Is the hate on Shadow Dragon justified?

[RJWalker]

The Wooden Cavalry is a great chapter on more reasonable difficulties. It's really fun in H2. A novel idea that at least tries to be different than most chapters in the game and the series too.

I personally never really enjoyed this level too much. It's a fun little gimmick map, but it doesn't leave much open to interpretation. One of those Fe1 levels that I didn't feel translate too well, up there with ch19 and 21.

So I know that chapter is radically different in FE1 where Shooters have only 1-2 range but I'm curios about what makes chapter 19 different.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Ranger Jack Walker

[eclipse]

What are the ballistas' targeting patterns?

I personally never really enjoyed this level too much. It's a fun little gimmick map, but it doesn't leave much open to interpretation. One of those Fe1 levels that I didn't feel translate too well, up there with ch19 and 21.

They'll go after the most paper-thin units first, so reclassing some scrub to Unpromoted Staffbot and having him/her wander into range will draw the ballista's ire. It's a pretty fun trick for drawing out one of the ballista on top, so someone more competent can obliterate it. The middle is a PITA, and influencing the ballista movement there is a bit trickier (as my bait will usually die to the southern ballista). The three ballista on the bottom can be taken care of by a single unit (there's a single time where that unit can stand, and none of the southern ballista can target him/her), as long as they can take a single hit from the ballista in the middle. Checking which ballista move and which ones are stationary doesn't take that long. Drawing Astram isn't too bad, assuming that whoever does so can take a Silver Sword and a Stonehoist shot to the face.

Arrowspate will target flying units over normal units (in general). IIRC, the Thunderbolt guy won't do much unless Jake/Beck are in range. You get your own Thunderbolt on this map, so I don't see what the huge hubbub is. Honestly, the most annoying unit on this map is the staffbot next to the boss.

Since Physic has unlimited range, I have a couple of staffbots near the starting save point, and have them patch up units as needed.

[Constable Reggie]

Huh, I forgot that shooters were 1-2 range in Fe1. Haven't played that shit in forever.

Imo it's just a boring map with nothing really interesting about it. I can forgive it in Fe1 because Fe1, but it doesn't really translate too well to a more modern game. They at least covered all the rooms with chests/hunters, but I feel it doesn't do enough to save the chapter as a whole. Actually, this also kinda hurts it, because if you know which rooms hold enemies and which don't (it's pretty easy to figure out), the level's even easier.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Constable Reggie

[dondon151]

So I leave you with the apology you so wanted from the previous post.

lol, a non-apology is very clearly not an apology. if i punched you in the face, "i'm sorry your face was in the way of my fist" is nothing less than belligerent.

Sure, but you sure as hell took your sweet time to jab at me with an out-of-nowhere condescending hand-wave and then form a huge, entirely irrelevant post attempting to defend yourself when no one but yourself cared in the first place.

what condescending hand-wave? the allegation that my posts "suck" is relevant to the FE6 argument at hand because there is evidence that points are preferentially ignored based on the person who made them. additionally, i rightly predicted the frequent use of the "but a casual player wouldn't do that" card pulled in response to citations of FE6's merits. are you going to stand by your original statement, or are you going to retract it?

Edited July 5, 2014 by dondon151

[Jotari]

I've played up to H4 and I can say I've enjoyed the Wooden Cavalry. You have to be careful how you go about things and baiting the moving enemies is really important but another crucial factor is the fact that ballistas can't attack from close range. Meaning once you clear the center you can get up close and personal with the ballistas on each side without them being able to fight back. Similarly the boss is completely open if you manage to deal with the two enemies covering him. The fact that you also get your own ballista slaying weapon really helps too. I believe the primary purpose of this map is to encourage you to use your own ballista units. It splits Beck and Jake up too practically forcing you to use them both in different ways.

[dondon151]

wooden cavalry has its good aspects in that you can get around enemy ballista range by swarming them with 10 mov fliers, but i don't think there's a really elegant strategic way to do that map in its entirety without warp.

on H5, thunderbolt isn't terribly useful either because it fails to OHKO enemy ballisticians.

[eclipse]

Wooden Calvary is a free map to sacrifice units in, IMO.

Assuming you got the Chapter 10 Levin Sword, will that along with Thunderbolt get rid of ballista on H5?

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Huh, I forgot that shooters were 1-2 range in Fe1. Haven't played that shit in forever.

Imo it's just a boring map with nothing really interesting about it. I can forgive it in Fe1 because Fe1, but it doesn't really translate too well to a more modern game. They at least covered all the rooms with chests/hunters, but I feel it doesn't do enough to save the chapter as a whole. Actually, this also kinda hurts it, because if you know which rooms hold enemies and which don't (it's pretty easy to figure out), the level's even easier.

Wait 19 is Manakete and 21 is Dracospam isn't it?

19 in FE1 is so laughable since you can have Marth Vacuum every non thief which for slow players basically means insta win since they won't attack Bantu. I think its MUCH better(tolerable) in FE11 thanks to how shitty FE11 item system is for a chapter where you need to take items

21 is basically Awakening Map design lol

Edited July 5, 2014 by Anti-Fun

[Irysa]

Wooden Calvary is a free map to sacrifice units in, IMO.

I don't believe that arguing that the chapter is made easier by suiciding units in order to beat it is a valid form of defence for the map. You could say the same about Awakening Lunatic+ Ch2. It is true that SD gives benefits to people who let units die, but it is also equally true that by most people's standards, letting someone die isn't acceptable. Before I say anything more though, obviously the entire game probably can't be judged by H5 standards, it is merely the only metric I have had whilst playing the game, and I don't considering having to rig dodges from LRT spam particularly fun.

That all being said, on H5 the boss OHKO's like everybody and killing him via thunderbolt with beck+jake doesn't remove the problem of the surrounding ballisticians killing beck and jake afterwards. Given their bulk on H5, only doubling mages w/elfire or bolganone or Cain/Abel/Hardin at at least 14 str 10 spd with a silver lance (on average they have to be like level 20 for that but since you can rig growths a lot via savepoints, more feasible than I'd imagine I guess) can get any ORKOs on ballista.

The best way to beat the map I could see at that level was to use warp + killer weapon/excalibur and rig crits and then dodges on key enemies including the boss and then mop up the rest whilst using early savepoints to rig dodges afterwards. All in all it's pretty RNGy. The top half of the map is pretty easy to get through via baiting with a staffer who should be able to survive one hit (in my case, Merric) but the bottom and center are still huge PITA beacuse getting hit twice is dead and eating a single stonehoist probably means you're dead too.

"Warpskipping" and "rescuedropping" are not the first two terms I thought of way back when I first played FE. Hell, I think I didn't use the Warp staff at all until I started drafting (didn't see the point, as I saw little benefit to finishing a map faster). Now, back to the ONE thing I wanted to respond to.

You're correct, they weren't the things I thought of either. That's why I give FE6 (at least when I first played it on HM) credit for actually teaching me a lot more about the value of rescue, and about the function of the warp staff, among other things. When I first played FE6 I was the stereotypical FE beginner who never used any prepromotes and arena abused and such, but trying to do that on HM is actually a fucking nightmare. Immediately it's very apparent that someone like Marcus becomes far more important when you look at ch1 and realise "holy hell, most of my units 4rko most of these enemies" whilst Marcus can ORKO or put any of them into one hit death range with his iron sword. That's just one example but given my own personal experience overall FE6 is definitely THE game that got me to use more advanced strategies or at least consider them. For a lot of other people here it appears to be Thracia, but seeing as I haven't played it I can't comment on that.

