Ayra

Pretty sure we aren't getting anything on the anniversary: April 20th is Labo release day. Nintendo will surely be putting focus on that instead of the Fire Emblem anniversary.

I like reading your playthroughs, and Requiem is the longest fan game/hack/ect I've played through entirely so I'm glad to see you playing it! The characters relationships are the highlight of Requiem for me: they are pretty well done overall, and I'd say they are more realistic than most core FE games. There's a few touching scenes, and I'd say that Josie is one of the most interesting/complete SRPG character I've ever seen. Stat-wise she's totally usable for the entire game. I did have some issues with the story progression later on (though the story itself is fine) and I felt that the difficulty fell sharply downward as I progressed through the second half of the game, even though my playthrough was a soft "Female-only" playthrough (soft as in I still used male characters I was forced to deploy, I used male characters if I didn't have enough female units to fill all the deployment slots, and I used Bruno for most of the game so that I actually had an axe user). Even with that restriction, it was an utter cakewalk later on; hopefully you'll be somewhat cursed with growths so you'll keep a challenge the entire way through. Despite my grievances with the game, I've enjoyed it quite a lot overall, and for a fan project it's immensely impressive. Hope you'll like it too, and looking forward to reading the rest of your playthrough! :)

Eep, very sorry about the lack of answers! I haven't been around Serenes Forest for quite some time... Thanks for putting up the new link Atticus! Regarding English: For this project, I have translated myself the dictionary inside the engine. Some Japanese text still remains after that (For example, buy/sell, deploy, ect). On top of the dictionary (which I learned only after making this project), there is also a file called constants-stringtable.js in the Script folder. The rest of the Japanese text is in there: I can confirm that editing this shows up correctly in-game. I cannot confirm if this covers absolutely everything (I haven't translated it all) but it should be extremely close. There's three very unfortunate things however: 1) This translation only affects the playable game: the entire editor is all in Japanese and there's no ways to change that... So making projects with this is very difficult unless you understand the language, which is unfortunate since the software is actually extremely well done and user-friendly otherwise. 2) On some computers, the English text shows up nearly unreadable. I have no clue why: on mine it works perfectly. 3) This is project-specific. In order to translate things like this, you need the master project file, not just the compiled version. I don't mind offering my master project file, but it would only be of use if someone wants to create a new project: it'd be pretty useless to translate an existing project.

Yup! That's all stock SRPG Studio, besides my translations and a minor animation tweak with bows.

The good news is that Amiibo are not region-locked as already mentioned. I have a "Japanese" Ike and he works just fine. The bad news is that you need to scan them 3 times as Anacybele mentioned, but there's a delay on the scan times. I don't have the details on how much time that is (I did it over three separate real-life days), but it's not super fast. The other bad news is that it's only for a single save file, so you have to repeat the process for each one of them.

I'm not sure if it's a quirk of the RNG, but I used Rinkah twice (once in on a Japanese, and my current NA playthrough) and in both cases she turned out to be more of a tanky mage than a physical unit. Here's the stats of my current level 20/10 Rinkah that received absolutely 0 favoritism: 35 HP 19 Str 16 Mag 17 Skill 26 Sped 14 Lck 29 Def 12 Res 26 Speed + 29 Defense is really good: that's more defense than anyone on my team besides Oboro. When you add the Horse God tome, that's 29 speed, 32 defense which is pretty darn good for Hoshido units. Yes, offense-wise she's not very good and her defense against magic is very poor, but her own Seal Resistance seal helps her damage. Plus, I tend to have Orochi hanging around her so the Seal Resistance gets additional use. She's not the best unit I have by any means, but she's been very usable with 0 favoritsm given to her.

