tempest's full fire emblem series replay!

[digitaldreams]

basics

hello, everyone, and welcome to my little corner of bulbablogs! this thread is going to be dedicated to my current goal for gaming: a full series replay of fire emblem. i have been a huge fire emblem fan since 2017, but in the case of most of these games, i haven't touched them since 2018-2019. so i decided it was time to change all of that, and i'm going to be replaying the series (almost) all over again. i originally started planning this out back in may as a result of this past year's emblemcon. i have been a panelist at emblemcon every year since the convention was first started, and i do informational panels about the franchise each year. and i decided it was time to update my information so that i can prepare for one of my panel ideas next year talking about some of the representation in the series (specifically plural/DID representation since that's a subject close to my heart). now, it has coincidentally become perfect that i am replaying the series since i can try to replay everything before fortune's weave comes out in 2026. funnily enough, the last time i played through all of fire emblem was building up to the release of three houses in 2019. time is a flat circle, i guess!

...okay, maybe it's not entirely accurate to say that i'm replaying the entire series. i'll be playing through every game except for 1-3 since those have remakes, and uhh... i am going to be honest, i do not enjoy the gameplay of fe1/2 all that much. and again, they have remakes. also, saying that i'm "replaying" fe4-5 is wrong since i have not played those games for a first time. i have been meaning to for years, but i kept telling myself we'd get a remake of fe4 and then put it off. fortune's weave has temporarily put an end to my copium on that, so i'm going to play fe4-5 for the first time. everything fe6-17 will be a replay though since i've played most of those games at least twice each.

what do those numbers mean?

i tend to not refer to fire emblem games by their titles. i have memorized the numbers of every game, so when i'm talking about the series, i just call them by their numbers. and then i forget that other people are not super autistic about this series and do not have games memorized in intimate detail. so here's a quick guide to what all of those numbers mean, including game title, console, release year, and if it is officially localized or not. if it is referred to as JP ONLY, then that means i will be playing on an english fan translation version of the game.

Mainline
1 - Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light - NES - 1990
2 - Gaiden - NES - 1992 (JP ONLY)
3 - Mystery of the Emblem - SNES - 1994 (JP ONLY)
4 - Genealogy of the Holy War - SNES - 1996 (JP ONLY)
5 - Thracia 776 - SNES - 1999 (JP ONLY)
6 - Binding Blade - GBA - 2002 (JP ONLY)
7 - Blazing Blade - GBA - 2003
8 - Sacred Stones - GBA - 2004
9 - Path of Radiance - GCN - 2005
10 - Radiant Dawn - Wii - 2007
11 - Shadow Dragon - DS - 2008 (Remake of FE1)
12 - New Mystery of the Emblem - DS - 2010 (Remake of FE3) (JP ONLY)
13 - Awakening - 3DS - 2012
14 - Fates - 3DS - 2015
15 - Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - 3DS - 2017
16 - Three Houses - Switch - 2019
17 - Engage - Switch - 2019

Relevant Spinoffs*
BS Archanea Saga - SNES Satellaview - 1997 (JP ONLY)
Warriors - Switch - 2017
Warriors: Three Hopes - Switch - 2022

*Spinoffs are a maybe and depend on how I feel. Other spinoffs not included are Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and Fire Emblem Heroes. I do not own TMS and am not planning on playing it, though I might in the future. As for Fire Emblem Heroes, I am suffering enough playing that game as it is. The less I have to think about Fire Emblem Heroes and its absurdly bad power creep problem, the better.

what's the plan?

with a bunch of games to get through, i'm sure you're wondering... what exactly is the plan for this? well, i'm going to be playing nearly every game on a physical copy. i own every game FE6-17 on a physical copy of some kind, so i will be playing all of those physically. the sole exception there is fe6. the reason for this is because i have played fe6 on a physical copy before, and it was the worst experience i ever had playing fire emblem. i am not putting myself through that again. so fe6 will be emulated. the same goes for fe4 and fe5 because... gestures vaguely. how do you get access to an english translation of an SNES game that never released outside of japan. that's much harder than getting a physical copy of a DS or GBA game that never went international. the emulation thing will apply to BS archanea saga if i decide to play that at some point because uh. that's a satellaview game. oof.

