Reality

Next up is 4x, the first Thracia map that I consider to be cheap. It still qualifies as an easy map other than the first two turns. At the start of the map, all of your units are backed into a corner. You CAN use the one torch that the armor knight starts with, but you don't do much moving around in this chapter, so there's no real need. The Fog is part of the problem, but the main one is that the enemy is way too close. Anyone you move above this line on turn 1 WILL die. It's an absurd setup, especially given that you are starting in this corner and have nothing else to do but move out. Even without the fog it kind of funnels you into an ugly fight. Here's an example of what turn 2 looks like. There are 4 soldiers (most are 1 rounded on counter attacks) 4 armor knights, and most important, 4 mages. If you aren't familiar, in Thraccia 775, the Magic and Resistance stats are compined into a single magic stat (think gen 1 special in pokemon). As a result, pretty much all foot and mounted units have terrible resistance. In this case, 7 units (including the lord of course) have 0-3 resistance, with the only karin (the dismounted pegaus knight) being able to laugh off a hit. After finding a position where nobody dies when you end turn 1, you must find a way to find enough offense on turn 2 so that they don't attack again. . Lifis (but not lara) can also disarm a mage with the stal command due to his high-enough con stat. This challenge is particularly cheap after the first escape map- you could probably survive losing 4 or even 5 units to the escape mechanic if the map after 4 was the bandit map we're going to see shortly. But 4x is a map that actually requires you to have high number of units and combining power. My preferred way through this is to have 2 weak units trade away their stuff and then intentionally let them get captured, which causes 2 enemies not to use their attacks. In tthis playthrough I didn't make sure to end c3 with the fire sword, which can also help. It's pretty easy to rescue captured units, and it even halves some enemy stas (hint I use it a lot later on). This enemy setup is slightly easier than it appears, as all 4 mages carry vulnerabilities- therefore you only need to wound them all on turn 2, if you can't kill them all. When you open the door into the next area, 1 of the green npc units will self-recruit. This is the first mage. Asvel is a well rounded mage unit, but if you didn't visit this gaiden. You wouldn't have any magic units until either 11x or if you early promoted Safy. The other npc is Sety. Sety is roughly akin to units like Athos- if you make it to Chapter 23, no matter how screwed your team is, Sety will absolutely gurantee that you can beat the last 3 maps. Obviously, at the end of this map he leaves (we've had 2 pre-promotes already, but they weren't anywhere near this level of power). There is a long conversaition between Sety and Farin which is worth looking at. Farin stayed in her country longer than Sety, so she knows about Sety's mother dying. Sety himself has come to Thracia to find his father in hopes of bringing them together (Sety's father also knew how to cure her illness). He stayed in Lenster longer than planned because he figured it would only take him half a year to overthrow the government because seeing the oppression led him to join the resistance He gives Farin an scroll which he claims to be the "engagement" ring of his royal family, as a promise that both will survive Thracia and return to their country. Princess Ruto joke here . This scroll is actually the best one you get, so it's weird it comes so early. Crusader scrolls work like the knight band, mage band, archer band, etc items in Path of Radiance fixed mode- they are equip items (although they don't take up the weapon slot like in FE2/SoV )that give characters holding them increased growths The Holsety scroll gives +30% speed growth, and you can trade them around mid chapter as much as you want. The end of the map has this group of enemy units. I used a torch for the purpose of taking this picture, but normally they would catch you by surprise. Anyone who ends the turn while standing by the second wall gets sniped at. This might not seem dangerous, but the promoted Bishop in there isn't treated as a boss- he moves too. This Bishop has an Elfire Tome and about 8-10 magic stat on average. This means that if he hits anyone, because of the 0-3 resistance mentioned earlierr, they take a massive 20 damage hit. It's best to have a plan to either rescue drop the thief that opens the second door away, or to lure him to the edge early with a 30 HP unit and let him the Green unit pick him off. He is weighted down by his tome (and only has 3 speed anyway), so you can double him freely, but doing so the turn you open the door requires two units due to the soldier in front of him, and he does have high enough HP due to being a promoted unit to possibly tank 1 turn of abuse from 2 of your 4 best combat units. The rest of the chapter (chests, civilians in lower right) pretty much completes itself. The escape tile functions like in Chapter 4- everyone else must go before Leaf.

Something about Vanessa and Tana being mogalls amuses me.

