Ertrick36

The extra 6 files are from an SD Card. If they're not displaying in your game, you must've removed the SD Card at some point. Those six files simply can't be stored on cart - the cart isn't able to fit that much data on it. Since DLC typically gets stored on an SD Card, it'd also explain why you're unable to save a game in Revelation. It's either you removed it, or the SD Card got corrupted somehow.

Unsure, unless you count the FE1 localization coming up in December (still can't get over that - it basically came out of nowhere). If you go purely off of past tendencies... well, first you have to consider Three Houses released a year and three months ago. Some may think because of the western release of Fates being a year prior to when Echoes was released worldwide that we probably would've gotten a remake by now, but those people should consider the actual first release of Fates was actually in 2015. So if we're getting a remake of roughly the same caliber as Echoes, it'll probably release some time next year - maybe longer since C O V I D. But in terms of a major release? Probably will have to wait another couple years. We may also get another spin-off instead, like a Fire Emblem Warriors 2 or something along those lines. IS and KT do seem close, given that they also worked together to make Three Houses, so I'd be more surprised if they didn't do something with that crossover IP. But regardless, I can't imagine an original title coming out earlier than 2022, so personally I'm holding out for a remake.

No, war wasn't inevitable because TWSITD/the Agarthans aren't the Empire. If Dimitri discovered on his own that Arundel was actually a conspiring heretic who wanted to see to the end of the Church and the rise of his own insidious faction, Dimitri would simply just need to apprehend Arundel and maybe whoever else was part of the conspiracy. Who would stop that? Edelgard. Why? Not because of family obligation, but because she's working with these conspirators to bring down the Church. It doesn't matter if she just pulled the trigger early like she did in this game or if she waited until the Church-aligned forces were catching onto the conspiracy. The issue is that she's supporting TWSITD as a means to destroy the Church. And as misguided as Seiros and the Church may be, they aren't responsible for the horrible state that Fodlan is in. Or at least, not wholly responsible. They granted crests to humans and censored history, but in truth the kind of cruel society Fodlan developed into would've probably happened without crests. Why? Because that society is basically what late medieval Europe was like, just without the crest stuff (and perhaps with a bit less drama in reality, though funnily enough there was this little known dramatic play an English poet wrote about a pair of lovebirds that opposed the will of their families who wanted to see them married to people from other families, which was called "Romeo and Juliet"). Primogeniture was a law created to retain stable lordships through inheritance, because before such a law came to be most of the time every child would get a slice of the holdings when their parents died, and that resulted in grievous realm instability. Also, marriages were arranged for women so as to create powerful, lasting dynasties - marriages were effectively political tools. Fodlan's crest-obsessed society is basically just a primogeniture-based medieval society with the added bonus of genetic favoritism (crest obsession). This added factor doesn't make this way of running things any more or less cruel for the families involved, though there are some tossups like Miklan suddenly getting disinherited because of Sylvain's crest. The only additional thing about crests to consider in this is the experimentation. However, this experimentation was solely carried out by TWSITD - at least, the more vicious, harmful kind. Rhea did perform her own sort of experiment, but it was much more ethical, as each of the vessels she planted the Crest of Seiros in were fully consenting to this - perhaps she may have taken advantage of her authority or their bias, but at least the people she "experimented" on were aware of and accepting of the entire situation (though poor Jeralt wasn't). And of course, it would seem that Thales is responsible for Edelgard's crests and the failures that happened in her siblings. The ultimate point I'm making is that the fundamental issue - why people take issue with the war and blame Edelgard - is because Edelgard was manipulated by TWSITD into waging war against the Church. She was set up to be aligned with the very people who are responsible for her suffering, and to fight against a faction that really are just as much victims of the people she's working with as she herself is. It's a situation that's just so very inane and backwards, and while one may sympathize with Edelgard, any reasonable person who knows the full story can see that Edelgard has her sights set completely wrong. Though of course, it isn't just about the crests - she claims she wants to dismantle the nobility and instead form a meritocratic system of government, where the most able people are given the highest roles in society. But the problem is, the nobility and those who were fortunate enough to be granted higher education are the most able people, because they got a very strong leg up over the rest of the people. A meritocracy is an inherently flawed system, but also this demonstrates an issue with trying to introduce radical change in a government - which is that while you may fundamentally change the laws and how people come into power, it's ultimately just gonna be the same people who retain that power because they can find some way to force themselves into these positions unless a radical revolution were to occur where all these people were just straight up killed or imprisoned for life. But I digress. Edelgard is responsible for the war. She's an active agent in starting the war. If she didn't start it immediately and allowed for Arundel to be discovered, she would've started it when she refused to hand her fellow conspirator over. If Edelgard wasn't a factor - if the emperor was someone else who wasn't involved with TWSITD - the Empire would have no reason to keep from handing over Arundel, and thus there would be no cause for war. Sure, Arundel is a noble of the Empire and one of the emperor's consorts, but most sensible people would prefer avoiding war even if it meant betraying one's vassals. Perhaps a lesser emperor could see it as an excuse to subjugate and conquer the other nations, but the point remains that it's the emperor that is ultimately causing the war, not TWSITD or Dimitri.

