Fennel

Along with most of what already been said, I would add: Slightly over-level two or three units: a lot of FE is about experience management when it is limited. Think of them as your Queens on a chess board... that you never, ever sacrifice... SLIGHTLY over-level, if this is over done you’ll waste experience. Use the level of the enemies on the map to judge what “slightly” means. Use your strong units to vanguard a strong enemy formation. Consider these strong units may also lure enemies, weaken them for others to kill, sometimes they’re so strong they need un-equip weapon, take the hit as other units go for the kill and experience. Remember multiple units may attack within SAME square: if your unit is strong enough to kill enemy unit, that square becomes open for another unit to attack, then another... and another, AND ANOTHER. Consider if your unit will survive all multiple attacks. Do you actually want to kill them all in same turn with same unit or spread the experience among your other units? Do the opposite of what enemies are doing... most of the time. If they are standing still, move into their range to lure them to attack. If they’re charging towards you, hold ground let them come. If they are REALLY charging at you overwhelmingly maybe you’d rather retreat to the limit of their attack range and slowly weaken their charge with counter attacks until it’s manageable. This can be tricky cause you don’t want leave units vulnerable. Be careful when moving units in offensive retreat to leave units you intend to be attacked at the correct enemy attack range, and that moving a unit does not open a path for another you did not intend to be attacked. If you move too far and enemy can’t attack you in their phase, you may have wasted a turn to weaken their charge. If you ever charge at the enemy, always consider the new enemy units that are able to attack. Don't totally trust game’s enemy attack range display, if it has one. If an enemy unit has ranged weapon, its attack range may not display properly if there is an enemy unit in a spot the ranged unit may move into if that enemy wasn’t there. If that unit blocking the spot moves or is killed, ranged unit can move in and attack farther than the enemy attack range displays. Also, the display usually does not update for moving your own units opening a new path for enemies. I think I’ve noticed Three Houses actually updating this, tho am not sure. Splitting the party is usually a bad idea. Even if the map heavily suggests that you should, sometimes you don’t HAVE to. And the side you don’t go for ends up running towards you wasting a few turns moving, you’ve already overwhelmed one side with the full strength of your army, and by the time the other side arrives they’ll meet the your entire army again. Your units are safer when they are together. You gotta judge carefully the goal of the map vs the safety of your units. Sometimes it’s necessary to split the party when you’re rushing an objective. COUNT ON reinforcements arriving soon to overwhelm your split parties. Get the objective done quickly and reunite the army asap. Recognize when the map wants you to rush. Usually its something far from your position in the map (a treasure, a house to visit, someone to protect, square to arrive...). Plan your rush from FIRST turn usually involving a flier or strong cavalry that lone rangers to that far objective. If it SEEMS like you can take your time to it, ITS ALL A PACK OF LIES!! 99.999999...999% of the time bandits appear to claim it if one doesn’t consider it during the first turn. Doors... you don’t have to open all of them... unless you have to. If there are alternate routes, closed doors can block enemy movements if you leave them closed. Until a thief comes along and opens it... Even an enemy unit with a key in its inventory will not open a door to benefit enemy movement because... “Alright, soldier! You’re gonna hold on to this key but never EVER use it. Guard it with your life and stand near the door it may open such that our enemies may grab it from your corpse and easily access the door and open the way for our assault! Bwahaha!” “But sir! What if I just open the door and...” “SILENCE MEANS NO TALKING!!” Manipulate the AI: it is often helpful to anticipate how the enemy will behave and use it against them. Sometimes you may want enemy to place themselves in certain squares or move in a certain direction. The AI tends to go for units they deal more damage, units that can’t counter attack, sometimes they go for the Lord regardless. Most definitely units they will kill... but don’t sacrifice your units... unless you HATE that ally... but still that’s mean :(... If a thief grabs a treasure you wanted, often times they’ll go for the nearest next one. If that treasure happens to be behind your army, you haven’t opened the treasure yet, and you leave a path for the thief to “pass by”, the thief will likely come straight towards you through that “little opening”... “Hey, fellas! Am just passing through. Don’t mind me!” *WHACK* Loot treasure off thief. Unless it was gold! Thieves immediately transfer funds into international bank accounts and don’t have the funds available in their bodies.

