Game objectives
- Emulator used: Dolphin 2412
- Heavy luck manipulation
Note: The last input is at the frame 452729. If you add an extra A input at the frame ~522300 which is at the end of the credits, you get the battle results.
About the game
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is the 9th game of the serie, released for the Gamecube on april 2005 in Japan and late 2005 in the rest of the world. It features 30 chapters, one of them being divied into 4 sub-chapters.
It is notably known in the franchise for it's very time consuming battle animations, which, unlike it's sequel Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, can't be skipped.
The Japanese release has 3 difficulty levels, Normal, Hard and Maniac. For the worldwide release, Maniac mode was replaced by an Easy mode, probably due to its poor reception in Japan.
Maniac mode is basically Hard mode with more and bulkier enemies and even less experience gains, which in practice makes it feel more tedious than hard.
Comments
Specific features of this game
- You get Bonus Experience (Bexp) after clearing a chapter according to certain specific criteria, usually the turn count. You can spend this Bexp at the base between chapters (starting with chapter 8) on any of your unit to level him up. The higher its level, the more Bexp you need, though the difference isn't much until the last levels of a promoted class.
- Also in the base, you can forge weapons from a limited list of basic weapons, to increase/decrease their Might, Crit, Accuracy and Weight, up to a fix amount for each stat. The forging costs are doubled in the Japanese version.
- Units can promoted by reaching level 21 instead of using one of the 3 Master Seals available throughout the game.
- There are 2 types of units: Beorc (humans) and Laguz (shapeshifting beasts). Laguz characters possess a Transformation gauge, which allows them to shift form once it is filled or empty. Laguz characters can't fight and have less stats when they are in their humanoid form.
- Characters can have skills, that they can (at the base) either learn if they have the corresponding item, or permanently remove. Each skill takes a certain number of capacity points to learn.
- The Recscue/Drop mechanic from the gba games is still there, but mounted units can't be rescued. Also, non mounted units have acces to the Shove command, allowing them to push a unit (ally or enemy) 1 tile away from them, as long as they have a higher Wt stat than the target. Mounted units are usually to heavy to be shoved by anything but some Laguz classes.
- Each unit has a biorythm which evolve over time, giving between -5% and +5% bonus to hit and avoid. Enemy biorythm is chosen randomly when generating their stats.
- When promoting, certain classes get to choose what secondary weapon type they will be able to use.
Quick summary of the stats each unit has:
- HP: When it reaches 0, the unit dies.
- STR: Added to a physical weapon Might to determine the total attack power. It is also used to determine if and by how much a unit will be slow by heavy weapons (e.g. the BLD stat from GBA games).
- MAG: Added to a magical weapon Might to determine the total attack power.
- SKL: Increases Accuracy and critical rates.
- SPD: This minus the eventual speed drop from heavy weapons gives the Attack Speed (AS) of a unit. A unit will attack twice if its AS is at least 4 higher than the opponent. Also increases Avoid.
- LCK: Increases Accuracy, Avoid and critical rates Dodge.
- DEF: Decreases an incoming physical attack by that much.
- RES: Decreases an incoming magical attack by that much. Also decreases the accuracy of status staves targeting the unit.
- Wt: Used to determine if a unit can Rescue or Smite another one. Cannot be increased by level-ups.
- Mv: Movement. Cannot be increased by level-ups.
RNG
The internal mechanism of the game is very similar to the gba games, with the next random number (RN) determined by a function of the 3 previous RNs. The two only notable differences are that:
- based on the Gamecube date/time, the game will chose between 7 different initial seeds (instead of 1 for the gba games), and will burn up to ~30 extra RNs after that
- opening the stats screen of a unit will burn a big amount of RNs, usually between 319 and 328, which is the most efficient way to burn RNs fast. On rare occasions (~4% of the time), the amount of RNs burned will be lower, down to 250 or even less, and I used these rare occurence when I needed to burned a number of RNs slightly under a multiple of ~325.
Similar to all previous Fire Emblem games since Fire Emblem 6, this game uses a 2 RNs system, meaning that the "displayed" hit isn't the "true" hit, and to determine if an attack will hit or not, the next two RNs are averaged, and if the averaged value is lower than the Hit value, the attack will hit. In practice it means that high accuracy attacks are unlikely to miss, while low accuracy attacks are unlikely to hit.
