Fire Emblem

Someone told me the most beautiful man ever, is a great healer on maniac. Is this true?

Sothe should also be useful in Part 3. He's got Beast Killer access, plus the stats to fight multiple laguz per EP.

Eh, not really. He's an okay filler staffer because he's got high base WEXP, but his stats are pretty iffy. Maybe if the final set of maps weren't so Spd-based and didn't have the final big boss encounters wall magical attackers so hard.

Curses, my excuse to go maniac foiled.

I mean, he's serviceable if you want to have him playing second fiddle to Micaiah, but I wouldn't go in expecting him to carry anything.

Healers' only important stat is weapon rank, so Mr. O should be doing fine.

@Redhunter I would call the balance neither good, nor bad. It just felt like a completely different game type than other Fire Emblems. It very much counted on you accepting to use the good units you'd be showered in later in the game and ignore those from the first part.

Edited by Resileafs on Feb 24th 2020 at 12:44:37 PM

Radiant Dawn is rather far on the story side of the Story to Gameplay Ratio. The idea of the Dawn Brigade as a small, rag-tag group of rebels. Their focus arc does a pretty good job of that, but then the Crimean Royal Knights and the Greil Mercenaries start at the levels the Dawn Brigade end.

If you're playing it, don't use Tauroneo until the endgame. Don't use the Black Knight unless you're going for the super-secret ending. In the one chapter where the Black Knight is mandatory, unequip his weapon and use him as a meat shield; enemies tend to prioritise unarmed characters, so you can grind Micaiah up pretty far on that map.

Sothe should be your main meat shield. As soon as you get him, have him pass all his weapons to other characters and send them to the convoy as soon as the map ends. Again, enemies will preferentially target him when he's unarmed, but he's so far above them that he'll never take more than 1 damage if they can even hit him, and won't gain more than 1 XP even if he gets a kill, so it's best to just let him soak up the hits and have everyone else get the kills. Have him steal everything your enemies aren't holding in their hands to maximise his XP; either he or Laura should get Paragon as soon as it's available (Laura will probably benefit more). And yes, both Sothe and Laura should get BEXP priority.

Revelations' unbalancing derives from the weird decision to scale Silas appropriately to his point in the game, but have everyone else enter with the same level and stats they have in the other routes.

Fates is so fascinating to talk about because while the core concept is interesting the execution is FUCKED in so many ways. It's the one FE I hope gets a complete, ground up remake because it really could be great.

Or you know, spin off Heirs of Fate into its own full game. I'd play that.

Silas is rebalanced because he's the boss of the chapter you recruit him in. He joins with the same stats he had as a boss, which is why he's so good.

I wonder what the hell happened behind the scenes with Fates that caused it to be the way it is.

Did someone in Corporate get arrogant due to the Success of Awakening and think they could throw anything they wanted at the drawing board to get a similar level of success?

Has anyone in IS stated they feel Fates is an Old Shame?

I do like Camilla though. As Mr Clemps himself said in his three houses review here (At around 2:35) she is indeed an absolute queen.

@Kuroi: those are pretty interesting options for dancers Ngl. As you said not necessary but definitely worth considering. My issue is that getting to S/S+ riding in a timely manner (on Maddening) might take too long, but I guess if your dancer forsakes every other weapon rank it could work.

Hit chapter 10 of Shadow Dragon hard 5. I have a lot of strong mixed feelings towards it right now. Pretty much after the earlygame, when you get ludicrous tools like effective forges and infinite warps, it's a fun and fast game. You feel powerful but you still have to be on your toes since enemies are really good as well.

At the same time that earlygame really left a sour taste in my mouth. Fighting the first three bosses of H5 was legitimately the most miserable time I've ever had playing fire emblem, they're cheap and unfun as fuck. I imagine the farther I get from it the more I'll be willing to forgive it but I worry the first chapters will kill my appetite for future replays.

Edited by mrsunshinesprinkles on Feb 25th 2020 at 10:51:23 PM

I think the problem lies in the fact that they hired a professional writer, but one who's writing style that does't fit with the games.

That's why Birthright's story feels more like a JRPG road trip than is usual.

And i do recall that there were a lot of writers in this game.

I imagine that after Awakening's huge success, they were actually at a loss on where to proceed and what people liked about that game. Like you can see the whole Child units and Avatar Lord as an attempt to recreate Awakening. Regardless of how little sense it makes for the former to be in this game.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Feb 25th 2020 at 6:46:42 AM

I do like Camilla, though.

