Wist

Crymaria looks suitably dressed for snowstorms... I hope they show a video of the Brave System at some point. I'm having trouble picturing it for some reason. But I don't want to be suspicious of something new just because it's new and I'm uncreative. I agree it should open up more tactical options. Thanks for posting and commenting on the news you've come across so far!

Actually, this isn't really a helpful post, so I'm deleting it.

Absolutely spot on. "I guarantee you if you made characters less sexualized it wouldn't change shit" isn't something you can guarantee. Perhaps changing nothing but the outfits wouldn't make a big difference. But changing the dynamic with the outfits, the personalities, and character's roles in the stories (like all the examples @I'm a Spheal mentioned) might. It's this dynamic that's probably the biggest contributing factor to a gender bias. Games are a broad category of entertainment. Even Fire Emblem is pretty broad. Strategy, story, party building, relationships, grinding, and resource management are among the many aspects of Fire Emblem that appeal to different people irrespective of their gender. It would be a shame if the series were artificially locked into catering to one reliable but isolated market segment, and an inevitable detriment to the quality of the series. It's high time the developers figured this out and properly acted on it.

I've been busy so hadn't taken the time to read through the pictures and commentary properly until now when it's emotionally convenient to procrastinate. You noticed and remarked on much more than I ever could have!

Thank you @Tryhard and @Ertrick36 for answering my question so thoroughly. When I wasn't losing to my sister I had a lot of fun with SCII's single player modes. It'll be nice if those make a proper return to form.

@Freezerburn's link suggests some. Though I would consider series instead of genres. For example, I'd be surprised if Kingdom Hearts had more male fans than female. And like @Freezerburn suggested, female playership in general is probably broadly underestimated. I suspect the number of women playing Fire Emblem is probably underestimated too. Maybe this is a tangent, but I also want to contribute to the notion that it can be hard to accurately judge the make-up of a forum. By no means am I arguing against the premise of the thread or the weighting of SF's gender ratio. But when I've seen topics like this in other communities, it's often turned out male posters assumed most other members were men when that wasn't actually the case. Anyways, @Florete makes an interesting point about the protagonists. The trailers, box art, and other promotional material probably have a lot of influence. I get the impression fewer woman discount games merely for having a male protagonist than men discount games merely for having a female protagonist ("I can't possibly relate to a girl... even though I can relate to a 200kg homicidal space marine..."). However, the coupling of serious male characters with cute/sexy support role girls makes the games look specifically designed with only straight male players in mind. And that probably goes a ways toward implying the stories will be less immersing (immersive?) for women (generally speaking). Can anyone comment on if FE Warriors is any good with this? I know it has dual protagonists, but I haven't kept up with the game at all, much less kept track of its marketing. Are they represented convincingly equally?

I played II with my sister a lot. Never played any of the others. But if she ever gets the chance to visit I'll pick this up! What didn't people like about IV or V that they're hoping will be fixed?

No worries. My fault for being too eager to check the thread! I don't have lots of time for games, so well under 30 hours sounds great. I just have to decide which version I want.

I have soft spots for a few characters, but none I'd consider a waifu. Balthier is my man though!

Funny you post this now. I was just this morning looking into the Atelier series. But I wasn't decided on which to try first. It would benefit from some paragraph breaks, but thanks for the review! Now thinking I might start with Ayesha too. Roughly how long did it take you to beat? Did you play the Vita version? How was the frame rate?

Nanoblock did some Pokemon too. But yeah, that's not Lego. Anyways, echoing what a few others have said, I love the idea, bu I'm not sure how well Fire Emblem would translate to a traditional theme set. They could make minifigures for various characters easily enough. But what about locations? I can think of castles, ruins, and sailing ships. Perhaps catapults or dragons. I guess I'm having trouble picturing it. But maybe I'm just not being creative.

I'm not convinced it's fair to compare the media release schedule for this game to a flagship Mario title. Half of what characterises VC are its aesthetic and character centric drama. And the trailer shows those off pretty well. Actually, from a marketing perspective, I think they achieved a lot. The first half of the announcement video is dedicated to building rapport by assuring fans they're going back to roots and taking development seriously. They could have released only that and I think fans would have been clamouring for more. I (personally) agree with @Ertrick36 and @Magical CC on fewer classes being better. A variety of classes can be fun. But I think reduced options better encouraging strategic creativity if the maps are diverse. I also really like the swimming idea in particular.

It's odd how slow DS emulators for computers still are. On my laptop (which has Chromebook specs) DraStic running in an Android emulator was twice as fast as DeSmuME. It's a pain to set up, but if you're itching to play some more FE12, it might be worth trying.