Well, I wasn't talking about that GameData.bin.lz (seems there are multiple files named this), but again I've not used Paragon - I just know what files are edited by Gay Awakening because I had to install them manually. EDIT: I will say that I actually was wrong, there's no GameData folder in Awakening, that's Fates. There are multiple GameData.bin.lz files, though, however only one of them is edited in Gay Awakening and it's the one in the directory you provided, not the directory I was thinking of. That is my bad. If you say so. I'm probably paranoid, but from years of modding games I've learned that if any files get edited it's always a good idea to back them up manually unless you're willing to reinstall them. But this has been something I've done for, like, ten years, and I've probably grown overly cautious (I'm talking about modding video games in general, not just this game or even Fire Emblem games exclusively). You do whatever suits you. Well, testing is what you should do, it's good that you're at least naturally inclined to do that instead of just winging it and sorting things out later. Just know that you shouldn't be surprised if post timeskip Chrom ends up "marrying" the village Maiden - that's simply because no one's yet learned how to program the scenes to accommodate the newly added couples, so the game will just default on story cutscenes displaying as though Chrom married no one. Functionally speaking he should be married to whomever you marry him to, and both Lucina and whatever other potential kid may be produced will inherit appropriate attributes (skills, growths, class options... all that good stuff). I say this because it's how it is for the Gay Awakening hack. Of course testing should go as far as acquiring the child (I suppose in this case it'd be Lucina), checking to see if they inherited skills from the secondary parent, and seeing if they can reclass to the secondary parent's classes. Maybe check some UI elements like the family list in each unit's screen that displays who they're married to or otherwise related to, but just as long as he parent-child stuff is functioning properly it shouldn't matter much. You have to enter commands in the actual conversation editor box to get things to appear on screen. Read the tutorial on that. You have to enter a command for each character's entry/exit, including at the beginning (by default no one appears on-screen). You also have to click "Reload Text" after typing commands. There's a specific format you have to write in to make things happen as you want them to, it's easier to handle in Script Mode but you still need to know what the commands are, which you can only find through the editor's provided documentation. I'd recommend writing a draft of the supports in a word processing program first - maybe write them like a play, where you tell when a character is supposed to perform certain actions or otherwise just write when sound effects might happen/when characters enter/exit scene. That way you will only have to worry about actual format when copying those support scripts into the editor. Trying to fiddle around with both writing dialogue and figuring out format at the same time can turn your brain into a real jumbled mess, which is bad for creativity. I know because I've been writing stories (stories I don't really share outside of when I play TTRPGs with friends, but still stories nonetheless) my entire life.

Interesting visualization. It definitely displays which characters may have received bias (e.g. no red for Tharja or Olivia, but Kellam's looks like it could be a peppermint candy cane with all that red). At first I didn't realize that to read a particular character's full list of supports I had to first red horizontally until the grey block and then read vertically downwards. Yeah, you don't use the Fates Support Editor for editing Awakening support options. Always dump the ROM if you can. With hacking tools, you always need to have as much of the game's files readily available as possible. Ultimately, yes, if the GameData.bin.lz file has been edited before, it'll become incompatible with Paragon. I discovered this when I tried to edit a modified Fates ROM with the program. As far as I'm aware, it's only dependent on if the GameData.bin.lz file has been edited, so if you can just get an unedited file (I hope you were making backups, I probably should've given that piece of advice first and foremost) then you should be able to edit it however you please. Also, store any modified files in the Citra Mods Location folder. You can find this by right-clicking on Fire Emblem Awakening in Citra and selecting "Open Mods Location". They need to retain the same folder structure starting from romfs (so you would put a romfs folder in the mod folder, which would just be named a bunch of random numbers), so that way Citra can layer the romfs over the game's normal romfs. This makes it so that you don't have to keep decompiling and recompiling the ROM and prevents a lot of issues that come with recompiling the ROM with new mods. That way it'll be easier to test modifications as well, as you won't need to go through the hassle of putting everything back together.

