As for said things, I didn’t want to talk much about them in the review itself because that would be major gameplay spoilers, but…
My thoughts on Chapters 4-7
Honestly, I thought one of the chapters would be something like the actual rescue attempt to save Zabba; and it kinda feels like a cop-out that we don’t actually get to see it, only the aftermath. (Though I’m going to take a guess here and say that it was too complicated to implement what you wanted, or something, which I understand.).
As for Chapters 5 and 6… Emblem Warriors with it’s concept is good in small doses. Maps like that are why.
I am glad that you did tone down the difficulty, as Chapter 6 in particular had several spots where I feel like it came down to some RNG. (My strategy that won in the end was to basically send everyone through the northern route, and pick off pretty much everything that was in the way. The only exception to what I took down that wasn’t that way I think was the ballista that started the closest.).
Though Chapter 5 ain’t any more innocent either. To seize an enemy fort, I have to kill the Fort Guard, and stand on the fort, but the enemy just has to kill the unit on mine to seize it? (And the bosses on the map are no easy feat to take down either; I think maybe only the mages of the bunch have a prayer of doing it, and that’s a risk.).
That one was honestly frustrating enough to make me seriously give up, but I managed to I think get lucky at one point and capitalize on it. (The achievements for that chapter were, as I recall, not that hard to do, but you did kinda have to be mindful of them the entire time.).
The rain there on that chapter was a mixed blessing- on one hand, that slowed my own invasion progress to a crawl. On the other hand, that also may have been all that kept me from being overwhelmed when the enemy reinforcements showed up.
I wish we had gotten to see like, Cavalier Seth (since I think he would’ve been in training still at the time), but seeing Orson before he went completely off his rocker was nice too.
As for the Bonus… honestly, it and chapter seven are breather-levels compared to what Chapters 5 and 6 were like, which is a huge relief.
(Although I have a feeling that the bonus was comparatively a cakewalk because I still had uses of Flash left to kill the boss. I thought that the chapter would end once that happened, but nope, nothing like that… although it does make a certain event later on in the chapter weird if he’s killed before then.).
If you’re curious, although I don’t think I stated this in the review, I took quite literally what I think was the hardest route possible- not only did I go for all the achievements I could, but I went with the route where you don’t hire anybody in Chapter 3.
… which may explain my difficulties in Chapter 4, but I digress. Maybe that was for the best (as I have a feeling there may have been other difficulties as well at that point…).
-Telos.