the most important part of this is "no save states for any game fe7 and after." i'm playing everything from blazing blade forward as legitimately as possible. if a unit dies, i will have to reset old school style and do the entire map again. i don't like it when my units die, so i'll be going in with the mentality of keeping everyone alive to the end of the game. nobody dies on my watch. even if i have to replay battle before dawn from fe7 over and over and over.

as for the order i'm doing this in, i'm kind of winging it and just going with whatever i feel like i'm in the mood for. right now, i'm halfway through my first run of sacred stones, the first game in this marathon. and since i'm talking about fe8, here's an important point: i'm only playing different routes or branching paths if i feel they are significantly different enough to merit it. so i'll play fe7 twice (eliwood and hector mode once each), fe8 twice (once for eirika route and once for ephraim route), and three houses three and a half times (benchmark save at crimson flower/silver snow split). and then tiny branching paths (like two chapter splits in fe6, the lloyd/linus split in fe7, or the sonya/deen split in fe15) will not necessitate a replay. all three paths of fates (birthright, conquest, and revelation) will get their own runs since they are substantially different from each other. i probably won't be doing the games with multiple runs back to back since i don't want to get too tired of them. this is mostly about three houses though since i get burnt out on that game way easier than just about every other fire emblem.

altogether, this leads us to a total of 21 runs. good thing i'm fast when playing these games!

in future posts, i'm going to be giving updates on how the entire marathon is going. i probably won't have many pictures unless i feel like taking pictures of my DS or TV screen, but i will be doing photo dumps at the end of each run to show off all my teams.

difficulty modes

a lot of fire emblem games have different difficulty settings, so the next step is to figure out what difficulty i am playing on. i consider myself pretty good at fire emblem, but i'm not going to mess with the cartoonishly evil difficulty modes or the ones that would make me hate the video game. i'll go as hard as i can without wanting to rip my hair out. in games that have casual mode, i'll probably play on that because resetting for units is annoying when you like keeping everyone alive. this is most relevant in fe12, fe13, and fe14 which have casual mode but no turnwheel, so classic mode might show up for fe15, fe16, and fe17 when i get to them. who knows. anyway, here's the difficulty breakdown:

4 - Genealogy of the Holy War - No Difficulty Modes
5 - Thracia 776 - No Difficulty Modes
6 - Binding Blade - Hard Mode
7 - Blazing Blade - Lyn Hard Mode -> Eliwood Hard Mode
7 - Blazing Blade - Lyn Hard Mode -> Hector Hard Mode
8 - Sacred Stones - Eirika Route Hard Mode
8 - Sacred Stones - Ephraim Route Hard Mode
9 - Path of Radiance - Hard Mode*
10 - Radiant Dawn - Normal Mode**
11 - Shadow Dragon - Hard Mode 1
12 - New Mystery of the Emblem - Hard Mode 1 Casual
13 - Awakening - Hard Mode - Casual
14 - Fates Birthright - Lunatic Mode - Casual
14 - Fates Conquest - Hard (Lunatic if one of the last runs) Mode - Casual
14 - Fates Revelation - Lunatic Mode - Casual
15 - Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - Hard Mode - Casual/Classic?
16 - Three Houses (All Runs) - Hard Mode - Casual/Classic?
17 - Engage - Hard Mode - Casual/Classic?

*Difficulty modes in Path of Radiance got mistranslated and changed in English. This refers to English Hard Mode which is the third and highest of the three difficulty settings. This is also Japanese Hard Mode.

**Difficulty modes in Radiant Dawn got mistranslated in English. This refers to English Normal Mode which is the second of the three difficulty settings. This is Japanese Hard Mode, hence why I am not playing on the highest difficulty setting (English Hard Mode) since that equates to Maniac Mode.

optional on this we have both of the warriors spinoffs and then archanea saga. archanea saga has no difficulty modes, and both warriors games will be set to their hardest difficulty if i decide to play them. three houses and three hopes will be on new game plus from my previous runs. and that should be all there is to cover here!

