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FE4 Chapter 9: For Whose Sake Luthecia --> Grutia --> Thracia Welp, RIP perfect consistency. It's not the biggest deal, but I can't help but be a little disappointed that the ambitious goal to accurately display the world map in the slightly overlapping chapter maps has only almost been reached. So you consider your enjoyment of the game more important than a miniscule mechanical advantage? Fake FE player. This greatly amuses me. I love these little localisation jokes, as long as they're not as heavy handed as they are in America. The greatest twist about that is that you secretly haven't been a beardman all along. OldMan he may be, but good on him for looking no day older than he did almost 20 years ago. I'm basing this on very little actual knowledge of the endgame, of course, but I'm not sure how valuable that additional staff user really is in the endgame. Even without Julia, you still have Lana, Fee, Leaf, Nanna, Tinni (in any ranked run, I'm sure she'll promote with ch.10's arena), and then Coirpre/Sharlow. How important is it really to have six instead of five? Even though not everybody can use all the important staves, I'm not convinced that it's that big a deal.

Interesting perspective. I read Travant as having decided on this last resort at the start of chapter 8 already, with Arion's line about Travant looking more fearful than ever foreshadowing that. If Arion seemingly killing Altena was what pushed him over the edge, that would put quite a different spin on this. Personally, I think I'll still keep a hypothetical code of honour in the back of my mind. Arion must've gotten his ideas about honour from from somewhere, so I kinda expect Thracia to have one. One would expect a lot of Grannvalian meddling in the diplomatic affairs between the Manster realms, no? With Thracia playing more of a role of plundering brigands with less diplomatic finesse, I can buy that they wouldn't have much success in that game, but surely, some Grannvale kings would've tried to play the Manster factions against one another. SEQUEL IDEA: Thracia 1492, in which the seafarer Chris O'Lumbus from the Manster district conducts an naval exploration in the name of the Thracian king and queen. And lo and behold, he actually discovers what will later be known as Valentia! Unfortunately, he turns out to be a complete piece of shit, killing and enslaving the natives, and it's the mission of the player character to expose his evil deeds. An oddity that I'm willing to accept because it is convenient. And a character's parentage isn't important enough in the turn-by-turn business that it would have to be crammed into the stat screen somewhere. (A small detail that is missing and that I would've liked: Characters like Ares and Johalvier could've given an answer from the augury, too. If nothing else, it would allow Jotari to add Finn's parents to his list of named FE characters that never actually make an on-screen appearance)

I'm going to say Sylvia. It's not that she's a promiscuous character, but I really don't need a promiscuous character whose childishness and immaturity is dialed up to 11 in virtually every scene she is in. And even if those traits were removed, it also bothers me that Sylvia's behaviour needed to be given a justification in the form of daddy issues, while characters like Sain or Saul are allowed to be man-sluts just because.

