ping

FE4 Chapter 2: Crisis in Agustria Anphony --> Mackily Considering that he killed himself after penning the letter, Victor would've had to be really commited to the act. Although, if you add "the letter was actually penned by the Loptyr Gang, who then killed Victor and made it look like a suicide", you can leave that snazzy tinfoil hat on your head. Omnipresent shadowy death cults are useful like that. Excuse me, since I am of ze Germanns, I do not recognise zis "Kohrsleid" you are talkink about. Ve drink proper Bier hier. Good points. Lewyn/Tiltyu is the pairing I'm going for (I mean, Lewyn hasn't been accounted for yet, so this shouldn't be much of a surprise), so Arthur and (maybe) Tinne are available options. But the Sonic Sword is Mist's personal weapon! Yeah, PoR!Elincia as a combat unit is the epitome of "too little too late", even with her personal unbreakable Brave Sword, so I hardly consider her as anything but a staff bot who might be able to grab a kill to gain more XP from that.

I like Erinys, personally. Fury just doesn't work despite the mythological background (unless her sisters are named Angry and Violent), but Erinyes just shifts from Roman to Greek name while keeping the reference intact and sounding like a name that parents would give to a baby girl. My only issue is that I keep forgetting if it's Erinys or Erynis No, just an example of me vaguely knowing stuff about the game, but not the details. That is too bad, but I suppose it makes sene that Rescue is the most expert of the three transportation spells with how they work in Genealogy. Well, here's to hoping that the other meme line isn't there anymore. -.- Although the horse on Azel's promotion is a pretty big boon to weigh against Lewyn's advantages. But yeah, Lewyn with the Pursuit Ring will blow Azel out of the water in terms of raw combat. Azel does get (B) ranks in Thunder and Wind after promotion, so he will have some interest in Lewyn's Elwind tome then. But we'll see. The way I read it is that Sigurd did neither. He didn't officially inform the king (with the implication that this would put Shanan in danger), but there's absolutely zero indication that he would make an effort of keeping Shanan hidden, either. Which really makes this the anti-Goldilocks solution, looking as suspicious as possible without actually being sneaky. Sigurd being in his fourties, obsessing over a teenage girl, would certainly give his character a very different spin. But yeah, since I didn't remember that Deirdre was Kurth's daughter, I went into this playthough thinking of Kurth as a man in his twenties. I agree, although in this particular case it stood out to me that Kurth was consoling Sigyn about her husband sleeping around... leading to her doing the same thing. It has some vibes of "the only moral extramarital affair is my extramarital affair", if you only read what Semi-Generic Old Guy is narrating, even though Velthomer sr. did it first and apparently on the regular. (Which makes him the big hypocrite, of course, by treating his wife's affair as the most shocking thing in the world. This is definitely not a "both sides are equally in the wrong" situation, with Kurth and Sigyn's affair being "understandable but they probably shouldn't have" at worst)

...oh shoot, Paragon is 40k, not 20k like the other rings. That makes the list of potential Paragon runs in the arena a tad lower. Finn, obviously, because he got the drop. Azel, who can actually clear the arena without the Speed Ring. Sigurd, who can sell some shit to get to 40k. Technically Midir, but he's have to do the first three fights first and then sell the Speed Ring, and he needs that to beat the final opponent, so that would make the whole thing a lot less worth it. Midir is looking like a much better candidate to grab money from the villages now, actually. Well, Ruben made the fatal mistake of admitting that he is not a frothing Finn fanboy, so... I'm still considering the story-friendly version, but the sheer number of characters that would really like the Brave Sword is giving me pause, since I would add Erinys (or Erin, as Project Naga calls her) and Fee to the list by denying them the Brave Lance. Yeah, Arvis, in this moment, looks more like a pawn in the Bene Loptyrit's grand plan of breeding the Kwisatz Haderach, not like somebody who's actually in on their plans. His first impression is that of a bit of a prick (his initial comment of "wow Sigurd really sucks" and Azel being terrified of him), but I don't think that an unspoiled player would file him under "villain" already. Numbers go up. That's why we play Fire Emblem

