Murozaki

I feel people who say the three remakes we've had were "Too faithful" really don't understand how different these three were as experiences compared to the originals. Seriously, if someone says SOV is "too faithful" i am quick to assume they have never played Gaiden because my god the experience between the two is night and day. My take is that any difference a remake makes will create significant changes in the experience already so even something that comes off as a minor change will still mean the experiences between playing the original and the remake will be very different. So it'll already be a vastly different game to begin with, meaning it doesn't really matter.

On the topic of "Pirate Emblem", i always felt it would be very cool to see a Fire Emblem game inspired by Middle Ages Scandinavian nations, full of sea warfare and Viking-esque armies that behave similarly to Pirates and Bandits in other games, but far more organized and far more deadly and dangerous because of it.

My take is that Supports can and should stay but their presence and the emphasis on them should be lowered, they should exist alongside other storytelling aspects to create a cohesive whole: Alternate scripts and Special Events: Tear Ring Saga does this i hear, where there are multiple scripts for a main story chapters based on who is alive and who is not, as to allow for more story presence of the game's cast, as well as special in-map events that can occur in chapters if you bring the characters who are most related to the story events of said chapter; Base Conversations: Conversations that happen in-between chapters, but they can be situationed so as to allow for characters to actually talk about things relating to the current events compared to Supports that, by necessity, require that they happen in this weird time bubble that can range from "beginning of the game" to "minutes before the final boss", they're also more flexible, allowing for more than two participants at a time, and hopefully do it for actual story reasons rather than how RD does it where they feel like they all exist for meta-tutorial talk that is on the level of Lyn Mode dialogue (Seriously IS, if you want tutorial dialogue for players, just use houses or a Tips mechanic); Memory Prisms: They can shed light and allow us to see aspects of the game's story that can not fit the events of the game or in a proper flashback, so as to help develop aspects that the player might be interested in but the game's story does not have enough time to flesh out in greater detail; Supports: The final piece of the puzzle, they should not be large in quantity, and they should only happen for conversations that are both stationary and supplementary in nature, an extra bit of characterization, something you don't need to get the full picture but does provide helpful extra context for the characters involved, and that could also happen at any time in the game's story and not be super jarring, they should also do what Three Houses does and not have them all be 3-4 parts long, be dynamic with the Ranks;

I'd say screw it, go wilder with it, make every single character be able to do it though with some restrictions (Something like Thracia where it's based on a specific stat like Con and you also need to carry the unit with you to the end of the map). If you're gonna give us a mechanic as wild as that make it fun and let a lot of characters be able to do it.

I do not understand why it needs to be "solved" in the first place, unless the character in question only gets themselves in the situation to begin with due to incredibly poor luck like say, critting three times in a row, moments like these are completely avoidable. Thinking about how many enemies are in range of your character and adding up how much damage they would all do in total and how much damage your character will do against them in return during the Enemy Phase is something the player should just do themselves.

Thracia is literally a game where you can screw yourself over from beating it because you didn't know ahead of time that 14 Door Keys would be important to have. Not the hardest FE game but absolutely the hardest to play blind.

