Fire Emblem

On Echoes I think it's telling that my favorite parts of the story where things they created out of whole cloth to add to the remake instead of reimagined hooks from the NES original. Gameplay's incredibly solid though.

God, I am going stir crazy from lack of Three Houses news.

I haven't played much Echoes yet, though it's on my list, but I think the humor is pretty damn on point. Thinking particularly of the first battle when you leave the village and one of the characters (I think Tobias?) just goes "Seriously? We just left the gates!"

Edited by Resileafs on Jan 11th 2019 at 1:46:50 PM

I'm currently hunting for Astra, Luna, and Sol in Echoes by using the Inner Sanctum DLC. I realize that the chances of finding said weapons is worse than finding Fiends in Shin Megami Tensei (1/256 chance for those who don't know), but at least I only need to find 3 weapons as opposed to 7 Fiends.

Speaking of Echoes, I really hope they localize the artbook. I know the artbook's been translated, but I would like to have a physical copy.

The Dawn Brigade chapters are a good lesson in how to prioritize EXP distribution. There's even plenty of nigh-invulnerable crutch characters to help them along the way.

Story-wise, it kinda seems like they ran out of time for anyone outside of Micaiah's core group. There's plenty enough Nolan, Leonardo and Edward convos, but it's hard to come by anything for any other newcomers. Meg's example where, putting aside her joke convo with Zihark, she just kind of disappears. Which leads to some real weird jarringness where she's inexplicably part of the ceremonial guard during the final scenes of 1-E (and then never exists again for Part 3).

Actually, come to think of it, Meg should really be a more interesting case, too. She's a Crimean farmer who somehow blindly infiltrated the Daein border, who then joins the Daein rebels. Said rebels eventually become part of the liberation army and then free Daein in a series of prominent and bloody battles. That's normally prime material for a conflict-of-interest plot right there.

FE: Genealogy Story Run 7PM PT Sun, Mon, Fri; Expert Unicorn Overlord 7PM PT Wed, Thurs: http://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi

I'd really like to see a new game set in Tellus, starting at the Super Secret End of Radiant Dawn where Ashunera and Lehran set out to find a new champion several millennia later.

Maybe in this era, beorc/laguz tensions are a thing of the past, but nationalism is strong, such that a mixed country attacks and harms both neighbouring beorc and laguz nations. Maybe the country Stefan founded is now the most nationalistic, imperialist power, having become the very thing its founder fled from. Heck, maybe Branded are considered super-special and blessed, and Stefanland, with its especially high proportion of Branded individuals, takes this as a sign that they are the best country. Ooh, this could even make for a caste system with restrictions on mixed marriages. Oh, and Ashera and Yune are remembered as evil beings who tried to kill all people, Yune by chaos and Ashera by order.

Nintendo could potentially do a marketing push by releasing HD remakes of Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn around the same time. Changes I'd like to see in those:

• Drop the biorhythm mechanic. It's an interesting idea that's just annoying.
• In both games, let the player choose whether levelups from Bexp work like in Path of Radiance, where the stat increases work like normal, or Radiant Dawn, where precisely three stats will increase.
• Laguz in Path of Radiance HD function like they do in Radiant Dawn, being able to shift to humanoid form at will to save their transformation guage.
• Add the height mechanic from Radiant Dawn to Path of Radiance HD. That mechanic made for new strategic decisions.
• A support chain for Oscar and Titania, because they tend to fight next to each other.
• Have Lanvega appear in some capacity in Path of Radiance HD.
• Having full support chains for every single pairing in Radiant Dawn HD is a tall order, so if that's not possible, at least give each pair a bespoke set of exchanges instead of the generic quotes we got.
• Also have full support conversations for at least some of the pairs upon reaching S support.
• Fiona should start off at tier 2.
• Either have more Dawn Brigade chapters, or have the character gain more Exp.
• Give more Exp for using staves.
• Paired endings for Mist/Rolf and Meg/Zihark. (Seriously, why don't Meg and Zihark get a paired ending?)

EDIT: Got ed. In response to .

