Fire Emblem

Fingers crossed they give it another shot sometime?

Another AI improvement I've noticed in this game: enemies seem less likely to commit suicide. Several times I've left Camilla in range of some bad guys hoping they'll crash into her and take some of the heat off my weaker units, only for them to either stand still or head for somebody weaker but farther away.

Frederick is really good. Unlike most Jeigans, he doesn't have poor stat growth rates; in fact, they're about on-par with the others. He instead is held back by his high starting level giving him low experience points.

What this means is that by about midgame, your other units have caught up to Frederick, but now the enemies are strong enough that Frederick can gain appreciable experience from them. So instead of becoming inferior to your other units, he "normalizes" and becomes like everybody else.

edited 25th May '17 9:49:57 PM by Anomalocaris20

In Conquest enemies generally won't attack if they can't deal any damage.

Oh huh, that's a Conquest-unique thing?

And distance doesn't affect their targeting; they attack whichever unit within their range is weakest, not whichever is closest.

I know that, but I've been seeing enemies, rather than kill themselves on a strong unit in their range, instead move to try to get closer to a weaker one outside it.

I think Ninjas and Maid will still attack for no damage if their debuffs let somebody else deal damage. Plus Poison Strike.

If we ever get a non-mobile game which features a crossover between the games in the series, I would love to see a "League of Assholes" type gathering of villains. Criteria for membership would be:

• Has to be a villain
• Has to have moral agency, so no people who've been brainwashed or controlled by others
• Has to have no Freudian Excuse that players know of
• Has to be an asshole

Though with those criteria, I'm not sure who the leader of such an organization would be. I mean, you'd expect Gharnef to be the leader, but I'm not sure how much moral agency he has considering that his personality's been warped by the Darksphere.

Roster would probably be Gharnef, Jedah, Manfroy, Narcian, Ephidel, Riev, Izuka, Lekain, Excellus, and Iago.

Assholes.

Makalov would have to man up and defeat them all to prove his worth to Astrid, maybe.

edited 25th May '17 10:19:29 PM by HamburgerTime

You know what kind of character I want?

A Dark Mage or Druid who has abused all kinds of arcane magic, pacts with demonic entities, ect. and looks like your typical FE-ugly-sorceror-monster due to its disfiguring effects, but is nevertheless a good person who's been using it to help others and do good. Sort of a "I take this dark burden on myself so that others don't have to" kind of character.

Also, Echoes question: In Act 3, should Celica head north to fight Blake, or east to fight Wolff?

edited 25th May '17 10:58:46 PM by Anomalocaris20

I would also add in Hilda, Hans, and Lang in there. Still kind of iffy about Gharnef because of the Darksphere, but eh, I'd have him in the roster if possible.

Every time one of the villains is defeated and dying, Gharnef shows up and kicks them while they're done out of malicious pettiness.

Blake takes you towards the mandatory Mila Temple events, Wolff to the path towards getting Est and either Deen or Sonya.

Palla, Catria, and Atlas all yelled at me for going north, and left my party. I got them back, but I'm wondering if they'll do it again if I head north?

They will- Grieth's goth their families in his fortress to the west. You're going to Mila's Temple, not the hideout, if you go north. If you free Est and Atlas' brothers then the lot of them will stick with you when you head for the Temple.

edited 26th May '17 12:21:06 AM by Pulse

They can shove that attitude up their arses.

This is Fire Emblem, once you join my team you're stuck on it even when what we're doing has nothing to do with your motivation for joining.

Tell that to the Tellius games. In Path of Radiance, Jill can get recruited by an enemy boss, and in Radiant Dawn you can have one of your armies steal units from the other one of your armies.

Edit: late night errors

edited 26th May '17 1:35:57 AM by Balmung

For the latter, it's Radiant Dawn not Path of Radiance.

Speaking of which, it still baffles me that some people still think Micaiah is a mary sue-esque character when she's the only lord in the series who regularly loses recruited characters from her side because they're that disgusted with her actions.

edited 26th May '17 1:22:17 AM by RangerJackWalker

Because Mary Sue is a subjective term, and what people dislike about her is her traits that are reminiscent of a Mary Sue?

The one trait that's necessary to be one is being beloved by all, regardless of obvious flaws that the audience sees. Not only are some named characters (that we know are morally sound) disgusted by her actions enough that leave her but also, the only people that love her unconditionally are compared to cult-like behaviour by the protagonists of the previous game.

edited 26th May '17 3:17:49 AM by RangerJackWalker

I'd like to talk about the Archetypes so far and who's placed.

• I think Hilda can fit better as a Michalis, her purpose was after all to make someone so horrible that killing them would be a catharsis... She does have her own ambitions after all. And honestly, despite being one of the leaders of a lot of Grannvale's houses, she doesn't seem as high as Manfroy/Julius' cadres, Ishtar seems to be of higher 'position'...
• ... The Merric needs a fixup, it's a mess and I'm not even sure what are the criterias. I mean, how is Lilina one!?
• Would incestuous unrequited stuff fit a Catria? Since Lachesis' attraction with Eldigan is definitely going to be unanswered, and if Beowolf's Love Convo with her is to be trusted, then it feels like she never got over Eldy and using Beo as a rebound. Another one is Priscilla, all that attraction on Raven, and he gives more attention to that very girly Lucius... and he got an ending with him too, not her! (Even if Erk got it happy with her, he's definitely her Second Love when compared to Raven...)

edited 26th May '17 8:19:14 AM by ChrisX

Merric is by far the worst 'archetype'. People pretty much dump every mage into that archetype.

Because she displays several common Mary Sue traits, such as unique abilities, enhanced lifespan, angsting about being Cursed with Awesome, leading around established characters, and an extremely distinctive physical appearance with multiple traits that are both rare in-universe and not disfigurements (after all, just how often is she referred to as the "silver-haired maiden"?)

On the surface, she has many characteristics that set off many people's Mary Sue alarms.

Also likely not helping her case in many peoples' minds is the Sequel Difficulty Spike, which likely had a fair number of players leave after or during the first part of the game, when it's easier to get Sue-ish impressions off her (after all, during part 1, she does actually look to have a Hundred Percent Adoration Rating).

There may also be some Viewers Are Morons factors at play, like not recognizing a Subverted Trope when smacked across the face with it. Also, ye olde sexism - all else being equal, I'm pretty sure a female character is more likely to be accused of being a Sue than a male character.

edited 26th May '17 6:09:50 AM by Balmung

Thanks to the Internet, the term "Mary Sue" has pretty much become a useless term due to people trying to turn it into "character I don't like," and those who still maintain it means "a badly written character" can't even decide on a criteria for "bad characters." Personally for me, it's gotten to the point that most accusations of Suedom make me roll my eyes since they tend to be "I'm calling a character I don't like a Mary Sue."

That being said, I think we can all agree that a Fire Emblem Mary Sue would never miss a hit that has at least 95% chance of hitting the enemy.

edited 26th May '17 8:07:01 AM by dragonfire5000

Mary Sue has a pretty clear definition to me; an idealized representation of the author with minimal-to-no character flaws, who exists solely so the author can live out a vicarious fantasy. That's the baseline, but severity is modified by additional traits such as being exotic to the setting, being beloved by everyone, infalliability, and intruding upon a story's pre-existing characters (that's the big one in fanfiction, obviously).

Micaiah has some of the latter traits but doesn't fit the baseline, not to mention deconstructing some of those traits, so I would not consider her a Mary Sue.