In Rime, the Dark Knights attacked and were slowed down by the Zenobian Knights. In the confusion, Zapan kidnapped Kachua and bade us travel to Armorika Castle to rescue her. It's obviously a trap, but how could we just stand by and leave Denim's not-crazy-definitely-not-a-huge-bitch sister in the care of a nasty, horny Berserker? So we travel there, on the way defeating a summoner. At Armorika we have a tough fight, but ultimately force Zapan to retreat within the castle. He's slain by Vice, who decides to have a one-on-one brawl with Denim. Before they can end their duel, Leonard comes in with horrible news: Bacrum is attacking Walsta! He gives Denim an opportunity; he asks Denim to rejoin him and help fight back the Dark Knights, in return Denim will no longer be a fugitive. Vice is not happy about this, just seconds ago he was attempting to rip his former best friend's head off. But Denim isn't a simple man, he must decide whether or not his ideals are more important than Walsta's future.

We've been training: we're now all mostly level 15 to meet the enemy levels. I smell some advanced classes coming in a level or two for most of us. Josh, Peter, Logan, and Dylan will definitely hit their target and Jay is not far off either. Hopefully their attribute growth hits high marks. Something came to my attention while I was leveling: stat growth isn't static. Each unit has a potential growth in all attributes, but it can deviate from -1 to +1. So it explains why some attributes are lower or higher than I expected.

I don't want to do a spotlight for a class we haven't been yet, so this is the last unrelated one before we advance. Exorcists are a strange breed: they're the only male class that can use light or "virtue" type spells. They can only use Heal, Light Bow, Starion, and Exorcism. Exorcism is the important spell in the set, it is the only thing that you have access to at this point that can permanently get rid of undead. You see: undead don't die, when their hp is 0 they go into a KO state, when their WT counts down to 0, they revive at full health. Undead are rare, but Exorcists are the only way to get rid of them until you get spells like Banish or HolyBolt. Their stat growth is good for offensive mages, but in later levels they're very brittle. My favorite part about Exorcists is that there are minor story characters who are big parts of an army. An army Exorcist... Anyway, our resident Exorcist is Logan, who has been fairly necessary as a healer, but he'll probably be a Warlock in 1 or 2 levels.

You've passed me in kill-count, meaning you're ready to be a terror knight whenever your attributes match the requirements to be one. I'll probably end up beating you to that, but I'll try to get you some stat-up cards in the battles to come. Your ability to hit enemies from 2 squares away continues to be valuable.

This is a boring fight aside from one detail: the enemy leader has a special class of Summoner. I'm not quite sure why this was put in, but this is a trend we'll see more often as we play. Summoner is one of a few unique classes that the player can't be, they can equip most magic, and have a special ability called "Summon-E," which allows them to spawn in a single skeleton undead. Good thing we had Logan, because we had to exorcise a few. At appropriate level, even with her additional level over us, we still defeated her easily.

It would have all been over quickly if not for the need to get Jay's kill-count up. So we farmed kills for him on this map, the only thing slowing us down was the summoner's skeleton spawns. People kept getting charmed by the witch, which Sagar corrected in the only way I can think of: to hit his buddy with rocks. Gage was taken to the other side of the battlefield by the ninja, who he got the best of. Ashley was responsible for a lot of damage to the skeleton spawns with Denim, keeping them down and out.

Everyone did a good job of doing damage and not dying. Logan got the MVP for exorcising a bunch of skeletons.

I took some time to farm kills for Jay on the Gruborza plain map, since he's woefully under count. Gameplay tidbit: In Tactics Ogre you can trigger random encounters, just like in FFT. The difference is that you only face 4 enemies; in some instances, like this one, there will always be a griffon and a golem with 2 random s-size units, one with a bow and the other one with melee weapons. It took a while, but I managed to get Jay above 20 kills. He's a little too leveled though at 16 with everyone else at 15.

A WILD BONER APPEARS!
I love the name database, they're all weird. I'll have more screens.

Since this is the last real battle of Chapter 2, the battle is probably the toughest we've faced so far. We've got Zapan, who has a level or two over us and advanced attributes, and a bunch of melee units. It's a brawl fest. The enemy army fields a whopping 6 knights, 2 golems, and 2 ninja. The ninja have great bows, two of the knights have crossbows, and the rest just hit hard. I was also farming kills for Jay, so I made everything more difficult than it needed to be.