Jesus dude I've already explained why. 6's levels are generally designed so that the best way to handle it is to take your ball of units (or two if it's split up) and move them all towards one area. You can argue petty little details of the levels all you want. I can do the same with 7's maps. The distance between the first and second set of chests and the fact that you only have one thief implies that to get the chests as quickly as possible is to rescue chain Matthew from the first set of chests to the second. The shaman protecting the first set is strong enough to 2hko any one of your units, which, combined with the archer in the room, means you have to bring 2 combat units, waste time healing, or bring a healer. The game sends Raven towards your way, but the myriad of archers makes it more difficult to protect Priscilla, the person who is probably healing your frontline, when approaching Raven. Past that, it's (optionally) crucial to save the soldiers before they get themselves killed on the archers in the stairs room, so you divert some units to deal with that on the way up. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, a constant flood of cavalier reinforcements are coming from the back, either requiring you to split your team even further to deal with this or risk getting pincered.

"Petty little details" are an important part of design within any given map though. The fact is that once again, you've made a grossly misproportionate summary of how the seize objective generally functions on most maps and continue to dismiss specifics in FE6 yet praise them in 7.

Attempting to actually secure all the chests with Matthew in ch17 is stupid because you need at best (assuming you use every single fucking mounted unit in your army bar Marcus and Pris in a rescue chain since he is probaby killing everything and she's probably recruiting Raven or healing somebody else) an extra 3 turns to get Matthew to the top of the map, then another 3 turns to get all the extra loot up there. If you actually want all the loot there, I'm pretty sure that in FE7 thieves who have looted chests drop the item they stole upon death, and that chapter spawns thieves on turn 4 and 5 who can basically do Matthew's job for him if you kill them, so rescuepassing Matthew to the top of the map is basically obsolete even in casual play.

The shaman's is pretty pathetically easy to ORKO for any remotely decent unit, there is no archer in the chest room at the bottom left in hard mode (for some reason) and Matthew has to spend a turn opening the door anyway, so that gives whoever killed the Shaman a free turn to heal before then ORKOing the archer in the room (who is only there on NM anyway so once again is an easy ORKO).

Protecting Pris isn't hard at all.because the corridors are so goddamn narrow all you have to do is block the way adequately with 2 units and the enemies are so weak they won't kill her unless they gang up.

Saving all the soldiers is easy because they only leave their cell on turn 8, by which point nearly all the enemies are dead except for maybe some reinforcements from the back.

You can simply leave Oswin at the rear end of the map and he is pretty much invincible to the reinforcements and will protect Merlinus by himself. Alternatively considering there is ample time between opening the chests at the bottom left and when the reinforcements at the bottom start appearing, you can pretty reasonably just have whoever came to help Matthew kill the Shaman or archer go back around to protect Merlinus themselves.

The rescue drop crap with Astohl is nonexistant because you're given 2 thieves at that point. And if you're not even going at a super brisk pace, it's likely Cath will open the door anyway. The enemy placement is so damn spread out and sparse that THIRTEEN units will have no real issue with, the only exception being the random horseslayer knight. After you reach the Ostia trio, the enemy density has suddenly skyrocketed and you're bombarded with mages and lancemen from every angle. The only overarching strategy at this point is still to keep moving forward with every single one of your units. At this point, you go past the chest room, probably sending some mounted units to take care of the 1-tile corridor below it, and suddenly the enemy density drops to crap again. You then beat the boss, and waste more time sending the thieves, who have constantly been with the rest of your party, to get the rest of the chests.

It's not "nonexistant" because you have two thieves, it is an extra consideration to make about deployment or positioning if you pass up bringing Chad. Frankly the better choice would simply be to have a mounted unit use a door key that you got earlier in the chapter rather than deploy two thieves considering you really don't ever need to deploy more than 1 in FE6.

Cath appears on turn 10 and takes 4 full moves before she can make it to the door so that is pretty much bogus. Even if Roy simply walked by himself with his crappy 5 mov to that point on the map it would take 12 turns, so unless you are actually turtling or just suck there is no way Cath can open the door before you make it there.

How is using the argument that the enemies aren't interesting to fight/easy to deal with only applicable if there aren't a ton of them? In ch17, most of the enemy units are easily ORKO'd and the density of them doesn't make it more interesting, you can just throw Marcus with a javelin up the corridor and he kills them all himself. The amount of units being used or enemies being fought only matters if the consideration into your positioning is accurately reflected, which FE6 actually does a better job of here because it is highly unlikely you can easily bottleneck most of the enemies or ORKO anything but the soldiers consistently.

I will concede that the very bottom of the map needed some more enemies before the throne room and that the secondary chests past the boss are kind of a waste of time.

What the hell does weakening your main unit mean? You have spots for only 9 units on the right side, and in a game that has encouraged you to generally use at least 10+ units thanks to a very liberal deployment count, it's entirely possible that you won't even have room for your main squad. Even disregarding that, due to the pathetic enemy density on both sides until you reach the throne, how likely is it that the left side (with the inclusion of at least one well trained unit) will have any trouble dealing with enemies? The only possible issue I see are the two druids that are together, but that's it. The rest of the enemies are spaced 4-7 units apart. Tell me, how is this good enemy placement, when you can easily deal with enemies one by one at a decent pace?

Er, not really. The game allows you to deploy excess units a lot of the time but the fact is there is not reasonably enough EXP to go around in raising 10+ units unless you decide to rout every map and arena abuse.

Roy, a dancer, two staff users, one or two paladins/cavaliers, one or two fliers, one or two bow users, and the odd foot unit here or there totals to about 10 or so. Raising more is difficult unless you are taking your time, in which case you can take your time on later chapters too. Also, are we talking NM or HM? Because untrained units or units behind statistically are not going to be able to really chew through high forties to fifties hp enemies who have 18 to 20 AS, or the brave weapon hero guarding the switch, or 44 atk Druids. Actually I think the druids on the left have 18 to 19 AS as well and nosferatu so good fucking luck killing them with "one good unit" without rigging crits.

The cutoff point should be that every chapter is beatable at a reasonable pace by a well rounded team; a random selection of playable units. This is not arbitrary whatsoever, as, in general, this is what the typical player will be using in their playthroughs. If a player wants to use a team of only the 2-4 knights/generals that are available in the game, they're already gimping themselves by not using the full deployment count. They shouldn't be further punished by level design that overtly punishes these kinds of units. And while demand may not be the right word, the alternative to using warp is having to go through horribly bloated maps with either a)terrible enemy placement, b)terrible enemy density, or c)both. This isn't even considering that every map is seize. Fe5's maps are made much easier with the warp staff, but they're still wholly interesting and unique as levels in their own right if you don't use them. My god is this not the case for Fe6.

You have just admitted that you think that the game is at fault because it didn't accomodate for somebody not deploying any mounts and intentionally using the lowest movement units in the game. :\

The alternative is not neccessarily using warp, I gave reccomendations on various things that can help to make FE6 faster. Making effective use of the rescue mechanic, utilising more mounted units, using the free strong unis the game gives you to deal with difficult enemies. None of these are things that are alien to any decent player. If you explictly choose to follow a strategy that you think is "un fun", and stick to it and insist it is the game's fault for not allowing that strategy to be subjectively fun to you, then you have completely lost me. I've already said, I actually DID THINK that a lot of FE6's maps were frustrating when I was playing through it on HM, and it made me reconsider what I was doing, and how I could effectively create better strategies. Thus, I had more fun with the game after coming to the conclusion that I could be doing something different, or that I had to reconsider my strategies or playstyle. You seem to be insistent on the point that because you felt FE6's maps were more punishing and less interesting to play from a specific perspective that the game's design is faulty. Now whilst I do think that positive reinforcement is a better approach to take, I don't believe that negatively reinforcing the ineffectiveness or tedium of player behaviour is by default "bad design".

I don't consider moving (and only moving; not positioning) my lagging Bors behind the rest of my team to be considered a "constant engagement".

Same problem happens in basically every FE game where you try to train armors...

Damn, you took up on my rhetorical question.

Just a note, Gale doesn't leave.

Oh yeah, ch21 is definitely a memorable experience. I don't think any game floods you with a ridiculous amount of reinforcements as much as this chapter does. Does this novelty gimmick make this a good chapter though? Not in my opinion. It was memorable; not fun.

