Emerald Ink

This thread started out shaming a fictional character for having several potential love interests and we're even attempting to have a civil conversation about it? I'm surprised this thread didn't get locked on principle. Camilla, and similarly most Fire Emblem cast members (not just female), have several potential supports despite having at least one individual they've potentially already fallen for. This does not make them less of individuals because they found one of those options to be the one that called to them the loudest.

That is adorable. Have we seen Camilla's supports yet?

Well, that was long and painful to read through. At this point I'm very confused regarding the story and character backgrounds of this game. It's certainly interesting, but some of the extra "fanservice" features are getting to be a bit much for me. Surprised there are so many incest fans here though.

I don't understand why everyone thinks that Nowi is pedobait. The girl is well over a thousand years old, even if she doesn't look or act like it - everyone ELSE is pedobait for HER (which if I remember correctly she actually brings up a couple times). Maribelle, Ricken, Donnel, and Lissa aren't any more pedobait-y than she is, either and Maribelle/Frederick is actually one of my favorite supports for both characters. Honestly though, I'd rather add supports to the game than take them out. I feel like a lot of them could've used a bit more polish, but I don't think that any of them deserve to be removed altogether.

Training up a Knight or General is WAY more tedious than training up an Archer - I'd say pass down Luna or Pavaise.

If all the kids are recruited, I think this is looking like the list of "worst kids" Maiden!Lucina Vaike!Laurent Frederick!Kjelle Gregor!Inigo Kellam!Owain Gaius!Cynthia Ricken!Gerome Libra!Yarne Virion!Noire Donnel!Severa Stahl!Brady Lon'qu!Nah With Henry getting left single. It's pretty much impossible to fuck up M!Morgan, though.

(EI's boyfriend here) Am I the only one who actually likes Walhart and the Valm arc? I mean, I recognize that it has very little connection with the rest of the story, but I still enjoyed playing through it. The Mila Tree and Fort Steiger are actually pretty decent levels. But on the topic of Walhart, it helped when I considered him to be a crimson Doctor Doom. Booming voice, iron-fist ruling, more intelligent than his outfit implies, imperious tyrannical despot, etc. And who doesn't love Doctor Doom? Okay, don't answer that one. I'm going to say that I was first introduced to Fire Emblem in the 4th grade when a friend got it. I'm guessing it was Blazing Sword but for the life of me I have never figured out which chapter I saw him playing. It wasn't until 9th grade that I finally got to play the series, starting with Sacred Stones. Honestly, SS kinda ruined Blazing Sword for me the first time through. The characters were better, I loved the overworld map, and the Tower was great for getting supports and levels on characters like Amelia and Ewan. I eventually warmed up to Blazing Sword and began to see the flaws in how Sacred Stones was designed, but I find both games to be vey good. Their differences make them stand apart from each other and give a more unique performance. Awakening is very much in the same vein. Yes, it lacks some things that veterans of the series are used to, but it also took the effort to include a number of new things. Awakening, at least to me, feels just as much like Fire Emblem as those first two games I played (sadly, I never got to play the Tellius series). Yes, Awakening has some stumbles in the story and I do wish that mission objectives and battle design were more varied (I remember Cog of Destiny, Battle Before Dawn, Last Hope, and Revolt at Carcino with fondness), but I'd still highly recommend the game for the experience that it does provide. Let me put it into note form. Please note that I have played the game on all difficulties but Lunatic+. I have finished three full runthroughs, and have lurked here for more hours than I care to admit. Overall play time is 261 hours and 8 minutes. Pros: Awakening is a unique Fire Emblem experience with new mechanics that make gameplay enjoyable and fresh. The characters, while tropey, are very memorable and I'd be surprised if none of them left a positive impression. There are literal hours worth of optional conversations that let you become more attached to this ragtag band of heroes. The art direction for armor is a little... odd, but the rest of the game looks very good and the 3D is surprisingly effective on some maps. Also, I still love all the cutscenes because of how few there are and how epic most of them are in scope. The game offers the best DLC setup I've seen in a long time and I found every single one of them worth purchasing. And I've gotten my money's worth on more than a few several times over. The game offers tons of replay value in the form of different Avatar options, support options, team makeup, reclassing, and to continue to challenge yourself through raised difficulty or self-induced challenges (I went through most of Lunatic with only the House of Ylisse). Even after you've beaten then game you may still find hours of enjoyment in battling old characters through spotpass or battling your friends on streetpass, or just messing around on the overworld and wrapping up paralogues. My second file has about 75 hours on it alone. Making your Avatar is awesome and I love it. For the first time in, I think, EVER you can finally max out your units and class them however you want. And that is wonderful. Cons As stated, I miss the maps where you were forced to withstand a seige of units or had to hold out for a number of turns, or where the direction you were moving across the map varied due to other circumstances. Let's take Revolt at Carcino. You start on the same side of the map as the boss, but if you want to get the recruitable units you need to charge down through the canyon and held defend them from the waves coming up from the south before turning back north to defeat Pablo. I can't think of a single Awakening map that is set up like this. For every favorite character there is a despised one. For every Legault there is a Serra. You may find yourself outright ignoring some of the characters because you find them annoying. Thankfully, the cast is plenty large so this relatively minor. The story does stumble every now and then and sometimes you have to question the wisdom of the characters. It didn't bother me but it seems to be something that bugged a lot of people. I will say though that the game does give off the impression of being a love letter to the series as a whole at times and that may be the explanation for some of the odder moments. Some characters are really flat and forgettable. Shame. The bosses are pretty much generic doomsday villains at first glance but YMMV on how bad that is. Not everyone can be Shakespearean. The game is HILARIOUSLY easy to break. Galefore, armsthrift, Nostferatu, etc. No one is forcing you to use these options, but if you do the game becomes so much easier. Speaking of, with the exception of the latter two difficulties I'd rank the game around Sacred Stones in difficulty. On the lowest difficulty you can almost literally walk over everyone. Because of the new mechanics introduced and the differing art styles it could be difficult for new players to go back to older games in the series. The stories are debatably better (and that's a serious debate I will not partake in), but the game plays differently due to lack of pair ups and lower stats. Also, most games in the series are pretty linear. Overall, the biggest shortcoming for the game IMO is the lack of map variety in both design and objective. Hopefully this is remedied in the next iteration of the series. So, those are my thoughts on the game. I had a blast playing it, I still have a blast playing it, and I'll probably play it again sometime in the future. If what I've said is appealing, go for it. I personally think it is special enough to warrant at least a playthrough. 12 might be excessive though.

