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[JoshuaFH]

WELCOME, to my latest and greatest planned playthrough for Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War, or Seisen no Keifu.

Now, the version I'm playing is largely translated except for some things, like the title screen! Now, I should probably iterate that I have played this game inside and out. I've completed the game around 6 times, a mean feat when this game is about 20-30 hours of gameplay! Now, as you probably already know, this game exercises permadeath for the characters, meaning that if they die, they're dead for good... and the game isn't shy about piling the odds against you either! Strategy and character-building is of the utmost importance, as it's extremely easy to get in over your head and lose a character to enemy attacks!

Since I've played the game so much in the past, I can practically guarantee that I know more about this game than you, but feel free to offer me courses of action, and I'm open to suggestion for other less important choices in the game, which I'll elaborate on when we get there.

Let's get started!

These are the first screens in the game we're treated to, and it's here that we realize just how story-focused this game is. The game gives a quick rundown of the history of the world, starting with a time-line of the world's most significant events, and then a detailed map of the game's world explaining in great detail the various relationships between the game's most significant countries and their leaders. That's all very long and overly complicated though, so here's the gist of everything:

Numbah One: Long time ago, evil cultists summoned a dark dragon to crush every peace-loving country in the world. The various gods then bequeathed 12 relics of ultimate power to 12 great warriors, and they then proceeded to trounce the evil dragon and brought peace to the land.

Numbah two: Roughly 3-4 Generations pass, and people have completely forgotten this great struggle as the strong alliances that were formed during that period are now beginning to dissolve, and petty conflicts between the countries are now starting to arise.

Numbah three: The main army of the country of Grambell is off traipsing about somewhere, and the ambitious country of Agustria sees this and attacks the mostly undefended capital. This is where the game starts, where you have to take command of Sigurd and his friends to fight off the Agustrian invasion.

Now let's introduce everyone!

This is Midir and Aideen, they aren't that important at the moment. To let you know though, Aideen is Sigurd's childhood friend, and Midir is her loyal vassal.

Here is our main game screen, a grid style map where we'll be spending most of our time. In this screen, on the right, you can see our first four characters!

This is Sigurd, he's the main character. Now, as the main character, he's VERY important. To be frank, he's not allowed to die. If he does die, you're not allowed to continue, you receive an instant game over. To facilitate this however, Sigurd is also very strong. In fact, he's one of the only pre-upgraded units you'll be given access to, and this means he's statistically superior to everyone at the moment. As such, you should allow him to absorb the brunt of any and all attacks. Now, don't confuse Sigurd with a jeigen character, as Sigurd is a full-blooded Baldo, meaning he's a direct descendant of the warrior Baldo that fought against the Dark Dragon so long ago, and as such has very good stat growths. We'll get more into that side of the mechanics later, but just don't let him hog all the kills, ok?

This is Alec, Noish, and Ardan, respectively. They're not as important story-wise, but they're Sigurd's friends and vassals, and are fairly decent to boot. Alec is weak but speedy, Noish is slower, but stronger, and Ardan sacrifices both strength and speed to have very high defense. Now, Alec and Noish both travel on horseback, while Ardan is destined to clunk around in his heavy armor for the remainder of his life.

Now, both after using our first turn to dispatch the nearby barbarian enemy...

An unimpressive fellow, easily two-shotted by Sigurd, I can advance my troops a bit, and then end my turn. At the beginning of my next turn, some new characters arrive as reinforcements!

Lex and Azel! Now, these are two quality character that can and should see a great deal of use. Azel is our first offensive magic user, and Lex is our main Axe user. However, they appear at the top of the map, a good distance away from Sigurd and his troupe. Now, alot of people don't like Azel because kind of limited to fire magic, which isn't as impressive as some of the other magics, but give Azel a chance and I can guarantee that he'll shape up into a quality character.

Now, after having them gang up on and kill a nearby barbarian with the power of teamwork, as well as advance all my other units, I end my turn. On my next turn, I'm greeted by THREE more characters! Happy day!

Now, this is Cuan, Ethlin, and Fin. Cuan is the lord of a nearby Duchy, Ethlin is his wife and Sigurd's sister, and Fin is Cuan's Vassal. Cuan is special in that he's the only other unit you'll receive that comes pre-upgraded like Sigurd, and as such also has stats which are superior to most of your other units. He's also you're primary spear user.

Ethlin is very special, because she's your HEALER! Now, due to the existence of permadeath in this game, Ethlin's going to be very busy healing everyone during the course of every chapter. As a rule of thumb, if you aren't having Ethlin heal someone during every single one of your turns, you're using her wrong.