He looks more similar to Eldigan? Would also explain why Raquesis warms up to him more quickly than anybody else. ...Her other love talk is with smol Eldigan Dew. Well. Sorry, but Genealogy has the rare speciment of staff-using pegasi. Apart from Elincia (with her godawful availability in both Tellius games), that is something I never get to play with otherwise. Staff-using pegasi with magic swords is complete unique, even. There's (several variants of) German packs, too. Although I have to admit that I have a much easier time playing with French cards. Never been a big fan of the Anglo-American aesthetic, though. Waltz has 30 Atk. Finn has 38 HP and 11 Def. If the situation was reversed, I would be gushing about these perfect numbers. I don't remember Javarro, but yeah, Waltz is pretty cool for a one-scene wonder. In theory, rescue seems fantastic on a flyer. In practice, it obviously depends on the map, and I can imagine that just putting that staff on a horseback healer like Ethlyn or Nanna, in order to shlep the respective dancer with the main group, might be just as good most of the time. I would counter that the info should also not be assumed as not being passed to the main character, and that information this crucial to the Evil Plan of Doom should either be given to Sigurd in an after-seize or after-chapter dialogue, or not be given to anybody in his group at all. Have some Evil McEvilface exposition it to Manfroy ("it seems that ...the girl is with the dumbass Paladin's child"), if the player is supposed to know more than Sigurd. I don't think it really would've fit into the narrative for this particular piece of info, but Ethlyn or Quan learning about something that Sigurd absolutely needs to know after they returned to Leonster also could've been a nice dramatic way of not delivering that something to Sigurd.

FE4 Chapter 2: Crisis in Agustria Heirhein --> Anphony

I think the way this works is like this, if I'm not misreading the formla on the main page: XP formula has a summand that sees to the level difference between a character killing an enemy and, well, the enemy being killed. This summand is negative if your character has a higher level (with some "class power" shenanigans potentially changing the effective level) BlaBla halves this summand if it's negative, but only on normal difficulty SacSto halves this summand if it's negative, no matter the difficulty So basically, overleveled units in general gain more XP in ENM, HNM, and all SacSto modes, compared to EHM, HHM, and both BinBla modes. However, all GBAFE games have a flat +40 XP bonus to boss kill XP, so in theory, Marcus should still gain, like, 45 XP for early boss kills. I honestly don't remember if that holds up, though, or if there's some more conditions that the main page doesn't list. If Genealogy would do something similar, the main problem would be that Sigurd would snowball even harder. It would truly be a Seth Situation at that point - S. is the best bosskiller, therefore he gains more XP than anybody else unless you go out of your way to avoid that, therefore he becomes even better at killing bosses and everybody else can just eat his dust. Well, Sigurd already functions like that (like, mine is 5-10 levels ahead of everybody except for Lex, and that's because Lex already cleared the arena), but it'd only get worse if Seth gained another two or three levels per map via increased boss XP.

