semolinaro

For my favourite, I’m tied between Edelgard and Dimitri’s route. My least favourite is probably the church route. It’s awfully generic and has a tendency for revelation dumping.

Edelgard is definitely a controversial character, and while a lot of players downright HATE her, I’ve seen some who believe she is one of the best written lords/antagonists in the series. It’s definitely hard to stomach her methods (she’s rather snakey and calculated), but her reasons for doing so are what interest me. The Church of Seiros certainly isn’t sunshine and rainbows and hides a dark past itself. I see her as a misguided youth who eagerly awaits the day she can use her power to rid the world of a broken system that has caused harm to herself and others. Ironically, these ambitions cause Fodlan even greater harm in the long run. What were your feelings towards Edie?

Yes and no. Edelgard's hatred for the Church of Seiros and her ambitions to topple the system led her to take some rather drastic measures. The only way she could reasonably see her goal through was to join forces with a group who also harboured ill will towards the church, AKA Though their morals are different, their goals were the same. An enemy of an enemy is a friend. I believe that Edelgard was involved, but not directly responsible. She acted as an enabler to a dangerous cult so she could orchestrate her plans of overthrowing the church and reforming Fodlan's broken class system.

Accurate. Usually I'm quite forgiving in overlooking something's flaws in favour of its strong points, but there's just too many things in Fates that make me cringe. Just reading everything you listed already made my eyes roll.

It seems that the general consensus in terms of FE's storytelling these days is that it could use some work. Awakening and Fates, while groundbreaking titles for the series, suffered from some very flawed writing, and I hope that IS takes more time into crafting a solid narrative complete with detailed worldbuilding, complex protagonists and a cast with characters that feel real and believable (I think it's time to tone it down on the tropes). With that said, what kind of thing would you like to see in terms of story on FE: Switch? Would you like to see a callback to a previous setting/continent (like Awakening to Archanea) or a completely new realm? What kind of aesthetic would you like to see, a continuation of the medieval/Roman/Renaissance feel or something new like we saw with the feudal Japan aesthetic in Birthright? Would you prefer a story functioning more on the notions of high fantasy (heavier on mythology, dragon-slaying and powerful forces of evil) or something a little more politically charged (misguided leaders, corrupt government, grey morality, etc.)? What about the lord/main character? Should they be royalty, or no? I thought about a FE nation that was more along the lines of a theocracy rather than a monarchy. They believe that the nation is built on the back of a massive sleeping dragon god, and that earthquakes and other disasters happen when the dragon entity is angered and begins to awaken. I think it would be interesting to have the church hold most of the country's wealth and power while also being terribly corrupt (nods to the Roman Catholic Church on that one). The church uses fear tactics to keep their power, and preach that if people aren't faithful to the teachings of the country's religion, they could awaken their great dragon god and bring an end to the world. This keeps the church well funded as people are afraid of being unfaithful. There could be an interesting social landscape involving the treatment of those believed to be 'infidels' and non-believers, as well as the activities of underground extremist cults. Instead of a royal family, there is a 'holy' family, and rather than a Prince, Princess, King or Queen, the country is ruled by a Hierarch and his bishops and priests. I'd like to see a story like this because I feel like it could make for a perfect blend of political tension, moral greyness and some new and interesting mythology. What kind of story do you want to see in FE: Switch?

I haven't played Fates in well over 8 months since I've been busy with university. Now that the school year is over I've been trying to pick up Fates again. But dear god I just can't seem to do it. I've had a lot of gripes with Fates. The story, for one, is an absolute royal abomination, but I won't go off ranting about that as it's beating a dead horse at this point. There's just something about Fates that is detterring for me and I don't understand why. Is it the story, the aesthetic, the tropey fanservice characters, the lackluster supports, or what? I really like Conquest's gameplay but other than playing through the maps, there's nothing else I enjoy. Birthright is horribly generic and I never feel good about siding with suetopia 'glorious hoshippon'. Revelation speaks for itself. I can't explain it, but every time I play Fates all I wanna do is go and play another game in the series, like Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance or even Awakening. People praise Fates, particularly Conquest, left and right but it's so hard for me to find enjoyment in the game. Even if I skip all the cutscenes and supports conversations and just play the maps, it feels like there's something missing, like charm or nostalgia. Fates lacks that FE aesthetic and doesn't feel like a FE game to me. This isn't intended to be a hate post, I'm just curious as to why I'm having such a hard time getting back into a game that's praised to highly and that boasts such good gameplay.