Without spoiling anything openly, something about Three Houses has exacerbated the issue I described in the first post. Here hidden in a spoiler, just in case you rather find out yourself...

THIS.... can you imagine a FE game where the Lord is not the frontline vanguard it grows to be in EVERY FE game? Instead it relies on its units giving them different kind buffs, healing, move again... maybe also affect the battlefield like in Fates... but never or rarely ever seeing combat. Maybe a character that WANTS to help in battle but for some reason just can’t?.... too weak? A physical handicap?... and is most useful leading the army in other ways. That would be interesting... Granted, Azura has amazing speed and strength growth making her a great fighter.

This should never have happened. Am sorry you had such bad experience. The problem is that it was completely out of your control... (as long as you actually leveled Ike through ALL levels and still got low speed). The root of that problem is random growth, and the SEED of the root of the problem is that randomness does not exist... ever... nowhere... there is absolutely NOTHING random about ANYTHING. It’s a lie fed to appease ignorance of a potentially very, very, very complex pattern. Think about it... if you have 10% chance to gain RES. Ten levels go by... no RES gain. Wait, wasn’t one supposed to get one? Well, technically 10% is 10 out of 100 and maybe they are not evenly distributed!... but in FE games you only usually get 40 levels, so we can never really tell what the true % of a stat would be. And that’s only if the gains are static! If there is a RNG... all bets are off. You can say, oh I have 50% chance gain DEF.. 40 levels go by and just HAPPENS that every time given 50/50 chance one rolls low and gains nothing.... NOTHING. When 50% can be equivalent to 0%.. or maybe you got really lucky and got it every time! Then 50% was actually 100%. 50% can be anything! It does NOT inform you of anything. Similar problems occur with the other %’s except 0% and 100%, of course. This is a big problem in academia and a great source of grief between me and Statistics prof... it is a problem in philosophy between Determinism and Free Will... it is in computer science and by consequence in video games making players grief whenever something critical to gameplay is left to Randomness... like not having enough speed and getting doubled by the last boss. Here is an alternative, maybe use True %’s. A True % is what % pretend to be but often end up lying to us. If you’re told your character has 50% Def growth, over 40 levels it will grow 20. Which levels the character actually GETS the gains may be randomized.. sometimes earlier, maybe later... maybe more or less evenly distributed... but if you actually go through ALL 40 levels without skipping promoting early.. you’ll get 20 def. Now, True% maybe not be as exciting... there is something thrilling about gambling... sometimes we like to be told 50%... but HEY... maybe its really 85%.. or 90%... with the risk of it being actually less than 50%. So perhaps a better solution is to let it be part True%... part RNG %... and never let the player know EXACTLY what 50% means.

Agreed. I’m all for the epic developments in FE4 but without a sense of time Sigurd’s romantic development felt kinda awkward to me. If a significant amount of time passes between turns, more than usual, players needed a better hint, I think. This is a good idea. I think devs have have sort of hinted at something like that with the Triangle Attack... maybe let be something like: Cavalry Coordinated Attack: Pick a cavalry unit Move it next to another cavalry and they merge, like carrying or supporting, do that with other cavalry that are nearby and movement allows, limited to 3 or maybe 5. Move in and attack as a single unit. After attack, move rest of space AND... this might be tricky... at the end all merged cavalry must separate back to single units. I dunno how hard that would be to program and implement. The fact that cavalry would have to use their movement to Join, Attack, then Spread would force cavalry to already be nearby each other in some sort of formation, and there needs to be space for them to spread out. Another detail, when it comes to Canto, maybe Canto should discriminate the direction the cavalry follows through its movement. If it’s the same direction or 90 degrees they attacked towards they get full rest of movement. If they go the opposite direction, rest of movement may be somewhat reduced. Might be getting a little too detailed with rules. Too many rules might not be good. Edit: But then why not move each cavalry individually instead of this Coordinated Attack?.... hrmm... am not sure.

