Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Haspen]

'Grau' is a color, 'grey'. I think

Grey Knights? It's kinda fancy and all...

[JoshuaFH]

Alright, to the next castle, FREEGE!

Get everyone up now, it's gonna be a long parade to the next castle.

At Freege, the castle in the most north-western corner:

OH NOES! Hilda's coming out to play! She also openly forecasts that we're going to be ambushed by Scorpio's Beige Ritter, or bow knights, while she attacks with her Gelben Ritter, or asshole knights.

Hilda's pretty much the same as we saw her last time, except this time there's a BIZARRE difference. See it? See how her minor fala blood somehow became Major Dain? It's a funny glitch, where she was given the wrong holy blood for this scene. All her subordinates are barons with Tron and silver lances.

Have everyone move through the inconvenient forest. I'm leaving Altenna back to guard the castle for a meta reason, and that she simply can't be useful in the upcoming fights. Simply can't. It's really sad considering how awesome I think she is.

Already, have everyone pick a favorite spot and get comfortable right around here.

I then have Celice travel up towards Hilda and her Gelben Ritter by himself, with Aless standing on the sidelines to jump in should he need any help.

Yeah, this is another battle that Celice can handle by himself. Just plant on one of the 30% evasion hills and watch as the entire battalion plows into him. The barons will try attacking him with silver lances, but they're accuracy is bad enough that Celice can dodge most of the time. Also, the barons will great guard enough in order to block up Celice's kill rate in a beneficial way, meaning that he doesn't get overwhelmed in one big wave.

Just keep a healer, like Corple, standing some distance away with a libro staff should things get hairy and you should be fine. These guys are chumps...

It's Scorpio and his Beige Ritter you should worry about.

Scorpio's a bit of an oddity. He's a Master Knight with very good stats, and yet has arbitrarily restricted himself to bows. He's the son of Andrei, Brigid and Aideen's younger brother, and yet has no Ulir blood whatsoever. To top that off, I'm PRETTY SURE he's the only character in the game that has both no holy blood and 80 hp, which is odd since the hp boosts from having holy blood are pretty much required in order to build up that high. Finally, where the hell's he been hiding all this time? His father declared revenge a good 17 years ago and he's just finally getting around to it.

While Celice is kicking Hilda's ass, have everyone converge on Scorpio. All his knights have hero bows, and can deal surprising amounts of damage.

This was actually a really close battle, Scorpio landed a critical on Faval, leaving him at ONE hp, and then Faval hits back with a crit and insta-kills him.

Then having everyone gang up on the rest of his guys should finish them off promptly.

Celice, with his sword now comfortably over 50 kills, is critical'ing with the Tyrfing and fucking Hilda's shit up so bad it's not even funny.

Before capturing the castle though, we have these pesky black magi to deal with. They're camping on the cliff and their home castle is Barhara so they won't disappear when I seize Freege.

See all those magi? Each one, except the top one, has a sleep staff. So aggravating, but you're gonna have to have someone go deal with them.

That's better, luckily my Fee developed enough magic defense to be immune to the sleep staffs, and so can fly over safely and kill them all.

NOW capture the castle:

Inside, we find guy that's been ordered to protect all the children we've been looking for! Yay Felipe! Apparently, it was Ishtar's doing as well, as noone would cross her in fear of facing her TorHammer. Turns out she's actually a really good girl that cares about the children.

Alright, now that we have Freege, we only have two castles left, Velthomer, the site at which Sigurd and the others were doublecrossed and killed 17 years ago, and Barhara, the capital! Thing's might have been a tad easy thus far, but the battle up next is the hardest in the game, where the game finally dives headfirst straight into FUCK YOU difficulty.

Just you watch, it's gonna be fucking ridiculous man.

[Haspen]

GO ON YOU.

Give me the Fun!

[JoshuaFH]

It's time for the MOST ULTIMATE AND FRUSTRATING BATTLE EVER!

Ishtar wants to get her own personal troops and take the fight to us rather than wait around feeling useless. Julius tells her that she doesn't need to, because they can send as many people as they want, but they'll all die before him. He concedes though, that if she really wants to go, then she can. Ishtar then brings her greatest warriors with her, Meng, Bleg, and Maybell.

Julius then dispatches his 12 Enigmatic Dark Warlords to defend the castle:

Meanwhile, at Velthomer, the most north-eastern castle:

Whoa! Julia has RED EYES! That means only one thing: she's been brainwashed! And Manfloy is sending her to fight us!