Clarine- availability, especially since FE6's early game is when you most need healers due to not having all the pre-premotes/good units yet. Sain- STR > SPD in FE7, because unlike FE6 you don't really have any risk of not hitting the doubling threshold. Moulder- I really don't know where support for natasha is coming from, never heard of using her being more worthwhile in my life. Arthur- Arthur's main advantage over Lute is that Lute is effectively the second slowest unit in the game after Gilliam due to eating Con penalty from nearly anything. Lute will hit magic cap with either of her promotion, so Slayer doesn't really mean anything (monster's can't take 2 cap elfires any easier than a bishop lol) They are essentially interchangble on NM but on HM Lute's speed actually causes a problem, especially if you go Ephriam route. (they are equal again around post C17 and Creature Campaign) Also free staff ranks.

Daien's four riders- Leaving the Black knight aside Petrine and Bryce and Betram are respectively awful, barely in the story , and raise unnecessary questions. While the Main villain has some interesting motivations (changing social structure to darwinism/meritocracy) Petrine is basically a GBA-era cackling villian who kills her own subordiantes. The game also semi-forgets her, which is silly considering that She is built up a little bit (Duels Greil, requires rescue from the laguz , causes Shiraham incident) Bryce is the most forgetable, as he is just a sub-boss in the final chapter. He does show up in the story of the chapter before where he freaks out when he realizes that Ashnard is intentionally splitting up the army to prolong Ike's chance/the war. He has some pre-battle conversations, but being POR you are pretty likely to just push him over with just anyone. Finally Bertram is basically a random chapter boss in Path of Radiance, although possibly hinted at as undead. He is never mentioned after you beat him. Radiant Dawn claims that he is Renning the king's brother (and hence would have been in line to the throne before Elincia even if she was known publicly but doubly so because she was raised in hiding) His mind control/ undead status in POR is explained as the result of Daien experments, and Bastian takes some time trying to get him cured in Radiant Dawn before he becomes a playable charather. However, perhapss as a testament to Radiant Dawn being a game with too many ideas, he is almost never discussed.

Garcia seems really low. I see him as a comparable to Lute at low B or maybe put him at the very top of C. He's semi-infamous for his use in drafts, but really, (ephriam route especially) he does a lot for very little investment. Myrhh- She has moderate utility on 5 of the 6 maps you can deploy her in (darkling woods qualifies as major, and her use in C17 is the only one where she is *bad*). The tanking siege tomes, offense, and flight help a lot in different ways. I have no idea why she's so far behind other late units. Probbably deserves middle to low C-tier, below Ross. Kyle and Forde should definately be below Moulder/ Saleh (Eir)- They might still be A though. Kyle above Forde - Forde (average) strength leads to him missing kills on things he doubles at the time that Kyle would get them. Therefore Kyle benefits more from the speed boost of the knight crest more than Forde does imo. Duessel (eir) and Cormag should switch places.

FE1 I'll call it Blade of Light so it isn't confused with FE11. Very hard to overlook that Rebelstar (1986) and Pool of Radiance (1988) had already been released when the first Fire Emblem appeared. Set many bad precedents for the emerging SRPG genre, especially regarding enemy AI and growth/level up systems. While the later Famicom / Super Famicom games had a high level of experimentation. FE3 and to a lesser extent FE5 "locked in" many of the mechanics that would become core to FE and Japanese SRPGs in general until the paradigm for the first international games on the GBA shifted to the philosophy of "back to basics".

I went with Fiana Freeblades. Because 4 Axe users = most testosterone. If I went charather wise I'd go Ram in a heartbeat. SoV doesn't have a good plot but it definitely has good charathers, especially the starting greek chorus guys.

