HumanDawn

Hello!! Thank you for your time here!! Are voice actors in general paid well enough, or does it depend on the amount of roles you have or the role itself? As Scarlet, I'd like to hear you say in a romantic way like with her confession to Corrin: "Ryoma, you shock my heart as much as your sword. I would defend you from anyone that dares stand in your way. Please, never leave my side."

Making an incredibly hard and rushed game (although one could argue that many Fire Emblem games seem rushed) on a dead console was the most ridiculous thing, it is no wonder it sold roughly 100,000 copies and expecting to get that much more money from strategy books is even more ridiculous.

Thracia 776 is not good at exploring anything. Its plot and characters are simple for personal perception and apparently that was the point. "Leif, the game" pretty much sums up Thracia 776 and I think if somebody doesn't like Leif I doubt they'll like the game's story. Great read as always. Yeah, with the Internet, the strategy books are almost meaningless, but imagine buying the game and not knowing how it works and having to bother to dish out a few extra bucks to enjoy it.

I don't think Leif is the only character in the series to make massive mistakes or is incapable to do certain things and be punished for it. This is a prime example of why I find Leif to be overrated - when talked about he is presented as a more flawed character than he actually is and other, actually good and interesting characters are thrown under the bus and ignored like as if they have no merit. I'd find Leif more tolerable if his fan base wasn't so keen in over glorifying him, which is amusing since the same fan base complains about Kris, Robin and Corrin being over glorified when honestly to me it sounds like Leif is glorified more than any of them and what infuriates me more is that he does not deserve it at all. He has less personality than Robin and Corrin, and I guess it works because it makes it easier to project to him and relate to him but it just does not cut it for me. I cared about the events in Manster and about Eyvel but after the Manster arc I really started losing interest. Maybe if Leif actually had more characterization, and the people he interacted with had more characterization as well as had some form of interesting relationship with them, then I'd definitely care more and have it sink more in me. Even the mistakes he did too wouldn't fall so flat on me because I'd actually be given a reason to care. All of his screw ups feel meaningless to me because I don't care about anything bad that happens because of his mistakes. The fact the game rewards you with very little is not a positive aspect about it. It just makes it more of a slog overall and even more meaningless than it already is. It's fine to have smaller scale war and conflicts but that doesn't mean it excuses them from actually being interesting. Just because there's less doesn't necessarily mean it's better. I found Leif to be a good enough combat unit with good investment and he does have good utility so saying he's weak falls flat on me. The two tacticians characters are also incredibly boring characters and I had finished Binding Blade just a few months before starting Thracia 776 which already had the awfully boring Merlinus for Roy. The death of one of them fell flat on me but I vaguely remember one of them having some bite to them in criticizing somebody once. They were like Lewyn in Genealogy, but there were two of them for a while. Leif's maturity literally flew over me because he lacked so much characterization it didn't fell like it happened. Anyway, Leif screwing up as much as he did was mostly because him being in a Gaiden means that since nothing matters that much, him doing things that don't end up mattering is fine. The other characters don't have that privilege but what the writing team for Thracia 776 forgot about is actually giving weight to the shit that was happening. I CARED about what was happening in Manster because Eyvel got captured and was lost to Leif. Eyvel was a mentor figure to Leif and they had an interesting relationship that didn't seem like it was work related only, so there was actually weight to what was happening. This could have served as some really good plot for Thracia 776, to save and make up for your mistake in a war, to see Leif's drive in wanting to save Eyvel and how it makes him change and develop as a result. Instead, Eyvel's existence and being saved is ignored or not treated as something important until you are able to save her in a gaiden chapter. Suuure, maybe I put too much faith in Thracia 776's plot, but I wouldn't be complaining about Eyvel motivating Leif a lot being a good plot if the current plot was good. The map design started getting more annoying than enjoyable and weirdly enough the fan base considers the Manster chapters hard when I found them to actually be okay. While I understand that it needs an understanding of its mechanics to beat, there's a lot of vagueness and the fact that Kaga even admitted that he designed the game in a way to sell strategy books just goes to show how awful it is. I understand wanting to try to get as much money you can considering how late the game came out in the SNES's life but it's still awful.

That was a really great write-up about Genealogy! Keep it up! It mentions most of my issues with the game's story and sometimes gameplay. It's such a shame Genealogy turned out how it was because there was a lot of potential that was just squandered with the lack of subtlety and interesting characters. I do cringe every time somebody points out that Genealogy has the best story in the series because its flaws are so awful and if it weren't for the Chapter 5 story gimmick I have doubts it would have been taken that seriously. Child hunts are also severely overrated. They always came off as wanting to make the story come off as more edgy and cool than anything interesting. Maybe if we actually saw children - children that we grew a connection to being abducted and killed then I may have called it smart but otherwise it just exists so people pretend that Genealogy was cooler than it actually was. The game is so slow a player probably forgot more than what have the text was saying and just assumes everything makes sense somehow as long as Sigurd and Seliph are killing the bad guys. Really, I found most of the appeal in raising an army and killing annoying and generic villains. I can't wait to see you tackle Thracia 776. I believe the story in that game is even worse because with only the Manster arc being any good. I don't think anything of interest occurred in the other chapters either, stuff was just seemingly happening. The characters, especially Leif, are so dull and uninteresting I can hardly understand why anyone would like them other than for their utility and potential. Leif is probably the most overrated lord in the series too and I just can't seem to understand how anyone would place such a bland protagonist on top. The gameplay is also pretty overrated.