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Comments
That is the most roundabout method I have heard for dealing with it yet
You just send two tough, mobile units down there (Vanessa if you have upgraded her to Dragon Knight, otherwise Franz, and Seth), follow up with Eirika. Wait just outside of Amelia's range, where she won't move up and attack you but her associates will. Next round, run down with Eirika. Convert her. Pick them up with Seth and Franz.
Alternately, forego Eirika entirely, just send Franz and Seth down, convert her with Franz, rescue her with Seth. Problem solved.
Well you asked about the other 50 soldiers in the context of a racetrack mission where civilians get killed if you aren't fast enough. I already gave the answer for Amelia's pack
Like I said, the way I'd handle that part of it is just send Gilliam or Seth down unarmed to bait all of them, then mob the pack and convert Amelia in one swoop on the next turn. Hell, give her one of the kills on her own squad.
No, Alice asked about that. I asked what the hell Gilliam would do when he's unarmed and surrounded by 50 soldiers in an attempt to not kill Amelia.
Oh. He just sits there, giggles hysterically, tanks hits for the enemy turn because he's fuckin' Gilliam, then on your turn gets healed, picks up a spear, and helps the rest of you bring them down. As long as it's not a bunch of magic or armorslayers or something he's pretty safe. And if it is a bunch of magic you send Seth instead because paladins.
Yeah, but that doesn't recruit Amelia.
Sure, it doesn't kill her, but it doesn't recruit her.
Plus, if you're using Gilliam, just disarm him and walk him straight to the boss. Tank the boss, destroy his weapons, and you can get Amelia to Level 10 on the very same level you recruit her.
It totally does. Amelia charges Gilliam and comes in Eirika's range. Talk, recruit, rejoice, have good times.
If you move Gilliam into Amelia's range, he's also in range of the soldiers surrounding Amelia, who move up. Bam, you have the same problem as you did before.
No, you really don't. Everything mobs Gilliam, both Amelia and not-Amelia, and walks in range of the rest of your army. Gilliam laughs. Next turn you kill everything that doesn't have a "Talk" option, and use said option for everything that does.
At which point, you may as well have just swept in with your army in the previous turn and attempted the same.
If Eirika and everyone backing her up had the movement range to pull it off and wipe out enough of them to keep your new recruit safe, sure. The point of the unarmed tank was to pull them up to where your whole army could smash them as a discrete wave and setup for the next one.
Also, keep in mind I'm used to playing on Hard, where you might not be able to oneshot everything you see. That means more demanding timing in saving civilians (handling Amelia and her adds on two separate turns, or spending a whole turn positioning your army to charge them all at once may not be feasible), and that a charge that leaves more than one loose end because not everyone could close to striking range will probably get someone killed. When you bait things, you can freely handle them on your own terms with a lot more slip room in movement range and no holes in your line, and you're less likely to leave stragglers that have to be mopped up with dudes who aren't ready to smash the next one.
Generally, you only want to take the charge when you're targeting an enemy that'll drop a weapon, so they don't equip it, use it on you, and drop the booby prize they had in their other slot. Most of the rest of the time, aggressively baiting works better in race missions than aggressively attacking or being all that meticulous in a setup. The only difference in this case is you don't want to have a weapon equipped right away.
Well, in this instance, the best strategy is to seriously charge in with Seth and Franz. Seth rescues Amelia and can tank everything, while Franz is tough enough to survive to the next round and flee.
Unless, of course, your Franz is a wimp.
In which case you should just give up.
Franz is a wimp for all of like, three chapters, and then he rapidly becomes a god of war and destruction. :V
Okay, so you've charged with two cavalry tanks (I'm assuming Franz and/or Seth can recruit Amelia -- I thought only Eirika could, but whatever). One is a badass who's now carrying a unit, and the other is an unpromoted cavalier. This is quite likely good enough for Normal because you start getting ridiculous evasion streaks earlier, but here's what happens on Hard:
Enemies are considerably stronger and more accurate, and often have enough staying power to take two characters to kill. Stuff will hit an unpromoted Franz reasonably accurately for like 1/3 of his life (Cavaliers are not crowd tanks on Hard. I learned that the hard way), and Seth has good enough stats but suffers major defensive penalties for carrying a unit which might actually be significant enough to put him in danger as well. It's a gamble from step one, and to do it at all you have to have the rest of your army beyond maximum infantry range.
Best case scenario immediately following the rescue:
A heavily injured Seth and/or Franz waste a turn rushing to the back for emergency heals.
You luck out and don't aggro the squad behind them as well (don't remember the exact setup of that mission, so this may not be an issue, but it's often another good reason not to do a full-on charge unless it's a bottleneck).
The healers are occupied with retreating tanks, and too far back to give heals to attackers that make it to the enemy even if they were free to act.
Half your army sits on their keisters two spaces away from the enemy because it's a crowded street and you could only pack ranks so tightly while making a charge at the limits of infantry range.