Holy eff! What happened to the font??? Even when running the compiled executable, it looks just fine on my computer. It's not the nearly unreadable mess that you have on your side. That's a pretty major issue and I have no ideas what that is... Maybe because I have the Japanese fonts and keyboard setup on my computer..? Anyhow, very sorry about that. If anyone else does play my submission, please tell me if you have the same problem as ghast did. All the sprites, animations and music are stock from the game engine. I wish I could claim god-hood sprites, but alas that's not to be. I figured it was not a major issue since basically no one is actually making games with SRPG Studio anyhow beside Kaga's upcoming Vestaria's Saga. There's actually a pretty good selection of very catchy music; it's actually the strongest point of the default assets in my opinion. The one change I did for the animation was to change the travel path of the arrows for the male archer (Kriel in my game), since by default it appeared like 2 foot over the bow itself and simply went over the enemy's head. The moving animations are DRASTICALLY better than they used to be when the engine released. Units kept phasing in and out of reality and it was very jarring; it's not perfect now but it's so much better. The actual attack animations could use some work still though... It'd be pretty easy to make the attacking unit move a bit further before attacking though so that'd at least reduce the "swing at air and deal damage" thing. Unfortunately, there's no English version of SRPG Studio. I've translated every single thing in the dictionary, and the result was what you have seen. There's still some Japanese text left (like Buy/Sell), but I found out later that there's also an xml terms file that I could edit out of the engine, which at first glance should cover everything else except the option menu. Of course, the entire engine is in Japanese and my Japanese is not great to say the least, so figuring which option does what or how to use them is pretty dang hard. I feel that the engine is very convenient and extremely flexible, it's just that it's not in English. :( Regarding the game itself, there were three mini boss: Each of them had a different sprite than the other regular units and a "Sub Boss" description in their stat screen to encourage players to check their items. Basically, Zywack is generally fine until the thief mini boss is there: she'll shred him nearly instantly. The mage boss will beat Brienne, but Yudistra with her +resist sword can slaughter her. And finally, the hawk boss has a guard breaker (hammer basically) and is set to be able to double Fenril (and no one else) in order to prevent Fenril just tanking everything on the west side, and she's actually setup to favor Fenril as target. That didn't pan out in practice since Fenril simply killed her with a crit on counter-attack in your playthrough, but ah well. Live and learn! At one point you wondered if the enemy AI was broken when the three small Hawks attacked you before the boss gave the charge order. It's intentional: the three hawks (but not the hawk boss) can be pulled if you go into their attack range, it's actually probably the best strategy to beat the chapter. The house on the west path refers to that actually. The buyable brave sword and fortify staff is really a "hey, look, a shop that actually works" and by the time you can shop you are near the chapter's end, so I figured why not. If I do go ahead and make a 5 chapter game out of this, there won't be any brave sword available for 300. There's also a brave sword that can be found by visiting the enclosed lake in the North-East, but there's really no point to get it and no indication that anything is there: it really was just to make sure I could successfully make a working event of the kind :) Thank you very much for the playthrough and the commentary: every comment both positive and negative is very appreciated!

Thanks for the playthrough! And yes, I do agree with most of your comments... The game is fun for an Android game, but there's some major balancing issue (That happens even if you don't grind the arena at all; the enemies do get weaker as you progress through the game) and the storytelling is a bit questionable (Sidequest, sidequest, hey we started a civil war during a cutscene and we already lost it and have to run away). Still enjoyed it for what it is. Regarding the next game to be played, I'm going to suggest this one: http://www.amazon.ca/Kapgain-Enterprises-Sword-Requiem/dp/B007PT5BUS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1456283235&sr=8-2&keywords=Sword+Requiem​ In my opinion, it's by far the best Fire Emblem-like game on Android. The translation is horrible (I believe the game was originally in Chinese), there's some extremely nasty bugs (For example, trying to check what a stat does crashes the game) , but the game play is actually pretty darn good especially a bit further on. There's multiple great skills that would fit right-in into Fire Emblem, and I'd dare say has more interesting skills than even Fates does. Despite the big issuesI found it a very enjoyable experience... At least until the ******** final boss (two forms) and the slap-in-the-face ending (To the point I'm wondering if I got the bad ending by mistake).

Holy eff! I'll definitively be watching this. My first playthrough was a female-only run on Hard/Classic on all runs, but there was no efficiency involved. I did allow myself usage of the male units until I could field a full female team, and I did grind supports to get the children faster (and replace the males) in My Castle battles. Efficiency wasn't a concern at all, just surviving was enough. Even with that in mind, I found my playthrough to be pretty darn hard (and fun). Looking forward to see you do what I did, except a whole heck of a lot better.

That first submission was pretty darn good in my opinion. Some pretty clever stuff (loved the support knights), some funny humor (loved the Sudoku guy in particular and Ghast's answer to it) and the nasty mage boss (I can hardly believe that there's no trick to beat that super-powerful character). I have a grand total of one negative: I felt that it finished pretty darn abrupt. There's this whole hilarious introduction with the whole super soldier parody thing and there's some funny moments in the game, but when it comes to the boss fight and the follow up, it just ends straight away. Pretty challenging (in my opinion), but there's no payoff at the end and I feel a bit let down by the ending. I was expecting some more comedy at the end. But besides that one thing, I thought it was really good. It'll probably get my vote on who should win unless one of the other two submissions turn out to be absolutely amazing.

