Seafarer

1. Raffin. Near-complete availability, excellent bases, and he gets to fly. He's basically DSFE Jagen / Arran with better long-term potential. 2. Sierra. I'm a little iffy on putting her so high because of availability, but she's just so ridiculous. She can save you a Warp charge in boss-kill maps, lets you Warp-skip a bit both before getting the Warp staff and on the route you don't send Renee to, and can sling Sylphid around. Shigen dying is really handy. 3. Plum. Dancers need to go high, IMO, but she also gets the Enarmour staff, which lets you do some stupid things with unreasonably high durability. And she joins at the end of Map 2, so that staff is available for most of the game. Beyond these, it's a bit trickier. Zieg does a lot of early combat better than anyone else, but his availability isn't great, and lots of units compete with him for at least adequate combat. Narron is similar, with better availability but a worse start (and getting him early costs you the Enarmour staff, which is bad). Renee has the Warp and Physic staves, but not much else, and her availability is worse than Sierra's. Lionel could be an extremely useful unit if his Mov growth triggers - 26B is nightmarish to LTC without a high-move infantry unit - but he also has to grow into it, and he isn't guaranteed to become godlike like Narron. Sasha's combat is good enough once she gets going, but her training arc is worse than Narron's if you want to get to Paragon. And of course Shigen doesn't die unless you want him to. Holmes has numerous overpowered bows available to him, plus thief utility. I think Zieg, Narron, Shigen and Renee are probably the ones competing for the last two spots, but I'm not super comfortable picking just two of them. I guess Narron and Shigen have availability on their side, so let's go with that: 4. Narron 5. Shigen

This map was... a bit much, really. It's always more difficult when there are two enemies with busted personal weapons and skills. That said, I eventually managed to get through it with the old reliables. That stupid Assault Troop Axe Knight, though... Ruined one of my promising runs, and eventually forced me to come up with a strategy to get out of the bottom area before he showed up. Recording is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EzQtzi9ULk4AIE2SZuWFSNEZ2QIpyIDQ/view?usp=sharing Don't know how long I'll leave it up, and there's no sound, sorry. Maybe one day I'll start uploading things to YouTube.

I believe they're Rearmed because they "rearm" themselves when you inherit their skills, but yeah, Arcane would have been the smarter pick.

I experimented with a new team on this map, with slightly more modern units than usual (motivated by Eliwood's remix). Nino still wound up getting the boss-kill, which was nice, as was not having to keep her within 2 spaces of her buffer and also having Canto. Fallen Edelgard put in work, of course, while Christmas Mirabilis... existed, I guess? All in all, I like my new team, though I do miss Cordelia's Galeforce shenanigans.

Not that it's relevant or anything, but based on the timestamp on this post, Skill Inheritance was added two days after Jaffar's banner (14/03/2017). EDIT: Jeez, it's wild back there. Apparently Reposition is an inferior Draw Back.

...your example of a sympathetic enemy is Lang? Anyway, it'll be nice to have a proper Jagen after TH. Hopefully there's a proper Gotoh, too.

If this is the entire case you now want to defend, I agree, but you said "I'd say the existence of Engage regulates [sic] Heroes more to spin off than anything else", which is what I'm pushing back against. Awakening treated Gaiden differently to the other past games by not having a villain appear. Does Awakening relegate Gaiden to a spinoff more than anything else? Fates and Echoes both have past characters from only a couple of past games. Surely you don't think that makes Jugdral and Sacred Stones spinoffs more than anything else? I think it's much more likely that they don't want the long-term fans that they're probably targeting with this game (because anniversary game) to be turned off by the inclusion of Heroes characters (since Heroes is, broadly speaking, less liked among that group), or that they decided they wanted 12 characters and chose the most popular main characters from the series to make up that number, with the constraint that they should all be from different games. Honestly, this is a pointless argument, but I guess I'm in a petty mood this evening.

I don't think inferences based on what's featured in later games really qualify as good evidence. You could make the case that, since none of the remakes are referenced on the wheel (including FE3, the original remake), they don't count as mainline games either. It's like when a bunch of people in the Pokémon fandom decided that Phione having a different encounter message in Pokémon Ranger 3 meant that it conclusively wasn't a legendary, to the point that to this day, even though evidence for it being mythical piles up, including it being allowed in official tournaments that only allow legendary and mythical Pokémon, it's still listed on Bulbapedia as "legendary status disputed". The thing that convinced me 100% that Heroes is meant as a main FE title is its appearance in the series splash page in Legacy of Archanea. To be fair, I was already leaning towards it being main series, but this also convinced my friend who felt it was a spinoff due to being too different from the rest of the series. Ultimately, though, it becomes a question of what makes a game a main series FE game. FE doesn't focus on a single setting or set of characters, so those don't really work as qualifiers. That leaves us with genre and recurring narrative elements. I think that "pseudo-medieval war SRPG with dragon gods" is a fair description of both FEH and the wider series, but others might disagree based on the shitty gacha system underlying it, and it's certainly true that FEH emphasises map strategy and tactics over long-term strategy. But that disagreement ultimately leaves only official statements on the matter, so we're back to my case above that fan interpretation of intent in a new game doesn't count as an official statement, which you disagree with, and now I'm rambling so I'll stop here. Also, *Alfonse.

I merged an Ascended Atk A!Fjorm (which was neutral to start, from the spark) into a regular +Atk A!Fjorm, and I ended up with +HP +Atk, if that helps. Should've made her +Atk +Spd before merging, but I didn't expect the Ascended Asset to carry over on Ascended Heroes...

Has anyone tested it against Nanna's Lands Sword? Or Vital Astra, for that matter? EDIT: checked and Lands Sword should go through Vital Astra, but Divine Pulse is weird in that it triggers on user's attack and then has an effect on the foe's attack, so it might bear testing.

