Dark Holy Elf

Yes, good point, part 1 really does add a lot to them in this regard, and gets you invested in them. And part 3 really does have a "now you've graduated to the big leagues" feel to it; their story went from one played on a local stage to one that is deeply connected to a conflict which spans all of Tellius. This might be an unpopular opinion, but Iong thought that part 1 of Radiant Dawn alone does "Typlcal FE Plot" better than most other FE games before it, despite (or perhaps because of) taking only half the time at most to do it. Obviously it has a big advantage in that it builds off a previous game for setting (so we don't need as much time devoted to that), but otherwise it gets the job done effectively, making all the major players memorable and relatable. So by the time Micaiah and friends are thrown into the awful situation of trying to balance all they've gained with the need to fight a war they want no part of, I'm invested in this struggle precisely because I've seen how hard-earned and important those gains were.

Maddening is definitely harder than Hard 0% growths. Just looked up the stats for CF endgame... most enemies have somewhere around +10 atk, +10 spd, +13 HP, and +5 def (give or take) on Maddening. Will growths make up for that? Take speed. On 0% growths, everyone will have either 16 (most master classes) or 20 (those who train flying) base speed, before any modifiers. What about with growths? Well, take Ferdinand. He has 8 base speed, and 50% speed growth. Assuming he gains 40 levels, that's 28 base speed. His relative speed compared to enemies is thus basically the same as in Maddening as on 0% growths Hard, a little more or less depending on his class choice and class modifers to growths. Similar arguments can be made involving other stats, though they're more complicated because damage always involves more stats interacting. Of course, that's endgame. The earlier you go in the game, the less growths matter. Taken to an extreme, at the start of the game, 0% growths does nothing. There's no question that Chapter 1 is far harder on Maddening than on Hard 0% growths. Not only that, but every time you reach a new tier (but especially Advanced) your stats automatically update to partly make up for the lack of growths. And then there's the non-stat things. As @Shanty Pete's 1st Mate already mentioned, there are enemy skills. Archers having Poison Strike, thieves having Pass, and various enemy classes having breaker+ skills all serve to make them much more dangerous than they would be without them. Then there's the fact that you gain more passive instruction exp on Hard than Maddening, allowing you to access classes and skills more easily (Weight-3 alone means some characters will actually be faster on the 0% growths run for a while, if they're able to get it on Hard due to the extra training available). And finally, there are the battles themselves. Maddening features, in particular, reinforcements who act immediately upon appearing, and this makes things like the Chapter 5 ambush much tougher than it is on Hard. Having said all that, they are different experiences and you should do which one appeals to you more. Hard 0% growths is much easier than Maddening early, but will likely be almost as difficult as Maddening by the end; you might prefer that challenge curve to the one in Maddening itself. It'll also change which characters are more useful; if you're a fan of Petra, you might prefer a growths run, but if you're a fan of Alois, he shines more on 0%.

Yeah, the extent of the dark emblems seems to be that you can completely annihilate them with their chosen rival (and the classes support this, like Duma being held by a General so your Celica-user, presumably a mage, demolishes him extra hard). For that reason, I think it's fair not to expect class matching, in that these aren't actually the emblems themselves you're fighting, just generic corrupted who happen to be holding them (like the ones in Chapter 11). I do agree that engage weapons might have been fun. I also have some issues with how the battle goes structurally. The first time I did that battle, I only saw the first two rounds of dark emblems; since then I've only ever seen the first. So yes, I've never seen the third set of emblems, and I've certainly talked to others who shared my experience. Now, on the one hand, I'm personally glad I didn't see the third, because I already felt the final battle was longer than I'd like (especially with the completely needless first stage; granted you can Entrap-skip that). On the other hand, I think it's disappointing that I haven't seen them. I'm not really sure what the solution is.

I'd say the analogy is closer to a sports story in a league with relegation, in which the Dawn Brigade finishing 17th is still an accomplishment because the 18th-place team meets a much worse fate. And then, I dunno, maybe some of their star players are chosen for the all-star game or something. There's a reason this isn't as well-travelled a trope, but I still enjoyed it fairly well as a one-off. The part 3 maps are very satisfying to survive, the the Greil Mercs showing up in 3-13 is a wonderful "oh shit" moment which nevertheless requires some player interaction. Yeah, Tauroneo is absolutely decent at that point. More than decent, I'd expect him to be one of your very best units (basically losing only to someone who was favoured considerably in previous maps). The stats posted aren't intended as a condemnation of him, just to observe how Goran would just be ridiculously good for the DB at that point (I'm pretty sure he'd one round every enemy on 3-12, many of them with a Hand Axe, all while having better bulk than the team's overlevelled General). And this is just the result of being designed as a boss for the Ike's team, which by this point features units who are in late tier 2, maybe even a few in tier 3, while the DB are probably still in early tier 2. And of course it's not just Goran. The generic enemies you face in 3-11, who are Daein soldiers, would all be largely better units than the ones you have in the DB maps (supports aside). I think you just have to not take this too literally for the story to make sense.