Well, that submission is pretty darn good so far! Commentary is pretty funny too. I'm expecting we'll see the dragon and her dude pop up later on? I guess I'll see next episode :) After watching this I'm feeling pretty bad about having submitted my test project. It's not funny, witty or great like this one (or designed with any references in mind, or actually changed for this contest since I learned of it 2 days before the deadline)... But I suppose it'll be over in less than 20 mins so there's a silver lining!

Wonderful! Here's the download link for the compiled game, Guardians of Valeira: https://mega.nz/#!ew1kTLLA!Ukbv-AuXUQ7ksJGjtZj-FEBZyhU0B9mN3qqMm04MHzE Thank you!

Looking forward to play this: It looks extremely promising! I'll wait until 1.5 is released to give it a try since it's so close to release (as others mentionned, no hurry though!). I'm honestly a bit worried about the "hard as ****" comments since I'm not a super FE player, but that won't stop me from giving it a try :)

Well, downloaded, played and finished Requiem. First of all, a huge thank you for making this game! I'm pretty sure this was a humongous endeavor and it's amazing to see such a large project actually finished. My final clock time was 25 hours and that's pretty amazing for a fan hack. With that said, I have a pile of comments to offer. It's always easier to critique than praise, so apologies if it sounds overly negative: I did enjoy my playthrough through your game. **************************** SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME ******************************* - I absolutely adored Josie; she's honestly one of my favorite character out of all of the SRPG games I've played so far (that's a big pile). A very respectable adult woman who is nice and responsible, yet has a strong temper, beautiful despite her flaw, and she actually keeps her importance in the storyline throughout the entire game. She's simply perfect as a character, I couldn't actually give any suggestion on how she could be improved. Major kudos there. I also liked Val, Alicia and Rayden. - I loved Val's storyline and the early chapters of Ash's story. Emotional, touching and challenging from a gameplay perspective. Great fun. - From the Eruthian library chapter onward, I started feeling progressively more and more annoyed by the storyline in general. Ash as a character is fine; the problem is that you have tons and tons of lines of dialogs about how "The dark powers in Ash is growing and how he might lose control and how he must go on for his family". That happens before every chapter and after each of them. It's plainly obvious at the midway point of the game that Ash will have to sacrifice himself. Okay, it's sad and his family love him. I feel that this should have been a sideline to a overarching storyline, and not be the storyline itself. I felt extremely tired at the repeating situations every single chapter when the outcome was obvious for so long away. It was touching at first, but I was far from the end of the game before I felt like I had enough of the subject. I was literally extasic when there were some tiny parts of the storyline that did not consist of Ash's darkness in the second half of the game. - Gameplay: In general, I found most regular "offense" chapters to be okay and the defense and escape chapters great. While Chapter 1 might be a bit too hard for a super early chapter (I managed first try but I'm sure some people ragequit right away), the first half of the game was generally challenging and fun. And then the enemies stopped improving. My units kept getting stronger and stronger, getting better weapons and class changing, and the enemy stats stayed nearly the same. I fought a grand total of 4 arena battles in the entire game (wanted money to buy a Sniper Bow) so it wasn't a case of arena abuse. As usual in my first Fire Emblem game playthrough, I try to do a female only runs (+ lords and thief if necessary) once I have enough units to do so. I was reticent to do so here in this game because it was fairly difficult and no female units were durable except for Josie, who had not rejoined yet at that point. I kept Drake and Bruno for some time, kicked Drake out at midgame (he was awesome, but I wanted an axe user and my Bruno had lots of HP and Def). The further I got, the more my units oculd survive. Josie was nearly invincible, Alicia could literally take out swarms of enemies, Gemma could outfight anything and Val was nearly as good. Nala and Laraya were getting out of battles