KoimanZX

It just proves that most developers and fantasy writers have little knowledge about medieval weaponry (Dungeons & Dragons classifies arming swords as "longswords" and gives bastard swords their own category when they really are more akin to longswords). Bronze is too soft to be used for anything longer than a shortsword and iron weapons need more mass to be as sturdy as steel ones (silver is just a dumb choice of material, even as an alloy, due to its softness and is simply a way to show off ones's wealth). This is why I have suggested that the whole grading system should be completely redone, using a system that uses quality as a descriptor instead of metals. Bronze -> Economy (e.g. Economy Sword) Iron -> Standard (e.g. Standard Sword) Steel -> Heavy (e.g. Heavy Sword) The Heavy Spear can be simply called a "halberd" with the anti-cavalry axe being the Pole-axe. Silver -> Quality (e.g. Quality Sword) Granted, we are talking about a genre that is plagued by chainmail bikinis, paddles masquerading as swords, absurdly large pauldrons, axes with heads too big for their handles, double-faced axes, breastplates that conform to the shape of a woman's bosom, and weak bows; expecting a logical system is likely out of the question.

The problem with Meg is not necessarily her bases per se, but rather her growths. She actually has some pretty solid bases for her level (with most of her stats being equal or better than Aran's bases, and he joins in the chapter before her with 4 more levels); it is simply the fact that her growths do not work that well with her class. She is an Armor with the growth rates of a Pegasus Knight. She is also pretty under-leveled and joins in a chapter with nothing but Laguz enemies (who are generally tougher than the Beorc). Personally, I could see Intelligent Systems giving her growths similar to Elfie's, which would definitely help. Aran could also use a buff with higher bases. Honestly, a decent dark magic user who comes early enough would be nice (like Micaiah using it as a secondary weapon). Also integrating the magic triangle into the standard triangle like in Heroes (that game has so many great ideas despite it having the gachapon element that makes not want to touch it). Having the triangle be like Sword/Light > Axe/Dark > Lance/Anima like how people such as @GlaceonMage have suggested would make the magic types actually matter.

Both are just about equal in badness, but the gachapon stuff in a full-priced game is slightly worse than in a free-to-play game. It is one of the reasons why I will never touch Heroes.

I guess it has something to do with my childish sense of humor, but I always like pairings that involve something inanimate or non-human. Examples including: Hisame x cucumber and Gatrie x tree-with-skirt. I admit that I thought that Aran x Laura was a thing until I found out otherwise. Whoever thought it was a good idea to tease an Ike x Elincia pairing in the English localization should have been a good scolding. I know I likely mentioned this before, but I imagined Micaiah and Sothe's consummation being incredibly awkward (assuming they even bothered).

I have some pretty evil ideas inspired by real-life AAA companies. -Microtransactions, because nothing says scummy but microtransactions in a full-priced game. They would also be pushed into the players' faces and severely gimp features to pressure said players into buying them. Forging would work like in Fates, but the gathering of resources would take 24 real-life hours with prompts to speed up the process for a "small fee." In fact, forging itself would be slow without microtransactions. Paralogues that are DLC would be clearly visible on the world map and highlighted at certain points to pressure players into buying them. -Lootboxes, because that is the hot thing right now. Instead of the normal shops for weapons and items, one would have to rely on lootboxes that are given sparingly with their contents being completely random. If the lootboxes given for free do not give what the player needs, then said player would need to spend real money to buy more lootboxes in hopes that those boxes have what that player needs. -Virtual Currency, because nothing says AAA but virtual currency. There would be the two currencies: "gold" (which does very little) and "orbs" (the actual currency). Most substantial things would cost "orbs" while "gold" would be used to buy access to buy things that cost "orbs." The things that cost "gold" would cost exuberant amounts to encourage players to spend actual money to receive the "gold" needed for a particular thing. "Orbs" could maybe be earned in-game or purchased with the "gold"--but the ones earned would be a paltry amount and not enough to buy much, and the "gold" required for each "orb" would be so much that it would take much less time to just buy the "orbs" with real money. -On-Cart DLC: wait... Fates already did that with Anna. Never mind. This would mean that Fire Emblem would be the full, AAA experience.

