Quetzalcoatl

Capture was a common skill that everyone had back in Thracia 776. In fact, it was quite integral to the game as the lack of weapons necessitated capturing enemy units; lest, the player ran out of weapons. In addition, capturing certain enemy units (and having your own units captured as enemies had access to the capture skill as well) opened up Gaiden/story-relevant Paralogue for the player. Fates brought back several classic Fire Emblem skills that every unit once had access to such as Shelter(Rescue) which is now a Cavalier of only skill and Shove which is an Oni Savage skill, and while the reinclusion of these skills is welcome, I do wish that every unit had them like in past FEs.

It actually isn't that bad of a skill in context. Only one character has it, Eincia who is a Tier 3 unit with an army of Tier 2 units, so it is quite good for feeding kills to weaker units either in Part 2 where she'said a higher tier than everyone else or in Part 4 where there is a great grinding chapter. Anyways, Mercy is a removable skill, so you can just take it off between chapters.

In Conquest, Corrin is apparently constantly sparing all his enemies, so what better personal skill for him to have than Mercy. If you don't know, Mercy is skill from Radiant Dawn that prevents that unit from killing an enemy unit;instead, reducing their HP to 1, and if it is already at 1, missing them. He would literally be sparing everybody...and completely incapable of killing them,so that would be interesting. How about it? How would Conquest play if Corrin had Mercy?

Can't believe I forget this. One of the largest grievances I have against both Fates and Awakening is the lack of recruiting enemy units and the absence of Together We Ride ; the sheer thrill you got whenever it started kicking in was amazing. It's as indicative or even more so of Fire Emblem than the main theme. It reminded the player that there were good, simple people fighting on the other side. And it really contributed to the feel of gathering up an army from a band of rag-tag misfits. However, recent Fire Emblems just have the units pop up and basically give them to you. There's no sense of accomplishment, no Together We Ride. Just imagine how great Fates would be if instead of units being locked behind different games they were recruitable,albiet, incredible hard to recruit. Corrin could actually be fighting for peace-and earning it instead of it being given-by gathering up a troop of Nohrians and Hoshidans and proving they could work and fight together, trust their backs and lives to each other. They could have Nohr and Hoshido locked in an 100 years war expy instead of it being because of a contrived assassination attempt where Nohrians and Hoshidans were raised hating each other; then Corrin would be fighting against all that built-up prejudice and hate and achieve peace between the two nations.