Welp, i decided to replay FE4 a few days ago, and while i played it i decided to list down stuff i'd change in a remake, and having now finished it i decided to list them down. Gameplay-Wise: Obviously, QOL additions and options for fans who want a smoother and/or easier experience, such as Enemy Phase skip, a no animations settings without both battle and map animations, Casual Mode, and all that jazz; No "Clever Mode" nonsense, just have consistent AI that makes sense be the default, specially for long-rage Tome users and Ballista archers; Still don't want Trade function, but i would like to see a "Give Item" option for Thieves and Lovers, Thieves can do it with anyone, while Lovers can obviously only do it with each other; Similarly, allow players to select how much Gold is given when the Give Money option is used; Map design should stay the same, but to make things more engaging, make the enemy placement be loads of tiny, 4-6man platoons rather that are all more spread around rather than so distant from each other so the player doesn't spend too much time moving between enemy groups, for example, in a space where there was say, a platoon of four Armor Knights, one General (Authority) and five Cavaliers, split the Cavaliers and Armor enemies into two different 5man groups and make one of them be closer to the player than they were in the original; Alter the Arena a bit, allow animations to be skipped while using it, and allow for some kind of enemy tree inside it, with multiple enemy options in the same tier (Let's make it 2 or 3, that seems like the sweet spot), mostly for the really weak units to have an easier time finding a favorable matchup, obviously make an exception for the final tier in Chapter 2 to recruit Chulainn; Allow certain units to promote earlier, mostly footlocked units, it would make them nicer to use and it wouldn't break the game or anything, im leaning towards a Level 15 benchmark as that would be just soon enough that it makes a difference but not so soon that it takes away from training an unit to reach that point to begin with, i also feel an exception should be made for the Prince/Princess classes as training those up for a big while is a big part of them, so their promotion benchmark should remain Level 20; Earlier access to the Wind tome in Gen 1, mostly to help Azelle out; Easier access to the Rescue staff in Gen 2, restricting it to Chapter 5 and making you need to get Edain and Claud together for it is really bad, just make it a Staff you get at say, Chapter 3 as a drop from a boss and make the couple-exclusive Staff something else, maybe the Berserk Staff as it's exclusive to Charlot otherwise; Hidden Events that give items or power boosts are bad design, straight-up, specially for stuff like the Brave Axe of all things, just straight-up make them not hidden in some way, there are different ways you can do it for each one but just make it clear they're there for the player; A more concrete way of viewing and managing Love Points; Arion should become a blue unit when talked to with Altena on Endgame; Story-wise: I'd like new modern story material elements like Base Conversations, Memory Prisms, and Supports but in the case of Supports in specific i don't feel they should be a replacement for Lover Conversations, make them separate if Support Conversations are implemented; Additional cutscenes, obviously, FE4 like all pre-FE7 games insisted on never showing any story events that took place outside of the physical space a chapter took place in, so this naturally leads to some stuff only occurring off-screen, ditch that and add new cutscenes that show stuff we really should have been able to see; And of course, Lover Conversations for more possible couples; Flesh out and give more characterization to some of the blander characters, specially in Gen 2 where a lot of the characters are carbon copies of their parents barring a few, though some characters in Gen 1 like Midir and Chulainn could use it too; Give Shannan and Oifey more screentime in the Gen 2's main story, they're meant to be the ones who started the rebellion and raised the Tirnanog kids but they lose importance quickly; Let Brigid be more than literally just "The consolation prize for whichever of the archer boys didn't get Edain", since that's how she feels like in the game as is; Speaking of Brigid, this would just be fluffy fanservice for FE5 fans, but i'd like an additional conversation on the end of the game (Around Chapters 10 or the Endgame), be it a Base Conversation or a map conversation, between Finn, Patty and Favail, where he informs them that their mother is still alive; Be it in an additional cutscene or a Base Conversation, i would like to see a conversation between all four of Finn, Shanna, Oifey and Lewyn, as they are the four characters in the game present in the story of both generations; Be it on additional cutscenes or a Memory Prism, show us more of the Frieges, they are supposed to be more sympathetic than other foes you face outside of Hilda, but it's all conveyed through telling rather than showing, show us how they are actually supposed to be more redeemable rather than just saying they are; Similarly to the above, show us stuff that is just told in the original such as Julius before he got the Book of Loptous (As well as his family life with Arvis, Julia and Deirdre and his relationship with Ishtar), Altenna being raised in Thracia and seeing all of the hardships its people face, Azelle's relationship with Arvis, and stuff about the conflict in Isaach in Gen 1, like, Prince Kurth is meant to be such an important figure on the game's story but the game never has him appear on-screen ever; Expand more on Arion's fate after the game, like, he apparently fucks off and doesn't even help his sister rebuild the country he grew up as the prince of and loved so much and is apparently super-depressed at the ending? I don't get it, feels like i missed something there; Don't let Shannan and Oifey be able to become Lovers with Patty and Larcei, i can hesitantly stomach all of the cousin couples that Gen 2 allows as well as all the other age gap couples that Shannan and Oifey can end up, hesitantly, but in the case of these two, Shannan and Oifey pretty much raised them, they are their children, them getting together with either of those two is where it just crosses the line into too much for me;

