Delphi Sage

Protagonist and Rei Clone. A match made in purgatory.

Knusperkeks, just because stuff like this happened in real life doesn't mean we have no choice but to go along with it in high fantasy fiction. And please use normal font. Whenever anyone uses a different font, It feels like they're just being holier-than-thou.

I blame that on the world map mechanic.

Chrom's ability as a ruler never comes up. All he does is go from place to place, smashing a holy relic into people's faces, claiming he's Marth when he's pretending to be Ike. When the closest you come to being likable is through an unironic demonstration of the Doomguy Method, not everyone is going to be suckered in.

Um, what? Caeda isn't an archetype. Even if she was, she's not defined by the ability to recruit other units. That goes to her being the main love interest to the protagonist. Besides, we already have Sumia.

1: Speak in default font. 2: Why are you overthinking a video game that clearly wouldn't even give the time of day to its own story?

*citation needed*

He used Ninian's Dragonstone to open the gate at the outro to Chapter 29/31. Can someone tell me how to cite the records?

That way we can narrow down what FE14's plot will be like.

Interceptor, you're taking a very defeatist stance on this issue. "All Fire Emblem games have crap stories"? What story in any kind of fiction has ever stood the test of harsh, nitpicky scrutiny? Don't single out Fire Emblem for this criticism. What the fans of this series want out of it varies from person to person, depending on their interests and their jumping-on point. For example, what you seem to want, Interceptor, is a pure video game like Super Mario Bros; with no story, no character, just entertaining arcade-style gameplay with no distractions and just enough in-universe justification to feel like stuff is happening. Not much different to what the FESS Old Guard wanted out of the series, with the ability to find a consistent pattern to ever-guaranteed, RNG-proof S-Rank runs. There's the fanfic community, which wants semi-realistic, angsty characters they can fawn over and make wild headcanons about love triangles and allegiance. And then there's people like me, Kai, RJWalker, Onmi, Banzai, and others, who want a story that can make entertaining scenarios, consistent characterization, balanced character dynamics, and a satisfaction that'll keep them playing the game over and over, even if the gameplay is a little lacking. None of these viewpoints are in any way wrong, so for you to go thumbing your nose at us like we're a bunch of whiny fanboys who "can't cope with their games becoming mainstream" just comes off as rude IMO.

I know this has nothing to do with me, but I remind you all that "This game saved the franchise" is regularly used as a catch-all argument/conversation ender for every single criticism of FE13.

What in God's name are you even talking about? It sounds like you're just getting angry at people disliking this game's story at all, and then inventing some sort of crazy catch-all defense against every single post in this thread. And why the hell are you using a short story about racism as an example? This game has no theme. You would've been better off writing a story about "This is Keith. He pees in his pants. The End" for your example. And then you say this: Yes, because Japan has this ideal that everything should be cutesied up. But that doesn't have anything to do wih anything in this discussion. Not to mention that the "cute" things in FE13 are ALL MEANT TO BE SEXUALIZED AND FETISHIZED. But on to matters that aren't taking advantage of a 6-year old forum punching bag to vent: I don't see what the size of the cast in this game matters to anything. There are about 16 characters in this game that actually matter: Chrom, MU, Lissa, Frederick, Lucina, Emmeryn, Basilio, Flavia, Gangrel, Aversa, Validar, Say'ri, Yen'Fay, Walhart, Excellus, and Yurius. Note that I am being very generous with Lissa, Aversa, Yen'fay and Excellus. That's not a very large cast by the standards of everyone's favorite games of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2. And half of these characters tend to just serve as expositors and/or reaction images. The large playable cast only comes in play during GAMEPLAY. Any interactions they have are kept behind a massive wall between gameplay and story. Nobody realizes that almost all the units you get in this game are given in illogical circumstances, oftentimes out of nowhere. Even to the point of that being how Sully and Virion were recruited. I generally don't care about this, though. What I do care about is that the story has put its full focus on justifying the gameplay, and gets nothing out of it but all-rout objectives and a single lava level. FE10 had a lava level, two swamp levels, three desert levels, plenty of setpieces, and a whole lot of objectives. And all this in a game that put its STORY before its gameplay! What am I talking about again?