Why didn't Altena just ask a random old guy who her real parents are? Is she stupid? You're right, it is a bit surprising that it's part of Leonster. I haven't really been thinking about the four realms of the Manster district, so that never occurred to me. Directly west of Meath and north of Luthecia would put it here on the map: So we probably just have to assume that Leonster controls like half of the Manster district. Make it "Rodelbahn" and you have the German word for a sled run. A beautiful name for a boy. Lex/Sylvia, let's go. (just theorycrafting - but that actually sounds like the most convenient option if you're going for ranked, no? Coirpre gets Paragon, Lex can pass him the Renewal band to give him a nice 20k to blow on staves, not like Lex would lack the funds, and you don't really care about how useful Coirple's staff botting is. And Lene can do Vantage/Sleep Sword memes to get through the arena, so she'll cap out, too.) Hey, no worries. We're both entitled to our opinions, and it's not as if I wasn't spamming mine all over this thread. We see wyverns fly above peaks (yet close enough to spot the sadness in their eyes), so this seems like a perfectly realistic explanation. It also covers why Erin would ever be attracted to Lewyn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant_(military) As I said, Arion as a person, growing up with a father like Travant, would have my sympathy. Arion as a fictional character is frustrating because first, he's just evil daddy's yesman, and when evil daddy finally showcases a shade of grey, it just goes over his head entirely, with the conclusion that he and his kidn-- adopted sister must stab each other eventually. I was thinking that he maybe could've reached the same goal by just pulling a Siriüh and disappear without a trace and only come back wearing a bitchin' mask when Arion is kidnapped by a somehow revived Manfroy. But you're right, him dying is a clear cut that would fulfil any desires of revenge on the side of Leif specifically. You consider 25-ish XP on a character who already one-rounds bosses with plenty of overkill "no need?" Fake FE player. FE 3-STYLE AGAIN STAFF Can't comment on the T776 involvement that Jotari is talking about, but the geography works out: The cluster is west of Meath across a mountain range and north of Luthecia, so that would actually put the village cluster pretty deep into Leonster territory. Relative to Ch.8's map, it would be further west (if from the southern part of the map), not south. I'm principled not to use any sequel or prequel's badness against an original piece of media (like BlaBla making some BinBla characters look stupid, or terrible FF7 spin-offs), so I agree. Sorry, FE4!Travant, you're just a bad parent.

I fully agree that Lang is great (honestly, Book 2's story becomes weaker almost the moment he's dead), but I'd say he stretches the category "minor villain" a bit. While there's never the illusion that he's the Big Bad of the entire game, he's still the major antagonist for almost a third of the game. Heck, I'd even say that he's the Book 2 villain with the most presence, even compared to the official main villains Gharnef and Medeus.

FE4 Chapter 9: For Whose Sake Meath --> Kapathogia/Luthecia

...which also applies to FE3, of course. Although I believe it's less punishing in that game because there's only one single Weapon Level stat, while (iirc) many Thracia cavs/flyers are limited to Iron Swords when dismounted. I'll say that the Cav line has very bad representation on Celica's side in Gaiden. She can only get one by picking the class for Atlas or by death-warping one of Alm's over... but either is a terrible idea because of all the swamp on her maps. But of course, Alm has some competent (Clive, Mathilda, Zeke) and one very cool cavs on his side of the map, and the Whitewings are incredibly good for Celica. And so that every NES/SNES game gets its explicit mention - I found that FE1 has very strong Cav representation. The Xmas cavs and Hardin all have straight up excellent stats, and even the meme cavs are somewhat salvaged by the Paladin class's bases. Shout-out to my Roshe for getting two or three Spd procs on the map he got his Knight Crest... which brought him exactly to Paladin Spd base, rendering all the procs useless.

I reject the premise that there is "no incentive" to train a bad unit. If your only goal is to beat the game, then sure - but I can offer the following counterpoint: Beating this final boss with the pink armour knight wouldn't have been nearly as satisfying if she hadn't joined as a Lv.1 General, as one of the latest recruits in the game, with godawful base stats. Her base Str is the same as DOGA's, the Knight who joins in the very first chapter. There is one ch.1 unit that doesn't have better Skl than the Pink General - and that's the healer. The only good stat that matters for this fight is her Weapon Level, allowing her to use the legendary Gradivus - but with her base stats, she's four points of Str shy of dealing a single point of damage to the final boss. Her Def is genuinely great, sure, but the final boss just ignores that. That was my incentive to use this awful unit: The challenge to set up the final boss kill for her, and a funny screenshot. PoR just doesn't offer the same thing - Ashnard has his magic plot armour, for starters, but PoR's bad units are all perfectly capable and easily trainable with BEXP (so there's not as big a "look at this cool thing I did" factor for a 20/20 Rolf), while still being "objectively" worse to field than somebody with wings, or at least hooves, and with an axe access, or at least lances.

