LightLelouch

A lot of it comes from the wierd way this game is set up by having us swap parties between four story arcs. Had the game been limited to Sothe and Micaiha's squad the entire time, we would've gotten a better opportunity to symphasize with them.

No Ike/Elincia romance. Really bizarre considering some of the implications (such as Shinon heavily hinting at it). Then the romance just dissapears in Radiant Dawn when Ike decides he likes men instead.

This is true, but can be remedied by (in addition to implementing some or all of these features) rewarding the player for completing the game under these conditions. Hell, I'd be a lot more inclined to play current Luna+ (and subsequently less critical of it) without even an ounce of grinding if it meant getting a secret ending, additional support conversations, a bonus map or something. Bragging rights simply isn't a good incentive. Do I see it as selfish? As far as my interest is concerned, absolutely. I won't deny that my motivations are entirely comrprised of self-interest whether I can demonstrate that my suggestions are better off for the game's target audience or not. Disregarding my intentions, however, there's truth to my position. I'd say that considering the limits on the games resources is a good consideration and helps to expose the flaw with the "it's optional" argument. You can make a lot of things optional, but at the end of the day, we must ask ourselves what kind of game the developors are trying to make. Attempting to broaden your audience is fine. After all, at the end of the day, the developors are trying to sell a game. To make a profit. Not one lick of what I say matters if they can't do that. However, we should keep in mind the potential problems with this route. I believe Bioware saw these problems firsthand after they made Dragon Age. EA made the effort to appeal further to the COD fanbase (their words), but it proved to be their downfall. Lets be clear that I'm not speaking out against Easy/Casual modes for Fire Emblem. I believe they serve there place here giving how the game has been marketed. In terms of Dark Souls though, it's a game that has the selling point of being difficult. It appeals exclusively to people who want a challenge. An easy/casual mode might possibly appeal to a wider audience, but the sacrifices needed to implement such a mode may simaltaneously lose some members of the existing audience. It's a balancing act, if you will. Can't please everyone. Besides, as someone else noted, Dark Souls does get easy over the course of time once you begin to master the system. Bows are highly reliable because they eliminate having to deal with counter, which is really the main issue when it comes to Luna+. All of that other stuff is a lot simpler to deal with, even without resetting. You're the right that the decision of what options to use are up to the player, but the player is going to have hell of more stressful time with the difficulty exercising some options over the one you've described. -Galeforce: You won't have this skill on a number of characters for a significant portion of the game in non-grinding run. Pavis+/Aegis+ make one-rouding enemies more difficult, thus reliance on the skill is not a good idea until your character is sufficiently powerful. -Alternative Two Range Attacks: This alone won't save you on counter-heavy enemy phases. -OHKO'ing via crits: RNG -Trading Away Weapons: I admitelly haven't tried this, so I can't comment. -Nosferature/Sol: Will screw you over against multiple enemies. -Rescue-bombing: Not enough rescue staves before ch.22 if this is going be the core of your strategy. The level of reliability between bows and other tactics are worlds apart. I'm in no way attempting to suggest that playing without anybody dying is the only way to play the game. I actually agree that it's simply a "scrub rule." Nonetheless, it's the way a great deal of players play the game. To many people, letting a unit die means failure. This is why having the enemies suicidally go after a weak villager NPCs or otherwise unimportant units works. A lot of players will reset the game right there. Without this consideration, much of the game's difficulty vanishes and you can take advantage of the idiotic A.I killing weak units by using them as bait. There's an argument to be made that the most of the game's in the series are reliant on the assumption that players want to preserve their units. Shadow Dragon is unique in that its the only game that rewards you for letting your units die (also POR, but not so much of a reward as it is a silver medal for losing to the Black Knight, thus getting a different character as a consolation prize). I don't buy that the game is meant to be played by killing off your units, but even pacfying Shadow Dragon as an example on the basis that you get additional content for letting units die, one can use this reasoning to the opposite effect in FE:A's case.. In FE:A, there's a benefit to keeping your units alive. You can get access to the support content (which is expanded further in DLCs) marry nearly all of them off and produce rather powerful children down the line (each with ample support dialogue) and see their epilogues. Just as you're rewarded in SD for letting units die, you're rewarded (with additional content) for keeping them alive in FE:A. Our explanations don't contradict each other. You've described in detail how the developors have sought to make an immensenly harder difficulty by countering common Fire Emblem strategies. That's your premise. One that makes plenty of sense. What I don't agree with is your conclusion; that the difficulty is well designed. It's one thing to take