immediate plans

like i said earlier, i've already started the first run on sacred stones. it's eirika route and hard mode. i'm up to chapter 12 i believe. with these repeat runs (fe8, fe9, and fe16), i'll probably not play them consecutively because they've got so many maps in common. so i'll do eirika route, play something else, and then come back for ephraim later. i'm planning on starting engage soon as a stream to my girlfriend (hi celeste i know you're reading this) and my partner over discord. as for what's coming after sacred stones, it'll probably be path of radiance since my girlfriend is playing it, and i can parallel play with her by speeding through the game. and then i'll play everything else whenever i feel like it, hopefully wrapping everything up by the time fortune's weave comes out! yippee!!

reply rules

1. please do not get on my case for playing casual mode on modern games. i have done my time with resetting by playing binding blade on original hardware deathless. it led to over 200 resets across two months of playing. i play casual mode on modern games so i don't rip my hair out. when it's an option, i like to use it. i still try to not get units killed, of course, but please don't call me a casual or anything for not playing on classic in modern fire emblem when i am doing 21 runs of this series.
2. similarly, please do not make fun of me for not playing on the super hard unfair difficulties of some of these games. again, i'm not doing stuff like fe9 maniac or fe12 lunatic reverse because i want to have fun. and i do not feel like putting myself through a nightmare when i am again doing 21 runs of fire emblem games. i'm going as hard as i can without making myself upset or frustrated.
3. highlighting this rule just to be safe, but please don't ask me about how i am accessing some of these older games that were not released outside of japan. this is to follow bulbagarden rules. if you want to play these other games, you can find a way to do it elsewhere.

and that should be about it. coming up shortly: an update on the first half of fe8's first run and playthrough 1/21!

 

[System Error]

Hm, you weren't kidding when you said full, nice. I guess I'll keep an eye on this. As a random suggestion, how about adding Tear Ring Saga to the potential spinoff mix? It's basically a Fire Emblem game. ;P

 

[digitaldreams]

so... let's talk about that sacred stones run.

i decided to start with fe8 because it's easily one of the easiest fire emblem games, and i just think it's a good place to start. my first game when i played the series the first time was awakening, so i decided to mix it up and start with sacred stones on replay. this is also so i can get one of the repeating game runs out of the way early without getting caught having to play the same game on consecutive runs back to back later on.

all things considered, fe8 has been going perfectly fine so far. as i said in the post, i'm about halfway through the game. i've gotten through chapter 11, and next up will be chapter 12. i'm on eirika's route first, and things have been pretty uneventful. when i play fire emblem, i tend to go pretty quickly and not think too hard about things. i have a few alters who are really, really good at fire emblem and other strategy games, and they can play really well even while essentially turning their brains off. so that's kind of how this fe8 run has been going. every character so far has been recruited without issues, and nothing scary has happened...

well, almost. during chapter 10, i had a major scare with a sleep staff. gerik got hit with the sleep staff on the turn that he was going to recruit marisa. so i got to have the most stressful four turns of my life as gerik was parked in a choke point asleep while marisa hit him with shamshir with a very high crit rate. and if she got even one crit with a 41% rate, gerik was dead. there was no way to get him out either. no rescue staff, and no restore staff either (not that it would have helped since marisa was blocking the only tile that would let me reach him). miraculously, gerik managed to survive. it was really scary, but he got through it. and then he was able to recruit marisa, and the game went back to being easy after that.

i don't know how easy it's going to be from here on out though. i love training bad units, and in fe8, my bad unit of choice is marisa. it's no secret that she's just an inferior version of joshua, but i don't care. i will use her anyway because she is my favorite character in fe8. and i do whatever i want. this will not be the first time you see me say that i am going to play an fe game with a very bad unit and take them all the way to the end. just wait until we get to fe10 because i take both astrid and lucia to the tower every single time.

as of now, my planned team for the end of the game is as follows (legendary weapons in parentheses)

eirika (sieglinde), franz, artur (ivaldi), lute (excalibur), natasha, joshua (audhulma), ephraim (siegmund), forde, tana (vidofnir), gerik (garm), tethys, cormag.

filler units will be gilliam, kyle, and neimi as needed. no archer on final team to use nidhogg and no dark mage to use gleipnir, but i'm fine with that. i think i'll be fine with that. i don't have much desire to bring neimi to the end of the game, use innes in general, or train up knoll on this run. maybe i'll change my mind for the ephraim run and do something different. we'll just have to see.

anyway, that's the fe8 update. i'm going to play chapter 12 next and keep pushing on toward the end of the game. i have faith in my team, and i know they will treat me well. time to sacred those stones!