It helps that she owns her sexuality unlike most of the ladies of her game.

Agreed, Camilla is one of Fate's best girls.

She's pretty much a better Tharja.

Yeah, not fond of Tharja, but Rhajat is actually a better executed version of her.

It helps that Camilla has an actual reason to care for Corrin while Tharja is just attracted to the Grima in Robin.

I find it funny that Hubert is the closest analogue to Tharja and Camilla. He even has the creep factor of the former going for him, and is one of the only Black Mages like the both of them.

While we'll never know for sure, we can make educated guesses as to Fates' development. Simply put, no one expected Awakening to be the hit it was, and the devs didn't understand why when, in their minds, they hadn't done anything that out of the ordinary, just made a Fire Emblem game.

Because of wanting to replicate its success, Fates had a lot of decisions that were taken because of Awakening, even if it made no narrative sense in this new game: characters were given child units or were reworked into child units, the lord character was turned into a customizable Avatar, and characters that won a popularity poll in Awakening reappeared in some way in Fates.

We know from promotional material and art books that the plan was originally to have Corrin (male) choose between three paths of adopted family, blood family or neither as a Child of Two Worlds, so it's not that Revelations was thought of last, but rather that, due to being the only true DLC route, it was balanced last, and it was easier to use the game's existing recruiting values and modify them a bit instead of setting new values just for an extra route (and it is an extra route, since you need a preexisting one as your base game).

aaah, but Hubert isn't trying to sleep with Edelgard as Dorathea mockingly accuses him of, and has well reasoned arguments against Rhea in his supports. He genuinely respects and admires Edelgard as a person, and can play wingman towards Byleth, despite also having feelings for Edelgard, he puts her first before his own feelings and hides his feelings for her to boot. And plans ahead in certain scenarios to ensure justice is delivered. What a guy. I'm sure he and Camilla would enjoy each other's company in a civil sort of way. Like how Camilla is quite mature in her support with Kaze and Odin.

Plus he has an awesome evil laugh and cool looking outfit. He's more heroic or less evil Gharnef than Tharja or Camilla.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Feb 25th 2020 at 7:08:21 AM

They also didn’t originally plan for a third route, but it ended up happening because the writer got inspired and had free time to produce it.

Some of the early notes and implications thereof are fascinating to consider. Like the fact Kagero was meant to be the elder Hoshidan princess, but the artist created Hinoka on a whim and requested she get the role (gives more context into Kotaro taking a random retainer hostage on every route,,even if it doesn’t quite explain why he never thought to use her as a meat shield; arrogance and pride, I suppose. Not to mention the Hoshidan royals’ varying hair colours, as Takumi would also have been a red-head like his sisters... instead of silver-haired). Might also imply that Saizo and Orochi were intended to be a retainer pairing, who knows about Reina... Or the fact that Corrin was apparently NOT an Avatar to start, male by default, and had Mikoto’s hair instead of explicably copying Robin’s colouring in their default look.

So many questions, so few answers...

Edited by CaellachTigerEye on Feb 26th 2020 at 2:20:20 AM

Was the concept of advertising a Fire Emblem game truly lost on them?

Speaking off, how was the Tellius games's ads?

Edited by RedHunter543 on Feb 25th 2020 at 7:31:15 AM

How was the advertising of Awakening in Japan? I heard about Awakening after it got released in Japan, so I didn't pay attention to the amount of advertising it was getting in its home country.

...Man, thinking of Awakening makes me feel kind of old now. I remember going to the local bookstore and paging through the current issues of Nintendo Power to see if there were any announcements of a release date in the West. And now I'm back to missing the Nintendo Power magazine.

I do not recall a single Fire Emblem ever getting ads outside of Nintendo Power. I suspect that the devs just don't think Americans enjoy these games and just don't bother to tell them about it. It feels like a common thought among Japanese devs who never consider that they indeed have a Western audience. Maybe because they want to make the types of games and stories they like and think the culture shock will be too big to make real efforts to advertise to the American market.

Blazing Blade got a...bizarre commercial ad, which was probably put together by people who had zero knowledge of the game outside of “pseudo-medieval setting.” It’s memetic now.

Blazing Blade apparently did fairly well and is in the higher percentage of FE sales outside of when the series started getting good advertising (Awakening and later). Somehow I don’t think that commercial was the reason though.