Here's the two big forces that were dispatched, Ishtar's army, and The 12 Enigmatic Dark Warlords.

Ishtar is more dangerous than ever. Since she has a five star leader rating, her stats are boosted incognito. She's INTENSELY dangerous, and NOONE should fight her unless they're absolutely POSITIVE they can win.

While, yes, she's dangerous, she's nothing without her THREE right hand women:

Holy.

Fucking.

SHIT! Remember how I said in a WAY earlier update that the toughest enemies in the game were palette-swaps of eachother? Meng, Bleg, and Maybell are what I was talking about. Practically carbon copies of eachother (with only Meng standing out due to being a four star leader), these are the most nightmarish enemies we've come across.

What makes them so intimidating, you might ask? How about their INFINITE USAGE Earth Swords? For those out of the loop, whenever an Earth Sword deals damage, it's user gains as much life as damage dealt. Their CRAZY AWESOME stats? Stats so awesome that I'm pretty sure there isn't a unit in the game that can score a 100% accuracy rating against them, and really, stats that no never-before-foreshadowed distant cousins of Sety should have. The fact that they have Leg rings? They can outrun ANY UNIT YOU HAVE, so retreat isn't an option once you start fighting. That they have both Nihil and critical, meaning that not only can you NOT critical them, but they can VERY EASILY critical you?! Everything about this trio is ridiculous, just ONE of them would be hard, but THREE? That's insane.

Let me tell you beforehand I was practically yelling at my computer by the time I was finished with this battle, if only because of these triplets.

Then we have Julius again...

Notice anything different? Yeah, because the power of Loputousu has finally embedded itself fully into Julius, he now has the Nihil skill... so now units can't critical him.... meaning he's practically nigh invincible now. He wasn't kidding when he said that he could handle the entire rebel army by himself, because he CAN! Good thing he's content just sitting in his castle.

Then we have brainwashed Julia and Manfloy.

Julia is as you left her when she was abducted, except that now she has the circlet that Deirdre owned. Also, if you sold off everything she owned (like I did) then she will also have a lightning magic tome.

Manfloy:

Manfloy finally makes his appearance in unit form, and he's surprisingly tough. He has great stats, pursuit, continue, and charisma, which I think is a really fitting ability to have for someone that makes a living off of manipulating people.

Just have all your units remain comfortable around this spot right here, there's no good strategy except trying to lure MBM (Meng, Bleg, and Maybell) away from the pack.

One turn later...

Arion and his Dragon Knight Squad attack from the east! They're heading right for Chalphy too, ignoring Edda completely. Good thing I left Altenna there EH?

Arion is basically as he was two chapters ago. I mean there might be some slight stat differences, but that's of trifle unimportance.

Jesus Christ, this update is already huge from just the character introductions. I'll cut it off here, and then get right to work on the next update, the ACTUAL battle!

[JoshuaFH]

The ACTUAL battle:

Ishtar's Army makes it's slow advance. Also, be sure to remember that MBM have ridiculous amounts of movement at their command.

And before you know it, Arion is on Altenna's ass! Fortunately though, I have a plan:

Have Altenna fly out of the castle and talk to Arion!

Altenna makes Arion reconsider his actions, that it's Julius that he should be fighting, and she puts everything on the line, saying that if he really wants to continue, then to just strike her down and be done with it. Arion's fraternal love for his sister makes him change his mind, and now he KINDA SORTA JOINS OUR PARTY YAY!

He's now allied green, along with the rest of his units. He follows Altenna around like a dumb puppy for the rest of the chapter. Threat completely subverted.

But really, I'd have liked it alot more if he ACTUALLY joined our party, because he's infinitely better than Hannibal, and his AI is a piece of shit and so he's always attacking the wrong person at best, or just standing around being a useless asshole at worst. Arion has NEVER impacted the final battle in a positive way in all my playthroughs, because he just joins too late, he's too far away from the fight, and you can't control him accurately enough to be useful. It's not like it'd be the first time a mercenary joined us either, Beowulf joined us in the first generation for a measly few thousand gold.

While it is better than nothing, I'd have appreciated a lot more. Oh well, we're already at the final battle anyway, so it's not like it matters.

As Ishtar's army nears closer, I position Celice so that he's within melee range of one of the sisters.

Bam! Maybell's down right off the bat! It's very important that you only have characters with nihil do combat with them, because they WILL critical the HELL out of you if you don't.

Bleg goes down shortly after. Hey, things are looking up!