In addition to the stats screen technique, you can burn RNs by generating movement patterns with your units, which was usually the fastest method when I was not looking for a too unlikely series of events.
The emulator isn't great to modify the date/time of the Gamecube (you must directly modify it in the movie file), so after testing around 100 different starting times, I picked the one with the seed I wanted and that burned the most extra RNs, though I doubt more than a few frames could be saved from a better seed.
Notable characters
- Ike: The main character, some chapters require him to seuze a throne/gate so he had to get at least some training to surveve enemy phases. Since he is also one of the very few units who can damage the final boss), he actually got a significant amount of training to quickly cap at level 20 and not waste time with extra experience until his promotion at the beginning of chapter 18.
- Titania: The "Jagen" character of this game, e.g. prepomoted with good base stats. She had to do most of the heavy fighting in the early chapters as she was, by far, the only unit who could reliably One Round KO (ORKO) enemies. She appeared less once Marcia was available, but was still useful in some chapter where I needed extra fighting power.
- Marcia: The first flyer you can get, she got heavily invested in Bexp to be the main carry of this TAS, as a lot of the fastest strategies can only be done by flyers.
- Reyson: A dancer, Laguz and flying unit, he can use his turn to give an extra action to any unit next to him. When transformed, he gives back their actions to all allies next to him instead.
- Elincia: A mounted unit who is also the only staff user able to use the Rescue Staff from base stats. Like Ike, you get a game over if she dies.
- Boyd: A fighter available from the beginning, with good damage ouput early on thanks to his access to axes and the 10% crit bonus he gets when next to Oscar (the cavalier).
- Mordecai: A Laguz with the Smite skill, which is an improved Shove command pushing a unit by two tiles instead of one.
- Callil/Bastian: Both are sages with similar stats and utilities, in my case nuking enemies with the long range tomes Meteor and Bolting.
- Geoffrey: A paladin with high base stats, with access to bows and lances. He gets a 10% bonus crit when next to Bastian.
Glitches and tricks
- Forge glitch: The japanese version of the game has a glitch with the forge, where if you remove 6% crit from a weapon with an initial 5% (Slim Sword, Slim Lance, Thunder), it creates a weapon with 255% crit instead of 0%. While it may sound amazing (and it is indeed quite good), for the context of this TAS it isn't that great. These weapons either lack 2 range and are weak (a real issue in Maniac mode), or have long animations and are limited to mage units, and this TAS can already land 4 or 5 low % critical hits in a row for a small amount of RN burning time. I ended up only forging a single Slim Lance with maximum Might, which was useful on some occasions but still had more than 10 uses left by the end of the game.
- Fast enemy phase: If you are holding B from your unit's last action to selecting the end turn option (hence why I couldn't select the auto end turn in the options), the camera will move faster during the enemy phase (as if you were in the player phase holding B), which saves a significant amoutn of time in the long run.
- Dodging trigger areas: In most chapters, some areas will trigger reinforcements or similar things if one of your unit ended their turn in it. However, if you drop a unit in the area and then have the carrier get out of the area, the trigger will not activate. This trick has a big application in chapter 7, and a more minor one in chapter 9.
- Camera movements: When moving a unit from point A to point B, the camera will first center on the point A before starting to move the unit. As such, it is more important to move the camera fast to the point A (with the B button or by opening the stats screen) than to inputing the next movement to do.
Comparison with other runs
There is no RTA equivalent of this TAS, the closest runs to compare to are the normal mode RTA WR in 1h48, a segmented full recruitment Maniac mode RTA in 6h44, and an unfinished Maniac mode TAS up to chapter 13, which should give you an idea of where I saved the most amount of time.