Goran's got much better stats than Tauroneo, actually (Level HP Str Mag Skl Spd Luck Def Res) Tauroneo* Lance General 14 38 24 12 22 20 18 21 15 Goran Warrior 17 50 28 5 24 25 11 22 13 On top of this, Goran has +1 move and isn't weak to Hammers. So, if Goran joined your army in 3-12 he'd be your best combat unit by far. It's a bit of a weird disconnect. I will say that overall I agree with your original post and don't really mind the feeling of the Dawn Brigade as underlevelled underdogs. Their maps are some of the most fun in the game to me, though I understand why someone would dislike them if they're used to stomping things. I do think they could have probably have afforded to give you a bit more of a power boost in part 3, e.g. with a new recruit, especially since they don't even give you Tauroneo for 3-6. I think they were trying to make you feel like the Black Knight was bailing you out, but honestly the way the map works I rarely find him that relevant, either I die before he appears or I get the map under control and he isn't able to do very much because of all the water.

Strongly agree with this. Additionally, the higher move lets you reach those energy circles more quickly/easily, and since the Corrin-user improves massively while engaged, that's a good thing. In the case of Ivy (or Hortensia), you're even guaranteed a useful action on the turn you grab emblem energy, because of staff access. Mind, I do still think a Mystic (e.g. Sage) with Corrin is a decent option too - the fire dragon vein is nice now and then, you still have access to 3-range Dreadful Aura, and you still make use of the magic boost. I definitely agree that Thief doesn't feel like it's making good use of Corrin's kit. Lower move, no 3 range, can't take advantage of the magic boost.

Yeah I was deifnitely struck by this when playing Dark Deity. While I'm not a fan of the overall story either, I appreciated how story scenes naturally integrated the playable characters, and in some cases they were even able to have little arcs. By contrast Fire Emblem tends to awkwardly have the stories only truly be about the few characters who can't die (the lords and certain key other players) because every other character can potentially not be present, and it's definitely a bit limiting. Personally I think that while Classic Mode is cool (I play it almost exclusively, after all), I think there's no need for plot permadeath. Engage already allowed six characters to be injured rather than die (plus a few more on a temporary basis, e.g. Alcryst until you reach Solm), just expand that treatment to the entire cast already and be done with it. Yep, it does, and certainly other Fire Emblems could pick this up again... but honestly, I understand why they don't. There's an issue in game writing; you only have so much time to spend on it, so why would you spend significant time on content that the overwhelming number of players don't see? I suspect the devs learned that hardly anyone sees these extra little dialog branches in PoR so decided not to bother in the future. And I agree with the decision; the time the writing team spent on those could have been better spent on more support conversations or info conversations. To be clear, I think there's a space for a game which focuses on the branching possibilities of who is alive and who isn't, but Fire Emblem isn't the game to do it (barring a significant change in the design philosophy of the games), because the huge majority of the playerbase either plays on Casual, or (usually) resets on unit death... and even out of the small group which plays these games ironman-style, many will never lose the exact units needed to see a given dialog branch. Agreed. And also, it's worth noting that numerous strategy RPGs do things like this. money cost for reviving/healing a unit if they fall in battle (seen in Shining Force, Vandal Hearts) ranking penalty for losing units, which is translates to less money and thus is similar to the above in practice but may have a different feel (seen in Mario + Rabbids) random permanent stat penalty to a unit if they fall in battle (seen in Dark Deity) unit is injured and must sit out the next battle to recover (seen in Brigandine and Fell Seal) Other possibilities exist; you could have some sort of stamina system (like Thracia) where falling in battle creates a big stamina penalty. Specifics on exactly how stamina recovers could vary. Anyway, I certainly wouldn't mind if Fire Emblem played around with the idea.

