♪ Life at Garreg Mach Monastery ♪
Hey, look, something new.Adan/Gilbert C.
You were very kind to offer your help, even though this is my duty.
I'm happy to help. In return, I will gladly come to your aid when you need it someday. Though I fear there may not be so many things I can help you with... Could you teach me to fish? Fishing? Of course, I would be happy to. I recall hearing that Captain Jeralt was quite the fisherman. You made a living as a mercenary under Captain Jeralt's guidance. As a comparatively new member of the Knights of Seiros, I was not so familiar with his past exploits... Yet clashing swords with him, even just a handful of times, was enough for his abilities to astound me. You, as one trained by him, must have those same great talents. I have devoted my life to the path of a knight, yet I find your mercenary experience lends your blade... Hm?
Hah... It is good to see children able to play and to smile. Minor addition to this line during Part 2. Even in dark times such as these, children can find joy in life. I never knew you could smile, Gilbert. Was I...smiling? Please...forget you saw that. I do not have the right to such pleasures.
The right?
Indeed... For those we have lost will never be able to smile again. I am sorry. I did not mean to trouble you with such talk. Come, let us head back.
♪ Life at Garreg Mach Monastery ♪
Oh no, dude, are you doing some kind of weird pious penance or repentance thing? Please don't involve me in that, that shit weirds me out. "I do not have the right to pleasures such as smiling" indeed...
Annette's a dancer again.
...Do I have to?
I'm not happy about this.
Every extra fog of war map I have to play on Maddening makes my life significantly worse.
We've got some significant extra initial resistance—more pegasus knights and an extra assassin, namely.If you wanna know how this map went in the attempts you don't see:
I'm pretty sure this is the first actual, proper game over of the LP. To be frank, I think the vast majority of 3H players have never seen this screen. You can only get a proper game over from the following things:- Triggering a defeat condition while out of Divine Pulse charges. This is what happened here—I was down to zero Divine Pulse charges, and Adan got picked off by a seemingly never-ending train of cavaliers. Something tells me most people just reset the game before they hit zero Divine Pulse charges, or if they are down to zero charges, just immediately soft reset upon noticing that a defeat condition has been hit.
- Refusing to use Divine Pulse after triggering a defeat condition. I don't really know why the game lets you refuse to use Divine Pulse after hitting a failure state, but it does. It explicitly warns you that doing so will cause a game over.
- Triggering a defeat condition during the prologue or mock battle. Since you don't have Divine Pulse for either of those, well, failing the map will just give you a game over, pretty obviously. Again, this strikes me as incredibly rare, since unless you're playing on Maddening, neither of the maps put up much resistance. I'd wager there's been more prologue game overs than mock battle game overs, since the prologue's defeat condition is any player unit being defeated, while the mock battle limits it to Byleth and the lord for your house.
So, yeah. Three ways to see the game over screen, one of which is only possible during the first two chapters of the game, and the other two require sets of circumstances that almost certainly would just make players soft reset the game before they see the game over screen. One of them requires consciously choosing to end the game and go through a slow fade out and fade back in rather than just soft resetting, for christ's sake.
You ever think about how "game over" is a weird phrase that, if you weren't already used to it, would probably scan pretty weirdly, and was probably born more out of the sheer limitations of very early arcade games rather than any conscious linguistic decisions? And yet now it's got connotations that go way beyond what this simple combination of two words would imply on its—
Sorry, sometimes I get hung up on bizarre trains of thought like that.Here's our group for this map. I really wanted to take Flayn along for her access to Rescue, but sadly she just really wasn't pulling her weight on earlier attempts. As such, I swapped her out for Dedue, who may not be able to heal, but can take physical attacks without even flinching, especially with the Aegis Shield.
The Fetters of Dromi return to Annette. I don't think they're ever going to leave her inventory.
No major preparations otherwise, so let's go!
Playing defensively is going to get me killed, so let's get a move on.
Yuri gets the very boring job of using a torch.
Finally, a way to get one-rounds without having to rely on crits.
I missed having a dancer.
Pure grit!
Adan moves to this very precise spot and uses a torch so I can get sight on the pegasus knights and reinforcement-producing bishop.
Felix intentionally waits here, to act as bait.
Dedue does the same, but for the southern cavaliers.
Doesn't matter if Catherine is defeated or not, so I might as well be reckless.
Hell yeah, good kill.
Amazing level, too!
Bit of a rough enemy phase.
Shuts off the western reinforcements.
An important kill rewards Leonie with an excellent level.
A bit of a gamble, but hitting these cavaliers with Blaze is important. Four of them hitting Rhea would've been very, very bad.
One of the few saving graces with flying enemy units is that they can't get terrain bonuses, making combat over groups of forest tiles very weighted in the infantry/cavalry unit's favor.
No more reinforcements.
Felix sets up his bait position.
...Godsdammit.
Right, Mercie will stand there this time.
I had Annette dance for Bernadetta instead, so she could do this.
Ashe and Felix also steer clear of the cavaliers. Leonie, sadly, doesn't get to kill one of the cavaliers that Dedue rattled.
Dedue with the Aegis Shield is very durable, as you might've surmised.
Sick miss, Rhea.
Oh, neat, if Rhea's within attacking range of an enemy, she will attack them.Too bad she missed again.
Adan moves down, and reveals a cavalier in the process.
A very good level for Yuri. More like that, please.
Missed crits are less painful than they were before, because I've got a dancer now.
Hell, why not?
Repent from the grave!
...Wasn't expecting that.
I can't lose!
That would've been more useful earlier, my boy.
I do not know where all this Spd is coming from.
Ashe gets to get in on that sweet Hit +20 action now, too.
Dedue's able to reveal the boss.
Adan uses this newfound vision to punch the boss's lights out.
Catherine reveals...this. You can't see it, but there's a third assassin lined up behind them.
Honestly, I don't know what I would've done if that failed.
Sometimes, healers having access to attack magic is useful on Maddening!
Ashe missed a 12 Hit Deadeye, so Annette dances for him so he can attack at a normal range instead.
The enemy and ally phases passed without anything happening.
Zappity zap zap, Double D.
I've already won at this point, so I have fun with things and let Mercedes get a dance so she can kill that assassin. It wasn't very worth it. Every level puts her closer to being a bishop, at least.
Two turns later, with some vision assistance from Yuri...
Bernadetta finishes the paralogue in an underwhelming way.
Those are going straight on Annette.
♪ A Guide for the Future ♪
Oh, that's not going to be fun...Next time: sand tiles...
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