Well maybe we've made progress here because you've admitted that in your opinion, that it was not fun. But you can't detract from the fact that a lot of people did find the chapter interesting and enjoyable because of its gimmick, and you can't dismiss the points I've made about how you can beat the map without warp in a decent pace if you think a little.

Idk who manages a 11-13 turncount on a casual pace, or who understands the game enough that sending Roy to the right, even though he starts on the left, will save you so-and-so turns, but when combat is so terribly off balance (the only grouped areas are the paladin and MAYBE the right bishop), yeah I would consider it too long. You have a whopping five sparse units to fight until you reach the Paladin, and then after that, you've got single bishops with a random mamkute thrown in. This chapter does have small details that make it better than most other later maps, like the whole Douglas thing, but for what's opposing you, the length of the map is way too long.

Sending Roy to the right is not just a turn saver, it is more convenient because it allows you to recruit Hugh much easier, and he holds the prized member card. The vast majority of the enemies on the map are aggressive and move towards you constantly. The left side of the map allows you to bait and kill units through the wall, and you may also attack enemy knights through the central passageway. The enemy purge bishop is going to be firing down on you from near the group of Paladins repeatedly unless you use Fae to burn his charges, and there are items to steal from enemies along the way on the center path.

Also no, rescuedropping isn't essential. I did just fine with lalum dancing Klein up with some mounts backing him. 11A has the same issue of low enemy density until you get to Echidna, but it definitely makes up for it due to the clusterfuck that is trying to sort all the recruitable character shit out. Managing helping Echidna and getting Klein up to Tate is exciting, mainly because there's so many enemies in that area too.

Getting Klein over the wall at the top of the map is the only certified way to get Tate to be recruited right after she appears, and that requires the use of Thany. Of course this isn't a hard leap of faith to make either since the chapter gives you Lalum and places you directly next to a shortcut that you can rescue, dance, then drop a unit over to the right of your starting area in order to thing the enemy lines out, or to make initial progress on it at the least so by the time you walk around, they are mostly dead. The map is quite reasonable to complete in 9 turns even in casual play which exactly coincides with Echidna appearing.

There's enough enemy density, compared to the map size, in 24 that it's entirely likely Gatrie can get some combat in it, unless of course you're going for really fast turncounts.

25 is so ridiculously easy to 1-2 turn, even for a casual playthrough, that most units aren't really doing much.

26 is the only real example of one where Gatrie might lag behind in a casual pace.

Keep in mind that generals fall behind in 6's maps at a casual pace. They won't catch up unless you're intentionally slowing down the rest of your team for them to catch up.

A lot of FE6 maps are ridiculously easy to 2 turn too, yet you refuse to accept that as a reasonable defence.

I played FE9 when I was still a casual and benched Gatrie because his stats upon returning were pretty iffy, his movement sucked and most of my mounted units were about as tanky as he was. Gatrie is not reasonably getting any real combat in any of those maps aside from the very start, which is the same thing that happens to most armor units in most FE games. Unless a player is specifically choosing to hold back his army full of high mov units in order for a slow unit to get into position and get some action, which is counterintuitive to the BEXP turncount bonuses. Even many casual players I know of like extra BEXP. What's Gatrie doing in chapter 16, any of the parts of 17, 20, or 21? Fuck all.

This is no more ridiculous than complaining that Fe9's gameplay/replayability is ruined because its map animations are too long.

I consider that a detriment to the game but the enemy phases are far more reasonable in FE9 due to just the lower amount of rout maps and the smaller amount of enemies.

You also do know there's a no animation option that heavily cuts down on ep time? It's not "waiting for ages" by a long shot.

You don't have that on your first playthrough. In terms of replay value, I won't hold that against the game, but I would say that removing enemy range indicators in HM is the definition of artificial difficulty and a large part of why I won't replay the game anytime soon, even if I can turn animations off. Playing the game again on NM is not particulary enticing to me either.

But I do agree that the game gets worse as it goes on because of unit inflation. They really should have kept the Master Crown system from the japanese version.

Wouldn't have helped all that much since you only need 2 or 3 tier 3s, Ike, and then in p4 the Laguz royals placed in the right spots to wallop the maps.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Irysa

[Jotari]

That all being said, on H5 the boss OHKO's like everybody and killing him via thunderbolt with beck+jake doesn't remove the problem of the surrounding ballisticians killing beck and jake afterwards.

What Ballisticians in particular are killing Beck and Jake after they take out the boss? In my experience I usually clear the entire map before taking on the boss and the last two Ballisiticians backing him up. Those two are quite a bit to the left of the boss meaning you can easily attack from just within the bosses range and not get targeted by those two.

Another thing that the Wooden Calvary encourages the player to ddo is learn the importance between switching between the attack range of one enemy and all enemies.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Jotari

[Irysa]

H5 ballisticians are not OHKO'd by thunderbolt, combined with the fact that most of them overlap. This means that if you use both ballisticians to kill a single ballista, one of them is at a high risk of dying due to being in an overlap of another set of them. So, the next best thing you could from there is to attack two different ballista's with thunderbolt, then use two other units to finish off the thunderbolted ballisticians. Unfortunately, that leaves those units in range of the group of ballista near the boss AND the boss, risking them dying. If you can eliminate the ballisticians on the top and bottom of the map, then its possible to proceed fairly safely, but doing that in the first place is also problematic because once again, overlaps.

This doesn't even take into consideration the fact that to get Marth up to recruit Beck in the first place and even have access to thunderbolt, he is pretty much going to have to dodge some hits, or someone else has to dodge hits in his place because jake is not killing those tanky ballista with his arrowspate.

[RJWalker]

Can someone explain the behaviour of Tate and Klein? Because sometimes, they refuse to move, Tate especially.

[Subsonic]

Shadow Dragon bored me. I was so excited that there was a Fire Emblem game for the DS and when I got my hands on it, I was disappointed. It was completely uninteresting, and I ended up just skipping most of the dialogue and cut scenes. When I found out I could skip the enemy phase, I went a bit crazy and skipped like everything. Bad decision because Gordin ended up dying without me knowing it until five chapters later. I had no problem starting the whole game over, it was just that I really stopped caring at the point when I found out Gordin died.

I did complete it though and Barst and Ogma just carried the whole team there. ;D

[dondon151]

Saving all the soldiers is easy because they only leave their cell on turn 8, by which point nearly all the enemies are dead except for maybe some reinforcements from the back.

the trickiest part of this map (FE7 chapter 17) in LTC is actually recruiting lucius with raven, lol. and it's only possible if you don't have sainadin or kentadin, since otherwise the map can be 6-turned.

How is using the argument that the enemies aren't interesting to fight/easy to deal with only applicable if there aren't a ton of them? In ch17, most of the enemy units are easily ORKO'd and the density of them doesn't make it more interesting, you can just throw Marcus with a javelin up the corridor and he kills them all himself. The amount of units being used or enemies being fought only matters if the consideration into your positioning is accurately reflected, which FE6 actually does a better job of here because it is highly unlikely you can easily bottleneck most of the enemies or ORKO anything but the soldiers consistently.

i would like to point out here that while marcus and sainadin/kentadin have no problem ORKOing anyone in FE7 chapter 17 with a javelin (except for an odd nomad), marcus and zealot can't even ORKO soldiers in FE6 chapter 8 with a hand axe. zealot needs a steel lance to ORKO archers, and marcus doesn't double them without spd procs. it's actually more difficult to power through the relative sparse distribution of enemies in FE6 than it is to cut a swath through FE7's toothless mobs.

I will concede that the very bottom of the map needed some more enemies before the throne room and that the secondary chests past the boss are kind of a waste of time.

there are actually reinforcements that come in through the bottom left, but i suspect that the game developers didn't imagine that the map could be cleared so quickly. this is a problem that's even more evident in certain FE7 maps, by the way.

Can someone explain the behaviour of Tate and Klein? Because sometimes, they refuse to move, Tate especially.

all enemy units use an RN before they move. often this means nothing; for tate and klain there's about a 10% chance that they won't move. it's pretty infuriating, and it's definitely not something i'd raise in defense of FE6.

this happens with garret, too, but i've never seen it happen with rutger or perceval.

