What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[Samz707]

Pair-up seriously harms Awakening.

Even ignoring how alot of your units feel really nerfed to make you use it and the "simple" (AKA bloody useless) combat menu completely hides the numbers for it from you.

Will Sully suddenly magically block an enemy attack for 0 damage when paired with Stahl? Will Chrom suddenly take part and instant kill an enemy that you were trying to soften up with Sumia to feed another unit EXP?, it adds way too much extra RNG to the game.

Had a unit who can only take 2 more attacks holding down an 1 tile hallway? well he's going to die now because his partner finished off the dude you were hoping for him to leave alive so now his friends can charge up and hit you, it can very easily screw you over as the devs clearly didn't realize that sometimes in FE you don't want to always kill the dude attacking you when he has friends that will attack you next. (And you need to pair-up since everyone starts pretty subpar so you need those stat increases.)

It's pretty much frustrating, at least with critical hits It's one extra random factor, with pair-up, it makes combat unpredictable to the point where it honestly feels like I could do the best tactics in the world and somehow, some way, it'll find a way to screw me over by "Helping" me, either by making it hard to spread the EXP around properly or killing a dude who was supposed to block his friends from attacking  (Which happened so, many, god damn times in Chapter 6.) and when it does actually help me, well then it's not satisfying because you practically got a Deus Ex Machina.

I'm really not a fan of egregious random chance in strategy games.(Such as Modern X-com removing/highly nerfing any "guaranteed" forms of damage, like explosives.), give me a chance to hit and maybe critical hits but leave it at that, have the strategy come more from level design than piling RNG nonsense onto it.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Samz707

[Ottservia]

2 hours ago, Samz707 said:

Pair-up seriously harms Awakening.

Even ignoring how alot of your units feel really nerfed to make you use it and the "simple" (AKA bloody useless) combat menu completely hides the numbers for it from you.

Will Sully suddenly magically block an enemy attack for 0 damage when paired with Stahl? Will Chrom suddenly take part and instant kill an enemy that you were trying to soften up with Sumia to feed another unit EXP?, it adds way too much extra RNG to the game.

Had a unit who can only take 2 more attacks holding down an 1 tile hallway? well he's going to die now because his partner finished off the dude you were hoping for him to leave alive so now his friends can charge up and hit you, it can very easily screw you over as the devs clearly didn't realize that sometimes in FE you don't want to always kill the dude attacking you when he has friends that will attack you next. (And you need to pair-up since everyone starts pretty subpar so you need those stat increases.)

It's pretty much frustrating, at least with critical hits It's one extra random factor, with pair-up, it makes combat unpredictable to the point where it honestly feels like I could do the best tactics in the world and somehow, some way, it'll find a way to screw me over by "Helping" me, either by making it hard to spread the EXP around properly or killing a dude who was supposed to block his friends from attacking  (Which happened so, many, god damn times in Chapter 6.) and when it does actually help me, well then it's not satisfying because you practically got a Deus Ex Machina.

I'm really not a fan of egregious random chance in strategy games.(Such as Modern X-com removing/highly nerfing any "guaranteed" forms of damage, like explosives.), give me a chance to hit and maybe critical hits but leave it at that, have the strategy come more from level design than piling RNG nonsense onto it.

This is why pair up is much better in fates. It basically removes 90% of the RNG involved and actually uses it in a way that better incentives strategy. I love awakening lord almighty does it have issues in the gameplay department.

[Samz707]

14 hours ago, Ottservia said:

This is why pair up is much better in fates. It basically removes 90% of the RNG involved and actually uses it in a way that better incentives strategy. I love awakening lord almighty does it have issues in the gameplay department.

Even without RNG, it's simply very cumbersome and feels half-finished. (You can still warp paired up units and healers can't heal the unit they're paired up with, meaning they're borderline useless as pair-up partners, to say nothing of the fact that apparently literally no enemy is paired up in Awakening from what I heard.) 