Blast Corps- Puzzle game where you destroy buildings to make way for a runaway vehicle. Some of the demolition vehicles were mech suits that excelled at what they did, others were construction vehicles that had to ram them down, with the Dump truck being the most iconic. Had good variety of levels, some where you had (almost) no holpe of smashing the correct buildings and instead had to look for a hidden second vehicle, some involving pushing tnt, and others that deviated from the core gameplay such as the pac-man and racing levels. The game had insane replay value because of it's hard difficulty. This is in large part because the fast times needed to get the platiinum medals came from a competition among the game's beta testers. One of the more annoying things is that you couldn't even access the Time trials until you had EVERY other gold medal in the game. Panel de pon / Tetris Attack - Some days, Tetris Attack Online just doesn't co-operate. Makes me wish for a licensed version of the game with online functionality, especially since the Switch should be free of the reliance on Friend codes that plauged 2/3s of the Wii's online games. Everybody's Tennis (PAL JPN)/ Hot Shot Tennis (NA)- Considered a spin-off game of the long running Hot Shots Golf games. While the golf series is still going strong, only two tennis games were ever made (technically just the same game with portable and console versions). I originally purchased the PS2 game with the intention of refunding it within a week in early 2016, but I ended up decided to keep it because I found it's arcade-y gameplay to give Mario Tennis and Virtua Tennis a run for their money (which the reviews I read for the game online never suggested). Besides that it even made the campaign mode's doubles matches 2P compatible. No more having to go through doubles championships with a computer! Me and my brother love this game. and hopefully if it ever spawns sequels they won't corrupt themselves into oblivion like the later Mario Tennis games. Star Fox Adventures- I'm just going to accept that the star fox series isn' going to make a straight rail shooter on the level of 64. I think we can have faith for a multi-genre game like SFA (albeit developed by an inhouse studio this time). The first game only had 5 or so very short Arwing sections, but they could probably be spread more liberally throughout the game in a remake. As for the Zelda-esque dungeons that made up the main game play, a lot of them showed potential and there was maybe 2 interesting ideas that zelda itself hadn't had yet. However I feel like SFA was hamstrung by achingly low difficulty (and the n64 and GCN zelda games weren't hard to begin with), and also ridiculous flexibility in how you got the game's treasures (power cells), with fairly low requirements and even blatantly had an infinite number of them for sale at the game's shop. Also I think you could pause at any time and Peppy would tell you the solution to any given puzzle much more explicitly than any of Link's partners. Nevertheless, the game was okay because of its setting and the cool factor of seeing fox on foot. I feel like a zelda-esque starfox could be made considerably better today than in 2002.

It happened to me with Colony Wars: Vengeance. From what I remember I had sold it because I couldn't figure out how to damage the first boss. It was still there 2-3 years later. Probbably because who tf buys PS1 games other than RPGSs. I like it a lot more now. Not sure why Richie considers it to be the hardest game in the series over 1.

I played Xenogears on the ps1. I was kind of disappointed by the combat mechanics and low difficulty. I played through it because I liked the setting and I can't resist giant mechs. I don't understand the sentiment between the visuals being weak. They put some love into the setpieces that can be seen past the ps1-ness of the everyday/minor models. I enjoyed the story of course, but I'm not blown away by it's use of Freud as much as the way say, the Italian filmmaker Fellini used him. Have no interest in the other games, since like the first one, they were they were made after the paradigm shift that demanded that all content should be see-able by the average player.

Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 At the start of this map, these guys gloat over a bunch of children they kidnapped. More interesting is that they reveal the OTHER resistance group besides the player character, the Magi. We show up to save the children, and then our shady guy leaves the map. We finally get to see an enemy unit with the same map sprite as him (by the boss), So we get a double dose of foreshadowing. The enemy units on this map depend on Thracia's random variation for their stats, so they are still basically cannon fodder. The same level 12 soldiers can have anywhere from 0 to 6 speed. This map also features one of Thracia's less talked about problems, one that actually makes Thracia easier. Thracia, like many fire emblem games, features reinforcements, but for some reason, most maps will repeat enemy spawns for 6-8 turns. Because of this, Thracia's early game is insanely Experience Rich . I just leave Leaf in this tree here, and these bandits don't have the hit rate to damage him (and he can heal himself with items anyway). He gains 3 levels without moving from this spot. On 2 and 2x you can avoid this kind of mini-grinding, but on this map you have to rescue drop NPCs onto villages in the lower right, so you inevitably will end up feeding someone. The map also feautures the first enemy siege tome and is the first time you get access to staves. The siege tome just means never to send anyone with 14 or less max HP into the fort (most notably the staff user herself). As for Sapphy. She actually managed to miss twice in the first map I deployed her. A bad impression. Thankfully she only needs a few level ups before she reaches 10 skill (which gives the maximum 99 accuracy). Saphy stops being a problem, but one of the later staff users will have even worse base skill AND exclusive access to certain prf staffs.... At the end of the level Leaf is captured by Redrick. The only items you have access to are those in Leaf and Lifis's inventory. For the most part this is inconsequential- you get enough new items to equip everyone, and the items that dagda/halvin/etc were carrying are returned to us after a few chapters. You can make your life easier by making sure that one of the two are carrying the fire sword though. In this escape map you start with 3 new units, a myrm idon, an axe cavalier (dismounted) and a second thief. In prison you have a sword knight and peagus knight (also dismounted) as well as two old units, Leaf and Lifis (if you recruited him that is). Getting your own units out is trivial, since the soldiers still have awful stats. When You release Fergus you have this misinformative dialog. Although "you go first, I'll probbably be captured" might be intended to help you draw the right conclusion, it's located at the begining of the speech, and then Leaf says this, which rhetorically suggests that this will be the mechanic as it supersedes the first thing. You also get the secondary goal of rescuing 6 civillians. This isn't super hard, but since enemies randomly (and it's actually random) spawn from the escape points, and since Thracia also uses same turn reinforcments AND the enemy phase happens before the Other phase, this means that you'll probbably want to dedicate 2 if not 3 units while escorting the civillians. 1 to knock out an enemy carrying a civilian, 1 to attack any new enemies, and 1 to sit on the enemy spawn point (this isn't strictly necessary but it helps). The 3 bandit NPCs don't need to survive. At the end of the escape you have no choice except to open a locked door at the top. It's annoying to get through, but since the armor knights block off the mages until the end and use javelins/hand axes, you can quite easily wall them by tanky people in front and attractive targets one space behind. With this formation you can take all the time you want since the front row enemies won't get counter killed. The mages are also inaccurate (due to thunder), but can crit people with low skill (leaf and the myrmidon should be immune), so it's a little annoying that they are the last enemies you fight. Make sure that you don't use Bryton as one of the front row blocking units since his wrath skill will make him kill too quickly.

