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What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?


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Lyn Normal Mode is more fun than Lyn Hard Mode. Neither one is of any gameplay merit whatsoever for anyone familiar with the mechanics of the series, but Normal Mode at least has a lot more fun character dialogue during those forced events "Hard" Mode skips. A recent replay made me realize that FE7's tutorial is really well-done, not just in terms of what they explain, but how they keep it fun and engaging for the people learning it. Lyn Mode has surprisingly risen up to be in the upper half of my favorite Fire Emblem stories as a result.

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54 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Lyn Mode has surprisingly risen up to be in the upper half of my favorite Fire Emblem stories as a result.

I agree with this one. Lyn's story is one of my favorites, it's more personal and almost everyone involved gets a chance to shine in their dialogue.

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Sacred stones has better balance IMO than Blazing Blade. (Haven't played HHM or HNM, though, mostly because I din't want to have to play all the way through the game again to unlock it.)

 

In Blazing Blade,  I used almost all of the bad units and none of the prepromotes. Case in point, my endgame team was,: Lyn, who had 18 Str as a 20/14 Blade lord, with three energy rings, Hector, who was quite good, Eliwood, who was absolutely stat screwed in everything, ( as a lv. 20/3 Great lord he had 11 str, 9 speed, Nino as a sage, Serra as a bishop, Lowen as a Paladin and Canas as a Druid. I never once used any of the prepromotes, and the only chapter I struggled with at all was Battle before Dawn, because Jaffar' AI is bad. In sacred stones, during a no-skirmish run, using the trainees has challenges, making many of the chapters interesting. Even though Sacred could easily be cheesed by Seth and Franz, there is ways to make it challenging. I did not find that this was the case in Blazing. Since I'm an absolute weirdo, this probably isn't the case for everyone, though.

 

I await execution at the hands of Shadow Mir.

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6 hours ago, Benice said:

Sacred stones has better balance IMO than Blazing Blade. (Haven't played HHM or HNM, though, mostly because I din't want to have to play all the way through the game again to unlock it.)

 

In Blazing Blade,  I used almost all of the bad units and none of the prepromotes. Case in point, my endgame team was,: Lyn, who had 18 Str as a 20/14 Blade lord, with three energy rings, Hector, who was quite good, Eliwood, who was absolutely stat screwed in everything, ( as a lv. 20/3 Great lord he had 11 str, 9 speed, Nino as a sage, Serra as a bishop, Lowen as a Paladin and Canas as a Druid. I never once used any of the prepromotes, and the only chapter I struggled with at all was Battle before Dawn, because Jaffar' AI is bad. In sacred stones, during a no-skirmish run, using the trainees has challenges, making many of the chapters interesting. Even though Sacred could easily be cheesed by Seth and Franz, there is ways to make it challenging. I did not find that this was the case in Blazing. Since I'm an absolute weirdo, this probably isn't the case for everyone, though.

 

I await execution at the hands of Shadow Mir.

OH wow. 18 strength Lyn with three energy rings. That's some major screwage right there. She starts with 4 strength and gets 2 from promotion. Which means she only leveled strength 6 times in 33 levels at a 40% growth. What are the chances? (no seriously, someone tell me as I'm absolutely blanking on my basic mathematics. What do I do, like divide by 40 or something?)

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21 minutes ago, Jotari said:

OH wow. 18 strength Lyn with three energy rings. That's some major screwage right there. She starts with 4 strength and gets 2 from promotion. Which means she only leveled strength 6 times in 33 levels at a 40% growth. What are the chances? (no seriously, someone tell me as I'm absolutely blanking on my basic mathematics. What do I do, like divide by 40 or something?)

Roughly 0.66%. There's a handy website I love using for these sorts of calculations:

http://vassarstats.net/textbook/ch5apx.html

 

 

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4 hours ago, Jotari said:

OH wow. 18 strength Lyn with three energy rings. That's some major screwage right there. She starts with 4 strength and gets 2 from promotion. Which means she only leveled strength 6 times in 33 levels at a 40% growth. What are the chances? (no seriously, someone tell me as I'm absolutely blanking on my basic mathematics. What do I do, like divide by 40 or something?)

She has fourty growth in strength?! She's never broken 14 without energy rings for me! In five playthroughs! I thought she had twenty.

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9 hours ago, Benice said:

She has fourty growth in strength?! She's never broken 14 without energy rings for me! In five playthroughs! I thought she had twenty.

18 is the average she should have at 20/14. Those three energy rings (which is a pretty massive investment imo) managed to maintain her average. She should have 20 strength if you're tossing three energy rings on her.

