Jump to content

Dark Holy Elf

Member
  • Posts

    3,606
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Dark Holy Elf

  1. Virginia is my favourite, probably (even if all her battle quotes about royalty-being-awesome are cringe-inducing). Good design, fun and confident personality, has meaningful relationships with numerous characters (particularly Alain, Josef, Leah... the Knights of Rose to a lesser extent), actually involved in the story (for a while anyway), good unit.

    But overall the characters don't really grab me that much which is a shame because their designs are, on average, so good.

  2. On 3/17/2024 at 5:57 PM, Etrurian emperor said:

    I guess it was unavoidable but the open world part of Unicorn Overlord is mostly an illusion. In the demo you were mostly free to go any direction you wanted, but in the game proper its made clear you're not really supposed to. There's a pretty clearly preferred route through the countries and strict level gate ensure its not really feasible to switch this up.

    I suppose its possible to go to Elfheim before Drakenhold, but the other countries will quickly kick you to the curb if you try to visit them early on. 

    To be frank, I wish the route through the countries was even more locked-in than it is. I'm doing Elheim and it's pretty weird honestly how Virginia has just completely disappeared from the plot, but I guess it's in service to the fact that you can do it first? And if this continues then the new characters gained in Elheim will similarly drop out of the plot later. It's awkward, and I don't see the point of it. Being able to do the nations in different orders would only be interesting if it had a meaningful effect on the story.

     

  3.  

    Reposting something from another thread talking about the same battle:

    Avoid agrroing the snipers (that is, ending your turn inside their attack range) until you need to. If one wakes up, the crowd of other enemies around them will too. Instead, use any fliers you have (Claude obviously, any others are a nice bonus) to bait individual non-sniper enemies, thinning them out as much as you can. Note that once an enemy is woken up, they will move toward your squishies unit, generally, and if they move beside an enemy, THAT enemy wakes up to, so be careful about waking an enemy then retreating.

    Claude's Ashes and Dust is a huge get-out-of-jail free card if a turn looks bad. You get two shots, use them wisely.

    Remember that Claude (and any other fliers) can dismount if you want him to take a hit from a sniper... or just in general, because of the thicket evade bonus.

  4. Seconding the sentiments expressed in this thread. I do wish there was either an option to turn off animated GIF avatars or just for us not to have them at all. I find animations quite distracting.

    (I fully respect that I'm hanging out on these forums without paying a dime and I do not expect the mods to do unpaid work just to make me happy, so I'll deal with it, but figured I'd make my voice heard.)

  5. Largely already covered, but to me the biggest thing is that hexes make things more dangerous. In general, with squares, it's usually easy enough to reduce the number of available spaces for enemies to attack you to 2 (it's possible to go to 1 with a walled formation), while in hexes the relevant number is 3 (and 2 with a wall). That's a pretty big difference. Ironically I feel like I often find walls more valuable in hex-based games because of this, but it obviously varies by game. And I agree that I generally value durable units more in hex grids than square grids (assuming both have comparable systems with respect to permadeath).

    All of this applies more to SRPGs with reasonably large (8+) unit counts and reasonably small attack ranges than it does to other games, but of course both of these disclaimers include Fire Emblem. I think the difference is less significant for games like Final Fantasy Tactics (squares) and Wild Arms XF (hexes). Those games (particularly FFT) aren't really built around defensive formations anyway, both because you don't have the numbers to pull it off and because attack range is so much higher generally (magic hits from range 4 or 5 instead of 2).

    41 minutes ago, Integrity said:

    e: for a concrete example of that, zone of control mechanics are all-but-mandatory to have a functional hex system, whereas they're far less needed (but sometimes appreciated) in a square system

    definitely agree with this. I've never felt Fire Emblem needed zone of control, whereas something like Brigandine would definitely lose something without it.

  6. Enjoying the game so far for sure. This is the third game I've played with this sort of squad-based combat I've played (Ogre Battle and Soul Nomad) and I think it does it far better than the previous ones, since it actually wants you to think about how you assemble squads and gives different classes clear roles to play in that. Good fun.

    On 3/12/2024 at 3:48 PM, Fabulously Olivier said:

    Personally, I think it's a good thing. Random unfavorable aberrant chance results (high hit misses, low miss hits, low chance crits) are the most hated thing in this genre, and a system that essentially eliminates these as an issue is really good game design. Fire Emblem should take notes. Fire Emblem wishes it was this good.

