𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥

wich is pretty much irrelevant, since everyone has their own preferences when it comes to judging games and their gameplay. might as well compare sales records to see wich title made the most profits and there you go, you'll have the most likeable game for the "casual" audience. also, quoting a single section out of context from an entire post just to prove a point is quite shallow to be honest, but whatever floats your boat dude~

looks like a promising spiritual successor of FF Tactics/Ogre Battle. an interesting title indeed.

are we talking about stats now? because in that case, you could just stock on stats boosters, feed them to whoever you want, and promote whenever you want without having to worry about stats gains and lost levels. or just grind arenas/reinforcements until you min-max any unit you want to lv20 and then promote. stats caps are also pretty low in Mystery, so maxing them out shouldn't take too much effort either. the problem is not getting stats, there's plenty of ways to do that. giving a promotion to a specific unit depends on multiple factors. movement range and extra stats are important, but they're not the only factors that needs to be considered. unit type and terrain play a bigger role. usually the more you wait, the better stats you'll have in the long run, but then again you don't have to wait everytime for every unit. it's always a matter between unit's utility over quality, especially when there's new items/weapons available upon promotion. there's no best or worst time to promote a unit, it all depends on the player's preferences and playstyle, since not everyone plays in the same way.

regarding Shiida, it all boils down wether you want a Pegasus Knight with better RES to fight against mages, or if you want a tankier flying unit with higher DEF. she'll probably loose some RES though, so it would be wise to keep her away from mages, should you decide to promote her. regarding book 2: brace yourself for a rollercoast of difficulty spikes. book 1 is kind of an introduction to the game with decent difficulty scaling, however book 2 is where your tactics and strategy will be tested. the general rule is that it's usually better to promote units that gain access to other items upon promotion first, and wait to reach lv20 with other classes that focus on just one weapon. for example: you can wait for Ogma to reach lv20 before promoting him, since he basicly gains only stats. however, if you have a Marich or Linda at lv10, you should consider promoting them in order to give them access to healing staffs. that way, you would gain a unit that can both deal damage and heal allies in danger, reducing the need to field two units like a mage and a healer when you could just deploy one that works for both instead. wich in turn would allow you to deploy some more units too.

beside the fact that everyone has their own opinion, the direction FE has taken with Fates has always been quite questionable for multiple reasons. truth is: the gameplay isn't actually better or worse than other FE titles, it's just different. as much as other franchises such as Final Fantasy have their own unique titles with different gameplay features while mantaining the same core mechanics and formulas, the same goes for FE too. in Fate's case, it's not that the mechanics are complex, because they're actually quite simple to deal with once you understand how the whole system works. the problem is that while some features make the game quite fun in terms of combat, in the long run it usually end up becoming utterly broken for the usual reason: skill stacking. an example of that would be Corrin with Nohrian Trust, since it allows the player to use multiple skills from paired up units. if you also add in blocking from supporting units, once you have a Corrin with access to Miracle, Aegis, Pavise and Aether, you're already running a top-tier skill setup. add all the other evasion boost skills against specific weapons on your main unit, and the game just implodes. now, was that actually fun in terms of gameplay while doing story mode? it sure was, a lot too. was it balanced in terms of online PvP? hell no, it was a complete disaster. it pretty much forced every player looking for a challenge to run the same skill setup just to have a decent chance of winning a match, making all other single-unit builds obsolete and almost pointless, unless you were doing arranged 1 vs 1 against a friend. long story short: Fate's gameplay can be fun, it's just not balanced for PvP.

what if Gundam actually got into FE? nah, i'm not talking about SRW, i mean like this:

i liked Echoes forging system the most, simply because that way you can: - upgrade base weapons to higher tiers without having to buy new ones; - unlock unique weapons with special effects; - a part of the weapons you can obtain through forge can also be found in game either by enemy drop or vendors; - since you're basicly just "evolving" weapons to higher tiers or special ones, the overall stats balance between each type will be mantained, therefore reducing the risk to break the game by stacking only specific stats on your weapons. on a side note: Genealogy's repair function is still a good feature even to this day, and should be present in future titles as well due to its utility(unless they'll remove weapon uses again like they did in Echoes).