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My unpopular opinion (not sure how unpopular, but whatever): 

This community has an absolutely asinine way of discussing the writing quality of anything, but especially Fire Emblem games. This isn't to say that FE stories don't have problems (dear god do some of them have problems), but the people on this forum and in this fandom in general take either a ridiculously hardline approach to what "good writing" means, or they get super defensive about a game they like that has widely-acknowledged bad writing--when it's okay to like a story that isn't particularly great. As an example of the latter, FE7's plot is a mess, but people like the writing because of the relationships between the three lords, even though some of it (Lyn, all of Lyn) is irrelevant or purely carried by nostalgia--AND THAT'S OKAY.

As an example of the former, one that I'm seeing more now that we've entered "New Game Response Stage 2: Time for Hate" is most of Three Houses. There are a host of things that people point to as "bad writing" that in reality is based on a difference in taste, not a lack of skill. There are real problems or missteps, don't get me wrong, but let's go over a few examples.

Example 1: Blue Lions doesn't deal with TWSITD/Killing Thales as Arundel. The big criticisms of this route that I've seen are either (A) Dimitri doesn't actually solve the problem (he does, pay attention), or (B) It's not satisfying to deal with TWSITD that way, so it's poorly written. That is not how this works. Each route of the game has a specific focus, BL is more of a character story, VW is more of a lore and worldbuilding story, and CF/SS are mostly plot focused--all of which are valid story focuses. Dealing with TWSITD is not the primary focus of BL because they aren't as important to the core characters. This is a story about tragedy, growth, and reconciliation. It doesn't need to do everything, that's not the story it's trying to tell, and saying that a story with a focus that you personally don't like is bad writing is entitled and childish. 

Example 2: Rodrigue's death sequence. There are two prevalent criticisms here, one of which is VERY valid, and could have been easily fixed. Firstly, the obvious one, why not Divine Pulse the attack? There are easy ways to fix or explain this away, but the writers didn't do it, so it is a legitimate plot hole--especially because DP is explicitly used in the plot early on (it's not a purely gameplay based ability). The other big criticism is that people have a problem understanding why Rodrigue's death is the thing that opens the door for Dimitri's recovery. The people that don't get it, I'm willing to bet, haven't experienced mental illness of any kind, and also (more importantly) haven't been paying attention to the themes of the story. The sacrifice having the effect it does makes sense in the narrative and to the characters. 

TL;DR the Fire Emblem fandom has a generally asinine approach to storytelling, and one that often is deaf to any brand of subtlety--or marks subtlety as "bad writing". I could get started on Claude here, because he gets WAY more shit than makes any sense, but I'll be here all day if I do. 

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2 hours ago, Mandokarla said:

Example 2: Rodrigue's death sequence. There are two prevalent criticisms here, one of which is VERY valid, and could have been easily fixed. Firstly, the obvious one, why not Divine Pulse the attack? There are easy ways to fix or explain this away, but the writers didn't do it, so it is a legitimate plot hole--especially because DP is explicitly used in the plot early on (it's not a purely gameplay based ability). The other big criticism is that people have a problem understanding why Rodrigue's death is the thing that opens the door for Dimitri's recovery. The people that don't get it, I'm willing to bet, haven't experienced mental illness of any kind, and also (more importantly) haven't been paying attention to the themes of the story. The sacrifice having the effect it does makes sense in the narrative and to the characters. 

Third criticism, the animation of the scene is absolutely atrocious XD

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42 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Third criticism, the animation of the scene is absolutely atrocious XD

I'm assuming the in-game overworld animation is what you're talking about? Where Fleche literally does the "I'm ready to move" animation to mime an attack? Yeah that was pretty damn bad--it definitely weakened the impact of the moment. I think the CG's after were pretty good though. 

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Here are a couple mini-games on the side I think would be fun in a future game (I’m surprised we haven’t gotten this any sooner, not that I’m complaining):

-A jousting competition where only mounted units (preferably horseback, but pegasi and wyverns are allowed) are allowed to participate. Battles are the same as any Fire Emblem battle, but with the rules of jousting.

-An archery competition where units focused on range (archers and mages) have to hit a target, and that unit gets more points the closer their projectile is to the center (which is determined by the Hit Rate).

On the rare occasion the unit gets a Crit in either game, their points are doubled. These games can be played in the Extras menu, with up to four players locally or online.

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17 hours ago, Sacredstoner said:

All fire emblem games should have a world map with skirmishes

Wow that is an unpopular opinion. I'm not sure where I stand on this one, because on one hand, linear gameplay does test strategy more than anything with a grindable world map. On the other hand, I think traversable world maps with skirmishes have been underutilized from a narrative AND gameplay standpoint, so there's more depth to be had with this. If FE developed more of a larger campaign, where holding territory mattered more a la FE4, a traverseable world map could be really cool and interactive. 

Ex. Villain-dude orders three armies to march out towards three different locations, and you choose which to counter--or maybe split your army to try and counter them. Pros and cons to each scenario, and it opens FE up to dipping its toes into a more grand strategy side of things. Really give you the "wartime tactician" kind of feel. 