    While I definitely think this game's combat forecast is pretty good at what it does, I don't really think Fire Emblem would benefit from imitating it. If you know in advance that you're going to miss, hit, or critical in Fire Emblem, that feels like it would remove all the probabilistic decision-making. Being a game where each combat is 1-3 interactions instead of a dozen (or so) is a big difference.

    Baking in the RNG for the combat forecast is interesting. On the whole I definitely think it's a decent, easy solution to letting players own their decisions, but it does result in some awkwardness. One of the most effective tactics in this game is to try your hand at attacking an enemy squad and if you don't like the preview (specificaly, if you feel like it's worse than it "should" be), wait until another combat has resolved elsewhere and try again; you may find a much more advantageous outcome.

    I think it would probably be even better if the game gave a detailed combat forecast that included the % chance of every given unit in both squads falling to zero HP, and then listed average expected damage as well. But this would be pretty difficult to calculate (you'd have to follow an extensive series of probability branching; it would easily be hundreds of calculations) so I understand why they didn't go this road.

    On 3/12/2024 at 4:42 PM, Etrurian emperor said:

    My problem with the forecast is that it only shows the damage taken by the group and not by the characters. There's plenty of battles where my squad is said to win comfortably and they do, but I still find the unwelcome surprise that one member of the squad is on death doors. 

    One thing I've definitely learned is that you really need to be wary when the listed enemy damage is equal to or greater than the lowest HP of your squad mates. In such circumstances it often pays to think about how the battle will go and try to predict if the damage will all go to one person or not, since by and large you don't want to lose units too often unless the map is about to end or there's a campsite nearby.

  7. On 3/6/2024 at 10:58 AM, Barren said:

    I’ve heard about Chloe as a mage knight but I never tried it. Chaos Style I know is a great ability. I want to give it a shot for next time.

    To be clear, I've never tried it either; I was speaking of Chloe and Mage Knight separately in my post. I'm slightly skeptical of Mage Knight Chloe just because I find that the magic benchmark to ORKO most enemies with tomes is reasonably tight; you can do it but you need a pretty good magic stat, or a lot of investment in that direction, but some people seem to have gotten good results (and obviously Levin Sword + Sword Power is always an option).

    On 3/6/2024 at 12:32 PM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

    Gave her me MS and she was just what you´d expect from a flying horse unit. Fast as fuck, frail as hell (except Res if memory serves, duh) and weak as shit. And then I gave her a crit engraved forge and she still didn´t kill shit. And I know I gave her stat boosts, just have to look up what drops when, but I think I remember 2 STR boosts

    Chloe's got pretty average def and above average HP so she's not particularly frail, particularly in Wyvern. The strength can definitely be cause for concern; she's a unit who is helped notably by the well IMO since now she can just grab Sword/Lance Power for her killing needs, and not needing much speed support is certainly appreciated.

    On 3/6/2024 at 12:32 PM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

    Sell them seals, I say.

    I might be missing something but I don't think you can; they don't show up in your regular inventory. Which is a shame because you often do end up with some extras. (If there's a way to sell them I missed, I'm all ears; I've been known to miss strange interface options before. I don't want to talk about how long it took me to notice you can pick up bond fragments from your achievements on my first playthrough...)

     

  8. I assume by early master seals you mean the ones in part 1, since you get a bunch more in early part 2. Combine that with the fact that deployment slots fall around then and you should be able to promote everyone you plan to use for Chapter 12.

    If I was making recommendations I'd generally probably suggest the following:

    Alear should be promoted by the start of Chapter 11. Chapter 11 has a win condition of bringing Alear to a certain point, and it's smoother if Alear is at least move 5. You can use the one you get from the Chapter 10 boss (the fourth one) if you'd like, or you can promote them earlier.

    Chloe just has great part 1 combat and snowballs easily, both times I made her one of my early promotions I was extremely happy with the result.

    Mage Knight has great magical offence out of the gate, and the earlier the promote the earlier you get Chaos Style which makes their offence even better.

    I don't think either of them are great units, but both Diamant and Lapis should be promoted if you plan to use them longterm because their base class is bad, a backup with no ranged weapons.