ther ermkpöoprerr sducv klsd

+3.4 Spd, that is. Other than that, Sigurd is fairly average, with +2 Skl, but slightly below average bulk (-1.2 HP, -0.8 Def). The "right" way is to feed the kill to your trainees, of course For SacSto, you're probably right, but for BlaBla, I'm not as certain. Marcus still benefits from level-ups, of course, but unlike Seth, you do eventually get characters that are better at fighting than he is. I think I'd rather have 100 XP on Sain/Kent/a Pegasus/Heath. (that said, the last time I played FE7 was as a ranked run, so my perception might still be skewed by that) In BinBla, things are certainly as they Should Be, with Marcus being best used to set up kills for growth units, my signature notwithstanding. Good points. I like the concept of staff-using Pegasus Knights (in case anybody wonders who Erinys is most likely going to marry...), so Erinys sounds quite interesting. Come to think of it - I'll have to think about who to pass the Return staff to. Fee won't have a staff rank yet. Nanna is the first kid that comes to mind, I'd say... Since "skill" is already used for the skill stat, we should try to avoid calling Steal/Adept/Accost/... "skills", too. Very confusing. I think referring to somebody's special abilities as their "strengths" sounds sensible. "Steal strength" or "Critical strength" roll off the tongue easily, I find. Honestly, kinda, yeah. Quan feels very unremarkable for a prepromote, with middling offensive power because he doesn't double consistently (and when he does, you don't expect it and he might die) and can't tank particularly well. And if necessary, he can sell the bathroom towels at the pawn shop so that he can afford it. There really is absolutely no flaw with this plan, come to think of it. I haven't reached the next castle yet because my brain still defaults to "OK, Quan can recruit Beowulf and then canter far enough back from th-- SHIT", but I can give a little spoiler and say that the combination of Dance, Adept, Critical, and Holyn advancing the random number string is still enough to save the top left village, even with a turn to spare. Wonderful. It's odd to see Sigurd without his horse, but I guess he had to leave it at the castle for maximum sneakiness.

When John Maynard Keynes first met his future wife, Lydia Lopokova, he lamented to a friend that because she was no man, he did not know how to approach her and express his feelings.

FE4 Chapter 2: Crisis in Agustria Nordion --> Heirhein I think WRPGs are generally relatively light on the god-slaying powers...? Like, Baldur's Gate 2's expansion is quite cognizant that its protagonist and their competitors are playing on DnD's Epic level scale, but you still have one of these competitors bringing an army in order to besiege a city. But I shouldn't pretend that I'm an expert on the genre as a whole. Also Fates supports between characters of opposite gender that don't have any romantic chemistry, at least as far as I'm aware. Three episodes of talking about this and that, before the writing suddenly remembers that it is very important that these characters must fuck.

Yeah, I was thinking about RD too, but forgot to mention it. It also has its Climactic Big Epic Battle in 3-E, which definitely manages to convey that feel of a huge clash between armies very well. How was war today? Pretty good. We got a new soldier, he's a thief, we'll make a lot of money. What soldier? I cannot tell you, it's confidential. Also, he's like 12 years old. Oh, come on, why not? And what the heck? No, I can't. Anyway, how's your sex life? The framing in Genealogy's prologue is that Sigurd initially doesn't want to take Noish and Alec along because he doesn't want to risk their lives, so it would be rather odd if he was willing to bring a squad of his personal soldiers along on this potential suicide mission. So... ...honestly, I feel like Genealogy is up there with Sacred Stone's "let's capture a whole fucking fortress with four soldiers" as one of the most difficult FE games to accept that dissonance between tiny armies and enormous battles. I'm expecting cardboard boxes.

Yeah, it's similar for me. I couldn't point at any character whose outfit/hair/general design I dislike... except for the uncanny, piercing eyes.

You're lying, I never abducted you! You're tearring me apart, Kaga! Not sure how to interpret that you gave Raquesis the role of the doggie That's a really good reason. And well done by Kaga to tweak the numbers so that it works that way without just making the female characters worse. Hmmm... But that's just an inherent problem of the Fire Emblem formula - the schizophrenia of portraying big epic battles, while having about a dozen characters fighting on the player's side at the same time. Some games manage to still create that "big battle feel", like BinBla's chapter 21, but it's always a bit of disbelief one has to suspend. Shout-out to BlaBla for creating a scenario where these small-scale battles are a lot more appropriate... and then arguably mucking up in the opposite direction, by having the small elite assassin's guild throw dozens of mooks at you in Cog.

