tope of their chain of command, issuing orders.
: Destroy that tank, and you behead the squad.
: B-But how?
: There.


: Right. I saw several of them littered about the area.
: Fueling stations for the villagers' farm equipment, I'd wager.
: If we lure the tank near those containers, then set them off with gunfire...
: That's perfect! We can use the blast to take out the tank!
: Zeri, you're a genius!


I know I try not to bash Avan that much, but does anyone else get the idea that Zeri is a better fit for commander here? Regardless, he's still the team's tactician.


I suppose the one consideration though is that Avan actually cares about teamwork and Zeri hasn't shown himself as being that much of team player.

---

Music: Briefing




Alright, story mission time! Arlem Village will be a common staging ground for missions,





This is also the first in maps where we can deploy units in more than one area from the start. Avan is force deployed in the cavern while Zeri and Cosette are force deployed in the town area.

The trick to this mission is to take the waypoint base in the cavern first, as the tank we need to reach is easily accessible from there.


The only preparation I make is to put Marion with Avan. The cave isn't too long, and two stormtroopers will have the necessary firepower to blitz it.



--

Music: Liberation Battle
New battle themes! Get used to hearing this one quite a lot.





Welcome to the first real battle of the game! Since there's so many enemies around and Zeri won't be doing anything but defense, I send Cosette to standby. Those scouts would end her if I left her there.


Here's the map that has the tank on it. That camp to the lower left connects to the one on the Village map and the tank is near that little ragnite container icon on the map. Considering the low reward value and low number of enemies worth anything on this map, I'm just going to worry about taking out the tank to end the mission as quickly as possible.


The cave will get us to that upper right camp- it's just a march northwards covered in enemies. We could go around, but the fastest way is straight through them.

I send in Avan first to scout out the enemies considering he has about as much health as a lancer and Marion doesn't.



Moving up, there's a trooper just around the corner and a scout not too much farther from him.


: "Comin' at ya!"

I opt to take out the trooper as he's closer. Shocktroopers are surprisingly okay at getting headshots.


: "Enemy down!"

Allied Radio Chatter: "Yes! Now we can move forward!"

This is consequently the first mission to introduce the radio chatter effect. It only happens on maps where we're taking the role of the miltary instead of doing training exercises.



Using the last of his AP, Avan moves up and ignores the scout. There's two more shocktroopers waiting for us here, one of them a commander unit. That little boost in HP makes him very hard to kill while crouching, believe it or not.


: "My pleasure, sir!"

Let's get Marion moved up.


: "I shant lose!"

Firmly set on the belief that she's stronger than scouts, (read: she is,) Marion triggers her Scout Killer potential.


I aim for the foot because late game has made me paranoid.


: "Thank goodness!"

Allied Radio Chatter: "Nicely done."

He does not survive.


Marion ends inches away from Avan...


...and I take another action with her. I've got a plan here.



Dodging interception fire, I contemplate grenading this guy from his position, but his boosted health means I can't kill him in one turn regardless of what I do with Marion alone.


Opting to move up some more instead, I approach the other shocktrooper and aim for the head. Marion's taken quite a good bit of damage from this, but a scout would have easily been KOd here.


Enemy Radio Chatter: "They got one of us! ...Watch your backs guys!"

Somehow, she hits the first 4 shots without missing, taking this guy out with 4 times that to spare. We also occasionally tap into enemy radio- it's a bit more crackly, but it also suggest the rebels aren't well trained.


: "Yeah, I feel great!"
Swapping over to Avan, this puts me down to 2 CP points left. He triggers Close Combat, one of the class potentials he got when he swapped class, allowing for this plan to go more smoothly.


Yes, this is what I wanted! Assist attacks are great provided you can get the positioning right to make it work.


: "Please, allow me!"


This guy just got shredded. Taking him out in one turn like this is a major timesaver since the grenade->shoot face strategy uses 2 CP.


I bring Avan up to this corner where the flag is. I don't have enough movement to make another assist attack work, but I'll be fine.


: "Enemy sighted!"
Bringing my CP count down to one, I move Marion up to clear the enemy off the flag.

Allied Radio Chatter: "I-I can do this. Just stay calm!"



: "Prepare yourself!"


Early game scouts are easily wiped by grenades, so this was a more assured kill than trying to gun him from here.

Enemy Radio Chatter: "Gah! Who are these guys!?"

You're getting beaten by highschoolers. It's just sad.


With my last CP, I bring in Mischlitt to help defend for no particular reason. If I just moved Zeri to crouch it would be about the same result.

I didn't get Avan/Marion to capture that flag just yet because we can still get A-Rank next round and I don't want the enemy to recapture the base from underneath me. They're bound to have someone on the other side, so I'd rather wait. There's no reinforcements on this map either.



I have her destroy the nearest sandbag to stop the enemy scouts from taking cover. After that, I park her right next to Zeri where she'll be practically immune to gunfire.

Crouched armor techs brush their shield off, by the way.

Enemy Radio Chatter: "Hey! What's your situation there?"

Music: Return Battle
At this point in the game, the enemy usually has a corresponding battle theme on their turn. This is one of my personal favorites thematically as it manages to have quite the intimidating beat to it.



The enemy first begins the futile effort to take my base with scouts only. This one's a blatant cheater that walks through this sandbag.


He aims for Zeri because he's standing, but he actually triggers his evasion chance and immediately drops for cover. I can't remember if I've already explainted it, but this is all evasion does: dropping you to prone (like in grass), providing the defense bonus from being prone, and prevents knockback from most sources. It's great if it happens on your units, sucks awfully if the enemy does it.


