Azure Sen

I forget what my given name is sometimes, because I have a nickname and pretty much everyone in my immediate family refers to me by that.

I imagine we'll get another soft reboot of the series or a UDG follow-up if we do get another game in the series. I just don't see them re-visiting the Hope's Peak saga outside of UDG nor do I see them going off from where V3 ended.

Honestly, when they were first introduced I actually didn't like the multipliers, but now that we've gotten interesting final rounds like this and Alfonse vs. Gunnthra I'm way more in favor of them, especially since IntSys refuses to stop putting versions of former gauntlet winners back on rotation. I'd rather less well-known characters get their time to shine instead of having another boring Ike steamroll victory. Anyway, I joined team Lyon. RIP both Team Sigurd and Team Marth.

Mechanists are based on and use karakuri, mechanized puppets/automata first made in the 17th century and used for theater and personal entertainment. In this case it would appear that the Mechanist uses strings to steer the karakuri and launch its attacks and the katakuri itself is wound-up in order to move. The Japanese version of the skill name makes it clear that the replica is another puppet, since the skill name is "Copycat Puppet."

I'm hoping for Chrom personally, half because I want the memes to end and half because I like Chrom. I expect Chrom to be an Echo Fighter of Ike. He could be an Echo Fighter of Roy but I think Ike's fighting style fits him better. Other than that there's no Echo Fighters I want, at least that I can think of at the moment.

The Prologue and Chapters 4 and 5 in both games makes it pretty clear that the narrative thrust of Gaiden/SoV is "gods meddling in the affairs of mortals is bad." Mycen has a big speech in Chapter 4 of both games of how the gods mucked things up by interfering, Rudolf felt that their influence was so poisonous that he gave his life to get rid of them, and the prologue points out how the gods' teachings had divided Valentia and warped her people. SoV makes it even more clear, showing that Berkut's over-reliance on Duma's teachings gets him killed and has him tell Alm to make Valentia a land of man and not gods, having several characters in-game comment that the whole situation was caused by their over-reliance on Mila and Duma, and even having Mila outright say that she and Duma were foolish because they couldn't see that mankind could stand on their own without them, among other examples. Given all of that, I really can't see how the main theme of the story is extremes are bad and bringing two opposing ideals together to unite the people. Marks that no other people who bear the blood of the royal family have, and which are explicitly said to denote the heroes who will save Valentia in both games; also Alm's birthmark existed in the original Gaiden and had no association with Duma there, while Celica's birthmark didn't exist at all until SoV. There's also the fact that Alm was not raised in the ways of Duma worship, so him representing the ideals of a god he doesn't worship nor was taught the tenets isn't a logical conclusion to reach, nor does he ever show any personality traits that would associate him with Duma. You're right, and I apologize. There was a better way for me to make my point and me being so rude was uncalled for. Celica was, at the time, working towards a goal that she felt would resolve the war in a better way than simply shedding more blood, even if the primary motivation behind doing so was selfish; I don't think she should be faulted for choosing to put that above a goal that she felt and arguably was less important (since even if they beat Rigel, Zofia is still screwed without Mila), especially when doing so would be a perceived setback to her goal. That being said, I don't think the same is true of her trying to get Alm to step down as leader of the Deliverance, which is 100% selfish. It's important to note that, while she would probably be put in charge of the Deliverance if revealed to be alive, no one aside from Alm seems all that concerned with actually finding her and having her retake her rightful place despite knowing she's alive; it seems to be more a reflection of Alm's humble nature than anything else.

And? Not to sound dismissive, but this is pretty obvious to anyone who was actually paying attention during those scenes in Gaiden/Echoes; Celica herself admits in both games that the whole reason she went to go find Mila was to keep Alm safe, with resolving the famine being a secondary objective. That's why she only made her move to go find Mila after having that premonition of Alm's life being in danger. Could the game have addressed this more thoroughly? Absolutely. But Celica does address it. Also good god, the dumb misconception that Alm and Celica were supposed to represent Duma and Mila's ideals needs to die already. It was never true, not in the original Gaiden, and not in SoV, it makes no sense if you think about it for more than five seconds, and Gaiden/SoV's main narrative thrust has nothing to do with the conflict between the two sets of ideals. Yes, kowtowing to the whims of the masses is always a good idea, because the masses always know what's best when it comes to leading a country or resolving a crisis. This point is illogical and ridiculous and I have no idea why you're trying to paint Celica as unreasonable for doing a thing that most sane, competent rulers do at least once in their career.

