Echidna's chapter is so fun! ...As long as you know everything that's going to happen. (rant)

Ok, I know that this is just kind of a "GBA Fire Emblem moment" and all, but I just wanna make this rant post to maybe commiserate a bit and blow off steam so I can retry later with a clear head.

Quick background; I'm playing Binding Blade through for the first time semi-blind--I know the general flow of the story and what the deal is with some of the characters just from being around Fire Emblem for so long, but not the specifics. I'm relatively fluent in Japanese, but reading is my weakest skill, so I'm playing through Binding Blade in Japanese via NSO in order to practice.

So! Just got to Echidna's chapter, and overall it seems like a lot of fun--there are a bunch of different moving parts, about six different factions on the battlefield in total, and a lot of strategy involved if you want to get everything done.

My first try, I've split my army into three to try and clear everything quickly because I suspected that bandits would show up and try to pillage the villages (I was right). But then, to my surprise, Klein shows up in the bottom section of the map. Luckily, I was using Clarine, but... she was all the way up top on the other side of the map, with a bunch of enemies in between. So I was trying to draw Klein up around to her, but his men ran up to the middle, I had to deal with them, and in the confusion the bandits show up, and immediately start running to the villages.

And dang, they show up, then immediatly move, and then they're one more turn away from two of the villages. I'm normally a "recruit all characters, don't let anyone die, save all villages" type of guy, but since I'm planning to do a challenge run after, I'm fine with missing one or two things here and there. But I wasn't in the most advantageous position anyway, so I figured I'd enjoy it more if I reset.

I plan more carefully this time, get Klein, rush in, intercept all the bandits, hooray! All my units are in the center of the map, and the victory music is playing. The pegasus knights show up, but that's no problem; I'll carry Klein over there to recruit them if Sheena can't.

Except Echidna's cutscene plays out, and three fighters surround the middle house, one of them passing through my units to get into position. I read through it, whatever, shouldn't be too much of a problem, but then before I'm allowed to do anything, the dude that passed through my units apparently forgot all about Echidna, runs up north, and 35% accuracy domes Larum. She's dead.

And I know I said I was fine with missing some stuff, but having the game materialize soldiers out of nowhere to kill my units without any opportunity for me to react at all really didn't sit right with me, so I decided to take a break.

And on NSO you can rewind time, but because I was taking a while to read through the conversation with Echidna, I couldn't rewind far enough to do anything about it.

So yeah, knowing what I know now, and being fully prepared for it all, I think this is probably going to make for a fun, challenging chapter to try and get everything done successfully. But spending an hour of gameplay doing very well only for the game to spawn in an enemy to kill one of your units is just terrible design.

Aaaaaaand... Breathe out. Thanks for reading my tale of woe, and have a nice day!