[Vennobennu]

11A's design is definitely good, but I don't appreciate how suicidal Klein and Tate's NPCs are. I suppose you're able to kill everything important before they can put themselves in harm's way, but like you said I don't think IS anticipated the player moving that fast.

It's why I like Fe12 better, you don't have to contend with idiotic allies.

Fe6 is rougher around the edges than the later games, but it's generally more challenging than the other GBA games so I can't fault it too much. Being able to play around with Warp and long-range tomes in the midgame is a plus too.

[eclipse]

I don't believe that arguing that the chapter is made easier by suiciding units in order to beat it is a valid form of defence for the map. You could say the same about Awakening Lunatic+ Ch2. It is true that SD gives benefits to people who let units die, but it is also equally true that by most people's standards, letting someone die isn't acceptable. Before I say anything more though, obviously the entire game probably can't be judged by H5 standards, it is merely the only metric I have had whilst playing the game, and I don't considering having to rig dodges from LRT spam particularly fun.

I did not intend that, and I have no idea how you came to that conclusion.

Shadow Dragon is the one game where killing your own units accesses More Stuff (this is an actual problem in drafts). It's one of the few meat grinder chapters available, so if I'm dead-set on getting Etzel, this is an ideal place to get rid of excess units, simply because they'll literally make life easier for me. Chapter 15 doesn't count, because making Gharnef tink is funny.

That all being said, on H5 the boss OHKO's like everybody and killing him via thunderbolt with beck+jake doesn't remove the problem of the surrounding ballisticians killing beck and jake afterwards. Given their bulk on H5, only doubling mages w/elfire or bolganone or Cain/Abel/Hardin at at least 14 str 10 spd with a silver lance (on average they have to be like level 20 for that but since you can rig growths a lot via savepoints, more feasible than I'd imagine I guess) can get any ORKOs on ballista.

Use Thunderbolt to weaken stuff, and then kill it?

It looks like the General base class is 28 HP and 15 DEF, and it would take forging to +10 to OHKO with Pachyderm, given the boss' base stats on H5. Other strategies include Levin Sword abuse (you should have two), using the other Silver weapons (I'm pretty sure Minerva can solo the bottom, but my memory's a bit sketchy regarding which ballista are where, so I might be wrong), and maybe utilizing the Arms Scroll/Parthia/Hautclere. Early promotions for Cain/Abel (Hardin doesn't count because his Strength growth is even sketchier) will net +2 Strength. If you're going for full-out LTC, I can see the problem, but if you're willing to go at a slightly more sedate pace, it's doable (doubly so if you need to kill off squishies for gaidens).

Edited July 5, 2014 by eclipse

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

"Sacrificing" units to get new units is probably the worst idea in FE history so far.

I never came to the sidechapters, because I hate to kill my units for getting (most of them) bad units.

Edited July 5, 2014 by TalesOf Hysteria

[Ewan101]

I, personally, think the game would have worked a LOT better if they based the gameplay engine off of FE6-8, with some graphical upgrades and touch screen features. Give the characters depth, support conversations, some more lines in the actual script. They could have easily changed certain things about the script to make it more interesting. Add some extra gaiden chapters to give the story and characters some dimension. I've seen concepts for a game such as this in the hacking subforum of this site. Why couldn't Nintendo have done THAT, where's THAT game? You have people doing that for fun by themselves whereas you have entire teams who get paid for it. Other things I didn't like: useless characters, Caeda being unable to promote to Falconknight without the use of Nintendo WFC (which has now been disbanded so oh well), one-dimensional script, no sense of adventure or danger or importance, requiring the sacrifice of your shitty units for more shitty units...

That being said, the visuals were pretty and I really liked the face portraits and CG's. The introduction of the reclass system was a good innovation, albeit a tad broken (Awakening's reclassing system had it perfect). And honestly, I really just think the whole point of this remake was to introduce new players (i.e. young'uns and American audiences) to Marth's story so they weren't completely clueless when Awakening was released. If Awakening wasn't already in development at the time, they most likely were conceptualizing and thought of a way to tie in Marth's story hundreds of years later. But that's just a theory...A GAME THEORY.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Ewan101

[Irysa]

I did not intend that, and I have no idea how you came to that conclusion.

Shadow Dragon is the one game where killing your own units accesses More Stuff (this is an actual problem in drafts). It's one of the few meat grinder chapters available, so if I'm dead-set on getting Etzel, this is an ideal place to get rid of excess units, simply because they'll literally make life easier for me. Chapter 15 doesn't count, because making Gharnef tink is funny.

Sorry, I thought you were instigating that as a defence of the chapter.

Use Thunderbolt to weaken stuff, and then kill it?

It looks like the General base class is 28 HP and 15 DEF, and it would take forging to +10 to OHKO with Pachyderm, given the boss' base stats on H5. Other strategies include Levin Sword abuse (you should have two), using the other Silver weapons (I'm pretty sure Minerva can solo the bottom, but my memory's a bit sketchy regarding which ballista are where, so I might be wrong), and maybe utilizing the Arms Scroll/Parthia/Hautclere. Early promotions for Cain/Abel (Hardin doesn't count because his Strength growth is even sketchier) will net +2 Strength. If you're going for full-out LTC, I can see the problem, but if you're willing to go at a slightly more sedate pace, it's doable (doubly so if you need to kill off squishies for gaidens).

No no, I'm not proposing that the chapter is unbeatable or has no facets of strategy to it, or that I had a lot of difficulty in beating the chapter in H5. I personally warped Sage!Lena to the back of the map and had her kill as many ballista as possible, including the boss, since she tinked thunderbolt and could kill the relatively accurate arrowspater without dying from one hit, and the stonehoist ballista had very low chance of connecting. But regardless, however you approach the map, you do have to gamble a bit, and in my case I had to reload map saves quite a few times. It was incorrect for me to say the boss OHKO's everyone, but he does a massive amount of damage and he overlaps with many other ballisticians who can potentially finish you off if he does connect a hit, even on your tanky units. Minerva can't solo the bottom of the map, she can't even double most of the Ballista.

As you've said, thunderbolt is a good bet, but getting Marth to recruit Beck means he has dodge a combination of 4 enemy ballisticians on the turn he recruits Beck. You can slightly alleviate the problem by getting a couple of units prioritised over Marth but because there are 2 moving ballista it's pretty difficult to set up anything foolproof after the start of the map unless the moving ones die immediately via warp. The center of the map is a gigantic clusterfuck of overlaps and anyone who gets hit once is probably going to get prioritised repeatedly due to the chance of death, and the hitrates aren't even bad for hoistflamme and arrowspate.

Enemy thieves get to the village by something like turn 3 or 4 so you can't dawdle around if you want to grab Beck. They also start behaving aggressively if you actually visit the village, and thieves on H5 are pretty messed up, they can easily murder Marth, or a lot of your other units for that matter. From what I remember of playing this map, I'm pretty sure you kind of have to just move some units up with Marth so you can kill the thieves before they get aggressive, and then rig at least 1 dodge out of 2 from various combinations of 30 and 70~ disp hit ballista. I think I definitely hurt myself by not using physic staff more on this map though, it meant I had to get any damaged units to dodge repeatedly (vulneraries didn't cut it).

Retrospectively, the map doesn't seem quite as bad as I initially remembered it being, but I don't think that there's really a consistent way to avoid having to risk death repeatedly quite a bit on h5 unless you use warp and rig crits on key targets.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Irysa

[Constable Reggie]

"Petty little details" are an important part of design within any given map though. The fact is that once again, you've made a grossly misproportionate summary of how the seize objective generally functions on most maps and continue to dismiss specifics in FE6 yet praise them in 7.