There's no real easy way on-the-spot to calculate how much damage the the partner will do if they chip in, you can't easily see (I'm presuming I'm missing something) how much damage they will do and you can't swap their weapon without swapping, which will take at least 2 turns. (One to swap then the turn to actually change their weapon.)

It makes healers really bad, they're too fragile to use unpaired up but when they are paired up it takes 2 turns for you to swap them around/unpartner with their partner to heal anyone, which takes too much time considering how some chapters in Awakening have the entire enemy force rushing you from the start, so I've simply found spamming healing items the only way to actually heal since they'll likely die in 1 turn without even getting to heal anyone otherwise.

Unless Fates dramatically changed the UI (which I haven't seen), dual attack ends up being a massive guessing game as you have no idea how much damage they will actually do if they attack. (And you end up arguably wasting weapon durability potentially, like Sumia doing barely any damage to an sword dude Chrom is fighting.)

Edited September 23, 2020 by Samz707

[Ottservia]

22 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

There's no real easy way on-the-spot to calculate how much damage the the partner will do if they chip in, you can't easily see (I'm presuming I'm missing something) how much damage they will do and you can't swap their weapon without swapping, which will take at least 2 turns. (One to swap then the turn to actually change their weapon.)

This is the thing Fates fixed about it actually. Basically how it works in fates is that you have two stances. Guard and assist(I think that’s the term). Instead of RNG determining whether or not a unit helps attack or guard their pair up partner it’s instead determined by how they’re positioned. If two units are simply next two each other, The second unit will do a second weaker attack(I believe it’s 1/3 the damage they would normally do) after the primary unit’s first attack. The damage is displayed as “primary attack damage + secondary attack damage”. When actually paired up it’s a little different. The partner will not assist in attacking but instead will help defend against other pair up attacks and as the two attack and are attacked a little shield meter will build up under their health. Once filled out, the support partner will guard the primary unit from any and all damage from a single attack. Again it’s no longer determined by rng. Fates handles it a lot better. 

 

22 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

It makes healers really bad, they're too fragile to use unpaired up but when they are paired up it takes 2 turns for you to swap them around/unpartner with their partner to heal anyone, which takes too much time considering how some chapters in Awakening have the entire enemy force rushing you from the start, so I've simply found spamming healing items the only way to actually heal since they'll likely die in 1 turn without even getting to heal anyone otherwise.

Dude if you don’t know how to keep your healers safe then I’m sorry you’re just kinda bad at the game. I’ve beaten this multiple times on lunatic and not once have I had a problem with keeping my healers safe. I don’t know what to tell you man. The X button exists for a reason so use it

Edited September 23, 2020 by Ottservia

[Benice]

29 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

Guard and assist

I think it is attack stance for the latter(?), but that's beside the point.

51 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

There's no real easy way on-the-spot to calculate how much damage the the partner will do if they chip in, you can't easily see (I'm presuming I'm missing something) how much damage they will do and you can't swap their weapon without swapping, which will take at least 2 turns. (One to swap then the turn to actually change their weapon.)

As what Otts said, this is what Fates fixed-There is no RNG at all, (aside from the standard hit rates, I think) as when you are in attack stance, (an allied unit is adjacent to you) that ally attacks after you do at half power. 100% reliability, no chance-based proc rates. You can plan around an attack stance strategy.

Guard Stance is when you are paired up-Two of your units on the same space. This provides buffs to your stats, and every time you attack or get attacked, your shield gauge raises by two-Once it gets to the maximum, your pair-up partner will block two hits from damaging you and your shield gauge goes down to 0. Once more, 100% reliability, you can (and likely will) plan out using guard stance to stop a particularly threatening enemy from dealing damage, etc.

Fates removed the RNG elements and balanced Pair-Up. (Sorta. It is still very good but not gamebreaking.)

