Fëanen

At least it goes farther than the Shadow Dragon manga. I get the feeling that the authors add so much to the plot development that they end up cutting out the end when it comes to light that nobody wants to serialize a manga based on a 5 year old game.

The financially minded among us would do well to invest in Kleenex: I have a hunch their stock's gonna go up when the next chapter is out. Credit to Oosawa for staging it so that the Sigurd/Dierdre meeting is even more heartbreaking, not to mention giving Azel a light at the end of the tunnel...and then revealing it to be across a large body of water. Ouch.

You know, based on the design notes, I think manga Trabant is closer to Kaga's intentions than what we saw at the game. O-sawa has an amazing ability to take already sad moments in the game and just make them absolutely heartbreaking. I think we're in for a hell of a ride.

The FE3 patch is totally playable and understandable. I don't know if the script is as polished as it could be, but as far as I can tell without being able to read the original Japanese it conveys everything well enough. The entire game script used in the patch is on the main SF site, you can check it out and see what you think. As for FE4, honestly at this point I'd hold off and wait for Project Naga. I don't know how long they're going to take, but what they're offering looks a lot better than what we have and I think that your patience will be rewarded in the long run. The J2E Renegade/Twilkitri patch that's currently out is okay (we've all been living with it for a long time now), but I gather that the original translation wasn't complete and most of the revisions were more about fixing technical problems rather than improving the translation.

Gotta love how Oosawa worked a gameplay element into a story like that. There's only so much you can do that in the narrative before it just gets ridiculous (imagine if Ira said "I have a Brave Sword, so I can hit you twice!" - it'd just seem stupid) but it was integrated very nicely.

That's interesting. I'm into weapon art and that kind of stuff, are there scans of those pages available somewhere?

This is news to me! I shouldn't be surprised, I know that translating a text-heavy NES game is like trying to put corset on a hippopotamus. What kind of stuff was cut? Good luck with the patch! The font's gonna take a bit of getting used to, but I think it's aesthetically more pleasing. The NES FE games are like old gems, any polish you can give them really helps.

It's not so much that the characters were very good or the lost chapters were pivotal (though it sucks that FE3 cut the first ever dragon boss), but it feels to me like the experience isn't complete without them. Plus, if a person's only exposure to the story was Book 1 the references to Jake and Anna in FE4 and FE7 still don't come across the way they should. Also, I hate dismounting indoors with a passion. Might seem like a petty complaint, but it's easily one of my least favorite mechanics in the series. Though the weapon level system means it's not as annoying in 3 as in 5.

The NES version has the distinction of being the first non-localized FE I played, mere months after FE7 came out. The learning curve isn't as hard as you might think, though of course in those days I didn't really have a functional patch, so it was all trial and error with a little help from the RPG Classics page (no Serenes Forest - it didn't exist yet!) The comparison to the original Zelda is really good - it's so retro that at first glance it seems like a fossil, but when you actually play it and think of the context at the time you really go "wow, this was groundbreaking!" Plus it can be fun to enjoy the retrospective oddities like 2-range Ballisticians and Generals who don't promote from Knights! As a remake it's not bad, I think the problem might be that it couldn't make up its mind about how upgraded it was going to be. We got the weapon triangle and other mainstays of modern Fire Emblem, but at the same time the graphics were almost a step backward from previous games because characters only had hair palettes; this made them seem less individual. The reason for this is pretty clear (reclass), though why the sprites didn't have faces instead of fleshy blocks is beyond me - on the SNES it made sense enough, but if the GBA games could give characters eyes I don't see why the DS team couldn't. Plus, I think fans used to the decent-to-great characterization of more recent games were put off by the fact that the big cast got almost no extra characterization. Some people would use a mediocre character if they liked their personality, but so many of the troops just don't have one to begin with (FE12 improved this a bit with base conversations). Plus, I don't think I've ever seen anybody defend how the gaiden chapters and extra characters were handled. I know I'm not going to. With that being said, it's still a pretty solid game play experience: I just finished my second playthrough. I don't know whether I'd recommend a newcomer the NES or DS version, honestly - the latter is much more in tune with the series as it is now, but losing the retro charm makes its differences more noticeable. As for FE3 Book 1, in all honesty the DS version improved everything it did without cutting the content to make room for a second game, so in a way it's kind of the black sheep of the Shadow Dragon family now.

Ack, I'm so sorry about that. I think part of my confusion was that I just got back to the manga after a long hiatus, and I had files from the previous translator and your team in the same Chapter 6 folder, so between that and the one time mix-up with chapter 43 everything looked more mixed up than it really was. Now that I see what's what, it's clear that your file scheme is perfectly consistent. I'm sorry I didn't delve deeper into the issue before opening my mouth. I totally get how hard scanlation projects are, and I've been really impressed the quality of the current translation. As an aside, if your team ever needs an additional proofreader to take off some of the load, hit me up - I know nothing about Japanese, but on the English side I'm really solid for a non-professional and have a stupid amount of time on my hands. Now I'm left wondering if I'm going to end up feeling a tiny bit of empathy for Langobalt. I already had more feels for Andre than seemed possible (seriously, the guy got one of the actually decent fathers in the story and shot him anyway!), so let's see how it goes.

