But before we begin, we have to name our lovely protagonist. No, not that guy with the Axe, silly. I mean the guy that's going to be making sure everyone gets through in one piece (or at least trying to). Following a personal tradition with most nameless protagonists, I elected to call him Tobio
. His birth month is September, aka my personal birth month, and this gives him the Fire alignment. From what I hear, alignments actually do have a small effect on the gameplay, but it's not meaningful enough for me to change my ways (iirc it just lowers the chances of a like aligned character eating a critical hit by a small amount).
And so the first chapter begins. Hector, a Hot-Blooded young noble from the region of Ostia, is best friends with Eliwood, another noble from Pharae, and the real star of the story. Eliwood's father disappeared a while ago, and Eliwood has decided to go out and figure out what the heck happened. Despite Hector's pleas, his older brother and head of the Lycian League (Lycia is the nation that the lands of Ostia and Pharae are a part of), basically says PSHAAAWW! to the whole event, leaving Hector to take things in his boisterous, hot blooded hands and support his pal. Meanwhile, some random assassins decided that now would be a great time to try to kill him for whatever reason, forcing him and his spy/thief pal Matthew to take up arms.
The battle opens up with my duo able to either travel north or south, the latter path having more enemies. I elected for Hector
and Matthew
to take the North path, which I figured would be faster and safer. I figure that since Hector's the only one that will be fighting (remember, in my case Matthew's sole purpose is to steal and open stuff), I shouldn't have to worry too much when it comes to experience.
I always find myself to be stingy with my characters preferred weapons (in Hector's case, the amazing Wolf's Beil) so I'm not too impressed with Hector only having a Hand Axe as an alternate weapon. They have range, but they break quickly and aren't very strong or accurate. Oh well.
Beyond a breakable wall lies my first big challenge...an archer blocking the only way through. This guy proved to be unexpectedly good at tanking, eating up 3 turns for Hector as he tried to kill him.
It didn't help that instead of blindly going for the kill, the archer calmly stood 1 space in front of me, meaning it wouldn't counterattack on the Enemy Phase. Great news for a normal game. Crappy news in this case for a speedrun.
Later, Matthew was sent to do his sole job of taking things that don't belong to him, while Hector tried his hand at fighting another Archer. This proved more succesful, and netted him his first level up
.
Upon opening the door that combined the north and south route, the soldiers that were on the southern path decided to move in for the kill. Due to this being a speedrun, I elected to go for the somewhat risky option of ignoring those soldiers completly and going straight for the boss, while Matthew runs away from the carnage.
The Random Number Goddess decided to be a tease at this point, having Hector miss a Soldier with an 84% chance of hitting, only to then critical him on his second attack, which he had a 2% chance of happening.
The boss of this chapter, Wire
, is an Armor Knight with a very thick skin. Even with the weapon triangle on his side (axe's do 1 extra damage against units using a lance) Hector is still too weak to do heavy damage to Armor Knights just yet, so he's forced to use his specialty weapon, which deals bonus damage to Armoured and Horse mounted units.
Hector is able to take out Wire with no real incident
, and also gets his 2nd level up
(and a very nice one at that).
Up next, Hector reunites with a sickly old friend, and our bums get rushed. Will the light from above save the day? Stay tuned!
Character Stats:
Hector
Lord Level 3/0
Str: 8
Skill: 5
Speed: 5
Luck: 3
Def: 10
Res: 1
Axes: C
Number of Turns: ...I forgot to check :P I'll be sure to keep up with it from now on, I swear! Fortunately the game tells you how many turns it took you to do each chapter at the end, so at least I'll have an idea of the final turncount when it's all over.
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