Attempting to actually secure all the chests with Matthew in ch17 is stupid because you need at best (assuming you use every single fucking mounted unit in your army bar Marcus and Pris in a rescue chain since he is probaby killing everything and she's probably recruiting Raven or healing somebody else) an extra 3 turns to get Matthew to the top of the map, then another 3 turns to get all the extra loot up there. If you actually want all the loot there, I'm pretty sure that in FE7 thieves who have looted chests drop the item they stole upon death, and that chapter spawns thieves on turn 4 and 5 who can basically do Matthew's job for him if you kill them, so rescuepassing Matthew to the top of the map is basically obsolete even in casual play.

The shaman's is pretty pathetically easy to ORKO for any remotely decent unit, there is no archer in the chest room at the bottom left in hard mode (for some reason) and Matthew has to spend a turn opening the door anyway, so that gives whoever killed the Shaman a free turn to heal before then ORKOing the archer in the room (who is only there on NM anyway so once again is an easy ORKO).

Protecting Pris isn't hard at all.because the corridors are so goddamn narrow all you have to do is block the way adequately with 2 units and the enemies are so weak they won't kill her unless they gang up.

Saving all the soldiers is easy because they only leave their cell on turn 8, by which point nearly all the enemies are dead except for maybe some reinforcements from the back.

You can simply leave Oswin at the rear end of the map and he is pretty much invincible to the reinforcements and will protect Merlinus by himself. Alternatively considering there is ample time between opening the chests at the bottom left and when the reinforcements at the bottom start appearing, you can pretty reasonably just have whoever came to help Matthew kill the Shaman or archer go back around to protect Merlinus themselves.

It's not "nonexistant" because you have two thieves, it is an extra consideration to make about deployment or positioning if you pass up bringing Chad. Frankly the better choice would simply be to have a mounted unit use a door key that you got earlier in the chapter rather than deploy two thieves considering you really don't ever need to deploy more than 1 in FE6.

Cath appears on turn 10 and takes 4 full moves before she can make it to the door so that is pretty much bogus. Even if Roy simply walked by himself with his crappy 5 mov to that point on the map it would take 12 turns, so unless you are actually turtling or just suck there is no way Cath can open the door before you make it there.

How is using the argument that the enemies aren't interesting to fight/easy to deal with only applicable if there aren't a ton of them? In ch17, most of the enemy units are easily ORKO'd and the density of them doesn't make it more interesting, you can just throw Marcus with a javelin up the corridor and he kills them all himself. The amount of units being used or enemies being fought only matters if the consideration into your positioning is accurately reflected, which FE6 actually does a better job of here because it is highly unlikely you can easily bottleneck most of the enemies or ORKO anything but the soldiers consistently.

I will concede that the very bottom of the map needed some more enemies before the throne room and that the secondary chests past the boss are kind of a waste of time.

I'm not dismissing Fe6 specifics at all. There's definitely some interesting ones that should be taken note of (Klein/Tate, Douglas, 14's treasures), but you're going clearly ragging on 7 about unit usage while letting 6 slide in this regard. That narrow pass under the ch8 chests? Throw Marcus and/or Zealot with a javelin/hand axe and it's all basically cleared out. You have THIRTEEN unit slots, which is more than enough for any units and strong fillers you're using, and then Chad on top of it. Why is it that just saying "oh Oswin/Marcus can handle any challenges" is acceptable for 7, but then you try to claim that the intricacies of Fe6 can't be done the same way with Fe6, which it totally can. Marcus and Zealout can basically fly through the entire first half of the map, maybe taking a small detour the manage the horseslayer knight (which, along with the other knight in the way, can be dealt with by the hammer), which basically trivializes half the map (as the rest of your units can't do anything but lag behind, unlike 7's 17). The unit surge between the chest rooms is likely where they'd have to slow down (though I don't doubt for a second the two can easily solo the entire group), but at that point you've basically cleared most of the map with a whopping two units while missing absolutely nothing. If you do the same in Fe7 with Marcus, you still have to deal with getting the chests, holding off the cav reinforcements, and recruit Raven/Lucius.

Er, not really. The game allows you to deploy excess units a lot of the time but the fact is there is not reasonably enough EXP to go around in raising 10+ units unless you decide to rout every map and arena abuse.

Roy, a dancer, two staff users, one or two paladins/cavaliers, one or two fliers, one or two bow users, and the odd foot unit here or there totals to about 10 or so. Raising more is difficult unless you are taking your time, in which case you can take your time on later chapters too. Also, are we talking NM or HM? Because untrained units or units behind statistically are not going to be able to really chew through high forties to fifties hp enemies who have 18 to 20 AS, or the brave weapon hero guarding the switch, or 44 atk Druids. Actually I think the druids on the left have 18 to 19 AS as well and nosferatu so good fucking luck killing them with "one good unit" without rigging crits.

I said it was entirely possible; not strictly mandated. I would also somewhat disagree with your comp there. Something like having Dieck + Rutger alone, which is not a terrible idea, alongside the rest of the comp, would push the number up. Similarly, it's not unreasonable to raise up 2 cavs alongside Percival to make 3 mounted units. There is absolutely enough experience throughout the game to train your units, and you're given a ridiculous number of enemies on the chapter just 2 before it (the ones you gave to Niime for the sake of speeding the chapter) if you still need some. Niime/Yodel can easily help chip down the enemies on the way, while whatever other filler units that have gotten exp (due to the high deployment limit) can do the same. Again, the two druids together or the only huge problem, while someone like Percival+Maltet/Durandal can easily deal with the rest of the units with some chip. It's how I beat the chapter, at least.

You have just admitted that you think that the game is at fault because it didn't accomodate for somebody not deploying any mounts and intentionally using the lowest movement units in the game. :\

The game's at fault for a particular reason. It's fine to expect the game to punish you if you don't use a full deployment slot. The game gave you that option and the player actively denied using it. It's not fine to (excessively) punish the game for using some of the tools it has given you (knights/generals in this case). I've never done this myself, but I could fathom a guess that a playthrough with only knights/generals and Roy would be very difficult; not primarily because it would take forever to get there, but because 3-4 combat units are not enough to get through 6's chapters.

The alternative is not neccessarily using warp, I gave reccomendations on various things that can help to make FE6 faster. Making effective use of the rescue mechanic, utilising more mounted units, using the free strong unis the game gives you to deal with difficult enemies. None of these are things that are alien to any decent player. If you explictly choose to follow a strategy that you think is "un fun", and stick to it and insist it is the game's fault for not allowing that strategy to be subjectively fun to you, then you have completely lost me. I've already said, I actually DID THINK that a lot of FE6's maps were frustrating when I was playing through it on HM, and it made me reconsider what I was doing, and how I could effectively create better strategies. Thus, I had more fun with the game after coming to the conclusion that I could be doing something different, or that I had to reconsider my strategies or playstyle. You seem to be insistent on the point that because you felt FE6's maps were more punishing and less interesting to play from a specific perspective that the game's design is faulty. Now whilst I do think that positive reinforcement is a better approach to take, I don't believe that negatively reinforcing the ineffectiveness or tedium of player behaviour is by default "bad design".

My first playthrough of 6 was excruciatingly boring, since I did it the filthy casual method of not hauling Roy's ass to the throne through whatever means necessary. The second time I did move Roy faster through rescue/occasional warp use, and played generally smart, but it still wasn't nearly as fun as any other Fe game and it still doesn't excuse the gluttonous level design. Why is it excusable that you practically need a ferry filler just to move Roy everywhere? SD handled this by giving Marth a generous amount of mov compared to the size of the levels. Roy's stuck with 5 movement until the very end, which, combined with 6's maps, necessitates having to carry his ass. Let me again point to Fe5, which has a lot of warpskippable maps, but does not expect you trudge through huge maps and ferrying your lord everywhere if you don't decide to utilize warp/rescue. And, even though it doesn't hold a candle to the size of 6's maps, in the later maps it also heavily promotes strategic unit placement due to the ballistae everywhere.

Same problem happens in basically every FE game where you try to train armors...

