Yeah, it's a fan translation. A pretty old one at that. I haven't bothered to check to see if anyone's updated it, since there's quite alot of things that are either in Japanese, or text gibberish. All the important stuff is handled well though, so I still enjoy it.
More shenanigans!
Now that we have Mar Castle, there's something I've genuinely forgotten about, a conversation between Sigurd and Aideen:
Apparently, Aideen has the Holy Bow Ichival, one of the 12 holy weapons! However, she's not the right class, so she can't use it. However, she wants to give it to her sister... It's probably best that we remember that!
Anyway, we got to take Verdane! To get to Verdane, however, we need to get through this big forest, slogging though Jamka's barbarians all the while.
Now, big woods like this present an interesting problem. There's a hidden stat in each character that dictates how much their movement is reduced when walking through difficult terrain, such as forests. Horses usually have it the worst, their movement being reduced the most. Units that travel on foot through have their movement reduced the least. Flying units (introduced later) can travel over any terrain unaffected.
Also, something I've been neglecting to mention is the existence of 'terrain bonuses'. When a unit is standing on any tile, it's evasion is modified by the terrain of that tile. Roads, or any place that doesn't offer any hiding places have negative bonuses, normal plains have 0% bonuses, forests have 20%, and inside of castles have 30% bonus. So, basically, if you don't want your units to get hit, make sure their standing on good tiles at the end of their turn.
Also, there's two kinds of forests, normal forests and 'thick' forests. Normal forests can be traveled through with difficult, thick forests can't be traveled through at all, acting more like walls than terrain. The barbarians though, can travel through it, albeit one tile at a time.
If you notice, there's a bottleneck with thick forests that we have to go through. This isn't that much of a problem, is just means that our units are gonna be tightly bunched up until we reach normal terrain. The barbarians don't pose much of a threat, but Jamka is an excellent archer, and can easily kill any unit should he get lucky with his multi-attacks, so be prepared for that by only having your strong units up front.
However, if you time it just right, and have Aideen run up and talk to him...
Aideen convinces him that something is wrong with his father, and that he shouldn't fight us. Believing in Aideen, Jamka joins our party!
Jamka is an excellent archer, what with good stats, all three relevant multi-hit abilities (pursuit, continue, and charge), and a great starting weapon, the Killer bow! The killer bow is special in that it's our first weapon to have an ability tied to it, that being the Critical ability. So, effectively, Jamka has 4 powerful abilities at his disposal, making him invaluable to us. I have him teleported by to Mar Castle so that he can wallop on the arena matches for some free experience and money.
Let's take a loot at the last enemies of this chapter:
Here, instead of just vanilla barbarians, this force is made up mostly of wimpy archerys, and some slightly stronger axe men. More importantly though, is that a black mage is guarding the castle.
What's important to note here is that he has a magic spell called "Fenrir" which has INCREDIBLE range. See all those red squares in that one picture? He can hit any unit inside one of those squares. That, and he has a magic ring augmenting his magic stat, making him all the more dangerous.
Now, passing through the bottleneck, when Sigurd reaches a certain point, Deirdre jamps out from a hiding place in the thick forests, and talk to him.
What commences is quite possibly the single fastest courtship to ever occur in any media, and Deirdre and Sigurd admit their spontaneous love for eachother, and Deirdre joins the team!
Deirdre isn't spectacular, but she can be another healer if you give her the appropriate staff, but she comes with some interesting items. There's the circlet, which is an item that gives her the Prayer and "Live" skill, which restores her health a little bit each turn, the white magic Aura, and most importantly, she comes with the Silence Staff! What the allows her to do is 'silence' any other magic user, so they can't use their magic! How convenient!
Also, she has Major Narga blood, and... what's that little purple dot in the center of the circle? Oh, I'm sure it's not important!
Anyway, it's SECRET time! If you have Lex travel to a peculiar peninsula just east of Verdane Castle...
And you get the Hero Axe! Now, "Hero" weapons are considerably better than their non-hero counterparts, because they have an "Auto-continue" effect added to them. Meaning that whenever the wielder of a hero weapon attacks, they instantly get to attack again for free! This is incredibly important for Lex, as he would ordinarily only be able to attack once each combat, and would eventually get outclassed by other characters without it! Also, it's lighter than his other axes, which is important for dodging! Take note though, that you MUST have Lex's original iron axe in order to trigger the event. If he doesn't have it on him, then you'll need to go back and get it in order to trigger the cutscene.
Alright, now that we have that done, CHARGE!
Oh fuck! I forgot about Fenrir! He almost one shots Cuan with it too! Quick, get in there Deirdre!
Now you can't do SHIT Sandima! Death will be upon you shortly!
The archers aren't that tough so long as you not let them gang up on one of your weaker units.
Oh, and I suppose it's about time to explain how magics work. Now, for the most part, magics work just like weapons, but they have their own RPS triangle they have to worry about. Fire Magic is good against Wind Magic. Wind Magic is good against, Thunder Magic, and Thunder is good against Fire. However, there's also Light and Dark magic, both of which have an advantage over all three, and are equally good against eachother.
Now, Deirdre gets use Aura, a light magic. Let's see that in action:
Whoa! Trippy. Pretty strong too!
After sweeping through the last line of defense in the span of about 2-3 turns, I have Azel kill Sandima so that he can acquire the magic ring he's holding.
Sigurd rushes into the castle to find King Verdane is still barely alive. He tells him that the Loptousou cult is active, and trying to take over the world, before dying for real. What will Sigurd do with this new knowledge? Find out next time, when we adventure into chapter 2!
Author
Topic: Let's Play Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War! [COMPLETED!] (Read 68609 times)