My take on balance is that it's pointless to try to "fix" the roster's balance without completely overhauling the game into something completely different. So instead i'd rather just focus on making it so that if a player wants to use a suboptimal unit out of their own volition, that they don't have a frustrating time, which is how it can be to use such units in FE6. So i wouldn't bother trying to make someone like Wendy/Gwendolyn outright good or top-tier, i'd just want it so that if i decided to use her i don't have an annoying time. There's also other things that might be introduced into the game that we can take into account, i could easily see IS adding a Skill system, even if it's a relatively minor one compared to something like TH or Fates, and that still having a significant impact. Or reclassing, just something as small as a system where one unit can change class to one other class and nothing more could still have a big impact on unit viability.

Ottservia. You of all people should have to understand that making pointless arbitrary comparisons to throw something under the bus is not what makes for good discourse. And looking at your posts about SOV in general i legitimately think you don't understand what SOV is actually about. I don't even like SOV's story all that much and i feel your reading of it is incredibly flawed.

FE6 > FE7 > FE8 FE6 has the best map design of the three, it does suffer from the worst balance issues of the three (Using some of the characters with low bases in Hard Mode is outright torture, at least at the start) and some pretty bad design choices (Sacae sucks, all of it) but overall it's a game that does a good job at having varied maps with a good balance of interesting combat situations, anti-turtling incentives and map-specific gimmicks. Writing-wise it's a mixed bag, some of the cast is great like Rutger, Igrene or Niime. Then you have people like Oogier and Gwendolyn who are so bland they almost feel like joke characters, the core story is fine and serviceable, i actually do appreciate a lot of the ideas and conflicts that the story attempts to explore, but it is all delivered through the blandest scripts ever, the story has cool theming and parallels going for it but so much of it is just delivered through Roy listening to exposition from Merlinus, Elfin or Guinivere, if there's one wish i have more than anything else that i have for a possible remake is for the story to remain the same but for the scripts to be different. FE7's map design is more mixed, it has some great maps but overall they tend to lend themselves more on the gimmicky side, which works in some instances and not in others (*cough*Kishuna*cough*), character balance is better, certain characters are way worse than others but using the Low-Tiers won't be agonizing, but the low enemy quality means it's pretty easy to juggernaut with 1-2 physical weapons, a mixed bag overall. Writing-wise i really love a lot of the cast, Lucius, Renault, Nino, Legault, Canas, Harken, Pent, Serra, Oswin and so many others, when it comes to the main script i really enjoy the character arcs for Eliwood and Hector (It is what makes Eliwood one of my favorite characters in the series) but it is a shame that Lyn is pretty much completely irrelevant, it also suffers quite a bit from Nergal being pretty incompetent and not as a deliberate choice by the writers like say, Narcian, but overall i enjoy it for having some of the best theming of the series and great thematic conflict. FE8 is fun and relaxing, but it is also kind of milquetoast, the gameplay just does the bare minimum to remain interesting but not much more beyond that, i do give it credit for having what i consider one of the best Rout maps in the series (The one with the Gorgon eggs). Writing-wise it has a great cast, i really love a lot of the Support Conversations in this game, but the main story... just kind of goes? It feels like the war with Grado lasted a few weeks at most due to how quickly everything goes by, not helped in part due to how Grado is the only core enemy faction in the game, most other enemy groups lasting one single chapter at most, and oh boy Eirika and Ephraim, they're fine enough characters in their Support Conversations, and while i appreciate what the writers were going for in their conflict and arcs in the main story, it all just kind of falls flat, they're some of my least favorite Lords in the series due to me not even disliking them but just really preferring the other Lords way more (Really only Alm, Celica and Corrin are below them now that i think about it), the part i most enjoy about Sacred Stones' story really are the villains, they all for the most part serve their role well enough, specially Lyon, who i would consider one of the best characters in the series, but given how short and underbaked most of the conflict in the main story is they can't really carry it on their own.