 

[digitaldreams]

Hm, you weren't kidding when you said full, nice. I guess I'll keep an eye on this. As a random suggestion, how about adding Tear Ring Saga to the potential spinoff mix? It's basically a Fire Emblem game. ;P

i might play tear ring saga at some point! i'm not sure yet. i haven't played any of the tear ring saga games before admittedly, but i might try and get around to it one day when i've made more progress on the rest of the series replay.

 

[terashards]

if it is referred to as JP ONLY, then that means i will be playing on an english fan translation version of the game.

6 - Binding Blade - GBA - 2002 (JP ONLY)

you talk about your… complicated feelings about binding blade so much that i honestly forgot it was never localized outside of japan somehow that makes your beef with it infinitely funnier but i can’t articulate how

as for what's coming after sacred stones, it'll probably be path of radiance since my girlfriend is playing it, and i can parallel play with her by speeding through the game.

heyy that’s me… i’m so sorry i haven’t gotten back to it yet!! i really intend to!!! maybe this weekend when i’m not swamped with homework or something. pokemon bank checklist has been taking most of my free time huh

also damn i wasn’t expecting how long your initial post was going to be. not a problem, i just forget how fast you type and think sometimes. in an effort to read over everything and write a good reply i failed to be first to reply… shaking my head (LOL this isn’t serious)

anyway i read over everything and i’m excited to get to read your posts (even if i already know a lot of what’s happened and it’s just a review)

do you think you’re actually going to be able to get through this before fortune’s weave? so many games…

edit: you sniped me with your fe8 post. pretend that i also responded to that. LOL

 

[digitaldreams]

you talk about your… complicated feelings about binding blade so much that i honestly forgot it was never localized outside of japan somehow that makes your beef with it infinitely funnier but i can’t articulate how


heyy that’s me… i’m so sorry i haven’t gotten back to it yet!! i really intend to!!! maybe this weekend when i’m not swamped with homework or something. pokemon bank checklist has been taking most of my free time huh

also damn i wasn’t expecting how long your initial post was going to be. not a problem, i just forget how fast you type and think sometimes. in an effort to read over everything and write a good reply i failed to be first to reply… shaking my head (LOL this isn’t serious)

anyway i read over everything and i’m excited to get to read your posts (even if i already know a lot of what’s happened and it’s just a review)

do you think you’re actually going to be able to get through this before fortune’s weave? so many games…

edit: you sniped me with your fe8 post. pretend that i also responded to that. LOL

i'm beefing with a game that never made it out of japan. this has indescribable vibes that no one understands properly.

as for if i am going to be able to get through it before fortune's weave, i genuinely think so. i started playing fire emblem after three houses was announced and got through everything fe6-15 before three houses came out. granted three houses had a really long development cycle, but once i cracked down, i was able to get through fe6, 7, 8, 11, and 12 in around six months with repeat runs on fe7 and fe8 included in that for a total of seven runs in six months. and i've got a more concrete idea of what's coming with fortune's weave and i'm faster at playing now than i was before. so i think i can do it! i hope! we'll just have to see!

 

[terashards]

and i've got a more concrete idea of what's coming with fortune's weave and i'm faster at playing now than i was before. so i think i can do it! i hope! we'll just have to see!

godspeed, if you ever need company during a dry portion of gameplay you know who to call LOL

 

[Elusian Roserade]

Hope you'll have good luck on these playthroughs!

I've always been a fan of training weak units too. It's really enjoyable finding ways to make them powerful no matter what it takes. Looking forward to which ones you use in each game.