I am not sure how relevant this is but I have found that the difference in average HP growth between Awakening and Fates is pretty stark with the average base growths being 49.9 and 40.6 respectively. The gap is further exemplified by the fact that the most a class gives in Fates (the Beserker with +30%) is less than the least amount given by Awakening classes (+35% with the top growths being +60%). Even the class growths for the physical classes in Shadow Dragon give +30-80% (and magic users +20%, which is what the classes with a HP cap of 65 give in Fates). The point being that, while the average growths of characters have been rising (the growths in Echoes are much higher than they are in Gaiden), HP growths took a major hit in Fates.

Same here. I also like the fact that Dracoknights in Radiant Dawn lack the bow weakness they have in other games. In fact, the bow weakness is the reason why I generally dislike using fliers (although they are fine in Echoes due to the damage bonus being much smaller than in Fates where bows are mostly instant death). The main flier I use in Fates is Camilla due to her boobs ability to be a decent mixed attacker (Hinoka has proven to be quite useful to me in Birthright as a mobile mage killer, however). Pegasus Knights outside of the Whitewings have issues in games with higher stat caps. They often are too weak and too frail to do much good. This is pretty much sentiment regarding fliers outside of Fire Emblem. Otherwise playing as Tails Doll is pretty fun.

This sounds like a typical AAA game, to be honest.

I am actually fine with the Cain and Abel archetype as they are something of an homage to the Mario Brothers. I guess the problem is that they became too samey and repetitive over the years due to them all being cavaliers until Fates changed it up a bit by making them ninja (I wonder if I am the only one who sees a similarity between Kagerou & Kotarou and Peach & Bowser). I remember suggesting the idea of having the duo be fighters who resemble the Mario Brothers.

I am avoiding Heroes on principle as the gacha/lootbox aspect is pretty much a soft form of gambling (people can argue about whether it is truly gambling, but the system is designed to squeeze large amounts of money out of users by exploiting the same risk-reward feeling that gambling gives). I am also too much of a gaming elitist to even touch mobile games and dislike free-to-play on principle. -Anyway, I think that Luck is a slightly underrated stat. Sure, the other stats are more important, but Luck is not totally useless as it helps with accuracy and evasion along with reducing the chance of critical hits (which is what I assume Levant Mir Celestia likes about it). -I think that it might be a good idea to Cavaliers lower growths along with lower caps for the sake of balance. -Gazzak is the best Beserker in Fates.

I never use Lightning or the Dragon Spirit because of the debuffs (I still managed to make it through Revelation on Lunatic, however). I also heard that the best reclass option for Saizou is Dread Fighter and wonder if that is true. Anyway, I also am not a fan of Cavaliers/Paladins for the reasons already stated. (I wonder if classes like Kinshi Knight or Dark Flier would be considered as good without their skills as those are classes that really do not impress me otherwise).

That is another thing about the Hoshido classes: boring magic. Too bad the Horse Spirit and Calamity Gate are just so good because I never would use it otherwise.

I guess I would say that I am not a huge fan of many of the Hoshido classes. Particularly the ones already mentioned (Apothecary, Merchant, Mechanist, Blacksmith, Kinshi Knight, and Master of Arms). They seem redundant and gimmicky in a bad way.

The major thing about the DS remakes is that there is not much of a reason for strength and magic to be separate stats. Besides the Levin Sword, there is no reason for physical attackers to have a magic stat. There are no mixed attackers, so the only reason for the split is to have a way to offset weapon weight (and gimp mages). Besides, the class growth rates make it so that the growth rate of the attack stat opposite of the one a given character uses essentially zero. And speaking of mages, there is not much of a reason to have the Sage and Bishop be separate classes as, besides the different bases and caps, they are practically the same as they come nowhere close to reaching their caps due to their low growths. Awakening had the right idea of merging them (as the both use basic tomes, anyway). Otherwise the other problems were already mentioned. (Plus the fact that most prepromotes have terrible bases).