Zeri's counterattack bans this man for defying the Fictional-Geneva laws on breaking immersion and being a cheater.


Scout number two bites it identically.


Scout number three comes from far away and out of hiding to shoot at Zeri from a distance just too far for him to counterattack. Shame.


Maybe realizing it's wasting it's time, the AI begins moving an unseen unit in the cavern but still ends up wasting its time.

Music: Liberation Battle


Alright, time for us to end this little skirmish.


: "Taking action now!"


I give Marion the capture because I'm just gonna leave Avan there and she's done for this map.

Allied Radio Chatter: "Good. This should make things easier!"
I'm waiting for Brixham to come over the radio. He will from time to time.


Zeri of all people comes to give me a tutorial from across maps about retreating units, another mechanic I've already talked about.

Enemy? Radio Chatter: "I missed! Fall back and regroup!"
Allied Radio Chatter (Lady): "Enemy spotted!"


: "Underway."

Spawning in at our waypoint base, you can see I was right in assuming they'd have an enemy watching it. I bring in Helmut mostly to scout, but also because I thought he could handle this shocktrooper.


For the first time so far, Helmut lets me down by putting the first bullet in this guy's shoulder and whiffing the last two into the wall behind him.

He eats half his HP in sub-machine gun fire in return.

Allied Radio Chatter: "Don't panic!. Maintain formation and circle around!"


Running around to check the position of our true target, he eats only a few more bullets but nearly goes down thanks to not having the camp bonus.

That there is the back of the Rebel tank. The dark blue canister is the ragnite containers mentioned in the story, but they aren't really more than a scarcely used gimmick.

That other blue thing, the rectangle on the back of the tank? That's it's radiator. All but one tank so far in Europan history has suffered the catastrophic weakpoint that is the exposed ragna radiator. Planting explosives on those deal way more damage than shooting tanks in the front.

A lancer will one-shot most tanks if they can launch a rocket into it's radiator. Long term, lancers are tank assassins, being used as small units who can sneak behind tanks to wipe them in one blow.


The game doesn't tell you about this strategy yet, but I've played VC1, so I already know it. Now you do too.

Anyways, here's a close-up of Helmut's face.


: "If those are my orders."
Every character also has a low health line, and Helmut's is appropriately hardcore. I'm giving him a chance to make up for that poor showing here.


: "Good."

He doesn't make the same mistake twice.

I wouldn't normally do this unless I was very sure that the unit in question would make the shot, as I'd retreat them otherwise. I knew he had this one though.


: "I'll show you what a man of the Empire can do!"

...See why I didn't take the main path now? 2 shocktroopers, 1 scout in a sniper tower, and a forward facing tank? Doing this the normal way is a lot more difficult.


Because I've got CP to spare, I wanted to show off that you can't climb a sniper tower if someone's already on it.

Allied Radio Chatter: "All core units, follow the front guard!"


: "I'm ready to go!"

I could waste another CP doing whatever, but I'd rather be safe and not immediately assume this tank will go down in 1 lance shot. (Some won't later on.)

Oh, and it lets Noel do her intended job instead of sticking lance grenades into people's faces.


: "Being alone is just so...lonely!"

If ragnite canisters only have 1 HP, they seem like a massive hazard to have around. Anyways, let's not waste the farmers' fuel supply and do this the proper way.


Note that boss enemies don't tell you their health numbers. This is really aggravating later.

Time to end this!



Obliterated.


Radio Chatter: "-Sha! That's a relief."


That we did, Avan.



Damn, we salvaged the hell out of that tank!


Look at this weirdness: Zeri got runner up but he got only got two total credits!

...How did he get that anyways? I figured Avan or Helmut would. For gunner, we'll need to get Avan the Support X credit and a Certificate. His arms requirement should be filled by now.

---



Music: Theme of Class G


*Spoken by Joachim*

: I still can't believe we really beat the rebels all by ourselves.

Look at his face- he really doesn't know what the hell is going on it seems. Poor guy.

: We did it, Avan!
: 'Course we did! I told you guys we could do this!
: And thanks, Zeri.
: For what?

He actually sounds a whole lot friendlier now as he says this.

: I never would have come up with that plan. You saved the day, man.

Too bad we didn't actually use it. It's also nice that Avan doesn't take credit for this- at least he's not a glory hog.

: I just offered a bit of logic. You might try it yourself sometime.


He gets cut off even before he hits the second word. Avan's portrait sort of bumps into his twice.

: Wha--? Stop that! Get your muddy mitts of my face!

: Ah ha ha ha! That looks like fun! Let me in, too!

Her portrait does the same.


The neat thing about the voice acting here is you can tell that as much of a serious person Zeri tries to be, he's actually having a bit of fun here.




They also do a good job with the filtering on the voicelines to make them sound like a radio but still easy on the ears.

...But Brixham's always easy on the ears, even if he is a bit of a jerk sometimes.

: Hm hm! I'm pleased to see your first operation end in success, Avan.
: Class G, you are clear to return to Lanseal.

: Roger that. All right, guys, time to go home!

: Aye aye, sir!




--

Alas, Zeri shall not escape schoolyard hijinks so easily. And neither shall we! Another update shall come soon, but we've also reached the end of a month!

Normally I wouldn't ask this, but do we want to bother voting for new units? Yes or no? We haven't seen any of our current units' stories yet and the missions now only start counting towards those. If we're voting for new units, save your unit votes for next time as we've got incoming character development and a new student!

Next time on Hardin's Isle, we recieve the perfect means for a 3 turn tour!