Fin is unique, because while he's unremarkable at the moment, he'll grow to be very useful in the future, so be sure to feed him some kills.

Now, we're on turn three and we already have 9 characters! How nice is that?

Now, allow me to elaborate on combat so that you folks reading this have some idea of what I'm talking about. Combat is very simple, to engage in a fight, you need only to move your character up to an enemy unit on the map, and then select the fight command on his menu. A short scene, like this will ensue:

In this scene, some mathematical calculations are made, and the two units will use their attacks on eachother, with their special attacks kicking in on occasion, and then it ends. It's very important that you not overextend your characters, because the enemy AI is very opportunistic and will dogpile on a single character if you give them the opportunity.

Now, there's quite a bit more to combat than that, but I'll explain more in future installments.

Now, ontop of the nameless, faceless bad guys, there's also baddies with faces AND names! Let's meet them:

The guy on the right is the big bad of the chapter. He has some mean attack and he carries two axes. The guy on the left is his lackey, who is not as intimidating but definitely more threatening than the barbarian flunkies that are sparsely laid out all over the map.

After advancing on the enemy some ways, this is our current position:

This girth of our force is here, just east of one of Grambell's captured castles. Alec and Noish have headed Northward to rendezvous with Lex and Azel so they can strike at the barbarians which are pillaging Grambell's villages, our major source of income. They don't have the luxury of having a healer with them, but they can use the churches that are built here and there to recoup their health should they need to. Plus, they're on horseback, and the barbarians aren't, so they can always retreat if they need to.

Man, just playing this little bit has already rekindled my love for this game. I'm afraid that I might get sucked into it again. I'll update again later on, feel free to ask any questions about this game.

[ToonyMan]

From now on I am Ardan.
Watching.

[Boksi]

I demand more pictures of the battlefield! Words aren't enough of a descriptor.

[JoshuaFH]

Alright, time for my second installment:

Alright, before I continue with beating the ever living shit out of these barbarians, I feel impelled to provide a more thorough understanding of the characters, which is vital due to the fact that every character has their own strengths, skills, abilities, and heritage that all play a factor in the game, and if any of you are to understand why I'm doing the things I'm doing, then it's necessary that you know this shit.

Let's start with Sigurd, due to his main-characterness:

These are three extra screens which are available from his character menu. Let me just give you the low-down on the important stats and nothing else. Sigurd is a two star leader at the moment, meaning that he gives a little bit of a stat bonus to any and all units that are standing right next to him. He has 9 movement due to him being on horseback, and he has a a star rank in swords and a B in spears.

Now, weaponry ranks deserve their own little footnote. What the ranks mean is that they denote what types of weapons that character is allowed to use. You see, each weapon has it's own rank, and a character is only allowed to use it if he has a high enough rank. In this case, Sigurd can use C, B, and A ranks swords, and C and B rank spears. Now, note that Sigurd has a star rank, that means he is allowed to use his family's holy weapon. When endows him with a star rank is not personal skill, but heritage.

Special heritage, indicated by the rightmost picture, the one with the circle on it, shows that characters relation to the 12 holy warriors so long ago. Sigurd is a direct descendant, and has FULL Baldo blood. Now, since he has full Baldo blood, he is given a star rank in swords and is capable of using his family's holy relic, passed down through the generations. Do note that all the relics are magical, and cannot be used by anyone except those with the appropriate amounts of holy blood in them.

Now, also note the "Special Skills" on the bottom of the first and second image. Almost all the characters have their own speicial skills which make them unique. Sigurd has the "Pursuit" skill which allows him to attack twice if he's more agile than his opponent, whereas everyone else has to settle with attacking only once.

So here's a run-down of all the characters and their spesheealitees:

Here are Alec and Noish; Alec, ontop of having pursuit like Sigurd, also has "Nihil", which nullifies an enemy's special abilities. Not very useful for everyday fighting, but extremely useful when we actually start to encounter enemies with specials. Noish has critical and charge. Critical allows him a random chance of one of his attacks being being a "Critical", of course, which means that that particular attacks power is doubled, which more often that not means instant death for whoever is getting hit, due to how damage is calculated. Charge is similar to pursuit, but it basically starts a new round of combat, meaning that both he and his opponent receive an extra attack.

Here have have Ardan and Fin. Ardan has a useful skill called "Ambush", which basically means that whenever he's at 50% or lower health, he always gets to attack first in combat, whereas it's usually the person that provoked the attack that gets to go first. Fin, ontop of having pursuit, has a skill called "Prayer", which means that if he's reduced to 5 or less health, then his evasion skyrockets and becomes practically unhittable.

None of these four have holy blood.