Eldigan is obviously playable, handsome fella that he is. And there's no way Fire Emblem has the balls to kill of a playable character. Never happened, never will. I would say Darin and Eric are a bit of a conglomeration of Chagall, Bordeaux, and Elliot. I'm trying to remember who the sex pest was in Elibe, but I think they both were, kinda? Darin perving on Priscilla, and Eric offering Clarine to Narcian in BlaBla. Ugh, dangit. Luckily, posts have been editable consistently for a few days now. Maybe the recent update did something. Nobody even noticed that I wrote FE4 Ch.4 in the title of the Ch.1 updates. All of them, because of Ctrl C+V I honestly didn't even notice that the Raquesis's bodyguards have "unique" portraits. And I don't think I'll bother updating another one. Yves forgot to do his laundry today and borrowed a cape from one of his brothers. I see your next bossman hack is going to become a lot more spicy. (Although your first one could be all spice, for all I know. Something is distracting me from starting another playthough, so I haven't checked it yet.) You're right, the scene has certain Tommy Wiseau vibes in its flow. Genealogy definitely has the usual Fire Emblem problem with scale, where it's always a bit ambiguous if we have small skirmishes or big epic battles. The maps explicitly showing whole countries, and the maps together adding up to all of Jugdral, might make it even worse than your average "fifteen teenagers conquer the world" Fire Emblem experience. I didn't know about Ayra getting more bonuses, but you're right on principle, that the female characters aren't outclassed by any means. it's just an oddity that Raquesis is the first woman with a non-HP growth rate above 30% if it wasn't for Holy Blood - and it's her Lck stat. And it's going to stay like that until Tiltyu arrives to est things up. And, as a result, inherit them. We'll see how good she'll actually be, but I'm looking forward to Patty joining with her planned gimmick available immediately. According to Wikipedia, the Greek Chi (Χ/χ) was pronounced as "K" in the ancient language before it evolved into sounds not really present in the English language. ...No real reason for me to say this, but I was curious about the pronunciation when I saw the inspiration for the name and it sounded like the kind of useless fact you'd also be interested in Anyway, BrightBow already explained their behaviour. Before recruiting Raquesis, they just sit in the initial triangle and attack when they don't need to move to do so. As a result, bringing her to the frontlines seems like a recipe for disaster. 😕 To be fair, identifying the gender of anime characters can be tricky. (unless you were hoping for gay representation, which would've been quite optimistic for a 1996 game) Lex is strong enough to two-shot Holyn, so that helped a lot. Still two 29% rolls he needs to hit, but that's an 8.4% chance - rather not good, but something you could even brute-force thanks to Lex's Vantage skill (which does work in the Arena, right?) Against the standard boss, Lex needs 4 hits to kill him (1 Str away from a 3-shot), so that would've been much more unlikely to achieve. Since Dew just gifted Azel with all of his cash, he's going to have to earn some money so that he can spend some money to earn some money more easily. I'll definitely want the Light Brand on a relevant parent at the end - Sigurd, Lachesis, Azel, or Erinys - but I should be able to get all of them a magic sword by the end of gen 1. That are good arguments why the scale might not be quite as out-of-whack, after all. I will say that even though Wyverns don't have the same oomph as actual dragons, even just thirty of them would be scary even for a large force of regular ol' humans. Not just because of the "they can strike anywhere without warning" aspect, but wild Wyverns in Akaneia can breath fire, which they just don't do after being domesticated because the humans riding them stab their enemies instead. ""Realistically"", I'd expect that 30 Wyvern Riders would be able to rain down heavy actual fire on enemy troops, too.

Oh, absolutely. FFX has its own problems with combat, in particular how random encounters are designed, but the boss battles are the best in the series, as far as I've played it. The ability to execute a plan instead of quickly selecting "ATTACK" because the next character already has their ATB filled makes them so much more fun to play. I can't really remember any specific Epic Battle from X-2, so it being fairly easy seems likely. The only fight that stuck to my mind was against some superboss in the desert, where I cycled through the Alchemist creating potions and two Dark Knights doing that class's special move for more than a fucking hour.

FE4 Chapter 2: Crisis in Agustria Evans --> Nordion Bit of a rushed update because I have to leave in 10 minutes or so. Hopefully not too many stupid mistakes and/or typos

Oh, we passed the funny nicenice page of the thread without noticing. Folks, we failed at juvenile internet humour. We are a disgrace.