See, that's another of my problems. People fail to notice when joke characters are joke characters, or when fetish appeal characters are fetish appeal characters; and so they make up their own rationalizations on why Severa is Tsundere, Owain is chuuni, Brady is Kanji from Persona 3, etc. They fail to understand the concept of Occam's Razor, using the thought process "How can I best comprehend this character?" rather than "Why does this character exist how they are?". For example, anyone who's played the remakes of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire will have noticed what they did with Courtney. They fail to understand the train of thought that she spawned from, and instead label her "autistic". Ah, there's my "NGE ruined society" connection.

For example, Cordelia being a pettanko. Or on a less disgusting note, people claiming that Henry is deep because he got beaten to death every day of his life as a child. While I do kinda prefer it over Memespout McPontacGraff, it seems like they could've had a servicable borderline shota that people would find as a functional version of Ricken without such an edgy character revelation. Reminds me of Mary Sue non-karma. Course, he wasn't made to be shota; he was made to appeal to the White Haired Pretty Boy crowd. (As if girls couldn't just do that to their player character...) Why am I talking about this? Oh yeah, I wanted to snipe at NGE but couldn't find an angle in retrospect.

I heard from TVTropes or something that the Fin/Lachesis hookup scene was a referemce to Revolutionary Girl Utena. Can anyone explain that for me?

Since Balzerack wanted to condense post activity, I'll just post this stuff here instead of the Grimleal topic. Was getting off-topic anyways... Sure, the characters are a bit memorable and have distinguishable speech, but not without cost. Most of the memory of FE13 characters comes from their over-the-top designs, repeated voicelines, and easy patterns of conversation. This...means...something...bad? I don't know, something to do with Rule 36 or so of the Internet? "It is somebody's fetish and that's why it's evil"? I just can't get past the fact that they were clearly made to invoke player fetishes. I guess if someone made this game, but instead did it while respecting the player's intelligence like Kaga did with FE3, maybe things would be different. I liked Cordelia and Cherche and others at first. I just hated that they eventually boiled down to "NTR" and "MILF" after a while. And I especially hate the fangirls that use this game as their own personal sex fantasies, AKA "Anybody who husbandos Chrom". And FYI, I like FE11, it's just that Metacritic, GameFAQs, 4chan, etc. said that "less just ends up less".

The dialogue is written around absolute garbage, though. Sure, you can use all the big words you can to cover up the stupid/nothing that's going on, but that's not going to stop the cynics/jerkass reviewer idolizers from noticing the stupid/nothing. For example, FE10 made a million bits of potential dialogue for just about everyone for certain engagements in 3-7 and 3-E. Does that make the Blood Pact any less ridiculous? No, it just means the devs put in a MASSIVE amount of effort AROUND it when they could've spent time reviewing over the scenario. Especially since they end up resolving all of this in a massive "Time stands still and everyone is peaceful when it unfreezes" Deus ex Machina. Or to use a less controversial example, nobody but RJWalker truly enjoys FE11. They made as much dialogue as they could in such a limited space, but they still didn't do enough to make it feel like anything but a new coat of paint over a 15-year old game. And need I even mention Halo 4's "An ancient evil awakens" trailer dialogue turning into a meme that means "If your game can be boiled down to this, it's a shit game that sucks and you are a faggot for defending and/or enjoying it."? /Gibberish

...What does this even mean?!

I see no reason why FE4 hasn't stopped being useful.

A: I did not argue with your disdain for the Grimleal; I argued with your disdain of the Loputo Cult. B: Obviously. But what is your point here? Interesting, but what really confuses me is why they made it, too, a country full of bandits, basing their leadership off the two branches of Fighters from FE8.

1: They are the Loputo cult done without understanding how they worked. 2: They worshipped Loputousu because their ancestors used to rule the world under the Galles, but now they're forced to live in exile and prejudice in the middle of a desert. Their plans were to unwittingly continue a cycle of hatred by taking back Jugdral by force. The Grimleal worship Grima for no reason.

I'd prefer a single unit in the game to have exclusive access to reclass.

Inb4 someone says this is unnecessary and/or on the wrong board and deletes this.

