Wormbait Blues

Yeah, I forgot that it was made before Studio Ghibli was founded. Still, it has most of Miyazaki's trademarks so I think it's probably fine to fudge it. EDIT: Oh, and shoutout to Discotek's excellent recent release including interviews with both Lupin voice actors from the two different dubs. Those guys deserve more credit for the great work they do.

The Castle of Cagliostro. Maybe a darkhorse choice but I love it's mix of fairy-tale idealism and more mature elements. The interpretation of Lupin in this film is not only my favorite version of Lupin but one of my favorite film characters of all time. Just a really fun, feel-good movie. Helps that the car chase sequence inspired John Lasseter to see the true potential of animation.

Not at the start but when it was like "there's a TRAITOR in Ephraim's army" it's pretty obvious considering his sunken eyes and vastly better stats.

A betrayal that isn't completely obvious yeah. Zeke from Tearring Saga is sort of like that too but his story isn't written very well.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes if you like politics and war.

Soldiers, Mercenaries, and Fighters (in the games where they don't suck, like in Thracia).

Villains with some actual complexity like Arvis and Trabant, a Jeigan/Oifey who betrays you, a knight who's a complete asshole, and a pirate character like Nedata. EDIT: I'd also like a character like Raquel from Tearring Saga who is powerful but cannot deal killing blows.

This seems overcomplicated. I'd just say re-institute fatigue except replace fatigue level going up to the HP cap (and once it exceeds HP the unit is out of action) with a separate stat, which can be high for armor knights and some characters with lower growths to give them a unique advantage. Also a character can't be fatigued out of combat if they have something important to do in the chapter (even if it's optional). Finally make stamina drinks more available though not plentiful.

I only got into mystey recently and I'm sort of on a fantasy binge right now but I'll definitely check her stuff out. Thanks.