Gen 2- Dark type E4. options were kind of limited unless the dark gym was like 1st or 2nd to justify the leader only having three pokemon in murkrow/houndour/sneasel. If the dark leader was late enough to have evolved mons (umbreon/tyranitar) it's team would just feel mismatched with the single evolution pokemon next to fully evolved ones. Gen3- Dark type E4. Kind of wasted oppurtunity since gen 3 has the 2nd highest number of dark types of any gen. Gen4- A dark type gen would not have showcased new mons really well, especially since 2/6 of the dark types are evolution of past gen stuff to begin with. Gen 5- Dark type E4. Gen 5 does have the highest dark types in its gen, so maybe? Perhaps they could have made Opeluid City's gym be a different type depending on the game instead of being dragon for both Iris and Drayden. Gen6- I don't understand the philosophy behind the gyms in this game at all. Some of the gym leaaders don't have any X/Y pokemon at all. Granted Dark wouldn't really be an ideal gym type for this game since there's like 3 evolutionary lines + legendaries as the only options.

A lot of the serious moments in the anime Last exile. I think the biggest things are the gunfight in the first episode- WHY do soldiers walk out onto gangplanks, stand in a straight line, and shoot at each other, when the ship's HAVE external cannons! I know they're trying to push some kind of late 1700s "honorable warfare" and show needless loss of life, but it's just so stupid from a logical perspective that I can't help but laugh every time. And then there's the point where the countries form an alliance to fight the badguys, the badguys crash the ceremony, but instead of bothering to attack them there and then, they use their airship to drop rose petals on them. JUST STUPID. Yes, it's supposed to show their arrogance and how little of a threat they see the protag countries are, but it's just so surreal. I think the last thing I want to mention is that one of the badguys executes someone by having them nailed to a cross, and then somehow manages to get strangled by said prisoner multiple hours after he's been on the cross. JUST DON"T WALK UP TO IT. I'm pretty sure if they saw a bulldog chained up they would stick their face up to edge of the dog's leash. And this is supposed to be a dramatic moment where a character trades his life to kill his nemesis. As for videogames- in Ogre Battle 64, there's the scene where Rhade executes the commoner. Yeah it's tragic, but Rhade is way too campy in the official translation. "There is absolutely no need to listen to their bitching" followed by cartoonish logic about the burden of the upper class (while beating a man tied up). It's an unbalanced way to start off a game about class conflict for its first three chapters.