I mean, probably? Point for point, I'd say it's somewhere in the middle - less valuable than Str/Mag and Def, maybe comparable to HP, and more valuable than Lck and Res. Spd depends heavily on the circumstances - on a character that doubles everything anyway, Skl is probably more valuable, but if not (or if the character can swap to a heavier weapon with an additional point of Spd), a single point of Spd can be insanely impactful.

I'd like to bring up a very minor Genealogy villain in Clement, one of the squabbling nobles in Agustria. The guy has a total of four lines, but still manages to stand out as an enemy that isn't exactly devious, nor this noble Camüh whose loyalty forces him to fight against our hero. He's just an unfortunate guy at the wrong place at the wrong time: He observes a brewing fight between Heirhein (Elliot and his father Marsaille Bordeaux) and Nordion (Eldigan) and prudently decides to see who will have the upper hand before deciding who to support. The problem: Sigurd is present and he won't go until he has seized every castle in a 100-mile radius. Clement thinks there is just a squabble between two neighboring noble families... and the next thing he sees is a foreign invasion literally at his doorstep, he feels forced to defend against it (I mean, understandable), and five minutes later, he has a Silver Sword in his gut. Poor guy. I just think that, in a series full of dastardly curs and noble Camühses, it's beautiful to see a guy who just takes the worst possible moment to be smart and cautious about something.

That's what happens if you challenge a German to a contest of pedantic arseholery. To be fair to him, Trabant is probably not the best parent to learn constructive conflict-solving from. This is probably the thousandth time that he heard that exact same argument, so he just defaults to the "please stop fighting" plea he developed when he was 13. Would explain why he keeps calling Altena a child - he just never figured out a better defense that doesn't involve telling his father that he might possibly hypothetically not be 100% correct in this and only this specific case. I did notice that the Bolt Sword Hero/Forrester was a woman. Interesting that this female version of the class was created just for one substitute character and this one generic enemy. Or maybe the sprite artists had already did the work for completion's sake, so Radney and this enemy were given that class so that the work wouldn't be useless. To be honest, I've lost track of the Dragon Riders, Dragon Knights, Wyvern Riders, Wyvern Lords, Wyvern Knights, Dracoknights and whatever else humans on lizards are called in the FE series. How silly of you to learn history from video games. Now, let me give a brief overview of the political landscape of 1444 Europe, right after the Battle of Varna--

List of Thracians who don't go "Yay, violence!" when Trabant points at Leonster: Hannibal Altena ...yeah. Diligent ping from chapter 5 lives in the past and thus knows that "Lutetia" is the Latin name and Lutèce is just the frenchified version of it. He also knows that the accent on the second syllable is an accent grave, not aigu (which is to say going down, not up). 😛 Whoops and weird, indeed. Luckily, it really seems that editing posts is less luckbased since the last forum update. Really? I genuinely just picked three names that an idiot Lewyn might confuse with Azel. Huh, my second guess would've been a song of three nice decent clean-cut young men from Seattle. The Three Kingdoms is an era that I really should try to learn about. It sounds fascinating, but I never even had it mentioned in my history classes at school. At least I recognised the names, so... yay me? If I had a nickel for every time this exact trope has been used with regards to a wyvern rider unwillingly fighting against the blue-haired pretty boy protagonist... I'd have at least two nickels. (an addition from FE3 B1, actually) That's fair. I'd have sympathy for an actual young adult in Arion's shoes, brought up by a man such as Travant. But as a fictional character, he makes for a rather frustrating yesman. Maybe that'll change, though - I know that it's possible to paint him not blue, but at least green in the endgame. I mentioned before that it seems that writers often have their villain kick a puppy or stab a toddler if they're worried that the villain might come across as too sympathetic. I feel like that's being done to Travant here - first, Finn makes sure to tell Leif and the audence that Altena's adoption contained 0% empathy or kindness, and the scene with Hannibal and staffy boi reinforces the impression that, yes, Travant would stab a toddler if it was to his advantage.

He absolutely is Flower Fridge.