51 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Unless Fates dramatically changed the UI (which I haven't seen), dual attack ends up being a massive guessing game as you have no idea how much damage they will actually do if they attack

It did, thankfully! It's also no longer cumbersome to change what's equipped, as Pair up also functions as a sort of Rescue from the GBA games, and you can switch, trade and separate at will, so you can also change what your ally has equipped via trade shenanigains.

51 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

It makes healers really bad, they're too fragile to use unpaired up but when they are paired up it takes 2 turns for you to swap them around/unpartner with their partner to heal anyone, which takes too much time considering how some chapters in Awakening have the entire enemy force rushing you from the start, so I've simply found spamming healing items the only way to actually heal since they'll likely die in 1 turn without even getting to heal anyone otherwise.

The problem is that it's not really the job of a healer to tank. Sorta like how an archer with ten speed, strength and defense would be worse than an archer with eighteen for the attack stats and 3 defence-Archers should not be seeing combat either way.

29 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

Once filled out, the support partner will guard the primary unit from any and all damage from a single attack.

I think it blocks debuffs too, right? That's another really important thing that Defensive stance does, since Inevitable End is nasty in the lategame of Conquest. It just adds an extra layer of strategy compared to Awakening's adding an extra layer of RNG.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Benice

[Shrimpica]

57 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

(I believe it’s 1/3 the damage they would normally do

1/2, actually

28 minutes ago, Benice said:

as Pair up also functions as a sort of Rescue from the GBA games

Some units (i think cavs?) have skills that make it work like GBA rescue.

[Alastor15243]

2 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Dude if you don’t know how to keep your healers safe then I’m sorry you’re just kinda bad at the game. I’ve beaten this multiple times on lunatic and not once have I had a problem with keeping my healers safe. I don’t know what to tell you man. The X button exists for a reason so use it

In fairness, fragile healers genuinely are really frustrating to use in Awakening, but that's not because of pairup, it's because of those fucking ambush spawns. Meanwhile, Elise is probably the most fragile healer in the entire franchise, and yet I had absolutely no issues keeping her alive despite her being in danger of getting one-shot the second anyone landed a solid attack stance attack on her, because a lack of ambush spawns made it so manageable to keep her out of danger.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Samz707]

3 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Dude if you don’t know how to keep your healers safe then I’m sorry you’re just kinda bad at the game. I’ve beaten this multiple times on lunatic and not once have I had a problem with keeping my healers safe. I don’t know what to tell you man. The X button exists for a reason so use it

Look at chapters like when Ricken joins, you're bombarded with ranged units who can easily one-shot healers which makes the basic heal staff (which is all you have at the start.) fairly useless, it's not like GBA where you can rescue a healer to put them out of harm's way, same with Chapter 6 and other battles, when ranged enemies that will hit your healer behind the dude exist, pair-up is pretty useless for keeping them safe, add the general aggressiveness of enemies in Awakening where you barely get any breathing room since most enemies are gunning for your units and not lying in wait and it's real hard to use a healer more than once or twice a chapter so far without something one-shotting them.

The only way to keep a Healer safe is to basically have them be someone's pair-up buddy who can't actually get around to healing for most of the chapter, so you're stuck with healing items most of the time and unable to actually get them to safely heal a dude, which means they stay weak since they're not getting exp so the cycle continues.

Pair-up seriously hurts this too, In older games, I had say, 12 dudes a chapter, that's enough room to somewhat block off a healer, but when I have to pair up, suddenly 10 units is only 5 and that's basically impossible to defend a healer with and flat-out impossible against any archers or mages, especially in the random battles where you basically spawn surrounded by dudes. (and god forbid if they're Wyvern Knights with small axes that can fly across the map and still oneshot a healer.)

With Rescue, A cav can run up and drag the healer out of danger in any situation where I need to heal a dude, with pair up, they run up and then hide behind the healer, giving them a stat boost that frankly probably isn't going to protect them when they take an axe to the skull, With Rescue, the Unit who initiates the action is the one taking the hits, with Pair-up, the unit who initates it is the one who's hiding behind the dude, which is kinda bad since you know, healing takes up your action.