Then I realize I spoke too soon, because Meng's the hardest with her bullshit leadership stat boosting.

My repeated efforts to kill Meng waste my time, and pretty soon Ishtar finishes destroying Freege Castle and is breathing down my neck. I simply have to retreat at this point because I can't handle both Ishtar and Meng fucking up my shit.

Then I make a breakthrough! Yes! Shanan gets the jump on Meng and she DIES!

But then Ishtar gets the jump on Shanan and two-shots his ass like butter.

Now, take that situation, and repeat it about 20 goddamn times, and you have me tearing my hair out over this damn battle. I really need to spend more time experimenting, and finding a surefire answer to the Meng problem. I might have to retroactively redact this update in the future, and replace it with me not being Ishtar's man-bitch.

I finally get Meng down to one hp though, and then I finished her off by poking her with Lakche's magic sword. Then I finally am able to block off Ishtar with Celice...

and finish her off with an awesome Shanan critical! It's a real shame you can't talk to her and get her to retreat or join you like Arion, especially since it's revealed just shortly before that she's a goodhearted person that wants to protect the children, doesn't approve of Julius' methods, and has only become his lover because she was pressured into it by him and her overbearing mother. It's actually really sad, because she was basically throwing her life away fighting us.

Or, atleast that's what I would have said if her battle-quotes didn't imply that she had genuine romantic feelings for Julius, I mean, this is some really mixed up storytelling. I don't know what to feel about Ishtar, as she isn't flushed out enough and I can't decide whether she's a tragically throwing her life away out over the guilt of harming so many children or valiantly fighting for the one she loves.

Now, this fight is easier with a Holsety using Sety, but I didn't brew myself one from the incestuous slurry that was the first generation, and I suffered pretty bad because of it. It is possible though, and this shows you beyond a shadow of a doubt it is.

But now we have another problem: Julia.

Find out how we deal with Julia in the next update, coming VERY SOON!

[Haspen]

Ah come on, stopping the fun right after Julia's 'heheheh'?

You damn bastard ;P

[Akura]

Ah come on, stopping the fun right after Julia's 'heheheh'?

YOU DASTARD!! ;P

Fix'd.

[JoshuaFH]

Let's get to wrapping this up!

Have Celice, and preferably another fast moving unit with a healing staff, I chose Fee, make their way up to the North-eastern corner of the map where Manfloy is. Be VERY CAREFUL to only remain close enough to Julia such that she is being tugged along by her AI, but can't get close enough to attack. If you can, have a unit use a silence staff or a sleep staff to incapacitate her so that she won't inadvertantly kill herself, or any of your units. That can be a bit hard though, since Julia very easily maxes out her magic defense at 27, so you might need a unit with a magic ring to boos them high enough to hit her.

Along the way, you'll finally come across these guys, the 12 Enigmatic Dark Warlords.

One of our last challenges in the game is defeating the 12 Enigmatic Dark Warlords defending Barhara Castle, who are all surprisingly unique, named characters that each have a different class, weapon, and set of abilities. Also, they all have 80 hp, which contradicts an earlier statement I made about Scorpio being the only non-holy blooded unit to have 80 hp, so I guess I was dead wrong there. Anyway, I feel impelled to tell you about each and every one due to these reasons:

Spoiler: Holy shit this is consumes alot of space (click to show/hide)

Eins:

Eins is one of the strongest Barons in the game, with his excellent stats, abilities, and silver spear. Not a giant threat though.

Vier:

Vier is a super High Priest with his great stats and an infinite reserve staff. He's also one of the only units to have the Life skill, which acts exactly like the Life ring, restoring health every turn.

Zwolf:

IIRC, Zwolf is the second enemy Thief Fighter in the entire game, the first being an insignificant enemy in Chapter 7. Zwolf is surprisingly good considering that he can get off 4 attacks, with each having a chance to critical. Not nearly as good as Patty, but he's decent. One odd thing to mention about enemy thieves though, if you do combat with one, and he hits your unit, and then your unit kills him, he still steals your money. He takes all of it too, right to his grave.

Drei:

Drei, an axe warrior, isn't that impressive. He is one of the only odd units though to have the Wrath skill, if that's any consolation.

Funf:

Funf is actually very dangerous. He has a Killer bow, automatically giving him the critical skill as well the light weight and high accuracy of the bow itself. He also has ALL the repeated attack skills, pursuit, continue, and charge. He has the stats to make use out of all three too, giving him a possible EIGHT attacks in a single combat.

