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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.

Interesting for sure. I'll read along piecemeal as I recruit the potential mothers. I was a bit surprised that Lex doesn't make an appearance in your "best pairings" list. I was given the impression that he tends to be excellent for any physical kid, but I can see that lack of Pursuit and inheritable weapons are strikes against him. I wonder if the name DiMaggio stands out to Japanese speakers at all. It's pretty jarring to me, since I think it's the only name in the game that's so obviously and unmistakably Italian. Well, the only person's name. "Genoa" is pretty obvious, too, although that word still sounds less stereotypically Italian to my ears. I don't believe you. This is the internet, where everybody is always 100% genuine about everything they say. If I can't trust your sadistic unit recommendations, then can I trust anything you write? Do you secretly hate Arthur, Hero of Justice? Are you clean-shaven!?

Yeah, I took a glance at Alec vs. Beowulf, since Alec's actually been relatively not-terrible after grabbing Sigurd's Steel Sword and a few good level-ups. But unless I grow to hate proc skills so much that I count Beo's Accost as a negative, Alec's still just him with slightly worse growths, minus a love-and-stats convo for Lachesis, and minus Accost. Wait, so if Finn marries, he doesn't just keep all the lances that his kid won't be able to use? That's an odd decision, for sure. I was going to say. Fee can't even inherit the Silver Lance, so surely, the optimal, the ltc pro route would've been to give her/Erinys the Brave Lance and the Silver Lance to Finn. And Ruben, you suggested Triple Soldiers for Gaiden. It takes more than this to balance that out.

No, Ruben wants both, evil beardman that h-- --oh. Well, in my defense, I'm pretty sure you asked for several pairs of substitutes at some point, Bridget's not-children being one of them. You can't quote two Azel pairings and then say "this one"! But I think I'm going to go with Bridget/Azel and keep the 08/15 Lachesis/Beowulf as planned, unless somebody has some particularly interesting suggestion for her. Patty joining with Pursuit and a Magic Sword (I can't quite get over these being C rank, by the way) honestly sounds pretty cool. I just finished playing the last part of Ch.1 and the lack of time pressure did allow Azel to catch up in levels, too: (and also to kill the boss ) I understand more and more why Bronze weapons are considered to be Good, Actually in Fates. (although, really, playing New Mystery gave plenty of practical lectures on that already) Yeah, I compared him to Nino earlier for that reason. Well, specifically in their role as Mage With Potential, since they're quite different otherwise, from joining time to promotion gains. If (or when - Shoshone good) I can choose, I'll take a well-timed pop ruin over culture any day (I tend to default to Scout->Monument->Shrine these days, so I'm not relying on a ruin to open Tradition reasonably early) It's very much that meme comic (an office lady being appreciative of a compliment vs. calling HR, depending on the looks of the man making it), isn't it? OK, I completely forgot about Kurth being her father. It still doesn't ring a bell, actually, so maybe I didn't pay enough attention when I was watching an FE4 LP years ago. Thanks for the clarification - like in Akaneia, it's messing with my head a little that Kaga has the big, earth-shattering conflict take place a mere century before the start of the narration, and not "thousands of years ago", as is the standard in fantasy. Despite having read the timeline at the start of the game, and it not having any negative dates, it still stuck in my head that surely, the Holy War started in year 0. But with the time span being one century instead of seven, that does make a lot more sense. I was assuming that one-child rule because that would have allowed the bloodline to continue without there being two heirs at the same time, but that sort of rationalisation really isn't needed for that much shorter timeframe.

FE4 Chapter 1: The Spirit Forest's Maiden Genoa --> Marpha Haha, appreciated! I don't see a Grannvalian attempt to "colonise" Verdane, as such, but generally speaking, I can imagine that the dynamic between Rome, China, and Grannvale with their respective neighbors might have similar, "proto-racist" vibes. (I know racism in a narrow sense is a rather modern concept, but "Romans/Chinese/Grannvalians are just better than the barbarians" still goes into that direction from "standard" xenophobia) -- Thanks for the comments about my thoughts on eugenics in the previous three posts, too. Still unsure about what exactly I want to do, so I welcome anybody weighing in further even though I think I can guess what Ruben thinks of the matter.

It's worth remembering that gun control and a ban on guns are two different things. I had to invest a lot of time and money into acquiring a driver's licence. If I buy a car, it will have to be properly registered and insured. If I was caught passing five red lights while drunk driving, I would lose my driver's licence, be fined (admittedly too low, in Germany), and required to make a so-called Idiotentest before being able to re-acquire my driver's licence. There is quite a lot of "car control" in basically every country on the globe. There's still a f***ton of cars on the globe.