I've already explain how several of the other Fe games mitigate this issue to some effect. Whether it's by including defense levels, route missions, or in general having smaller maps with more enemy density (CoD), there's generally enough to make generals not feel entirely useless in most other games. There are no doubt a bunch of levels where they do fall behind, but it's not nearly as bad as 6 in this regard.

Well maybe we've made progress here because you've admitted that in your opinion, that it was not fun. But you can't detract from the fact that a lot of people did find the chapter interesting and enjoyable because of its gimmick, and you can't dismiss the points I've made about how you can beat the map without warp in a decent pace if you think a little.

It's also a fact that other people find it unfun because of its gimmick. Both those things don't mean anything under a constructive criticism approach. People can find a bunch of bad things to be fun; doesn't make them well designed.

And while I don't doubt your method to beating the chapter quickly enough, a lot of it requires forehand knowledge of where the enemies will pop up, which I doubt most non-efficient playthroughs will bother to look up. It's all too easy to slowed down if you don't know the right places to put Niime, the right places to squeeze through reinforcement areas, etc.

Sending Roy to the right is not just a turn saver, it is more convenient because it allows you to recruit Hugh much easier, and he holds the prized member card. The vast majority of the enemies on the map are aggressive and move towards you constantly. The left side of the map allows you to bait and kill units through the wall, and you may also attack enemy knights through the central passageway. The enemy purge bishop is going to be firing down on you from near the group of Paladins repeatedly unless you use Fae to burn his charges, and there are items to steal from enemies along the way on the center path.

I forgot if Hugh moves or not (iirc he doesn't?), but if he doesn't, then taking the right side doesn't really mean anything. He's not going anywhere, so how would it be easier?

Also, you're really stretching your case if you consider one red gem to be "items to steal from enemies along the way"

Getting Klein over the wall at the top of the map is the only certified way to get Tate to be recruited right after she appears, and that requires the use of Thany. Of course this isn't a hard leap of faith to make either since the chapter gives you Lalum and places you directly next to a shortcut that you can rescue, dance, then drop a unit over to the right of your starting area in order to thing the enemy lines out, or to make initial progress on it at the least so by the time you walk around, they are mostly dead. The map is quite reasonable to complete in 9 turns even in casual play which exactly coincides with Echidna appearing.

As I've said, there's absolutely no reason to recruit Tate right when she appears unless you want to be 100% certain the peg knights won't get themselves killed, but it's extraneous all the more.

Also, I'm starting to doubt your turncounts since a quick glance at a few fe6 drafts note that 9 turns is around the average for that level when recruiting Tate (And while they are deliberately handicapping themselves, they are still going as fast as they can. I'd rather consider something like this to be a better indicator of a casual pace.

A lot of FE6 maps are ridiculously easy to 2 turn too, yet you refuse to accept that as a reasonable defence.

I played FE9 when I was still a casual and benched Gatrie because his stats upon returning were pretty iffy, his movement sucked and most of my mounted units were about as tanky as he was. Gatrie is not reasonably getting any real combat in any of those maps aside from the very start, which is the same thing that happens to most armor units in most FE games. Unless a player is specifically choosing to hold back his army full of high mov units in order for a slow unit to get into position and get some action, which is counterintuitive to the BEXP turncount bonuses. Even many casual players I know of like extra BEXP. What's Gatrie doing in chapter 16, any of the parts of 17, 20, or 21? Fuck all.

None of 6's maps are nearly as easy to finish as literally moving a flier like 6 tiles up.

Gatrie can easily see combat in 20 and 17. 16/21 are harder for him to do so, I agree. But while there are some chapters that he can't really be used, there are also other ones where he doesn't need high movement to be decently utilized. Ones like 13, 14, 22, and 24. The only ones I can think of where Fe6 general can do the same are some of the Sacae maps, but you won't even see those in half your playthroughs.

I consider that a detriment to the game but the enemy phases are far more reasonable in FE9 due to just the lower amount of rout maps and the smaller amount of enemies.

You don't have that on your first playthrough. In terms of replay value, I won't hold that against the game, but I would say that removing enemy range indicators in HM is the definition of artificial difficulty and a large part of why I won't replay the game anytime soon, even if I can turn animations off. Playing the game again on NM is not particulary enticing to me either.

This is probably the first time I've seen someone think that 10's EPs are worse than 9's.

Also, you're now changing the primary reason for your disliking of Fe10. First it was long ass enemy phases (which isn't true); now it's lack of enemy range marking. I agree on the second being a bad decision, but don't change your main complaint because the first didn't hold up.

Wouldn't have helped all that much since you only need 2 or 3 tier 3s, Ike, and then in p4 the Laguz royals placed in the right spots to wallop the maps.

I disagree. The master crowns are pretty sparse, your team is split up into three (further dividing your t3's), and the laguz being strong in p4 doesn't negate the fact that yours team are still overall toned down from mid-part 3 and onward. It's painfully easy to promote potential filler units like Titania. Not so much in the japanese version when you have to consider the scarcity of the crowns.

Wait 19 is Manakete and 21 is Dracospam isn't it?

19 in FE1 is so laughable since you can have Marth Vacuum every non thief which for slow players basically means insta win since they won't attack Bantu. I think its MUCH better(tolerable) in FE11 thanks to how shitty FE11 item system is for a chapter where you need to take items

21 is basically Awakening Map design lol

Yeah. While Fe1 had the general problem of Marth-magnetism, there were at least ranged units that slightly posed a threat if you wanted the chests. In SD, they're hidden, so they don't pose a threat at all unless you open their doors.

Incidentally 21 is one of my least favorite maps. Probably a smart decision to make that one of the ones they cut in Fe3.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Constable Reggie

[Professor Vasuda]

I really enjoyed Shadow Dragon. The characters aren't super fleshed out like some of the other ones, but the gameplay was great. The harder difficulties really pushed me without feeling completely unfair like Awakening lunatic mode felt like after about a third of the way through. Any game you get 3 awesome pegasus knights that can use a formation attack is good in my book. Also I loved the art style in Shadow Dragon, it's a shame not many others felt the same and they did away with it.

[Ewan101]

I really enjoyed Shadow Dragon. The characters aren't super fleshed out like some of the other ones, but the gameplay was great. The harder difficulties really pushed me without feeling completely unfair like Awakening lunatic mode felt like after about a third of the way through. Any game you get 3 awesome pegasus knights that can use a formation attack is good in my book. Also I loved the art style in Shadow Dragon, it's a shame not many others felt the same and they did away with it.

I liked the style of art for a lot of the backgrounds and whatnot, but the character sprtes, especially on the overworld just looked kind of strange. I preferred the sprites from the previous few games better. One thing I did thoroughly enjoy about the games was the remixed music from the first game. I felt they really outdid themselves with that soundtrack, considering all they had to work with.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Ewan101

[RJWalker]

Wait 19 is Manakete and 21 is Dracospam isn't it?

19 in FE1 is so laughable since you can have Marth Vacuum every non thief which for slow players basically means insta win since they won't attack Bantu. I think its MUCH better(tolerable) in FE11 thanks to how shitty FE11 item system is for a chapter where you need to take items

21 is basically Awakening Map design lol

Wait, they won't attack Bantu? Why not? That's just... wow.

[Irysa]

I'm not dismissing Fe6 specifics at all. There's definitely some interesting ones that should be taken note of (Klein/Tate, Douglas, 14's treasures), but you're going clearly ragging on 7 about unit usage while letting 6 slide in this regard. That narrow pass under the ch8 chests? Throw Marcus and/or Zealot with a javelin/hand axe and it's all basically cleared out. You have THIRTEEN unit slots, which is more than enough for any units and strong fillers you're using, and then Chad on top of it. Why is it that just saying "oh Oswin/Marcus can handle any challenges" is acceptable for 7, but then you try to claim that the intricacies of Fe6 can't be done the same way with Fe6, which it totally can. Marcus and Zealout can basically fly through the entire first half of the map, maybe taking a small detour the manage the horseslayer knight (which, along with the other knight in the way, can be dealt with by the hammer), which basically trivializes half the map (as the rest of your units can't do anything but lag behind, unlike 7's 17). The unit surge between the chest rooms is likely where they'd have to slow down (though I don't doubt for a second the two can easily solo the entire group), but at that point you've basically cleared most of the map with a whopping two units while missing absolutely nothing. If you do the same in Fe7 with Marcus, you still have to deal with getting the chests, holding off the cav reinforcements, and recruit Raven/Lucius.