  9. 9 hours ago, ARMADS!!! said:

     The S support CGs look so atrocious to me not only cause they're ugly, it's just that they're so low quality and weird, look like fanart but it's on the actual game, and a bunch of them are unecessarily corny, also the fact that they're ugly while that's obviously not the intention. They just piss me off so much. I don't know how unpopular is my opinion here too, I've seen people expressing dislike for them a few times, but given the amount of fanart that people do on the same style (but for characters from previous games) and that they did the same thing again in Engage (although in better quality) I presume these CGs have a bunch of people that like them too. Still, I can't over how much I detest them, most of the characters were drawn without a nose, and that pink sky background has a special place on the farthest place away from my heart.

    I think people like the idea of them, but mostly, not the art. Heck, 3H fanart itself is awash with similar CGs for the Three Houses characters themselves.

  10. Tend to agree with Gaiden (not counting BS for this). I don't think it's Thracia, even speaking as someone who hasn't played it. The game has an identity, and I've definitely seen big fans of it as a result. Its sales are bad, but I don't think it's enough worse than Gaiden to close that gap in passion. Of course, this is with the caveat that I don't discuss the game in Japanese circles - if Thracia is the least favourited game of 1-6 in Japan, then it's possible.

    It's definitely not RD. Plenty of people like that game a lot. It was my favourite FE of the era and I always found lots of like-minded people on that front - not to say there weren't people who preferred 7 or 8 or 9, but 10 was certainly a contender. Also, the remarkably strong showing of Tellius characters in CYL to this day (i.e. generally stronger than Elibe or Magvel overall) show that the game is more popular than its sales indicate.

    Among games released outside Japan, I think it's gotta be Shadow Dragon. Maybe SoV, but that one's different enough that I think it carves out a decent little fanbase. Shadow Dragon isn't particularly beloved by the English fandom and has to compete with the other Archanaea games in Japan (and I have a sneaking suspicion it's the least popular of the four there). Can't really see it being any of the others.

  11. 22 hours ago, lenticular said:

    Depends what you're counting as a bow user. If you include Silver Knights, then Oscar and Geoffrey and Fiona both take less effort to get ready for the Tower. But they're also capped at A rank for bows, which means that they can't use the Double Bow and are probably going to just pretend they're still lance-locked.

    I'm... honestly not convinced Geoffrey takes less effort to get ready for the tower. Sure, he starts 13 (iirc) levels ahead of Rolf. But he also has 11 fewer maps in part 3+4 to get them! (I'm excluding part 2 because Geoffrey pretty much just gets 1 exp per combat then.) I don't think getting an even vaguely competent unit approximately one level per chapter is particularly effortful. Certainly, my experience of using Rolf in the tower is that by the time I got him there, giving him a modest number of kills per map throughout his 13 appearances, he was doing great, Double Bow and Brave Bow with that strength goes brrr. While when I used Geoffrey in the tower, I frankly thought he was very unimpressive; bad speed and only so-so other stats and lances are not a great specialization for the tower (the SS weapon is the last one obtained, no hammer, no wyrmslayer), and he doesn't get 34 speed or earth supports or anything else interesting that his competition gets. Now I'm willing to imagine Geoffrey could be a "good" unit in the tower if you give him a lot of BExp (or just drag out 4-5 grinding off Izuka's summons) so he's rolling in there at or near his tier 3 caps, but that's not what I would consider low effort.

    I think Geoffrey's probably a more useful unit than Rolf overall but that's because he's very useful in 2-3 and 3-9. But I definitely think Rolf will do much better in the Tower in most situations where you plan to use one or both of them there.

    2 hours ago, lenticular said:

    Worrying overly about caps always seems like a bit of a dead end to me. Once you get to the point where you're starting to butt up against caps, pretty much any unit is going to be pretty great.

    Mmm, in most Fire Emblems I'd agree, but in Radiant Dawn a unit with low caps can definitely fall off in E-4 and E-5 pretty notably (and in some cases E-2). While this doesn't have a huge impact on a unit's overall worth because there are many, many maps before E-4 (e.g. we all agree Haar rules), it does impact performance in Endgame, and hence how worthwhile they are to bring there (Haar does okay for himself in Endgame because of Hammer access for E-1, but is mediocre thereafter; I would not usually consider him part of an "optimum" endgame team. And Geoffrey is significantly worse.) You're correct that you can still beat Endgame with those weaker picks, but you can also easily beat Greil Merc Part 3 maps using weaker units too, for instance.