Cormag- What a guy. One of the best units in your party in a game full of super units, and even has great characterization because they spent the time to devote one of the sub-bosses to being a foil for him. Has some pretty good supports. I don't understand the definition of "flier" for outside the series. Is this vehicles? Flying mechanics? Just characters that fly/float/glide in their animation sets? Gut picks- Kazooie - Conker's umbrella is one of the best characters in a comedy oriented game of all time. Favorite SRPG flier- Hawkmen from Ogre Battle. not too much competetion, the birds in Shining Force 2 are too overpowered to be mechanically interesting. Other flying units in ogre battle are problematic (fairy/gremlin are just ugh, sphinx/ lighting dragon/ angel knight have availability issues) Ghosts in ogre battle tactics are fun because of being able to use equipment, but I have hard time looking past them being "status effect" units in the main games. Characters- Kazooie from the Banjo series, The witch from King's Quest 1. The player characters in Burning Rangers (although it's more a jump pack than a jet pack). Kurt Hectic from MDK (if gliding on updrafts with a parachute counts as flying). Max the dog from MDK2 for his actual jetpack. Raven Devil from Grafiti Kingdom (lot of great monster designs, but since he's the first flying enemy and therefore gives you access to flight yourself, he changes the flow of the whole game). Kain's Bat form from Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain- I always thought that the SOTN bat form was a let down compared to what you expected from a vampire, he made be held back by PS1 technology, but just the visual of standing and then enfolding into a cloud of bats is so perfect, even if it was just for cutscenes.. Raziel from Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver- he never gets to fly although Square Enix would probbably say otherwise but he's such a great character and both of his pre and post fall designs are amazing. He does glide a little bit. Vehicles- The X-wing for how satisfying it is in certain games (rogue squadron, rogue leader, and star wars 1983). Some of the spaceships in Colony Wars- All of the player ships except the S-7 Chimera. the T-11 clone for being the best enemy fighter, the strike cannon, the banshee minelayer (appeals to me because of the idea of its grapple beam more than ingame interactibility), and of course, the super titan for being a great last boss. Klein from Colony Wars Vengeance (due to the space joust setup of the encounter). The 6DD vehicles in Descent and Freespace. The P-38 Lightning (eat your heart out tomcat) . The arwing. The dart fighter enemies from area 6 and sector X. The R1 from R-type (innovating the option pods in SO many games). The J-Bomb from Blast Corps. The Astrolander ship for finally finding the perfect environment for "thrust" style controls. The flying shell and the flaming barrel from Rayman 2. Druudge Mauler from Star Control 2- The crazy Recoil makes it the most interesting movement wise, although I like most of the ships due to the gravity whip and such. The rocket powerup from Cel Damage- Probbably my favorite incarnation of the Wile E coyote ACME rocket, even more so than in actual Looney Tunes games.

I really wish I could say my least favorite was the first 9 games collectively, or at least the Famicom/Super Famicom games collectively... Least Favorite Genealogy- 5 good things 1 world map actually integrated / serves a purpose beyond a SMB3-type level select grid. 2 Having talk conversations other than the recruitment ones 3 Story 4 Music 5 Causing Intelligent Systems to shed itself of Kaga Favorite New Mystery- 5 bad things 1. I don't like the art style of the DS games. I don't talk about art ever, but I stand by thinking that Awakening was the game that made me believe in the 3DS as a console and that before playing it I thought that it's games would have the blocky 3D graphics of the last handhold (Super Mario 64 DS / Okamiden). Awakening's art is easily my favorite for fidelity if not overall. I think that as for actual art direction I like the sprites of the GBA games followed by Thracia. But New Mystery and Shadow Dragon disappoint me. 2. Rainbow drops- I find them compelling from a mechanical standpoint due to their limited number but wish they came as a standard feature so people wouldn't complain about whether they should truly a part of Lunatic Reverse "the DLC stigma". 3. The battle preparations arena- Almost as vulgar as the Radiant dawn BXP. At least on harder difficulties it is "effectively" unusable due to the enemies being extra buff. 4. The BS maps- way too simple 5. Prologue chapters encouraging exp funneling and turning Kris into a pseudo jeigan. I like them as actual maps though, esp on lunatic and reverse.

The first time I played through awakening, the units with the most kills were a married pair of Kellam and Coredelia. The first time I ever played Path of Radiance, my sister asked me to kill off Soren because she considered him racist. I wasn't using him anyway.... I had a Path of Radiance playthrough where I committed to using all three generals. I legitimately thought that armor slayers were bad due to their weight for like my first 4 fire emblems. I played the series in the order. 8>9>13>7>10>11>12>5>3>4>1>2>14Con>14Rev>14Bir>SoV