Lex, is a tad more special than other characters. Ontop of having ambush, he has a special ability called "Elite", which means he gains double experience! Very useful. Lex won't have any problems leveling up. Also, from the right picture, we can see that he has minor Neir blood, meaning he's related to one of the 12 holy warriors.

Now, to elaborate further, there's two different types of holy blood: Major and Minor. A Major holy blood carrier has access to the family's holy weapon and substantial boosts to stat growth in certain area. Minor holy blood carriers, on the other hand, only receives a one letter increase in weapon rank in that blood's associated weapon (which cannot progress into star rank), and a less significant boost to stat growths. It's much better than nothing though, and Lex will definitely be a great warrior to have.

Also, Lex's minor Neir blood gives him stat boosts in attack and defense.

Azel is pretty nice as well. He has the pursuit skills, which is very useful, and he has minor Fala blood, which grants him boosts in magic and magic defense IIRC.

Cuan, has skill called "Continue" which is similar to pursuit in that it allows him to attack twice if his agility is high enough. However, unlike pursuit, continue has a chance to trigger multiple times. I've seen Cuan attack an enemy four times in a row. Unlike pursuit however, it doesn't have as high a chance of triggering. Cuan has Major Noba blood, granting him major boosts in oh-I-can't-remember.

Then finally we have Ethlin, who has the critical skill and minor Baldo blood, due to being Sigurd's half-sister, which I just remembered was relevant.

Here, we can have Ethlin and Sigurd talk to eachother. Most of the conversations in the game aren't that important, but it's wise to seek out all of them as some grant you with stat boosts and special items.

I have Lex, Alec, Noish, and Azel travel westwards, killing all the sparely laid out barbarians with great ease. It should be noted that after killing the barbarians that are pillaging the villages, you can talk to the mayor of each village and receive lumps of cash, tidbits of info, and in certain cases special items.

This mayor mentions something called the Holy Tyrfing. Let's keep that in mind.

Another Mayor gives us...

A speed ring! This speed ring will increase the speed of it's holder by 5 points. I've given it to Noish to help his evasiveness and probability that his Charge skill will activate.

But yeah, the barbarians aren't the spectacular, in the above picture, you can see that I've already trounced all the ho-hum barbarians, leaving only the mini-boss guarding the castle.

Who's easily dispatched by Azel, due to him having barely any magic defense.

Now, with Jung castle undefended, Sigurd (and only Sigurd) can go up to the castle and...

...SEIZE it! Upon seizing the castle, we get a small cutscene.

and as a reward, we get another character, Midir!

Alot of players don't like Midir, due to his unspectacular stat growth and no holy blood whatsoever to compensate for it. However, he is your only archer on horseback, giving you some decisive strategic advantages which can and should be exploited. Also, he has both pursuit and charge, which can activate independently of eachother, meaning that if he has enough speed, he can attack a WHOLE lot of times! Also, charge, like Continue, can active multiple times, which is a good thing. I might have Noish give Midir the speed ring in due time, but we'll see.

Anyway, now that Jung castle is secured, something is brewing to the west!

The enemy is PISSED at losing the castle they took from us, and have called for reinforcements!

However...

We have reinforcements as well! Now, this isn't a new character, this is an NPC that just so happens to be on our side. His name is Alvis, and he's come to kick alot of ass.

In short, this is Azel's big brother. He has Major Fala blood as opposed to Azel's minor blood, and if you look at his inventory, you'll see that he the Fala Flame magic book, one of the 12 holy weapons! Basically, Alvis is here to help you, but he could singlehandedly murder every single person on the map by himself if he so wanted to. It's not funny considering how much stronger he is than everyone else.

But anyway, this installment has ran on a bit too long, so I'll cut off here. This is our army's current position:

Basically, everyone is crowded around Jung Castle, with all my units rushing to meet the enemy reinforcements so that Alvis (who is north of our position) doesn't swoop in and steal all the kills.

[Zai]

I love playing through this game after modding it so all my characters are way OP, even moreso than in the normal game. I give each person I plan on using in the 1st Gen at least one Major holy blood, so that all characters in the 2nd Gen have multiple. And I mod the items too, so that I can have multiples of the same Holy weapon as soon as I recruit each character.

Haven't played in a good while though.

Carry on here.

[ToonyMan]

I've played Fire Emblem games but this one looks a lot better than the ones I've been playing.

[Spartan 117]

I claim Fin, because.

[JoshuaFH]

I'll make sure both Ardan and Fin get some levels in them, so you can see their progress. It won't be that hard.

Anyway, I beat Alvis to the chase and I collide with the barbarian reinforcements. Beating down most of them.