I'm getting really tired of talking about this chapter specifically, because I've already said I don't even consider it to be a particularly good chapter. The complaints I made about 17 weren't solely about "Marcus kills everything", but I can only assume your lack of response to some of the counterpoints I made are an acceptance that they don't really matter very much.

For starters though, are we talking about NM or HM here? I'd refer to dondon's earlier points about FE6 enemy stats, Marcus and Zealot simply can't ORKO most of the enemies in ch8 by themselves, and definitely not with inaccurate 1-2 weaponry (they're like base 50 hit dude), so you're going to need extra units to finish off enemies. Javelins are way better in FE7 than 6, and Marcus has 15 fucking base str in 7, compared to 9 in 6. Zealot is packing 10. This is further compounded by the fact that the corridors are much wider, so rushing them along the way doesn't really defend the units that are following them effectively at all, compared to 17 where the corridors are so tight that Marcus alone ends up impeding the movement of a lot of enemies, and having a promoted Sain or Kent from Lyn mode basically makes an impenetrable fortress. Getting other units to follow Marcus and Zealot takes some more consideration. Note, not a lot, just some.

For chapter 8, most of the time I do this chapter I use; Roy, Marcus, Zealot, Alan, Lance, Thany, Sue, Dieck/Rutger, Saul/Elen, Clarine, Lugh, Noah/Treck (to carry foot units around and to use chest keys). I'll concede that if you want to go slower, deploying Chad is an option but I don't feel it's really worth the slot since he doesn't really do anything not replicable by cavaliers with keys, which is mainly why extra thieves are kind of pointless in FE6.

As for the final point, I don't really think that going "eh I'll just leave a Lord and Matthew to get the chests from down here" and/or leaving someone like Oswin behind to protect Merlinus is particularly riveting distraction from the rest of the map, especially when they don't do anything else besides sit there beacuse they're unlikely to catch up with the rest of your units in the meantime. Recruiting Raven is even easier than talking to Cath, whilst recruiting Lucius is the equivilant of the extraneous chests past the boss; stuff you waste an extra turn or two doing when there's nothing left on the map to do because you want to do everything.

I said it was entirely possible; not strictly mandated. I would also somewhat disagree with your comp there. Something like having Dieck + Rutger alone, which is not a terrible idea, alongside the rest of the comp, would push the number up. Similarly, it's not unreasonable to raise up 2 cavs alongside Percival to make 3 mounted units. There is absolutely enough experience throughout the game to train your units, and you're given a ridiculous number of enemies on the chapter just 2 before it (the ones you gave to Niime for the sake of speeding the chapter) if you still need some. Niime/Yodel can easily help chip down the enemies on the way, while whatever other filler units that have gotten exp (due to the high deployment limit) can do the same. Again, the two druids together or the only huge problem, while someone like Percival+Maltet/Durandal can easily deal with the rest of the units with some chip. It's how I beat the chapter, at least.

I'm going to have to quote myself here again.

I am not so much reccomending that all casual players do it so much as that any player who thinks "oh god that looks like a pain" utilises the option.

Rather than weaken your main force on the right, you should think about how to make it easier for your other units on the left to manage. What's the most easy solution? Warp over the short gap

By deploying one of your better units along with divine weapons to the left of the map to make it through, you are actually weakening your force on the right. You won't be able to get your divine weapons to the group that is actually going to attack Zephiel and his throne manaketes, unless you convoy pass them via the chests, but trying to get Merlinus to actually keep up with everyone else is absurdly difficult because he has maxed out con so he cannot be rescued. Anyway, you proved my point, you yourself did not have enough power without subtracting something from your units on the other side of the map, so instead of avoiding that problem you accepted it and took the hard route. You even admit the druids are pretty difficult. How are you going to chip them for someone to kill when they have pretty accurate nosferatu that hits hard at 1-2, heals them, and they need 22 AS to be doubled and have 40hp*10def? The best thing you can do is probably barrier a unit with 1-2 who can also double (22 AS is somewhat steep for filler units...) and hope they connect on EP, then attempt to get a finishing blow off on PP.

The game's at fault for a particular reason. It's fine to expect the game to punish you if you don't use a full deployment slot. The game gave you that option and the player actively denied using it. It's not fine to (excessively) punish the game for using some of the tools it has given you (knights/generals in this case). I've never done this myself, but I could fathom a guess that a playthrough with only knights/generals and Roy would be very difficult; not primarily because it would take forever to get there, but because 3-4 combat units are not enough to get through 6's chapters.

Again, I would have to refer you to most games in the series. Armor knights always have trouble keeping up unless you slow yourself down a lot. It is true that some maps give them some greater use, but generally speaking they're more useful for turtling than aggressing, and FE6 does not like it when you turtle.

My first playthrough of 6 was excruciatingly boring, since I did it the filthy casual method of not hauling Roy's ass to the throne through whatever means necessary. The second time I did move Roy faster through rescue/occasional warp use, and played generally smart, but it still wasn't nearly as fun as any other Fe game and it still doesn't excuse the gluttonous level design. Why is it excusable that you practically need a ferry filler just to move Roy everywhere? SD handled this by giving Marth a generous amount of mov compared to the size of the levels. Roy's stuck with 5 movement until the very end, which, combined with 6's maps, necessitates having to carry his ass. Let me again point to Fe5, which has a lot of warpskippable maps, but does not expect you trudge through huge maps and ferrying your lord everywhere if you don't decide to utilize warp/rescue. And, even though it doesn't hold a candle to the size of 6's maps, in the later maps it also heavily promotes strategic unit placement due to the ballistae everywhere.

My first casual playthrough of 6 wasn't anything special, but I don't really think I would call it boring because at the time I liked capping people out and never using prepromotes or non iron weapons. If you're now saying you subjectively found 6 less fun, then I can't do anything other than subjectively disagree and say I found 6 on HM to be considerably more fun than playing 7 or 8, or even 10.

I would say that it isn't so much that you need a ferry flier to move Roy so much as you have to decide whether or not you want to slow your army down to accomodate foot units, or speed the foot units up by carrying them forward. If you choose to do the former, you obviously have to go slower, and the slower you go the more reinforcements you have to fight, the more turns you have to spend not neccessarily doing anything. The latter negates this disrepancy, and it is pretty frequently employed in other games anyway. I still contest that FE6's maps aren't too big, because traversing them does not take a long time if you utilise your resources. Now what I will say is that in FE6 utilising full mov repeatedly is far more frequently applicable than it is in other GBA games, and as a result, if you don't utilise that then you are gonna have a lot of spare turns. There is also a larger disrepancy in GBA games on the whole in terms of unit mov comparisons, Roy does deserve to have more base mov, and I can see the case for upping Hero Crest users to 7 mov on promotion.

I haven't played Thracia so I can't comment on any of it.

I've already explain how several of the other Fe games mitigate this issue to some effect. Whether it's by including defense levels, route missions, or in general having smaller maps with more enemy density (CoD), there's generally enough to make generals not feel entirely useless in most other games. There are no doubt a bunch of levels where they do fall behind, but it's not nearly as bad as 6 in this regard

Defence maps pretty much break down to "kill boss" most of the time so generals and armors don't really do all that much in that example at all. If you can't even do that, then most of the time they're still not significantly more useful than the average Cavalier or Mercenary in an oh so strategic chokepoint repeatedly getting healed till the map reaches its turn limit. Generals do not shine in rout maps because most rout maps require you to actually kill enemies, and Generals do not really do the whole doubling thing very well, which is a huge part of how you kill enemies in Fire Emblem.