I don't think "Canon" means what you all think it means. I don't want to get into a gigantic argument over authorial intent so i'll try to keep this brief. People can and do have different interpretations and personal choices in a work of art, different interpretations of the meaning of something as well as what choices makes more sense for a story. Their own vision. But "Canon" can only be the interpretations and choices that you cannot have any agency over. What is completely set in stone, and it is also important to remember: In a series where entries can share continuity, canon can and often will be self-contained. Marth and Caeda being lovers is canon, it does not matter what choice the player makes these two will always be each other's romantic interest first and foremost. All of Shadow Dragon's cast surviving the events of that game is canon to New Mystery of the Emblem, as well as Arran being the one recruited by Marth's army in the game's events rather than Samson. But neither of those are canon to Shadow Dragon and Shadow Dragon in specific. Ced being the child of Lewyn is canon to Thracia 776, but it is not canon to Genealogy of the Holy War. Same with Nanna being Leif's love interest, or Leif's rebellion to take back Munster being successful. Ninian being Eliwood's lover is not canon. Be it for Blazing Blade or Binding Blade. Of course, in discussion that doesn't mean that stuff the player has choice ever should be completely disregarded because "it's not canon", because the fact these choices can happen in the first place can still be used to examine a character under specific contexts. Neither male Byleth nor female Byleth are canon, but you can still take the differences in dialogue certain characters have when talking with Byleth depending on their gender and talk about it in discussions and analysis of course, as the fact there is differences in the first place and what these differences are can tell more about the characters involved.

Pardon me, but could you elaborate? I never interpreted the story of FE4 in that manner.

Trading around the Paragon Band is not worth it. It's better to just pawn it off to one unit you want to give favoritism to than to try to make as much people use it as possible. Most people make that one unit Lachesis since it makes her getting to Master Knight far quicker.

That's actually one thing to consider, every single game since Awakening, remake or otherwise, has usually had some story-focused DLC with it. Awakening had Futures Past, Fates had Heirs of Fate, Echoes had Rise of the Deliverance and Three Houses had Cindered Shadows. Which does make one wonder what they would do for a Genealogy remake in specific.

Robin > Byleth > Mark > Kris > Corrin Robin is the best because they're the only one where you could easily just make them not an Avatar and just be a normal character and nothing would change in the slightest; Byleth is the second best because even though them being an avatar, and most of all a silent avatar, hurts the writing in some areas, they're still for the most part fine, if they were not silent and were instead basically an "Avatar-in-name-only" like Robin and Corrin i could see them being the best for me; Mark is pointless, remove them from the story altogether and you lose literally nothing; Kris is like Mark except the few moments where Kris actually does something it's all just them repeating lines other characters said in the original game, which irks me; Corrin is just ugh, they're not pointless to the story like how Mark and Kris are but their role and character are so blegh that it makes me have a reaction of "I'd rather have nothing", nothing in this case being something like Mark;

