PrismaticStar

Myrmidon, Tactician, and Mage.

I genuinely had problems with Sacred Stones on Normal. That said, I was also like 12 and I never let people die without resetting in FE.

Okay so it's been a very long time since I've been here and this may qualify as a necropost, but now that I've finally fixed the driver issue that kept making my computer explode, I really feel like I need to clarify my argument about Lunatic and Lunatic + with a more level head. What I'm absolutely NOT saying is: A) There isn't enjoyment to be had in Lunatic, or that it isn't the perfect game mode for certain types of players. B) Lunatic mode does not offer exactly what it claims to... a very difficult challenge for hardened Fire Emblem masters. C) There are not ways to minimize the RNG involvement down to a negligible level. However, Czar you will receive no written apology. I want to mention first that I'm not complaining because I can't do Lunatic. I can do Lunatic. I'm a more than halfway through rounding up all the child characters on my playthrough. If I remember it's just Severa, Noire, and Nah left. Maybe one more. I admit that I used the DLC once I was able to, but that's because I genuinely do not enjoy playing Lunatic "properly" and I decided to make my life less hellish. My beef with Lunatic isn't exactly that it's too hard for me, or even that it's in the game. My issue is that it's the difficulty level after Hard, and for that matter a difficulty level at all. Bear with me here. The best way I can think of to make my point is to pull up Interceptor's thread that everyone and their dog has linked to me by now: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=48207#entry3145464 This guy has done incredible work with this chapter. I won't argue against that for a second, but when I scroll down a little bit and see that to even follow the hilariously in-depth guide of one of the one or two possible turn combinations required to survive the beginning of this chapter (Chapter 2 I remind you, the beginning of your game should never be the hardest part) Robin needs to have a certain amount of magic and speed which you can get RNG screwed on, and C Support with Chrom which will probably require you to gimp your chances of surviving the earlier chapters because in the early game Fredrick is the only one capable of surviving anything, I could basically stop reading already. I've read through it several times, and that one point sticks out to me every time. If your Robin doesn't have those things? You're screwed. Start the game over. You wanted to take basically any other stat increase other than Speed at the start of the game? Too damn bad, you're on Lunatic mode now, you do things Lunatic's way. Even on a "hardest" difficulty mode that's something you as a game dev should always, ALWAYS avoid. Only a very, very small number of extremely hardcore people (who are unfortunately for my argument, all on this forum since this is basically the only place for hardcore FE players to be) would PREFER having to start over if you didn't know everything about a difficulty mode going into it. To be honest, I just wish Lunatic wasn't a difficulty mode. I wish it was a separate game mode altogether. The people who love Lunatic mode love it because, as has been said before "every battle is a puzzle." Good on those people. They should be able to have their FE puzzle battle mode, where every battle has one, maybe two solutions and you have to use the craptacular, outgunned units they give you in a particular way in order to clear the chapter. That sounds fantastic and even I would enjoy that a lot... as a separate game mode. The reason why I hate Lunatic/+ so much isn't the fact that it's hard or because it relies on too much RNG (although that one certainly doesn't help), it's because it removes any flexibility or customization that I have in a Fire Emblem game. If I decide to use sub-optimal units with sub-optimal pairings, who don't have the cheapest and most broken skills possible, I either can't win, or I'm going to have to spend an amount of time that I simply do not have either grinding (which is never enjoyable in anything) or slamming my head against the same chapter over and over again, trying to remember what I've already tried and what I haven't. This is of course assuming that I don't just cop-out and follow someone else's guide. The flexibility to "make it work" with the units and pairings and my own personal strategies and preferences about how to tackle a chapter are vital, critical parts of my enjoyment of Fire Emblem, and Lunatic doesn't let you do that. There is no wiggle room for you to do what you want. If you don't min/max in Lunatic it's going to be a nightmare, and far too frustrating for you to have any fun. If you want to try to work your way through a strategy for the chapter yourself instead of just outsourcing to a guide, go for it, but you'll more than likely come up with the exact same thing as whoever wrote that guide because there are only one or two ways to get through it alive. Rather than punishing you for mistakes like FE always does, Lunatic punishes you for preferences and not conforming to what Lunatic wants. Lunatic punishes you for not following the exact sequence of turns necessary to "solve the puzzle." Lunatic forces me to do either do things Lunatic's way, or waste gigantic portions of my life which could be spent playing other games, and I hate that. I cannot stand that. Lunatic mode (or as I think I'll refer to it from now on, "Puzzle Battle") is great as a feature in the game, but as a difficulty level of the main campaign that is supposed to be a step above Hard? It is a nightmare.