Time saved (in seconds) by this TAS over these 3 runs:
| Chapter | Normal RTA | Maniac RTA | Maniac TAS |
| Prologue | 16 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 | -20 | 27 | 15 |
| 2 | -36 | 296 | 72 |
| 3 | 38 | 157 | 42 |
| 4 | 38 | 158 | 57 |
| 5 | 27 | 287 | 37 |
| 6 | -64 | 160 | 154 |
| 7 | 104 | 864 | 335 |
| 8 | 30 | 568 | 229 |
| 9 | -9 | 335 | 113 |
| 10 | -11 | 539 | 41 |
| 11 | -34 | 474 | 228 |
| 12 | -8 | 906 | 52 |
| 13 | -67 | 885 | |
| 14 | -7 | 207 | |
| 15 | -4 | 163 | |
| 16 | 27 | 519 | |
| 17-1 | -43 | 195 | |
| 17-2 | -16 | 130 | |
| 17-3 | -52 | 378 | |
| 17-4 | 9 | 155 | |
| 18 | -310 | 759 | |
| 19 | -8 | 323 | |
| 20 | 11 | 328 | |
| 21 | -28 | 896 | |
| 22 | 27 | 28 | |
| 23 | -176 | 748 | |
| 24 | -64 | 147 | |
| 25 | -285 | 932 | |
| 26 | -130 | 750 | |
| 27 | -27 | 390 | |
| 28 | -266 | 892 | |
| Endgame | -113 | 417 | |
| Misc. | 429 | 2718 | 37 |
| Total | -1022 | 16731 | 1412 |
Chapter by chapter comments
Enemy stats and biorythms are randomly generated at the beginning of the chapter. Stats hardly vary by more than one point early on, and by only a few point at most for the later chapters.
The inital seed was chosen among the 7 available to get a good chapter 1 enemy phase the fastest.
Prologue (Rout the enemy)
Basically a scripted chapter as you can neither crit or dodge attacks. I had to manipulate at the same time Ike's level-up and some enemies' biorthms in the next chapter. The general rule for level-ups is that I want STR, SKL and SPD to proc every time, as every point can matter, then as many other stats as possible for survability. Ike and Marcia in particular will need enough RES to dodge status staves in the second half of the game.
Chapter 1 (Seize)
The 2 turns clear is straight forward, but I needed to get as much exp as possible into Ike as the early levels are the most important ones, which was done with several low% crit with the Steel Sword Ike got from the house. Oscar also got the Angelic Robe from the other one.
Chapter 2 (Rout the enemy)
Titania wasn't available until turn 3, but Ike was strong enough to ORKO enemies with low% crits thanks to his previous level-ups. Boyd and Oscar on the other hand were barely enough to ORKO the few enemies on the west side.
Chapter 3 (Defeat the boss)
Shinon (the sniper) has the Provoke skill, forcing enemies to attack him if there are no other targets with a better "outcome" (e.g. a kill or the inability to counterattack). He was used to force most of the enemy focus on himself, letting a free path to Titania without needing to fight. Ike must talk to Marcia in order to recruit her in chapter 9, and the Had Axe bandit was manipulated so that Ike could kill him after talking to Marcia.
Chapter 4 (Defeat the boss)
The boss and the enemies next to him will not move if none are my units are 10 or less tiles away from him. With the Hand Axe, Titania could end the first turn 11 tiles away, and still ORHO him on the next turn. The close formation minimized the mount of enemie attacking me, while not preventing Titania from reaching the boss.
Chapter 5 (Defend for 6 turns)
Two enemy archers were manipulated to end their turns on the only two tiles next to my units, preventing anyone from attacking me afterwards.
Chapter 6 (Ike escapes)
Enemy phases are skipped as long as my units end their turns in the forest and don't engage any battle. The west path is the closest to the end and has less enemies on the way. Ike can theoretically reach the exit with only one enemy phase, but it just wasn't possible on Maniac, most notably because either Oscar or Hand Axe!Boyd would need to ORKO the 15 defence knights, which would require at least 5 level ups for one of them.
Chapter 7 (Rout the enemy)
Some enemy stats were manipulated to allow Titania to ORKO them without a crit. All the north part of the map is a trigger zone for a cutscene followed by a 16 enemy reinforcements, including the boss. It is supposed to be mandatory because one soldier (killed during said cutscene) is out of reach for anyone without spending one enemy phase in the trigger zone first, however with the dodging trigger areas trick, I could drop Boyd in the zone without triggering it, allowing him to kill the last soldier at the next turn.
Chapter 8 (Defend for 8 turns)
The waves of enemies coming from 3 different chokepoints. The east one can be blocked by baiting the Longbow archer to go to the front. The west one follows a similar pattern, except that this archer is "smart" and will step back if he can't hit anyone, so I had to bait an extra turn with Boyd so that the enemies in the back could occupy all the tiles the archer could back off to.