Ever thought about how a game such as FFVII would actually look like if it played like a FE GBA game? well, i have, and in mind it would look something like this: now you might be wondering: are those just clever edits, or is it actually a project in the works? and the answer is: it's just edits, sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it could be an interesting project to work on though. in any case, the main sprites were taken from the Spriters Resource website, credits for the battle ones go to SpriterTrooper and Lord Zymeth. everything else was made by playing around in Photoshop with other images found on the internet.

some stuff i've edited recently for a misterious project, mainly FE GBA backgrounds:

it depends. in my opinion, if we're talking about the overall utility of javelins and other similar weapons, you need to consider the class that uses them, and the situation you're facing. there's always multiple ways to approach combat based on the enemy unit type, quantity, terrain type and player preferences. going by examples: there's people who prefer to use throwing weapons as their main source of damage just to have the advantage over other melees. then there's those who use ranged weapons mostly as a counter for mages/archers/whatever during enemy phase. then again, there's others who prefer to move around with ranged weapons just to be able to reach anything in their range. now, all of those tactics work fine in theory, however there's always other mechanics to consider as well, such as weapon usage, class accessibility to ranged weapons, and rank. if you're playing a game like Echoes, weapon usage is pretty much not an issue. if you're playing other more "traditional" titles, that's already a different story because uses are tied to money, and not every title has the exact same ways for farming gold. some are more risky than others depending on the game, so that requires planning from the player since he'll have to decide if they're actually worth "spamming" or not. a weak unit will probably benefit more by doing ranged chip damage, rather than getting close and risking to get killed. otherwise, it would probably be better to get close and kill an enemy unit in one or two hits with a stronger melee weapon instead. this is yet again another factor to consider: some people prefer basic ranged weapons over bronze/iron/whatever low grade weapons due to similar stats, and they can always get close to use a stronger weapon in order to kill an enemy. others prefer to run around with both low/high grade melee weapons in their inventory in order to deal with common and stronger enemies while saving uses(and money), and keep ranged weapons just for situations previously mentioned above. in any case, long story short: it's situational.

depending on how many posts you have currently made, there might still be some restrictions applied. not sure though, perhaps a mod could probably look into it and tell you more.

as a concept, it could have been fine depending on the situation, for example if there were groups of enemy bishops/mages with silence staffs debuffing from afar like in Genealogy. in that case, knifes could have become a backup weapon based on their utility, but even then they should have probably worked around the basic stats of knifes, since the damage was awful even for thiefs compared to other sword users. there were some swords, lances and axes with damage output based on MGC rather than STR, so they could have done the same for knifes too in order to make promotion choices a bit more relevant. giving them additional debuffs like poison, or other effects such as the HP leech of Nosferatu tomes, could have been a good option as well. as things were in PoR, going for knifes upon promotion wasn't exactly an optimal choice, more like a handicap rather than anything actually useful, especially because they didn't have any kind of bonus against other creatures, unlike magic tomes with damage boost against laguz/dragon/flying units.

as long as there's not too much shaking, because otherwise there's good chances to mess up and ruin an iconic title. for example, BluePoint Studio did a very good job with Demon's Souls. on the other hand, Square's FF7R is overall okeish in terms of gameplay, while the story ended up giving mixed feelings to the fans. plus, those who followed FF7's compilation through the years should already be aware that FF7R isn't actually a remake in the true sense of the word, but rather a sort of sequel. in any case, if an old title gets entirely reworked gameplay and different story development compared to the original, for me that's not a remake, but rather a reimagination. wich is not a bad thing by any means( at least, not always ), but at the same time is not in the same category of a remake/remaster, and obviously shouldn't be compared as such. in my opinion, a good remake is one that does not alienate its own fanbase, but rather it keeps and eventually expands the original story elements in a respectful way, while also enhancing the visuals and gameplay of the old version if there's a chance to do so.

i can say that PoR is probably one of the best FE titles in terms of story, since there's much lore to be discovered while playing through the game. plus, the characters have their own very distinct personalities with a good variety of attitudes( whoever came up with Soren and Shinon needs a hand shaking, seriously ), wich is pretty interesting since they actually look like medieval~fantasy characters(at least, most of them do), rather than the sad cluster of anime tropes/copy-paste characters that this franchise has thrown around with Awakening/Fates. the gameplay was also way ahead of its time to be honest, it surprised me as well how "modern" it was for a GameCube title. i'm currently at the last chapter of normal mode( since it's my first time playing it too ), and maybe i'll play it again in hard mode to check out other units that i didn't use in my current run.

considering it's always been an item, and the main protagonists usually end up receiving the title of Lord, i guess a crown would fit well in terms of lore. as for other alternatives, a stigma/tattoo similar to the mark of the Exalt could do as well, but not to symbolize royalty, rather to represent other concepts related to myths and legends of old.