Elf:

Elf has two unique qualities to her: She's the only true enemy shaman in the game, and she's the sole possessor of the only rezire tome in the entire game, a spell that leeches HP from an enemy, identical to the Earth Sword basically. She has the pursuit and critical skills, but beyond that, she's not that intimidating.

Zehn:

Zehn is one of many Dark Bishops, and he's not that dangerous. Be very wary of him though, because even if Hel only has a 5% chance of hitting, he'll hit SURPRISINGLY OFTEN, reducing your character to 1 hp in the process. Also has the life skill, surprisingly.

Neun:

Neun is meant to be the enemy female Swordmaster that offsets Lakche, too bad she's not anywhere as good, even with pursuit, continue, critical, and life.

Zwei:

Where Neun is to Lakche, Zwei is to Skasaha. Dangerous, but not TOO dangerous.

Sieben:

Considering that I plan on tackling these guys with units so pumped full of magic defense it's popping outta their eyes, Sieben and his Volcanon are forgettable.

Sechs:

Ditto for Sechs.

Finally, Acht:

Ditto again for Acht.

One interesting thing to note though, Sieben, Sechs, and Acht all have Fala, Tordo, and Holsety blood respectively. However, the Family Tree I displayed earlier doesn't include these three members, meaning it's incomplete. Just thought I'd point that out, because once again, I care about shit like this.

Don't aggro the Warlords though, instead, sneak behind this forest, which doubles as a convenient shortcut to Velthomer, then we finally face off with Manfloy!

Attacking me with Fenrir, I can only presume he's standing at the top of the castle shouting this conversation at Celice, where he then proceeds to totally trash the person that's had no trouble completely ass-whomping every force sent to kill him thus far, and outright telling us that the only way to save Julia is to kill him. It's like he wants to die or something. He says that all our efforts are futile though, because the God of Darkness has finished descending into Julius, thus heralding his imminent conquest over all the world.

A number of Dark Magi equipped with Sleep Staffs and Hel Tomes come charging at Celice the moment he gets within range. So long as Celice stays on a patch of forest though, they'll only succeed in crowding around him since they won't have any chance of hitting him with their magic whatsoever. Kill them at your leisure as Manfloy impotently pings you from afar.

Don't have anyone else approach the castle though, unless they have higher than 19 magic resistance, because they'll get sleeped by one of the magi and that's never good.

Manfloy's surprisingly tough for such a feeble old guy. He can deal some not-insignificant amounts of damage with Jormung, and swing multiple times for even more fun.

Celice shouldn't have any problems though if it's a straight 1v1 fight. One critical and he's down for good. Hopefully you did it before Julia caught up with you and started complicating things by throwing herself into the fight.

Yeah! We finally take Velthomer Castle and we find out that the Sacred book of Narga is hidden somewhere in the castle! However, to access it, we need a special key that was affixed to Empress Deirdre's Circlet.

NOW WHERE COULD THAT BE HMMM? NEXT TIME: THE FINAL SHOWDOWN WITH JULIUS!

[Boksi]

So the twelve dark warlords are named... One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven and Twelve?

I could accept the colored knights, but this is just silly.

[JoshuaFH]

So the twelve dark warlords are named... One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven and Twelve?

I could accept the colored knights, but this is just silly.

Yeah, pretty much. I don't know enough of whatever language their names are based off of to tell you which is which, but that's their names.

I still think they're pretty cool, and I think it's a shame that they don't have a bigger place in the story or their own portraits.

[JoshuaFH]

The finale!

We must find and talk to Julia, as the spell controlling her hasn't been lifted yet!

Celice manages to snap Julia out of her hypnosis, and it turns out she's alright! Julia finally comes to a realization though, and it's that she finally realizes what she has to do, and that's fight, because she's not afraid anymore and she's a big girl now.

And she officially re-joins our party! Happy day! Full roster!

First thing's first, have Julia go over to Velthomer and have her ENTER it asap. A short scene occurs where she places the circlet that Alvis gave her into the secret keyhole that opens up the secret room that the Holy Tome Narga is kept in!

The most powerful weapon, beyond a shadow of a doubt, in the entire game is finally ours!

Look at that insanity! +20 to skill, speed, defense, and magic defense! That's not the best part though, the VERY BESTEST BEST PART is that the book of Narga NULLIFIES the power-halving effect of the Lopt Tome! It is a weapon tailor-made to defeat Julius. I just hope you took the time to level Julia up some, so she's extra effective.

