Adam Smasher

Most tedious level for me is still the dragon level. Otherwise, I wouldn't use the word "tedious" for any other part of the game. Still, I'm taking an FE break for now. I just picked up No More Heroes 2 and it's funny going from something as deep and long as Radiant Dawn and then moving into something as superficial and short as NMH2. Off topic: I have never seen a game prioritize style over substance that much. I bought it 2 days ago and I'm almost done. Then I'll move on to finishing Ogre Battle on my virtual console. Wait, wasn't I saying something about tedium?

For Path of Radiance, my top 5 usually include Ike, Boyd, Gatrie and Jill, and Boyd is usually #1. More about my top 5: Boyd and Mia were the only two who went into the tower! Not surprising that Neph made the top 5 since she's an awesome unit. And where Neph goes, Brom follows, so he'll sponge kills too. But Edward? The more I think about it, how did he get 106 kills? Then again, he was a total powerhouse in 3-13 with Beastfoe. Mia had only 103 kills, but she must have gotten around 20 of them in the Tower. Same with Harr and Jill, tied for 6th place with 85 kills each. And Ed beat them all. My Ike got kind of strength screwed. I don't think it ever broke 30, which is why he didn't make the top 5. Next playthrough will be better. Boyd and Oscar (who capped all stats but magic) turned out awesome though, and that made the difference. Oh and one more element of failure: I took Gatrie into the tower, but when Yune was blessing weapons, I forgot to have him equip a silver lance, and so he was walking around with a blessed steel sword. D'oh!

...and I feel exhausted. Don't get me wrong, Radiant Dawn is my favorite FE, and it might even be my favorite game ever, but this took a lot of work. I logged nearly 70 hours to beat this. Plus I had animations on (because they're cool) so it probably took twice as long. Also, that doesn't count the 30 hours I logged on my Path of Radiance transfer run. Part 2 Endgame was the longest for me--I logged about 3 and a half hours on that. I remember getting home just before lunchtime and starting that chapter, and by the time I had it finished, it was dinnertime. I bought this game in summer of 2008, and this is only my second completion. My first playthrough was on easy mode, just so I could feel my way around and figure out who's good/bad. After the dawn brigade chapters, it was REALLY easy to bulldoze my way through the game. This time was on normal mode, and there were times where it was quite taxing. The dragon chapter was really a pain in the ass. Like I said, this is a great game, but somehow it just drains me. Anyone else get that feeling? Incidentally, here's my top 5: 5. Brom 4. Boyd 3. Nephenee 2. Mia 1. Edward!? Probably because Brom and Neph are the units I spend the most time training in part 2 and Eddie had beastfoe so he gobbled a lot of Laguz.

Here's the thing...I'm not interested in doing what's purely optimal for now. Crappy or not, Dragons are a part of the game and I want to see what they do just for the sake of completeness. I just beat the 8th map, and so far, I've never felt like my victory was less than inevitable. Time consuming, yes, but never doubtful. So in that respect, this isn't a hard game, and I don't need to play for optimization. This is why I'm going to try training one red, one black, and one metal just for fun. Oh and my Octopus unit kicks all sorts of ass. Two Octopi plus one Cleric. Granted, they are slow as hell, and a pain in the ass to get moving on rivers since their AI is too stupid to stay in the water. This requires a bit of micromanagement because I have to give them a new movement command everytime a river bends. However, they really shine when I get them in the periphery of the boss's stronghold, because then I leave them in the water and the enemy units rush them. Either the octopi shred them or they win the battle (hard to lose when they take like 1 pt of damage per hit), hold the turf, and push the enemy unit back into a weaker that needs kills.

1. Not the question I asked. 2. I read the wikipedia article too. Anyway, the general consensus in the FAQs is that large monsters aren't worth it, but I want to train the dragons just to see what they can do. And the Octopi are amazing provided you can get them on a waterway. I like positioning them so that a tough enemy will go lemming into them, the Octopi soften them up, and then they retreat into a unit I'm training. I ignored warren's hellhounds, but maybe I'll play around with them on my next playthrough. But yeah, I'm staying away from golems.

