screenshot Ike's FE Megathread {15.5}

[Jedi]

Actually, you can easily take care of Weissman by using Leif's Light Brand or Eyvel's Fire Sword from range, since if you use a magic weapon at range it will do magical damage. You can also use Dagdar's Hammer to take him out, of course. Also, Nanna joins you way earlier than Mareeta, joining you in chapter 5, as opposed to chapter 12 for Mareeta.

Typically I have Eyvel do it because she two shots him with the Fire Sword, and experience isn't that hard to come by in the game so I never feel like its a waste to do so.

[The Draco Knight]

Actually, you can easily take care of Weissman by using Leif's Light Brand or Eyvel's Fire Sword from range, since if you use a magic weapon at range it will do magical damage. You can also use Dagdar's Hammer to take him out, of course. Also, Nanna joins you way earlier than Mareeta, joining you in chapter 5, as opposed to chapter 12 for Mareeta.

You can actually leave the boss to Othin with the Pugi Axe, since he will be able to do a lot of damage to the boss in retaliation thanks to Wrath and Pugi.

It's a bit luck based, but It works nearly all the time against Weissman.

[sirmola]

To be fair, Kaga did have plans to release an easier version of Thracia to the Nintendo 64, but this version never came about due to Kaga leaving and other such factors. And at least with the advent of gamefaqs and such, no one can try and pull that shit nowadays.

THe "making of fire emblem" book that intsys released shows pretty clearly that FE64 was an extremely early version of FE6. (source: http://serenesforest.net/2015/12/09/the-making-of-fire-emblem-64/ ) Or are you talking about something else?

[Integrity]

What kind of awful things do I have to do to convince you to take Marty and Ronin to the final chapter

i already did that in the linked lp i'm pretty sure

[Katie]

THe "making of fire emblem" book that intsys released shows pretty clearly that FE64 was an extremely early version of FE6. (source: http://serenesforest.net/2015/12/09/the-making-of-fire-emblem-64/ ) Or are you talking about something else?

Something else. Pretty sure FE64 only started development after Kaga had left.

[sirmola]

Oh, and by the way, great first fe5 update. Now that you have slayed all those (mostly story related) FE4 related sacred cows, time to do the fe5 ones (mostly gameplay related this time). I suspect that fe6 will be a bit of a dry spell, though, mainly because it's no one's favorite, and doesn't generate too many strong options.

Edited August 1, 2016 by sirmola

[Miacis]

It wasn't especially uncommon for games back then to have things that would be hard to find without either a guidebook or extreme luck/thoroughness. Seems kinda hyperbolic to call Kaga a fucker "designing the game to sell strategy books", seeing as none of the more obscure events/items will have a significant impact on either the gameplay or the story.

It's not like this is Valkyrie Profile with its hiding the entirety of the plot behind a list of poorly-explained conditions.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Miacis

[Katie]

It wasn't especially uncommon for games back then to have things that would be hard to find without either a guidebook or extreme luck/thoroughness. Seems kinda hyperbolic to call Kaga a fucker "designing the game to sell strategy books", seeing as none of the more obscure events/items will have a significant impact on either the gameplay or the story.

Just because it was common at the time doesn't mean it was okay.

[Jedi]

Oh, and by the way, great first fe5 update. Now that you have slayed all those (mostly story related) FE4 related sacred cows, time to do the fe5 ones (mostly gameplay related this time). I suspect that fe6 will be a bit of a dry spell, though, mainly because it's no one's favorite, and doesn't generate too many strong options.

I'm not sure where you were when Serenes & the community mostly hated FE6, and people like dondon, Irysa, Lord Raven had to despell it, along with me defending it as well.

I personally like the game a lot, I think its just right in the challenge department and gives you enough options to have fun with the game at the same time.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Jedi

[Lord Raven]

Oh, and by the way, great first fe5 update. Now that you have slayed all those (mostly story related) FE4 related sacred cows, time to do the fe5 ones (mostly gameplay related this time). I suspect that fe6 will be a bit of a dry spell, though, mainly because it's no one's favorite, and doesn't generate too many strong options.

I'm not too convinced but I'm too lazy to argue in this thread about it because I think Integrity is being needlessly pedantic about a bunch of random things (and honestly the whole 'this is my soapbox' in the OP is very offputting), but I digress. We also shouldn't pretend that the common opinion behind FE5 these days isn't that it has a lot of random bullshit in it, but I think dondon does a wonderful job going over some of the stupid parts and some of the more well designed/difficult parts.

Now, I'll point out that FE6 actually has quite a bit of good design and ranks on my top 3. It's definitely not a dry spell.

Now, let me get here.