It's so awesome to finally see this manga continue. I do have one small request - in the future could you please standardize your file naming? I keep chapters in folders by volume (and I'm probably not the only one who does so) and because of that right now chapter 44 is before chapter 43 in the folder.

It's been a while, but I've found that if you offer a Pokemon with a reasonable request, it'll usually be leaped on pretty quickly. I don't know if things got worse in the last few months, but maybe instead of searching you should try requesting.

One strange thing I've stumbled upon is that the name appears in one place outside of FE: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Dissidia_012_Final_Fantasy_Weapons#Axes http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Dissidia_012_Final_Fantasy/Translations#Weapons Two possibilities occur. A) They're referring to the same mythological weapon (probably an axe) and every English-speaking FE fan has totally missed it somehow. B) Somebody on the Dissidia 012 Dev team is a big FE nerd like us and inserted an obscure reference. Either way, it's strange.

Hi guys, Some of you may remember doing a survey from me a while ago about video games and eating habits. It went really well and she's doing the study again in hopes of it being professionally published. Rules: Must be between the ages of 18 and 64 (doubt the upper limit will be a problem XP) US residency not required this time Ten randomly selected participants may earn a $25 Amazon gift card. The survey is also for non-gamers, so I encourage you all to share it with friends and family of the proper age. Thanks so much for your time! https://nyu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8c3QBNiQU1UOVvf

Ah, yes, I was not aware that only US residents could respond. See, I was part of the pilot study which had slightly different questions, so for procedural reasons I can't take the final survey. Truthfully I know very little about the project, it's all a favor for a very good friend.

Hey all. My best friend is going for her Master's degree in nutrition and is doing a project about eating habits among various groups of gamers. We'd really appreciate it if you'd take the time to fill out this survey. https://nyu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3lTQadhOo9ySzhX Huge thanks to all participants.

Regarding the HiPriest/Bishop issue - perhaps we could do what IS does and break out the thesaurus. "Prelate" sounds like it'd fit into the FE world like a glove, so that could be used for one of the classes.

If we're talking Earth Dragon Medeus, I think Gharnef definitely had the upper hand. Though I'm still not sure how he intended to use Falchion.

Eh, I find his attempts to con Chrom by "foretelling" victory amusing. The skirt chasing, not so much. On a related note, I'm not the only one who noticed he looks just like the FE4 Fortune Teller, right?

Nah found a Tree Branch! Based on some of her supports, she'll probably eat it.

Yeah, I've seriously considered that too, and I'm still open to it. But The Scouring serves as an explanation for what happened to the Archanean Mamkutes so well that unless I see some very solid evidence for them being separate worlds, I'm sticking them together.

I'm going with a two world theory - there's the Tellius world and the main FE world where the other nine games happen. The only problem is the knowledge some of the Awakening characters have knowledge of Tellian history, but I think I have a good way to get around that - maybe Soren came with Ike and wrote down what happened in FE9/10? I think it'd be in-character for a scholarly type like him to make a chronicle of their achievements. As for the rest of the games and major events, here's the loose order I want to place them in, based on the timelines found on Serenes Forest. -The Scouring/Decline of Archanea's dragon tribe. -Divine/Earth Dragon War, rise of the Lopto Empire. -Miracle at Darna, fall of Galle XVII -FE 4 and 5 -FE 7 and 6, founding of Archanea by Adrah (about the same time, give or take) -FE1, 2, and 3. -War with Grima, founding of Ylisse -Awakening I don't really have much of a clue about FE8, but I'm tempted to say it should probably be somewhere around the other GBA games. Just a guess based on how Awakening treats them.

So far I've done the following Elwind > Aircalibur (for training) Thoron > Rexbolt Seliph's Blade > Blaggi Sword Ruin > Erishkigal Waste > Lyon's Grief (max accuracy, +3 might) Noble Rapier > Marth's Swrd Forged Brave Weapons will naturally be named Master Weapons after FE5.

I see I'm not the only one who gave Yarne Lethality. I don't care if it has the lowest activation rate, I wanted the Killer Rabbit. If only Walhart had said "what's he gonna do, nibble my bum?"

The artwork from The Complete is a good deal better - still a bit bland, but not hideously deformed looking like some of the Gaiden manual art. I guess they either forgot or didn't have the rights to use that somehow. Honestly, even the 8-bit sprites would've been better than what we got.