Sure. EDIT: BTW the number scores are on the scale of Fire Emblem games, not normal games. I enjoyed all these games, though the last two barely so. FE4: 7/10 Probably the most "mature" story told in a Fire Emblem game (though nothing great) with awesome music. I liked the graphics and the animations are really good. However there were serious balance issues and while I liked the idea of huge maps it made you basically have to babysit the infantry if you wanted them to get any action. Ambitious but I'm honestly glad most of its changes weren't implemented in the future. FE5: 6.5/10 Sort of cheating since I'm still playing it but I have mixed feelings so far. I really like some mechanics, like fatigue, the hard fog of war, and the great map design. The story is also the best in the series at portraying a realistic rebellion (the game mechanics just add to that feeling) and the music's probably my favorite in the series. I really can't deal with the difficulty though. I have fun when I abuse savestates but I shouldn't have to do that to enjoy a game. Maybe I'm bad but Shield of Thracia still gets me salty. FE6: 4/10 One of my first so I'm fond of it but it's not very good honestly. Story is a bland retread that only picks up at the very end, it's unbalanced as shit, most of the characters are boring, and there's too many goddamn wyvern knights. FE7: 8/10 Fun game. Story's pretty good (thank god there's no "must-visit-every-place-on-the-map" syndrome,), music's great, gameplay's better than FE6 in basically all respects, and Hector's a bro. The characters in general are much more fleshed out. Simple but polished to a shine and really good. FE8: 6.5/10 My first game. I liked branching promotions, the darker color pallet, and the music, but it's way too easy (even if you don't grind) and short. Also the characters are all pretty bland honestly. Gets a .5 for having a lance-wielding infantry lord. FE9: 9/10 My favorite game, combining the best of the GBA games and the SNES games for an experience that's incredibly fun. The revamped support system, base, and bonus experience are all great additions (even if bonus experience can be abused) and it has a great supporting cast. It's just the right difficulty (on hard) and pretty well balanced (laguz are pretty bad though). Also shoving is awesome and should make a return past the Tellius games. I can't really think of anything very negative to say. Sort of annoying that you can't get back skills once you assign them. Story's pretty bland but that's the case with basically all Fire Emblem games. It isn't actively offensive and Ike's coming-of-age arc was pretty well-done. EDIT: I forgot, it added furries and clumsy racism morals which is pretty annoying. I was able to safely ignore it for the most part though. FE10: 7/10 An ambitious experiment that I enjoyed, but I recognize it as incredibly flawed. I liked that it added in some more features from the console games like three tiers and leadership stars, but the multiple story system, while interesting, is inherently flawed and reduces some characters' usability just because they don't show up enough. I liked the story until all of the interesting things froze near the end. Getting rid of supports was a huge mistake and laguz are still bad. It got an extra .5 because Gatrie's my favorite character in the series (I know he's not the best unit by far but 60% strength and speed on an armor knight damn son.) FE12: 6.5/10 Thank god it added back supports (I could never get through Shadow Dragon because of the lack of them) but it still has problems. I didn't like that all the characters had ridiculously high growth rates, the graphics are still pretty ugly, it inherits some bad map design from FE3 (seriously fuck that mission where you go around in a spiral and waste like twenty minutes), and it introduced the Avatar. FE13: 2/10 This game gets me salty. The story is horrible and split up three distinct arcs into 25 chapters, meaning none of them had any time to develop well. The balance is all sorts of fucked and pair up is OP. The characters are cardboard cut-outs (the children are a little better, Owain and Inigo are pretty great) who had tons of support conversations, but none of them were interesting. Nothing like Matthew confronting Jaffar, Zealot and Noah discussing the hardships of being a mercenary, Mist and Rolf trying to deal with the horrors of the war, or Astol telling his former wife Igraine to forget about the life they once had. Instead it's all generic and boring (once again, the children are better) plus totally inappropriate lead-ups to fucking marriage. Most of the mechanics that give Fire Emblem it's strategic depth, like limited ultimate weapons, non-repeatable maps, and limited skills and classes are repealed in favor of grinding and a shitty class and skill system that pales in comparison to Final Fantasy Tactics, a game released more than fifteen years ago. Sure you can ignore the grinding but then you're confronted with how shallow this game really is, with boring, featureless levels that made me realize how good Thracia's are. From the dumb children subplot to the fanservice (which includes little girls, ugh) to the fucking mary sue fanfic bait Avatar, this game reeks of desperation, which makes sense since this was going to be the last game in the series unless it sold well. And it did. I'd be cool to forget this game as long as the next one discarded most of it's features but I fear it isn't going to happen. The Avatar is almost certainly here to stay and the fanservice will probably stick around, maybe increase if anything. I'm glad Fire Emblem is still alive and I'm happy this game was a success but I have some serious reservations for the future. Tearring Saga: 2/10 Horrible, and really illustrates the similarities between George Lucas and Shouzou Kaga: they can make great stuff if you don't let them do whatever they want. Game balance is the worst in the series with characters and classes being either godly or horrible with little inbetween, weird map designs with some taking too long and being too large and some taking literally minutes, terrible anime drawings that look like they come from a Chinese bootleg game, and cringe-worthy growth rates (that one's subjective I guess). I liked the idea of most of the enemies, even the evil empire, being sympathetic, but the game wasn't written well enough (at least from what I could tell) for it to matter. The translation is obviously horrendous but I'm not going to rag on the translators for that. The only saving graces are the music and the animations which are my favorite in the series (seriously, archers actually shoot in an arc!)

Hi there. My name's Wormbait Blues. I'm a fan of Fire Emblem obviously but I'll play just about any video game, from Ace Attorney to Battlefield to Chivalry to Smash Bros to Planescape: Torment. My favorite game dev is Yasumi Matsuno, my favorite dev studio is Obsidian. In terms of literature I like fantasy, mostly of the grimdark variety but some traditional stuff too, some non-genre fiction, dark sci-fi, history books, and mysteries. I'm a big fan of noir (and genre offshoots like cyberpunk), offbeat comedies, b-movies, thrillers, and spaghetti westerns. In terms of music I like blues rock and folk rock (AKA dad rock), 90s gangsta rap, and energetic jazz, but I'll listen to just about everything except country (stereotypical I know. I like some older "country" acts like Johnny Cash though). I love history and ancient politics, reading, traveling, and video games obviously. Nice to meet you all and I hope to have fun times discussing the videya.