I mean, for the games themselves? If he's not expressing opinions, he may not have any. Or he finds them fun, or maybe he thinks they're the worst. At the end of the day, and as much as we may have loved the games he worked on, he's still just some guy none of us know all that well, and we shouldn't put too much stock in his opinion. I feel people want to dramatize these types of schisms/conflicts too much. I mean, if he really wanted to beat Fire Emblem with his own IPs, he'd be screaming from the rooftops about how FE sucks and his game was much better (well, except probably with more class than that) to drum up this huge rivalry that would generate more sales. He's content to just quietly make indie games, so I can only assume he doesn't think too strongly about FE - probably just wants to forget about the TRS lawsuit.

Well, it seemed to be a programmed function in this remake project: Granted, that project shut down, but it at least seems like an avatar function may be possible. At the same time, Kirb is a pretty skilled hacker AFAIK, so it may not necessarily be easy to do. But they did leave the resources available for anyone to use (though you need to have access to that Discord server, which may not be possible due to how Discord invites tend to expire after some time), so maybe you could take the source code for the avatar function and make your own hack supplemented with that feature. I wouldn't know for sure as I'm not much of a ROM hacker. I think if you dedicated time and effort you could manage it. Hacking's like any worthwhile endeavor - you only will get good through applying yourself. It's a combination of accumulated knowledge and just experience that makes for a good hacker, you just have to be willing to build that up.

The Gamedata.bin.lz file within the Gamedata folder is what actually adds in the options, while the conversations for those options are under the directory [RomFS>m>E] ("E" may be different depending on region, but it's always the only folder in the "m" folder). Making supports is a two-fold process. First you have to add the options in - I'm not entirely sure how to do this (you may use Paragon, but I've never been able to get it to work because my ROMs are kinda wonky). When you add the supports in, they will function in every way except they will not have any conversations attached to them. The second step, which will require some actual creative juices, is creating the conversations. There is an easy-to-use tool for this called Fire Emblem Conversation Editor - it has a tutorial on formatting, allows you to use sound effects, and will automatically save the conversation file the way it needs to (just so long as you put it in the correct directory). This guide will be helpful for you, I think. It's for Fates, but the same basic premise applies to Awakening, as they more or less have the same support system except with a couple changes (no ad lib voice clips and there are A+ rank options with no associated conversations). And even if you aren't all that into gay pairings, it'd still be a good idea to install the Gay Awakening hack because it adds in quite a few options all around, especially for Chrom (he can get with Anna, Cordelia, Miriel, and I think Tharja, along with the g a y 🏳️‍🌈 that was added). You'll need to figure out which support options contain conversations yourself, though, because I'm not sure if anyone's compiled a list for this that's well organized.

Oh yes, I'm aware of exploitation - that was implicit in my comment about corporations abusing their employees. Exploitation isn't unique to the games industry, though they definitely have a claim for the most BS excuse for the abuse - that they really are just "letting" their employees work overtime since they're just so "passionate". Definitely not just taking advantage of people's passions, desperation, and/or possible physical/mental health issues because the folks on the top deck suck at planning things out (and probably shouldn't even be on the top deck in the first place because of this, lmao). And honestly, if anything the game industry and other corporations probably are too good at learning. For example, people talk about how EA trying to implement loot boxes in their Star Wars: Battlefront 2 was really dumb and that they walked back on that, but I think if anything it was a calculated measure. They were testing the waters, and if people said it was taken too far they could walk back on it and suddenly they're the heroes of the story because they got "listened to the criticism" and got rid of the bad feature they implemented in the first place. If there is something I think is stupid/foolish in the games industry, it's all the directors that want to make their games "movie-like". It's such a stupid thing to pursue when making a game. Not because video games can't be "as good" as movies, but simply because it's an entirely different medium. There is a different appeal, and moreover there are different mechanisms available to a video game than there are available to a movie, mainly in that you are able to interact with things on-screen. You don't sit and watch a three-hour video game, you play it. Directors who go for the "movie video game" approach are A) setting the game up to be a disappointing shadow to basically any movie of actual narrative merit, and B) making the game way less interesting than it could be given the tools at your disposal to make it a great experience or even an interesting narrative. Well, that and the crunch is foolish, as it's directly a result of mismanagement. But that's what you can expect from pigs that can afford to stick their head in the sand for a year and not suffer any consequences for their inaction.