People say that FE5 is the game that you gotta play with a guide, and honestly, i only agree to a certain extent. For FE4 though? That is the game i feel new players should absolutely read about before starting, sure, it's a far less difficult game than FE5, but unlike FE5, which, despite all the nutty stuff, still follows a standard FE game formula, only with a bunch of extra mechanics that change it up like Capture or Stamina, FE4 is from the outset a completely different beast that can be hard to adjust to. The biggest pieces of general advice that i can give are: Money matters only as much as one unit needs it, and the only money a unit will ever need is how much money they need to get a ring they need, or, if they're a Staff unit, fixing a broken non-healing Staff, anything else, from buying weapons on the armory, passing weapons through the Pawn Shop or fixing weapons, can all be handled by sending the unit to the Arena for a bit; To make dealing with the above issue more easy, whenever you face a boss with a proper portrait and dialogue, specially if they're guarding a castle, make sure to check if they drop an item or weapon, if they do, make sure to have a proper plan on who to get the killing blow to make inventory management easier; As far as weapons go, typically you will want each unit to carry around one strong weapon, one weak weapon, one 1-2 range option (If they have access to one) and maybe one situational weapon (e.g. Armorslayers, Horseslayers, Wingslayers, etc.), anything more will be superfluous, there's no reason to give Ayra a Silver Sword since if she needs a strong weapon to one-round an enemy she can just use the Brave Sword for example; Don't do Arena before starting the chapter proper, if you wanna grind, do it mid-chapter during moments of respite between castle seizes, or at the very end before seizing the final castle in a chapter; Mounted combatants are decent at worst though how they're good can often be unintuitive or have caveats to it in Gen 1 at least, this could honestly be its own list with how it goes: Sigurd is Sigurd; Alec and Noish can contribute a lot but only if you give them lots of favoritism, Noish needs a Pursuit Ring and Alec needs a very strong offensive boost such as the Power Ring and/or a stronger weapon; Quan has excellent bases, if you get him the early Silver Lance from Chapter 2, he will be perfect for setting up kills for other characters as his lack of Pursuit and reliance on Adept means he's unlikely to 1-round most enemies but he'll still leave them with very little HP to help your other units get the kill, kills he himself won't need because his bases are already great; Finn is just okay until he gets the Brave Lance (And even then you might need to pawn off the Speed Ring to him to make him more consistent); Lex needs the secret event to get the Brave Axe to be great; Midir can contribute a lot... if you pawn off the early Killer Bow to him, trust me, Jamke won't need it, Iron Bow Midir is okay and Killer Bow Jamke is good, but Killer Bow Midir is great and Iron/Steel Bow Jamke is still good, giving Midir the Killer Bow means having an excellent high move chipper (Which trust me, is far more useful than it sounds) and Jamke's own performance as a "1-round 1 Enemy" button for Player Phase will only be slightly hurt at worst; Beowulf is straightforward, already starts off with Pursuit, has much better bases than Alec and Sword access means it's not hard for him to double, all he needs is a good weapon, preferably a 1-2 range sword like the Bolt Sword from Chapter 3; As you can see, mounted combatants can and will contribute a lot, but in order to do so you kind of have to either give them some kind of preferential treatment (Alec and Noish mostly) or you have to do some kind of "How was i supposed to think of that?" decision of investment like the Midir one, it's all rather unintuitive i'll admit, but if you do stuff like this you'll get way more out of them than just using them at base with their starting inventory without putting much thought into more. The only action here in this list i wouldn't take is the favoritism for Alec and Noish and even then only if you really want to focus on Inheritance and training up your footies a lot.

Minerva for me, she is probably my favorite Archanea character, the way she struggles with being in a position that necessitates her to have a hardened heart while being too kind for that is compelling to me. Another Archanean example would be Gharnef for being a surprisingly well-done take on an evil mastermind character. His role in the story is simple: To be comically evil and to manipulate and kickstart the events of both FE11 and FE12, and he does a great job in both of such things. Beyond these two another notable example would be Kotaro from Fates, most of Fates' villains and antagonists are neither interesting nor threatening, so Kotaro for me stands out for getting a decent amount of characterization and presence in his short screentime. Specially in how he actually has a personal connection to a character that isn't Corrin, something Fates otherwise didn't have.