So healers are pretty much worth nothing, since it's too dangerous to actually let them heal someone since then they're exposed to dying if a nearby enemy so much as looks at their general direction since with the basic heal staff you need to be right next to who you're healing, which puts you very quickly in bow/mage/throwing axe/lance range and Awakening so far loooooves to spam you with those, ergo I find healers worthless and frankly wish I just had competent units who didn't need pair-up and rescue instead, all pair up does is frustrate me. (or even just competent units with neither like Echoes.)

Edited September 23, 2020 by Samz707

[Ottservia]

13 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Look at chapters like when Ricken joins, you're bombarded with ranged units who can easily one-shot healers which makes the basic heal staff (which is all you have at the start.) fairly useless, it's not like GBA where you can rescue a healer to put them out of harm's way, same with Chapter 6 and other battles, when ranged enemies that will hit your healer behind the dude exist, pair-up is pretty useless for keeping them safe, add the general aggressiveness of enemies in Awakening where you barely get any breathing room since most enemies are gunning for your units and not lying in wait and it's real hard to use a healer more than once or twice a chapter so far without something one-shotting them.

The only way to keep a Healer safe is to basically have them be someone's pair-up buddy who can't actually get around to healing for most of the chapter, so you're stuck with healing items most of the time and unable to actually get them to safely heal a dude, which means they stay weak since they're not getting exp so the cycle continues.

Pair-up seriously hurts this too, In older games, I had say, 12 dudes a chapter, that's enough room to somewhat block off a healer, but when I have to pair up, suddenly 10 units is only 5 and that's basically impossible to defend a healer with and flat-out impossible against any archers or mages, especially in the random battles where you basically spawn surrounded by dudes. (and god forbid if they're Wyvern Knights with small axes that can fly across the map and still oneshot a healer.)

With Rescue, A cav can run up and drag the healer out of danger in any situation where I need to heal a dude, with pair up, they run up and then hide behind the healer, giving them a stat boost that frankly probably isn't going to protect them when they take an axe to the skull, With Rescue, the Unit who initiates the action is the one taking the hits, with Pair-up, the unit who initates it is the one who's hiding behind the dude, which is kinda bad since you know, healing takes up your action.

So healers are pretty much worth nothing, since it's too dangerous to actually let them heal someone since then they're exposed to dying if a nearby enemy so much as looks at their general direction since with the basic heal staff you need to be right next to who you're healing, which puts you very quickly in bow/mage/throwing axe/lance range and Awakening so far loooooves to spam you with those, ergo I find healers worthless and frankly wish I just had competent units who didn't need pair-up and rescue instead, all pair up does is frustrate me. (or even just competent units with neither like Echoes.)

Dude if I can get Lissa to level 4 or 5 before chapter 6 on Lunatic without any grinding then maybe you’re maybe you’re doing something wrong(or you’re getting rng screwed). Awakening does give you the tools to deal with it’s bullshit. I should know I’ve played through Lunatic several times.  I know how this game works. Yeah awakening spams ranged enemies at you so work around it. You don’t have to pair up your units you know you can separate at the cost of a turn in order to create a mini barricade. Take advantage of the weapon triangle for dodge tanking because a lot of the of the early enemies use axes so units like Stahl, Robin, and Chrom make for effective effective shields. You could also try giving bronze swords to Frederick and Sully for this exact purpose. Also use your Jaegan. Frederick is really useful for the early game because he can easily take out strong immediate threats. Look at Enemy ranges to determine how far they can actually reach. There are plenty of options available to you. You just have to use them

[Samz707]