    RD is also in a unique position with respect to caps precisely because it asks you to cull your team for the tower. In another FE, if another unit suffers a bit at their caps, who cares, you've already committed to using them as one of your 12 (or whatever) units you're bringing to every map, building supports for, etc. In RD, if you have an excellent unit who falls off in the tower, you just use them until then. Even if you employ small teams in part 4 you'll probably need to bench roughly half your regulars when you reach the tower (if you use full-size teams, it'll be closer to two thirds), so you might as well bench the ones who do least well there, even if they were an MVP up to that point.

     

    Anyway what was this thread about again? Oh right! If we're defining MVP the way the game does (most kills), then I've had a lot of MVPs, usually some with high availability and often (though not always) a relatively low starting level. Nolan, Jill, and Volug from the DB; Mia, Rolf, Haar from the GM side of things. Oscar once? Maybe Titania? I forget. It feels like it's a different unit every time, though I think maybe Haar was twice. (Fun fact which dovetails back to my previous paragraph: I once had Haar be MVP even though I didn't take him to the tower.)

    If we're talking about "which unit I actually consider to be the best on a given run" then the list is probably shorter, being pretty typically the usual top-tier suspects such as Haar, Titania, Jill, Ike, and Volug (this one's a bit controversial maybe? I stand by it, he's absolutely saved my behind before in Dawn Brigade part 3, the hard part of the game). And of course herons, they're silly busted in this game even with the paper durability.

  12. 12 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

    Also, are auxiliary battles EVER worth it on Maddening??? I am very heavily leaning towards no.

    The ones attached to quests are, obviously, at least big quests like the merchant ones.

    Otherwise? I typically find them not worth it, myself. Much of what aux fights give you can be given in a fraction of the time through other means. A seminar gives you comparable weapon exp in seconds, and usually just choosing to explore gives even better rewards still - professor exp, money (via arena), gardening rewards (stat boosters), support building, faculty training.

    To go into more detail: realistically, realistically you usually want to explore every weekend except the last of each month, for motivation reasons (exception: if you have lots of paralogues you want to do). In Chapter 5 you should do two quests battles, and in Chapter 8-11 (and for the Lions, Chapter 6), you have paralogues, which give better rewards than aux fights. In Chapter 7 there is no "free" battle weekend, as Chapter 8 opens with an instruction week before the first weekend. That just leaves Chapters 3, 4, and 6 (Eagles/Deer) pre-timeskip. In these chapters, there's a case for aux fights, but IMO early professor rank increases and recruitment prerequisite increases are more valuable, and certainly take less time. I suppose there's also a case for aux fights post-timeskip but I definitely find them to be a bit grindy / time-wasting at that point. You don't need to master many classes post-timeskip unless you're desperately trying to pretend that Gilbert is a good unit.

    12 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

    Also, don't enemies eventually get so strong that you cannot survive one round against them?

    Depends on the unit and the enemy, but I don't feel this is that big a problem. I will say a lot of the units one might favour for Vantage/Wrath builds (i.e. high-str units with axe boons) tend towards being reasonably bulky, so it's usually not very hard to get them to survive something. If you're okay with your V/W user not being a flier, they can also use a guard adjutant to survive doubles (and V/W users kinda want an adjutant for the hit boost), or even Blessing.

  13. Not only does RD Hard Mode suck, but it really isn't even that much harder than Normal Mode imho. In particular, it is extremely similar to Normal Mode if a player wastes or sits on bonus exp (two things I'm both very guilty of, depending on the run, and I imagine I'm far from alone). The one time I did play Hard I did a bit of a pseudo-challenge run limiting myself to certain affinities only (I certainly used a number of the units mentioned on that list, like Rolf and Meg). I don't doubt for a moment that lenticular could have used the team she cited for the tower on hard mode too and done fine.

    17 hours ago, lenticular said:

    I don't think I agree with this? I mean, not in the sense that I think people shouldn't use the term like that, but more that I don't think they do. I think that people generally use the same terminology and language regardless of what difficulty they're talking about. I don't have any hard data to back this up or anything, so let's just leave it as saying that the overall feeling and impression that I have is not the same as the one that you have.

