The Mind Scroll does not work, no. Besides that, the game functions perfectly on Fixed and it is fun to see what units look like on average. Definitely gave me a massive appreciation for Kairos’ overkill Speed and Simeon’s Res, for example.
Answer
You will receive a choice during a certain cutscene where there previously was none. Don’t worry, mashing skip won’t cause you to miss it.
I’ve finished the game, amazing project, very well done. But I’m thinking about someone, who exactly is Demeter?
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After 2 playthroughs on Difficult. Characters are ordered within tiers, with availability taken into consideration to a certain point.
Top tier thoughts:
Summary
Kyra: Absurdly powerful. There’s a bow for everything in this game, and Kyra has the biggest strength stat out of any of the straight-up archers. Her speed can be shaky, but Kyra with the Solar Brace will generally one-round anything with the Maelstrom, and she’ll probably still double most things in the normal course of action.
Apate: Healing is cool, but Apate really shines with her peripherals. She can help crowd-control with her high res, and in the early game she can even take a whack better than some of your guys. Post-“promotion,” she effectively has 12 mov, and this lets her reach just about anyone for healing or run over for some emergency offense in a pinch.
Fiadh: Wildly strong with zero effort, and joins rather early to boot. Everything about Kyra more or less applies to her, but with the added benefit of starting out stronger and with that +1 range. The other archers can eventually edge her out stat-wise, but they will never provide as much overall value as she will in your run.
Delilah: The game’s best frontliner, with a Hoplon Guard at least. I like the Mind Scroll on her, because she joins relatively early and a lot of what you fight right after is fodder for her, so she snowballs almost instantly. Even without it, she nearly maxes more stats than she doesn’t. Her defense is her Achilles’ heel, but her HP is pretty good, and with a Dragonshield she can most likely still take two physical hits, though with terrain/WT manipulation she shouldn’t get hit that often to begin with. I like her as Swordmaster, and she typically turns out with a good magic stat anyway. Also helps that her support partner is good.
Barlowe: He just fits my style more than a Dancer usually does. I think he really shines on first turns, since enemies are usually right in your face and you can rally like half the army from the starting position.
Conan: The best unit out of the Arran/Samson duos. He’s a bit more durable and faster than Dahl, and I think axes are the better weapon type, plus of course you can plant him on a peak in a pinch. He will eventually fall off a bit and become more of a roleplayer, but for most of the game, he’ll rake.
Jane: Her strength stat is ridiculous. She won’t be quite as good as she would be without some investment, since her speed is borderline, but—an insta-promoted Jane can meaningfully contribute in the endgame. I like Hoplite, since it sort of accidentally fixes her skill problem, and it makes her a good candidate for spare lances, since there’s not quite as many good lance users as there are for other weapon types. She will get hit hard in return, though not quite as hard as like, Scymerius or Begoña. Theoretically, she should be the better unit between her and her support partner Delilah, but in practice Jane is more susceptible to magic than Delilah is to physical, which generally limits her, and she’s just a pincushion otherwise anyway thanks to lower speed and luck.
Demeter: Not super available, but still the best flier in the game. The others can be decent with investment, but they will never do everything quite as well as she does all at once.
Thyone: I never truly needed her, but she’s good to have around for what little time you have her. What’s cool about her is that she can’t really take on the final boss directly like Athos, but White Pool can give you an edge if the final enemies (especially the final boss) are dangerously close to doubling you. Or if Kyra/your other 3-range-plus bow users aren’t quite doubling or damaging when you really need them to.
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Um, excuse me, you appear to have missed the toppest of top tier characters in your thoughts summary? It’s okay, we all make mistakes. He won’t hold a grudge, I’m sure.
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If you’re saying that, it’s because you don’t yet understand. But we cannot use words alone to grasp at things that words cannot express. And you cannot rationalize with logic that which defies it.
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someone else who never really got mileage out of Kairos or Raleigh like everyone else?!?!
On that note, Delilah got absurdly defense-blessed for me on my most recent run to the point she had significantly higher def than Jane, so the support bonuses turned her into God LMFAO. It was bizarre. Like, deadass better def than any non-armor knight
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Wait how do recruit him?
Huh??
It’s funny because if the game had like two fewer gems or cash prizes in it, I think López truly does change the entire paradigm of the game.
For the record, I consider Dark López to be the promotional meta.
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Putting Kairos in bottom tier is… interesting. I’d say he’s the best combat unit in the game. Joins one-rounding things, stays one-rounding things the entire game.
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Part 5 of the iron man starting now! Come on in!
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I think Kairos’s only flaw is how expensive magic swords are in a game where the economy is really tight. I think the Fire one costs 900, so Lopez needs to merc six people every time Father Stabby goes sicko mode.
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I’ve done two runs so far, one of which I never used Lopez, and I still ended the game with plenty of money to spare. I don’t think investing in Fire Brands is that much investment, really, especially when reavers/effective weapons are more expensive.
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Yeah Kairos makes you think you’d need to rely on fire swords and then like before his first one ran out a second one just dropped and I was like, alright cool it’s so free
anyway speaking of kairos because he’s my favorite character here’s some art
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Awesome fanart man
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I don’t think anyone in the first third of my bottom tier is bad per se, I think Kairos is something of a vacuum. Like, Kairos is doing the most total damage out of anyone out of the gate, but he needs to be shown a reasonable amount of favoritism to outpace Delilah, he’ll never pick up a wider range of weapon triangle options like Agari or Begoña, and other units like Beatrix show up and immediately make him look expendable. Like, other units being good or having other advantages doesn’t mean you can’t use Kairos also, but I think Kairos only does one thing really well with enough training and that’s deleting one res-starved unit on player phase—the archers all already do that, often at a brave or 3x clip with far greater flexibility and range, and Coronis hits on res with better movement (to be honest, even insta-promoted Zaccheus probably performs better on an effort-to-output scale). To add insult to injury, Kairos’ main support partner is Hecate, who is one of the few units in the game where speed is truly a problem, so that’s a project in and of itself even though I think it’s easier for Hecate to find her niche than Kairos himself to begin with. Whereas Delilah and Jane come packaged for success and both tend to be more resilient.
Kairos is valuable in the early game, but the devil is in the details here I think, and I don’t really feel like anyone in the hometown squad is an all-timer for one reason or another.
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Kairos is actually performing better for his join than Beatrix does in hers, unless you’re counting her temporary appearance in Chapter 10 in which she carries over none of her EXP or WEXP to her actual join Chapter 16. Delilah is definitely a strong unit as well, and I especially appreciate her having a Leadership Star, but her Magic suffers in comparison to Kairos so she’ll struggle to actually ORKO at 1-2 where Kairos won’t.
Maybe this is an instance of us valuing different things, but at the end of the day Kairos is a unit who joins in Chapter 1 and can reliably ORKO things at 1-2. Basically perfect availability and the best offenses for his join make for a great unit to me. I don’t think there’s anything niche about that.
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This was another banging campaign hack.
The story and characters were great, and played expertly with the expectations set by the tropes of Fire Emblem. There’s a refreshing layer of dirt over the majority of our heroes here without quite devolving into dark/grey territory.
From a mechanical perspective, I think you struck gold with the premise of the game (again in a meta-ludonarrative way), and the map design and balancing absolutely lived up to it. Giving most classes access to magic means the player has fewer safe combat encounters where no damage is received (in the opening half, mostly), giving a real sense of tension that couldn’t be replicated in a different game.
Thank you for the great time.
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Its route split time! come in on in for some more Chaos
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