While I do feel that your discontentment with Fates and subsequent enjoyment of Awakening can be attributed to nostalgia-more specifically that slight inexplicable dissatisfaction with a sequel that just doesn't match the enjoyment you had previously and the desire to return to the 'good old days', It is true that Fates does indeed diverge from traditional Fire Emblem; whether that is an evolution or degeneration depends both on player experiences and how IS will take the series from this point. Fates took steps forward, sideways and backwards: a perplexing snarl of refinements. Weapon durability is removed streamlining inventory and gold management which means the clutter of in-between-chapter-shopping and innate hoarding behavior towards rare or unique weapons such as Levin Swords, Killing Edges, or Silver weapons are removed; however, the pros of these additions are discounted because of other features. Fates has arguably the most in-between-chapter clutter out of all Fire Emblems with My Castle: character convos, support convos, lottery, hot tub, kitchen, mine, x resource farm, jail, Lilith, My House convos, and weapon and item discounts which even encourage players to check on stores anyways; this all clogs up the chapter-to-chapter transition, so instead of a simple shopping spree before jumping into the next chapter, the player has a veritable checklist to do before proceeding. Due to unbreakable weapons, the Forge system had to be changed, but they changed it so that the player has to run back and forth to the Armory and Forge buying, forging, and reforging the same weapon over-and-over, a tedious process that removed the customization of letting the player choose what property they wanted to upgrade. Conquest's tagline included 'limited resources' and 'no grinding'/ a classic, grueling Fire Emblem experience to appeal to long-time fans, but without any weapon durability(a mainstay mechanic that has been with Fire Emblem since the beginning before even the advent of the weapon triangle), the resource management that fans were expecting is simply nonexistent; furthermore, Conquest constantly throws gold at the player even though they really have no need to spend on anything besides Heal Staffs. Speaking of Heal Staffs and the 'no grinding' tagline, Conquest has two Seize chapters( 8 and 9) both with bosses on thrones or forts which regenerates their HP. Because there is no need to actually buy anything in the shops besides Heal Staffs because of unbreakable weapons and a player can use any weapon for as long as they want without restriction, it is extremely easy to grind these two bosses, limited only by a stockpile of Heal Staffs; as such, a player can have a Tomebreaker servant by CH 9 and a Strategist Elise by CH 10. Finally, the removal of weapon durability did not-in my case-increase my weapon variability; in fact, it just made me use the same weapons throughout the entire game. As a player who preferred using high durability weapons such as Bronze or Iron, I never ventured out of my comfort zone or touched the Forge, but on higher difficulties, I had to utilize all my resources and weigh the pros and cons of each weapon. For example, on Lunatic Awakening, I had to decide between using the unbreakable Falchion or the Rapier where the +10 hit and increased Crit. could make the difference, or deciding on whether or not the reduction to Attack Speed is worth the increase in damage with higher Weight weapons. There was strategic weight put into the decision of choosing what weapon to use. Fates lacks that strategic weight(when choosing weapons) as there is wide comfort zone when players no longer have to worry about losing that weapon when they may need it later, and though they try to add pros and cons to each weapons such as Bronze and Joke weapons getting +10 avoid and Steel and Silver getting debuffs, they feel negligible, excluding 2-range melee weapons but I'll get into that later. Kaze is still going to double with Steel Shurikens, and Effie will still OHKO even after the Silver debuff. The removal of True Hit is ...interesting. While I'm all for a more fairer battle ground and I admit that, despite Radiant Dawn being my favorite Fire Emblem, a single RNG is far more effective at leveling the playing field than removing the weapon triangle, the results of this new system can often be quite baffling at some times resulting in a rather 'random' RNG. Attacks hit and miss all over the place. While one could argue that that is the point, SRPGs have always made it a point to present all information to the player so that they can make the appropriate decisions. Players know the enemies stats, weapons, range of movement, and when engaging the damage done, dealt, whether or not either unit can double, the critical chance and the accuracy of the attack; therefore, they can make their decisions with confidence with the exception of the two random factors: critical chance and accuracy. While these factors are random, players can still reasonably weigh whether or not an attack will hit or miss, but with the wide dispersion of hits and misses, that confidence does decrease. A player cannot be sure if WTD 42 Hit attack will miss or not...and I cannot argue against that being a flaw considering that is the point of a RNG after all. However I will argue that the current system needs tweaking in order to find more precise degrees of randomness. For the most part I've gotten used to this system even if dodge tanking like in past FE is no longer as valid as a tactic, and eventually you just expect every attack and laugh at the 88 Hit miss or 30 Hit, hit(...except when your WTA!Speed Tonic!Bottle!SamuraiOdinPairUp!Villagesitting! Severa gets hit by every single Oni Savage in CH 10 including the one with a Throwing Club that had 27 Hit!). The inability of 2-range melee weapons to double is another curious revision. The reasoning behind it was to increase the effectiveness of Archers(especially Archers after their poor performance in Awakening), Mages, and arguably Ninjas, Butlers and Maids-I say arguably as Hidden Weapon users serve another role as debuffers rather than attackers. In past Fire Emblems, Archers were mainly used for safe chip damage that would enable another unit to finish that enemy off without taking damage and had to be protected because of their inability to counterattack at 1-range. Of course, there were exceptions to this with great Archers like Innes, Rebecca, and Shinon, but in general Archers were in their nice little niche of ranged attackers whose true effectiveness came with their bonus damage against flying units. On the hand, mages had 1-2 range and hit on a different