The half of your squad fast enough to close that much distance takes out about half the squad but sustains potentially serious damage in the process (VANESSA, COLM), doesn't get immediate heals, and then gets bitchslapped on the enemy turn unless you get lucky a second time.
You may or may not have been able to move up enough people to protect ranged attackers.
Extra turn to cleanup if you luck out on two enemy turns in a row and nobody dies.
Or you could draw the lot of them 3-4 spaces toward you with a character who has both the defenses to survive all of them and no rescue penalty impeding it, then recruit Amelia out from under them while you smash them with the full force of your army. It's so, so much safer and goes a turn quicker to boot because it keeps your army as a cohesive mass instead of spreading them by movement range or ever seriously risking singletons.
Franz can recruit Amelia, yes.
Luckily, there's a total of three enemies there who'll rush in, plus... four on the other side, I think. If you keep Seth to your right, the enemies on the bridge can't get to Franz, and are forced to tackle Seth (of which, a total of... four, can? To either side, to his closest, and an archer on the furthest side).
The result is that you have a living Franz (again, assuming your Franz isn't a wimp and has a decent Speed and Defence now, as Franz should really have enough Speed to double-attack anything on this map), a living Seth, and a way to get out of the way.
You can then retreat out of the way, with Seth taking a mobility bonus from the number of enemies around but still being able to get out of the way.Your army, waiting in the wings, can then sweep in to form a protective wall in front of them, Seth can dump Amelia, Molder and Natasha can heal Franz and Seth for most of the damage they took, and- the actual best thing- the army that forms up on the bridge there dissembles itself. The archers rush in, allowing you to sweep over the bridge with Vanessa to clear out any remaining units, while Ross can cross the water from the north as a Pirate (which nets you the Ocean Seal, so you should have done that anyway).
You then have a three-way attack going; Ross can sweep out the units around the boss, while Vanessa can take out the units on the bridge, and your army can tackle the units with the archers to keep them away from Vanessa.
It removes enemies from their dug-in positions (and thus, the advantage of having fifty other enemies to sweep in to save them), Ross sweeping in from the north saves the village over there that gets attacked, and you have a very mobile unit in place with few enemies that can significantly injure her with the archers out of the way.
It's probably a bit riskier, but it's faster, builds Ross up even more towards being a Berserker with that Ocean Seal, and it's a lot more fun than turtling around.
Didn't know Franz could recruit her, but okay.
Checked the map (and poked an LP of it because the maps I found were all empty of units), and yeah, that strategy is totally doable on Normal. Hell, I remember taking Pirate Ross down the water route on my first run of the game, but I didn't remember this was the mission where it happened.
On Hard, wouldn't risk him soloing all four of those guys. On Normal he's dodging 3/4 of their attacks and killing them in one turn, but on Hard it'd likely take him two turns apiece, and he'd be getting his ass reamed in the meantime. I'd be surprised if he cleanly handled two on his own, and I'd need him more taking out spearmen. I think I saved that village on my Hard run by having Vanessa duck in and out from the water, and took the pirates with my main army as they came from the rear. I probably had to rush Seth deep into enemy lines to save the middle village.
As for the section to recruit Amelia...yeaaaaaah, that just looks like way too much potential damage for an unarmored spear/sword character, and Seth can only bottleneck one space of that bridge (again, if they don't decide to dogpile him instead due to defense penalties). Franz is gonna get a lot of spears and axes to the face, which he doesn't dodge reliably on Hard, and will probably kill the spearmen in defense and take more than just the four hits.
The right rhythm never really feels like turtling, though there is a certain unavoidable amount of it on Hard by sheer virtue of things sometimes getting dodge streaks or just taking that much damage to die. Usually it's a constant, fluid advance where you kill the last couple enemies in a pack from behind, leaving those units at full health and far enough forward to bait the next ones the moment your turn ends. You don't really have idle characters unless stuff just happens to be clear that far forward or you're coming out of a particularly horrendous bottleneck. I might play a full cautious defense on less time-critical missions where stuff can go wrong quickly or every other enemy has a specialty weapon that can oneshot someone (most of the last third of the game and ALL of the bonus dungeons), but on ones like that you can't really afford to dick around every other turn.
You don't have to. Leave him at the edge of the water, supported by Neimi and Tana, and they'll come at him one at a time due to the movement in water penalty. As long as you can kill them in one turn- Ross's attack followed up my Neimi, with Tana ready to sweep in if they were left on one or two health- or, if Ross/Neimi miss once too often, reset your game I guess.
Meanwhile, you press forwards with Seth, Franz, Gilliam, Eirika, and probably Lute, plus your two healers. Vanessa stays up the north of the map for a while, dealing with the reinforcements up there, while Gilliam, etc. head down south to recruit Amelia.
And... here's where I hit a screeching halt, right. The biggest problem is that there's an arrowhead seperating you from Amelia there, so you can't sweep in with Franz and Seth without someone to kill a soldier, allowing Franz to sweep through. You could use Seth to do so, but then Seth can't Rescue Amelia, and Amelia can't run far enough to get away from the soldiers, who will pick on her as she's the weakest unit. Fuckers.
