"Support Rank?"
Miyazaki opened the character menu in confusion, trying to find the answer. On the character relationship screen, a new "C" icon had appeared between Roy and Marcus.
"C? Does that mean this rank can be raised even further?"
Although nothing was explicitly explained, if his guess was correct, then if there was a C, there had to be B and A as well.
Thinking back, the only difference between this playthrough and the previous ones was that he had kept Marcus glued to Roy's side the entire time. If there was anything that could influence this support system, then that was the only variable.
"So as long as two characters end their turns next to each other, their support points increase and their support rank goes up?"
For now, that was the only conclusion he could make, but that immediately raised another question. What was it for?
A possibility emerged in Miyazaki's mind. He separated the three characters who had been fighting together and left only Roy and Marcus.
The difference became obvious at a glance, on the battle status display, he could clearly see that both of their stats had changed. Every one of their attributes had increased to a certain degree, while both Hit Rate and Avoid had each increased by an additional 5%.
"This is that powerful?!"
Miyazaki was completely stunned because a boost of this magnitude was already enough to influence the outcome of a battle.
After some simple testing, it seemed that as long as a unit stayed within three tiles of their support partner, they would receive these stat bonuses.
The discovery of this brand-new mechanic instantly overturned every strategy Miyazaki had built up through his previous experience with the game. Centered around this newly discovered mechanic, the entire game suddenly felt like something completely different.
Positioning troops was no longer just about considering everyone's attack range and stats, it also required taking support relationships into account.
Just a mere C-rank relationship had transformed Roy into one of the strongest members of the team, and Marcus, who was already incredibly powerful, became even stronger.
Miyazaki looked at the heavily armored knight Bors standing nearby, and suddenly a flash of inspiration crossed his mind.
"You've hidden it well…"
Why was it that Bors, despite staying next to both of them as well, couldn't trigger a support conversation?
What exactly made Bors different from the other characters?
There was only one answer, he wasn't Roy's subordinate.
Although Bors was also one of the starting units, his identity had already been revealed during the story in Chapter 1.
He was Lilina's subordinate, merely assigned by her to fight alongside Roy.
Thinking back on the conversation just now, rather than some abstract concept of "support," it seemed more like the friendship level between two characters had reached a certain threshold.
Just like the character growth rates that the developers had deliberately hidden, these support relationships had to be another form of hidden data, and each character could only form support relationships with certain specific people.
Once he figured that out, Miyazaki stopped rushing things and simply gathered different characters together to test them. The results seemed to confirm his theory.
Among the six members of the starting party, Roy could trigger support conversations with every character except Bors. However, the number of turns required varied.
The fastest pair to reach C-rank support was Marcus and Wolt. Meanwhile, the two cavaliers, Alan and Lance, took several more turns.
Likewise, Alan and Lance, Alan and Marcus, nearly every pair among them was capable of forming a support relationship. That was absolutely incredible, because the stat bonuses granted by support effects could stack!
The characters advanced steadily in small squads, and by the time Roy stood before the final boss of the map, he had accumulated C-rank bonuses from four different allies.
"Huh? Isn't something off about these stat bonuses?"
Looking at Roy's final stats, Miyazaki couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right. He tried separating everyone and standing Roy next to each character individually.
"The support effects are actually different depending on the character?"
When Roy stood next to Alan, who also had the Fire affinity, the Attack and Defense bonuses changed from +0.5 each to Attack +1 and Defense +0.
Furthermore, the Critical Rate and Avoid bonuses changed from +2.5 each to a standalone +5% Critical Rate.
The meaning was obvious, the Fire affinity seemed to symbolize concepts related to offense. Likewise, Lance's Anima affinity provided Roy with a completely different set of bonuses.
"Now this is interesting."
"Dad, do we have any scratch paper? I want to write all of this down…"
The support system was undoubtedly one of the most interesting mechanics in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, yet it was also one that was extremely difficult to notice during a first playthrough.
Because it required intentionally having related characters fight together, often for dozens of turns, just to raise the support rank by a single level. But once that layer of hidden knowledge was uncovered, an entirely new world awaited the players.
Ethan gave a rough explanation of how the support system worked but remained completely silent regarding the characters' relationship network.
…
"Oh, right. Each character has a limit on the number of support conversations they can have. Every character only gets five conversation opportunities during an entire playthrough, and each chapter also has a hidden cap on how much support progress can be earned."
Steve sat there blankly, staring at the list of questions he had carefully prepared in advance before crumpling them into a ball and tossing them into the dustbin.
So after playing for so long, he hadn't even finished the tutorial! And he actually had the nerve to come here and conduct an interview.
"Five conversations per character? So... does that mean if you want to maximize it, you can only establish a single A-rank support relationship?"
Raising a support rank required spending one conversation opportunity. That naturally caused characters to form the concept of "groups."
Three-person or four-person teams that maximized their relationships to enjoy the highest bonuses. Or perhaps one character could establish five separate C-rank relationships, accumulating smaller bonuses into something substantial.
"This amount of content is practically an entirely new game…" Steve muttered.
With this, the entire logic behind troop deployment had fundamentally changed. Spreading units apart had become far less efficient than advancing in tightly packed groups.
Depending on each player's strategy, multiple combat squads could be organized, coordinating their advances with one another.
Even movement calculations now had to take support ranges into account, instead of simply exploiting mobility and running around the map as freely as before.
Most importantly, this was irreversible!
It was also part of resource management. If you ended up dissatisfied with the support relationships you had built, your only option was to reload an earlier save.
At first, Steve had thought the two save slots were rather unnecessary. After all, wasn't a single save slot more than enough? But after spending so much time with the game, his experience had taught him otherwise.
Two weren't enough!
Twenty would have been better.
"What an astonishing game... Ethan, then for today's, "
"Don't be in such a hurry, Steve."
Just as Steve, having run out of questions, was about to wrap up today's interview, Ethan suddenly interrupted him.
"Please allow me to introduce another special feature of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, the Link Arena!"