The south checkpoint was the trickier one, as there are several mounted units who will move after attacking, in particular the ones with javelins will prefer to end their turn in front of my blocker, so that they can attack and run away the next turn. There is however a Bow Knight with a dumb AI, who will just go to the front he there are no targets available. The issue is that this Bow Knight is only the 7th enemy to move from that group, so I had to thin their ranks a little to allow this scenario to happen. Every unit I didn't deploy earned me 25 Bexp, which was actually relevant.
Chapter 9 (Seize)
I had a lot of leeway since I had to wait turn 5 to recruit Marcia with Ike. It should be possible to clear the chapter on turn 7, however there is a reinforcement trigger zone near the boss which would spawn 8 extra enemies that I can dodge the same way than the one in chapter 7. This strategy requires that Marcia kills one of the stationary Mage, and that Titania kills the boss from 2 range. With their current stats, Marcia can only do it with a rare 1% crit 55% accuracy attack and Titania can't crit the boss at all thanks to his 10 LCK, which is why I forged a +6% crit and +2 Mt javelin, to allow these actions and later ones to go smoothly for a moderate amount of money.
Chapter 10 (Ike escapes)
You can get 700 Bexp if you go unnoticed by the 3 patrolling guards, which is the fastest way to complete the chapter anyway. With my forged javelin, Marcia needed 15 STR to ORKO the boss and get his master seal, as getting it to promote her will be faster than leveling up to level 21, so I had to give her 7 level ups from Bexp. My aim for these levels was to get +7 STR and +7 SKL, as well as finding a sweet spot between lot of stats and a low number of RNs burning by viewing characters stats, as each burning (from the base) costs ~0.6s, which very quickly adds up. After a deep investigation, I went for this +4 HP, +4 SPD, +3 LCK, +3 DEF and +5 RES, at the cost of only 8 RNs burns. Also, since I had to trade items between Marcia and Titania anyway, I also forged a max Mt 255 crit slim lance for later uses.
Chapter 11 (Arrive)
I had just enough Bexp to level up Ike to level 20 and Marcia to level 13. My aim was to get RES on all of Ike level ups, as well as maxing his STR, SKL and SPD, and getting a good level up for Marcia. Since Ike already had high STR, SKL and SPD, it was less tedious to find a good RN path to get these, and I only had to RNs burn once for these 10 level ups.
The chapter itself was straight forward, Marcia and Ike hiding out of range prevented most enemies from moving, and I just had to make sure that the enemies didn't block my path on the last enemy phase.
Chapter 12 (Rout the enemy)
There was few enemies to kill and the reinforcements never got the chance to appear.
Chapter 13 (Defend for 10 turns)
You can end this map a few turns earlier if you rout the enemy, which is usually what is done on normal mode speedruns. However this is maniac mode, with 15 extra enemies and raw stats allowing them to double all but 5 of my units, so it felt more time efficient to go for the pacifist route. While I could just protect the defense tile with Ike, he would still be attacked by 3~4 enemies every turn, and he would need to dodge everything in order to not get healed by the tile. Another issue would be the difficulty/inability to open the chests, as the ravens will waste a lot of time opening them. Instead I blocked the three chokepoints leading to the second boat, and with clever movement I was able to limit the enemy phase to only 2 attacks, despite the abundance of 1-2 range enemies.
Another factor to take into account was the green units, as I wanted them to be dead fast to not have the "other phase" message every turn, but they also needed to never have a turn while low on health, else they would waste time using a vulnerary. In practice, I manipulated the southeast soldier stats so that he had enough bulk to not be ORKO by the mage, and I also manipulated the one attacked by 2 myrmidons to hit them back but still die after the second fight.
Chapter 14 (Defeat the boss)
I had to take a detour to get the extremely important Vantage scroll. The path I took dodged almost all enemy phase animations in a minimal amout of turns. I could clear it one turn sooner by taking 2 enemy phase attacks, but it was overall slower since the turns were so fast anyway. The boss kill was guaranteed as long as he didn't crit Marcia, it was a good moment to get a level up.