I definitely will read them! I've heard very good things about the characters from this game, but that's just it - I infinitely prefer the fact that Awakening gives me all those supports in the actual game rather than making me pick and choose whose I want to see because the total support pool is so limited. In Awakening, the only supports I miss out on during any given playthrough are marriage proposals for couples I didn't pair up, and I can also get to know the characters via their battle quotes, which 7 doesn't have. In 7...well, if I don't want to use one of those limited support conversations, then I'm stuck with what the game gives me in the "overworld," which so far really hasn't given me enough to really endear me to anyone except maybe Lyn. I haven't met Legault yet, though seeing as how he's my boyfriend's favorite character in the game, I am looking forward to it.

Did you miss the rest of that first paragraph? I admitted it wasn't the best plot a game has ever given me. My point was that the story, despite it's faults, was still enjoyable. No, it's not exactly Dostoyevsky, but it doesn't need to be. It takes a simple story and tells it fairly well, with memorable characters that I personally think are a lot less "gimmicky" than most people around here seem to give them credit for. Some of them may be a few notes short of a symphony, but they're all at least a full chord. A story isn't bad because it's simple - it's bad if it's told badly and if the other person doesn't enjoy listening to it. Awakening may stutter here and there, but overall, I definitely don't think it's a "pile of heated, wet shit" (to quote someone from earlier). I'm no stranger to lots of text in games, or loads of exposition in general. RPGs (video game and tabletop) are my bread and butter, and I love the Ace Attorney series as well, which is pretty much nothing but text. Hell, I have a freaking degree in creative writing, and that required reading more unpleasantly bloated "literary" books than I care to remember. But that's just it - if a story's pacing is off, it doesn't matter how much or how little exposition it has, it's going to feel awkward. Awakening does a brilliant job of letting you hit the ground running and setting up a mystery (your amnesia, the meaning of the opening cutscene, and your presence in Ylisse) without feeling like it's deliberately trying make it frustrating to solve. We're still on Lyn's portion of the game, and I'm told it gets better during Eliwood/Hector's bits, but as of right now, I'm simply not as engrossed as I was with Awakening at a similarly early stage (mainly because right now it's bandit fight after bandit fight after goddamn bandit fight and oh look here's a mage or two and the green guy is hitting on another girl and the red guy is mad at him for it hahaha can we just get to the goddamn castle already and advance the plot instead of going two steps and WHOOPS here's some more fucking bandits under the command of our eeeeeevil uncle?) That's another thing I think I already mentioned - I am absolutely spoiled on the fact that Awakening allows (mostly) everyone to support with (mostly) everyone else. I don't have to go and look up any support conversations (except the proposals I didn't do) in order to completely get to know all of the characters - I can get a complete experience within the game itself. I will play the game all the way through, and my boyfriend wants to take me through 8 as well, so it's not like I won't be able to give a better comparison between the older games and Awakening in the future, but yeah, as of right now, I still much prefer Awakening.

I also don't get the hate for the story. Is it the best story of a game ever? Of course not (I think for me that honor goes to Persona 4). Every plot has holes if you drill hard enough. But is it enjoyable? Fuck yes. Awakening was my gateway into Fire Emblem, and I took to it like a fish to water. The gameplay is exceptionally solid, the characters are a lot of fun and all very memorable, and supporting them all with each other is a lot of fun (and also provides a ton of replay value). Combat is simple, but still not without challenge, especially on higher difficulties. Lunatic+ is basically "the computer is a cheating bastard: the game." There's even a casual mode if you're the kind of person who cares more about the characters and story than having to deal with combat. It's also boasts what's probably the best system for DLC I've ever come across - the DLC adds to the game without ever making you feel like you're missing out on anything if you don't get it. To put it in some context, my boyfriend and I are playing through Blazing Sword at the moment, and while I'm enjoying it, I'm not nearly as engrossed as I was my first time through Awakening. I like the characters well enough, but none of them really stand out to me, and the pacing drags a lot compared to Awakening. Also, I really miss the pair up system and the ability to see the enemy's threatened zone all the time. It's worth it to get a 3DS no matter what, though. It's got a pretty impressive library of games, many of which are just as enjoyable as Fire Emblem and have already been listed here.

That's actually why I started this thread shhhhh

I know there's a lot of talk about who the best parents for each of the kids are - who passes down the best combination of classes, skills, and stats to turn each individual kid into a destructive juggernaut - but I got to wondering what the WORST possible parent combinations would be. For stats, shipping, or even hair color - what parents do you think simply do not go together with each other or their kids? (Chrom/Maiden is kind of a given so maybe we shouldn't dwell too much on that particular option)

Sumia: Bit of a klutz. Nowi: Bit of a trickster. Would those work?