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I know people are gonna dump on me for this, but here goes:

I feel like Three Houses and the Judgral games are the only games in the series that truly deal with the grim reality and consequences of war, and how they affect the people and the world around them. While past games touched on this subject and could get really dark sometimes, most of them treated the war during their stories as generic adventures where the hero had to kill the bad guy and save everyone.

Edited by Perkilator
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5 hours ago, Perkilator said:

I know people are gonna dump on me for this, but here goes:

I feel like Three Houses and the Judgral games are the only games in the series that truly deal with the grim reality and consequences of war, and how they affect the people and the world around them. While past games touched on this subject and could get really dark sometimes, most of them treated the war during their stories as generic adventures where the hero had to kill the bad guy and save everyone.

I don't think anyone's gonna dump on you for this. They're the only games where the horror of war goes hand in hand with the hero's journey. Most games obviously focus on war and ultimately tell an anti-war story, but most have different focuses than the war that's being fought. Like Tellius touches on it with the states of places like Daein, and how both war-dependent and war-torn that country is, but ultimately Tellius is more concerned with race and class.

Fates kinda is about war just sucking in general and tears people apart, but it tackles dark subjects with all of the grace of a trashy 90s comic book.

Edited by Slumber
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22 hours ago, Perkilator said:

I know people are gonna dump on me for this, but here goes:

I feel like Three Houses and the Judgral games are the only games in the series that truly deal with the grim reality and consequences of war, and how they affect the people and the world around them. While past games touched on this subject and could get really dark sometimes, most of them treated the war during their stories as generic adventures where the hero had to kill the bad guy and save everyone.

What about Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn? Those games definitely didn't just "touch the subject". 

Path of Radiance, for once (in an FE game), didn't have an evil wizard/cult secretly pulling the strings; at least, none that reveal themselves in Path of Radiance; they saved that stuff for the sequel. Instead, it's all about stopping Ashnard from bringing about continent-wide war. It's one of very few FE games where the war arc is the only arc. And when the effects of the war were at the forefront, which was fairly often, the game dived deep into the realities and consequences of war. 

Radiant Dawn opens with Daein in shambles and under the oppressive occupation of Begnion; painting a pretty clear picture of what it's like to be the country that loses a war, and the motivation of the main characters in part 1 is to liberate Daein from those oppressive conditions. Part 2 then dealt with the arduous reconstruction of Crimea as it plunges into Civil War. The whole point of Part 2 is about whether or not Elincia can successfully lead Crimea through its post-war reconstruction and beyond. 

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On 3/27/2020 at 4:25 PM, Perkilator said:

THIS. Three Houses sort of had this, but it was mostly of your control with the whole calendar system.

I don’t even want it for grinding purposes, there’s just so many maps that I wish I could revisit. Also incorporating revenants etc into other story lines would have been cool.

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On 3/27/2020 at 5:54 PM, Mandokarla said:

Wow that is an unpopular opinion. I'm not sure where I stand on this one, because on one hand, linear gameplay does test strategy more than anything with a grindable world map. On the other hand, I think traversable world maps with skirmishes have been underutilized from a narrative AND gameplay standpoint, so there's more depth to be had with this. If FE developed more of a larger campaign, where holding territory mattered more a la FE4, a traverseable world map could be really cool and interactive. 

Ex. Villain-dude orders three armies to march out towards three different locations, and you choose which to counter--or maybe split your army to try and counter them. Pros and cons to each scenario, and it opens FE up to dipping its toes into a more grand strategy side of things. Really give you the "wartime tactician" kind of feel. 

Whether or not you want to grind is up to the player. You can skip all skirmishes and continue to move forward for the greatest challenge, or you can grind as much as possible and basically break the game with your level 20 units. That’s the beauty of the world map. The main reason why I’ve always wanted this is just to go back and see some maps again. I hate when there’s a really well designed beautiful map and you only get to experience it for maybe 12 turns. Feels like a waste to me. Idk. But the incorporation of monsters/reinforcements/rebel armies/ whoever is occupying those spaces on the map would make for a more interesting story line. Small details like that are what I love in all games.

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7 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

What about Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn? Those games definitely didn't just "touch the subject". 

Path of Radiance, for once (in an FE game), didn't have an evil wizard/cult secretly pulling the strings; at least, none that reveal themselves in Path of Radiance; they saved that stuff for the sequel. Instead, it's all about stopping Ashnard from bringing about continent-wide war. It's one of very few FE games where the war arc is the only arc. And when the effects of the war were at the forefront, which was fairly often, the game dived deep into the realities and consequences of war. 