At the end of the day Conquest and Radiant Dawn are the only ones I can seriously consider. I'm thinking. Shadow Dragon if you count H2 or H3. (H1 is too close to normal, H4-5 are more lunatic than hard) The "units don't have chance of growing" is more community spread myth than fact. That said, yeah, the game does encourage locking in your party early on, even on the lower hard modes. New Mystery- if you count Maniac as the hard mode. (Hard is too close to normal, and lunatic and reverse are lunatic and reverse) FE4- most Hard mode changes are just AI and the same things that work on normal mode will work there, gen 1 has a group of units in gen1 with godlike growths (and usually horses) due to major holy blood (including the main lord), gen 2 is only ever annoying -not difficult- in chapter 7. Beyond this once again you have godlike growths, and oh yeah 3 of your units are unthouchable dodgetanks because not all holy weapons are equal. Honestly pobabbly the most pointless hard mode difficulty "increase" other than path of radiance and awakening. FE6- you technically can use anyone (see the all axe or all girls run). That said they drop the ball with enemy stat's halfway through, so while the start is nasty regardless of strategy (although not too nasty if you trust in Marcus), the later maps (excpet the obvious notorious one) aren't that much of a limiting factor. FE7 hard - FE6 but the sudden switch to "easy hard mode" happens considerably earlier. That said while it's not too hard to prevent you from using who you want, there isn't really incentive to bother putting the effort needed to do so because the natural advantages are there (as with FE11, FE6, and 12) FE8- Better than PoR HM for what that's worth. Being able to casually double with everyone including the game's thwomps (gilliam and Lute) should raise red flags. FE10- The C4 is laguz only? so what, the GBA game's endgame (really 7+ last maps) are also inferior to the hard mode experience in much of the rest much of those games. Honestly I find shafting this game's hard mode because of the balance of C4 to be disingenuous. Conquest Hard - unit diversity has more of a point than other hard modes while simultaneously requiring less elbow grease to accomplish than before Shadows of Valentia - I'd like to point out that some units (the alm route warp user) will probbably never learn the unique things that made you excited to put them in your party. That said they manage to hold their own without getting there just by being mold able into a solid unit at general combat... People who like this game can talk about it. I won't. I'd make a case for Birthright and Rev being more functionally diverse than the GBA games, but not conquest and SOV, but whatever.

I bought Secret of Mana via the (first) wii shop channel. I find Square Enix's licensing policies regarding the wii U shop channel (Nintendo Eshop) to be really weird. Anyway the worth of the game depends on whether you have people to play it in local multiplayer with. The style reminds me of the DS and phone remakes that Matrix software did for Square Enix. Most of them do add extra story scenes and bonus super dungeons in addition to just changing the art style. Not sure for this game since Matrix software don't seem to be mentioned on the official website. I think the most exciting thing is how the music will be remastered, since it's already one of the best soundtracks on the SNES. (I don't really excpet the same kind of miracle as Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, but I still expect something generally good.)

Chapter 2 and 2x So after breaking the FE tradition with those imperial soldiers in chapter 1, chapter 2 restores the status quo and makes us fight bandits. Anyway the guy on the right is our first hint of loputo sect. He is shocked by how these bandits have access to better information than him, and runs off before the map starts to go warn his faction. I was half asleep during this chapter. I recruit a second archer, Ronan, who despite critting someone from full health, isn't going to be a long term member of this LP. It isn't a mindless chapter if you try to get kills too Havan/Othin/Leaf and minimize usage of the prepromotes, because the bandits can already 2 shot Leaf and 3 shot the other base units. There are things in this translation I'll be sad to see disappear in all the hype over the good translation. Like this rude villager. Chapter 2 isn't all fun and game's that Bandit from the chapter intro is actually a decent boss. 10 defense means that only magic (via leaf and eyvln), Dagda, or crits can hurt him. If you want to use Leaf you have to rescue drop him while chipping him down, since if he switches to bows, Leaf only has 5 spd at base. After we kill our first bandit, it's time for Thracia to get real. So the first run in with the thracia fog of war. It's pretty important to have vulneries for both the people going left and right- the ordinary iron axe bandits can sometimesf 2 shoting Havin and Othin depending on their random stat generation. Like in FE6-7, you can and should use your pre-promotes quite a bit through here and the rest of the early game- don't worry about the exp distribution too much. There's one other thing about this chapter: Do not equip Leaf with his Light sword, it weighs him down and getting doubled on this map is bad for a lot of reasons. Stick with iron unless you can rescue drop away or use other units to surround him. They WILL hit twice in a row. This map has two of these generic promoted enemies wandering around, one on the bridge in the middle, and the other on the second bridge towards the boss island. They are what makes the fog so dangerous. The real reward for this chapter is probbably lore The pirate leader Lifis is holding the cleric Spahy hostage- She tries to get him to join her crusade to free Tahra, and mentions that she is fighting the Lopto sect, and that failure will cause darkness to cover the world. Lifis bluffs his support. I'm pretty sure he's supposed to have dirty intentions for Saphy in the Japanese original, but this translation stops at "get my hands on her". If you talk with Eyvln she will explicitly tell you to capture Lifis, despite the whole "complicit in child killing" thing. At the end of the chapter, Saphy tells Leaf about how Tahra has suffered a civil war, child hunts, and direct intervention via the Grandbell Empire, and that the resistance has largely been crushed. It's not really clear if Leaf knows Lopto is involved yet since she doesn't mention it to him in this conversation, and the CH 3 intro doesn't change regardless of whether you visited this gaiden. Leaf reminisces about how he owes a debt to Tahra, and then impulsively pledges his support. This is a familiar kind of scene in Fire emblem, Marth and Ike have the most notable parallels- but It's a sensible place to go for Leaf. And happily- or rather perhaps unhappily- Leaf gets to see the consequences for this kind of underprepared chivalry which other lords don't. Coming up next time- entering Manster and the dreaded Escape mechanic.