untouched. I kicked out Bruno at that point; more than half my characters were outrageously powerful compared to the opponents, and even swordmasters and desert hunters could be thrown in enemy groups without any care as long as there wasn't too many enemies with the opposite weapon triangle. I thought I had got incredibly lucky with the RNG level ups, but after checking the average stats in the first post, that wasn't the case: at most differences were 2-3 points (with some lowers to compensate) and usually were about average with the exception of Alicia's defense (+6). I then checked the enemies further, and the problem is really them: At the chapter prior to the last, the majority of enemies are STILL not promoted somehow. The enemies that are actually promoted have stats averaging 15 (???) right at endgame. The bosses are threatening, but that's it: the enemy opposition is extremely weak, and feels about the same as they were ten chapters earlier. Yes, the very last level enemies are dangerous, with much higher stats, all promoted, and very nasty weapons... But from midgame to before the last chapters, enemies stay about the same while the player's strength skyrocket. Even with my restriction of only using female units (+Ash +Edward), the game was not very challenging starting at the midway point, and steadily got easier and easier the further I got. And I'm far from being a top FE player either (Hard Classic is my usual level for example, or Hard** in Shadow Dragon, ect. I don't play Lunatic modes). - A huge thank you for not forcing Ash to face a boss all by himself. My main characters in most Fire Emblem games tend to be incredibly unlucky with level ups, and Ash was probably the worst I had ever seen (Hello single digit speed at level 20). I kept fearing to be completely stuck in the game because of that, but it never happened. I hate when games force your main character in a fight that's basically unwinnable because of pure bad luck. Your solution of giving Ash and Alicia a special anti-mage spellbook so they get bonuses but keep the other units useful against the final boss is the right one in my opinion (Although in my case Gemma simply soloed the final boss without even needing to be healed). - The bonus chapter that allows you to easily grind supports and get more background information is a pretty cool idea. - I liked how human the characters were. While some had their quirks like Linda or Andrei, it was never "tropey" or overdone like so many FE games (especially the newer ones). - Some supports were pretty neat (Val/Josie for example, or Nala/Laraya, especially the paired ending). One thing I did miss however was a touch of humor: it literally was nowhere to be found. While I appreciate that it kept somber tones, it felt a bit depressing that everyone's support were so filled with tragedy (at least the ones I've seen). The lighter ones like Gemma/Clare were not "feel good" either. There might have been some lighter ones, but I sure didn't encounter them. Also, some referred to storyline events that had not actually happened yet (so were confusing and made no sense at the time) or were about a discussion that was about something that's already been resolved in the main storyline. - The ending is about how Val had united the continent together and all the political prowess that she had during the war, her charisma and so on so forth... Yet you barely see any of that in the game proper once Val's chapter is done, except for a tiny bit with the local militia that was already on her side. The game was all about Ash's darkness, and the ending is about Val's political and military development (that sounds far more interesting than Ash and the doom and gloom surrounding them). It felt like a tonal dissonance to have the game ending celebrating what we didn't see and barely comment about what we've played the second half of the game. Kudos for not bringing Ash back to life though. I also loved how positive the ending was; it's extremely welcome after all the doom and gloom that was present in the game, and scenes like Linda with her mother was great. Overall, I liked the game, and I loved the first half. The second half tired and annoyed me more and more the further I got both from a story and gameplay perspective, but I really appreciate the game and I did enjoy playing it. So a big thank you, and sorry for sounding so negative: I did like it, it's just so much easier to rant about the negatives than the positives (at least how I perceive them). Thank you again!