I have basically a socialist ideology, so I hate all of the industries with hyper inflated corporations which inevitably end up abusing their employees and their consumers. In other words, all of them, lmao. If I had to pick least favorites, probably the fossil fuel industry for driving our planet to the point of it being probably uninhabitable in the next hundred years or so, the telecommunications industry for turning goddamn utilities into a for-profit, price-gouging business, and the agriculture/food industry for turning farming into a horrific, automated process that tortures the ever loving shit out of the animals they process (for the record I'm not vegan and do believe you can ethically raise animals for meat, but corporations clearly don't do that). I think the games industry deserves an honorable mention. Not because anything they do is actually harmful to the whole of humanity, but because they manage to implement the scummiest, consumer unfriendly business tactics into their models and it somehow works for them. The closest thing you'd see to some of the horribly abusive BS from Free-to-Play games is literally just casinos. Like, that's basically gachas. And we all gobble it up because cute anime waifus. Ignore the fact that my profile pic comes from a gacha game, that's irrelevant.

Of course they aren't, and time doesn't affect their vampire rank either. Not sure, though I know that one player had to give up being a mermaid to learn magic so this probably is the case for vampires without mods. It's not like the Sims 2 where one can be, like, both a plant sim and a vampire. Vampires do get a myriad of special vampire-specific abilities though, and they're pretty powerful. I mean... why would they not be able to? They can't siphon plasma (that's what it's called in-game, btw) from kids. Kids may be able to help them grow plasma fruit, but that's as close as you'll probably get to them being sources of blood. And IIRC the children are barely able to do much of anything without mods because I guess EA thinks kids are worthless bags of meat, so they may not even be able to help with plasma fruit farms. Probably nothing, but it's pretty useless. Might be better to just use the adult as a continuous plasma farm. I say if you want an easy way of getting a vampire plasma, have them get abilities that enable them to just break into people's houses (I think it's called "Vampiric Entrance" or something) and just raid random Sims' houses. Or at night you may find people just randomly walking along the sidewalks that you can prey upon rather easily without repercussions. You can also just, like, grow plasma fruit after studying Vampire Lore a bit (you can get Vampire Lore books through online shopping and looking in the book section). That said, I don't know why you would need this information - if you are thinking of doing a challenge or if you are wanting to find a way to cheese the system. And of course I'll add that there could be mods out there that change the answers to literally every single question you've posed. You'd have to look up the mods yourself, and honestly you will probably get a better experience out of mods than out of some of the Sims 4 packs (the vampire DLC is solid, but some packs just suck, such as the recent Star Wars pack).

I'm pretty sure the difference between the hard modes is just in the enemies' stats, especially for the bosses. For example Gazzak has a strength stat of 8 on Hard 1 but a strength stat of 14 on Hard 5, yet he has literally the exact same inventory. Maybe sometimes they'll have forged weapons (e.g. Chapter 10's boss on Hard 5 has a javelin with 11 might and 90 hit), but even in this regard I think they are still the same weapons except with added buffs. Also, and I think this applies to other FE games as well (any that have enemy growth rates), I'm pretty sure the stats are semi-randomized. I've done a couple tests of the first chapter on Hard 5 and all the enemies except Gazzak seem susceptible to a 1 point difference in some of their stats. I have to assume there's a mixture of internal calculation of growth rates and hard coded base stats for each class. Of course I think someone would need to test further (and by "further", I mean "beyond chapter 1"), though I'll add that the level of consistency leads me to believe the different hard modes do have differing base stats for the enemies. With that said I am pretty sure the hardline base stats of the enemies are the same as listed here (because in my tests of Hard 1 some of the pirates had the exact same stats as the base stats listed for their class, others with only a one point variance in a few of their stats), and outside of Hard 1 they just manually adjust their stats to better fit the difficulty modes.