Alright let's get started with chapter 1 and part of the prologue. The prologue establishes the Chaos in Thracia, but does not actually name-drop Grandbell as one of the nations that benefits from the coup d'etat, perhaps expecting players to have checked the manual or be familiar with FE4. The highlights include the death of King lenster (the main charather's grandfather), and his two sons (father and an uncle). The game is fairly dramatic about this, as the 2 year old Leaf gets to watch his home consumed in flames while the loyal knight Fin spirits him away. You'll have to forgive me for only posting chunks of story, it's a bit too much work, and I am more interested in critiquing game play than the translation problems - which get a lot worse beyond this point. I do like this game's set up a lot more than other Fire Emblem game's that have the lord exiled at a young age. Unlike, Alm, Leaf does not manage to improbably hide as a commoner for years, and we are told that Finn has to move from city to city, until ending up at the tiny village of Finia on the coast. The semi-official leader of this village is the swordswoman Eyvln, who acts as a secondary advisor to the lord along with Fin for the first few chapters. Of course the plot has to make concessions in order to justify having each battle. The bad guys have occupied the village, taken Finn and Eyvln's daughters hostage, and we get to mop them up. Both Jugddral games feature disproportionate numbers of bandits, which have led some to speculate that certain countries in the Jugdral setting are badly governed or in decline. I think the opening chapters of Thracia can be justified by being set near the coast, which is the literal edge of both Judgral and the continent, and away from the major cities. There is actually a cute pseudo- cutscene where one of your units takes a look ahead: it respects the line of sight that this wall represents, and he even slows down when he is sidling around the edge, and then speeds up when running back. Leaf (not shown) claims that he doesn't want to run away anymore, and Evlyn and Fin show a different amount of respect for his opinion. Eyvln will go on to claim that most of the enlisted soldiers are just commoners and request you to try to spare them with the capture command. I proceed to do so, more for the sake Fin's brave lance durability than any humanitarian impulses. At first glance, Chapter 1 might seem a little open-ended, much like say, Chapter 1 of Shadow Dragon, but it is very much a tutorial - All of the enemies have terrible stats and hit rates. Most of them are carrying Javelins, and both Leaf and our archer can absorb 3 hits without dying, with most of the other units being able to take more, and your 2 pre-promotes are basically immortal. The houses yield unusually good loot for chapter 1. A lot of people are fans of the Jugdral games for being dark, but like later titles, they don't have any problem mixing light comedy in with serious moments. Only a few minutes ago the infant Leaf watched his home burn to the ground, and now we are in the middle of the "Volke forgot his Axe" sketch from Fire Emblem:Awakening. Chapter 1's gameplay isn't too interesting, but the playable units it gives us are worth mention. The lord and the cavalier are bog standard. But Thracia also gives us 4 axe units. Axes aren't particularly accurate in Thracia (once we get past the low stat enemies of ch1), but they are saved from the fate of the GBA axe units because of the combination of Thracia's version of support bonuses and also getting really nice skills for free. In Thracia, any units with supports will have them active by default, no grinding for turns needed! Even at this early stage, this means we can give Dagda and Othin a +20 to hit, and Marty and Havan a +10 consistently. Our axe squad has other notable features: Othin has a personal weapon and a skill that lets him auto-crit on enemy phase, Havan has solid growths only a little behind Othin, and Dagda will be the most important pre-promote for the first half of the game. However, Thracia doesn't entirely make up for the reputation of Axe users in Fire Emblem and Marty is, well, probbably the one used as a template for the scrubs in the GBA games. He has a speed stat of 0, while the others pull a respectable 7, 7, and 9. The two girls won't see much use. A sword master is a weird pre-promote for Fire Emblem, but can reliably get rid of the promoted enemies (not just bosses) that we are going to start running into starting with the next chapter. Tanya will make apperances in quite a few chapters since we won't have access to the deployment menu for a while, but the game is not kind to her. Thracia is definitely one of the FE games that emphasizes enemy phase combat more than player phase combat. The other weird thing about these units is that they do not all carry standard iron equipment, despite being chapter 1 units. Fin has a brave lance, Dagda has a hammer, and both Leaf and Eyveln have magic swords as backups in addition to their iron swords. Anyway it's an easy chapter, and before long, the boss gets his doctor proscribed dose of hammer, and we can continue our journey.