This made me laugh. Does the game really let one get into a dead end state like that? I imagine the heroes going through a long arduous journey, overcoming the odds and FINALLY get to the boss... look at its stats and go: ”Ok guys its over, just give up... WE’RE DONE! RESET!” I guess if one REALLY had to, start sacrificing people... but then if the boss has Vantage??! Lol I dunno... I’ve run into MANY situations where enemies just happen to have the EXACT stats to kill a unit... like they do the exact amount of damage... if its not one unit its the summation of a two or three that overlap attack range. VERY SUSPICIOUS... sometimes I wonder if it’s coincidence or like the game wants to kill me... if I forget how to add... which sometimes I do...

Is there something you think deserves a second look about the way Fire Emblem games play? Not necessarily something that is bad... but like needs something else added or maybe tweaked. I love FE... but there's these two things... that ARE NOT BAD DESIGN... its just, they feel funny, and I don't really know a solution or if it even needs a solution. Ok, am sure you've all experienced these at some point: There's a bottle neck... you plant your guy/gal... on the other side there's this MASS of cavalry.... like a MASSIVE MASS... horses on top of horses on top of horses, like one huge horse triple decker festival. Enemies turn... one horse comes attack, moves away... then another, moves away... another... another... another... EVERY SINGLE HORSE attacks the tiny bottleneck. I mean, I get it! Horses Canto... and I take advantage of that when I can, but when I think about it, IT DOESNT MAKE SENSE! I understand that it is a turn based game and all... but really? All these horses take turns attacking a narrow bottleneck, there's no way they can perform the attacks simultaneously so... what? In all that time the horses go back and forth the team behind the bottleneck is doing what?... they are waiting for player turn... cause... ugh!.... Edit: I mean, I can accept that somewhat in an open world map... cause of dimensions... so like there a square represents a very wide open space where that situation can happen... but then why can't we have more than a couple (or just one) per square?... and what about in a closed environment indoor map?... AND THEN... imagine that your bottleneck guard is a superhero and is actually killing these horses... there has to be piles upon PILES of horses getting stacked up. HOW ARE THEY EVEN GETTING THROUGH TO ATTACK?! There should be like a wall of dead horses at some point... I dunno... it's just a game... I really have to suspend realism in those times. (...cause I don't suspend realism when people throw lightning bolts...*cough* #DoYouBelieveInMagic?...). They don't happen often, but when they do am like: "Yeah, right.... ok, whatever..." But then am not sure of alternatives... AND THEN... what if one doesn't want to attack them back? I wish there was a way to selectively suppress counterattacking, other than un-equip weapons. Like maybe something you press before the attack animations engage or something. But I guess, that could adversely affect some abilities... maybe let it be like a skill that allows suppression? So that's my thing... what you think? Is there something like that for you?

