Prologue III
Outside the castle, Marth talks with Cain, who delivers Marth's father's last words “Tell my son that I leave the future of Altea and our continent in his hands. He must rise now where I have fallen. As Falchion's rightful heir, he has been born into greatness... Now, he must be great.” The Gra traitors took the divine blade Falchion from Marth's father, and then gave no quarter to the remaining soldiers.
Cain is much more emotional about this than Marth is, and swears to avenge the fallen. I be Marth is in shock. That's no small order from his father, the whole continent's future...
Marth agrees with Cain that when the day comes, they will punish Gra and Dolhr and all responsible for this tragedy together.
Jagen advises us to visit some nearby houses to speak with the countrymen, and it's on to the battlemap.
Only one enemy, this is probably tutorial for visiting places.
The first villager recommends a strategy I've seen in BlueAnkylo's Let's Play, luring one enemy at a time out of position and taking them out rather than rushing into the enemy.
Oh wait, I see a few more enemies. They started further from me than I'd anticipated.
Shoot, Abel still has a javelin equipped, I don't want to waste the ranged item on a spear guy. I'd best move Cain in front and try to take the attack on a melee equipment.
Hmm, Cain, Abel and Frey are all Cavaliers, but Jagen is a Paladin. I know from the later game that Paladin is the promoted version of Cavalier, but that early game promoted units aren't as good to level as non-promoted units, as leveling a non-promoted unit all the way up tends to leave them with better stats than the auto-promotes. … If that makes sense. Anyway, I'll probably leave Jagen behind and use the other three cavaliers and Marth mostly for this map. I like Cain better anyway right now, he'll probably be my permanent cavalier.
After I end my first turn, Jagen and Marth have a talk. Since some Gra soldiers linger outside the castle, Elice will have noplace to escape to. Marth wants to seize a fort across the river to try and quash enemy reinforcements at the source.
Enemy spear guy runs to attack Cain, and Cain gets a double attack and kills the spear guy in one go! Keep it up Cain!
Next enemy threat area is an archer and spear guy. Hmm... maybe if I can lure the archer with Abel's javelin while Cain tries for the spear guy? I know bows have a two square range.
Hmm, doesn't quite work, the archer goes for Cain too, but misses. Then Cain counter attacks the spear guy with lethal force again.
Abeland Marth are level two, and the others are level 1, I should try to have Cain and Frey level a bit (not sure if I like Frey or Abel better, and I'm not sure how many Cavaliers I'll want long term)
Cain and Frey take out the archer, while Abel visits a house. The villager recommends if we get hurt to spend a turn in a fort to recover.
Jagen visits another house where the advice is not to have Jagen, a Paladin and a champion, do everything for me, as that wouldn't be fair to all my future champions! (In other words, he can get me out of a bind if I need him, but it's better not to let him grab all the experience points? Or what I was trying to say above...)
Go Frey! Taking out the spear guy guarding the bridge and leveling to 2! He got HP, Skill, Speed and Luck increases this level.
Jagen visits the last house on the east side of the bridge, where they explain Javelins and Handaxes are good for melee as well as being throwable at range 2.
West of the bridge are two axe guys and another spear guy. Let's see, if spears beat swords then axes beat spears and swords beat axes... Cavaliers can use swords or spears (spears and lances are the same thing, in case I change the terminology later) So let's try to lure spear guy with Cain wielding his iron lance, and then the axe guy... oh he has a handaxe. I'd better use Abel's javelin.
Shoot, spear guy could go for Abel too. But I don't want to take forever moving across the map. Oh well, we'll see how it goes.
Yay! Spear guy went for Cain, who killed him then leveled up to 2! Hmm, HP and Skill ups only, not the best level for him.
Oh right, axes are good against spears, so Abel had disadvantage. No matter, he dodged the thrown axe, then hit with one of his two return throws.
Marth moves in and finishes axe guy, then levels to 3. HP, Speed and luck up. I'd have preferred strength but speed isn't bad.
A second archer is coming across a bridge to our north. Cain and Abel can both reach the archer, but Frey can only get to the remaining axe guy, so I'm going to go Frey attack Axe, then if he survives Cain or Abel to finish him off, then the remaining cavalier to the archer. Use a sword Frey! … Not enough to finish the axe off. Abel can go next, no more axe guy.
Cain hits the archer but can't quite finish him off. Hmm, I hope he can take the inevitable return fire.
At turn end, Marth notices the enemy has mages up north. Mages attack our resistance stat, instead of defense, and can attack at range 1 or range 2, so this could be difficult.
Cain takes another hit from the archer but survives on 8 HP. He may need to stay back for the rest of the map, there were forts back on the eastern side but it would take too long to send him all the way back there.
Only house on this island advises me about weapon durability, which I mentioned in the first post.
Hmm, one enemy mage is on a flashing yellow tile, looks like a fort from the map info, probably the fort Marth wants to capture. But his threat range doesn't show blue so he probably is the boss and won't move. The other mage is my only concern then.
I move cautiously across the north bridge, staying just out of the mobile mage's range. Now my cav are fast enough to go hit him first. Let me check who has the best resistance.
...Jagen is the only one with ANY resistance. But maybe I can do this with Abel going in first, as he's at full health. Let's see... yes, he'll double hit and kill the mage off in exchange for losing 8 HP. One mage down! Now just the boss.
Ok, another careful approach, but Marth can double hit and kill this mage in exchange for just 8 damage on his 19 HP, so I think I got this.
VICTORY!
I let Cain heal a bit before Marth seizes the fort on my next turn, and the battle is won.
Malledus approaches Marth, and delivers the news that Elice has elected to stay behind and sent him away. Marth immediately begins rushing off to the castle only to be stopped by Malledus. Malledus reasons that Elice knows Marth is the future of the whole land, and that is why she is doing this. Marth flashes back to Cain's words.
Malledus: “Drink deeply now of these injustices; sup on these slights they serve. Remember them! One day you will lead us back here to avenge the fallen and reclaim Altea in their names!” Ok, but couldn't Elice come too? Couldn't we teach her how to use Falchion? ~sigh~
That's the trouble with the following little bit about Marth being of the blood of Anri and sole heir of Falchion, he has a sister who shares the same ancestry. If you're going to go with the whole blood carries the special power to wield the magic, you can't then have the sex or gender of the descendant rule out half the potential heirs. Ok, sure I could see Elice's sprite was a magic user, but in the world of the game couldn't she have been taught to use a sword too?
Maybe that was too much to ask of 1990 when the game originally came out, but it rubs me the wrong way. Oh well. Anyway, Marth accepts that he's the chosen one and can't risk his life without this consideration anymore, so at least it sets up the inevitable “if Marth dies it's game over man”.
Anyway, other than that little issue, I'm enjoying how this is going. Next time, on to Chapter 1!
Post-script: It occurs to me that Malledus and Marth's father are the two who are pinning their hopes on Marth. Elice actually chose to remain behind to give hope to her people and to give Marth an out, so maybe the whole “Marth's the only chosen one” is just something the guys are reading into the situation, and Elice's choice is entirely trying to be selfless and help as many people as she can as best she can.
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