I'd say the easiest way to make the backtracking be less time-consuming would be a few small changes, not one big change, but a few small changes addint up together: Reworking movement-inpeding terrain; Adding roads to more areas you have to backtrack through; A few Warp and Rescue staves;

The game i'd compare it to the most is Tactics Ogre. A game which, similarly to the early Fire Emblem games, were a large influence in the SRPG genre. The team behind the game went on to make Final Fantasy Tactics (Which was very similar in tone and gameplay, with Final Fantasy iconography added in) and Ogre Battle, both of which went on to introduce more mechanics and ideas, including the aforementioned ledges and knocking units around. Specially given that the team behind Triangle also worked on Bravely Default, which was heavily inspired by Final Fantasy V, and Octopath Traveller, which was heavily inspired by Saga. If you enjoyed the demo and want something similar to that, i would definitely recommend Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics and Ogre Battle. For me personally, while i enjoy how these games possess very complex storytelling focusing greatly on worldbuilding, political intrigue and multiple clashes of character motivation (Which, going by the Triangle demo, is still strong here), the gameplay focus is significantly different, while the tactical gameplay is still there and done decently, the games feel far more like a normal RPG but on a tile-based grid compared to Fire Emblem which places far more emphasis on the "Strategy" part of "Strategy RPG". Keep these in mind with your expectations going in.

I didn't expect nor want much. I wanted No More Heroes 3 footage, Monster Hunter Rise footage, and a Dai Gyakuten Saiban localization reveal. I got two of those things so im happy. Beyond what i wanted and expected, Pyra and Mythra in Smash look neat, i should check out XBDE and XB2 these days. Splatoon 3 looks cool though i probably won't play it myself. And the new game by the Bravely Default team seems interesting.

What defines a moral gray area to begin with is ill-defined and difficult to discuss so that's understandable.

I believed flying units got boosts from special terrain. I believed it was pronounced "Kah-eh-dah".

There is no definitive answer because anything can work so long as the game is properly balanced around it. If the game is properly balanced around it Archers without 1-range can work. If the game is properly balanced around it Archers with 1-range can work. Of course, this only speaks of theoretical new games, when it comes to remakes or discussions of how the balance of already existing games in the franchise could be improved, i feel the answer is almost always no.

Thracia 776 > Mystery of the Emblem > Genealogy of the Holy War > Shadow Dragon and the Sword of Light >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Gaiden

Now that i thought about it, i wonder, wouldn't it be neat for a Fire Emblem game that makes certain action provide more EXP for certain classes? You could balance it around what the class's intended role in the game is, and make it so that the more infrequent and specific the action is, the more EXP it gives. Just to spitball two examples, you could have Thieves be able to steal from enemies and gain EXP for it like in some of the games. But rather than a small amount, the amount of EXP they would gain from it would be equal to what they would gain from defeating the enemy in combat if not greater, as stealing is a very infrequent action that Thieves mostly do in very specific scenarios in the games. For a less specific and far more frequent example, there are Archers and chip damage, typically in Fire Emblem Archers are designed not to be combat gods who one-round the enemies with ease, but to needle down their health from a safe distance for others to finish off, having just enough power to significantly lower the enemy's HP but not enough to finisht them off. Well, why not make it so that they gain double the EXP from chipping damage compared to other classes, it would be a small increase as chipping EXP is small, and it definitely won't magically make Archers top tier, but it would go a long way to make Archers far easier to use for those who do want to use them. Fire Emblem is an RPG, characters are meant to gain experience and level up so they become better at their specialties, and doing this i feel might help units with more niche uses become easier to use, not become great units, but become easier to use for those who do wish to use them. Archers in specific would become far more easy to use with this as a big issue is that, as they're often designed to be used for chip damage, they won't be able to keep up with the EXP gain of units that are actually meant to defeat enemies, so after a while they won't have enough Strength or Speed to actually do their job properly. Of course, Archers have many other weaknesses beyond their HP gain, and to repeat this change wouldn't make them good units in most of the games, but it would make using them take a lot of less babying. Which i guess is the general idea here, not to make the classes great, but to make using them require less babying and busywork.