This is about how I feel. All I will add is that while it's clear the devs wanted Fire Emblem to be played ironman style, there's a reason that never happened - if you make a bunch of characters with unique names and faces, players will get attached to them and want to keep them alive. It's a reset that doesn't cost a large chunk of time, which is a big deal to a lot of players. Not everyone has time to retry a map which can easily take an hour. IMO, if Casual Mode wasn't going to exist, mid-map saves (which notably appeared in both of the last two Fire Emblems before we got casual mode... and in FE4) definitely should. Regarding XCOM vs Fire Emblem, agreed that despite their similarities, they do some very different things and it's not hard to find someone who likes one and not the other, for a slew of reasons. I definitely have some opposite anecdotal experience here - I have friends who started with Awakening/Fates/3H who had previously ignored the series because of being intimidated by permadeath, and are now big fans. And while I can't prove it, I suspect this experience is quite common.

The big difference with Melee is that the roster was now about double in size, so more slots were available to represent different Nintendo franchises. Luigi and Jigglypuff were/are both extremely popular characters. Mario and Pokemon were (and honestly still are) waaay ahead of other Nintendo franchises in terms of impact. Sure, you could cut one of them for a Japan-only character, but we shouldn't be even the slightest bit surprised that the Smash devs opted not to do so. Yeah, Ness vs. Marth is definitely one you could argue. I dunno about it being "definitely" a bigger name than Earthbound; the most successful Fire Emblem sold 780k, while Earthbound was at 660k. (Granted, "rest of the Fire Emblem series" also outsells "rest of Mother" due to number of titles alone; I'm not looking up specifics.) That's a lead but not a huge one, certainly it's close enough that other considerations might win out. I would generally agree that Ness is the most surprising member of the Smash 64 roster. Marth, to me, would be about equally surprising.

I decided to go look at the battalions unique to each route based on the ratings thread. I didn't include non-unique paralogue battalions, because I'm strongly of the opinion that you can get those without difficulty if desired; while it is difficult to recruit people ASAP, recruiting someone in mid to late part 1 is extremely easy outside of a challenge run. The one exception worth mentioning is Goneril Valkyries, just because you can't get that one on Crimson Flower and its score of 8.28 is high enough to make this notable. But anyway, the main ones to consider: Golden Deer: 1. Immortal Corps 9.56 (Chp 13) 2. Alliace Wyvern Co 8.18 (Chp 8 ) Blue Lions: 1. King of Lions Corps 8.88 (Chp 13) 2. Duscur Heavy Soldiers 7.54 (part 1 paralogue) Black Eagles 1. Supreme Armored Co 8.31 (Chp 12) 2. Empire Archers 7.64 (Chp 3) After this the next-highest is actually Empire Magic Users but in general a whole bunch follow at once at this point: the Chapter 8 magic battalions, the Impregnable Wall battalions for the Eagles/Lions (the Deer already had theirs up at 8.18), Blue Lions Dancers, Empire Pegasus, and Kingdom Archers all fall close to 7. Anyway I do think this comparison favours the Deer a bit, because their lord battalion and Impregnable Wall battalion are significantly better than the equivalents from other houses. But I do think Empire Archers also deserves specific note, because you get it in Chapter 3.

Given how tight roster spots were, Marth would have been an odd choice for Smash 64. Fire Emblem just was a way more niche series than the other games represented at the time (yes, even compared to F-Zero. How times have changed...) with only the possible exception of Earthbound. And the reason to choose Ness over Marth (or, for that matter, a Mother 1 character) is a simple and obvious one: he'd actually seen an international release. Yep, fair enough; the one FE game I've not watched nor played in any form. Beyond that, I think you hit on the reason that Smash (and indeed, other crossovers, including Heroes) tend to focus on the character in their earliest form for whatever reason, which in Marth's case means no shield.

So uh, confession here: I don't actually remember Marth ever using his shield. Just plain can't picture it. Normally you'd expect a promoted form might have it, but Marth famously doesn't promote. I just did a ten-second google image search and can't find an image of him with his shield except some bonus form from Heroes (Brave?). I'll happily concede my memory of both Shadow Dragon and New Mystery is fairly poor, but still... I think this is related to why Smash (and others) tend to ignore the shield, though.

If memory serves the range edge of the nearest ones lines up perfectly with the edge of the dragon's threat range; that is, if you're in one, you're not in the other, and vice versa. The siege tomes aren't likely to one-shot anyone, but they're still an extra complication. One other thing the dragon has compared to other bosses in the game is that he's range 3, so unless your rescue-carry unit has canto they can be stuck in the range of the boss themselves. (And yes, this is one last cherry on top of mounted units being too strong in FE7, but I digress.)