I really like Meg, both as a character and as a unit, so it's a real shame she gets so little attention. Plus, she's a big (not plus-sized, but actually big) woman, who is completely happy and well-adjusted. There is a battlefield conversation she can have with Brom in 3-7 (?) where she can't bring herself to leave her comrades, and interestingly enough the two can't fight each other.

I sometimes ponder how the various Fire Emblem games would adapt to TV, and in the case of Radiant Dawn, I would have Zihark fall for her soon enough, to the point that at some point someone would walk in on him giving her a backrub.

When their armies clash, Brom begs the two to come with him. Zihark's conscience finally gets to him and he moves over to Ike's army... but Meg can't just betray her friends. Zihark, crying, begs her to come with him, but Meg, also in tears, is too honourable to turn coat. Both tragically turn away, devastated.

Edited by VampireBuddha on Jan 11th 2019 at 8:33:58 PM

Ukrainian Red Cross

I don't think Lekain's pursuit of ever more power and wealth and such, no matter what it costs anyone else is necessarily at odds with him also being a true believer if you look at it in a Prosperity Gospel way - that Lekain is wealthy and powerful is seen as proof of Ashera's favor, and that he is so favored by Ashera is "proof" that he deserves even more. And then him actually being brought back by Ashera herself would be the ultimate proof to him that he was right all along. He is favored by Ashera above all others, while the child, the false Apostle he elevated as a pawn, that most opposed him, has sided with the "Dark God" hated and feared across the continent.

If anything, his faith and bastardry feed each other.

"Having full support chains for every single pairing in Radiant Dawn HD is a tall order, so if that's not possible, at least give each pair a bespoke set of exchanges instead of the generic quotes we got." The did hundreds of support conversations for Awakening and Fates, I'm sure they can handle the Radiant Dawn supports. Admitedly they are combat support convos, but hey, so were Sacred Stones', and that didn't stop the conversations from being entertaining and lenghty. (Hmm, weird, this post isn't letting me make paragraphs. Did I do something wrong?)

Edited by Resileafs on Jan 11th 2019 at 3:57:25 PM

Sacred Stones has SIGNIFICANTLY fewer characters than Radiant Dawn. I think possibly less than half as many.

@Vampire Buddha: I'm not sure making Fiona start as a paladin solves her biggest problem. Sure, she has a rocky start, but even beyond that, every single map she can be deployed on except one of the two numbered part 4 maps she'll be available for and the endgame are outright hostile to cavalry. They're consistently indoors (-2 MOV, cannot the ledge), heavily wooded (move cost penalty), swamp (completely block cavalry (Fiona literally cannot get from one side of 3-6 to the other), or just so densely packed with enemies that high MOV loses a lot of its utility.

...Maybe they could add re-classing?

"Death's vastness holds no peace. I come at the end of the long road—neither human, nor devil... All bends to my will." -Demifiend.

I still didn't like Echoes/Gaiden overall & if they were going to take that much of a risk remaking the black sheep they should have focus on Genealogy than anything else. The only things I like were Mila's turnwheel, the Deliverance resistance group, & the battle animation.

But I still think it's worth at the very least one play through for impartial Fire Emblem fans.

I get the feeling that remake for Genealogy would take a heck of alot more time and resources, even more so if they decide to add Thracia 776 along with it.

If anything, Echoes was testing the waters so to speak to continue remaking the older games on the series.

Edited by dood9780 on Jan 11th 2019 at 1:13:38 AM

"Death's vastness holds no peace. I come at the end of the long road—neither human, nor devil... All bends to my will." -Demifiend.

Well I was more refering that the conversations being in the middle of battle wasn't an excuse to make them bare bones rather than the number of characters involved.

Holy War is too beloved to be a late and cheap 3DS remake. Gaiden doesn't have ardent fans, so it was easier to just update them to modern standards without high expectations.

I still want them to do an Elibe remake before a Jugdral or Tellius one. Unless the Tellius remake has Ashera turning into a giant dragon or giving Heather a paired ending with every female playable unit in the game, then I want the Tellius remake to come first.

Seriously though, I want Heather to have a paired ending in a remake.

I thought that wasn't possible since Thracia was separate game from Genealogy. You're telling me it's feasible now or am I getting that confusion from whenever someone is talking about Elibe series getting remade?