I remember this was really clunky because it just used an entirely different engine that was sorta archaic in its own way. You didn't really traverse freely across the map, you just selected options after battle for if you wanted to go to place A or place B. Also, some of the midis were just plain stinky, in only such a way that a standard Microsoft midi format can make them (I have to wonder if having a different soundfont installed would change the midi sound in-game, too). Still, it was a decent attempt - probably better than I would've done, given the tools at our disposal at the time. I played it because I wanted to try playing Gaiden but didn't want to put up with archaic Famicom FE nonsense. Maybe at some point I could give it another go.

The only tool I'm aware of that does anything like what you are asking for is Paragon, which is a tool for modding the game itself. You might be able to add them via save editing, but you'd need to do it manually (by that, I mean decompressing the save file and using probably a hex editor to change values you most likely know jack about). The Paragon method isn't necessarily terrible, but it's inconvenient because you need to disassemble the game to do it, and also because you're permanently adding units to the game (meaning every time you meet the conditions that need to be met to recruit them in any given playthrough, you'll always recruit them). Basically the idea would be you'd make custom characters that use the generic units' graphical resources - the portraits, the sprites, and the models. But this is all I know as someone who really isn't great at hacking games. You'd probably find more discussion on this at GBATemp, since they're all about hacking games and the site is where you'll find many 3DS FE hacks (as well as FE hacks in general). Not sure if FEU is a good place for discussing this topic - I have a friend who's had awful experiences with them because some of them feel the need to explain things to you even if you don't ask for it and it has little to do with what you're doing - but nevertheless it's a place you can look into. SF really isn't ideal for looking for hackers. Then again, the 3DS games in general don't garner much of a modding community, or at least it's not as developed as modding communities for older consoles.

There are several ways to make a 0% growths run work, depending on the game. Permanent stat-boosters: Feed all your perma boosters to one or two units, that's their "progression" in this playstyle Temporary stat-boosters: Only viable for games like Awakening or Fates, but you'd make more liberal use of them in this kind of run Skills: Once again only viable for games with skills, but every advantage you can muster will help ensure your units dish out enough and take enough to push through the game Weapon forging: In games that have it, you may find yourself making abundant use of the mechanic just to up the damage output Using already powerful units: Your Jeigans and Alans really pay off, here - later prepromotes even moreso; a 0% growth run is one of the few kinds of runs where such characters and the obligatory endgame sage/warrior are your only powerful units, you might just end up with a party of crusty old men/women (probably with the addition of dragons, too) Promotion: Always valuable for anyone that can do it, 0% growth runs don't forbid you from doing it unless you specifically place that limit on the run I think the idea is to demonstrate that even when nobody gets growths the game is still technically beatable, meaning units who actually have no growths do have value and that you'll always have something to fall back on. Of course, you won't take everyone with you in a 0% run - a character like Book 2 Alan will be extremely valuable at first, but unless you feed him stat boosters his marginally better base stats won't carry him to the end like later units' base stats would. Incidentally that means a game like Gaiden where the bulk of stats comes from promotions is easier than a game like Awakening where you expect your units to gain anywhere from 20 to 40 level-ups in each of their stats from actual level-ups. Then again, you'd probably be forced to defeat Duma with Nosferatu, which is easier said than done.