Chapter 15 (Defeat the boss)
The desert chapter, and as expected it uses the same rng for finding desert items than everything else like FE8, and not a different secondary rng like FE6 and FE7, so I could very easilly get the items I wanted, namely the Boots and the Guard scroll. For a very minor time cost, Marcia also had the opportunity to get the Silver Blade, the highest raw damage non forged weapon Ike (and Tanith) will have access to until the Ragnell. I ended up not using it at all in the TAS.
Chapter 16 (Seize)
I teached Marcia Vantage and Guard, thie first one allowing her to always attack before the enemy, while the second one gives her a SKL% chance of preventing the enemy to counterattacking. I also got my third forge, a max Mt and Crit Javelin that will allow Marcia to barely kill some enemies without a crit, in particular the 17-4 boss, and the extra crit is always nice when I have several enemies to crit in a row, or if Marcia is carrying Ike since she will have 0 displayed crit with a regular Javelin. For chapter 16, I only used it on turn 2 to cleanly OHKO the mages and setting up a nice level up, as the previous Bexp distribution allowed me to not have to manipulate it along the 55% hit 9% crit attack on the soldier. For the last enemy phase, I had to kill all the 3 knights, else the priest would have healed one of them, wasting time.
Chapter 17-1 (Rout the enemy)
It is highly preferable to only deploy Ike and Marcia in chapter 17-1 in order to save a lot of time in chapter 17-2, as I can't undeploy units between these sub-chapters. After turn 2, reinforcements start to appear left and right and are annoying to deal with, so finishing in 2 turns was my aim. It wasn't certain whether or not I could do it with this enemy density and Ike's inability to counter at 2 range, but Marcia could move just far enough on turn 1 to be within range of the most annoying ones, while still being able to kill the longbow archer and the faraway enemies on turn 2. A big ~4.5s RNs burn was done to get the extremely unlikely enemy phase 1 where it only took 3 extra attacks (2 against the sniper and 1 for Ike against the myrmidon) than the theoretical minimum to kill everyone.
Chapter 17-2 (Arrive)
Thanks to only deploying Ike and Marcia, I could hide them in the forest in the first two enemy phases, preventing most of the enemies from moving.
Chapter 17-3 (Survive for 10 turns)
Incredibly long chapter given the low amount of actions that happened. Ike was hidden in a corner to only take one attack per enemy phase.
Chapter 17-4 (Defeat the boss)
For some reason this is the only boss with different stats between Hard and Maniac modes. His high LCK prevented Marcia from critting him, but thanksfully she had just enough power with the forged Javelin to ORKO him.
Chapter 18 (Rout the enemy)
The chapter where Maniac mode starts to kick in. Compared to Hard mode, there are almost double the number of enemies, most notably 6 siege tome users instead of 3. The generals are also annoying with their high defense, they were manipulated at the end of chapter 17-4 to have lower than average stats, allowing Marcia to OHKO 5 of them, while the high level one could be ORKO with only 1 crit instead of 2. Ideally you would want for Marcia to Vantage crit everyone, but the odds of doing it during the enemy phase decrease exponentially with the number of enemies she faces, so I had to make compromises between the time wasted on "extra" attacks and the time it would take to burn RNs to get a better outcome. I alleviated some of this burden by purposely breaking some of my javelins once all the 1-2 range enemies were dead, allowing Marcia/Titania to finish the rest with the forged slim lance. Speaking of forges, I got a brand new max Mt javelin at the base, but despite that I only had a few uses left at the end of the chapter due to the sheer quantity of enemies I had to kill with it.
The siege tome users are not stationary and it's almost impossible to prevent them from attacking at least once, but I managed to bait them all to be in range of Marcia/Titania after that first attack. The boss has Nihil, preventing Marcia from using Vantage in the enemy phase against him. I could face him anyway, but it was slightly faster to spend an extra turn rather than to watch his ~5s attack animation. It also allowed me to more easily manipulate the paladins reinforcement stats near the starting position, as Muarim and Tanith were my two best units available apart from Ike, and it's unlikely for any of them to be able to ORKO one of the paladin, while Ike has no issue with his Regal sword.
Chapter 19 (Defeat the boss)
Unlike lower difficulties, I can't simply Shove & Dance Marcia to kill the boss on turn 1 because his soldiers are perfectly protecting him from 1-2 range attacks. He could theoretically be killed by a longbow or siege tome user, but I have neither the weapons nor the adequate users for it to be worth the time investment. He was also moving last on enemy phase, so putting Marcia next to him also didn't work. Instead, his soldiers were naturally moving out of the way on the first enemy phase, so that I could do the usual strat on the next turn.