regardless of what you're aiming for( either an amateur or professional project ), you should consider going for Adobe Photoshop. it doesn't have to be the latest version available, as long as it's past the CS one. with that you can make pretty much anything you want in terms of pixel art, although learning how to use it properly might take some time( as most softwares do anyway ).

it depends, mainly on weapon levels and what you have available at the moment in terms of gear. the main advantage they have over Generals is movement range obviously, so you can cover different areas "faster" and eventually get to the chapter's end earlier, but in turn they lack the Great Shield ability, wich can be a real lifesaver at times, especially when it comes to tanking. then again, there's cavaliers that might end up being more suited for the Paladin role rather than Great Knight, and viceversa. same goes for knights and trainees. people usually tend to forget all the different little details and factors to consider while playing these games, because it's not always all about stats and skills. while they might eventually help, they're not the only things that the game has to offer. in my opinion, if you're playing inside a fortress against a bunch of archers with a General rather than a Great Knight, then you might be doing it right. same goes if you're playing in a wide open field with trees while using a Great Knight rather than a General. if you're playing in a desert map against an army of mages with either Generals or Great Knights deployed, then you're probably just shooting yourself in the foot. but hey, that's just me~

it depends. while it's true that RNG can always go wrong, some people have noticed that if you send all your units to the right side of the map, Jaffar may actually move to intercept and attack the enemy units going for Zephiel's room. needless to say that horseback units always help in getting to Zephiel faster. i honestly have no idea why that happens, but i've done plenty of runs before, and by using that method i managed most of the times to trigger that behaviour from Jaffar. not sure if it might be related to the overall position of your units on the map, or if there's eventually something connected to the lords you deploy. might as well be just RNG, although it seems pretty weird to me since i've seen that same behaviour multiple times in my runs. that's also true. you might not be able to get everything in HHM, so sometimes you'll have to choose between getting items, or getting units, or if it's actually worth getting anything at all in order to complete a chapter. you can always sacrifice treasures to get units and eventually gaiden chapters, but you can't do the other way around. unless you just want to complete the game for the sake of it, of course.

as quick resume taken from Serene's website and regarding only the mainline franchise: [NES] Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light « original FE1. [NES] Gaiden « original FE2, partially connected to FE1 due to shared characters( Pegasus sisters ) and other reasons. [SNES] Mystery of the Emblem « first remake of FE1, it also has a secondary story that works as sequel to the first game. [SNES] Genealogy of the Holy War [SNES] Thracia 776 « connected to FE4 in terms of story, but shows a different "route" since it tells the story from Leif's perspective rather than Sigurd/Seliph. not a direct sequel, just a retelling of the previous 2nd generation( children ) story under a different point of view. [Satella View?] Akaneia Saga « basicly, a collection of "gaiden" chapters related to FE1 that were not present in the original game( a prequel of sorts ). [GBA] Binding Blade [GBA] Blazing Sword « the prequel to FE6. [GBA] The Sacred Stones {GameCube] Path of Radiance [Wii] Radiant Dawn « sequel to Path of Radiance. [DS] Shadow Dragon « second remake of FE1. [DS] New Mystery of the Emblem « obvious remake of Mistery of the Emblem for NDS, to be more specific it retells the story of the 2nd book, while Shadow Dragon for NDS covers the 1st book( original game ). [3DS] Awakening « connected to Shadow Dragon, Gaiden and PoR for different reasons and recurring themes. [3DS] Fire Emblem Fates « connected to Awakening for many reasons, although it's not really a direct sequel. has some nods to previous games as well. [3DS] Fire Emblem Echoes « remake of Gaiden. [Switch] Three Houses in any case, there's no fixed timeline for each game. they're pretty much like Final Fantasy: most of them have their own worlds and different lore depending on the game, while others may be connected for different reasons even if they don't follow the same story. my advice is to start with the SNES titles since they're pretty much the basics, then move to the GBA ones, followed by GameCube, Wii, DS, 3DS and finally Switch. in terms of gameplay, Genealogy and Echoes have their own unique mechanics, while all other titles share pretty much the same basic gameplay formulas with different twists regarding other features.