I previously nominated this game for "worst game I'd ever played." I have to make a public retraction, however. At first, I played the first map and I was like "what the hell is going on?!" but now that I've read some FAQ files, it's starting to make sense and is pretty cool. I don't know how a game with such a slow pace can be so gripping. It takes me hours to complete a map, and I kind of like that. Also, doesn't the title sound like it could be a gay porn movie?

That's a good question. I assume they did it because a character is said to be "useless" if he can't double reliably. And I've noticed that Brom and Gatrie do have trouble in that area from my personal experience. As for Meg, for all her crappiness, at least she's fast. If it weren't for her prohibitively low speed cap, she might dodge like a myrmidon. As for the res, it's funny because in PoR you had so much gold that I bought a pure water for everyone on my team. So for all practical purposes, everyone's res was 7 points higher. I'll return to this thread after I take a closer look at their stats.

I'll reply in brief to some of the issues people have brought up: Balance: For me, the game on normal mode is quite difficult. (On Easy mode, you can just bulldoze through levels after Part 1.) This has a lot to do with the fact that I have an idiosyncratic playstyle where I will train units just because I like them, and ignore good units which I think are dopey. For instance, I think pegasi are cool, so I train Sigrun, even though she's not very good and pegasi got nerfed in this game anyway. Aside: my favorite character ever is probably Isadora from FE7, because there's something romantic, in the midieval sense of the word, about a noblewoman riding into battle. And her support conversations with Harken are so romantic (in the gushy 16-year-old girl sense of the word) that it makes me ignore the fact that she's useless without a body ring and angelic robe at minimum. Helmets: Nobody wears a helmet because we want to see their faces. Same principle as the chainmail bikini. No, it doesn't make sense. Music: I've played FE7 thru 10, and I don't know if any FE had good music. Sorry. But this one was the best. Gameplay: All the blades and poleaxes and greatspears add versatility, but I get so caught up buying that stuff that I forget to forge things. Sure it's redundant, but my default position is that more options = good. The way they did supports was dumb though; I liked the detailed conversations. Also, there are chapters which don't push forward the storyline, but playing FE for the story is like reading Playboy for the articles. Story: All FE games seem to have lots of reading. I always get to a point where I just want to press start and bypass it all. I think it was around Ch 18 of PoR where I had the first feeling of "Whoa, this is actually a pretty good story." One thing I didn't like, and this is based on my deep personal beliefs, was the whole metaphysics where they reveal that good and evil don't really exist as universal absolutes. But that's a can of worms we can open elsewhere. Ike: By RPG standards, he's not very well developed, but he's got more personality than Mario or Samus or Link. You want character development? Read a book or watch a movie (or USA). Elincia: I was surprised when Elincia ended up with a different blue-haired guy with no personality. I suppose it establishes Ike as a "citizen of the world" rather than being loyal to Crimea, as well as emphasizing the overall message of subverting authority and being loyal to your loved ones. Still, the Hero should get the girl in the end. Bottom Line: I liked this game. Because of the enormous variety, it's my favorite FE. I have minor complaints about the support system and how the weapon triangle can be pretty much ignored, but this is definitely the best IMO.

Don't get me wrong, this wasn't a bad game. The eel dentistry and roller coaster levels are the most fun in the game. And the "secret" areas were great, in part because you can't use FLUDD. (Aside, FLUDD is a slightly less annoying version of Navi the Fairy) I just get ticked off when in Bianco Hills, I work so hard to get the motor nozzle and then the next shine is "red coins of the lake." I figure, OK I'll finally get to use this motor nozzle to do something, but...nope Instead I have to walk on tightropes and with every mistake I make it's "congratulations, you get to start over from the ground" Mario 64 also had a lot of coin collecting. You had to get 8 red coins in each stage plus 100 yellow coins in each stage. I remember the water levels were hard because there were only about 101-105 coins per stage so you had very little margin for error. But it was kind of fun in M64 because if you couldn't figure out how to get the star associated with the level you could just pick up red coins and get a star that way. Sunshine was much more linear in this respect. Going back even further to Yoshi's Island (aka Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island) there were 20 red coins in each stage, but they were disguised as normal yellow coins. Strictly speaking, you didn't need to collect them unless you wanted to get 100% on each level. Needless to say, towards the end of the game, I had a lot of scores in the 30s and 40s. I suppose all this coin collecting business started in Super Mario World where each stage had 5 dragon coins. If you got them all, you got a 1up. (Some had 6 or 7 for a 2up or 3up, I believe) I never really cared about it because I eventually became so good at the game that I could start a new game and have 80 lives by vanilla dome just by using tricks like bouncing on koopas and using the cape trick for getting 5 1ups in the bonus rooms. Now that's old-school cheating! Anyway, end of history lesson.