23 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Dude if I can get Lissa to level 4 or 5 before chapter 6 on Lunatic without any grinding then maybe you’re maybe you’re doing something wrong(or you’re getting rng screwed). Awakening does give you the tools to deal with it’s bullshit. I should know I’ve played through Lunatic several times.  I know how this game works. Yeah awakening spams ranged enemies at you so work around it. You don’t have to pair up your units you know you can separate at the cost of a turn in order to create a mini barricade. Take advantage of the weapon triangle for dodge tanking because a lot of the of the early enemies use axes so units like Stahl, Robin, and Chrom make for effective effective shields. You could also try giving bronze swords to Frederick and Sully for this exact purpose. Also use your Jaegan. Frederick is really useful for the early game because he can easily take out strong immediate threats. Look at Enemy ranges to determine how far they can actually reach. There are plenty of options available to you. You just have to use them

Frankly, by that point , I feel it's no longer actually worth it using healers instead of healing items.

Your units will take more damage the next turn anyway (Since defense is something pair-up can increase) so the slightly extra healing of the heal staff isn't worth it I find,  I can get roughly the same results (With no risk of a unit suddenly getting overwhelmed due to their stats effectivelly getting worse) by just downing an Elixir/Vulenary.

Not to mention, again, alot of units start with some god-awful stats (Like Lon'qu, who is pretty much the reason I thought Lyn was a great unit playing Fe7 since he can't even crit-reliably with the killing edge he starts with nor does even have any noticeably better speed than other units.) so separating isn't a valid option if that unit is currently using another unit that's frankly bad as an attempt to make them both better, I would not trust frankly any of the Awakening units who isn't Frederick, Un-funny meme man Kellam or Robin to reliably survive without support bonuses so far so I feel like It's honestly just safer to use a healing item than a song and dance separating pair-ups then praying to god my suddenly lowered stats aren't low enough to get doubled or take a ton of damage, it's simply way more efficent and less risky to just down a healing item then risk suddenly getting doubled to death, or picked off by a range unit that the defense buff from pair-up would have let them survive.

 

EDIT: Also Awakening is so bad at humor it's actually hard to watch, like Sumia punching Chrom in the face when he's concerned about his sister.

 

Edited September 24, 2020 by Samz707

[Seazas]

Pair up is a trash mechanic, a fleshed out adjutant system is better.

[Alastor15243]

7 minutes ago, Seazas said:

Pair up is a trash mechanic, a fleshed out adjutant system is better.

Hard disagree. Fates' version of pair up plays a massive role in giving player phase a much-needed buff, and it interacts with so many systems to create just a generally amazing network of options you have. Meanwhile adjutants... do what, exactly? Aside from some stuff that guard adjutants can do and the ability to train unused units, what strategies can you really pull off with it?

[Seazas]

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hard disagree. Fates' version of pair up plays a massive role in giving player phase a much-needed buff, and it interacts with so many systems to create just a generally amazing network of options you have. Meanwhile adjutants... do what, exactly? Aside from some stuff that guard adjutants can do and the ability to train unused units, what strategies can you really pull off with it?

There were plenty of strats with it, and it's better so the entire game doesn't center around this stupid mechanic like Pair Up does. 

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Seazas said:

There were plenty of strats with it, and it's better so the entire game doesn't center around this stupid mechanic like Pair Up does. 

From what I've seen adjutants might as well not exist. The most consistently valuable thing they do is let you train up more units than you're deploying. The actual adjutant effects are so comically unreliable that last time I checked, months after the game came out, we still weren't entirely sure what the rules even were for how some of them worked. I've heard there are some reliable things you can do with guard adjutants, but beyond that...

[Seazas]

6 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

From what I've seen adjutants might as well not exist. The most consistently valuable thing they do is let you train up more units than you're deploying. The actual adjutant effects are so comically unreliable that last time I checked, months after the game came out, we still weren't entirely sure what the rules even were for how some of them worked. I've heard there are some reliable things you can do with guard adjutants, but beyond that...

And? As I said, a fleshed out adjutant system is better. I prefer an optional strat that proves more opportunities than pair up which completely bends the game to be centered around it. No thanks. 