-I like to play with avatars of both sexes, so having some mechanical differences between them (like access to different classes and weapons) is nice (I do not give a fiddler's fart about supports as the children in Fates are inferior to their parents and the conversations themselves and MyCastle interactions are often so terrible that the marriage system is more of a chore than anything else with the only benefit being extra chapters for gaining experience; I also lack friends for player-versus-player to matter). -I like to give avatars stupid names (the name "Dingus" ended up being funnier than I thought it would be, but the charm of "Avatar (M)" dissipated after a while). I was even thinking of the name "Neckbeard" for Birthright, but decided against it (besides, "Weeb" or "Weeaboo" would work better, anyway). -Using the Laguz royals in the Radiant Dawn endgame, while being the "correct" thing to do, is not nearly as fun, so I prefer to use the Beorc units.

-I am not sure how unpopular this is, but I am not a big fan of Kinshi Knights. Their poor bases and growths make their claim to fame (being flying archers) less appealing. I guess it was meant to balance them out so they do not outshine other bow-using classes, but it just makes them seem less worth using. (I also find it strange how bow users in video games are often fairly weak when real life archery with medieval-style bows requires more strength than most realize, speaking from experience). -The weapons I use the most in Fates (other than iron weapons) are the weapons that boost defensive stats, like the Nohrian Blade and the Guard Naginata (the Horse Spirit is essentially the default weapon of my main mage).

I never voted, though. Anyway, I should have not used DLC as part of the solutions (Harold with a Frying Pan could work maybe?). I was simply trying to play Devil's Advocate.

I wonder how many people realize that one can use castle battles to grind supports in Conquest. Anyway, the characters in Fates have pretty good growth rates in comparison to most games in the series (save for HP). The issue is that--since the stats are so high--each point matters less, and being screwed by the random number generator is that much worse. I would, however, side with the team that says that most of the characters are usable with a bit of a caveat: many of the characters take more effort to be made good than others. Characters like Harold and Mozume can be used with some babying (with the former benefiting from Veteran Intuition, and the latter from special classes), but one would be better off with characters like Camilla, Silas, or Elffie (Silas has a good join time and is mostly pretty balanced save for his lacking speed). Gunther has no hope, however.

Is it strange to purposely do different pairings each time? I know I like to make sure I never repeat pairings (unless I did something like lost the child unit like I did with Hisame). I guess it has to do with my somewhat-completionist mindset (though the sheer number of possible supports makes Awakening and Fates massive bears to 100% complete, to the point where even Jirard the Completionist would be burned out by it). Otherwise my sentiments are the same as most people's in this thread (they are broken in Awakening, and are mostly terrible in Fates with Genealogy of the Holy War doing them the best).

The thing about Chulainn is that the "ch" digraph represents a /x/ when it is broad in Irish (which is the sound at the end of ugh and blech), but is rendered as /h/ by English speakers as /x/ does not exist as a phoneme in Standard English. The goofy thing about the name is that it is the genitive form of Culainn (as Cú Chulainn means Hound of Culainn), meaning the name is essentially Culainn's, which is pretty dumb if you ask me. Some changes/renderings that I found dumb are ones like Makalov for Makarov (I understand the L/R thing in Japanese, but the latter is a Russian surname with former being meaningless), Aran for Brad (because Brad is just too normal-sounding, I suppose), Lukas for Luka (Luca is a normal Italian male name, so nothing is that wrong with Luka), Jedah for Judah (because why was that necessary?), and Mozu for Mozume (because apparently three syllables is too much for us Gaijin). I have many others, but covering them all would take too long. I assume the localizers try to give more of a stock-standard "fantasy" (read: rehashing aspects of Tolkien's work) feel to the names, which I find rather silly to be honest (the funny thing about the generic fantasy names is that they are often meaningless strings of syllables with goofy spellings when Tolkien himself was a linguist who understood phonologies other than that of English, and simply wrote stories around the many languages and language families he created; Many seem to not understand that and end up pronouncing the names wrong). Also, Kliff's official Nintendo of Japan name is Qulyf (which is sort of dumb).