Just because it was common at the time doesn't mean it was okay.

Define "okay," because I mean, judging a 90s game by modern standards is going to make the game look significantly worse. There are some things you gotta take for what it actually is. Edited August 1, 2016 by Lord Raven

[Specta]

me too fam

[Miacis]

Just because it was common at the time doesn't mean it was okay.

Was it not? I can see the value in hiding nonessential things behind tasks that require either several playthroughs, acute intuition, or mouth-to-ear. As a developper, you aim to have your player do at least one of these things. By that logic, should games have no secrets? What about games that hide key story elements in out-of-game materials, like Drakengard-NieR?

Take something like the Dark Souls series which pushes that secret-hiding philosophy to the extreme. Its netplay and community amplify the whole mouth-to-ear effect, and there's quite definitely an audience which craves that sort of exploration.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Miacis

[Integrity]

It wasn't especially uncommon for games back then to have things that would be hard to find without either a guidebook or extreme luck/thoroughness. Seems kinda hyperbolic to call Kaga a fucker "designing the game to sell strategy books", seeing as none of the more obscure events/items will have a significant impact on either the gameplay or the story.

It's not like this is Valkyrie Profile with its hiding the entirety of the plot behind a list of poorly-explained conditions.

no, you're right, it's a very '90s videogames thing to do (as you said, valkyrie profile or even the PSX final fantasies) and that's probably an overreaction to it, particularly since thracia isn't even as bad about it as genealogy is (i'm still salty over the hero axe)

EDIT:

Was it not? I can see the value in hiding nonessential things behind tasks that require either several playthroughs, acute intuition, or mouth-to-ear. As a developper, you aim to have your player do at least one of these things. By that logic, should games have no secrets? What about games that hide key story elements in out-of-game materials, like Drakengard-NieR?

Take something like the Dark Souls series which pushes that secret-hiding philosophy to the extreme. Its netplay and community amplify the whole mouth-to-ear effect, and there's quite definitely an audience which craves that sort of exploration.

okay the first post i quoted was alright but this one is pretty dumb. don't jump straight off the slippery slope to "should games just have no secrets then???" because there are a lot of things in videogames that are really stupid and unintuitive unless you have the guide to tell you how they work, and that's objectively bad design. even dark souls is guilty of it to a huge extent - siegmeyer/siegward's questlines are grossly specifically linear in games that pretend to be nonlinear or the entire way armor works in ds3, to name some. being obtuse doesn't necessarily make a game good, nor does it make it bad. it's entirely in the handling.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Integrity

[Miacis]

I wouldn't have mentioned Valkyrie Profile if I held the belief that all obtuse secrets are good always. Simply taking the counterpoint that "most people might need a guide for it" is not necessarily not-okay. Guides and secrets were shared in classes and magazines before the internet, and if even a blind Dark Souls LPer playing offline can find Gwyndolin in this day, I'm sure a bunch of folks found Linoan's church, Mareeta's Astra or Marty's class change to Berserker. As you say, it's all in the handling, and I personally don't think Thracia did too bad in that department. (Or it might be my standards are a bit skewed from playing TRS and going for Retina.)

I'll fully admit that my "should games have no secrets???" was kinda dumb and poorly phrased though.

[Katie]

The thing is, Thracia doesn't bother to even hint at a lot of things it should. Take, for example, Shiva in chapter 2x. Now, his dialogue implies he's actually a good person and is therefore probably recruitable, except, the thing is, while he is recruitable, he's not in chapter 2x, so many players will probably try to recruit him until they've tried everyone and realize he can't be recruited, and there's a good chance after realizing that that they'll just try and kill him instead, and even if they have the sense to capture him for his weapon, how are they supposed to know not to release him? Sure there's that talk Leif has with Eyvel, but nothing in that conversation implies that you shouldn't release other recruitable enemies as well. And not only that, but Kaga basically admitted himself that it was done out of greed. Not only do you have to buy the game, but if you want to complete it 100%, you'll have to buy the strategy guide as well, and give them even more of your money. So it's not so much the fact that he included secrets, but the fact that said secrets were included in order to get you to buy the strategy guide, whereas other games generally included them as little easter eggs for players willing to try everything to find.

Anyway, I have to say, one thing I notice about the old FE5 patch, is a lot of names aren't even kept consistent with the old FE4 patch. For example, I just beat chapter 6, and I'm at the part where Raydrik and some other dude are talking about Galzus's past, and he's mentioned as hailing from the Kingdom of "Libo". Now, every FE4 translation to my knowledge, and even the FE4 world map, calls it "Rivough", so it actually took me a while to figure out where they were talking about. This is why the Project Naga FE5 translation can not come any sooner. Not only will we finally have quality translations for both Jugdral games, we'll also have consistent ones at that.