measures the nullify the effectiveness of common FE strategies. It's another thing to counter the utility of most of the classes/weapons in the game entirely. Like or not, the counter skill does this. You've acknowledged this to an extent in providing your rationale for using bow-classes on Luna+ runs. The design literally grossly limits the fashion in which you can reliably complete the game without exploits. You've offered multiple alternatives to bow-usage, but counter and the randomness mucks with all of them if you're not willing to grind and or/ soft reset alot. Also, perhaps I misunderstand you, but the randomly distributed skills do limit strengths/weakness of the weapon triangle and special weapons to a great degree. An axe user with counter and/or hawkeye literally no-sells a sword's users weapon triangle advantages. Strategic reliance on most special weapons are greatly hindered by pavis+/aegis+. Not that I have a problem with bypassing the triangle and special weapon usage. Whoa there. It is not my intention to get on your "shit-list" or anyone's shit list for that matter, good sir, haha. I'd like to keep this discussion civil and apologize if you took offense to my comments. It's just that I don't think you believe in the implications of the "stop having fun guys" trope here. I demonstrated this via reductio ad absurdum. I gave an absurd example of implementing an optional way of making the game incredibly easy. You don't appear to agree that this is a good idea and with good reason. You provided us with an excellent anaology. An L+R/start-win method would make the game beatable for ALOT more people, but it's a waste of resources, optional or not. Making a game more accessible is fine, but it's not the only consideration when making video game. I think there's been some miscommunication here. It's not about what exist and what doesn't nor whether there's a slippery slope it. It's about identifying a principal and acknowleding that just because something is optional and potentially makes thing more accesible, it doesn't mean it should implemented into the game. We agree that accessibility has its limits. Evidence which if taken seriously, would lead us to conclude that I don't want a lot of people to have fun, including those who'd like to have the ability to win entire chapters with the push of a button. Developers, coders, artists, writers or whatever applies here. The point is that the game was created on limited resources and that cutting back on one feature means more resources for another. I can even use the accessibility/its-optional argument here.There are plenty of optional elements in the current game, but what if those optional elements were traded away for other optional elements? Would the game be better? Considering that there are no doubt a lot of people who would be much more inclined to play Fire Emblem if the storylines/characters were much better (some who have voiced their opinions in this very thread), this argument has grounds to stand on. Bioware, before they sold their souls to the EA devil, used to prove this with every one of their games. When I speak out against the element of grinding, I'm not simply suggesting that they cut-paste FE:A, but remove the grinding. Obviously, the game would need to be balanced around a lack of grinding. I'm talking about a system where grinding is more or less irrelevant. A good example of such a SRPG is Super Robot Wars (for the most part anyway). To its credit, Luna+ attempts to do this with skills like counter. You make some great points here and I wholeheartedly agree as far as silliness of FE13 is concerned. I've never played FE12, thus can't really comment on it. We seem to agree, however, that good characterization is a good way to enhance the series. Some of the death scenes are laughable even when its clear they shouldn't be and I could do without Olivia constantly talking about her dancing (even when the MU "dies", she's saddened that he/she won't get to see her dance anymore). The MU's sacrifice could've been handled a lot better. I would've made the death permanent. It's a big mistake to have a character killed off and resurrected if it doesn't come at a cost or at least a reasonable explanation. Here, we get neither. The MU just comes back at the end and everything is peachy. That said, as far as the principle of making characters a little more than meaningless faces with one or two lines of dialogue, FE13 went in the right direction. The support conversations are one the best features in the series and I for one would like to see them further expounded upon. Maybe not to the extent of a Bioware game, but as a mechanism for fleshing out characters and giving us greater reason to keep them alive. This is one thing I like about games like about Dragon Age Origins. Grinding is literally irrelevant since the enemies scale to your level and there are a set number of enemies in the game. Despite this, some enemies (i.e. bosses and elite level foes) are tougher than others and game is centered around besting your foes with strategy (hence the 'think like a general' tagline, inevitable exploits aside). I'm not suggesting level scaling, but if they could do something to balance FE in a similar fashion, I think that'd be great.

I can see a short manga or at best something similar to Pokemon Origins, but nothing else. I love Awakening, but as far as the storyline is concerned, I can't help but acknowledge some substantial limitations.

THis is true. I would love for them to get rid of all the gimmicks and simply give us a much more competent A.I. Unfortunately, current technological limitations makes this all but impossible for a 3Ds game.