    I also strongly second the above. I suspect most people just discuss what they are most familiar with, only agreeing to settle on a particular difficulty it's actually relevant for a discussion (it often isn't, most great units are great regardless of mode) or has been pre-stated to remove ambiguity.

  14. 36 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

    For my own question... how effective are low HP builds in this game?? Because I am dubious as to whether they really are as effective as some people say..

    Depends on the build, the point in the game, and your playstyle.

    Broadly when talking about low-HP builds, we are talking about one of the following:

    Vengeance: Vengeance allows its users to kill foes in one hit at a point in the game where few other things kill in one hit (just Catherine and perhaps an RNG-blessed lord). To use it the user needs to have low health so you'll need to protect them, but the payoff can certainly be worth it on some maps, particularly around Chapter 4-8 or so. In fact, I would say Vengeance during this stretch of the game is the most "worth it" low-HP tool. The further you go in the game, the less useful I find it, because you get more and more things which kill reliably without the downside of being one hit from death (and needing to be lowered there every fight), though some players find it useful even late (I'm not a big fan). Bernadetta and Dedue tend to get more out of it than Cyril, for several reasons (they get it earlier, they have Persecution Complex and higher HP respectively, and they don't have the largely superior Point-Blank Volley).

    Balthus's personal: It's a cool bonus for sure, but a bit fiddly even by the standards of low HP powerups. The defence boost is quite potent in pure physical situations early (later it won't do much unless you're already stacking a lot of def), and of course the attack allows kills you might otherwise miss, so I do like to keep Balthus at lower HP when possible. The big problem is that Balthus wants to use combat arts on player phase, and those can easily heal him out of this zone due to his crest. If you're leveraging this with him late, chances are it's for Vantage/Wrath (see below).

    Defiant [abilities]: Are almost strictly bad, IMO. Most are gained incredibly late, and I can't say I'm ever tempted to kick out one of my existing good skills for something that requires me to be at <25% HP. Defiant Strength is gained earlier but involves mastering Hero (which sucks, on top of being gender-locked), and every time I've tried to use it the unit has fallen off too much to be worthwhile thereafter. Particularly since the main build that wants low HP late is the one below, and the thought of trying to master both Hero and Warrior on one unit fills me with a deep feeling of dread.

    Vantage/Wrath: IMO this is the main low-HP build worth using in the later stages in the game, though it's still a bit weird and I would hesitate to call myself a big fan. There's a major investment here: Needing 150 class exp in the mediocre Warrior is a drag (and you'll also want Mercenary), you have to set up for low HP every fight, and you have to avoid or mitigate all the things which punch holes in this build, i.e. siege weapons, monsters/armours, and gambits. But if you do the payoff is cool, being able to reliably kill on the enemy phase without having to worry about battalion durability, and Retribution is nice at expanding the things the build works on (meteor/bolting in particular). Works best on units with high strength since every point counts for triple, and an axe boon is preferred as well to get to Warrior in a decent amount of time.

    When using low HP builds in general, watch out for extra sources of healing: there are a lot in this game. Sacred weapons and various accessories, healing tiles, being in range of Fortify, healing crest effects (Byleth, Edelgard, Balthus, Claude, etc.), being adjacent to Dorothea, being named Raphael. Most of these can be worked around to some extent but they're definitely a source of frustration when using these builds in my experience. Conversely, you can take advantage of various ways to safely lower HP like devil weapons, relic backlash (if the unit doesn't have a crest), and of course deliberately leaving the unit in range of certain enemies (archers are especially useful for this on Maddening due to Poison Strike).

  15. 11 hours ago, samthedigital said:

    When you say that you find Ryoma to be more valuable than Rutger does that mean that you would rather play FE6 without Rutger than Birthright without Ryoma? That's how I would personally determine which is more valuable, but it doesn't necessarily correlate to which unit I think is better either; that kind of question is complicated.

    For what it's worth I wasn't thinking of value as "which one would I rather play the game without". The latter conversation, while sometimes interesting, leads to some odd results: for instance, if we adopted that definition, then Brom (RD) is definitively more valuable than Seth, because Sacred Stones can be reasonably cleared without using Seth while Radiant Dawn 2-1 without Brom is a nightmare (I'd buy that it's possible, but I wasn't able to do it when I tried).