Chapter 20 (Arrive)
This chaoter was tricky due to the amount of time wasting enemies near the boss. Calill could OHKO him but there were only a few spots from where she could target him, and even with 11 move Marcia struggled to reach the throne with all the enemies blocking the path. I ended up only slightly approaching on turn 1 while making sure my path would not be blocked, so that on turn 2 I did a 4 man dance to solve my boss/throne issue as well as getting the Rescue Staff from the village. The base after this chapter was the perfect moment to equip skills to Ike while also removing the time wasting Blessing from Reyson.
Chapter 21 (Seize)
Only Ike and Marcia were deployed to "skip" some enemy phases while standing above water. With the Shade skill (exact opposite of the Provoke skill), the enemies are forced to target Marcia first instead of Ike, which will be a recurring strat to not be body blocked after dropping him.
Chapter 22 (Defeat the boss)
The boss is cleanly ORKO by base stats Callil, I just made an extra step to get the Bolting tome first.
Chapter 23 (Seize)
As you would expect, the great bridge wasn't a piece of cake to cross for Marcia, especially when carrying Ike and without the Full Guard. Before even thinking of to crossing it alive, I had first to make sure that the path was open after each enemy phase, which was easier said than done. I went for a Reyson strat to spend one less turn on the map, which also allowed Marcia to end her turns next to a barricade, ensuring she will not be blocked by 1-range enemies, while there is only a single 2-range mage that she had to kill, which is why I set up one of my forge Javelin to have only 1 use left, so she didn't waste time attacking the other enemies. Keeping a weapon to proc Guard instead of double dodging may have been good, but she couldn't really proc it every time with only 13 SKL while carrying Ike.
I had to kill the first enemy with Sonic Sword!Ike as I couldn't get him in 1-range without another deployment, which I didn't want to because there wasn't any good place to hide, and Tanith was my only unit besides Marcia who could carry someone and not be doubled by the warriors. For the Ike drop, I thought I would have to rely on the NPCs or some Ike crit to open a path to the boss, but with this drop setup the enemies somehow left a path open without any fighting on my side. I OHKO the boss with a max Mt/Crit Silver Lance that I previously forged.
Chapter 24 (Arrive)
I tried different strategies as the most optimal one wasn't obvious. The fastest one was to solo with Marcia and Ike, as the time saved from having a very limited enemy phase on the first turn was just too big compared to my other options. The downside was that Marcia was a sitting duck for the ballistas, and I had to manipulate their biorythm so that they "only" had ~90% displayed accuracy against her, as opposed to 100%, as I needed to dodge one of their 3 attacks. It was very important to kill the paladin on turn 2 instead of healing (his stats were also manipulated, as there was only a ~50% chance he was weak enough to be ORKO by Marcia), else one of the wyvern lord would not take his space, leading to a bunch of paladins attacking Marcia and wasting time afterwards, as well as having a serious chance to hit and kill Marcia.
Now the elephant in the room, the NPCs. They are a big time waster and I needed to make it as little as possible, which is why a lot of them got "unfortunately" crit killed by red units, preventing them from moving ever again (Marth would be proud). I also had to make sure that they would not be low enough for the valkyrie to heal them, and that no wound unit would start his turn on the healing bush.
Chapter 25 (Rout the enemy)
Last rout map, featuring more than double the number of enemies on normal mode. It's starting to be really hard to OHKO (or even ORKO) enemies, and only my very best units can do it with crits. Largo was recruited, and the time spent to do so was compensated by the small time saves he added, namely faster attacks animations and his Silver Axe for Titania. My other new recruit Geoffrey was given the Arm Scroll solely to be able to use the Brave Bow (reminds me of my FE12 TAS...), as even if he couldn't OHKO with it, the double attack animation was fast, or at least faster than my other options, and he could get the double crit without too much trouble with the 10% crit bonus he gets when next to Bastian.
All these guys were basically waiting at the deployment area for the few enemies rushing to them, while Marcia was once again the main carry, though Bastian and Callil also sniped 2 long range weapon users who would have been annoying mosquitos otherwise. Marcia had to carefully navigate behind enemy lines to try to only fight one sort of enemy per enemy phase : 2-range users who must be killed with forged Javelins, 1-range wyvern lords who can only be killed with decent reliability with the forged Silver Lance, and the rest who can be reliably killed by the Brave Lance or the Silver Lance.