If you’re being really picky and want to create an elite squad that can tackle anything FE games throw at you, this is what I suggest from my experiences: Make sure every unit has enough Luck to at least deny Thunder Mages critical chances. Depending on the game, that’s usually 5-7 Luck early chapters, then it grows to like 10-13ish. Game loves to kill units over 1-2% crit chance... it happens way more often than the actual percentage suggest. Use the Thunder Mages as a guide to keep up with Luck. Choose a fighter. Every FE games provides one or two foot axes that become awesome later on. I’ve been trying to explain this over at Least Favorite Class thread, but I just gave up on them... too much bias, I guess. Anyways, if given option choose the fighter that excels in Health, Strength and Speed. This will be your meat shield early on, use it to draw out enemies into your formation. Might be tempted to use the lord or the knight for this job, but I suggest the fighter so you keep training it. Once it gets weapon levels up and starts gaining defense, this unit often becomes reliable to handle an entire half of map. Choose that healer with high Res and Luck. Fighter will need heals to keep up meat shielding until defense grows. High Res healers are also used to make enemies wear out very long range magic like Bolting. Make this healer heal very often even if units just have little damage. You want to level healer this way and bring weapon level up so you can use higher level Staffs to Restore Sleeps, and cast Silence. Endgame winning strategies often require use of high level staves. I highly suggest picking two healers... the game maps often asks for two sides attacked simultaneously, and threaten to Silence/Sleep that one healer... then the other may Restore it. It depends whether or not the game provides you with another character with high level Staff, maybe you can use it on those levels. If you’ve kept up leveling your mage and it can now use staffs maybe there’s no need. Mage with high Magic and Speed. This often will be your Knight and Boss killer. Once it can use staff it may fill in role of second heal, don’t deny training its Staff unless you decided to use another Staff user. At least two cavalry. No surprise the game traditionally provides them early. Boss fights often require indirect attacks and then unit be carried to safety by cavalry. I suggest one with high speed and another with high defense. Both should have decent Strength. When it comes to cavalry, I highly suggest prioritizing Bow Knights as long as they get a melee option at some point. If given option train bows into cavalry. High mobility, indirect attack and move again works wonders in many situations. An archer... but don’t invest too much on it, just use when necessary until you have enough Bow Knights. There’s always a map that overwhelms you with fliers. If you’re team has plenty Bow Knights this is encounter will be super easy. At least one flier, preferably a Pegasus high speed and Res. It’s job is to kill that mage shooting long range bolts if wasting its shots on a high Res healer is not an option. These often fly over shortcuts to kill thieves, or maybe mobilize a powerful unit into a position to cause massive damage to the enemy formation. Always the dancer/singer. Moving a unit again is very useful. Endgame strategies often call for this. Don’t ignore leveling the lord really good. I’ve found that games often punish you if you’re lord is not very strong. And of course it will kill the last boss. EXCEPTION 1: So you got your team and are thinking of only using them... well, I think the game devs didn’t want us to do this and switch units depending on the scenario. There’s always at least one desert level when you’ll need to bring more mages and fliers than usual. EXCEPTION 2: A bridge or maybe high artillery level where you’ll need bring more cavalry than usual. EXCEPTION 3: A indoor level filled with lock doors and chests need bring those thieves. YOU CAN TELL THESE ARE COMING cause the game just happens to provide you with the necessary units not long ago. Niches: Oh boy am I gonna get flamed for this.... Myrmidons and Swordmasters. *takes cover*. OK IM SORRY... go ahead and use them if you love them!... am just saying, the Lord is often the best at filling this role. Archers and Snipers... yeees.. they are VERY cool... but Bow Knights. Knights... maybe... the Fighter can fulfill that role... maybe am wrong... Wyverns... eh... fliers with defense... that may not be able to handle that mage with Bolting/Meteor... maybe an advocate of Wyverns can help me out. They can be effective walls... unless bows. I dunno... And there you have it! The A-Team according to Rioma with an “i”. What do you think? Edit: Alternatively, when choosing units, relax about optimizing so much. Go with characters that you like personality wise. That might actually be MOST IMPORTANT. Even if they have big flaws, that’ll force one to play around them. You can have a really good time with not the “perfect” team, but characters you love. Edit 2: ...and when the game potentially kills them, you’ll genuinely feel that sweet, sweet pain and grief I’m pretty sure game devs wanted us to experience over the loss of loved ones in a cruel and often unfair battlefield. War is NOT fun.... but it’s just a game so maybe you can reset... or swallow the pain and press on... up to you.

This. Just sadness and confusion. If anyone finds a report clarifying the motive of the arson, please update this thread? I already read reports that the suspect wasn’t former employee...