    Admittedly I'm not sure exactly how I would define value. If I had to put it into words in the context of Ryoma: I am impressed by how well Ryoma does what he does without needing much investment, and find that when I try to replicate him with someone else, they either do significantly worse or need a lot more resources to get there.

  16. 11 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

    In my playthrough, not all that worse, to be honest - though that does come with a couple of caveats. I thought Fates was more iffy with avoidtanking, actually.

    I do agree that Rutger grows into an excellent dodgetank and Fates "pure" dodgetanks can never be as good (due to using single RN and having fewer ways to stack evade, but Ryoma is still secretly pretty much the most durable unit once he joins in Birthright on top of having the best offence. Since he doubles at 1-2 range he can fill up the dual guard gauge every two combats, and on top of that he has -2 damage received in this state from his personal (assuming his partner's level doesn't exceed his, but given his high starting level and exp gain this is basically a guarantee).

    Beyond that, my opinion is that they're both excellent and measuring which of two units is more valuable in completely different games is rarely going to be easy. On the whole I'd lean toward Ryoma, but a lot depends on how much you dock him for missing Chapters 7-13.

    12 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

    But oh whatever. Anyway, a possible plot point I'd like to see in a future game is the role of the industry-military complex in a war. Say, the purported Empire turned out to be not quite the bad guy. The weapon suppliers, merchants, mercenaries, and nobles are the bad guys tagging together as the warmongering faction because they like the profit from weapon sales, contracts, and war prizes.

    I definitely agree with this.

  17. A lot of the advice I'd give depends on the builds of Ignatz/Lorenz/Hilda/Leonie/Byleth, but this point should apply regardless:

    Avoid agrroing the snipers (that is, stepping inside their range) until you need to. If one wakes up, the crowd of other enemies around them will too. Instead, use any fliers you have (Claude obviously, any others are a nice bonus) to bait individual non-sniper enemies, thinning them out as much as you can. Note that once an enemy is woken up, they will move toward your squishies unit, generally, and if they move beside an enemy, THAT enemy wakes up to, so be careful about waking an enemy then retreating.

    Claude's Ashes and Dust is a huge get-out-of-jail free card if a turn looks bad. You get two shots, use them wisely.

    Remember that Claude (and any other fliers) can dismount if you want him to take a hit from a sniper... or just in general, because of the thicket evade bonus.

  18. On 2/6/2024 at 7:49 PM, Fire Emblem Fan said:

    Aren't those all graphic/animation problems and not really character design ones? Looking at the actual character designs and the actual artwork is a bit different than the graphics or animations. The Tellius designs, for example, don't look as good during a battle in gameplay, the characters all look a little off from their actual designs in the official artwork and such.

    I'm generally more interested in talking about character designs as they are presented in-game rather than an artbook, so to me these aren't fully distinguishable problems. Particularly character potraits, due to them being used for dialog scenes as well as the battle screen: those are definitely a major part of the character design to me, and if they're off, that's a problem. (Tellius designs don't look great in battle, I agree, but the game uses gorgeous half-body shots for its story scenes which let me appreciate the character design.)

    Since Engage is getting thrown around, I'm a bit mixed on some of the designs (Hortensia's as mentioned feels particularly over-the-top and actually does a disservice to the character's rather serious role in the story, IMO), but I do like how the game uses poses and facial expressions to make the characters more individually memorable, on top of things like outfits. The greater variety in skin-tone is also something I very much appreciate. So while it's not one of my favourites, I definitely disagree with it being the worst.

  19. Best: I'm tempted to be the Three Houses fan that I am and just vote for that, and certainly I do think it's very good! I love how most characters get a pre- and post-timeskip design, it's obvious a lot of thought went into having outfits (both) tell you something about the characters. Really the only thing I might mark the game down for is the S support art which is... remarkably bad?

    I'll also mention Radiant Dawn, which I could certainly vote for instead depending on my mood. Senri Kita is probably my favourite FE artist, the characters tend toward looking a bit more mature and practical-minded for outfits while still maintaining the colourful FE style.

    Broadly speaking I think most of the games in the series are at least pretty good at this.