As for Echoes being a testing ground, I feel like the most of the mechanic were being tested for 3 Houses's systems. And to see if people are still interested in the Kaga era & going by Heroes they are.

I'm not the biggest Gaiden fan, but there's nothing that implies that they took cheap shortcuts with Echoes. Especially with the dungeon crawling aspect & the full fledged voice acting for nearly every character on screen.

They couldn't just add that whenever they decided port the Tellius duology?

Edited by agent-trunks on Jan 11th 2019 at 1:29:21 AM

I don't think I could agree with this simply because Zihark is already devoted to another woman and that devotion is what drives his entire quest for social change.

To be fair—and this is a real small consolation for her—that canyon map is really good for abusing Canto. If she had stats that weren't continually behind due to garbage bases, she might actually do okay there.

Prior to that, I think if she were boosted to Paladin (with better actual bases, mind, otherwise we'd just end up with a Cavalier Fiona with +2 all stats who gains EXP painfully slow) she would be useful, even with the chronic -2 Move. EXP is tight in the DB chapters, such that the pre-promotes are all very useful, despite having worse Move than her. Another pre-promote who is legitimately useful for little investment would likely be welcome.

Don't get me wrong: the map design still does really bad things to her, but even were she a different class, her bases are such a massive joke that there'd still be little point in deploying her.

FE: Genealogy Story Run 7PM PT Sun, Mon, Fri; Expert Unicorn Overlord 7PM PT Wed, Thurs: http://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi

Echoes is cheap in the sense it builds a lot on what the previous games had done for the engine and such. It definitely had a lot of effort and care put into the presentation and making it an overall polished experience. I imagine Holy War would be more difficult to do something similar, though I'm just spitballing at this point.

Right right, I'm the kinda guy who wants see credit where credit is due in his own bias views

Genealogy of the Holy War Echoes should be a full Switch remake. It's way too ambitious a game to be a filler 3DS title.

I think that's the only way they could do a story of its grand scale justice. The added bonuses of space, voice acting and cutscenes means stuff that was All There in the Manual can actually be on-screen and developed. And can we like, maybe, see old Julius instead of just being told about him? Memory prisms maybe?

Considering what they did for Shadows of Valentia with the DLC fleshing out major characters and backstory, I can see something similar done for Genealogy. Plus they might be able to compile Thracia into the same release, which is probably the only way most people will get to play it. I still haven't touched it, mostly because I'm half-scared to in its current form, lol.

Urg... I really don't like reclassing. People say that it adds to replayability and can make subpar or bad units useable in another context, which I get, but a character's class is a large part of their personality imo. Imagining somebody just dropping their career in a split second and picking up another at random breaks the Willing Suspension of Disbelief in half for me. Cain is a cavalier and trained a long time to be one, dangit. He's not about to drop it and pick up a staff to be a healer. I know, a very out there example, but it's my big problem with it in general.

Unless it's to reclass Azama to a physical-attacking class, because that's just hilarious. The only acceptable use of it imo.

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

I kind of agree about reclassing. I like that it opens up other skills, but I don’t like that it Removes how important classes actually are. Like, “want just a bunch of archers and mages? Go ahead!” instead of having to plan which characters are important to your army because of what they can do.

Bases and growths still do that. Someone with 1 Str ain't making a good physical attacker. That aside, Awakening and Fates at least started narrowing things down, with Fates putting even more emphasis on personality. At least for the first generatin, anyway. The second generation inheriting things that may be less appropriate gets a little weird.

FE: Genealogy Story Run 7PM PT Sun, Mon, Fri; Expert Unicorn Overlord 7PM PT Wed, Thurs: http://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi

Yeah, but still with enough variety that you can go “my whole army is Pegasus Knights” if you want to.

While I didn't really use re-classing all that much in Shadow Dragon, I had a lot of fun with it when playing Awakening and Fates. Personally, I love seeing the characters in different classes and it makes gameplay more fun for me.

I like the potential of reclassing for making challenge runs possible. Like putting every unit in their shittiest available class and trying to win with that.

Or just jumping through weird marriage/friendship hoops to make bizarre combinations like Butler Hinata and Onmyoji Benny.

You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!