Believe it or not, the one paralogue that I left unfinished in the last chapter was the closest thing to a “good” one that exists in that group. Go figure. Anyway, we’re finally starting to knock on the door of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and doing so causes some ripples among our presumed allies (namely, the duplicitous snake that is Lord Arundel) thanks to Edelgard’s sneaky tactics and talent for suppressing information.

[Click here to start from the beginning]

In the early game, each chapter would begin with a lengthy, flowery description of what that month meant for ordinary people despite their lives being the furthest thing from the game’s magical, goddess-housing professor/ex-mercenary and his troupe of mostly royals. Now, these scenes are just one or two sentences that amount to “all of your characters killed people and will probably kill again. War, am I right?”

Edelgard has publicly announced her intention of attacking Fhirdiad, the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus capital, but this is actually a lie; instead, we’re attacking a border stronghold called Arianrhod that’s never been conquered. There are many mages present in Arianrhod, foremost among which the Faerghus general, Cornelia. Felix’s father, Rodrigue, is also present. We find out a little later in another video that Arianrhod’s construction was funded by the Empire and constructed by a family supposedly loyal to them during a past conflict with Faerghus, only for that family to switch sides as soon as it was completed, using it to defend against the Empire’s attacks instead. Beyond the underlying strategic reasons for attacking Arianrhod, conquering an area that long ago slighted the Empire and has never been conquered is a good move from a morale point of view.

Edelgard receives new armor from the Empire and randomly class changes into the Emperor class. Automatic late-game class changes aren’t inherently a good or bad thing, but these tend to occur in the better Fire Emblem games. Make of that what you will.

Wandering around the monastery hasn’t had quite as much purpose since the recruitment cutoff point, but it does provide a chance to play out various support conversations (which then provide bonuses in combat when characters are near each other) and learn new things in the process. For example, Jeritza is Mercedes’ little brother, Emile. I obtain a C-level support between the two in the video, and then a B-level support in a later video, and what you learn from these conversations is that he was left behind when Mercedes and her mother fled from his abusive father. Mercedes has long felt guilty about that, but Jeritza was the one to insist that he remains behind, as the group would have been hunted down and slaughtered had he, the heir, gone with them. At some point, he murdered his father and his personality split in two, creating the Death Knight.

Oh, and Edelgard apparently found him and gave him opportunities to slake his blood lust, which is how the Death Knight works for her. He doesn’t seem to have feelings about her either way, but he appears to view their relationship as transactional, and he can probably be trusted to keep his word so long as she has enemies in need of killing. Considering how many people are plotting against her, that’ll likely be a long time.

Hubert has been handing out sidequests like they’re candy, and he has a combat sidequest available this time around that unlocks a new merchant once finished. That’s handy because it not only unlocks something new but also gives us something to do with our second “combat” point. Other than that, I unlocked Shamir’s A-level support and spent most of the rest of the chapter bombarding Jeritza with tea. Byleth reaches a B-level support with him by the end of the chapter. It’s hard to tell if his obsession with Byleth is the result of a gay crush, but he 100% has one.

The paralogue left over from last time is called Forgotten Hero, and it’s a Marianne-centric one. We learn a lot about her—for example, her crest comes from a hero who fought with the original wielders of the Relics that ended up being passed down, but he succumbed to his Crest’s power and became a monster. As a result, he was largely wiped from history and his Crest became a sign of bad luck and impending monstrousness, hence the cloud that’s been hanging over Marianne her entire life. Someone accuses her of being the monster stalking nearby grounds, and so we go to investigate and clear her name. The entire map is filled with monsters (with some human enemies also appearing for reasons that I can’t really fathom), and the goal is to defeat the “main” monster and keep Marianne alive. Which could be hard if you haven’t leveled her up.

Marianne begins the map stranded at the top-left of the screen for reasons that aren’t really explained. Everyone else starts at the bottom-right, but the map is mercifully small and full of foliage to enhance everyone’s ability to dodge attacks. If you haven’t leveled her up at all, the infinite monsters, foggy map, and hard-hitting enemies could make this one of the worst stages in the entire game. Fortunately, I’ve leveled her up to the point where she has access to the Nosferatu spell (so she can heal herself through attacking) and can adequately dodge attacks. I do end up using the Divine Pulse once in this map after overextending Lysithea at 24:22, but in my defense, her opponent hits her twice in a row with a 36% chance to hit. When you factor in the real chance (which is significantly lower than displayed thanks to the way Fire Emblem calculates its hit chances), she dies to an event that has a 6% chance of occurring. Other than that, this map is deceptively simple: all you really have to do is throw your dodge-tanks into the bushes while your weaker units hang back and soak up extra experience from nearby monsters.