Inspite of Julia's massive boost in stats, it's best to not have her tackle the Warlords alone, have Celice assist, and keep someone with a live staff or something close by in order to heal them pronto if things go bad.

It's time to kick alot of ass. The Tyrfing has around 80+ kills on it now and can critical like crazy, and Narga is powerful enough to just kill people through shows of brute force.

Plus the animation for Narga is possibly the sweetest in the game.

A giant golden dragon appears out of nowhere, and fucking demolishes the battlefield with a blinding Ultima-esque attack. Totally awesome, but a bit long, especially since Julia will use it two or three times per combat.

Acht is completely demolished, needless to say.

Then Neun pushes up daisies.

Then Eins and Zwei bite the dust!

Zehn, Vier, Drei, and Sechs kick the bucket!

And then the rest just flatout die. How'd I forget to screenshot the last two?

Oh well, now the path to Barhara is CLEAR!

Attacking with Celice provokes this conversation, and I just really love Julius' arrogant personality.

This is just to show you how hard it is to damage Julius normally. Celice did all of TWO damage out of Julius' 80. Doing things the hard way would sure be a pain in the ass.

We NEED Julia's help, there's no way around it. It's now time for the ultimate confrontation between Light and Dark magics!

Because Julius can't halve Julia's power, she's actually doing a significant amount of damage to him! Plus, with Julia's 47 magic defense, she needn't fear repercussion.

Julius has trouble landing even a single attack though, and can't seem to harm his sister!

And Julia does it! She's killed Julius!

In what is possibly the fanciest cutscene in the entire game, a giant black dragon ERUPTS from Julius' body, busts through the castle's roof, and then disappears into the aether.

This is it man, the very last castle. Once I seize Barhara, Celice's campaign against the Emperor's and the Dark Sect's rule will finally be complete! What will we get for our effort?

COMPLETE GIBBERISH! As it turns out, my translation of the game isn't complete, so the entire ending is completely void of anything that can be understood.

What I can glean from the events that follow though, is that everyone is shown outside the castle, with groups of two or three units going in at a time, conversing with Celice and probably saying their final farewells, and then venturing off to places unknown. Every unit get's their own conversation, and those that had partnered up will be traveling with their respective lovers.

We then get a narration covering the world map, presumably telling us the respective fates of all our comrades after they travel to their homes in each corner of the world. The screenshot above is the very last screen in the game, as I can't advance past it, so I can only guess it says "The End" or better yet, "Great job, you kicked alot of ass!".

I love this game so much, I just wish there were a better translation for it.

So that's it everyone! That's the end of the game! I hope you liked my LP, because I enjoyed giving it to you. My offer to give people a copy of my one end-game savestate is still on the table, if anyone's interested.

I'm SO happy that I was able to start this LP, and see it through to the end. I feel that my motivation issues are finally starting to be resolved.

I want to thank everyone for reading! Every post gave me a tiny bit more motivation to finish this, so really, Thanks everyone.

[Akigagak]

Yay!

Strange though, it seems Julius was actually possessed by Tavros, not Lopt.

[Haspen]

Aw dammit, forgot that you told me about untranslated ending.

But, don't fret anyone!

Actually, do that. I was unable to find any movie of translated ending. And I wanted to help this LP finish up truly, eh.

Hell, I can bet that Joshua propably possesses the only translated ROM of FE4 in the internet (and few others whom he gave it, including me)! Well, at least the part of internet we all frequent

[Jim Groovester]

That was a great LP. Shame about the unfinished translation

It was interesting to see what other Fire Emblem games are like, although I'm not sure why I was surprised to find out that they are all essentially the exact same game.

[JoshuaFH]

Aw dammit, forgot that you told me about untranslated ending.

But, don't fret anyone!

Actually, do that. I was unable to find any movie of translated ending. And I wanted to help this LP finish up truly, eh.

Hell, I can bet that Joshua propably possesses the only translated ROM of FE4 in the internet (and few others whom he gave it, including me)! Well, at least the part of internet we all frequent

Thanks for the consideration, I'd have a better translation but it would seem that the small community that is actually knowledgeable in translating games is disorganized and unmotivated, leading to some releases taking extremely long periods of time. Heck, I believe that one of the most highly anticipated rom translations of all time, the one for Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together has been in the works for years now.

If, in the future, I get my hands on a complete translation, I'll most definitely update this again, with the full ending.

Also, I really want to get a hold of the three Fire Emblems released for the GBA, since I heard they were fairly good, and I want to compare them to this one.