FE13: Chapter 20 and Paralogue 17

[mark_asphodel]

Oh.  So that's the end of the Valm campaign.  Color me unimpressed.

Seriously I don't know WTF that entire detour was for.  Especially in an NoA adaptation that doesn't pretend to explain the whole Doma-and-Mila business.  Um... yeah.  Maybe there's some meta or something somewhere that'll make me feel that all had a point to it, but right now... jeez.  What a letdown.  Look, guys.  I really cared about the whole Valencia Barensia Valm angle and it just didn't work for me.  Nothing about that plot arc was good.  The allies were not any good.  The Camus character wasn't any good[*].  The villains were beyond not-good.  And Walhart just seemed like a total misfire.  I got some neato weapons out of it.  That was about it.

[I guess I liked it when Lucina drew a parallel between Chrom's father and Walhart.  That was a shit-ton of nonsense we just slogged through to make that point, dearie.]

Now at least we're back in Archanea Ylisse and Lucina's having flashbacks to the fell dragon trashing everything and for a second I felt the impact of what could've been a really great story.  And then we went back to being idiots and pretending to trust Validar.  I mean, seriously?  I'm expected to find Robin super-clever just for having an escape route out of this diplomatic meeting and gift exchange or whatever the fuck we're doing now with the Orbs Spheres Sacred Stones Gemstone thingys?  Nope.  Sorry.  The bar for "wow he's clever" is pretty low in this universe.  It's not as defiantly "we're fucking dumb and proud of it" as Jugdral, but that's not saying much.

Then again, Chrom's so dumb he sends out the highly conspicuous Frederick out on a gemstone hunt instead of, IDK, Gaius or somebody less notable.  I mean, I'm sure we're meant to think that Validar was aware of what Frederick was doing because of something-something to do with Robin, and that it wouldn't have mattered who went on that mission, but dude.  You have thieves and mercenaries and such at your disposal.  You wanna scour the land for mystical shinies, use them.  You could say that only Frederick can be trusted not to steal the mystical shiny, but Chrom trusts all sorts of people he shouldn't based on "feels," so that doesn't hold.

Um...

Oh yes.  I recruited Tiki so now she can have funtimes with Anna.  There is nothing to say about that Paralogue other than it was annoying and again I'm glad not to be playing Lunatic because I can just imagine how bad that onslaught of flying things would've been.

Pairing Update:

Got Lucina/Inigo to A level.  He was kind of her arm candy for a while but now he's promoted and hopefully will be a little better on the offense.  Not that he was bad... just that she Aether'd everything to death before he could get a swipe in.  I gave him Roy's Blade to hold so he would feel special, but he hasn't used it on anything yet.  They are really hot together.  

Chrom is a fine piece of work, I must say.  That javelin idea Ammie recommended leveled him right up as wexp goes, so now he's getting in touch with his Inner Ephraim via the Ephraim's Lance.  Can't wait to find Sigurd's Lance so he can get in touch with his inner Sigurd, ha ha ha.

The kids really are pretty amazing.  Severa and Morgan easily earned places on my A-team alongside Kjelle and Inigo.  Gerome displeased me, Nah will be reserved for the DLC beat so I can get her supports, and Owain was strangely fragile in spite of his nice skillset.  Maybe Frederick passed along crappy Jeigan genes to his kid, IDK.  Stahl and Cordy certainly passed on awesome genes to their little hellion.

Um, that's it.  We're clearly into the falling action of this storyline now, and I'm hoping the plot gives me something to savor.

* Possibly the worst Camus character to date.  And by "worst," I don't mean "stupid," I mean I still don't give a damn.

Comments

[amielleon]

Meh, the Selena character was better than the Camus, who wasn't even a true Camus.

Did you get Chrom's battle conversation with Walhart? I feel like it was possibly the best part of the Valm crap.

Also that Tiki paralogue is pointlessly easy if you form a bubble around her with your strongest units and use Rallies on the whole party.

I keep repeating stuff about rallies, but I'm serious, they're broken (hilariously so when you're not going anywhere) and make a world of difference.

[intaglionyx]

As soon as I saw that penultimate line, I was like, Yes, we know, Ammie :I. And then I read the last line and thought, Well, at least she knows.

That conversation was pretty good! I've forgotten what was in that and what happened in the start of the map, but I liked that Chrom made a token attempt at a peaceful solution as a sop to Emmeryn's memory. As for Walhart's side of things, I still don't really buy his character. Maybe if we knew more about his background, or if his appearances consisted of more than "I AM A RED MOUNTAIN ON LEGS. GODS SHALL FEAR ME."