It's also a fact that other people find it unfun because of its gimmick. Both those things don't mean anything under a constructive criticism approach. People can find a bunch of bad things to be fun; doesn't make them well designed.

I wasn't trying to argue that the amount of reinforcements was well designed. I was simply saying that your subjective viewpoint of "there's too much shit on this map to fight, its not fun" is very much a subjective viewpoint and can't be considered criticism, as it is not even a common opinion at that.

And while I don't doubt your method to beating the chapter quickly enough, a lot of it requires forehand knowledge of where the enemies will pop up, which I doubt most non-efficient playthroughs will bother to look up. It's all too easy to slowed down if you don't know the right places to put Niime, the right places to squeeze through reinforcement areas, etc.

I've already gave you a quoted TC for a completely unthoughtful strat on the map that didn't take any of this into account at all though. Figuring out a good spot to put Niime, or an Aircalibur Sage is not really all that difficult, find a tile that gives them some extra avoid then put them there and go to town. A berserker on a peak against the wyverns is the same basic idea too.

I forgot if Hugh moves or not (iirc he doesn't?), but if he doesn't, then taking the right side doesn't really mean anything. He's not going anywhere, so how would it be easier?

Hugh moves, that's why it's easier to go right rather than left.

Also, you're really stretching your case if you consider one red gem to be "items to steal from enemies along the way"

Was not the only thing I listed in my points about stuff you can do whilst moving up the left entrance, so I'm going to assume you concede those points.

As I've said, there's absolutely no reason to recruit Tate right when she appears unless you want to be 100% certain the peg knights won't get themselves killed, but it's extraneous all the more.

I think the extra elysian whip is a pretty good reason to want to do it considering that you only have 2 before you can buy them at the secret shop and you have 3 potential users of one.

Also, I'm starting to doubt your turncounts since a quick glance at a few fe6 drafts note that 9 turns is around the average for that level when recruiting Tate (And while they are deliberately handicapping themselves, they are still going as fast as they can. I'd rather consider something like this to be a better indicator of a casual pace.

Exclusively using weapons that have about a 50% chance missing at best along with a severe lack of mounted units and zero fliers is not a very good example of casual pace.

None of 6's maps are nearly as easy to finish as literally moving a flier like 6 tiles up.

I dunno, have you ever warpskipped 14x? It's really easy.

Gatrie can easily see combat in 20 and 17. 16/21 are harder for him to do so, I agree. But while there are some chapters that he can't really be used, there are also other ones where he doesn't need high movement to be decently utilized. Ones like 13, 14, 22, and 24. The only ones I can think of where Fe6 general can do the same are some of the Sacae maps, but you won't even see those in half your playthroughs.

Most of the maps you suggested he's useful in are even easier when using mounts. Gatrie can get at best a 1 or 2 rounds of combat on most of these maps before everybody else has left him in the dust or finished already. Gatrie's most significant use is in the earlygame when he's actually capable of doing a nice chunk of damage, but by the time he comes back, he's not doubling when all your other units are and his tankiness is comparable to Oscar or Titania. He does not have a niche in that game.

This is probably the first time I've seen someone think that 10's EPs are worse than 9's.

Also, you're now changing the primary reason for your disliking of Fe10. First it was long ass enemy phases (which isn't true); now it's lack of enemy range marking. I agree on the second being a bad decision, but don't change your main complaint because the first didn't hold up.

I'm not changing my reason at all. I was talking about my experience playing the game the first time when talking about tedium within FE games, and then talking about how I don't want to replay even with that option unlocked for other reasons that don't neccessarily equate to tedium.

I disagree. The master crowns are pretty sparse, your team is split up into three (further dividing your t3's), and the laguz being strong in p4 doesn't negate the fact that yours team are still overall toned down from mid-part 3 and onward. It's painfully easy to promote potential filler units like Titania. Not so much in the japanese version when you have to consider the scarcity of the crowns.

Have you played FE10 in JP? The basic normal mode for the JP version is easier than the localised one, even though there are less ways to get to tier 3.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Irysa

[dondon151]

I'm not dismissing Fe6 specifics at all. There's definitely some interesting ones that should be taken note of (Klein/Tate, Douglas, 14's treasures), but you're going clearly ragging on 7 about unit usage while letting 6 slide in this regard. That narrow pass under the ch8 chests? Throw Marcus and/or Zealot with a javelin/hand axe and it's all basically cleared out.

marcus can't ORKO the mages without both a str and a spd proc; zealot has to hit twice at 62 hit. neither are likely to be in good shape following a confrontation with the central enemy group.

Why is it that just saying "oh Oswin/Marcus can handle any challenges" is acceptable for 7, but then you try to claim that the intricacies of Fe6 can't be done the same way with Fe6, which it totally can. Marcus and Zealout can basically fly through the entire first half of the map, maybe taking a small detour the manage the horseslayer knight (which, along with the other knight in the way, can be dealt with by the hammer), which basically trivializes half the map (as the rest of your units can't do anything but lag behind, unlike 7's 17).

irysa and i are making true claims. marcus @ javelin ORKOs every enemy on the way to the throne in FE7 chapter 17 except for 3 nomads. but in FE6 chapter 8, marcus has to choose to ORKO soldiers with a steel axe, knights with a hammer or armorslayer, or archers with a silver lance. he can't do all of those at once, and neither can zealot. the trailing group of unpromoted mounties have to work to clean up the enemies that are often left alive, unless you advance your team at baldrick pace, at which point movement no longer matters.

Why is it excusable that you practically need a ferry filler just to move Roy everywhere? SD handled this by giving Marth a generous amount of mov compared to the size of the levels.

marth has to detour for villages in FE11 and FE12, falls behind dracos, paladins, and horsemen in very little time, and there's no rescuing to help marth along, so the only alternative is to burn warp and rescue uses on him, plus he has to take the boots in both games to maintain an appropriate pace.

Let me again point to Fe5, which has a lot of warpskippable maps, but does not expect you trudge through huge maps and ferrying your lord everywhere if you don't decide to utilize warp/rescue.

you're doing one of the following: being unintentionally ironic, forgetting FE5's maps, or being intentionally dishonest.

chapter 2x: big map, roundabout path, fog of war, and sand tiles everywhere that cost 2 mov to traverse.

chapter 4: big map, little rescuing.

chapter 5: huge map, little rescuing.

chapter 12: fog of war and forest tiles everywhere

chapter 16A: big map

chapter 16B: forest tiles and warp tiles everywhere

chapter 18: little rescuing, why are you complaining about FE6 chapter 22?

chapter 19: huge map, nothingness

chapter 22: big map, roundabout path, bullshit cyas

chapter 24: little rescuing, why are you complaining about FE6 chapter 22?

chapter 24x: fog of war, warp tiles, little rescuing, why are you complaining about FE6 chapter 22?

now that i've debunked this silly claim entirely, are you going to take this back?

[Fe5] does not expect you trudge through huge maps and ferrying your lord everywhere if you don't decide to utilize warp/rescue.

And while I don't doubt your method to beating the chapter quickly enough, a lot of it requires forehand knowledge of where the enemies will pop up, which I doubt most non-efficient playthroughs will bother to look up. It's all too easy to slowed down if you don't know the right places to put Niime, the right places to squeeze through reinforcement areas, etc.

it's like we're asking too much of the player to commit to some experimentation and thought in a strategy game if "knowing the right places to put niime" is too difficult of a task.

I forgot if Hugh moves or not (iirc he doesn't?), but if he doesn't, then taking the right side doesn't really mean anything. He's not going anywhere, so how would it be easier?

hugh moves in chapter 16, so roy has to take the right side to recruit him, or he has to be warped in.

Also, you're really stretching your case if you consider one red gem to be "items to steal from enemies along the way"

one red gem is 3/4 of a boots in FE6. a red gem is worth a lot.

try not to make these sorts of arguments; your ignorance is telling and it's exhausting for irysa and me to put out every little fire that you start. thanks.

Edited July 6, 2014 by dondon151