-Is it that unpopular to find Charlotte to be more trouble than she is worth? I hardly use her that much as she is underleveled when recruited and is equipped with a weapon that hurts her ability to double and dodge. She also has horrid accuracy (and I simply dislike her, personally). I only find use for her as a backpack for the man I choose to be her husband and for Hexing Rod bait. In fact, none of the default fighters are that great (Beruka, Benoit, and Flannel/Keaton make for better Beserkers as they have much better bulk with the former being able to hit things more consistently). Of course, a fair number of people on this site dislike infantry axe users for various reasons, so I might not be alone here. -The love for Oboro on this site perplexes me a tad (I find her not all that remarkable, myself). I guess she seems like a good character when she has two gimmicks (the "scary face" and fashion) instead of one like most of the characters. -Not sure if this unpopular, but I really care more about Ike in Smash Bros. than in his games. I just like his power and large hitboxes.

I found X6 to be quite easy with Zero (only Infinity Mijinion, Gate, and High Max gave me that much trouble, and even then I still am able to beat them with some effort). The only levels I found that difficult were the Gate levels and Infinity Mijinion's stage. Zero easily breaks that game in two (I can beat Commander Yammark in approximately 10 seconds just by bum-rushing him and the Z-buster makes short work of Rainy Turtloid in tandem with Blaze Heatnix's move to break the crystals on his back). I swear, Zero is basically the Easy Mode of the game, even with the barely functional weapon from Shield Sheldon. The are hints of a good game, that is for sure. Playing around with the equipable parts is pretty fun and the music is pretty decent (although decent music seems to be a common thread with many bad games). The Nightmare system sucked with the annoying stage-light effect that obscured parts of the screen and the Virus Zeros crashing into X often without any way to dodge them. You just have to love that executive meddling forcing unnecessary installments into the series and ruining the canon (X8 and Command Mission were okay, though).

The funny thing is that I had a similar thing happen with me. I dropped out of the series around the end of Generation 4 and sort of skipped Generation 5 (I played through White 2 after I finished Y just to help fill out the PokeDex). The Fairy type was intriguing enough for me to give the series another go. Needless to say, I still play the games; especially after discovering Gardewaifu and the other waifumons Smogon (I like to watch Pimpnite with his goofy sets and theme teams on YouTube). Kalos is a pretty cool region with an interesting aesthetic. I also like how grinding for levels was made so much easier with the restaurants and the O-Power feature (Generation 6 marked the first time I bothered to raise Pokemon to level 100).

You are right that Skyward Sword's problems are pretty obvious. My comment was more in reference to the habit of many to bash a piece of media simply because some Internet celebrity said that said piece is bad. I guess I made it seem like the general consensus was being dictated exclusively by Egoraptor (I could give a futile rebuttal by saying that said "many" and not "everyone", but the statement was still poorly worded and from a place of ignorance) and I guess I should own up to that.

It is definitely a series that is unfairly dismissed by critics, that is for sure. I found the gameplay to be quite entertaining due to the slight puzzle element to the combat (with some fine-tuning of the input detection and a nerf to the shield bash, I think the combat would be perfect). You are right about the plot and characters being the some of the strongest in the series. I think many hate the game because Egoraptor told them to do so (the bomb bowling is nowhere near as bad as he makes it out to be). If I am not mistaken, I recall Metroid: Other M only being hated in the West as sold just as well as any other Metroid game in Japan (the Japanese are not very fond of non-linear games or exploring). I have never played the game myself, but from what I have seen of it, it seems mechanically sound. It just is simply different from the rest of the series. Zelda 2 is another black sheep that seems to be hated mostly because the AVGN said it was bad (although, I believe Danny of Game Grumps was less harsh on the game, so that could have affected the opinion of many in a more positive way). As much as I like metroidvanias, I would also love another Castlevania in the vein of the originals (too bad the series does horribly in Japan).