Restarted from branch of fate on normal and have all units intact, currently working through chapter 8 and it's going really well. It's pretty easy right now but that's probably because I've played it on normal so many times. But hard was brutal, those faceless with grisly wound were absolutely deadly.

So I just finished chapter 7 and only lost Jakob which is pretty good, but I felt I didn't use any special strategy and only won based on luck since one of the faceless missed a fatal blow that would have killed Arthur and Effie got a crit on the paired up ones. I think you're right Avalanche, I'm gonna take it down to normal but I wanna start learning how to enjoy Fire Emblem in classic mode as well. It's an entirely different feeling to play and I even like it, I just wish I wasn't so bad at it haha.

When it comes to fire emblem, I would say I'm a devoted casual fan. I love the series but don't consider myself experienced enough to do well in classic mode on the 3DS games (PoR wasn't so bad since the difficulty wasn't that high). I've played and beaten conquest several times since it came out, and all of them have been on normal/casual mode since my last run, which I completed on hard. I want to get the experience that people play conquest for and play on hard/classic. But I'm only on chapter seven and I'm ready to rip my hair out. This must be my fourteenth reset, but I can't seem to prevent my important guys from dying (I don't care much for Jakob since you'll get lots of healers down the road but when Silas and Elise kick the bucket that early I gotta reset). I'm getting really frustrated but I don't wanna give up because I believe I'm capable of completing a hard/classic Conquest run. Does practice really make perfect and I just gotta work through it until I get the hang of it?

I just finished it an hour ago, and I honestly enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. Made me appreciate the children more as I wasn't as fond of them this time around (Forrest and Velouria being the exception). What did you think of the DLC?

I still think Awakening had decent worldbuilding. We get to know the history of the conflict between Plegia and Ylisse, it makes some great references to FE3, and the continent has a name. Fates doesn't have a single ounce of that (we don't even really get to know the true reason of Hoshido and Nohr's conflict unless you play Revelation and have it explained in an exposition dump). In comparison, Awakening had far superior worldbuilding, even if it wasn't on a grand or detailed scale. Fate's setting is about as interesting as a cardboard box.

Right? I wish I could be one of the people who could overlook it and enjoy it from a gameplay perspective, but when the aesthetics of the levels are bland and the worldbuilding isn't there, it makes playing through each chapter much more uninteresting. Awakening's story is definitely not perfect but for a video game story it's pretty damn good and I enjoy the hell out of it every time. Yes it has flaws, but they're nothing catastrophic and can be overlooked and the gaps are so small that they can easily be filled in. Half the time when people viciously rip apart Awakening's story, it begins to sound like nitpicking. Awakening's plot is nowhere near the fatal car crash that Fates is. Also, this was another thing I wanted to bring up, but I absolutely can't stand the fanservice in Fates. Not so much in terms of skimpy outfits and boobs (which is there too) but more so with how it tried so hard to please everybody by including the Awakening kids as well as their reincarnations. I adored Severa, Owain and Inigo in Awakening, but I can't stand them in Fates. I used to find Owain's theatrical antics charming in Awakening, but Odin's made me want to tear my hair out. Severa, while she was a brat, had some funny dialogue and was true to her character. Selena is whiny and standoffish and lacks the complexity and depth that she had in Awakening. Laslow is an exact, unchanged clone of Inigo from Awakening who underwent no development and that bothers me. You know, this would be been absolutely fine, awesome even, if FE14 was a direct sequel to Awakening. But given that the Fates universe is practically another dimension away from Akaneia, the inclusion of the Awakening kids makes absolutely no sense, and not even Fates' ass-pull writing could make their presence in Nohr a believable scenario. I pretend that their cameo in Fates is non-canon, because it's just so ridiculous.