 

[digitaldreams]

well, i shouldn't have made fun of sacred stones for being easy. chapter 12 was no issue, and aside from one scary turn, i breezed through it. chapter 13... good lord. i got to turn 10 out of the 11 turns you have to survive, and cormag got sniped and died to a 6% purge crit. lesson learned. don't poke fun at the game for being easy unless you want to run into statistical improbabilities the likes of which have never been seen before.

speaking of statistical improbabilities, i cannot believe i am saying this, but my entire army is kind of strength screwed. out of my physical units, gerik is the only one with over 10 strength in chapter 13. marisa, eirika, tana, and forde haven't even hit double digits yet, and all of them are at a level where they can promote. marisa hasn't gotten a single point since base, and she's level 12 now. i was wondering why i was having trouble killing enemy units, and... yup. that'll do it.

i am going to go to sleep now since it is almost 3 AM and if i pick up the DS again i am going to play tilted over that purge crit. chapter 13, i will get you another time. i won't do chapter by chapter posts on this thread, but i needed to scream somewhere about the 6% purge crit. they hate me so bad.

 

[digitaldreams]

the run continues! so i did, in fact, play tilted on chapter 13 even after saying i would not do that. i beat the map at 4:30 in the morning on wednesday. i just went for a boss kill so that i couldn't get screwed over by the purge crit again. i failed at the map about four times more before i finally won. having the entire army be behind on strength is catastrophically bad and frustrating, and it is the reason this run is giving me so much grief now that i'm in the midgame. i had to promote everyone very early to offset the strength problem. franz is still four points behind average in strength though. it is a mess. gerik and cormag need to save me because nobody else can get strength level ups to save their lives.

i got through chapter 14 on my second attempt. the first time, i got screwed over by a miss from cormag in the high 70s to low 80s, and he died after i had collected all the treasure. on the second run, i planned things out much better, and i was able to get through the map without issues. it went a lot better on the second round, and i'd even say i planned things out smartly on the second time, so it didn't take anywhere near as long either. and carlyle isn't that scary when you just hit him at range with lute.

and then chapter 15. it took two attempts again, and it was a mess. the first time, everything went perfectly fine. up until the very end. lute got killed by pierce from valter when he was literally the only enemy left on the map. so i had to do it all over again. this time, i was a lot more careful about it, and gerik was the one who took care of valter instead. next up is chapter 16, and i'll be tackling that next time i sit down to play. here's to hoping the strength problem starts turning around soon. only hitting double digit strength on half my army because i promoted them all... yikes. i really hope strength stops screwing me over once i get out of this sacred stones run.

 

[terashards]

why do they hate you (the random number generator)

 

[digitaldreams]

sacred stones continues! the random number generator continues to hate me also because i can never have a break for five minutes. yesterday, i did chapters 16, 17, and 18. chapter 16 was a massive pain because i kept getting sniped by the guys with the purge and bolting tomes at the top of the map. that is how every failed attempt ended. eirika could get one shot from max HP by them, so i had tana rescue her and just wait it out. it was an absolute mess. 0/10 experience. orson wasn't that bad when i got to him. it was just the getting to him that sucked. i spent multiple hours on this.

and the strength screwed issue? it is getting worse. i took a video of it when i failed on chapter 16 once, and it is... catastrophically bad. forde has been benched for having only ten strength after promotion. tana has gained a single point of strength in the entire run, and she's promoted with a 45% growth. everyone but lute, artur, and gerik is underperforming. cormag has fine enough strength, but he has other problems and has been behind on defense to the point that he is unable to reliably tank anything. so a lot of this run has consisted of sitting lute, artur, or gerik on a forest and just watching the enemies die. it is not a very engaging way to play fire emblem. sacred stones heard me say that it is one of the easiest games in the series and decided that it needed to exact its vengeance against me.

and on that note, i have started to consider something for later in this replay. i'll have time to think about it since it'll be a while before i get there, but... i think i'm going to emulate fe7 when i get to it. i can do eliwood mode on original hardware, but for hector hard mode... if sacred stones has been making me feel this horrendous because of a bit of bad RNG, i do not know if i am going to be able to handle a certain late game HHM map without wanting to rip my hair out. (it's battle before dawn. i do not know if i will be able to get through battle before dawn without hating myself when a little bit of bad RNG has turned sacred stones into an absolute nightmare.) i have time to think about it before i get there since i plan on playing at least engage and path of radiance first, but... sheesh. the children yearn to have strength. lute having above average magic is awesome, but i wish it didn't come at the price of the rest of my army sucking.

