ZanaLyrander

I admit, I'm a bit unclear on that. I feel like the AoE of Hades doesn't increase when you have Essence of Fire equipped (though Hades' AoE is so enormous natively it can be hard to tell), and yet the game certainly seems to think Essence of Fire affects Hades: whenever you use a spell or combat art that is affected by the the Essence you have equipped, it pops up in the upper left corner along with any other abilities that are activated, and Hades definitely gets that popup for both Essence of Fire and Essence of Darkness. So, we have confirmation that Hades triggers Essence of Fire and Essence of Darkness, but what they're actually doing to the spell is unclear. And that's true, Awakening is intended for characters you want to play for extended periods, and Ferdinand definitely qualifies, but by itself his unique support doesn't provide a ton of Awakening Gauge. It's nice to have, but not terribly important, which is why I give it a B for him.

Here he is. The man. The myth. The legend. Ferdinand. Von. Aegir. It amuses me how the story and support conversations try to paint Ferdinand as the jack of all trades, master of none, as if he's good at everything, but not great at anything. In reality, he's jack of all trades, master of several.

I haven't used Hapi that much, so I don't think I'm going to write up a full analysis this time, but I agree with B rank. She's not a bad unit, she just gets overshadowed by other magic users, and in the specific niche of monster slaying, she's quite useful, but it is a fairly small niche, monsters aren't that common after all. I did have a weird build I've been experimenting with for her that I haven't had time to properly test. I made her a Bow Knight, and gave her Failnaught and the Reigan Crest Stone so she can use Fallen Star. Fallen Star scales with magic, meaning she can actually use it more effectively than Claude can, and it does massive damage to monster stun gauges. Combined with her Unique Support, it should theoretically make her into a monster-killing machine, but I confess I haven't done much testing with the build yet, so I don't know how good it is. All I know is that I agree that keeping her as a Gremory feels like wasting her talents.

Agreed, it's another part of why I'm less thrilled by the idea of new characters: I'm not thrilled at the prospect of having to level up new characters from scratch with no classes mastered, that sounds like a pain at this point, and I'll probably stick with the characters I have already anyway (especially in the case of Cyril, Anna, Hanneman, Gustave... I can't see myself replacing any of the characters I currently use with any of those, especially given the effort/resources required to level them up and teach them abilities). I'm hoping the DLC will be more tailored towards postgame stuff.

That's fair, at least about Agnea's Arrow, it's not terribly useful on its own, even if its potential as a combo finisher outstrips just about every other powerhouse spell. As for Luna, I do still have to disagree with that one. Used by a powerful magic user, Luna can annihilate even multiple commanders in one cast, along with the 50+ mooks nearby. Sure, Excalibur is probably better, but without Essence of Wind, it's got a smaller AoE, and it costs more. Luna is one of the most powerful Medium might spell in the game due to the ignore resistance effect, it does startlingly high damage. Seeing you list it as 'not particularly strong' confuses me given how easily and rapidly I see it devour enemy commanders. With a strong dark magic user like Shez or Hubert, it can be cast into a crowd of commanders and mooks, and then you move on knowing they're all already dead. Even leaving aside Luna's potential as a combo starter, it's one of the best dark magic spells in the game. Aura has never impressed me, its effect is too brief to be an effective combo starter the way Bolganone is, you won't have time to get off another spell, plus with Essence of Light, it has an AoE deadzone right in front of the user, similar to Fimbulvetr, leading to some occasional frustration with trying to land a hit with it.

Damn, seeing Luna and Agnea's Arrow, two of the most powerful spells in the game, rated at C, makes my head spin a bit. I suppose if you're evaluating spells purely on an individual basis rather than in terms of combo potential, that kinda makes sense. Agnea's Arrow is admittedly unreliable without a setup spell such as Excalibur, Meteor, or anything that freezes, but with such a setup spell, it's unbelievably powerful. Excalibur + Agnea's Arrow is honestly the most powerful combo in the game imo, it can destroy just about anyone from full health. When a Trickster with 60 Magic can oneshot even high resistance targets like warlocks/gremories on Maddening, you are dealing with an insanely powerful combo. As a single spell, yeah, Agnea's Arrow is not reliable enough. As a combo finisher, it's the most powerful spell in the game. Similarly, Luna makes the perfect setup spell for Hades or Dark Spikes, gathering them all together, and typically applying Spellbound to drastically reduce their resistance before Hades/Dark Spikes annihilates them. Not to mention, since it ignores Resistance, it does shockingly heavy damage in a massive area, even to target normally quite resistant to magic damage. In addition, referring to it as 'low hit count' is technically accurate, but misleading. The main problem with low hit count effects is that they're easy to block, hence why a setup spell is so important for Agnea's Arrow. But Luna is low hit count only in so much as it provides those hit by it a long period of time before they are hit by it again. But for those guarding the effect, Luna appears to keep trying to hit them continuously until it connects, much like spells with a high hit count, giving it many of the advantages of spells with high hit count despite only doing damage 2 or 3 times. I would rate it one of the strongest, most valuable dark spells in the game, as important to a dark mage as Hades or Dark Spikes.

Yeah, that was what I figured, the Wolves don't really have a retainer position, so I assumed we were just skipping them this rotation.

Ugh, Catherine. My feelings about Catherine are complicated Also, did we skip over the Ashen Wolves this round? I was expecting Balthus to be next, and was surprised we went straight to the Church.