Might be an emulator issue. I think this patch expands the ROM, which is allowed by SNES hardware but not used by many games, so older / less accurate emulators don't work with it. It bugs me, because I can't get Satellaview stuff working on snes9x, but snesgt doesn't seem to support the expanded ROM, so I have to keep two separate SNES emulators around.

The PAL version of Blazing Blade is atrociously sloppily localised. You'll note that they also didn't bother being consistent between Ositia/Ostia, Biran/Bern, or Lahus/Laus. The American localisation wasn't great either, but this... they went above and beyond.

Yes. See also: Berwick Saga.

I don't think valuing a baby over embryos in an extreme situation is incompatible with believing abortion in general to be murder, though. (It is incompatible with opposing abortion where the mother's life is at risk, though, imo.) It's like asking if you would prefer to save four elderly people who have lived full lives, or a primary school child. I think it's possible to relatively value different people's lives in extreme, no-win situations while also believing that they all have the same right to life. Heck, we would probably argue to do that if something goes wrong during a birth - the baby is viable, and coming out, but someone has to pick who to save or mother and baby will both die. Who do you value more? That's why I think that that scenario is a pro-choice pat on the back, not an argument with merit.

The counterargument to that is that being forced to choose between horrific outcomes isn't a fair representation of someone's morality in a situation where there is no such duress. I'd probably kill an aggressor to save an innocent's life, given no other choice; that doesn't mean that I don't understand that killing is wrong. Obviously, your argument resonates strongly with those of us who don't ascribe personhood to blastocysts (because that makes the "correct" solution very obvious), but I don't think that someone who does choosing to save the baby is quite the gotcha that you think; they could make the case that they're just choosing from three terrible outcomes.

i'm glad you decided to deflect instead of engaging with my point. it definitely makes you seem like you have a rational, well-founded position in this argument. (And to answer your "point": conjoined twins are an entirely separate moral issue, given their symbiotic nature, compared to the parasitic nature of pregnancy.)

People aren't allowed to use other people's bodies to stay alive without their consent. Removing the woman's right to refuse consent makes unborn people more than people. Sorry, dude. It really is that simple.

I don't really hate any of them except Heroes, and that's more for its predatory nature than its actual gameplay loop. I'll divide them into 3 groups: Would happily play again: Genealogy, Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, New Mystery, Echoes (and TearRing Saga lol) Not bad, but there's something that makes a replay uninviting: Gaiden, Mystery, Radiant Dawn, Shadow Dragon, Awakening, Fates Tedious to replay in a fairly big way: FE1, Akaneia Saga, Thracia, Binding Blade, Heroes, Three Houses Haven't played any FE spinoffs or the rest of Kaga Saga, so they're not on there.

There's a point at which the line becomes so blurry that there's no way to have a good hard rule, and you just have to defer to your gut feeling or a company style guide (if applicable in the context). For example, I was thinking about it, and I'm not sure whether I would capitalise a girl calling her brother "Big Brother" or not. I think it would really depend on the context of the phrase. My style guide advises using a down style as much as possible (meaning minimise use of capital letters). For what little it's worth, I would never call anyone "Miss Babe" - it just sounds wrong to me. "Miss", yes. "Babe", sure. Both? Nope nope nope nope nope. I'd go with "Mister Pervert" though, probably, in the given context. Anyway, if you want more advice on the finer points of English grammar, you can PM me. I'm happy to discuss it with anyone. Perfection isn't really necessary on an internet forum, though; this is hardly a formal writing context. 😛

I don't think I've ever seen pet names or expressions of affection capitalised like that. It's formal address and honorifics that are capitalised, according to my style guide (and my gut feeling, which has rarely failed me) so things like "Mother", "Uncle", "Your Majesty", "His Holiness", "Madam President", "Professor" and, yes, "Reverend". And a specific point: when Plumeria calls you "pervert", she isn't saying that the name she knows for you is "Pervert", she's just calling you a pervert (probably because she knows what kind of dreams you have about her...). It wouldn't make sense to me to capitalise that. It's not even a pet name; she's just insulting you.

Meg is worse, because she has crap move and no Canto (and thus no real rescue utility). If you're using either as a combat unit, you've probably moved beyond a playstyle where any unit can really be considered "good" or "bad". I found that Meg takes less BEXP to become a viable combat unit for part of the game (specifically, ORKOing Tigers in 3-6 with the Brave Sword), but Fiona can probably become just fine if you really invest in her. I took Meg to the tower in my (very recent) first RD run - I'm honestly biased towards her, so you should be able to trust my assessment at the top there.

I can't believe there's still no date for Home compatibility with BDSP and LA. Gen 9 is nice or whatever.

You have to unlock them in a version of the game that has the support log. If you transferred a save from a previous version, you have to view the supports again in-game in order to unlock them in the support log. Just wanting to clarify these instructions for @gringe and possibly @tabachanker too, because I had trouble parsing them. To get the crash: 1) watch the intro sequence and the whole class roll. 2) skip the next intro sequence. 3) watch through the cutscene and the third intro sequence. 4) the crash will occur during this third intro sequence. You can use emulator speed-up to make this less time-consuming, and the crash will still happen. Also, the crash is loud, so turn your sound down. Knowing tabachanker's talents, this bug will soon be confined to the trash heap of history. ^_^

You can skip his battle. He's not relevant. I agree they should have given him an actual name, though.

Well, Brigand Boss is on the list, so... every character at least as important as him would be nice to see. In other words: everyone who appears on a map and has a name and portrait. Then we could meme Batta the Beast or something like that. I'd find that much more interesting than Brigand Boss or even Gatekeeper.