I’d try writing a story were the Fire Emblem is nothing, but that would be big reveal and turning point in the story. Start things off as usual, big bad empire invades with the pretense of obtaining the “Fire Emblem” from the other country which could be some random artifact... maybe even randomly generate what the story says the Fire Emblem is, cause it really doesn’t matter, you’ll never see it. Internally, the monarch knows its a lie, but his country is filled with religious fanatics that will only mobilize and crusade for the promise of this holy grail Fire Emblem. So they claim the other country is doing something ‘evil’ with it so they HAVE to invade to get it. And while the one country commits to war with the other, another surprise attacks the aggressors with similar pretenses. I’d try to get as many different countries involved in conflict over the Fire Emblem for different reasons. One may claim to already have the Fire Emblem and to win over the fanatics of the first country... but they mess up some important detail in a ceremony or something... and now the “Fire Emblem” is shown to be fake. Then a big hunt for the Fire Emblem across all the lands, different armies, bandits, mercenaries all fighting each other over an artifact that promises give the wielder great power, each with a slightly different version of an ancient legend. And often they’re fighting over a different artifact, and it is just an excuse for waging war. Some wish to claim it to hide it from the world, others want to use its power for good.... or “good” (actually, evil), maybe others want to sell it... And when the entire world is engulfed in war... as our dear ancient dragons always seem to lead thing into... I’d slowly introduce the more traditional version of the Fire Emblem as an artifact to seal an ancient evil. When our heroes finally arrive to the sacred temple place, they open vault... and there is nooooothing!! They learned that YES, long ago there USED to be a Fire Emblem that sealed away evil mad dragons... but in the last ancient war the old heroes of legend lost. The dragons were released and the Fire Emblem destroyed. Every single person currently alive in the world is a descendant of mad dragons that turned human over countless millennia, which might explain why everyone outside is going trigger happy with war and conflict. As battles escalates, people start turning more and more savage. Loss of loved ones fuel a rage that turn former humans to savage beasts. The evil comes from within each person. I would write about the descent of all civilizations into savagery. Even as our heroes win victories their efforts are in vain. And when all hope seem lost, the entire world a frenzy zombie apocalypse, by providence a meteor crashes on world incinerating most of the crazy population, the rest frenzies die in the following long years of winter. The only survivors the those humans who remain sane, willing to support each other survive the ice age. The survivors would then write stories about an emblem of fire that once long ago fell from the sky and incinerated the world scaring the land permanently. Monarchs would wear fragments of the meteor in their heads as a reminder.

Bow Knights!! ❤️❤️❤️ These two threads are getting entwined... GET IT?!... cause they’re like threads?... *ahem* Oh, goodness... I’m an alien everywhere... Anyways... I agree, it seems the same creative... thread... of Genealogy will be felt in 3H. Kinda like you can feel it in Path of Radiance... something about axe cavalries and armored knights with swords... Geneoloish...

That’s perfectly fine, dude. I guess we know which is your least favorite class.

I’ve every single FE a few times... there’s always one foot axe that if you stick with, it will grow into a monster that can deal with half a map... with a Hand Axe. I thought this was common knowledge. Apparently, maybe some don’t give them a chance to level and get benched for other favorite classes... which is perfectly fine. And we’re kinda getting of topic here harping on foot axes... I pointed out, in the context of LEAST FAVORITE class, that other classes have annoyances, but have interesting quirks, and that my LEAST FAVORITE class was the lord... that foot axes even thou they tend to miss a lot early game, there’s always one or two that if one stays playing with them they become very strong and reliable to deal with a whole side of the map themselves: Barts, Johalva (in this incarnation one had to go with this with high skill or the other with high speed) Lot (tho in some plays Wade turns out better), Bartre, Ross, Garcia, Boyd, Nolan, Vaike, Arthur (although in Fates things are a little more interesting with reclassing... in this case it was Effie reclass to Axes through Arthur... tho likely other better reclass) Regardless, there’s always a foot axe that becomes super awesome later, with its weapon level up it wont miss, they gain a lot of health, strength and speed. Either decent or pretty good defense. One only has to watch out for magic. And even then their huge health pool can take it, killing the mage with Hand Axe. I’m really surprised... I don’t know what else to tell yah... I mean, am sure you know the game re-uses character archetypes with some changes, and there’s always one or two foot axes that follow that type. And one really only needs the one... that is destroying the country side while the rest of the army deals with the other side. I mean if this is really news, give it an HONEST try. Or don’t! That’s ok too... And yeah... lords are my least favorite class... and Roy sucks... goodness, I actually have to make that clear... Just don’t tell him that to his face. Poor guy’s trying to save the world. Edit: Fixed.