If anyone tells you the game can only be beaten with grinding, they're telling you absolute BS. Like you said yourself, your failing was trying to give too many units EXP (maybe also bad levels) - early on you should just immediately bench some people. As with any other FE game (barring certain black sheep that are less than balanced), you should only focus on a limited pool of units or else grind incessantly. I get that FE Awakening doesn't have the best balance or map design in the world, but I've hardly ever heard of people familiar with the franchise struggling to complete the game on Hard. And you still won't even acknowledge what I've been telling you about the Spotpass battles you can use to grind EXP. If EXP is what you're looking for you don't need to rely on the regular map skirmishes because you can summon legacy characters via the Bonus Box feature to fight instead (they come with teams to fight alongside them), their only drawback being that you don't get money or items from beating them. It's like Shadow Mir said, it's nowhere near as bad as that one person said, not on the difficulty you're playing on. You're being punished for playing in a very poorly optimized way - you tried leveling up characters that you should've just left on the bench, and it sounds like you're incapable of using formations that block off an enemy's advance or using the level design (the chokepoints/walls) to your advantage. Awakening is not a very difficult Fire Emblem game, but it will punish you for playing poorly, just like any FE game that isn't Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia or Genealogy of the Holy War would.

Well, like I said, try the Bonus Box Team battles. Look for teams with bosses of a lower level than your own team's average, and summon them. Go to them and parley, then choose to challenge them to a fight. You don't have to recruit them post-battle, you just do this for the free skirmish essentially, and you can do it as many times as you want. Just shy of that I'd either say buy the grinding DLC or start over, but I don't think you should have to do either of those things.

I'm gonna break up this little two-sided conversation thread by adding my voice as a third side. If you have Spotpass activated for the game, you can grind on the Bonus Box Team battles through the Wireless menu. This can be an effective replacement for the normal skirmish battles, which would cost around 5,000G to forcibly spawn (with Reeking Boxes), at least on the difficulty you're playing on. Especially since you don't have to pay for Spotpass, either in-game or with real-life currency (apart from of course needing internet). With this said, I'll give a few bits of advice that I think can apply to Awakening. Not everyone is actually good in Awakening. Some may tell you that you can make anyone a good unit, but that's only true if you're grinding. The reality is, you'll want to use some units and avoid others like the plague. I'll list some examples here, but generally speaking you'll want to focus on a specific set team. Donnel sucks if you aren't grinding. The only way you can use him is as a support unit in pair-ups until he gets enough levels from assists to be able to fight on his own. He is good as a father, as his child will get the incredible Aptitude skill which makes unit growth ridiculous, but he's awful to use without a lot of care and attention - IMO substantially worse than Mozu. Frederick, on the other hand, is bae. Seriously, don't be afraid to bust him out from time to time, when you really need it. Even if you don't use him as a combat unit, he provides much valued protection against enemies that use non-magical attacks. Virion is kinda bad by virtue of being locked at 2-range. In some games archers are absolutely amazing, even in some games where they only have access to 2-range attacks, but in this game they're just terrible because they have no notable strengths to make up for their lacking short-range capabilities. That said, he might be a solid unit for baiting mages, but I'd say you should avoid using him much unless you plan to reclass him. For dealing with mages, you might want to consider having healers and mages pair-up as support units to your main combat units. By that point in the game I think you have four total magic units. It may not be a bad idea to use the mages as combatants either, but be warned that units with non-magical attacks will destroy them. The best tactic for this chapter is to wait for the enemy and rely on enemy-phase counterattacks to soften up the enemies for finishing blows. Don't let your units get too hammered by attacks, and if need be push weakened allies back behind safe lines to get healed. There are three main choke points, and you have plenty enough units to hold them all. Chrom and one or two others should take the west flank, a tanky unit paired up with someone should take the middle stairs, and the rest of your allies should be on the east flank. I know it may seem difficult and BS, but I know that the chapter can be beaten with good tactics because I've beaten it consistently without grinding, you just have to be constantly defensive, and if your units are dying all the time either you're being too aggressive or you screwed up and spread unit levels too thin. The further you get through the game, the more overpowered your units get. But at the same time, the game will occasionally throw absolute BS difficulty spikes, mainly in Chapter 12.