Guinivere outright says in 6 that Zephiel's drastic personality change came about after a near-death experience caused by poisoning, similar to real-life cases of brain damage caused by poisoning leading to similarly drastic personality changes. Desmond was also planning to murder Zephiel's mother and Murdock along with Zephiel, which is what ultimately spurred Zephiel into murdering him. Also, I'm pretty sure being the target of multiple assassination attempts by your own father, including one where you spend ten days on the brink of death due to poison, doesn't qualify as a "generic bad childhood."

From an actual writing perspective I prefer unsympathetic villains, not because I think they're better but because sympathetic villains are really easy to mess up for me. From an actual character standpoint I like both, because both can be really entertaining or enjoyable when well done.

Depends on the game, but usually I treat them as a template with which to create a new character, never as an extension of myself or representative of me. Basically I use them for more roleplaying as a character than anything else, I guess. In general I don't do the self-insertion thing, because it feels weird to do. Corrin was only criticized by a small number of fans not even belonging to IntSys's primary target audience. As both CYLs and various other popularity polls show, they're still very popular with the general fanbase.

I haven't posted here in a while, whoops. Beat the second and third nights of Prison Tower, but stopped after that because both times required draining Command Seals. Took a bit of a break after finishing London. London in general was pretty great, and gave me a new appreciation for Mordred, Fran, Babbage and Tesla. Did some summoning on the America pickup banner for Billy, got Geronimo and a bunch of CEs instead. So now I'm back to actually saving up, this time for Jalter. Started America. Medb seems like she'll be delightfully hatable and Cu Alter looks pretty cool. Nightingale is hilarious. Dunno how long that'll last, though. Fionn is an ass, and getting to beat on his dumb face is both an honor and a privilege. Poor Diarmuid, though. As a tangential and incredibly late side-note, Karna is the best and I'm glad he's getting story focus, even if it's just Tamamo and Kintoki in London levels of "...okay, that happened."

Malig Knight. I know space limits are a pain, but really? You couldn't go with Wrath Knight or something instead of a name that seems like you forgot to type part of it? Basara. I have no idea what Muromachi-era hipsters have to do with the class outside some design cues. Druids. Similar to the basara, they have no actual connection to their namesake, in this case societal and religious leaders in ancient Celtic societies. The whole pegasus thing seems to come from conflating them with unicorns (...for some reason), as evidenced by the fact that a majority of FE's "pegasi" have horns or grow them on promotion; Bellerophon died entirely because of Zeus, either by spooking Pegasus with a lightning bolt or sending a gadfly to bite Pegasus. Actually, every iteration of Pegasus Knights count, because they're not riding pegasi.

Unskippable tutorials. Maybe it's just my many years of gaming catching up to me, but I find most tutorials pretty pointless, since most game don't have unique enough mechanics or control schemes to justify them, and if they do the tutorial usually does a pretty meh-to-garbage job of actually teaching the player the intricacies of those same mechanics. Stealth sections in games not built for them. They are never good, period, and there are better ways to have variety in how objectives are completed. Being able to brute force them is just as bad, as it illuminates just how utterly pointless they are. Giant maps full of nothing, especially when the fast travel mechanic is bad. This does not just include open-world games, mind; Final Fantasy XII, for example, has the entire section between the Tomb of Raithwall and Draklor Laboratory full of gigantic maps with almost nothing of interest story or gameplay-wise to the point where you could cut half the areas that you have to go through and lose nothing of value. Stat inflation and busted enemy-only skills as a substitute for actual difficulty. Making the enemies bulkier and hit harder does not equal difficulty, especially if their AI is not buffed to compensate. It's why I generally play most RPGs on easy or normal.

I'm against it. Unlike Book 1 and 2 of Mystery, Binding Blade and Blazing Sword have a twenty-year gap between them that renders them ultimately pretty irrelevant to each other. They share a general world and a handful of characters, but not much else, and I'd rather neither game suffer the abridging and cast reduction they had to do to get the Book 1/3 format work. The most I would like to see is some sort of save bonus feature where the children in 6 Echoes get growth modifiers or special items depending on who their parent was in 7 Echoes. That being said, I wouldn't mind a Binding Blade remake having more playable 7 characters and call backs to 7. Rath's ending with Lyn says he has a daughter with her, similarly to Nino's paired endings being the ones that establish that she's Lugh's and Raigh's mother, and much like the other parents of Binding Blade children who haven't been born yet Rath retreats instead of dying. There is zero reason to assume that Rath is not Sue's father.

Generally speaking, status effects tend to be either a nightmare (Thracia, Hexing in Fates) or a non-issue (pretty much everywhere else) for me with little ground in-between, so I'd prefer if they were just dropped altogether.