The first thing on the agenda was to block up the path with a line of tanky guys to protect our defensively weaker units, so Josh, Brian, Gage, Jorshe, and Jay moved up while we tried eliminating the two ninja as fast as possible. The whole battle was a mess of hard hits, abysmal evade and hit rate on our part, and lots of item use. Zapan proved to be the most trouble, because his hammer hit for around 80 damage on average on most everyone, except for Jorshe. Gage was in danger constantly because he refused to block with his shield.

Velika had trouble sticking charm spells and it was slow going due to me wanting Jay to get kills. After a lot of frantic switching around and healing, we took out a couple of the units and began shifting forward, one square at a time. Velika finally landed some charms, but they kept wearing off in a turn or two. One of her poison spells land and forces a knight to retreat somehow, I'll take it! Sagar saves Gage by blocking the side path next to him, allowing us to heal him with items.

Eventually we took out everyone and had Zapan to contend with. I was cautious, so we approached him slowly and allowed him to take damage from easily healed counter-attacks. We whittled his health down and he retreated like a punk. Jay got MVP and became overleveled at 17, but at least he's nearly done with kill-farming.

Here's a refresher on the whole thing. Two countries, Walsta and Gargastan, waged war with Gargastan beating Walsta. The Dark Knights of Lodis attack Denim, Vice, and Kachua's hometown, taking Denim's father for execution supposedly. The three vow revenge and meet some exiled Zenobian Knights who they mistook for the Dark Knights. With them, they rescue the captured Duke Ronway, who makes all of them Knights and makes Denim the poster boy for the Walsta Army. In short order they rescue Ronway's #1 man Leonard. The Duke sends them to Bacrum to sign a treaty of non-interference with them and the Dark Knights. Ronway then sends the three heroes and Leonard to a slave town in Gargastan to convince the 5000 of them to rebel, but this doesn't happen, the real mission is to dress up as Gargastan Soldiers and slaughter the whole populace. Denim refuses, Vice turns on him and Kachua and joins Leonard in butchering the place. Denim is made a fugitive and a scapegoat for the incident, he's on the run. Denim encounters an archer named Aloser who joins him and they narrowly escape an ambush by Vice. They head south and rescue three members of the Valeria Liberation Front, who take him to their leader and explain the leader's plan to assassinate Walsta and Bacrum's leadership, to return peace to the land of Valeria. Denim doesn't want to take part in this and heads to Rime to try and get Lans to clear his name. In Rime they fight a mercenary, Zapan, who wants the bounty on Denim's head. During the battle the Dark Knights attack, Lans is seen engaging a Dark Knight in a duel while Guildus comes to save Denim from another Dark Knight. In the confusion, Zapan kidnaps Kachua and lures Denim to Armorika Castle.

That's what happened so far. Here's what happened this chapter:

Denim heads to Armorika Castle. On the way, we encounter an old woman who has a class that none of us can be legitimately: Summoner. Turns out there was no point in this and we effortlessly slaughter her and her army. At Armorika we find Zapan at the gates, taunting us and being very cocky about his battle skillz. After a hard fight, Zapan is defeated and retreats to the castle. Inside we find him at the mercy of Vice, who is somehow able to overpower the meaty berserker.

Vice kills Zapan for being an idiot and turns his attention to Denim. After some short words, a duel ensues between the two former best friends. During the fight, Vice moans about how much Kachua loves her brother and no one else and about how Denim's father is respected, whereas Vice's is just an alcoholic. Denim tries to reason with Vice, but at this point Vice's evil portrait can't be changed. Before a winner is decided, Leonard bursts into the room and yells at them to stop, even calling Vice a baby. Turns out that Bacrum and the Dark Knights are attacking Walsta now, so Leonard asks Denim to forget the past and rejoin him in order to repel this force; in exchange, Denim will no longer be a fugitive.

Our good boy Denim is no simpleton and has to make a choice: drop his ideals and vendetta against Ronway and rejoin the Walsta Army or continue fighting for what's right?

Does Walsta actually need us? After all, we're just a small force lead by a competent commander. Walsta will be mostly busy fighting off Bacrum and the Dark Knights anyway and not have time to focus on us. And what about those who also were betrayed by the Duke and Leonard? Aloser has a stake in all of this. The Valeria Liberation Front also wants him dead. Will that all be for the greater good?