>>26644546Okay, so. I'm no war tactician and I have no idea how battle formations work or anything like that. But I did give that fight a read and tried to make sense of it as best as I could. I don't think it was a bad fight, but I admittedly wasn't really blown away by it either. I'll be speaking in terms of entertaining the reader, instead of how accurate it would be to a historical fight. Best to speak on the things I'm more knowledgeable on, I feel.
The enemy never felt cunning nor powerful, so it was difficult to read it with the belief that Pomerlane could lose this fight at all. Now, of course, I'm not saying this because Pomerlane is overpowered in any way. If he was a perfectly mediocre warlord my perception of the fight wouldn't really change. The enemy is just too flat in nature and, in a few cases, just disappointing.
Donabella's group being wiped out right away was simply... There. I don't have any complaints, but there's not many compliments I can give either. It was just something that happened during the fight.
Labienius's charge was actually quite nice. It was good to see Pomerlane on his toes. Supposedly. My issue with this is that we're just told that Pomerlane was surprised. There wasn't any danger to it. It wasn't like his lack of presence at the dam would cause an issue, so him moving to counter Labienius just felt like it was an obvious move. Just pop this other guy in charge while you go take care of that mess.
Cursor's fleet was when I first started to feel really iffy on things. Like with Donabella's group, he was simply taken out. It felt like there was very little resistance on his side, they simply threw some fireboats at him and then filled his fleet with grapeshots. I think it would've been more interesting if the fleet hadn't gone into hysteria, but instead actually listened to Cursor's instructions and stayed in formation.
Labienius on land was somewhat impressive, but still didn't feel right. Pomerlane losing his eye doesn't feel very warranted, as we haven't seen the enemy do anything really powerful yet. We're told in a line or two that he supposedly defeated an entire group, but we're just told that. Labienius is written as a powerful man, but we're given no proof to back up his strength. Pomerlane's our protag, an injury like that should be built up to with some suspense or action.
Labienius's death was nice. I don't really have any issues with it, Pomerlane bested him in combat and that was that. Cutting off his head was a good move and I can believe it demoralized all who saw it.
I'm not sure if it was great to have the whole army essentially given up at that point, though. Some would flee or surrender, but the way it is written leads me to believe that this is the entire army that's finished. Wouldn't there be some groups still willing to fight until the bitter end? Some leaders to quickly jump up and rally some men to fight back?
The ending of the naval fight was just... Expected. They stood no chance, it felt as if it was a total wipeout. A clean sweep with near zero casualties on Pomerlane's side.
Overall I would say it was a straightforward fight. Pomerlane simply either saw through the enemy's plans beforehand or was smart enough to outwit them on the spot. Ryuguards being the people of Finana, I would have expected them to have a much stronger navy. An impressive, proud navy that would be able to crush most opposition. This was not the case, as made evidence by how they were easily beatable. Labienius was perhaps the most interesting segment, yet it still didn't feel as if Pomerlane's strategy was tested. Everything went more or less according to plan. That's my point of view as someone without much knowledge of historical combat, at least.