I agree with everything you stated here, and I also liked Awakening far more than Fates. In fact, I just finished an Awakening file a few weeks ago and am now on chapter 22 of Conquest, and I can confidently say that Awakening was a more fulfilling experience. Fates (oddly enough) felt much more limited than Awakening. I felt more restricted in how I could level up and reclass my characters, despite there being more seals available. I just wasn’t having as much fun playing around with my unit’s classes and stats, and wasn’t all that eager to see them grow in their new classes either. Overall, I don’t like the characters in Fates nearly as much as Awakening. Sure, Awakening has a fair share of tropey characters, but they at least have motivations, internal conflicts and actual reasons to fight for you. In Fates, your army consists of people who fight for you because of their obligatory loyalty to their masters, or for literally no reason at all (Keaton and Kaden, don’t you guys have a tribe to lead or something? Why do you suddenly want to get involved in a war that literally has nothing to do with you?) In Fates, the cast felt so uninspired. I feel like I was the only one who really enjoyed Awakening’s story. Sure, it’s not The Last of Us or Bioshock level storytelling, but it was very enjoyable for a Fire Emblem game. There wasn’t a time where I questioned a character’s actions, and I felt their goals and motivations were believable. Fates story is just absolutely abysmal and probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever slogged through. It desperately tries to make sense of three incomplete storylines that are so dumb I have to skip all the cutscenes whenever I play. I was so beyond excited for Fates’ story too, because the choice was such an interesting concept. But by making the choice so black and white with one being the obviously good side and one being the blatantly bad side, they ended up failing so hard at an A+ concept that could have been presented with complex political tension and grey morality. You can’t give players a choice when one is wrong and the other is right, that defeats the entire purpose of having a choice in the first place. Instead, what we get is brick-for-brains Corrin who would rather sacrifice an entire innocent nation under the heel of his (obviously) evil adoptive father because he’s too much of a coward to stand up to him. It makes playing the game so difficult sometimes. I also was interested in the idea of contrasting classes between Hoshido and Nohr, but I don’t really like Hoshido’s classes. I didn’t enjoy fighting them, nor did I enjoy playing as them. I don’t know, it just felt kinda random to me, the eastern aesthetic doesn’t really fit into a Fire Emblem game IMO. Actually, Fates doesn’t even really feel like a Fire Emblem game to me, but more like a spinoff. There is no world building to be had, and the aesthetics of Nohr and Hoshido, while they can be perceived as refreshing, don’t feel very Fire Emblem-ey. It was made too contrived and complicated to have all of Hoshido’s classes added, as I felt they were exactly the same as previous classes in the franchise but reskinned with a Japanese theme. I also hate how the Japanese inspired nation is pure and innocent while the Western nation is aggressive and belligerent. I just can’t get over that. Also, Corrin’s dragon is the ugliest Arceus I have ever seen. Ah yes, the weapon system. Another thing I totally agree with you on. Though nobody else seems to agree, I really can’t stand the weapon system. Weapons have so many complicated stat detriments and boosts that I can’t keep track. I’m already trying to organize my units on the map, I don’t need more complications with my weapons. I miss the more simple and straightforward weapon system of Awakening and previous titles, as this new feature was trying way too hard. (Also, magic users in Fates are worthless. They hit heavy, but are way too fragile. Mages are some of my favourite units, but I could barely use them in Fates). Oh god, the kids. The deeprealms are so beyond stupid; I couldn’t believe how little time and thought went into the kids mechanic. Honestly, one of the biggest problems with Fates is that it wants to be different from Awakening, but it’s also afraid to let it go. The children were so poorly implemented in this game that I would have been completely fine if they didn’t include them. Either that, or have a big generational timeskip, with the parent characters aging during a ‘peace era’ between Hoshido and Nohr and having the children grow up then. It might even help the children get involved in the story. Marriage was also kinda pointless as the pair up system was tweaked with Attack Stance and Guard Stance, so you can control when your ally will attack the enemy or shield you. While I liked being in control, it really made marriage seem like it only existed for the children. The kids in Awakening were also far better developed, while the kids in Fates were as shallow as a puddle in July. The world map also really bugged me. It took me ages to actually figure out where Nohr and Hoshido were on the map, and the menu navigation system made it feel so restrictive. I loved the world map in Awakening because you had free reign to traverse an open world, it made the continent feel large and grand. The lack of worldbuilding in Fates also doesn’t help this fact, as I think the Fates universe has one of the most uninspiring settings in the entire franchise. The soundtrack of Fates is phenomenal. I don’t think there’s a track I don’t like in this game. Oddly enough, though, I find the maps, while challenging, lack soul and visual detail. A lot of the environments and textures are bland and don’t feel as immersive as Awakening’s levels, and there were far more memorable maps in Awakening compared to Fates (for example, Chapters 9, 10, 16, and 23 in Awakening were far more memorable than anything I played in Fates). I have a feeling that the uninspired setting and plot had something to do with my enjoyment of the level design, since I'm the kind of person who can play a game with meh gameplay but a stellar story and love it (PMD Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky comes to mind).

Thanks! Only problem is that I have my seraph robe to Ophelia, and no longer have one. Can't find it at the staff store either.

I'm short on healers and Felicia is an important part of my party, but her HP growth is terrible. She's at level 26 and only has 25 HP. What should I reclass her as to give her an boost to her HP growth before I reclass her to a maid?