There's the thing: Fire Emblem, at least to me, is about its story. Its gameplay really isn't anything special. Simplistic, easy to pick up on, and the only way it makes itself difficult is by going to extremes. Which is what FE13 did; cover up its flimsy plot by effectively destroying the line between what's a challenge and what's just outright disdain for the player's motivation. At least when FE10-12 was at its worst, it gave the player the option to use in-level saves. Here, it forces you to reset, reset, reset until you come out with an impossible outcome. And don't get me started on how they paywall training your ingame army. At this point, I'd almost prefer FE14 to become a visual novel than sit through a bunch of impossible odds staggered out by crappy justifications. And actually, there were a few ways to make FE13 better in both story AND gameplay. The whole thing more or less nosedives in both by Chapter 13, where the levels just boil down to swarms of super-enemies with equal stats and no diversity all attacking you at the same time. Personally, I'd limit those kinds of actions to a very finite minimum. Not even the Spotpass or monster battles should have to abide by that garbage, and especially not the damn Gaiden Level 23. As a general description, here's my idea for the events after that point: [spoiler=Autism] Do the Valm arc anyways. Retool Chapter 13 so that Chrom and MU don't recognize Validar. Make him way less suspicious and have him donate troops, with Henry as their commander. Get rid of the "Validar is MU's father" cutscene. Heck, get rid of the Premonition, too. Keep the ship-burning, but use it as a point where Chrom starts to get uncomfortable about why MU would use such destructive tactics. Make efforts to do something creative with the MU besides an outlet for the player's fetishes. Change Say'ri's method of recruitment. Instead of having her boxed in by a pair of knights, give her a method of appearance where she's outed by the civilians at the harbor for fear of their lives, then make her a neutral unit with high all-around stats and an Armorslayer, capable of single-handedly taking down the first few enemy units surrounding her. If the game says she's Echidna crossed with Karla, they should MAKE HER Echidna crossed with Karla. Turn Yen'fay into something similar to Astram, where he actively pursues the party in cutscenes and maybe gets a cinematic all to himself where he beats one of the unkillable units in a fight. Make the gems for the Fire Emblem/Binding Shield actually have powers. Use them as excuses for giving bosses high stats and/or Lunatic+ skills. Make Pheros a bigger deal. Have her being enamored with Walhart comes off as her losing all hope for humanity. Don't turn her outright into Selena or Petrine. Maybe give her Cordelia's backstory so that we can actually see some goddamn consequences of Ylisstol being attacked by Gangrel. Make Excellus into a full-blown boss in that chapter, creating a twist that Walhart actually fled the castle after getting beat in Chapter 19. Then after the chapter's over, make a revelation that the Empire sent a covert strike force with him while Chrom was busy, having them successfully take over Plegia. Basically, turn it into Chapter 21 from FE9. Exploit the map system for all it's worth. Make enemies an actual solid roadblock and re-add the retreat option from FE8. Make some enemy encounters mandatory and turn them human to represent Valm-occupied territory. Make the paralogues mandatory chapters as an extension of this idea, and turn the bandits and mercenaries into Grimleal and Valm soldiers more often. Create a scene in Plegia Castle where Walhart and Validar battle each other and Walhart wins, assumedly killing Validar. Make a level where you fight Valm soldiers to retake the castle. Turn Walhart into the boss of that map with higher stats and more/better skills than in Chapter 19. Give him Dragonskin from the Darksphere/Sable gem. Then have Walhart reveal on his death that Validar plans to reawaken Grima and the Earth Dragons from the Dragon's Altar/Table, and end with Validar revealing that he only faked his death at Walhart's hands Chapter 23-style, and then make him destroy Plegia Castle with a beam of unholy judgement from the Dragon's Altar. Make fixed encounters where Grimleal and Risen fight alongside each other against you. Make Aversa lead a legit squadron and a couple Earth Dragons against you in Chapter 22, while Validar commands the Dark Warlords and Earth Dragon reinforcements in Chapter 23. Make it that the completed Binding Shield can put a stop to the Altar and re-seal the Earth Dragons only if Validar is slain. Have Chapter 24 happen in between Chapters 21 and 22. Turn Naga into Tiki, and combine the level with Paralogue 17, where Tiki has to be guarded so she can unseal the Falchion. Then at the end of the level you get both the Exalted Falchion and Tiki, similar to FE11 and the Alterspire. Get rid of Chapter 25 and Origin Peak and make Chapter 23 lead directly into the Endgame.

First, I was talking about "Giant Evil Dragon God #407 taking the Grimleal into space to find a new world after blowing up Earth" as being a shark jump. Second, there's a million games with a crap story and good gameplay. I'd rather have a game with a great story and decent to passable gameplay, like Xenoblade or MGS1. That's a flimsy excuse, though. Plus, it seems ridiculous for an entire nation to go from "GRR KILL THE HOLY BIGOTS" to "Let's all practice pacifism in memory of Nyna Clone #7!" to "Living is pain, let's join a death cult!" at the drop of a hat.