Maybe you’re right... maybe am just lucky. But I tell ya... in every FE there’s always one or two foot axes that if you stick with them, all they need is a Hand Axe. It’s as much as staple of FE games as that you’ll get a green and red cavalry.

In every FE game there is always one or two foot axe that grow to become one unit army themselves. What happens is that this does not become apparent until they’ve been leveled, they gain massive health, strength, speed, weapon levels. Single one of these beasts would take care of a whole side of map with just a Hand Axe. People tend to give up on them early because of how often they miss early game. They come to this site, look at the listed growth stats and give up hope. But then you see someone post that they actually love Axes and wonder why... With regards to archers being decoys, in several FE games, within THE SAME game, I’ve noticed the enemy AI behaving differently when they choose who to attack. I’ve often seen AI ignore a target because they’ll deal no damage, or has 0% chance to hit. They will pass right by them and continue charging to the heart of the army. More often than not the AI goes for a unit that they’ll deal SOME damage, and much more likely if that unit can’t fight back. Of course, if you have a bottleneck one may plant a tank... but if one is out in the open with a mass of cavalry threatening to focus their attacks with their hit and run tactics... unless one has a superhero that can kill them all in their own turn (like for example, that incredible foot axe?)... one wants to split the cavalry charge, archers tend to have enough speed and defense to peal a cavalry away and survive. That it will take some damage and not retaliate is what makes it an attractive target for the AI, and thus, a decoy. Edit: And if the attacker is has a 1-2 range weapon, the archer’s melee blind spot guarantees it’ll plant itself right in the archer’s face. Of course swords tend to lack range... but they do have the option, along with so many other options. There really is a sword for every occasion. There’s even swords that act like axes, heavier Blades with increased damage and weight, reduced hit. So, if a unit is locked into swords, they’re probably a Swordmaster with not only a wide arsenal of sword options, but innate class abilities to exploit those options. So you see, these classes have annoyances but some interesting quirks. Lords? There are just made to be awesome... cause you know, they’re the star of the show. *Roy sneaks in*: “That’s right! I’m awesome too!... I am!... Really!”

Goodness, there’s so much to unpack here I’m totally gonna screw this up. I would quote many interesting points people have made and respond how I agree or disagree but that would be ridiculously long. Here’s what I think... I don’t think we’re going to completely agree on semantics of what theme, plot, execution, characters are... they’re just words and we sometimes use them differently. To me... a theme is an important idea that colors a story, like a guide. Plot is the layout of scenes, like structure, I guess. Execution is the details within each scene of the overall plot, that gets into pacing, dialogue, AND EMOTIONS evoked. Character is a unit capable of executing... Execution... that means, it is Character who sets pace, has dialogue and emotions. Character, to me, can be more than just people. Character can be a place or thing as long as it’s capable of Execution. The One Ring of LotR... to me that ring is Character. Good plot, bad theme: I think this would likely bore people who are looking for intellectual or philosophical stimulation. They will probably think: “Ok, it’s a good plot... but what’s the point? It’s a stupid theme (idea) so you’re killing my brain cells.” Then there are people (like me) who are not looking for a manifest of great ideas and just want to be entertained... for whatever reason... maybe we’re happy with our own philosophies... maybe we seen way too many stories already and are hardly impressed... these people may be happy with good plot, bad theme. We just want a distraction for a while. Bad plot, good theme: I think this works in two cases: children stories that try to teach a lesson. Or when the audience is seeking intellectual or philosophical stimulation. I think they still will not appreciate a bad plot, but they are much more willing to overlook plot flaws in favor of the good theme. I used to be on the Bad Plot, Good Theme side... I experienced many cool ideas and learned a lot from good themes. I started thinking on my own, developing my own philosophies and found they were no longer compatible with stories published. At that point, Bad Plot, Good Theme became annoying to me because the “supposed” Good Theme I found to be ridiculous or be completely wrong. So it was just Bad Plot, Bad Theme. That is when I gave up on Themes in stories and seek just a good plot. Within Good Plot, I think Good Character is the most important. If you can make me fall in love with an excellent Character (person, place, or thing) I will bear the bad theme and bad rest of plot, because at least I will experience it along side a Character I love. Of course one would strive to write good everything, but first, and above all else, GOOD CHARACTER.