As I said, 3 is a massive improvement on 2. It still became a chore. 2 being worse doesn't negate that. Edit: I'm not dismissing your recommendation, which seems to be how you read it?

I really hope they don't mess it up. I was going to buy Azure Revolution until the demo turned me off from it completely. I was way more impressed 3 than 2, but it's a slog. So many similar battles on recycled maps. I enjoyed the first 20 hours immensely. But after another 20 hours I gave up on it. Maybe I should have spread out my play time better. But I found it became such a chore to play.

Do card games count? When I got into the Pokemon TCG (shortly before Fossil came out) my dad read up on how to play and started collecting his own cards. Nearly every time I saw him we'd make a few stupid crazy decks and battle it out. There came a point when we stopped buying new cards because we didn't want to invest in keeping up with power creep. But we kept playing for years and years. I usually lost because he had a much firmer grasp of strategy and metagame than I ever did. But it was great fun. I have a huge soft spot for the Pokemon TCG because of those memories. I also remember linking up Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics Advance with friends after school. The Fire Emblem 'multiplayer' was pretty crap, honestly. But we didn't care. Multiplayer FFTA was more involved, but the battles took longer. I never thought about it before, but I guess the most nostalgic memories were the ones shared with other people. Reading through this thread, I noticed maybe half of you also mentioned at least one shared experience with family or friends.

You make a good point about them serving different purposes. I think also that Echoes was also going for a very particular kind of style. And I happened to be personally very fond of that style. Whereas the Smash songs were composed by a variety of special guest musicians, right? I imagine they're meant to be quite distinct and creative.

I didn't realise the Smash version would be so much more popular. I prefer the Echoes version. It sounds like it's building up to something positively heroic. This makes it consistently exciting. I think this is particularly important for a looping song. The Smash version sounds a bit oppressive. It has a lot of harsh sounds tempered only by what I can only describe as brief dance beat interludes. I never much liked it.

Didn't see that coming. Looks pretty fun though. Does anyone here play Tekken? I've looked into the series a few times, but I've never played it.

How was your trip?

On that note, GameFAQs has alleged 100% support GameShark saves for the North American version, if your emulator supports those.

I was enjoying playing until Remastered came out. Updated to find the latest patched version no longer runs in Wine. 8[ Suppose I'm busy the next two weeks though anyways. But afterwards, assuming I get it running again, I'd love to play some games (ladder, melee, FFA, UMS, whatever) with anyone here who's interested.

I agree it's possible save data storage medium wasn't a deciding influence. But perhaps I wasn't clear about why I highlighted the topic of FeRAM. GBA carts don't use batteries for game saves. Some carts use batteries for internal clocks, but still not for saves. Additionally, GBA carts offer more non-volatile storage media options than DS carts. Battery backed SRAM is faster or "more powerful" than flash. A key advantage of FeRAM is SRAM performance despite the lack of a battery. FeRAM is more resilient than flash memory, which is what DS Fire Emblem carts and the Wii use. Autosaving after each move can result in hundreds of save writes per chapter, maybe 2~20 thousand per typical playthrough. A few such playthroughs could easily put you within the endurance limits of cheap flash. I don't know how many writes DS carts can endure. But Nintendo did drop FeRAM, and DS games save quite slowly; I expect Nintendo went for cheap parts. The crux of my argument is that autosaving after every move takes more time and causes more wear with Flash RAM than FeRAM. If the write speed or endurance of whatever flash units Nintendo uses was deemed insufficient, it would be reason enough not to implement GBA Fire Emblem style autosaving. As you suggested, the culprit could lie elsewhere. It may not even be technical. Hopefully someone familiar with the topic will shed some light on other possibilities. But judging from the evidence, save file size remains a convincing candidate factor.

I suspect they require too much save data. Most GBA carts use EEPROM (like Zelda, which has small save files) or Flash RAM (like Pokemon, which has large save files). But GBA Fire Emblem carts use FeRAM. This lets them save a middling amount of data a large number of times much faster than other carts at evidently acceptable cost. For whatever reason, it seems Nintendo DS carts (and probably 3DS carts) only use EEPROM or Flash RAM. It's possible neither of these could write enough data fast enough not to slow the game down. Or perhaps flash memory that could withstand a sufficiently large number of writes was deemed too expensive. That's the extent of my limited understanding at least. I don't know much about hardware. Hopefully someone who knows more on the topic can chime in.

I rarely test what I understood, and I'm a bit loath to reread. But that's out of laziness. Like you said, the graded repetition should help. It sounds sensible, so I'll give the 3 phase method an honest try. What kind of responses would you do for the 3rd step? Page/chapter summaries?