Can I submit my 1-chapter game made with SRPG Studio? It's been made about a year ago and I had lost everything about it: The download link had timed out for some reasons and I had an hard drive failure. I very recently got a copy of my development files back (Thanks Klokinator!), and I'm thinking of turning this project into a 5 chapters or so game instead eventually. But as it stands right now it's a stand-alone chapter, is pretty short, is (probably) not rage inducing and most of the community likely didn't see it yet so I think it could fit this contest well. I'm not actually expecting to win anything and there's no ways I could build something else in less than 4 days, but... I think it'd be an ok entry! SRPG Studio is purpose-built to make Fire Emblem-like games, and the game is standalone so you don't need to download anything but the game folder by itself so it shouldn't cause you problems. If you accept my submission, do I post the download link here or send it to you via PM? Thanks!

I've played with SRPG Studio more lately. If the only thing provided is the compiled game, I think it's going to be extremely hard to translate it. Everything is compiled in machine-code... If we have the project files, then we can "easily" translate nearly everything through the in-software interface and some edit in a repository txt file, then recompile.

Nal'at (the dragoon) is utterly amazing. Her stats are better than most pre-promotes of that level, and she's not even promoted yet. I got her later than you did, but by the end of the game she was basically game-breaking good. Holy eff the arena abuse! Yeah, I'm not expecting you to have any sort of challenge until the convoy chapter at the earliest... I admit it's kind of hard to not use it when its so utterly easy to abuse. Especially based on how hard the stage you just bet is if you don't do any arena fighting. Raf also got a lot of movement too in my game. He got up to 8 movement relatively quickly and Serene got up to 9. Talking about Serene, she was incredibly good in my game, enough for her to basically be able to tank the entire enemy armies except for at the very end (where she was merely super durable). Much better than the one you are having for sure. Main character was very good too (especially after promotion where he can equip shields for even more invincibleness). Healers don't promote at all in the game, and there's no other class that can heal besides them. I got rid of all those cavaliers too as soon as I could (I think Bendt participated in a chapter or two and that was it). I did use the two female cavaliers you get with the caravan for great success later on (With a spoilery caveat I can't say), I used Nan throughout the entire game and yeah, she never was any good at fighting. I didn't have the growth rates, but she definitively did follow them. The low speed in particular is annoying. And yes, she can only occasionally steal on success, so that's not impressive at all. There's the Mug skill that allows you to select ANY item that is on the enemy unit. This includes their armor, shields and equiped weapons. I put that skill on Emily (one of the two female cavaliers), and she could literally steal everything with over 50% success rate. If you go to the arena, the enemies have really rare, powerful and expensive equipment. Steal everything, make a huge profit and kill them at your leasure. Based on how insane the armor and shield bonuses are, it was usually faster to steal the enemy armors before trying to kill them. Unfortunately, Mug is thief-only now so this particular abuse is gone. Probably for the best actually: it allowed trivialising the game even further. That does remove some options to deal with armor and shield though... "Apparently the Snape household is having a little father-daughter spat that can only be solved with weapons. I'm sure you've seen similar situations in your own homes." I decline to answer this statement!

Well, Imelda or Sherry from Langrisser 2 were probably wearing less than most characters in Rebirth. Pretty much everyone prefers the art from Satoshi Urushiara (the artist for all prior Langrisser and Growlanser titles), but I don't think he does art anymore. This new artist was definitively much cheaper to commission at least. Regarding the songs, the majority of the soundtrack is remixed Langrisser 2 songs actually. There's one or two I believe are from IV or V (not 100% sure) and there's a few new songs, but most are good L2 remixes. You can get some samples on the official webpage. The first few samples are super short, but the others are of a more reasonable length. http://langrisser.jp/sound.html

Well, I've just finished reading this entire thread... It was an extremely interesting read, thank you! It made me laugh quite a few times.

I might be misremembering, but didn't Kitty get one +1 strength once early on before a reset?

Even on Hard, the enemies in IK are very strong and threatening. That's actually part of the problem: since the enemies hit so hard, you have to approach all situations very carefully since none of your units can tank many hits. This encourages the player to use the "pull enemies one by one" approach, which is both more necessary and effective than in the other two paths. Regarding the recruitment levels... It does feel completely out of whack. I don't think that much thought went into it, and they simply figured "Well, they'll just do a few skirmish to catch up the units they like so we won't bother to balance it". That's the only thing I see: the characters that come out underleveled are the characters that are kind of weak in the first place (Setsuna, Nyx, Odin, ect).

*glances at own avatar* Well... I kind of like it..? I do understand why other people's opinion would not match mine though! Anyway, I did get my copy of the game! I didn't get to play it yet though. I can confirm that the music CDs that came with the collector edition are pretty good though!

I definitively agree to that. Fire Emblem Fates is an awesome game, and I'm extremely happy with my purchase. It's literally the only game I've played since the day it has been released. It's just that it feels like such a shame that the third path is so poor (in my opinion) compared to the other two. I felt that Hoshido was more fun to play than what a video playthrough would indicate. It looks basic at first glance, but I found myself scratching my head quite a few times wondering how the **** I can manage to clear certain spots without having anyone die or how to get myself out of trouble.

I kind of like the resist seal on Rinkah; since her main use is to pull enemies, she spreads out the resist Seal around. I tend to have Orochi following Rinkah closely. So if Rinkah pulled two enemies, she can sometime kill one using her magic as Oni with Orochi's dual attack (who is really good at that especially with the seal appliedl) and Orochi can kill the other by herself. Without the resist seal, Rinkah would definitively be worse. Of course, someone like Effie can do all that better without even needing Orochi (or anyone) at all, but... yeah. That's why even though I get some use out of Rinkah, I definitively agree with your "Don't use" rating from a gameplay perspective. I did try Hinoka as an Holy Lancer on 3rd path playthrough (instead of a very mediocre pegasus knight in my two Hoshido playthrough) and she's faring much, much better. I pretty much agree with all your ratings actually. There's some slight differences (Like I rate Jacob lower than you), but overall I definitively approve throughout.Thumbs up!