I'll have to wait for the next FF game to be able to say something specific about the game, but I can add another +1 to the ATB write-up. I think it took until X-2 before they managed to do something with it other than speed-menuing, and even then, I don't remember interacting with the chain attack system all that much. I think I found battles too fast-paced and too random to actually time up attacks properly, so chains were just nice when they happened and not something I was working hard to achieve.

I assume that the substitutes all have the same gender as the child they're replacing to make the love system in the second generation easier. This is still the 1990s, so we can't have Patrick hit on Shanan, so Daisy it is! I think Patty/Daisy flirts with Shanan? I honestly remember very little of the gen 2 character dynamics. But I agree, it would've been nice to have some distinctiveness to the substitutes. It's probably still a hard concept to sell to the executives: "We need the resources to add 56-70 full-fletched child character (7 mother x 4-5 potential fathers(*) x 2 children/pairing), of which a player will only ever see 14 in a single playthrough". Would've been hard to sell in 1996 because of storage problems, would be hard to sell today because if you actually want 70 full-fletched characters, presumably with at least some unique interactions between them, that would require a ton of work from writers, artists, and VAs. Maybe it would work in a game where the playerbase won't expect every character to have 50 pages of backstory and motivation, but we all know how Shadow Dragon went over. (*)counting substitutes as "children of {no father}"

I've also heard that the priority on creating competent AI for Civ is quite low because people generally don't like being outsmarted by the computer. And that it's more important that the AI seems fair than it actually being fair, which sometimes means that the AI shouldn't be allowed to do things that the player can do because it would feel "unfair" to be exposed to the bullshit a human player will often unleash upon the AI.

Oh god, scrolling through the list... "Meins bleibt meins..." ...auch wenn es sinkt und kracht - Schiffsbesitz. ("Mine remains mine..." ...even if it sinks and crashes) ...except that it's also a carnival-related pun: Mainz bleibt Mainz, wie es singt und lacht - "Mainz (a city western Germany) remains Mainz, as it sings and laughs". "Rettet dem Dativ" von dem Tücken des Grammatiks. ...where do I even start. A little joke about German grammar. Übersetzungen "Gilberts verdammte Wortspiele" (Translations - "Gilberts bloody puns") - Ron Gilbert being the lead designer of MI1 and 2. This book then explains two riddles that simply make no fucking sense in German.

Monkey Island 2 had a little joke in the German translation that I quite liked. In a library, you can find a book with the title "Der Säbel in der Tastatur" Finstermänner setzen einen Übersetzer unter Druck. ("The Sable in the Keybord" - shady people are excerting pressure on a translator) - I would hazard a guess that this was not in the English original.

I think what promotes this in Genealogy is rather the high variability in outcomes. There's so many 20-50% hit chances for the enemies and skill proc chances in the low double digits; there's arena fights that can easily end in either a loss or a perfect win because everything in them is a coin flip. Not to mention that the AI tends to act unpredictably, too. In general, I don't think it's bad if the game allows the player to just "see what happens". See what character the enemies prioritise, then change your positioning accordingly, that kind of stuff. Fire Emblem, with its very stupid AI, ventures into "puzzle game" territory anyway - it's like playing chess against somebody who will always take your pieces when given an opportunity. Your opponent's moves become more like an extention of your own moves, so you're not so much interacting with another player, and more with a game environment consisting of the board plus the opposing pieces. Of course, that is true for any game with an AI acting in a somewhat predictable fashion (like Civilization, honestly), but I think Fire Emblem's AI is especially unconcerned about trying to hide its simple nature. Er, back to the topic - "classic" Fire Emblem often forces the player to redo the first half of a map because the player screwed up (or got got by turn 20 ambush spawns), which means that the player has to repeat a puzzle that they already solved. Hope you remember the correct sequence of inputs! It's annoying. I think it's good if the player is given a way to avoid this. If I'll play Fates at some point, I'll probably pick casual mode and still play "deathless" just so I can use battle saves. Where this can fail is the random nature of Fire Emblem. There's stuff like fishing for low% crits in DSFE, or people playing GBAFE on emulators being tempted to arrow-wiggle themselves a bunch of awesome level-ups, which you could see as "degenerate gameplay". In Genealogy, because so many probabilities are quite far away from 0 or 100%, it's very tempting to react to a character death by... just doing the same thing, except maybe don't attack with one character to start at a slightly different point of the RN string. Ah. Yeah, I completely forgot about them. (and this is clearly Kaga's Sage bias showing) Oo, I like that. I really can't say Who should be getting What weapon, and When, since my experience with FE4 was both second-hand and a long time ago at this point, but stealing a lot of money is always fun in RPGs and RPG-adjacent games. To be fair, a certain stupidity seems to run in her family. (and I remember that Ethlyn will insist on bringing Altenna with her when she and Quan run to Sigurd's aid again, so she really does have a penchant for bad decisions)