scale-Resistance which most units besides Mages, Priests, and Pegasi units are weak in-so they were generally pretty useful. Come Fates, and Archers have jumped tiers and have become quite the powerful class; I can't say anything about the Diviner class since I've only played Conquest, so I've used Dark Mages which were heavily nerfed from Awakening. The increased MT of bows, the prevalence of Ninjas who they've WTA on, the higher emphasis on Player Phase which means that their inability to counter at 1-range is less of an issue(which is further irrelevant with skills like Point Blank and the various 1-2 range bows that aren't as weak as Crossbows), great skills like Quick Draw which capitalizes on their strengths and Bowfaire which combined with Quick Draw gives a hearty +9 to damage. Archers are great in Fate, and it's great to see one of my favorite classes getting some love;however, the problem here is that Archers are great on their own merit; they don't need to stand over other units because of their inability to double at 2-range. In Fates, not only are 1-2-range physical weapons unable to double, but the wielder eats a -5 Speed debuff which is rather superfluous. 5 Speed greater is the benchmark for units to double; as a result, an unit with equal or only slightly greater speed would be unable to double the enemy anyways; in fact, they open themselves up to be doubled. There's no reason for this penalty other than to disadvantage an unit using a 1-2-range physical weapon whether in close quarters or long range as such the inability to double is quite pointless because that chance would rarely come anyways. One penalty is enough, but both of them render each other superfluous. Even without these penalties, Archers, as proven above, are still great units and could probably outspeed and double 1-2-range melee wielders. Furthermore, the true strength of 1-2-range melee weapons in past Fire Emblems came from the coverage they provided in Enemy Phase(from my own personal experiences);however, Fates places a greater emphasis on Player Phase, so they had already lost some of their versatility. In an odd reversal of roles, units using 1-2-range melee weapons have become the damage chippers that Archers used to be, unable to kill an enemy without Attack Stance, unless their name is Effie or Xander(who actually can double...as long as he has Speed Tonic, Speedwing-boosted, and Charlotte/Severa Pair Up). Fun fact, back in FE 3 Javelins were so absurdly heavy that nobody in the game could actually double with them, so this change could arguably be seen as 'returning to the roots'. Okay, onto something Fates did right: the introduction to the Hidden Weapon and debuffs in general and the restructuring of Dual Stance and Skills. In past Fire Emblems, it was pathetically easy to block off enemies with a Jeigan or tank or cruise through armies with high-leveled units(granted still completely able to do that but not as easily), but with the introduction of Hidden Weapon debuffs, Poison Strike, Savage Blow, Lunge, and the Seal Skills, there is a whole new layer of complexity added to the game, and that's not the only thing Fates added. In Awakening, Dual Stance was overpowered; there was frankly little to no reason not to have units paired-up, and with certain builds, Dual Attack and Dual Guard were practically guaranteed. Fates split Dual Attack and Dual Guard into Attack Stance and Guard Stance each with pros and cons;furthermore, whereas in Awakening Dual Attack and Dual Guard were set to the RNG, Dual Attack and Duel Guard are always a guarantee in their respective Stance. This means that the player can reliably implement them into their strategies;also, the application of the Stance system adds an incredible depth to combat with considerations on unit placement and when units are better paired-up or separate. Unfortunately, Guard Stance just trumps over by Endgame since the onslaught enemy units means constant Dual Attacks from them unless paired-up and S or A-rank support bonuses are easier to utilize when the two units are in Guard Stance. And finally, Skills, and how many of them affect damage output or input. The clearest example would be the Demoiselle change from reducing Avoid to reducing damage. Accuracy and Evasion, though they can be adjusted, are set to RNGs; however, damage is always set and clear. As such, just like how Dual Stance was changed into something that can be reliably counted on so to were many skills as they provided straight simple damage additions or reductions. This added to the numerical strategy of the game. Ok, while I would get into story, this post has gotten way too long. To make a long story short, Fates made quite a few changes, some good, some bad, and some in-between. Do I think these elements betray the 'feel of a Fire Emblem' game? Nope. Change is never inherently a bad thing, and even though I will bemoan the lost potential of the story and curse child abandonment, Fates is a great strategy game to play with numerous additions and improvements to the Fire Emblem system ,and as long as it never renegades on that core, it remains a Fire Emblem to me. Besides, plenty of people praise Thracia 776 and Genealogy of the Holy War as the pinnacle of Fire Emblem, and they had fatigue, chapter-long status ailments, individual inventory, and doubling locked behind a skill(maybe that's just their nostalgia). Anyways, I apologize for the lengthy post, but I hope it's a half-decent analysis.

Thank you.

I've decided to make an Introduction's post. My experiences with Fire Emblem started with Radiant Dawn which is my favorite in the series, and I have since played Shadow Dragon, Awakening, Conquest, Sacred Stones, and Blazing Sword; however, I have yet to complete any besides Awakening due to my compulsive tendency to restart and make new files. My character preferences veer towards ranged attackers such as mages and archers and speedy swordsmen like myrmidons and thieves; in addition, I usually deploy characters based on personal likability and tend to ignore tier lists. I enjoy using low-level, low-bases units who I baby and make into monsters, and I distaste using any sort of Jeigan units who steal/waste my EXP. Outside of Fire Emblem, I generally enjoy JRPGS and Action RPGS such as Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, Final Fantasy, Fallout, Deus Ex, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Ni No Kuni, and Dark Souls, as well as artistic games such as Flower, Journey, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus. I enjoy reading fantasy, sci-fi, and philosophy. I have a varied taste in music ranging from Rock to Video Game Music to Anime Music.