[Nintales]

The thing is, Thracia doesn't bother to even hint at a lot of things it should. Take, for example, Shiva in chapter 2x. Now, his dialogue implies he's actually a good person and is therefore probably recruitable, except, the thing is, while he is recruitable, he's not in chapter 2x, so many players will probably try to recruit him until they've tried everyone and realize he can't be recruited, and there's a good chance after realizing that that they'll just try and kill him instead, and even if they have the sense to capture him for his weapon, how are they supposed to know not to release him? Sure there's that talk Leif has with Eyvel, but nothing in that conversation implies that you shouldn't release other recruitable enemies as well. And not only that, but Kaga basically admitted himself that it was done out of greed. Not only do you have to buy the game, but if you want to complete it 100%, you'll have to buy the strategy guide as well, and give them even more of your money. So it's not so much the fact that he included secrets, but the fact that said secrets were included in order to get you to buy the strategy guide, whereas other games generally included them as little easter eggs for players willing to try everything to find.

Anyway, I have to say, one thing I notice about the old FE5 patch, is a lot of names aren't even kept consistent with the old FE4 patch. For example, I just beat chapter 6, and I'm at the part where Raydrik and some other dude are talking about Galzus's past, and he's mentioned as hailing from the Kingdom of "Libo". Now, every FE4 translation to my knowledge, and even the FE4 world map, calls it "Rivough", so it actually took me a while to figure out where they were talking about. This is why the Project Naga FE5 translation can not come any sooner. Not only will we finally have quality translations for both Jugdral games, we'll also have consistent ones at that.

Iirc releasing Shiva still triggers his event. Not sure.

But how would you hint it?

You can't make people in Leaf's squad get a line, because none of them know Shiva.

You can't make Shiva get a line neither.

The only way that would have been possible would have been to give Saphy or Lifis a line about him. But that would have been horribly clunky imo because it'd have been something like "you're a good man, Shiva. *shiva leaves* If only the gods could protect him..." from Saphy.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Nintales

[Integrity]

shiva's recruitment would be totally fine if capturing and releasing him kept the flag up for him to spawn later. that's the only problem with it that i was bitching about, that it's not particularly intuitive that you have to capture and hold onto him to get him to come back later, particularly when his release dialogue is like "huh. i owe them a favor now."

i suspect that's a direct casualty of the game being rushed, though, since i can hear the programmer chat. "well, when the player lets this guy go, the game flags him as dead and i have no idea how to prevent it right now." "well we're shipping in a week so i dunno just do more important things"

Anyway, I have to say, one thing I notice about the old FE5 patch, is a lot of names aren't even kept consistent with the old FE4 patch. For example, I just beat chapter 6, and I'm at the part where Raydrik and some other dude are talking about Galzus's past, and he's mentioned as hailing from the Kingdom of "Libo". Now, every FE4 translation to my knowledge, and even the FE4 world map, calls it "Rivough", so it actually took me a while to figure out where they were talking about. This is why the Project Naga FE5 translation can not come any sooner. Not only will we finally have quality translations for both Jugdral games, we'll also have consistent ones at that.

dude the old patches aren't even internally consistent, let alone with one another

[DarkDestr0yer61]

I just thought of something, Finn was around when Briggid gets recruited in Holy War, so wouldn't he be able to recognize if Eyvale is Briggid?

Or does he say something about it further down the road, and I am just getting ahead of myself?

[Katie]

shiva's recruitment would be totally fine if capturing and releasing him kept the flag up for him to spawn later. that's the only problem with it that i was bitching about, that it's not particularly intuitive that you have to capture and hold onto him to get him to come back later, particularly when his release dialogue is like "huh. i owe them a favor now."i suspect that's a direct casualty of the game being rushed, though, since i can hear the programmer chat. "well, when the player lets this guy go, the game flags him as dead and i have no idea how to prevent it right now." "well we're shipping in a week so i dunno just do more important things"dude the old patches aren't even internally consistent, let alone with one another

Fair enough. I myself have already found many an internal inconsistency in fe5 so far, mainly characters being called one thing in cutscenes and another in gameplay, likely due to character limits or something like that.

[sirmola]

Iirc releasing Shiva still triggers his event. Not sure.

Some people say that it does, and some say that it dosn't.(see this thread: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=48309 )

I suspect heavily that it depends on the game version that you are using (NP or ROM version). THe rom version is more polished, so that might tie into integrity's guess

[Integrity]

I just thought of something, Finn was around when Briggid gets recruited in Holy War, so wouldn't he be able to recognize if Eyvale is Briggid?