I'm immensely skeptical. If he was meant to be just a cameo for a staff member, I highly doubt they'd have gone out of their way to make him come across as so repugnantly evil in such a short amount of time, to the point where there's a scene dedicated to how disgusted the player characters are when they discover his lab. IMO he was clearly there as a sequel hook. When RD was announced (which keep in mind, was just a year after PoR's release date, i.e. the game had to have been in development almost immediately after PoR), Izuka was one of the first characters shown iirc. I rather like the theory that Izuka only truly went over to the senate after Pelleas failed to appreciate his genius; it's 100% in line with Izuka's characterization. Certainly I don't think there's any indication that Numida considered him a potential asset during Numida's part 1 scenes (certainly the success of Pelleas and Izuka during Part 1 is devastating to Numida's bottom line of exploiting the place for his own benefit), so if he had any contact with Begnion by that point it would have to be something Numida doesn't know about (granted, it's entirely possible Sephiran was already pulling strings, or that Lekain was thinking ahead in his blood pact plan).

His clone is a replica, and replicas share health pools. By the time you fight Takumi you've seen this mechanic before, in Chapter 15 of Conquest (never mind the possibility that you might have used Mechanist's Replicate yourself e.g. by playing Birthright first). As soon as you attack Takumi the first time you can see both their HP pools go down in tandem. Don't get me wrong, I think it's reasonable enough to think there might be two separate health pools, but even then being surprised that a boss dies more quickly than expected isn't the worst thing. It's not like the map as a whole is in danger of feeling too easy. As for the second part, I kinda agree with you, but interestingly I felt this one even more strongly with a map you like, the final battle of Verdant Wind. It just... doesn't feel like a final battle at all in terms of where you fight it (which makes sense, since it apparently wasn't intended as a final battle originally). You're just in a random swamp, one with no lore behind it. And on top of that you're fighting a zombie, instead of someone the protagonist(s) share a connection with. I have some issues with Ashnard as a character but at least he feels like a proper final boss narratively. Though speaking of bosses who don't feel like the proper choice narratively... It's not a super hard boss but I think you're underrating it slightly; there are some siege tomes and status staves which can reach you and mess up some plans if they don't involve just one-rounding the boss. At minimum it's more tactically demanding than the other GBA final bosses, as well as Normal Mode Ashnard. Though I agree it's still not great.

I agree that it's a bit weird to hardly ever acknowledge Wyvern Caeda, but honestly, I think the weirder thing still is the idea of the mount magically changing during promotion. You use that Master Seal (or whatever) and boom, suddenly your pegasus is a wyvern. You can even do this mid-map in some games! It's even weirder in cases where the character appears to have a bond with their specific mount (Cherche with Minerva, etc.). I accept that a character might start or stop using a mount in games where reclassing is a major feature, but I really think that for linear promotions, Archanaea and Engage are being very silly in forcefully changing the mount of the character upon a basic promotion. *In Engage I accept that it happened because someone at Intsys is very attached to the idea that men shouldn't ride pegasi but they didn't actually want to classlock men from any meaningful classes after everyone complained about genderlocks in 3H, so Chloe's transmogrified pegasus was a compromise solution.

In my opinon, what was good about Castlevania was the design of Koji Igarashi et al. As far as I'm concerned, Bloodstained is Castlevania now; I don't really care about Belmonts or other Castlevania lore, just the excellent game design that his games (and now Bloodstained) is known for. This makes it extremely hard for me to care about future official Castlevania games going forward, when Konami hasn't shown any inclination to use that name to make a game I've found remotely interesting since 2008.

My thoughts basically mirror Florete's. Blood pact is just coercion, the fantasy version of Lekain saying "we have planted a nuclear bomb under your capital, cooperate with us or else". And Micaiah is correct to trust that Pelleas wants what's best for Daein. I would also say she's pretty far from blind or unquestioning about it.

Pass wouldn't really help; it'd just switch the strategy to what I personally usually do, i.e. have nobody in range except the unit(s) you want fighting him. I like moving bosses in general but I think Ashnard's implementation of it is a bit shaky. I think the main advantage a moving boss has is that it allows a boss to fight you with their friends nearby to threaten you (Engage has several maps which do this well) instead of the player being able to neutralize all such threats first, but Ashnard isn't really set up to take advantage of this. As such Ashnard's movement mostly just ends up as a bit of a middle finger to the player if they don't know it's coming, and otherwise isn't too relevant (you bait him to where you want him to go, and then after that he might as well be immobile).

Oh, just to be clear, I was having a bit of fun re Berserkers. I completely agree with you; their offence is extremely useful.