Quite the contrary. Ideally, I'd want something that stills manages to appeal to the players that do like Luna+. I think changing the nature of Luna+'s difficulty while still making it difficult would do the trick. I've offerered multiple methods to do this. Ban second seals, lowerthe restricted the amount of playunits usable on all maps, impose turn limits on all chapters, multiple enemy healers with catharsis staffs on all maps, fog of war chapters, FE5's fatigue engine, enemy balista units, enemies with berserk staffs, additional objectives besides routing the enemy, etc.

Do you mean the alternatives aren't reliable? If so, that was my point. If not, I was not aware of other viable core-strategies, so perhaps this is indeed simply my own lack of ability to play the game. What do you have in mind besides bows, turtling, grinding, resetting? Simple. If you are the sort of player that doesn't want anybody to die, you skip out on recruiting Athena. The idea is to preserve as many units as possible (emphasis on the possible). Though yeah, this is just common player-rule. Certainly not binding, but an unspoken rule many of us adhere to. It is war, but the sort you can play to perfection! Certainly. The developors realized that they might've made the game too easy, thus opted to make the enemies serve as a potential threat no matter how much players relied on exploits (counter, pavis+, aegis+, hawkeye) and made it to where players couldn't rely on previous knowledge of the level set up thanks to randomness of the skill distribution. Unfortunately, they didn't realize that this really limited the players options in how to reliably complete the game. I agree that the random skill selection combats common FE strategies, but don't believe it was (or ought to have been) their intent to massively limit the way the game could be played. Nah, I don't think you believe that. To demonstrate, lets say there's a free weapon that can be acquired in chapter one a limitless number of times. Lets say the weapon automatically allows you to kill any enemy 100% in one round, has limitless uses and also makes the wielder invincible. Do you think it's a good idea for the developors to include such a weapon? After all, one doesn't have to use it, no? I'm all for everyone having fun and don't buy into elitist BS, but you'll find that accessibility is not the only consideration made when developing a game. Otherwise, why stop at grinding? Grinding, after all, requires time. Not everyone has time. Why not just include "auto-level up" feature that lets you level up to your hearts content in an instant? I'm sure we can agree that there has to be line drawn somewhere. And no, I must contest the idea that I simply don't want other people to have fun. I'm not that arrogant! :D If I'm correct about some of the optional elements not being good, perhaps developor resources would be better spent elsewhere. I for one woud've liked to see better storyteling! I think you raise some good points here. Stilll, call me daft, but I've gotta massively disagree with adding an easy mode to Dark Souls. Difficulty is the premise of the game. I'd rather they take the resources used in developing an easy mode and improve the game in alternative fashion. That's how I see it for just about any optional feature in a video game that I take issue with.

Again, I just don't find the "it's suppossed to be unfair" argument persuasive. Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge. It's why I play the mode in the first place. I just want a better design. Having to reset over and over until you get the "right skills" on enemies is silly. I should be able to beat a map 99.9% of the time without ever resetting. How about restricting me to six characters for all maps, disabling dual attacks/guards, making automatic game/overs if chapters aren't completed within a certain amount of turns and banning second seals? This lolcounter and random skill distribution stuff though is tad bit silly. I think all classes should serve a purpose on all difficulties as oppossed to the bow-fest that is Luna+. I will admit that Interceptor is correct as far as self-imposed rules are concerned. Admittely, a large part of the difficulty I've had in almost every FE game was keeping all of my characters alive. If someone died, no matter how unimportant they were, I'd instantly reset. If even an NPC villager died, unless their death was scripted, I'd reset. I don't believe using sacrificial "decoys" is the way the game is meant to be played (maybe on casual in FE13's case). Were this Baldur's Gate, that'd surely be interpreted as the "evil" decision. Just strikes me as out of character for Chrom or the MU. Besides, just makes the game too easy if I don't care about people dying.I do wish there were more of benefit to keeping your characters alive (i.e. better story, unlock additional chapters, better ending, etc). One of these days, I may just let Stahl and Mirel bite the dust in CH2 since they don't impact the story anyway and I don't care about Laurent. Though I commend Interceptor for his time/patience, I can't say I believe the developors put as much time/focus into Luna+ as he suggest. Though he and other players did have the time/patience to prove that the difficulty can be bested without grinding or using other in-game crutches, I think the same applies for a lot of the old NES games that were seen as immensely difficult at the time. Games likes TMNT, Contra and Battletoads. Of course these games are quite beatable, that doesn't alter the fact that most of the difficulty comes from poor game design (especially in TMNT's place in terms of level design). Finally, this "if you don't like it, don't play it argument" couldn't be any more unpersuasive. There are a lot of things I don't like in RPGS. Fetch quests, even of optional variety are high on the list. Just because something is optional does not mean its immune from criticism, especially if we're shelling out our hard earned money. If players don't like something, perhaps the devs should use their resources on something else as oppossed to falling back on the "it's optional" excuse. Or perhaps devs should simply work on improving what a group of players don't like (i.e. making the game better). Anyways, this has been a enlightening discussion. Thanks everyone! EDIT: I don't think Lunatic+ scratched FE13's sales, but I do think a difficulty mode (or in general) could improve future game sales depending on how the game is marketed. Dark Souls is a game that is premised on its difficulty and is quite successful. I personally like the waifu stuff as I feel it makes the character a little more interesting. In Shadow Dragon, I couldn't care less about most of the cast they only had a few lines of dialogue in the entire game. I'd line to see something akin to this expounded upon. What I'm really looking for is not the ability to get it on with any female unit, but actual character development, which FE games have always lacked to a great degree.