[mark_asphodel]

but I liked that Chrom made a token attempt at a peaceful solution as a sop to Emmeryn's memory. As for Walhart's side of things, I still don't really buy his character.

This. In spades.

I'm used to a villain with a halfway decent motivation-- Alvis. Rudolf. Trabant. Even Zephiel, mad as he was. Sephiran, ditto. I'll even buy the explanation that Ashnard was some personification of chaos. But these were crappy, crappy, crappy villains.

[mark_asphodel]

Did you get Chrom's battle conversation with Walhart? I feel like it was possibly the best part of the Valm crap.

I did, and it didn't help all that much, because Walhart's motivations and such are just not... there. It's not like, say, Michalis or Rudolf. I mean, when bad guys from the NES era come across as more convincing than their FE13 counterparts, somebody fucked up bad.

Also that Tiki paralogue is pointlessly easy if you form a bubble around her with your strongest units and use Rallies on the whole party.

That's precisely what I did. It pissed me off because they kept dog-piling Ricken, who just annihilated them even though I'd only brought him along for staff work with a low-level tome as insurance in case Henry fucked up. I don't know why the enemy fliers wanted him dead that badly, but dead is precisely what they all got out of him. -_-

[amielleon]

Yeah, granted there are usually kinks to work out with the bubble formation (bows incoming, etc). Also it happens to be one setting where Henry and his defense shine. But anyhow, the nice thing is it's so mindless that you can get it started and very nearly skirt by just rallying, healing, and pressing start.

[swanchika]

//Meh, the Selena character was better than the Camus, who wasn't even a true Camus.//

Sorry to unearth this when FE13 is already an old story in America, but where did you see those ? I'm really not picky about those archetypes (I mean, I liked Levail) but all I saw during the Valm arc were the bald bastard son of Don Quichotte and Sancho Panza ; a white-haired Swordmaster whose death I might have cared about if, well, I cared about Swordmasters ; and an eunuch who doesn't even have the voice to match. Was there more, or... ?

[amielleon]

Pheros, the female boss of the castle you take when the Resistance turns on you, is pretty clearly a Selena type. Meanwhile I feel like Yen'fay was set up like the sympathetic but loyal knight you didn't want to kill... Then it turns out that none of it was his own decision.

[mark_asphodel]

"bald bastard son of Don Quichotte and Sancho Panza"

Well, that gave me a chuckle.

[intaglionyx]

Walhart could have been interesting. He wasn't. Yen'fay could have been interesting. He wasn't. Hell, even the bickering and hints of backstabbery between Walhart's two cronies could have been interesting if they weren't obvious joke characters.

The whole thing ended up feeling like a massive detour, because that was exactly what it was. It was an excuse to get Chrom and co. out of Ylisse for an unspecified, but no doubt lengthy, stretch of time.

I loved the second flashback scene. I wish we'd seen more of her native timeline. Hell, I would have liked a small arc of extended flashbacks. Or somethng. I don't know. They certainly could have done a lot of great things with the space they chose to devote to Valm.

The rest of the plot is...I don't know. The game has two endings, and I'm honestly more interested in the implications of one than in anything that happens in the other. You'll know exactly what I mean when you get to it.

Honestly, with about two weeks behind me, I think FE13 falls more in line with FE7. The plot is not the main draw of the game, and as a whole it relies a lot on the games that came before it without really doing justice to them.

This isn't to say that I don't love it a great deal, just that it's very far from perfect.

[mark_asphodel]

The plot is not the main draw of the game, and as a whole it relies a lot on the games that came before it without really doing justice to them.

I just got to Chapter 23 and now I'm pissed off.

When I said I wanted an FE4 remake with the FE13 engine, I didn't mean I wanted the "surprise" FE4 ending recycled wholesale, cultists and all. Boo. HIss. Fuck it.

[amielleon]

Pretty sure you're just gonna hate it more by the end.

[mark_asphodel]

At this point I have out the sackcloth and ashes to mourn its wasted potential.

Still liked the gameplay, though.

[samuraiter]

Walhart: *laments* "I'm a filler arc!"

[mark_asphodel]

Pathetic, that's what it is.

[gilasen]

Honestly, I say at least part of the issue with Valm and the game overall is that IS tried to do way too much in the time it had to make Awakening and send it out. Keep in mind that the future of the franchise was riding on Awakening. Therefore, it wouldn't be surprising that IS put in as much it could into Awakening, even if not all of the story arcs had enough to do with the Ylisse and Naga VS Plegia and Grima thing.