Okay, while perhaps a bit longwinded, this much I can understand, though I admit this feels more like a complaint about the modern games industry rather than this game in particular. I agree that pricing all new triple-A games the same regardless of demand is silly and needs to stop, since essentially no other industry does this, and instead performs market research to set prices so as to maximize their profits. It's especially silly with video games given how minimal the cost per unit is, almost all the money in games goes towards development, once the game is made, making copies is dirt cheap, especially in an age of digital distribution. Plenty of games would likely make more profit if they put more thought into their pricing rather than just pricing every game the same. I don't think pricing has anything to do with 'fairness' or cost of production, every business sets prices to maximize their profits, expecting otherwise isn't realistic, but I do think some games would actually benefit from a lower price tag, and would make more money by reaching a wider audience than they otherwise would. Nintendo refusing to put older games on sale or lower prices over time is a separate problem, one that I agree is rather silly behavior for a game company, but not relevant to a discussion of a new game I suppose, you wouldn't expect a game this recent to go on sale anyway. Comparing the prices of older games that have had their price decrease over time (and may have cost less to begin with given pricing at the time) to the price of a new game is a bit unfair. Game companies should set prices at what the market will bear. If a decrease in price will help them sell enough additional games to make them more profit overall, they should do so. But if not, I don't think it's reasonable or realistic to expect lower prices if it won't result in higher profits overall. The game sold quite well given the niche it occupies, I personally doubt a $40 or $50 price tag would have sold enough additional units to result in higher profits, but I'm not an economist, it's hard to estimate how many people would have bought this game at those price points who didn't buy it at $60.

To be fair, I can't think of a single primary axe-user who doesn't feel disappointing compared to Edelgard, that's hardly a point against Hilda. But I agree she's not quite that good.

Well, at very least there are some signs that Mass Effect may not be dead after all. The collection sold very well, and I've heard another game is in the works. It's one of the things I find comforting about video game franchises. Even if a single bad game kills interest in new games for the franchise for a while, if the franchise was strong enough, with at least a few truly good games, nostalgia for the older, good games in the series will eventually drum up enough interest for more, especially in this age of remakes and remasters, which serve as an excellent way for creators to test the waters and see how much good will exists for a franchise that has been quiet for a while. Many franchise I believed to be dead have revived many years later. Not all of them of course, but it's nice to know that there's always hope for these sorts of things.

I think we're agreeing with each other without realizing it. This is kinda what I meant, that the company can only make assumptions about why a game doesn't sell. And even if it sells well enough to continue the series, if it sold worse than the previous game in the series, the creators can only guess as to why. There are ways to gather information about how players play a game, about who plays a given game. Gathering information about the people who chose not to buy the game is much harder, it's why I believe positive feedback is easier to provide than negative feedback. If you support games that do certain things, that establishes a pattern developers can eventually notice. But when I choose not to buy two different games, often it's for entirely different reasons, and if you picked ten people at random who also chose not to buy those games, odds are good many their reasons were also different from my own, so the developers don't get much information from that. But 'this game did well, make more games that do things like this' is a message developers can learn from, and often do, as successful games often lead to games that imitate them.

I have to agree, when I wish for a game to fail, its because it's predatory, with loads of microtransations, or worse, gambling, preying on vulnerable people. The only fire emblem I have ever wished would fail is Heroes, because I despise lootboxes and Gacha games in all forms. If your business model relies on harming people with gambling addictions in order to succeed, then you deserve to fail, and should be ashamed of what you have created. But hoping a game will fail just because it's not the sort of game I enjoy feels bitter and petty. I don't enjoy competitive multiplayer. I don't hope such games fail, I simply seek out other games. If a game from a single player series I normally enjoy became competitive multiplayer, I'd certainly be disappointed, but even then, hoping it fails feels like a bit of a stretch. I continue to support the games that provide what I am looking for. It's all a consumer can do. It's our way of saying "I approve of this". When you don't buy a game, the developer has no idea why: maybe you couldn't afford it, maybe you don't like the genre, maybe you dislike their business practices, maybe the game wasn't very well made, maybe something else you were more interested in came out around the same time, who knows? Providing negative feedback to a developer through purchasing decisions is all but impossible, because the message is so muddled. Positive feedback is much easier to provide, much easier to measure.

Um... no, you can not, that is an inherently subjective claim, a statement of opinion. No one can objectively declare something to be poor quality. I understand your point of view a bit better, but... well, the number of games I can play for 300+ hours and still be having fun is low. Three Hopes is one of those games, I have sunk almost 350 hours into this game, and I had a great time. There are numerous games I would consider good that don't meet those standards. So hearing that you had 300+ hours of entertainment from a game and then hearing you turn around and call it poor quality... I'm certainly not saying you're incorrect, as I said, quality is subjective, it is a matter of opinion. I'm only saying that if your standards for games are so high that 300 hours of enjoyment and entertainment are not worth $60, you're going to be disappointed more often than not. I certainly don't consider the game perfect, there are numerous improvements I would like to see. There are plenty of ways it could be better. But having extracted as much enjoyment and entertainment out of the game as I have (enjoyment and entertainment being the entire point of a game), I can't possibly declare it poor quality. I am merely surprised that we seem to have had a similar experience with the game (played for 300+ hours and are still enjoying it), and yet come to polar opposite conclusions.

No, I was not referring to you, but Tediz64 mentioned that he evidently spent about 300+ hours on his first couple of runs of the game, and yet also said the game was 'piss-poor quality', which I admit I find a bit confusing, as I would expect one to come to that conclusion well before that point, and then stop playing. While I can understand and even agree that some of the responses in this thread to the negativity have been perhaps a bit too hostile, I can also understand the frustration: this was clearly a thread intended as a celebration of the financial success of a game people here enjoyed. Having numerous people come into this thread bemoaning said success and expressing a desire for the game to fail... I mean, again, I agree that perhaps some of the responses were overly hostile, but if you come into a celebration specifically to complain about the very thing people are celebrating, it's perhaps foolish to expect a receptive audience. It does come across as intentionally trying to rain on the parade.