Chapter 25 right side does seem like an absolute doozy. I didn't even think about how this run softbanned Shelter. Obviously you can beat the map just by setting up a Corrin build to bypass the rest of the map, but good for you for not needing to. You mentioned the chapter 26 stoneborn and I'm surprised you engaged them at all; the sorcerer room is usually the place I find attack stance most useful in the lategame, so would definitely have gone that way. Did you go left for the spy weapon, or did you clear out both paths for exp and/or fun? Be careful, or you might trigger some rants about Russian Roulette...

Neat, congrats! Do you have any memorable strategies/moments or insights from the run?

I voted Night Breaks Through for the final map, even though I do think you should have been able to save before it and that mars it a bit in my eyes. That said it's a thrilling race to the boss against tough but varied enemies and a unique map mechanic which is fun. Boss itself pretty much has to go to one of the 3H ones (or Ashera); most of the others are dead in a couple of combats and rarely feel like the team effort they should. I voted Hegemon Edelgard because she can actually affect the map before you approach her and because seeing the a final boss using Vantage/Wrath is a cute nod to a classic player strategy.

On Ice/Water, the main thing I feel is that ice should be weak to water. Anyone who's lived in a place with snow knows that nothing melts snow faster than a big dump of rain. ... well except extreme sources of heat, but ice is already weak to fire! I don't feel strongly about what ice should do on offence to water. I can see the case to go either way. I suppose it depends on which one there's more of; a small amount of ice won't do much to water for a variety of reasons, but a large full-scale temperature drop obviously threatens water by literally turning it into ice. Steel should not resist psychic or ice. Oh, I know why it does; it's because those were two of the most dominant types in gen 1 and both steel and dark are very blatantly "let's balance the gen 1 type chart". But neither makes any sense to me! I guess steel resisting pyschic makes a little sense if we consider pokemon who are inorganic, but many steel pokemon are just "some animal-like creature wearing metal armour" so I don't really get it for them. Ice I feel even more strongly about. Metal conducts heat really well; in a situation of extreme cold, that means it conducts heat away from the person wearing it, causing them to enter a hypothermic state much faster than they otherwise would. Wearing platemail in sub-freezing weather is a terrifying prospect.

I don't think the rallies make much difference in route challenge, aside from perhaps the unintuitive investment of Rally Charm letting the Eagles stomp Chapter 2 via accurate gambits. If you actually consider e.g. Rally Strength to be particularly good (I'm not a fan), Annette can always provide them from mission assistance from Chapter 3 on, and since rallying doesn't provide any exp, skill exp, or class exp, it's well-suited to the mission assistant since there' no opportunity cost for using it. One thing not mentioned in the spreadsheet (or brought up in general that I've seen) is that Sylvain is a free recruit for the Eagles and Deer at least 50% of the time, and this blunts some of the supposed strengths of the Lions by giving an extra relic and paralogue to those houses, with no effort required besides possibly playing as the gender the player may not wish to play as. Sylvain himself is also a pretty respectable unit with good all-around stats for Chapter 2, particularly since he's auto-levelled to 3 with some reasonably generous levelups and your Chapter 2 roster includes at least four units at Level 1 otherwise. I agree that challenge runs "don't count" although they can sometimes shed light on some things. However, I think blind (or semi-blind) runs absolutely do count. After all, if we assume a perfectly knowledgeable player, they're not going to struggle with any route, on any map, so all routes are in effect equally easy. To determine challenge I think you need to start considering "how specific is the knowledge required to overcome this challenge". Anyway Chapter 13 (non-CF) is the hardest map in the game because it's the main one that requires you make specific preparations earlier to overcome - the advice offered for the map frequently involves levelling specific characters and/or specific builds (flight, defence, and/or evasion). It's also a map where otherwise good strategies don't work or aren't available, such as Battalion Wrath or Warp. It is also, by far, the map which causes the most softlocks / discussion threads of "please help me beat this" at least on SS and AM. I would personally weight this very heavily in a discussion of a route's challenge. I've played the game on Maddening many times (over a dozen) and I still feel this way: I never find myself saying "whoops, starting up a [xxx house] run, better get ready for a harder time". Of course, I do think there are some differences in exactly how some maps play out on different routes (especially later on), but I don't think the gaps between the houses are large for overall challenge, especially early. Most houses largely do the same things and the strengths and weaknesses mostly balance out. Almost any difference in player knowledge, or rules for their run, (e.g. are they doing a challenge, do they have DLC) are more significant.