Yeah, that seems about right. Player phase nuke (especially if you abuse battle saves to rig an Astra proc), but sketchy on enemy phase and, of course, no horse. I was considering Lex!Patty to maybe experience a Thief who is competent at fighting, but as you can see, I moved away from that plan. RE: Magic Thief - Azel/Bridget sounds like a really funny, dumb idea. Probably ruins the Sniper kid, but I think it would give Patty Pursuit and somewhat of a Magic stat. I think Azel would even be able to pass down swords after promotion. Dang it, now I'm tempted Yeah, I forgot to mention that. I guess it's appropriate because Archers are awful, too. I think the implication is that Sigurd assumes that the king would take Shanan hostage. The way I read it, although I might read too much into it, he knows that he's doing something that the king wouldn't approve of, and that he doesn't want to say that openly. Well, Quan is already close-ish to Aideen and Dew. I think he's warpable next turn.

He can actually survive 4 hits from Ayra (23 Atk vs. 37 HP / 14 Def). Unfortunately, she would've had 87 hit on him, so dodging two out of six strikes (normal hit + Astra) still would've been unlikely. Thank you. ...unfortunately, I just now notice that her portrait is off-center by a pixel. Darn. We'll see if I can edit the post. It was editable! Incredible! Listen, there's already one bachelorette planned, and Mr. Bones still hasn't challenged you about adding a second one. And if that gets though, it would even fulfill a third request of yours. Don't get greedy, now.

FE4 Chapter 1: The Spirit Forest's Maiden Evans --> Genoa Answers!

Well, I think Lex specifically won't remain a bachelor in many people's playthroughs. Monkey brain says big XP go big up is big good. But I shall make my first FE4 remake prediction: If Lex and Azel get more dialogue, and the vibe of their interactions stays the same as in OG Genealogy, they will be that game's Ike and Soren. Certain Rome/Germania vibes. I can see it, considering how the Verdanites are seen as savage brutes by the Grannvalians. And if I remember correctly, the Thracians (or some other faction that appears in that game) have managed to develop green paint that still allows the wearer to attack blue units. Jugdral really is at the cutting edge of weaponised chromalogy. Which would make the game easier because enemies would be more predictable. Ahhh, good ol' Old Game Jank. Reminds me a bit of "smart AI" in Pokemon RBY, if a lot less extreme. "Smart AI" knows the effectiveness table, but doesn't know that it doesn't matter for status moves, which can allow a Beedrill to safely set up to max Attack and Speed against the first Pokemon of the first Elite 4 trainer, since it will only ever use Rest against it. One reason that I forgot to mention - it's also somewhat of a "the rich get richer" situation because of the Arena. A character that is good at beating the Arena (although that doesn't necessary make them good units in general (hi Ayra)) will earn more money that way, which means that they have an easier time affording stat rings and so on, which means that they'll have an even easier time in the next chapter's Arena, or to save villages. All this is second-hand knowledge, of course, so I'll see how this really shakes out. I can see that it makes money management a lot more involved, of course, but I'm a bit worried that this might result in an added barrier to using and training up weaker characters.

Meteor would've been too on the nose. Even then, the timing would've been very odd. Story-based promotions tend to be at very dramatic points of the games - Roy finds the Binding Blade and is about to face Zephiel; the Wonder Twins just liberated Renais; when Ike is promoted, Crimia is done running away and goes on the offensive... Even the Gaiden promotions, despite that game's rather minimalistic writing, have more weight than "You completed the tutorial mission. Have a promotion." Purely mechanical, I think it could work, though. Sigurd wouldn't have to be a horseless whelp; being in Alec and Noish's Sword Cav class would be perfectly appropriate, too. But it's just not a very epic moment in the narrative. Well, Gerrard has 55 HP and 2 Res. Arvis doesn't need Pursuit You could argue that trading in the middle of the fight is a bit silly in itself. People are busy, they probably don't have the time to check their saddlebags to see if they have a vulnarary around that they can toss over to their wounded comrade. Generally speaking, I like the mental image of the knights preparing for the upcoming campaign at the castle, instead of passing around the Armourslayer like a blunt so that everybody can take a swing at their respective opponent with it. If he's already planning the big BBQ party at this point (which I don't know if he does), the implication is pretty cold, too. "I'd rather he didn't die along with you, but eh, needs must". I can see this is becoming a theme in your replies I haven't followed Quetzal's playthough very close at all, because, well, this thing I'm doing, but I assume he is also fully informed about Sigurd's incapabilities already. It would have made sense to alter this conversation when it happens after Arvy's talk to Sigurd. But hey, old game. That does seem plausible. And in that case, Sigurd is eating it right up, too. Well, *my* Sigurd has 16 Str, thankyouverymuch.

FE4 Prologue: Birth of a Crusader Jungby --> Evans Answers!

Yes, clearly it is something that is wrong with you, and not me not paying enough attention.