Disclaimer: Everything below is my opinion only. After finishing the Hoshido and Nohr paths, I felt that Fire Emblem Fates was by far the best Fire Emblem game ever from a gameplay perspective. Great mechanics that worked surprisingly well, interesting maps that required different strategies, good enemy placements that lead to challenging but fun situations. And then I played the third path and it all crumbled. I have a distinct feeling that they ran out of time making the third path stages. The marketing said that the third path was middle of the road in difficulty, that's incorrect. Why? Well, it can all be resumed to one thing: The enemy does absolutely nothing on the third path and it waits for your inevitable victory. If you want to have more details, here goes: - Both Hoshido and Nohr have some enemies in Dual Guard stance. Some are static, some are mobile (which require some thought on how to handle especially when mixed with other types). Even on Hoshido, you can sometime find a static hefty dual guard unit that's guarding mages shooting you with turrets. On the IK path? There's zero enemy in dual guard stance throughout the entire game. ZERO. - Nohr has some timed maps. Hoshido has some "thief getting treasures and running away" maps. Third path has none of those: you are never forced to hurry in any stage, except for one where you have to talk to Saizo on turn 2. - Both Hoshido and Nohr have situations where you'll be charged with enemy groups. There might be "waves" (Like some groups start moving on turn x), some according to other triggers. Sometime it's going to be very nasty reinforcement groups. Third path? There's one where you have to defend ships which is really challenging and fun, the problem is once you survive the first few turns, nothing happens for the rest of the 30 minutes remaining on the map and enemies are waiting for you to pull them one by one (see below). Reinforcements are a few units that changes absolutely nothing to the map's progress. - Both Hoshido and Nohr have situations where if you pull one unit, you pull an entire group (sometime with . Third path? You always just pull one single unit, two if they match up for a dual attack. You never pull entire groups, just one or two units at once that you can easily dispatch. - Third path has probably the worst map in Fire Emblem history, and a second map that's nearly as bad. One map has you traversing a cave with a few units. It has a "reveal enemy units when entering the door" mechanism. Kamui is the only unit able to survive triggering those, so the map is a slow brainless slog. The worst map however has you destroying blocks of ice in your path (95% of the map is ice). When you destroy a block, it sometime reveals 2-3 enemy units. Most of your units die in 2 hits, so you have to take the map super slow by destroying two blocks at most per turn (you want to have as many units with their turn available to take care of the enemies). Since a lot of enemies have really good drops on that map, you want to clear the entire map of ice. Both maps offer 0 challenge, yet are extremely long. - Nohr in particular has some "kill zones". Situations where many different units overlap a threat range, where units with Defense Seal or ninjas will weaken first, or switching your unit's place before swarming them with other units. Hoshido has a small handful of those type of situations too. IK? Nope. - IK maps tend to be long but dull. You often have busywork like having to activate 8 seals on the map before proceeding. The thing is, each seal is protected by 3-4 units with no cohesion between them (You can pull them 1 by 1). It's not challenging, just time consuming. - Upon recruitment, every character is directly usable in both Nohr and Hoshido (except Mozume for obvious reasons). Not so for the third path. Some characters comes very underlevelled and underpowered, and it feels like they intend the player to simply grind them up. Those characters are unfortunately usually the weaker ones so unless you like them, there's little payoff for doing so. The third path does not use any timed units (except for maybe a few token enemies in the first 2-3 turns or a single pegasus here and there), does not use dual guard, does not put enemies in groups and never puts any pressure on the player (except for the beginning of one map, and the end of another). It feels very incomplete compared to the two other paths from a gameplay perspective, as if they ran out of time or put little attention in creating good enemy patterns for the third path. Edit: Deployment slots. In both Nohr and Hoshido, your available deployment slots slowly grow as you progress through the game. 10 early on, goes up to 12, then up to 13, ect up to 16. That allows you to comfortably grow your team and leave no one behind (and the auto-leveling the children have is perfect to fill out a new slot). IK recruitment slots varies considerably from chapter to chapter, but is generally a fair bit lower than Nohr and Hoshido, which is silly considering how many more characters you have.