Once the main monster is dead, the map ends and you find out that it was actually the hero from long ago who originally succumbed to the Crest. His reign of terror finally ends, you get his Relic sword, and Marianne feels like the curse on her Crest has been lifted. A job well done. After that, I finished up that easy combat sidequest, making sure to get Leonie and Ingrid some extra experience and keep Byleth and Jeritza together to build up their support. Jeritza also has Mercedes assigned to him as an adjutant since that’s an easy way of building up their support.

In the last video, I class changed Jeritza to a Wyvern Rider. I don’t plan on using him as a flying unit because flying units don’t benefit from terrain bonuses, but it opens up some options in case his movement becomes limited by a desert map or something. In the above video, I finally feel comfortable class-changing Bernadetta to a Bow Knight, meaning she’s now a mounted unit. The increased movement range and ability to expend the rest of her movement after attacking should combine nicely with her insane attack range and high strength.

Some time ago, Hubert gave Byleth a sidequest that requires finding flowers. I haven’t been able to turn it in like the others, so I finally just give him flowers as a gift. That’s how you finish this sidequest, as it turns out. I don’t like that. There should be one way of turning in resources. Doing it multiple different ways is needlessly confusing. And speaking of Hubert, his support conversations are threatening in a way that he hasn’t been since Byleth sided with Edelgard. It’s a little jarring, but still better than the “you missed your chance to deepen this bond” message.

At the end of the week, a scene plays out between Cornelia and Rodrigue as they realize that Edelgard lied and is headed their way without giving them time to adequately prepare. She believes that she’s being personally targeted for reasons that will become apparent soon.

This map is actually fairly simple. I did have to use the Divine Pulse once after experimenting with Cornelia’s monsters’ area-of-effect damage (it’s a physical unit, but AOE stuff always seems magical, so I put Lysithea and Annette in one’s range and they both got wiped out—definitely a physical attack), but that was just reviewer experimentation now that I know that I can rewind. A slow and steady approach trivializes this map; there are floor traps that damage anyone who remains on them between turns, but otherwise you can slowly lure small groups of enemies to your tankier units and use the others to clean up. Jeritza’s counterattack ability helps a lot in speeding up the process, and Dorothea’s Meteor spell compels a sneaky mounted enemy to ride toward my units rather than needing to put someone in danger to lure him into range (20:04).

Cornelia remains fixed in place while everyone around her is taken out, and then Bernadetta finishes her off in two attacks from a range that she can’t counterattack from. I like this type of map: there are no ridiculous reinforcements or endless enemies, so you can strategize based on what you see rather than having to plan around the possibility of something stupid happening. It feels like an actual Fire Emblem game, basically.

Lord Arundel shows up to Garreg Mach to criticize Edelgard for lying about attacking the capital and not taking Cornelia alive. He’s clearly up to no good, possessing knowledge that Cornelia planned to betray Faerghus and believing that her death was a waste because of that. However, he casually mentions that something has happened to Arianrhod before we learn of it, highlighting his complicity in what amounts to a shortsighted power move. Arianrhod has been wiped out by magical beams of light, suggesting a kind of magic that’s only been used in the long-ago past. Now that we know that Arundel is complicit and willing to strike out at the Empire when it doesn’t directly serve his interests, the chances of us lovingly lodging an ax into his face have increased dramatically. Edelgard decides to pin the blame on Rhea and the church and limit the number of people who know of Lord Arundel’s involvement. Even our own units who were told about the sneak attack on Arianrhod are lied to.

It kind of seems like we attacked Arianrhod not for war-related reasons, but to strike at Arundel’s support network. He and Cornelia were clearly plotting together, and I’ll be blown away if he isn’t planning on overthrowing Edelgard the second she takes over the entire continent.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses Let’s Play – Chapter 16: Lady of Deceit first appeared on Killa Penguin