I went with Geoffrey and Rolf. I considered Bastian, but he's a little too silly. For female Calill was the only one.

For some reason my first thought on how a modern fire emblem anime would be treated was heroic legend of arslan. That kind of put me in the "NO" category. On the other hand other medieval anime have done really well, but I don't really think any of them feel like Fire Emblem. Personally I don't really think even more story focused games like Path of Radiance or Genealogy are really suited to a season long series for various reasons (number of characters relative to screen time being a big one). A lot of "filling out" of side characters would probably have to be done, among other creative liberties, to make Fire emblem worth watching . Even relative to other RPGs, I think a non- anime "cutscene-movie" of Fire emblem is seriously lacking. It could of course be adapted as a kind of "summer anime" and follow the heorics of the party/lord, but that would ONLY be a fun thing to watch once or twice, and not really an all-time anime that you could return to, and worse, it wouldn't really stand out from a medieval anime WITHOUT the licensed setting.

I've been worried for a while that my attitude toward Fire Emblem has been negative especially about how good it is relative to other SRPGs, and so on. Beyond this, I've noticed that Thracia seems to have a divisive reputation, especially in two new threads, "The most underrated Fire Emblem" and "The best and Worst Fire Emblem gameplaywise" . I'm in an odd position in this kind of debate. I think that the first four games are the worst in the series, with Genealogy the absolute worst. However, when I played Thracia 776 three years ago (in the same marathon as the other games) I was impressed with it to the point of placing it as the 4th best game in the series. A lot of people argue about how hard it is (as they also do with Genealogy). While I think that Genealogy is on the easy side relative to Conquest, the DS remakes, Radiant Dawn, and even the GBA games, I believe that Thracia is legitimately a hard game. A lot of people claim that it is only hard due to fake difficulty. Some of the chapters in this game unquestionably do have fake difficulty. However, less is said about how other parts of Thracia 776 are hard in the "conventional" way. There are a lot of nasty promoted units, even in early chapters, GBA-style throne bonuses, and because of Thracia's weapon distribution, you encounter enemy brave weapons before the half way point (4 bosses at various points before chapter 16). Because of stuff like this, the general difficulty of the game can readily be compared to Radiant Dawn or FE6 HM, even if the fog of war and status stave chapters did not exist. I'm playing on the infamous "bad" fan-translation. Given that this is 2017, this may be one of the last times anyone ever uses this translation. Be prepared. In keeping with my intention in starting the LP, I plan on playing the game without the paragon mode cheat or any glitches. I hope to highlight that Thracia, despite it's reputation, CAN be an accessible game, and in order to do that, I will be putting a special focus on how you can manage your growth rates, get ahead of the expected resource curve, and use skill scrolls to your advantage. I might even intentionally leave some units behind on the first escape chapter to demonstrate how you can mitigate the setback that the mechanic causes.

Nice review. Personally I think that the hostility to retro reviews is because people have gotten used to using "review" and "preview" interchangeably, just look at the content that IGN or youtube creators put out or you tube reviewers to understand why: As much as I like Tetris Attack, I don't know if I would rate it quite this highly. There were a few AI fixes later games like pokemon puzzle league (mostly noticable on higher difficulties) and I like some of its "fluff" like the puzzle mode, the so-so tutorial mode, etc. It always felt like a more complete game to me. Also as for competetive, I would say that 5 minutes rounds are very rare. 2-3 minutes is more typical. https://youtu.be/dh_3CaZWsTI I remember there were some tournaments back in the day that used default speed settings (Level 5) which allowed skilled players to survive for unnaturally long times against each other, since as you know, you can't die in Tetris Attack until all of your chains have resolved. regardless of the top of the screen being buried. I think this was when the online romhacks were first made. Most tournaments in both Tetris attack and Pokemon puzzle League today (for the last 5 years really) set the speed level higher so that pieces "lock in" faster and games don't get drawn out.

I meet your Tolkien and raise a C. S. Lewis. although it's hardly likely to see religion returning t mainstream RPGs in anything other than watered down harvest-bounty goddesses and doom cults.