Marcia had to kill 5 long range users on player phases, which led to some enemies being very annoying to kill on enemy phase, in particular the boss who must be double crit + Guard (if I didn't break my Spear in chapter 18, it would have been far easier as I would only need 1 crit) and the two wyvern lords with Javelins, who are only ORKO with a double crit. Also, all the wyvern lords needed to be dead after battle, else they would have healed with vulneraries the next turns. All these shaky requirements led to me having to burn a big amount of random numbers to get successful enemy phases (6000+ for the 4th one). Some enemy stats were also manipulated to some extent to make these enemy phases more likely (like the top side hawk getting 2HKO by the Brave Lance without a crit), but I couldn't get every stats as I would have liked to (like the other hawk not getting OHKO by Tanith) due to the emulator not being very friendly with scripts and RAM editing, forcing me to manually try different results from different RNs.
Chapter 26 (Seize)
68 enemies, not even counting the up to 50 extra reinforcements who would start to appear as early as turn 4, and 36 tiles between the gate and the closest deployment slot. The main difficulty was that I wanted to spend as little turns as possible, as even without any action each enemy phase takes forever just to move the units, but the farthest I danced Marcia, the more in danger were Reyson and Elincia. By forcing my way, I could seize on turn 3, which was great as I couldn't protect Elincia for more than 2 turns before having to engage battle with several enemies. Marcia's survability was very shaky, especially when carrying Ike, but I managed to find relatively safe spots where she didn't have to dodge too many attacks.
Chapter 27 (Seize)
The normal mode strategy of rushing ahead with Ike/Marcia while a paladin is following them didn't work in Maniac mode due to the Marcia's inability to deal with these quality enemies while carrying Ike. Instead, I went for a slightly more conventionnal method, bringing my high stats mounted or long range units to assist her while avoiding unnucessary fighting. In particular, I made a big Rescue Staff + Dance combo to avoid any battle against the enemies from the boss room.
Defeating the Black Knight was optionnal and thus not done.
Chapter 28 (Seize)
In case chapter 26 wasn't enough... This chapter had similar issues, but the big one was to open a path to the throne for Ike, as it was guarded by an incredibly bulky dragon (similar stats to the final boss) who only moves if one of my unit is in range, but being in range triggers a reinforcement wave at the end of the enemy phase that blocks the path to the throne once again. I went for a very aggressive strat to trigger the dragon on turn 1, while only having one enemy afterwards blocking the path to the boss, enemy who was in range of Ike. Then Marcia only had to carry Ike in front of the boss. What do you mean Ike can't Seize the throne when he is rescued?
Endgame (Defeat the boss)
On Hard and Maniac mode, Daein (the final boss) has a second form once you defeat the first. He can't be crit, and he can only take damage from 5 units, 3 of them are only available after defeating his first form. Ike previously learned the Wrath and Resolve skills to defeat him, as they are extremely busted in general but even more against him, and activate when the user is below 50% HP. Wrath increases the crit chance by 50%, and most notably it's the only way to have a crit chance against Daein. Resolve on the other hand increases by 50% the STR, SKL and SPD stats of the user, allowing Ike to double Daein and to inflict 22 damage to him intead of 9.
The usual strategy is to drop Ike in Daein's range on turn 1, to ORKO him the first time on enemy phase and imediatly the second time at the next player phase. This strat would work here too, but in adition to Daein, Ike would also have to fight A LOT of enemies in the enemy phase. Instead, I baited Daein with Tanith, who was then quickly disposed of, and dropped Ike close enough to be in range of Daein but far enough to not have to fight most of the enemies. He had to face two of them, which was enough to get under half HP. The last part was to Rescue Staff + Dance him with Reyson, for two clean OHKO.
Possible improvements
- The overal strategy seems very good, you can probably find improvements in the chapter by chapter ones.
- Item management was far from perfect (Silver Blade, Pure Waters that I ended up not using) but very minor in the grand scheme of things.
- Better luck manipulation.
Suggest screenshot :
Any moment when I am surrounded by enemies everywhere