Radiant Dawn opens with Daein in shambles and under the oppressive occupation of Begnion; painting a pretty clear picture of what it's like to be the country that loses a war, and the motivation of the main characters in part 1 is to liberate Daein from those oppressive conditions. Part 2 then dealt with the arduous reconstruction of Crimea as it plunges into Civil War. The whole point of Part 2 is about whether or not Elincia can successfully lead Crimea through its post-war reconstruction and beyond. 

The opening of Radiant Dawn is the only part of those games that really covers how war affects normal people. And even then, that's after the war is finished, and seeing Daein struggle to bounce back under Begnion occupation, not really showing the people struggling during a war. Once Daein enters another war, that stops being a focus again.

Jugdral and Three Houses do a lot more to show how desperate people get during a war, and how fucked up it is for them. Thracia 776 especially.

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11 hours ago, Sacredstoner said:

Whether or not you want to grind is up to the player. You can skip all skirmishes and continue to move forward for the greatest challenge, or you can grind as much as possible and basically break the game with your level 20 units. That’s the beauty of the world map. The main reason why I’ve always wanted this is just to go back and see some maps again. I hate when there’s a really well designed beautiful map and you only get to experience it for maybe 12 turns. Feels like a waste to me. Idk. But the incorporation of monsters/reinforcements/rebel armies/ whoever is occupying those spaces on the map would make for a more interesting story line. Small details like that are what I love in all games.

I think some games do it better than others. Sacred stones is a great example where even in the post game, it's perfectly viable to march right into lagdou ruins straight out of endgame. You can grind if you want to, but it's not necessary. 

On the other hand you have awakening and echoes, where although it's not necessary for main game, you don't stand much of a chance taking on the post game without grinding. That's the stuff I don't like, I've still never beaten the post games for though because I hate grinding in these games.

That said, whether it's a world map or not, I don't think they're ever making another FE that is grind free (remakes excluded, although I wouldn't be surprised if it was added).

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Not entirely sure if I'm alone on this or not (Pretty sure I am, though), but I actually like Ambush spawning reinforcements.

Don't get me wrong, most of the time they just come in and smash your face in outta nowhere but I think having reinforcements that surprise you is better than FE7's "Here, have a free bandit, get it while it's fresh!" because the latter requires no strategy at all to get away with, unless they spawn like, a million enemies at once that you have to do your best to kill before enemy phase. And FE6 often even warns players about those ambush spawns, and when it doesn't it at least has the decency to spawn them from stairs or forts, which in my opinion encourages being careful around those tiles and always being sure that you can take on anything that may come on with the units who are within supposed range. Although I hear that ambush spawns in later games became more and more unfair, and as someone who's played FE12 (and hasn't finished it) I can definitely agree.

Edited by Koops
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On 3/29/2020 at 2:28 AM, Perkilator said:

I know people are gonna dump on me for this, but here goes:

I feel like Three Houses and the Judgral games are the only games in the series that truly deal with the grim reality and consequences of war, and how they affect the people and the world around them. While past games touched on this subject and could get really dark sometimes, most of them treated the war during their stories as generic adventures where the hero had to kill the bad guy and save everyone.

Who do you think would dump on you for that? Like, it's basically self evident. And you even covered yourself by mentioning that other games touch on it. Speaking of said other games, I absolutely love this imagery they use in Shadows of Valentia but do basically nothing with.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia Review - Gamereactor

It's one of those pictures tell a thousand words moment. This is the result of war. An endless field of death stretching beyond view dwarfing the actual sought after goal. Quite a shame Shadows of Valentia accidentally becomes, probably, the most pro war story with it's muddled theming.

18 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

What about Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn? Those games definitely didn't just "touch the subject". 

Path of Radiance, for once (in an FE game), didn't have an evil wizard/cult secretly pulling the strings; at least, none that reveal themselves in Path of Radiance; they saved that stuff for the sequel. Instead, it's all about stopping Ashnard from bringing about continent-wide war. It's one of very few FE games where the war arc is the only arc. And when the effects of the war were at the forefront, which was fairly often, the game dived deep into the realities and consequences of war. 

Radiant Dawn opens with Daein in shambles and under the oppressive occupation of Begnion; painting a pretty clear picture of what it's like to be the country that loses a war, and the motivation of the main characters in part 1 is to liberate Daein from those oppressive conditions. Part 2 then dealt with the arduous reconstruction of Crimea as it plunges into Civil War. The whole point of Part 2 is about whether or not Elincia can successfully lead Crimea through its post-war reconstruction and beyond. 

Half of Path Radiance involves the characters being on the other side of the continent to the war. Hell it even has a scene in the first act depicting how little the war is affecting people in that part of the country (this is not a bad thing, but it is a thing).

Edited by Jotari
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Shanna > Miledy. Even if Shanna has 10 str promoted, she's still better imo.

 

Jagens are the worst and I always bench them (excluding a few like Titania and Dagdar, I keep them around)

 

Blood pacts are not a bad plot device and are completely okay.

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