chapter 17 was fine. i didn't really have any issues with it beyond the usual of syrene being squishy. lute carried since nobody could kill the wyverns reliably except for her and artur. ephraim has officially replaced forde since he at least has more utility with reginlief effectiveness on cavaliers than forde's ten strength does. really sucks to put that much effort into a unit only for them to not be able to do anything worthwhile in lategame. what a mess this has been.

chapter 18 was also fine aside from my first attempt where cormag died in a single hit from a long range gorgon. not even a crit. just a regular hit. sigh. this run is an absolute mess. or maybe cormag just has low resistance. i cannot tell.

i'm going to try and finish up the run in the next few days since i'll be going out of town on saturday. worst case scenario, i finish it up while i'm out of state. i'm super close to the end anyway. and after this, i'll be shifting gears to path of radiance where i will hopefully have a little bit more fun and get the RNG to stop stabbing me repeatedly. fingers crossed!

 

[digitaldreams]

we have arrived at the end of sacred stones! i cleared the final map a few minutes ago! i normally struggle a lot with the second stage of the final map, but i decided that the best course of action was to be as aggressive as possible, so i rushed the demon king and killed him on turn two with gerik, ephraim, and finally lute. lute was the biggest carry throughout this run, so it only feels fitting that she was the one who delivered the killing blow. my plans for legendary weapons didn't really work out on account of half of my army being strength screwed, so it wound up as follows: gerik with audhulma, cormag with vidofnir, lute with excalibur, artur with ivaldi, eirika with sieglinde, and ephraim with siegmund. cormag, artur, and eirika did nothing against the demon king.

funnily enough, lute was also one of the only characters to get a paired ending. i wasn't grinding for supports or anything, so the only paired ending i got was artur and lute since they were my main carries. they hit A support after dragging me through chapter twenty. i couldn't have done it without them.

honestly, this run was a kind of refreshing experience with sacred stones. i'm used to the game being a very easy one, but this... yeah, this was not easy. it goes to show just how much RNG can impact a run of fire emblem, and if you get screwed over, it becomes a lot harder almost instantly. artur, lute, and gerik were definitely my carries on this run, and i'm so glad i had them here with me. what have i learned from this run? i am never doing a run of sacred stones without them. never. no way. these three were my top three units, and it wasn't even close. when your strength growths fail you, fall back on mages and a guy with a good strength growth. that's the other lesson i learned.

the biggest letdown of this run was forde by far. i really wanted to use him, but his strength was 10 for the entire back half of the game. i promoted him and tried so hard, and it still wasn't enough. his battle to win ratio was absolutely atrocious: 104 battles to only 30 wins. that is awful. having to baby a paladin is miserable too since they're supposed to be good carries. marisa and tana were kind of disappointing on this run too. they only got two and one point of strength on level up respectively. sure, marisa's growth is only 30%, but tana has a 45% growth! so why in the world did she only get a SINGLE POINT OF STRENGTH for the entire run??? i have no idea. this run of sacred stones gave me a headache. i really did get screwed over by factors entirely out of my control. please, RNG lords, make sure i am never this unlucky again. that was horrible.

but now that sacred stones is done, it's time to keep moving forward with the next run on the list: engage streamed to my partner and girlfriend. i'll be starting that after my trip out of town. i'm letting the two of them pick my team so long as i can use ivy and lapis. so far, the only character that is locked in is rosado. we'll have to see how engage plays out. i'll also be starting path of radiance when i get back, and i suspect that will go a lot better than sacred stones. i actually have a physical copy of path of radiance i got back in 2018, so i won't have save states or anything. i'm looking forward to it though since path of radiance is my favorite game in the series. fingers crossed it goes well!
alright! time for some last minute stats as we say goodbye to the first run of the series replay!

TOP FIVE UNITS:
Lute: 249 Battles, 171 Wins
Artur: 195 Battles, 150 Wins
Gerik: 201 Battles, 87 Wins
Joshua: 154 Battles, 82 Wins
Ephraim: 124 Battles, 61 Wins

TURN COUNT: 416

Spoiler: scrolling through all my units' stats!

