López (Hag in White)
“Now, RandomWizard,” I hear you saying, “Hag in White (which is a very cool and cool hack that everyone should play) just released like thirty seconds ago. How do you have a whole effortpost written up about it already?” The answer there is that I got a pre-release patch, already beat the hack as of posting this, and fell in love with López along the way. I wrote this beforehand, too.
Anyway, onto what y’all actually came here for.
Maybe the real Hag in White was the friends we made along the way.
The first couple chapters of Hag in White, as with so many other FE games, pit our plucky heroes against a gang of bandits. Predictably, this goes poorly for the bandits, and our heroes throw the lot of them in jail. Soon afterwards, though, the party has to break out of that very same jail, and can recruit the first three maps’ bandit bosses along the way - including the subject of our discussion today.
Even before López joins, he has a notable presence in the story. Of the three named members of Begoña’s gang, he’s very clearly the runt of the litter. You don’t even need to fight him in Chapter 1 - just a few threatening words from the main character are enough to get him to surrender. Still, he’s got that Fire Emblem early-game bandit dawg in him, with an evil laugh, a face only a mother could love, and a squad of weak brigands under his command against which you can learn the ropes of the game.
At first glance, the playable version of López really doesn’t look like much. His bases and growths are frankly abysmal, and his starting Poison Sword can barely damage even the weakest of foes. He looks like the sort of unit who you only use for lockpicking, and bench immediately once you stop seeing doors and chests or once a better thief comes along. And I have to imagine that for a lot of players, he will be - that is, unless they see the potential he has to contribute to the team.
Very few units in Hag in White have personal skills - even relatively minor ones, like the main lord having Acrobat, are very much unit-defining traits. There are some class skills, but they tend not to be incredibly impactful (though we’ll touch on that later). López, however, begins the game with a whopping three skills. One is completely useless, and one is just Locktouch, but the third one on the list is a neat little thing called Despoil.
I feel like Stink is self-explanatory.
Despoil is, really, the highlight of López’s kit. At first glance, 150 gold per kill is almost comically little - that’s not even enough to buy an iron weapon! The thing is, though, that it’s 150 gold for each kill, guaranteed. Once López gets a few levels, or the rank to use a better weapon, he can start securing finishing blows (or even one-rounds against frail enemies) relatively easily, and rack up massive quantities of Coins with it. Even moderate usage of López can end up securing over 1,000 extra gold on each and every chapter.
Those Coins are even more valuable than they sound, too. Money in Hag in White is fairly scarce, with gem rewards throughout the campaign being rare and shops stocking lots of good gear. Having López grease your economic wheels lets you afford a lot of stronger equipment in general, thus strengthening your entire team. In combination with that, you can recruit a unit with Bargain fairly early on (who deserves an effortpost of his own, really), so López’s plunder can go twice as far as it initially looks.
The nice thing about that, too, is that Despoil and López’s combat feed into each other. Using Despoil to get Coins requires you to get kills with López; as such, he’ll likely be getting a lot of experience points, and thus leveling up to increase his stats and get better at combat. And he needs that better combat to use Despoil in the first place, so you’re incentivized to make sure he’s contributing to combat to be worth the deploy slot.
Hag in White has a unique class tree, where a lot of classes have strange branches or weapon types they wouldn’t normally get. Warriors can use anima tomes, for instance, and the two types of armor knight both have magic access by default. As a Thief (the only unpromoted Thief in the game, even), López’s options are Assassin and Artificer. You can get pre-promoted units of both classes later on - plus, dark mages also get Artificer as a branch - so you won’t be losing out on a class for your endgame team based on López alone.
Let’s be honest - there’s no way you’re promoting López to Artificer (outside of comedy purposes). He has no real use for dark magic or Poison Strike, since he wants to be the one getting kills. Assassin, by contrast, gives him better offensive stats, access to bows for taking out flyers and attacking at range, the Assassinate skill to take advantage of his great Speed and increase his offensive power, and an additional point of movement. The last is especially important because maps in Hag in White tend to be pretty big, and enemies tend to start far away from you on Turn 1 - extra movement is great for closing the gap and picking off the enemy’s first wave.
Promoting to Assassin is a powerful payoff for anyone putting in the effort to train López. If you gave him enough experience points to reach that Master Seal, he’ll pay you back by no longer being dependent on your team. Other units don’t need to set up kills for López anymore. Now, he’s the one getting one-round kills to clear a path for them. It makes sense narratively, too - where he began as a lowly crook who was helpless on his own, he’s learned to stand up for himself and rely on those around him to make his own performance even stronger.
On top of all that, López has the power of friendship on his side! Remember the trio of bandit bosses I mentioned earlier? Well, all of them join, and they have some very potent support ranks with each other. If you’re deploying Fango or Begoña (both solid units in their own right), then López being nearby will make them stronger. In turn, they make López stronger, too - and thus help him secure kills to activate Despoil and grow in power. Everyone wins! (Except for the enemies.)
Supports aren’t the only benefit López gets from his bandit buddies, though. The three of them also have access to a powerful Triangle Attack. Positioning with Fango and Begoña can be difficult, since they’re both 1-range offensive powerhouses in their own right. If they’re willing to set up for López, though, then he gets a whole new tool in his arsenal. Early on, the automatic critical hit from the Triangle Attack lets López deal heavy damage to foes he’d otherwise barely scratch, opening up new avenues for triggering Despoil. A trained lategame López, though? When he’s getting kills even before allies come into play? There, the power boost of a Triangle Attack can make him into a monster.
Hag in White’s whole cast is full of incredible characters and units - I could just as easily write a whole post about Apate or Polonius or Vasiliki - but López in particular sticks out as perhaps my favorite. His unique gameplay utility and hilarious narrative role combine into making this unassuming little early-game Thief a deeply compelling unit and character.
Part of what makes López so great is his training arc. For a player willing to look past his bases, his portrait, and his terrible smell, they can watch him grow over the course of the campaign, from a helpless thief rifling through the pockets of slain jail guards to a master swordsman who’s… still rifling through pockets, but now those of the game’s main antagonists and the strongest warriors in the land.
I’d laugh were it not true.
I’ve never quite known how to end things when writing - my past posts in this thread have had a tidy concluding paragraph, but that doesn’t seem quite right here. Perhaps I’ll leave you all in the same way López leaves his enemies:
