Taller than Zim
#2: Nov 9th 2010 at 1:24:21 AM
Good. Those damn seals needs weapons to defend themselves against evil norwegians!
"No, the Singularity will not happen. Computation is hard." -Happy Ent
#3: Nov 9th 2010 at 1:04:29 PM
I'll admit, that made me chuckle.
Full picture here.◊ Drawn by Saemus!
Total posts: 3
Part 1: Introduction
We open on the victorious Fire Emblem theme as the game begins!
◊
Yes, folks, as my third LB (Tactics Ogre is on hold as I work my way through a long bonus dungeon and I'm currently reading every single book requested in the Goosebumps thread, getting distracted by other books as I do so), I'll be doing my favorite game in the Fire Emblem series, Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals! Or Binding Blade. But my translation patch says Sword of Seals, so I'll just go ahead and call it that.
This game was made before Fire Emblem: Rekka No Ken, or as it is known in the states, simply Fire Emblem; the first Fire Emblem game to be released over here in the USA. However, in the Elibe timeline, this game is actually a sequel, and Rekka No Ken is a prequel. Many children of characters from Rekka No Ken will appear in this game. For example, Roy is the son of Eliwood.
I'll be letting you guys vote on supports and stuff later on.
I start a new game.
"Men and dragons once lived in harmony on this land. However, the harmony was broken when the men started to invade. In a great war known as the Scouring, both sides fought over control
◊ of the continent. The laws of nature were twisted by the vast amounts of power that were released... the Dragons were defeated and disappeared from the face of the
◊ continent. Mankind then began to spread its forces throughout to populate the land."
◊
And now, 1000 years later...
The people of the continent of Elibe have been spreading technology and civilization
◊ for some time now, after the Dragons had been defeated in the Scouring. In the west lies the kingdom of Etruria, which has the highest level of
◊ civilization in Elibe. The kingdom of Bern, with a powerful military and a practical and pragmatic
◊ attitude about life, is located in the east. These are the two strongest nations in Elibe, and the lesser nations are located between them.
There is the Lycia alliance, which is under joint relationship of various marquesses.
◊ The people of the Knights Union of Ilia are hard at work cultivating the snowy wastelands in the north.
◊ In Sacae live various clans which ride through the plains on horseback.
◊ Although there were occasional clashes between nation-states, there was a general sense of balance of power and peace in Elibe. However, that balance was suddenly disrupted...
King Zephiel, ruler of the Kingdom of Bern, has sent his forces out to conquer the rest
◊ of Elibe. Bern's forces invaded Sacae and Ilia and mercilessly massacred all those who stood against them. And now, Bern has shown signs of invading the Lycia Alliance. A youth named Roy was in Lycia's largest territory, Ostia.
◊ He was sent as a transfer student to train to become the next marquess of Pherae. However, Eliwood, who has fallen ill, has sent for Roy to return home.
◊ Just around that time Lilina, the daughter of Hector, had traveled to Lycia
◊ to pay her respects to Eliwood. After getting the message, Roy returned home, taking with him his loyal knights and Bors, a knight from Ostia responsible for Lilina's safety.
◊ The story begins when Roy had reached an area on the outskirts of Pherae...
Chapter 1: Dawn of Destiny
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Some units emerge to surround this castle.
◊
"Boss!" a weaselly man shouts.
◊ "The residents of the castle have hidden themselves!"
Heh, even Eliwood, the greatest knight in Lycia, can't beat an
◊ illness, eh?" the leader of the bandits says.
"Hehehehe..." the minion giggles. "You were right when you said there wouldn't be enough soldiers around here because they're getting ready to take on Bern!"
"Of course, who do you think I am?" the boss arrogantly says. "But you never know when reinforcements are going to come. All right! Kill the guys in the castle while we still have time! Then the treasure is all ours!"
A brigand, a unit able to destroy villages, walks out. "Heh, castles aren't the only places with treasure. Let's go ransack the villages and get some loot!" He destroys a nearby village.
◊
"Master Eliwood!" Merlinus shouts.
◊ Yep, the same Merlinus from FE 7, except he changed from frivolous in that game to a total hardass in this game. "The bandits from Bolm Mountain are attacking us!"
"I see. Blast!" Eliwood mutters in frustration. "If I weren't in this state, I would teach them a lesson...!"
"Mister Eliwood...?" Lilina asks.
◊
"Lilina, you must hide somewhere," Eliwood says. "This castle is going to become a battlefield."
"No, sir. I will fight, too!" Lilina insists.
"Don't be ridiculous. If something happened to you, I wouldn't know what to say to Hector." He'd kick your ass with the Wolf Beil.
"To my father? But..."
"It's going to be all right," Eliwood assures her. "Roy should be almost here by now, so if we can hold our own until then, we can drive off these bandits. Merlinus! I want you to send a messenger to Roy informing him of this attack immediately!"
"Y-yes sir!"
More bandits
◊ arrive at the scene
◊, and so do we, a cavalier coming to meet us.
◊
"Oh, it's Lance! What's the matter?" Roy asks the cavalier.
◊ "Why are you in such a hurry?
"Master Roy! Bandits have appeared and are attacking the castle as we speak!" Lance tells him.
"WHAT! Is Lord Eliwood safe?"
◊ asks Alan, the other cavalier.
"He's inside, defending against the bandits' attacks. But I don't know how long he can last with his illness...!" Lance says.
"Excuse me. Lance, is it? Is Lilina safe?" asks Bors.
"Are you from Ostia? Lady Lilina is in the castle. She should be all right, as long as lord Eliwood is with her, but he can't last forever."
"No... I shouldn't have let Lilina go to the castle before me..." Roy mutters.
Roy's close friend, Wolt, tells him regret won't solve anything and that they must recapture the castle.
◊
Marcus, who was in FE7, agrees.
◊
"Yeah, you're right. All right, let's go! We're going to save those trapped in the castle!"
The map, not including enemies.
◊
Let me explain about stats.
There are five stats in this game: HP, strength, skill, speed, luck, defense, and resistance. Anybody who's played an RPG can figure out most of these stats; HP is your health, strength is how hard you hit, skill is your accuracy, speed affects whether you get doubles and your evasion, luck affects your critical hit chance and also your evasion, defense is how much damage you can take, and resistance is how much magic damage you can take.
Let me talk about this game's leveling system.
Like most RPGs, you get experience for killing enemies. While hitting enemies does get you a tiny bit, you only get a decent amount if you kill one. 100 experience leads to a level up. This is where you're at the mercy of the RNG. You see, in Fire Emblem, stats are a bit random; at each level up, the RNG will randomly choose which stats to level up, so sometimes, you might get stat increases in almost all your stats, and sometimes, you might get an increase in just HP. All stat gains from level ups are by one. Thus, as this is a game of stats, a character can be easily screwed by the RNG. It isn't totally random; each characters have growth rates, represented by a percentage. This is their chance that the stat in question will be raised on a level up. For example, if a character has a 50% strength growth, he should theoretically get strength half the time; however, the RNG is a lot more loose, so he may get way more or way less strength than his rates indicate, depending on if he's lucky with the RNG.
There are some other oddball statistics that I'll explain later.
Roy
His stat screen right now.
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His growths:
Roy is the main character and thus you are forced to use him. He has pretty even growths in everything except defense. He'll usually be pretty evasive. However, he really suffers because of that low defense growth; he'll often need other characters to help him out. He's much like his father, Eliwood, from FE 7. As with all characters, he really shines if he has an A-level support conversation, especially with Lilina. More on supports later.
Marcus
Stats.
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This guy is a pure Jeigan. What's a Jeigan, you ask? Well, Jeigan Character used to be the trope name for Crutch Character. A Jeigan is a character who appears really good at first, but as you level him up, you see he's crap. Why is this? Well, he's a paladin, the promoted form of a cavalier. Because he's promoted, making him much stronger than our other characters, who are very low level unemployed units. However, because of this, he gets much less experience from killing the unpromoted enemies that will be with us for 3/4ths of the game. Because of this, if you actually bother to use him, he hogs precious experience from other units. And even if you do level him up, his growth rates are terrible. Seriously, everything is around 20% except his HP, a measly 60%. In the early chapters, you can strip him of his equipment and use him as meat shield (if he doesn't have any weapons, he can't counterattack and steal experience); however, once you start to have too many units to bring all of them into the maps, dump him.
Lance
Stats.
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This guy is one half of the "Cain and Abel" Fire Emblem archetype. They are both cavaliers; Cain usually is a bit better in strength and HP, and Abel is usually a bit better in speed and skill. Cains usually wear red, Abels usually wear green. They reversed the colors in FE 7 where Sain was the Cain and Kent was the Abel, for some reason. Personality wise, Cains tend to be head-strong and impulsive, while Abels tend to be calm and mellow. So yeah, this guys has better speed and skill then his buddy Alan. In the early chapters, unlike Alan, he can double; that will change pretty soon.
Alan
Stats.
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This guy is the Cain of this game. Not much to say, really; he's better with HP and Strength. I tend to prefer Alan, but they're not that different from each other; they're mostly left to the mercy of the RNG.
Bors
Stats.
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This is probably either the second best or best knight, which isn't saying a lot; I don't like knights in general. I tend to use very reckless, head-strong tactics, so knights can't keep up. He has more defense than his more speedy sister and his more tank-y brother. I'd suggest this guy if you wanted a middle ground, but I wouldn't suggest knights in general.
Wolt
Stats.
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This guy has horrible base stats, but his growths are decent. I tend to just keep Wolt around until I get an amazing nomad -cough cough Shin cough cough-. Archers tend to fall behind with my tactics, once again, because they can't keep up with my, to be honest, reckless playing style.
edited 7th Nov '10 1:30:38 PM by gentlemanorcus
Full picture here.◊ Drawn by Saemus!