A couple issues I see with the term: First is it's really vague in definition, I think due to just being named after a character. People generally have an idea of what a "Mary Sue" is supposed to be, but there's no clear line for what it actually is. Second is it may not be a gendered term, but it is a notably female name (I'm sure there are probably a few guys named "Mary", just like there are girls named "Kevin", but it's very obviously meant to be a female name). The issue here is that I believe it makes female characters more subject to accusations of being "Mary Sues" than male characters. Sensible people would obviously be equal opportunity critics, but sensible people also wouldn't use the term recklessly. A lot of the time I just see it thrown around by people who just don't like female leads being strong in any capacity - sometimes it is warranted, sometimes it isn't. And even when sensible people use it, I still see a notable slant towards its use with female characters versus male characters - when talking about male characters, I usually see them talk about them being just "perfect in every way". For example, people accuse Alm in SoV and Ephraim of being without notable weaknesses/flaws, and never use the term, yet will call a character like Rey from Star Wars a "Mary Sue" for suffering from basically the same problem - although the Sequel Trilogy is a whole can of worms to sift through, not gonna lie. What a word is said to mean in a little dictionary doesn't matter nearly as much as how it's actually used, and I don't see an equal distribution between male and female "Mary Sues", even though there sure as hell are plenty of male characters who could fit that bill just as well as the female characters accused of being such. I just hate it as a term because it's a term that subconsciously invokes biased use and reactions out of people in a way that only sets up discussions on the subject matter to derail horribly. We'd be better off just explaining our thoughts out instead of just saying "Mary Sue" - yes, it might take longer to explain what you mean, but at least you can have a sensible goddamn conversation instead of going off on a tangent about feminism or SJWs or whatever.

You're the kind of person who should be documenting stuff and speedrunning games, lmao. Not many would dedicate this much time to a game.

The DLC does make the game easier. Mainly the stat-boosting items and the skirmishes. Sure, the skirmishes are difficult at first on account of the enemies being even more overleveled than before, but they give you a stupidly easy foothold to gain over the Maddening enemies, getting you to the point where you may well end up having some of your units actually doubling the enemies consistently instead of the enemies doubling your units consistently and you struggling just to keep from getting doubled. So I'd say the DLC can negatively impact your enjoyment if you're looking for a fun challenge. Maddening absolutely can be beaten without the DLC. Probably the only elements that would actually enhance the playthrough are the new characters and classes the DLC added, because AFAIK they don't break the game completely.

Yeah, I'll have to second (or third?) the sentiment on Miklan's chapter. I mean, it was great for Sylvain's story, but its design is the same reason I dislike a lot of Binding Blade's level design. All there is to the map is you slogging your units from one point to another, smashing enemies along the way and maybe occasionally picking up treasures. There's so little variance in how you approach it - the most you might do is consider leaving a unit behind to help poor ol' Gilbert fend off the ambush units from behind. Also don't like that one city chapter. You know, the one where at least two paralogues take place in. Maybe I just get sick and tired of playing the same map over and over again, but I've never had fun playing this map. Not sure what the best would be. It's been a while since I've played the game normally, that is without NG+, DLC stuff, and ceaseless grinding. I ought to challenge myself to never use broken weapons and to do normal new game. Probably would have a substantially funner time.