I see what you're saying and agree to the extent that he's kind of a lousy character (gary-stuish). Even still, I do like the idea of having my own unit as an integral character in the story. I would've gone the Dragon Age / Mass Effect route (if the budget permitted) and made the game more interactive, thus offering the MU a solid chance for some good character development. If they could do what Bioware did for Revan in KOTOR, that'd be great! Don't get me wrong. I get that it's a completely optional part of the game. All I'm saying is that they could've done a better job with it. Of course, I suppose the real issue here is the limitations there are in implementing A.I. If the enemies were just a tad bit smarter, I guess there would be no need to give them random skills and max stats on the highest difficulty.

Hello there shadowofchaos! Like your youtube videos. You make some great points there and here! Still, if I may respond here: Haha. To be fair . . . we've seen stranger FE supports (Ephraim x Erika!). Besides, isn't Nowi like a thousand years old even if she romances the MU? xD The challenge maps (on classic) would simply exist for one purpose and that's the challenge in completing them (and perhaps rewards to be found). Granted, I'm not oppossed to DLC rewards like access to the Dread Fighter and Bride class I've heard this argument quite often. I can see the merits of it, but have never been persuaded by it. It's the game designers job to make the game challenging, not mine. As the player, I don't feel I should have to impose some sort of artificial difficult of my own design. Whenever that happens, I count it as a failing on the developer's part (which the developors appear to agree with, hence them getting rid of boss abuse on the higher difficulties). Granted, as I did do that throughout my hard mode playthrough. On my Lunatic runs though, I grinded (to a modest extent) since I'd rather do that than resort to the tedious tacics needed to cope with Luna+ foes. Agreed. Speaking of Emmeryn, I feel the decision the player makes in her regard should have actually had an impact on the story. Perhaps you get different chapters/characters depending on the decision you make there. I disagree. I've played and mastered plenty of truly difficult games. As I said previously, what you've described is a lot more tedious than difficult. Some people care to do insane amounts of resetting (many before you even start the map) and consume insane amounts of turns on a single map, but I don't. To me, that feels more like a job. I play these games to have fun and consuming vast quantities is anything but (same reason I don't play MMOs). Maybe that's just me. A truly difficult game is Ninja Gaiden 2 (master ninja). Although the highest difficulty may seem next to impossible, you can develop to skills to clear out entire levels without suffering a single scratch. It's a different genre, but the point I'm making is that a truly difficult game is one that requires skill to consistently overcome. I don't believe that's the case with FE:A's lunatic+. To me, that difficulty is more about time/patience than skill. I've gotta disgree with this. If the goal was to simply make the difficulty unfair, they could've done a lot more than what they did (i.e. only allow you to use 6 units for all maps, give all enemies counter/lethality/hawkeye/pavise/aegis 100% of the time, keep the level cap at 30, etc). The purpose of the mode is to offer a challenge, but like all games, the ultimate concern is fun. In that regard, I feel they failed. This is true, but for balancing purposes, a better alternative to arenas and a much better alternative to bonus map farming.

