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So... Which route do you prefer?


Which route do you prefer?  

39 members have voted

  1. 1. Eirika or Ephraim?

    • Eirika
      22
    • Ephraim
      17


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Phantom Ship isn't hard but it is one of the worst maps in the game. The initial skeleton rush is one of the most braindead uses of enemy placement I have ever seen (and as you note just encourages brainless use of Duessel or some other PC who can play a similar role), and then after that the map just tries to kill you with reinforcements from the fog that you aren't aware of ganging up on someone.

The map does zoom out to show that flying reinforcements are coming so they're not exactly out of nowhere. Early in the map you begin close to the enemy starting points too so you have an idea of where they're coming. The map is hard, but I wouldn't call it badly designed. Specially when the actual enemies in question are actually very weak it's just the fliers with high speed and steel weapons.

I may be remembering things wrong but is there a map in Sacred Stones outside of 14E that isn't a braindead power rush? Even on Selena's map it's safer to dance and fly Vanessa, Tana or Cormag (Or my personal favorite: walk Pirate Ross over yhe water) over to Selena than to take her Bolting assault.

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If you take Ephraim's route, you'll miss out on Joshua's awesome little backstory.

Actually, no you don't. Caellach mentions to Lyon that he used to have a friend named Joshua, and if you have Joshua fight Caellach, he'll briefly mention that Caellach used to get into fights with Joshua over who would be king.

All of the information is there in Ephraim's route; it's just that the player needs to connect a few more dots than in Eirika's route. You only miss out if you don't connect the dots.

Edited by Paper Jam
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Ephraim: the exclusives maps are generally more fun to me, with Father and Son being one of my favorite maps in the series.

Plus, we get to know why Graze invaded and what exactly happened to Lyon, not to mention that the confrontations between Lyon and Ephraim after chapter 15 are more interesting than the confrontations between Erika and "Lyon".

I still take Eirika's route sometimes tough.

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Actually, no you don't. Caellach mentions to Lyon that he used to have a friend named Joshua, and if you have Joshua fight Caellach, he'll briefly mention that Caellach used to get into fights with Joshua over who would be king.

All of the information is there in Ephraim's route; it's just that the player needs to connect a few more dots than in Eirika's route. You only miss out if you don't connect the dots.

But you miss Joshua's mother's death, the convo during the battle is WAY shorter and less detailed, etc. etc. etc. You really miss out on too much to say you still get it on the other route.

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The map does zoom out to show that flying reinforcements are coming so they're not exactly out of nowhere. Early in the map you begin close to the enemy starting points too so you have an idea of where they're coming. The map is hard, but I wouldn't call it badly designed. Specially when the actual enemies in question are actually very weak it's just the fliers with high speed and steel weapons.

I may be remembering things wrong but is there a map in Sacred Stones outside of 14E that isn't a braindead power rush? Even on Selena's map it's safer to dance and fly Vanessa, Tana or Cormag (Or my personal favorite: walk Pirate Ross over yhe water) over to Selena than to take her Bolting assault.

In your previous post you said Phantom Ship "isn't hard at all"...

Anyway in general I think most maps do a better job with placing enemies into groups which are more interesting to individually deal with than Phantom Ship's swarm of low-level monsters. Darkling Woods is the only map which feels as bad about this, but even it has some more interesting elements (shadowshot). To say nothing of the cool things the game does with secondary objectives. FE8 doesn't have the best map design in the series but you're really selling it short, and by comparison Phantom Ship just looks bad.

I don't think too highly of hints that reinforcements are coming. I hate reinforcements who act on the same turn in FE6, Hard Modes of FE11-13, etc. Phantom Ship feels like the closest thing to that in FE8. Yes there are ways to mitigate this (spam torches like crazy) but it's still dishonest and not much fun. The couple of times I've lost people on that map my reaction was "well that was cheap" instead of "well that was my fault", and usually it's the latter for me in Fire Emblem, so that's a bad feeling.

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I see some people saying that Eirika's route has the better story telling, but to be honest, I fail to see that to be the case when most of her chapters seem to be all but irrelevant to Sacred Stones' overall story...

Edited by Levant Mir Celestia
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In your previous post you said Phantom Ship "isn't hard at all"...

What I mean to say is that if you use Duessel, and Seth even if moderately, the ship isn't hard at all. If you actively skip on using units because they're "too strong" or they're "boring to use" then that's entirely on you. Call them "boring" or "brainless" but you have the perfect tools to make your life easier. Hell, you even get Dozla who's somewhat bulky himself with tons of HP. Reinforcements are constantly coming from every orifice since the beginning of the map, it's one of those chapters where you don't lower your guard until the map is over. This map is just as hard as you allow it to be.

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What's dishonest about using the torches that the game gives you for exactly this purpose?

It's more that you'd have to set them up in a lot of different locations (or know in advance where the right locations are). I don't really see the appeal of this, either way. It's a map where by far the most likely way for you to lose units is due to things you don't know about (or maybe a bad approach to the boss*). That's bad design.

*Actually I quite like the boss of Phantom Ship aside from the issue of him possibly having a surprise attack; he's probably the only thing I like about the map. Competent stats + moves + flies + has some crit rate + hey a reward for actually raising an archer in a FE game, how novel.

What I mean to say is that if you use Duessel, and Seth even if moderately, the ship isn't hard at all.

That was my original argument. You said, and I quote: "The map is hard, but I wouldn't call it badly designed". Which, well, I disagree on both counts! If you're retreating from the first, good; I'm much more interested in talking about the second anyway.

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If you're retreating from the first, good; I'm much more interested in talking about the second anyway.

Very well: At no point you're not warned about enemy attacks. The first turn has flying enemies ambush you from top and bottom and their range has them so they won't be able to reach the units in the center of the boat. You are forewarned that during this map flying enemies will be coming the edges of the screen and outside the ships. Dialogue implies that the boat is packed and a mere use of a Torch staff will reveal a good amount of skeltals in the boat. You can also choke them and funnel them by choking them not on their ship's side of the plank, but your side of the plank, making an advance much more safe although it might complicate things with L'rachel. Lastly reinforcements do not move the turn they arrive so even if you can't see, the camera will pan to the spots they will be coming from. You can also early promote Artur at 13-15 and make thing even easier on yourself.

It's not poorly designed, it's designed to screw with players that do not know how to play carefully, defensively and instead ram their units in the middle of the enemy's army and genuinely expect to survive the turn.

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I mean, I'm sure that nowadays' me would be completely able to beat Phantom Ship even on Hard Mode without having too much trouble, but as a kid, I'd always hate using prepromotes (I still kinda do), so I'd have a hard time keeping people alive. I also didn't know my way around the gameplay as well as I do now in general, so...

Edited by Topaz Light
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I think both routes have really solid maps, Eirika's more on the simpler side, but more focused on routes, while Ephraim has more army based battles dealing with seizes and boss kills.

I prefer Ephraims myself, because I like harder maps, but I do also really like Eirikas, and I like her more as a character than Ephraim.

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