it's going to be a good alternative for pc gamers, as they will basicly have a dedicated portable gaming machine to run their games rather than using an "average" laptop. it's probably not going to be the next-gen goal for everyone else though, since most people these days play games on their phones anyway. however, there's also to be considered that other consoles such as the PS5 can't be found anywhere at the moment due to scalpers and very limited quantities released every once and then, so there's probably some people that might want to buy the Steam Deck instead if there will be enough units available, rather than waiting forever just to get a PS5. the fact that it will be released around December means that people will most likely be looking for stuff to buy for christmas, so with the current market situation regarding other consoles, this was indeed a smart move from Valve.

regarding consoles: i just finished the Comrades expansion for Final Fantasy XV a couple days ago. even though the online is dead, the expansion itself has been alright, with few differences from the main game in terms of gameplay mechanics, wich actually made the combat more entertaining for different reasons. in terms of story, well...let's just say it's bare bones, but that was to be expected since Square decided to cancel the last DLCs that were planned for FF XV and move on. currently playing Scarlet Nexus on PS4, wich kind of feels like a simplified action game with few nods to Devil May Cry in terms of gameplay. the story hasn't been anything special so far, but i'm still in early game so i can't judge yet. overall the game looks ok, even though it's clearly not at the same level of other "major" triple A games. also playing FE Path of Radiance on PC, and i gotta admit it's been a lot of fun so far. the gameplay was quite ahead of its time for a GameCube title, there's plenty of memorable characters, and the lore seems to be crafted with care. gonna move to Radiant Dawn later on for sure. regarding portables: still playing FE Sacred Stones on my phone, doing my last dungeon runs on Eirika's side. after that will be done, i'll move to Ephraim's route. then, once i'll be done with Sacred Stones, my session of FE titles from the GBA era will be finally completed. regarding future titles: it's probably going to be Tales of Arise after september, followed by Elden Ring next year, both on PS4. as for portables, i guess i'll switch from GBA FE to Advance Wars for a while, at least until i manage to re-play and complete once more all the titles from that franchise( gonna be a long run yet again ).

in theory, if you have a .sav file of the game obtained by using the in-game save function, you should be able to use your save files on other emulators too since they should be tied to the main ROM. if we're talking about save state files, then probably no. they're basicly "images" created by the emulator itself, therefore they shouldn't be compatible with other emulators. by personal experience, it's always better to download and install an emulator on pc/phone, rather than using the online ones. they're overall more reliable, and in most cases you can eventually customize some settings to have a better gameplay performance.

maybe i should have said "hybrid Jeigan unit from early to mid-game" to avoid confusion, but what i wrote was mostly related to his performance in combat anyway. i thought it was pretty obvious. i partially agree: he does have flaws such as the lack of movement( that can eventually be fixed by using the boots though ) and the fact that he struggles against mages like any other armored unit, however he doesn't have many issues when it comes to tanking and dealing damage against other physical classes. not to mention that FE7 has overall better accuracy rates than FE6, so axes are not that penalized by the weapon triangle like they were in the previous game. also, the Fire Dragon is kind of a joke when you have maxed out lords with good stats( if you gave them all the required boosters ). you could probably even solo it with Hector just by stacking Elixirs, or by using ranged healing staffs with Pent/Athos.

giving stats-booster items to each lord in their main routes always help. that way they'll have better survival chances in the long run, and will deal noticeable damage. in case of FE7, it partially depends on the difficulty. basicly, both Lyndis and Eliwood can eventually become decent units if you're playing their routes one after the other, because if i remember well Lyn's stats should transfer to Eliwood's route. plus, the difficulty scaling of those routes is quite alright, if you don't consider gaiden/extra chapters. Hector's route is probably the hardest of the three, so unless you let the other lords get carried around and get some "safe" exp by feeding them last-hit kills, they're not going to be great units by the time you reach the end game. you'll be using pre-promotes for the most, and by the time you'll reach mid-game, you'll probably notice that having weak units hanging around will do more harm than anything else. also, Hector is kind of a Jeigan unit disguised as lord, but that's another story. unlike Lyn/Eliwood, he can stand on his own from the get-go, and will not need any babysitting.

by the way, i actually managed to start a run of Path of Radiance via emulator, and damn, am i glad i did it. i gotta say the game is very catchy, and it has been great so far. the gameplay feels like a renewed and improved version of Thracia 776, and in terms of story i'm liking it as much as Genealogy( maybe even more ). the world's lore seems deep enough, and it really feels like reading a fantasy book from bygone ages. overall it's been a pleasant surprise, and even though i just reached chapter 5, i can already tell that the game has been crafted with care. i honestly never thought a FE game from the GameCube era could have so much charm.