I might not even check this thread after I post because Awakening is still my favorite FE, and I know how I'm just stirring up trouble, but here are the ones that even I will acknowledge as a big fan of FE13, followed by the complaints that I just don't get. -Lunatic and Lunatic+ are perfect examples of how NOT to do difficulty in a video game. They rely on rote memorization, RNG, and grinding to what most people would agree is an unacceptable level. I don't care what delusions Czar is under, having to reset until the enemies don't have the ability that enables them to one-shot literally every one of your units 75% of the time is not fair or intelligent difficulty. It also completely relies on the player breaking the game as much as possible and exploiting the fact that it isn't balanced. If you're tuning your difficulty around exploits, something has gone wrong. I understand that many people enjoy the challenge, but I won't pretend for a second that it's good game design, or that I'm some kind of pansy for not wanting to spend my time and effort on it. I'm too lazy to go back and hit the quote button, but in reference to when Czar said that Lunatic is no more RNG based than older Fire Emblem games, I've officially played older Fire Emblem games by this point, and I didn't have to reset 20+ times praying that Chrom pulls off 3 dual guards in one turn just so I could make it through the first few chapters. All this being said, I'd still rather have Lunatic and Lunatic+ than just not have higher difficulties at all, so I'll cease my whining. -Nobody has feet. Why does nobody have feet. -Most of the characters are just one single personified quirk and are obviously one-dimensional (although I'd argue that's a huge improvement over older games where they just get no characterization at all). -The plot is convoluted as all hell (like most time travel stories), and often is only held together by headcannon. There are a ton of loose ends that are left open to speculation, namely the events of the last 10,000 years, everything about Grima, and everything about Morgan. The game tells us basically nothing about the main antagonist, or for that matter, the PROtagonist, or even how or why any of the things that the characters are doing is important. The reasons and rationalizations for things are usually flimsy at best. Complaints that bug me: -Emmeryn sacrificed herself because Chrom was going to hand over the Fire Emblem to Gangrel if she didn't. It was the only way to force his hand and make him do what was best for Ylisse. She had to remove his other option to prevent him from taking it. I will admit however that the Plegian reaction to it where suddenly they're all just now questioning their convictions en masse was forced and bizarre. -The DLC paralogues are just bonus characters. They thought it would be cool if they tossed in Emmeryn as a playable unit, so they did. Then they gave it some barely logical context of debatable canonicity so that the chapter that went along with the character at least made SOME sense. You can fill in the blanks with whatever headcannon works for you, or if her survival really just feels like nonsense just don't do that paralogue. It's optional DLC anyway. -Exactly one game ago there was no continuity at all between the vast majority of FE games, and now people are complaining because the continuity MIGHT not sync up with Marth's games after 10,000 years? Really? 10,000 years isn't long enough to get away with some retcons so that IS can do what they want?

Henry: I'M GONNA KILL YOU! :D Fredrick: Pick a god and pray. MU/Morgan: Checkmate!

FE8 (Sacred Stones) or FE13 (Awakening). FE8 is a completely self contained story and isn't a sequel or prequel to any other Fire Emblem game, it has arguably the prettiest sprite-work, and it's definitely one of the easiest Fire Emblem games. Awakening is also very easy and newcomer friendly and it is the newest so there's no need to worry about whether or not the game has aged well.

Best: Gregor as the last unit I haven't moved yet saves the day with a crit on the last enemy of the chapter when otherwise somebody would have died next turn. It was a less than 10% chance if memory serves. Worst: Realizing only AFTER I overwrite save on the Lunatic playthrough which I've spent countless hours grinding in that when people say the mother characters "retreat" on Classic mode, they only mean canonically and gameplay-wise the character is still dead. RIP Miriel, at least you were literally my least favorite character in the whole series.

I think I'm going to go with Gangrel, but Valter is a close second. Valtome is third, then Izuka, then Lekain. Valter is more messed up, but he isn't anywhere near as intentionally annoying as Gangrel is. Izuka is a really weird character for me because the second he first appeared on my screen I literally laughed out loud. It constantly broke my suspension of disbelief that ANYBODY was trusting this guy. Ever. For any reason. He is the most obviously evil character I have ever seen. He has the most stereotypical "untrustworthy lunatic" character design in the universe, and yet even when he says and does obvious and overtly evil things everybody just keeps hanging out with him. All I could think during his boss chapter was "How have you lasted this long."