You me both... we’ll join our horses into a massive horde, sword in hand, bow in the other.... that we somehow skillfully use one handed... and ride beyond the horizon, tremulous thunder at our wake.

Bow Knights. Specially the promoted kind that can also use swords or another melee weapon. I could have an entire army of just bow knights and make it work. Genghis Khan had the right idea. Overwhelm them with mobility and firepower. I challenge you to think of a counter to a well played mass of promoted bow knights coming at you full charge. Their mobility gives them the initiative. The one who would take the initiative from them are fliers who are countered by bows. They have decent defense, better resistance. Enough strength, great speed. They can support each other melee on front, bows on back. In some versions they can use hit and run, pick and drop each other tactics. They can choose to be unable to counter melee or range luring and manipulating the AI. Link, THE HERO OF TIME, is a promoted Bow Knight.... I mean, riding Epona... Master Sword... Bow of Light... Yeah, how do you counter an army of Links?! One would have really set everything up against them to just have a chance. That means a desert environment, fighting against foot soldiers with high defense. But even then the bow knight might still outmaneuver and focus fire with bows. And if you let said foot soldiers have anti cavalry weapons, bow knight might also use anti armor and magic bows. I always use every Bow Knight the game gives me. Always a welcomed addition. They even play nice with other classes supporting, carrying, saving them, setting up enemies to help others level and not steal their kills. Bow Knights. ❤️❤️❤️

Lords. (Sorry for the long post, what follows is a rant. You got the short answer and are welcomed to ignore the rest) Each class seem to have an annoyance, axes dont hit, knight slow, bows dont melee, swords vulnerable... etc, but they also had something that made them interesting: The axe dont hit as much but can be used as a wall to set up for others to kill, supported by healer. At higher levels axes missing is no longer issues and they become a one unit army killing machine. Knights slow is really its only relative disadvantage, which is non issue in indoor levels where a reliable wall at a bottleneck is essential. Put a boot boost on a knight to create a monster. Bows dont melee... and the AI loves to hit them making them great decoys. There’s reason why foot archers tend for good defense. Swords just need a bush to perch on and dodge everything Matrix style. Then there’s a sword for every occasion. Need something killed? Killer Sword? Oh, but high defense is the fast sword counter? Armor Slayer. Wyvern Slayer. Longsword. Yeah... a sword for every occasion... even range. And then there are Lords... privileged by the writer gods to be the best at everything. If don’t watch lords carefully they’ll steal away all the exp until they max out and can’t promote because.... you know they are special and their promotion is scripted. Selfish lords never share their special weapon. You have a promising unit that needs some help leveling? Maybe a good weapon could help? SORRY! You can use swords... BUT NOT THIS SWORD. It’s only for lords! Heaven forbid they die... ITS ALL OVER. Every single member of the army as a background, they suffer losses and sacrifice, and they press on. BUT IF THE LORD DIES... we just can't move on like we’ve been doing when anyone else dies... we have to warp back in time, restart the chapter, bend time and space, create a rupture in the time continuum letting loose all sorts of temporal beasts and chrono demons because THE LORD JUST CANT DIE.... no matter how much one hates their pompous, arrogant, virtue signaling, presumptuous, demeaning and condescending attitude towards others, one just cannot kill them. If you try you get sealed for half eternity into oblivion, and after one finally breaks out another lord comes up to carry on the mantle of annoying character privileged placement. Lords should not be a class, just a background they role play. Lords should just class like everyone else. As it stands, lords are myrmidons with defense for example. I appreciate Ike trying to break off the lord tradition. And Fates lord being vulnerable to dragon slayers.