    Worst: No question to me it's the DS games. Like... you could argue the NES titles but they were working under very stringent conditions, I get it. The DS games? No excuse. The portraits all look like low-quality 3D renders, the battle sprites look ugly and washed-out. It's a big step down from the GBA and Tellius games whatever you're looking for.
     

  20. You probably don't need to buy 3 intermediate seals every month, though I do find it's good to have a few extra on hand. If you buy all the ones in any one chapter you are most likely set until Chapter 8, unless you stop and do a lot of class-exp grinding via optional auxiliary fights right after hitting Level 10. (If that sounds like something you'll do, then yeah, buy three a chapter.)

    You do get quite a lot of them without needing to shop: one from Chapter 1's battle, one from a chest in Chapter 4, two from arena rewards (chapter 5 and 7), and one automatically when your first unit reaches Level 10. Additionally, recruitable non-students come with them; you are guaranteed to get one such character at the start of Chapter 7 and depending on route either one to three others are available by Chapter 6, though may take a little effort. So that's seven to nine for free, and of course you'll always have the option to stop and buy up to three more in any given chapter.

    I echo Zapp's thoughts that Armour Knight certification is worth it for anyone who's already training axes (which should probably be a majority of your physical units), but probably a bit too far out of the way for anyone who isn't - it's still a valid option, especially since Weight-3 is itself a cool ability, but I usually prefer to focus on other skills personally.

  21. On 1/29/2024 at 10:40 AM, Etrurian emperor said:

    I've heard people speculate that Bernie fans will move on to Alcryst next CYL but I doubt it. There's a pretty unfortunate double standards when it comes to social anxiety in characters. Female characters are allowed to be, male ones are not. The same reason people go ''So precious must protect!'' about Marianne is the exact same reason they have contempt for Ignatz. 

    While there are certainly some gender-related double standards when it comes to characters, I don't think this is one? Like, obviously Alcryst is "allowed" to be socially anxious by the fanbase... he's the second most popular male character in Engage! If his social anxiety was seen as a negative trait, there's no way he'd be more popular than someone like Alfred, who is more plot-important.

    IMO the reason that Ignatz isn't as popular as Bernadetta, Marianne, or Alcryst is because he's just... not as interesting as them. Even people who would relate to Ignatz tend not to care about him that much in my experience.

    Anyway in my experience there is definitely some overlap between Bernadetta fans and Alcryst fans. Will a few Bernadetta fans support Alcryst next time? Probably a small number... more than will move to Diamant or male Alear, for instance. But it's not like they migrate as a bloc - I expect others will support other Black Eagles (particularly Dorothea since she's the next most popular and Hubert since there's a lot of Hubert/Bernie fanbase overlap), and countless other characters.

  22. Happy with the results overall. Felix is one of my favourites and was who I voted for, Bernie winning is cathartic. Not the biggest fan of FEH originals but y'know Alfonse is the main character of a Fire Emblem game which has shown it can get characters get into the CYL winners' circle so I guess if anyone from the game deserves to get in it's the guy who has gotten 7+ books of character development.

    Since the big discussion is around Engage: I'm not at all surprised that the Engage men were shut out. There is really no reason to believe that male Alear would be as popular as male Byleth, or Diamant would be as popular as Felix (a comparably important supporting male PC) given the gap between Engage and 3H, and there was Sigurd in the mix as well who honestly I expected to be one of the winners (didn't see Alfonse coming). I thought maybe Alcryst had an outside chance until I saw he wasn't in the running at midterm results. I am surprised the Engage women were shut out, though to be fair they were close, and I imagine at least one of them will win next year.

    Biggest disappointment is that neither Fogado or Timerra are anywhere to be seen. I only wish I could say I was surprised.

    47 minutes ago, Florete said:

    why [Bernadetta] instead of Dorothea or Petra?

    I also prefer Dorothea and Petra but I get it. This might be one of the things you have to be on social media for, but Bernadetta gets a lot of very specific, targeted hate (e.g. some at least moderately-known FE youtuber made a video of himself destroying a Bernadetta figurine) and this really galvanized not only her own fans, but others, into supporting her. My wife spent all her votes on Bernie this year despite not being the biggest fan, and I know others who were doing similarly.