A few threads ago, there was some contention about whether Super Mario Sunshine was good, great, or mediocre. I decided to dust it off and play it for a while, and, man, this is a frustrating game. The level design is really uninspired. So many of the challenges revolve around collecting coins! Here is my evidence: There are a total of 120 Shine Sprites in the game. 24 Shine Sprites are from collecting Blue Coins 22 Shine Sprites are from collecting Red Coins 8 Shine Sprites are from collecting Yellow Coins 7 Shine Sprites are from chasing shadow Mario, still not very hard or fun. 3 Shine Sprites are from racing Il Piantissimo That leaves you a total of 56 Sprites involved with exploring, problem solving, and generally doing things other than running around like an idiot. So, what say you, forum? Good, great, or mediocre?

I actually enjoyed the Chuckster stage. They were pretty funny. You have to laugh when there's a big distance to go and you have two chucksters to choose...a little guy and a big guy. It turns out the little guy is the one who flings you the farthest. But I can see how the rest of you might be annoyed when the game is laughing at you like that. In a bizarre way, I owe much to Super Mario Sunshine (and the Bad Boys movies) since they motivated me to move to Florida. But now I'm back up north. It's a cold rainy april day. /offtopic

I bought the SNES one for VC, started playing, didn't know what I was doing so I studied everyone's numbers...stil didn't know what I was doing. I can't say if it's a good or bad game because I can't figure out what's going on.

When I play, I try to use every character (except Rath, Dorcas, and Bartre because I just don't like them, but you might). It turns out reasonably well this way, but you have to arena abuse like crazy. I usually arena my nonpromoted units to level 15 and then let nature run its course with them. I NEVER send a promoted unit into the arena because they tend to be berserkers with high crit, high speed and silver axes. With arena abuse, I can get just about everybody up to level 20/10 going into the final chapter, though promotion items limit this. Speaking of cheesy things to do, if you have a chance to seize a throne, don't do it. Just sit around for about 20 turns and let people build support levels. Merlinus and Marcus have pretty entertaining support conversations. To level up your healers, heal everyone you can. Every time someone levels up and gets one HP, heal. Better yet, use Mend. If you abuse arenas, you'll have lots of money and this will be affordable. In the chapter where you recruit Legault, there's a secret card which allows you to access the secret shops. Make sure you grab it! By the way, my recommendations will give you a horrible tactician rating, so feel free to disregard if you want to get all 5 stars at the end ;)

Let me be clear, I don't hate Super Mario Sunshine. At least, not the way I hate Quest 64 or Bill Laimbier's Combat Basketball. It was pretty forgettable, though. I almost didn't play Galaxy because of Sunshine. Things I didn't like about it: 24 of the 120 Shine Sprites are from blue coins Easy--Hover nozzle over everything Yoshi can't swim and he needs to eat fruit or he'll evaporate FLUDD's melodramatic line at the end "I hope...I was...of assistance..." Things I did like about it: The "side worlds" where you can't use FLUDD The roller coaster level Sunglasses Bowser Jr.s line "Yeah, yeah, I know she's not my mom" <-- I lol'ed

Brilliantly stated, Raymond. By the way, one thing that annoyed me about Link's Awakening is that I kept trying to beat the game with 0 deaths, but it's so easy to die in the first dungeon. So reset. spend 20 min getting to dungeon 1. die. reset. repeat. And yet I somehow have managed to live a rich and full life without having accomplished the perfect playthrough in that game. How deluded I must be.