The trick here is to let the first wave crash against against your units, then quickly overwhelm them. Then get to the river, stockade the bridge with a tough unit, and then pick off the long range with your own long range units, or else they'll all gang up on a single unit.

If you don't want to do that however, then you can lure Alvis to them and he will just completely and utterly rape them. He won't take care of the big bad of the chapter though, I've tried.

If you allow him to talk to Sigurd, you'll get this cutscene:

Sigurd reaffirms Alvis that his brother's alright, and Alvis gives him a silver sword. Nice! A definite improvement over his steel sword. We can give Sigurd's steel sword to someone else later. Alvis promptly then runs away though, so he won't kill anyone if you just run up to and talk to him right away.

Now, with all of the barbarian peons out of the way, we just have the big bad, Gerrard. Gerrard is significantly more formidable than the ordinary guys, but he doesn't have enough strength to one-hit kill anyone in your party, so it's very easy to have all your guys line up, and let everyone get a stab on him to quickly deplete his health.

However, I'm not gonna do that, because you see, Gerrard is level 20. Why this is significant is because of how the experience system works, where level difference is the main factor when determining how much exp a unit gets out of combat. Here, the level difference is so large that even a unit just running up and nicking him will net a sizable amount of experience, making this an excellent spot to get all little guys up to a respectable level. The process is simple, just have one guy at a time run up and do battle with him and then run away. If the unit was damaged, have Ethlin heal'em up good, and she'll get experience too. Now, due to the fact that Ethlin's healing staff only has so many uses, I can't repeat this process indefinitely. However...

My oh my, I just remembered, I haven't yet explained weapons uses yet! It's very simple, all weapons have a number of uses ranging from 10 to 50. You can only use that weapon so many times before it breaks. Once a weapon breaks, it's still in your inventory, but it's practically useless unless you go to a repair shop, found inside any freed castle, and pay a small fee to restore the uses in the weapon.

So yeah, if Ethlin runs low on healing stuff, just have her run back to Jung and fill up on more staff, and then run back to continue. Her money is finite however, so you can't repeat this process forever. I did take the time to level up Ardan, Noish, Alec, Azel, and Fin a little bit. I didn't spend as much time with Fin as I did the others though because he uses a spear and Gerrard uses axes, putting him at a statistical disadvantage.

You see, there are three types of weapons, which work in a rock-paper-scissors format. Swords beat axes, axes beat spears, and spears beat swords. Now, when I say they "beat" a certain weapon, what I mean is that there's simply accuracy modifiers applied in that given scenario. For example, a sword user vs an axe user will be swayed in the sword user's favor due to him receiving about 20% more accuracy, and the axe using being penalized 20% less accuracy. It's important to remember this triangle before clashing with an enemy.

For this reason, Fin will have a hard time leveling up because the vast majority of the enemies will be axe users, which has have difficulty hitting. It's best if he goes after the croosbow users (which aren't part of the triangle) and only try to hit with the javelin (a long range spear) after I transfer it from Cuan to Fin.

Oh, and I also leveled up Midir a little bit, since he's so weak at the moment. When you attack Gerrard with Midir, a special conversation triggers:

Conversations like this are more like easter eggs than must-haves, and they're all over, and they'll all mostly intuitive with the plot. You just gotta look for'em.

Anyway, after battling with Gerrard for awhile, I eventually get bored and I kill him with Azel, who does a great deal of damage to him thanks to Gerrard having almost no magic resistance to speak of.

That's the end of the first chapter. I'm like, totally victorious.

Sigurd, upon learning of Aideen's location, sets off into the forest of Verdane to find her, and god help anyone that stands in his way.

At the beginning of chapter 2:

Who could this be? Find out in the next installment of the Fire Emblem 4: GotHW!

[ToonyMan]

...you have to pay money to repair your weapons?

Now I understand that tvtrope article.

[JoshuaFH]

May I ask which Tropes page you speak of?

I'm gonna have to start putting the updates in quotes, these are getting pretty long.

[Creamcorn]

And how many incredible masculine looking characters are in this one? Yeah, that's ED, it's Work safe. And yes, that's a guy.

[JoshuaFH]

Sorry, I never go to ED out of principle.

[Boksi]

Oh, Lucius. Yeah, he's almost Bridget-tier. I'm pretty sure he's from a different game in the series though. And he kicks ass because he's a monk and the bad guys spam shamans.

[Creamcorn]

Sorry, I never go to ED out of principle.

Lucius , he's the blond one.

[JoshuaFH]

Fortunately, there aren't any cross-dressers or feminine men in FE 4. Instead, there's just incest and more incest.