Alas, I burned all my command seals the last fight, but that's what Kaleidoscope is for. I completely forgot about Ushi, whoops. Mine would need some training, but a single-target Rider NP is just what I need right now. Here's the team I was using, with notes on my strategy: Medea, lv. 61: There to clear the first wave, basically. She can generally take down the assassin chimera in one full chain, either on her own or while helped by someone. Emiya, lv. 60: There to eat random hits and, if he survives that long, deal as much damage to Fergus as possible. Dantes support: There because I can't get rid of him to deal damage and get switched out in the second wave for... Santa Alter, lv. 50: There to help with the demon. She'll probably get replaced with Ushi once I get Ushi leveled, because lol AoE NPs. Robin lv. 50: There to hopefully be the Fergus killer, but as I learned when I tried that Fergus's debuff resistance must be higher than normal because poison failed for the first time I've ever seen it do so. Zhuge Liang, lv. 42: There to boost Robin's NP gauge, basically, because max ascension is still a long ways away. Waiting in the wings: Archers: Tesla, Atalante, David, Arash Casters: Hans, Shakespeare, Mozart, Babbage Riders: Astolfo, Medusa, Alexander, Ushi, George Berserkers: Lu Bu, Asterios And of course, best support girl Mash I'll freely admit that a( I'm not good at coming up with team composition, or at least ones that synergize well and b( I'm really bad at picking what Servants to prioritize when it comes to leveling/skill upgrading, since I tend to go for favorites first and based gameplay servants second. I appreciate any advice you guys have, and all the advice you've given so far.

I'm having a really tough time with these quests, myself. I can't even get to Fergus without half my team dying because of the wall known as the demon in the second wave. It's a shame, because those summoning tickets would have been really appreciated.

Duma telling Alm to learn from their success and their mistakes is not the same as Duma telling Alm to bring together two differing philosophies. That Mila and Duma remain detached from the conflict for much of the story is irrelevant. The whole conflict was set in motion by the gods' meddling in human affairs; If Mila and Duma did not exist or had not come into conflict there would be no Rigel and Zofia, no division between north and south and no SoV. Since you brought it up, though: Desaix only had an opportunity because Mila's teachings made Lima IV a lazy hedonist, the pirates were driven to piracy by the food shortages caused by Mila's disappearance, Rudolf's plan is spurred entirely by Duma's degeneration, and the Duma Faitful are following the degenerated Duma's will.

Two lines out of context does not an overarching theme make. Mycen, much like in SoV, outright says at the end of Chapter 4 that the issue is that the gods came in, divided North and South and started meddling in the affairs of humans directly: All of Valentia's issues in Gaiden can be traced back to the gods meddling in human affairs, and in both Gaiden and SoV Duma and Mila's teachings are both shown to be wrong in their own ways (Duma's encourages cruelty and heartlessness, Mila's encourages corruption and hedonism). Duma is telling Alm to pick and choose the best from their philosophies while also not repeating their mistakes, not to bring their two (very flawed) philosophies together. The SoV translation makes this more clear: Much like the whole more aggressive Alm thing, the idea that Gaiden and SoV are supposed to be about two conflicting ideologies coming together is based entirely on misinformation.

Yesterday's summoning went weirdly well. Not only did best paladin come home: But I also pulled Beo and Tesla. RIP my chances to pull Jeanne Alter or Dantes ever, because I'm pretty sure this banner has burned my good gacha luck for the next year.

I'm just amazed and baffled because a( these two mark my fourth and fifth 5* Servants pulled and b( I pulled them in a row on 3 SQ pulls. It's like GO is saying "you can have any Servants you want except the ones you actually want" at this point considering I was rolling for Astolfo. I'm pretty sure I've pulled more 5* than 4* Servants at this point too. We'll see if I feel the same way tonight when reset rolls around and I get a pile of SQ for 100 logins. Astolfo had better come home on that. I went with Noisy Obsession, since in the NP gauge pre-charged department I have Kaleidoscope, the Imaginary Elements, and a full LB Dragon's Meridian, and the rest of the CEs didn't seem that great aside from megane heaven Glass Full Sweet Time and Salon de Marie, the latter of which I pulled.

So guess who I pulled. Twice! What is even my luck with this game.

I'm hoping he'llget a ranged version of Wrath, as potentially absurdly overpowered as that would on certain units. I'm also hoping he gets a special that isn't Vengeance, but that's about it.

That's true of most Greek heroes; by modern standards they're giant pricks. Odysseus storming a town in the Odyssey, slaughtering all its men and taking all its women into slavery being treated like just a regular Tuesday comes to mind. Anyway, blah blah blah White Day/Chaldea Boys Collection/whatever you want to call it. Gonna go for best paladin but with 30 SQ it's probably not going to go well. Knowing my luck Teach will bend the rules of time and space just to spook me when I pull.