Am taking the bait, given that Fates is my favorite FE, but that is mostly for its polished mechanics, features and online play. The story.... I don’t think the story was bad. It’s execution was horrible. Fates had a great setting, great setup, there was a great opportunity to do something new... and then one realizes it’s an FE game where we’re telling the same story all over again. So all that good setup tenses and collapses on top of cliched execution and one end up with a big mess, broken hopes and dreams. Fates spoilers following... I went into Fates Conquest first, because I LOVED the idea that PERHAPS THIS ONE TIME the traditional “evil empire” that attacks for no apparent reason would actually turn out to be the “good guys”. I thought we’d get a more mature and even take on why and how nations go to war. I wanted to see justifications from both sides as to why they are in the ‘right’ side of history. But no... they we’re just evil... because of crazy ancient dragons again. I really wanted Garon to start off as that apparently crazy maniacal evil emperor and then had a scene were a key story element was revealed that would make the audience: “oh my god! Garon was right!” Let both sides feel pride in their nations way of thinking, then allow the tragedy of warfare unfold, the grief of lost loved ones in battle. We could still have had the Third Path in which we found a compromise between both sides main conflicts. But it was not meant to be... I was very disappointed when the ‘bad guys’ were just ‘bad guys’ and the ‘good’ were really just ‘good’. It was just another FE story like any other. It’s still a great game. Oh, and the protagonist lines we’re cringe worthy almost all the time. I wish it had been more assertive and humane. And on the OTHER SIDE of the spectrum theres Genealogy with great characters and story, but god awful gameplay! I admit Genealogy introduced many great features but no where near as polished as they would eventually become in Fates. I still have nightmares of masses of cavalry units overrunning multiple sides of the battlefields... ugh..

I think the value of Skill is so great that it has been siphoned away from the Skill stat into other “things” as to allow characters of other specialties to enjoy the benefits of High Skill while pretending not to... have High Skill. Those weapon levels that allow characters to use better weapons and get bonuses? Thats Skill. Those Hit stats on weapons? Skill. Dodging? One can have great Speed, but without Skill to move the right way at the right time one ain’t dodging anything. Making Skill valuable as other stats may take much reformulating, ending up with something that’s not FE anymore. If I were writing formulas, I’d play around with making Skill the primary factor of Hit/Miss. Remove Speed from dodging factor. Hit/Miss would be determined by the relative values of opposing characters. A low Skill toon vs a low Skill toon would have similar Hit\Miss ratio as a High Skill toon vs equally High Skill toon. One with higher Skill would benefit from Hit and Dodge. I wouldn’t make it all or nothing when it comes to dodge. Nobody would like to play low Skill character that can’t hit anything. I’d introduce Glancing Blows, which a low Skill character may land with reduced damage along with the full miss. If said character has insane strength stat, even a Glancing Blow may be effective. Speed would determine double attack as usual but also give character chances to attack first as in Vantage, increase movement range, and opportunity to move rest of movement after attack as mounted classes. The relative Luck would determine Crit chance and also crit damage. Crit Damage would be x1.5, x2, x3... based on the character Luck advantage. Also Lucky characters would have opportunities to reroll any failed roll. The player would gamble with: When are several lower chance rolls better than a single higher one? How many rerolls? But yeah, that might not be FE anymore.

-Recurring character archetypes. THIS... very much this. I wonder which lady in Three Houses will go out of her way to “Talk” to multiple enemies in the middle of a gruesome battlefield with a conversation that goes in some form of: ”Wait!! Why are we fighting?! Let’s be friends!” ”I KEEL UUU!!” ”If you must... Then go ahead and slay me!” ”Oh wow, u so crazy... ok, I don’t keel. We bff now. <3”

I have grown to enjoy the recycling of common themes throughout the FE series, tropes reused sometimes with a slightly different angle in every new game. With Three Houses coming up soon, help me list out all those traditional themes to look out for in the new game. I’ll start off within a spoiler, just in case... I know there’s plenty more! 🙂 Help me out and with Three Houses out we’ll see what shape the tropes take on this time.

It’s not a typo. No relationship to Ryoma. 😛 Been checking the forums while playing all fe games, now decided to sign up. Greetings to all FE fans.