  23. 39 minutes ago, lenticular said:

    Well, to start with, I will disclaim that I don't touch Hard difficulty in RD, and honestly think of it more as a gimmick than something that's actually worth my time or thought. (I am vehemently opposed to the removal of UI and QoL in the name of difficulty; does it show?)

    +1. I actually have played Hard (and did a challenge run on it to boot, perhaps as a defence mechanism against anyone who might say "you just don't play hard? skill issue") but I definitely agree that it's a terribly-designed mode. Removing UI and QoL is terrible, removing the weapon triangle is also pretty bad. And the things I might actually want a hard mode to do, like creating trickier enemy formations, making more bosses move, etc... the game doesn't do. Even the stat differences are only barely noticeable.

    My feeling on Fiona is that she isn't objectively worth investing into (and is terrible if you don't invest into her) which makes her pretty "bad" but she does have neat and unique payoffs so investing into her does feel pretty good. This is a place where the usual "rate the units out of 10" doesn't really capture a unit's value. It is true both that Fiona has the least value if you decide to only invest in Jill/Nolan/Zihark/etc., but also true that she has more potential than the other Dawn Brigade also-rans.

    1 hour ago, lenticular said:

    Only tangentially related, but I'm now imagining a skill system similar to Tellius, except that instead of each skill having a set capacity, each unit has a specific capacity cost for each skill. So, Savior might cost 10 for most units, 0 for Fiona and Tibarn, 5 for -- let's say -- Tanith and Titania, 15 for Makalov, and 20 for Shinon and Oliver. I dunno how that would work out in practice, but I like the idea of it.

    Flavour-wise I definitely like this idea! I'm all for small things like this which both increase my feeling of a unit's personality, and create different strengths/weaknesses beyond just stats.

  24. 15 hours ago, Shanty Pete&#x27;s 1st Mate said:

    To this end, I actually disagree. Like, I think the overall plot is totally broken. But I think there are some really strong themes contained within. Eliwood and Nergal both deal with grief and loss, but where Nergal obsesses and goes mad in isolation, Eliwood counts on his friends and keeps on living. Lyn first seeks to become stronger to avenge her family, but changes course to discover the family she never knew. And Hector learns to be more emotionally open, while also taking on more responsibility - to his friends, and to his land. I don't know if FE7 has one single thesis, but I think it succeeds at fleshing out its core characters and making their feelings matter. Just my take, though.

    To be clear, I agree with you that FE7 does a good job of characters. I enjoyed watching Eliwood's little arc, and Lyn's. Hector's not so much but I get where you're coming from. And in general this is something I think most FEs are good at, and part of what drew me to this game, and thereafter this series in general.

    (Nergal I generally think is rather disastrous from a writing standpoint, both in the present and the past. Did he deal with grief and loss? I don't think that came across in the story well at all. IIRC it's mostly gated behind that rather ridiculous 19xx sidequest, and even then I was unclear if Nergal's madness was supposed to be the result of grief or if it was just "dark magic eventually makes you crazy", which iirc some supports seemed to be pointing at. Nergal is bad and there's a reason he's still not in FEH. Even as far as "grief making someone turn to extremes" villain arcs go I thought Sacred Stones did a significantly better job at this... more than once, even!)

    15 hours ago, Shanty Pete&#x27;s 1st Mate said:

    Is it, though? Killing Zephiel is irrelevent once the Fire Emblem has been stolen. And vice-versa: why block his coronation by stealing the magic rock, if they were going to kill him regardless?

    Also, the last scene with young Zephiel implies things are going to get better for him and his family, which... no. No, they're not. If they did, FE6 would never have happened. Maybe they were going for "sadly ironic", but it really feels moreso like dissonant messaging.

    Far be it for me to defend anything from Blazing's plot but yeah I definitely thought the last Zephiel scene was supposed to be sadly ironic. Or, perhaps it was supposed to make the player hopeful that the problem had been solved (at least if they were unaware of FE6)... only for the ending to come along and gutpunch them with the truth.

    I also definitely think killing Zephiel is absolutely relevant even after the fire emblem is stolen. Desmond wants someone to succeed him, so he'll need the fire emblem eventually, right? The plan is presumably to kill Zephiel than the fire emblem can be conveniently "found". I do agree with the vice-versa part; I suspect that is just filler to (a) get the titular object into the game and (b) give you more time to learn about what's going on in Bern.

×
×
  • Create New...