Post by @digitaldreams0801 · 1 video

0 0 ❤️ 0 · finished the worst run of sacred stones known to man! with half my army strength screwed, i somehow succeeded! please let me never be this unlucky again! here are my character stat…

www.tumblr.com

 

[digitaldreams]

so... i did something a bit unexpected today. i was on a flight today to go and visit my sweet partner out of state, and i had a lot of free time with no internet. i wrote for a lot of the flight, but after i was told to put my laptop away for ascent and descent... well, i had to do something else with my time. so i decided to start playing fe7. i'm playing lyn mode on hard, and then i'll be jumping into eliwood mode. i got through the chapter five in a little over 45 minutes.

the most interesting part of all of this was that on my first attempt of the prologue, i had another instant of colossal bad luck. lyn has a 39% chance of getting hit by the first enemy on the map. under true hit RNG, that's closer to 30.81%. she got hit by that enemy twice in a row and died. this had a 9.49% chance of happening. i was astounded. utterly baffled. what in the world was that. the second attempt went fine, but that was a mess. my luck for the rest of the run has been much better, but wow. that was unlucky.

lyn mode has a lot of the characters i want to use on my team later on, including sain, kent, erk, and florina. so i've been focusing on them while letting wil and serra take a bit of a backseat. i'll be focusing on lucius too once i get him. other units i'm planning on using include priscilla, raven, and maybe oswin. i'm planning on actually trying to train all three lords on this run since i have run into issues with viability on lyn and eliwood in the past. as for my last few team slots... who knows? maybe i'll finally commit to using heath after thinking about it multiple times and never committing. maybe it'll be rath so i can have an archer around for once. i could train canas too to try and snipe the dragon with overpowered dark magic. i'm not sure. i'll decide it when i get there. for now, i know who i'm using in lyn mode, and i'm going to go all in on them.

i probably won't be playing too much in the next week and a half since i am still out of town and will be for a while, but i wanted to give this update on my plane boredom. fingers crossed this run of fe7 goes better than the previous run of fe8. i don't think i'm strong enough to go through something like that again.

 

[digitaldreams]

update time! i continued to play a little bit of blazing blade on my return flight from my trip. i got through two more chapters, so i'm up to the paralogue attached to chapter seven next. i don't know how intensely i'll be playing blazing blade though because...

i started streaming engage for my partner and girlfriend tonight! i got up through chapter five. the run was largely uneventful aside from some really, really bad luck on chapter five. i missed an 85, an 88, and a 90 in consecutive turns. i was getting ready to rip my hair out by the time the chapter was over. it took 45 minutes. entirely too long for an early game map, especially since it was just because i kept getting unlucky. i was questioning if this game really does use true hit rng, and after some research, i learned that it seems to use the fates hybrid roll system. which... okay. sure. why not.

as for other details about the run, there are a few things to talk about. right now, i'm planning on picking my team according to what my girlfriend and partner say. their only concrete choices right now are rosado and timerra. i'll probably run timerra as a byleth bot since that's the way i normally run her. as for rosado... i do not know. i have never used rosado, so this will be a first for me! i'm going to make lapis a wyvern rider (sword/axe) because of favoritism, and i want to use ivy too. most other slots are up for debate, but alcryst will probably be on the final team. i have already decided i won't be using vander or diamant because vander falls off really hard really fast and diamant was a major problem for me on my last run. his low skill cap kept him from being able to hit anything, and that turned into a significant issue toward the end of the game. i'm just going to follow my heart to fill out the rest of the deployment slots.

and last but not least, i'm doing this run on fixed hard casual mode. normally, i would go for random just for fun, but after the horrible way sacred stones went... no. i'm not doing that again. my first run of engage also struggled a lot because of alear not getting enough strength, so i'm just... going to avert the problem entirely. fixed level ups for everyone. and hard mode so i don't want to tear my hair out since i've never played maddening before. and casual mode because of the sacred stones run from hell, though i have been using the time crystal each time someone dies anyway. you know how it is.

i think that about covers it. fe7 is going by without any issues, and engage has been... interesting on the luck front! but i'm looking forward to the rest of the game. i will share my emblem matchups when i have a team laid out. the only thing i have in mind right now is lapis with tiki since she was the mvp of my last run. everything else... we shall leave it up to fate! and future me!