I enjoyed Fire Emblem Awakening overall. It had its flaws, but is my second-favorite FE game to date. Here are some things I would've done differently (and hopefully are considered in the next game). #1. Eliminate Grinding: Fire Emblem has almost always boiled down to resource management. As a player, you only had a limited amount of chances to increase your units' levels since there were a limited amount of enemies. This meant that you, as a player, had to plan out which characters you were going to use and had to avoid letting your more-powerful units suck up all the experience gained in eliminting enemies. It is true that a player could potentially grind via "arena abuse", but at least that came at the cost of having one of your characters killed during a chapter, thus forcing most players to risk the possibility of resetting the game (granted, I'm against arenas as well). Fire Emblem Awakening makes the mistake of not only allowing limitless opportunities to grind all of your characters, but with no real cost whatsoever. Not to mention that grinding is nigh-necessary for all but the most patient of players on the highest difficulties (Lunatic and Lunatic+) since the growth rates of enemies units are much less balanced. Even still, there is the need to cater to casual gamers as well as newcomers to the series. Thus, in the Improved version of FE:A, I would have only permitted units to gain experience from non-chapter maps on casual mode; in classic, units would not be able to gain any experience unless it was during an actual chapter. That said, I feel Fire Emblem 9's base experience feature is a fine and balanced substitute for arenas since there isn't a limitless amount and since players will at least have the option of training a couple of units without having to baby them over the course of several chapters. #2. Balanced Higher Difficulties. Although I've beaten both Lunatic and Lunatic+, it was only after countless hours of resetting the game as well as a modest amount of grinding. Although I feel I could've beaten both difficulties without grinding, I simply didn't care to spend that much time bothering. I didn't find Lunatic+ to be that hard to be honest; I simply found it to be tedious. There is a fine line between tedious and difficult. If you rely on strategies that take dozens of turns to pull off, hit the reset button alot and use classes that aren't too hindered by enemies with the counter skill, you can beat Lunatic+ without an issue. The problem, however, is I don't think that's fun; I think that's a boring way to play the game. Thus, rather than simply increase enemy growth rates in an unbalanced fashion and simply opt to give all enemies random and overpowering skills like counter and hawkeye, I'd instead bring back the fog of war feature on certain maps (or rather areas if my fourth suggestion is implemented), add additional objectives on certain maps (i.e. route the enemies while protecting a fort), etc. I feel different objectives calls for non-tedious strategies and is a far better alternative than having to reset the game at the very beginning of almost every map. Moreover, I'd give certain enemies the abilties to use the dual-class feature and also bring back the fatigue feature from Fire Emblem 5. Lastly, players would be barred from using second seals or rental units. Essentially, Lunatic/Lunatic+ would be difficult due to extra objectives/features/limitations as oppossed to simply giving enemies random overpowered skills and maxed stats. #3. Fire Emblem 4 Style Timeskip. Fire Emblem 4 remains my favorite Fire Emblem game. The feature I liked the most was the obligatory timeskip that took place after chapter 6. I felt the child-unit feature in Awakening would've been a lot better had they gone this route.Essentially, this would call for changes in the story. First, I would do away with the time-travel bit. Instead, I'd have it to where players controlled Chrom and co. for the first half of the game. At the end of the first half, everybody besides the MU (and maybe a few other characters) would get killed off by Validar (which, I guess, we could later learn that it was actualy a possessed MU that killed everybody instead or something like, I dunno). The MU would escape and would spend the next 20 years building a new group of Shepards, many of whom are the children of the previous group. MU, probably being too overpowered as a unit at this point, wouldn't be useable until several chapters of the timeskip had passed. Lucina would pretty much serve Chrom's role throughout the timeskip. She'd also be a more interesting character. ;) Second, marrying off your units in the first half of the game would be crucial. After all, you're going to be using their children, so picking good partners would be a must. The MU would still be able to marry almost any unit throughout both generations, but wouldn't have a child if he/she opted to marry a second generation unit. #4. Fire Emblem 4 Style Maps I'd also bring back Fire Emblem 4's massive maps. I felt they added a lot more strategy to the game. You could leave some units to guard your castle while you had a different go off and seize another one. If anything (and I'm willing to give in on this one), I'd make the entire game be comrpised of just one massive map 30x the size of a Fire Emblem 4 map. Players would be able to fast-travel their pary-members across the map, but not during a mission. At the start of the game, most of the map would be covered by fog with the exception of your castle. However, as the game progressed, you'd be able to visit more areas. In terms of strategy though, you may find yourself fighting two or three different simaltaneous battles on two or three different sides of the map. Thoughts? Additional ideas?