You'll feel very at home with Sacred Stones. All three of the GBA games are very similar. That also means you probably won't see some huge jump forward in terms of improvement though. Personally I find Shadow Dragon extremely boring and I hate the art style, but to each their own. It's cool to see Marth's story and the original game play out. I would probably recommend PoR or Awakening over Shadow Dragon. Even with the updates for the remake, Shadow Dragon still feels like the very old game that it's based on. PoR being 3D really doesn't change anything at all, it just adds cutscenes and uses character models instead of sprites. It's still a top-down isometric view with the same gameplay as the GBA games. I wouldn't play RD without playing PoR first either, you'll appreciate RD a lot less if you do. Awakening is extremely newcomer friendly and even though there's a fair bit of backlash about it on this particular site, there's a reason why there's so much hype around it. It's also one of the easiest FE games so you might want to get to it sooner rather than later, before you get used to FE enough that it's not much of a challenge anymore. It's also set in the same world as FE 1, 2, and 3, and obviously the remakes for 1 and 3 though so you might want to play those first just so you recognize places. It's kind of neat to know what happened in a given spot on Awakening's world map in FE2. Bottom-line: My three recommendations would be Sacred Stones if you want something very similar to FE7, Awakening if you want to see the latest hotness with the highest review scores (I didn't say it was the best one, don't release the hounds on me just yet), and PoR if you're looking for something more challenging than the other two. As for getting your hands on Sacred Stones and PoR... all I'm going to say is that this site probably wouldn't even exist without emulators.

Because I am Karkat. Whiny, easily provoked, rage-y, and overly self-important.

I feel like RD has some pretty serious pacing problems, but I really enjoyed the overall story. Part 3 in particular just felt like it dragged on forever to me. Part 1 had all new characters, showed us a whole desert area and wolf laguz tribe that we hadn't seen in PoR, and a revolution story that I haven't seen Fire Emblem do anywhere else yet (I haven't played 4, 5, 6, 7, and most of 12) so all of that combined with trying to figure out what the HELL was going on in Begnion kept me plenty interested. Part 2 managed to collect every single character I didn't care about from PoR and dump them all onto the same team, so I'm just glad it was mercifully short. With part 3 I was happy to see Ike's crew again but it quickly turned into Shadow Dragon where each chapter was just another step in a long war and not a whole lot was going on. I get really bored whenever Fire Emblem does that. I actually really loved part 4 because the story had finally gotten off the ground like I had been waiting for the whole game. Dheginsea was difficult enough to scare the crap out of me after he one-shotted Tibarn with Ire (I reset obviously) but he was still doable, and Ashera was a little cheap but there's plenty that you can do to mitigate her damage and battle saves exist. Ike has probably solidified his place as my favorite lord by now (Though he still faces tough opposition from Chrom) and I really don't have much of a problem with Micaiah. Gameplay-wise I'm really not qualified to talk. Mainly I was just really annoyed about the support system being so barebones, and being saddled with the horrible characters in the Dawn Brigade.

Haha, no problem. I didn't know either until the first floor of the tower when I started googling around for a decent way to counter the Sleep staves.

I brought all of them except Nailah on my one and only Normal Mode playthrough and couldn't possibly imagine beating Deghinsea or Ashera on that file without them. I insist on getting as many people as possible fully promoted in every FE game, so I wasted a TREMENDOUS amount of bonus exp on horrible Dawn Brigade characters like Meg who I had no intention of ever taking into the tower. Even with the royals Ashera took me literally 3-4 hours to beat and because I ALSO insist on never letting anyone die, I ended up using Tibarn, Caineghis, Reyson, and Mist (to heal off the recoil damage from the shields) as a mobile drill swiveling around her and blasting through the shields one by one. Everybody else, including Ike, was spread all around the outside of the platform (to mitigate the damage from her AoE... at least I'm ASSUMING that's how it works) just trying to keep themselves alive by standing on the right floor tiles, nuking down her adds as soon as they pop up, huddling close to whichever dragon will protect them, and frantically healing themselves back up from the brink of death after Ashera hits them. The fight didn't end until turn 20-something. EDIT: I'm sure somebody's going to bring up her mass-stun, but it only worked on like two people. Gareth and Ike from what I recall. I don't know if it has a miss chance or what but it really didn't cause that many problems for me. I just busted everybody out of it with Sacrifice.