Ah, thank you for the reminder. It's a neat little detail that Jamke had always been the heir apparent, although it certainly doesn't change that he really shouldn't just fall in line as just one of Sigurd's soldiers/knights. I'll say that I don't fully accept the "permadeath" excuse. Genealogy has a very easy workaround in the form of its triggered conversations, so it would've been easy to have Jamke have a talk with Sigurd (or maybe Aideen) about the death of his father. I almost suspect that these don't exist because there really isn't a good reason why Jamke would leave Verdane at this very moment (unless one comes up in the upcoming chapters, of course). Fair; the identity of Deirdre's would-be brother-husband is definitely not obvious at this point. What I wonder is how plausibly deniable it is for Sigurd to know that his union with Deirdre is propagating the blood line of literal satan. Old Guy in the third village explicitly points at a girl this old, born by this mother, and raised by this wise woman - so in my mind at least, this isn't just something that the player should've figured out by now, but Our Hero as well. Good to know. There is a Steel Bow in next chapter's armoury, and no particular reason for Midir to buy it, so there is no opportunity cost, either. Not like Jamke can gift his money to anybody. Honestly, since I don't have the experience how many good weapons are available at the end of the first generation compared to the number of children, I really don't know how to best distribute the good physical weapons. Considering who I'm using, I think it would be OK to leave the Pursuit Ring on Ethlyn - that plus some generic swords (like Ethlyn's Slim Sword, or a Steel Blade to trade power for accuracy and speed) sound like they'd be a huge improvement over the Iron Sword he generically starts with already. The Brave Sword I think I would like to keep for all of Gen 1. Maybe on Beowulf. It certainly seems like something a couple would have to talk out Yeah, Ayra probably would've been the one for the job. But since I sent quite a few characters into the forest to set up kills for the right people, I didn't really have the mobility to get into a good position for that. Jamke does have an extra point of movement in the forest compared to Cavs, Arden, or Azel. There's a Steel Axe in ch.1's shop, so I'm sure there were plenty of players who said, "well, there's no advantages to Iron in this game", sold it to the pawn shop, and were in for a rude awakening if they knew about the Brave Axe event. At least there is nobody around who would be able to use the Yewfelle, so Aideen isn't withholding a legendary weapon that would've made life a lot easier for us. That would've been really dumb of her, wouldn't it, Ike?

FE4 Chapter 1: The Spirit Forest's Maiden Marpha --> Verdane It's interesting how none of the kids seem to have innate Pursuit, unless I'm missing somebody. Seliph gets it from Sigurd, the Sword Twins from their class, and Patty from promoting, but everybody else needs a dad to teach them. I'll keep it in mind With my planned set-up, I think I'll want magic swords on Patty, Nanna, Fee, and maybe Seliph. According to the main page, you get four out of the five magic swords in Gen 1, so that would mean that Leif indeed has to give up his. I'll say that it didn't have to be strictly one boy and one girl for every mother, since even as is, inheritance by gender isn't consistent anyway. But it's definitely cool that you have to weigh the benefits for the kids against each other, especially when they're more different from each other than the Sword Twins are.