I knew I'd be forgetting something.
Apart from that, equip Seth with a Steel/Silver sword, and he's got the three enemies on the bridge covered (one of the Soldiers wields an Axereaver, so only one of them is strong against Swords, and Soldiers are the weakest enemies here). This leaves Franz facing three Soldiers, all of whom wield Lances if I am remembering correctly, allowing a Franz with a Steel Lance to survive for a turn, which is really all you need. He won't be left feeling particularly healthy, sure, but he can get out of there next round and end up protected by Gilliam.
The riskiest part of the strategy is honestly Ross dealing with the enemies around the boss, as you have multiple Archers who can wound him pretty badly, a Shaman, and a bunch of those stupid little sword-dudes who will wreck his shit because fuck you they're Swordsmen.
See that swordsman right before the arrowhead? During my main advance, at some point I'd grab the batch of dudes up to him (probably while Seth rushed for the middle village), then while the rest of the army is still polishing them off, just have Gilliam put on a bullseye sandwich board and a metal speedo and dance around where that swordsman was standing. It should be far enough down to let all three soldiers and Amelia ring him, while still being far enough up for the bulk of the army to immediately pounce on. If they're dealt with fast enough, cavalry could get started on the bridge since it's a low-risk bottleneck.
There's still even easier ways to do it.
If you're going for the ultimate low-risk strategy, you can have Seth and another high-power unit stand just outside of Amelia's range. The enemies all have the same movement (5, I think?), so standing just close enough for the bottom ones to attack invites them to rush up and attack, while leaving Amelia down there alone.
After that, it's a simple rush job of getting Franz down there, recruiting Amelia, and getting people over to bottleneck the bridge. If you have Vanessa and the archers aren't in range to reach her this turn, then Vanessa makes for a great second; otherwise, Gilliam can be used in support with Lute (Lute will finish off any enemies, grabbing EXP for her and all), or you can go the really risky route and use Joshua and Natasha.
In fact, there's even easier ways to do it- once you've recruited Amelia, you can have Tana fly in from just out of range, Rescue Amelia, then fly northwards enough that the soldiers on the bridge can't reach her in a single turn. That gets Amelia right the hell out of danger, and leaves everyone unencumbered.
But ultimately, I feel that's a boring way of doing it.
Just signed up to marathon (pseudo-marathon?, since breaks are allowed) most of the Mario platformers over at SA. I must be insane.
So, does anyone have any thoughts on Bungie's Destiny IP?
Conceptually, it seems pretty cool. A FPSRPG with multiplayer mechanics drawn from FromSoftware's Souls games. Whether they can deliver on it is the bigger question, because while Bungie have always made really solid games, I can't say I've ever been blown away by them. This project is markedly more ambitious than anything they've done before -- pride cometh before the fall and all that.
I'd like to see this work, and I certainly don't think that's impossible. Bungie are good at what they do. But as always, we ought to take their conceptualisation of the game with a grain of salt.
^^^ In what context?
@Unknown_Entity is streaming The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: http://www.livestream.com/unknownentity634
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122183-Sony-Patents-EyePad-Controller
Sony has patented a controller called the EyePad. It has a large flat surface, which will probably be a touchscreen, with the more traditional controller buttons on either side, much like another controller you may have heard of. Each corner of the touchscreen also has cameras which will allow you to place objects on it for augmented reality stuff. It also has a camera aimed at your face.
Nothing in this post is a joke.
Seriously, is there anything indicating that Sony has had the slightest clue what it's doing at any point following the launch of the PS2?
Eh, as long as they stand by their statement that they're not going to implement any copyright-related anti-consumer bullshit with the PS4 (like having to link copies of your games to your PlayStation Network account or worse), I really don't care what other kinds of crazy experimental crap Sony gets up to.
Well, they did fix that with the whole PS3 slim release.
Except for the whole 'lolnobackwardscompatability' thing.
Which was annoying, but let's face it, at least they made the PS3 much more accesible, and in my opinion, sacrificing backwards compatibility for that is not exactly a mistake.
Plus, PS3s with BC were withdrawn before the PS3 slim was a thing so.
I don't think Sony and Microsoft are dumb enough to block used games.
But remember Lair? The game that was going to be a killer app for the PS3, but wound up being unplayable because it used the Sixaxis just because it was there? That's where I see the EyePad going.
^^^True.
My relationship with Ubisoft is strange. I consider them the worst of the major publishers active today, but I won't boycott games by them or anything. When I buy a game and then discover it's by Ubisoft, though, (in this case, Far Cry 3, when Uplay launched) I swear out loud for a bit.
Funnily enough, I was recently looking into buying an older PS3 to replace my crapped-out PS2 solely because of the backwards compatibility thing (which led me to find out that they started phasing out the backwards compatibility before the PS3 Slim was even released). But seriously, how many more issues do the older model PS3s have compared to the Slim versions (besides apparently being less reliable)?