Or does he say something about it further down the road, and I am just getting ahead of myself?

24x is a long way away, don't worry, we'll get to it

[HumanDawn]

And not only that, but Kaga basically admitted himself that it was done out of greed.

Making an incredibly hard and rushed game (although one could argue that many Fire Emblem games seem rushed) on a dead console was the most ridiculous thing, it is no wonder it sold roughly 100,000 copies and expecting to get that much more money from strategy books is even more ridiculous.

Edited August 1, 2016 by HumanDawn

[Katie]

Making an incredibly hard and rushed game (although one could argue that many Fire Emblem games seem rushed) on a dead console was the most ridiculous thing, it is no wonder it sold roughly 100,000 copies and expecting to get that much more money from strategy books is even more ridiculous.

Good point. Even the n64 was a few years old when Thracia came out. It honestly probably should have been on the n64 to begin with.

[Miacis]

Without reprogramming shenanigans or writing awkward pre-chapter hints, they could have made Shiva's recruitment work a bit better by having someone (anyone, really) throw a post-chapter reaction to Shiva dead/released, and then have them react a different way if he's captured/alive. So the player at least has some feedback on the actions they've taken and can still restart the map to change them.

As things are, Shiva could very well just be the map boss seeing as no one cares about his death. (And his only dialogue shows him opposing Lifis, the player's newest recruit...)

Not knowing how to succeed a task in advance is one thing, but not knowing about your success or failure until it's too late to restart is the bigger sin of that chapter.

expecting to get that much more money from strategy books is even more ridiculous.

It is indeed ridiculous because it's a silly idea that he planned to make money from ingame secrets? Even if the game sold, it's just "special tips, hidden events or hidden items", so the stuff most players won't give a shit about. Not like devs get much anything worth from strategy book sales either, so I'm still not sure how Kaga's quote went from "he wanted to have obtuse things you'd essentially need a guide for" to "he planned to get filthy rich from it"

Edited August 1, 2016 by Miacis

[Julius Nepos]

Wow, I go on vacation for two and a half weeks and miss almost the entire second generation of FE4. Keep it up, Integrity!

By the way, Orsin reacts aggressively to this. Surprised?

Orsin's personality is his wrath skill.

While eating through them, here’s a screenshot of dismounted fighting. All (?) mounted units are locked to swords when they dismount, nonregardless of their mounted fighting type. If they used bows or staves, I think, they can still use those too. When dismounted, mounted units also suffer stat penalties beyond the movement speed you’d expect, which leads to them being generally inferior fighters on foot – and, in indoor maps, they’re forced to dismount, which leads to your foot units getting some actual hella good use in this game.

I miss dismount so much. :(

Also, dismounted bow users can only use bows, not swords.

I won’t blame you for not remembering, but Blaggi is Claude’s blood. Apparently Blaggi has his own non-Blaggi-blooded priests, which raises the question of whether the other bloodlines do too? Claude was the ruler of Edda, nominally, so it’s not like he eschewed rulership for priesthood. Jugdral is weird and doesn’t make sense. August joins us because he’s on the road to Manster, and he offers to give “tips” on our travels.

Of course Blaggi has priests that are not of His lineage. According to ancient Roman propaganda, the Julius family was descended from the goddess Venus - did that mean that only members of the Julius family could be priests of Venus? If the worship of Jugdral's gods was limited only to the gods' descendants, there'd be barely any religion at all.

Without reprogramming shenanigans or writing awkward pre-chapter hints, they could have made Shiva's recruitment work a bit better by having someone (anyone, really) throw a post-chapter reaction to Shiva dead/released, and then have them react a different way if he's captured/alive. So the player at least has some feedback on the actions they've taken and can still restart the map to change them.

As things are, Shiva could very well just be the map boss seeing as no one cares about his death. (And his only dialogue shows him opposing Lifis, the player's newest recruit...)

Not knowing how to succeed a task in advance is one thing, but not knowing about your success or failure until it's too late to restart is the bigger sin of that chapter.

As far as I know, Intelligent Systems has always wanted people to play FE ironman (i.e. not resetting). Anyway, the game hints pretty well that Shiva is a Good Guy, by making him support Helpless Cleric Saffy and going against Lifis, who is painted as a Bad Guy. I played Thracia blind, but I instinctively figured out that I should capture Shiva because he looked very recruitable and knew that capturing = not killing.

He may be a bit of a "hidden recruitment", but those are not uncommon in FE. Off the top of my head, FE1 gives no indication that Navarre and Roger even are recruitable, and FE9 gives no hints for Shinon or for Stefan. They're supposed to have a non-intuitive recruitment.

Edited August 3, 2016 by Hattusili II