Hmm... Any dislike I might have for a character isn't ever particularly strong. So bear that in mind as I provide a list. Among FE games, because I guess everyone's doing it this way... A lot of the main cast of Fates could fit the bill. I mainly think of Corrin, Azura, and Xander. I'll qualify my stance on Azura and Xander because I don't think they're particularly bad in supports (though I don't really care for Azura in her supports), but I really just don't like Corrin. Strangely enough, I don't dislike Camilla. I don't particularly like her, and it irks me when she's given a lot of attention over a number of other characters, especially when that attention is wasted on shameless pandering, but I think beyond the pandering and in her original incarnation she was alright. Alm and Celica are big time dislikes for me. Mostly because of how they were handled in SoV. There were things that they did right with that game, but the protagonists weren't among those things done right. Like most say, Alm should've been more of a proper reflection of Duma/Rigel. Celica... well, there are ways for her to fall into the trap of Jedah that didn't involve reducing Celica's brain to a single-cell organism. Maybe Donnel in Awakening, if only because of the memes getting a bit much. I was fed up with him right around the time some journalist asked KT to add him in FEW. The lancers they did pick over him were much better choices, lmao I guess I'd add Nowi too? I know she has a fandom, and I don't like a sizable portion of that fandom. Kind of an annoying character too, IMO. Kaden from Fates is her done substantially better, and without the whole "I'm a secret 1000 year-old that looks like a kid" trope going on. If there's any character that's popular which I don't like from the Archanea games, it's Camus. I'm sorry, but he's not much better than Xander, the difference is that instead of the king being an obvious dickhead he's just an inept ruler who I'm pretty sure is implied to be on his death bed. I can't help but compare him in my mind to Lawrence. Lawrence is effectively in the exact same position as Camus, the only differences being that he's old, likely has been serving in Grust's military for longer, and just so happened to be friends with the king of Talys. They literally had Camus take the fall just because it's so much more dramatic if it's a young man who is the love interest of one of the protagonist's main allies take the fall instead of an old man who's just a friend of a character you probably forgot about by the time you reached the chapter you meet these two characters. That's about all I can think of from FE. As for outside this franchise... Welkin Gunther... I do like him for the most part, but I really don't like him as a brother. He just doesn't interact with Isara at all. Not in a meaningful way, apart from calling her a pet name. Where's the goddamn sibling banter?! Asuka Kazama... she's popular among the Tekken fanbase, right? I mean, she's a Kazama, so you'd think that'd count for something. And hey, she's one of my mains because I like playing a character with a BS moveset that is barely telegraphed. But damn do I dislike the direction her character arc had taken. At first she had a whole vendetta, and there was an implication that she'd get involved in the internal Mishima feuding... like, it seemed like it'd be cool. Although for whatever reason they had to throw in the trope of the girl getting angry with the boy, which tends to lead to a romantic relationship... but it was between her and Jin, and they're both cousins (or at least, they were at the time). Apart from that, though, the arc could've gone somewhere. But then they had to waste her arc on being a petty rival to some rich girl who really has no business being the rival of any fighter in the Tekken universe. And that's all she is now, and so here I am complaining about a story arch for a goddamn fighting game. Also, she's been gradually far removed from her relation with Jin, for... reasons, I guess. I dunno. While I'm talking about 3D fighters... in the weird, specific context of Soulcalibur where I'm talking about their existence in the games instead of just as characters in general, Darth Vader and Yoda. I don't think people liked Yoda as much because he was broken due to his height, but people always ask for Vader. Like, why? I know he's popular, but not every popular character belongs in every video game setting. There are plenty of fantastical elements in SC, but hell, it takes place in the late 16th Century. While I'm at it, I'll add Talim to the pile. I hate how people keep stanning this 15 year old girl like it's okay just because it's fiction. Chris Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy from the Resident Evil series. TBF I actually liked Leon in his original incarnation, but I stopped liking most of the cast after their second appearances. That applies to almost everyone (I think Jill was alright in RE3), but it especially applies to these two dudes because of what they've turned into. Was never really into Chris, but he's become the poster child of RE that they just have to jam into every RE crevice, and he's probably one of the least interesting characters in the series. Leon, meanwhile, just went from rookie cop whose first day was effectively canceled to elite super agent seemingly overnight. Seriously, compare Leon in RE2 to Leon (even at the end of the game) in RE4, he's basically a different character entirely. I know he went through hell in RE2 just to survive to witness his home get destroyed, but that doesn't exactly distinguish him from any other Joe that went through this apocalyptic event, or even from your average soldier who I'd say also goes through some pretty awful shit. Though maybe I feel this way because of the Outbreak games, where you play as 8 characters, one of whom is a veteran cop that looks like Tom Cruise and another of whom is a Vietnam War veteran. None of them became super agents as far as I know, though I think Yoko actually testified in a court of law against Umbrella Corp and their heinous crimes. That's really all I can think of, and I might've even been stretching with some of these choices.

Mystery's a good start in terms of getting familiar with the SNES titles - many would say it's one of the best balanced FE games. If you want truly massive scale conflicts, you're gonna want Genealogy of the Holy War. There are some chapters where you literally fight through an entire kingdom. I'm not kidding - Chapter 1 is all of Verdane. They're long chapters, and it's a lot of ground to trek - the chapters are so long in fact that they let you save progress in the middle of a chapter. It also has probably the highest deployment limit in the series, though it's mostly because it doesn't really have a deployment limit and the amount of units you have never exceeds 24.

There's an actual condition for this, you know. It's called autism spectrum disorder, and while it generally has pretty variable effects it always affects one's ability to understand and communicate with other people. You should think about how such people might feel about making jokes like this before you make them. And if it's meant as a serious piece of advice, then you chose to frame your words poorly.