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Seazas said:

And? As I said, a fleshed out adjutant system is better. I prefer an optional strat that proves more opportunities than pair up which completely bends the game to be centered around it. No thanks. 

Fates is hardly centered around pair-up. It's just one of many systems, one that meshes really well with the other systems in place and provides crucial buffs to player-phase units, and especially player-phase units who can't double, which used to be a death sentence.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Man, I don't like this whole moving units on a grid thing. The game is so centralized around it, I feel like every turn I have to move units around on the grid to get anything done.

[Benice]

43 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Fates is hardly centered around pair-up. It's just one of many systems, one that meshes really well with the other systems in place and provides crucial buffs to player-phase units, and especially player-phase units who can't double, which used to be a death sentence.

Yeah, can't conquest Lunatic be done with no Pair-up or royals?

Speaking of...What do adjutants do in Three Houses? I legitimately have no clue.

[null]

5 minutes ago, Benice said:

Speaking of...What do adjutants do in Three Houses? I legitimately have no clue.

They generally have a similar effect to how support bonuses worked in previous games, although the bonuses are somewhat mild compared to how strong they’ve been in certain FE games. Also, if you have a healer as your adjutant, you will get “adjutant heals” when that unit gets low on health. How often that occurs or at what HP level it happens at I’m not sure of though.

[Benice]

1 minute ago, twilitfalchion said:

They generally have a similar effect to how support bonuses worked in previous games, although the bonuses are somewhat mild compared to how strong they’ve been in certain FE games. Also, if you have a healer as your adjutant, you will get “adjutant heals” when that unit gets low on health. How often that occurs or at what HP level it happens at I’m not sure of though.

To quote Raphael:

"Huh...Ugh."

Well, I could see that becoming a good mechanic. Just making it a bit more concrete and like Pair-up would help, probably. Well, and transparency. Adjutant heals kinda cool, though.

 

I think that FE should do what Berwick does for weapons-Weapon rank is dictated by the unit's level, not weapon skill. Most prf weapons also can be used by non-prf units if they reach a high enough level for it. To me, it makes a lot more sense, as units become versatile not only for their stats but also the equipment they have access to. Also, I like units being able to use weapons they don't have the rank for, but they don't benefit from effects and the weapon has a chance to "fail" or not work. Adds more player choice.

[Florete]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hard disagree. Fates' version of pair up plays a massive role in giving player phase a much-needed buff, and it interacts with so many systems to create just a generally amazing network of options you have. Meanwhile adjutants... do what, exactly? Aside from some stuff that guard adjutants can do and the ability to train unused units, what strategies can you really pull off with it?

Agreed, Fates' pair up/stance system is the best new mechanic the series has ever added. Adjutants felt like a way to appeal to the anti-Awakening/Fates crowd while still having something like pair up and it just ends up being nothing.

[Seazas]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Fates is hardly centered around pair-up. It's just one of many systems, one that meshes really well with the other systems in place and provides crucial buffs to player-phase units, and especially player-phase units who can't double, which used to be a death sentence.

No, many enemies usually pair up either intentionally or because they happen to be standing next to each other before one of them initiates combat. I don't care for it and the general meta that centers around pair up 100% being optimal. Adjutants as a system is better than pair up. 

43 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Man, I don't like this whole moving units on a grid thing. The game is so centralized around it, I feel like every turn I have to move units around on the grid to get anything done.

What a disingenuous comparison. FE day 1 had that kind of thing with every single mechanic consistently intertwining a grid. Pair up is a recent addition that isn't needed for strategy.

Edited September 29, 2020 by Seazas

[AnonymousSpeed]

1 minute ago, Seazas said:

What a disingenuous comparison. FE day 1 had that kind of thing with every single mechanic consistently involving a grid. Pair up is a recent addition that isn't needed.

FE day 1 also had it so you couldn't promote knights, which was not a strictly necessary addition later on. Stat caps above twenty aren't really either.

[Seazas]

8 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

FE day 1 also had it so you couldn't promote knights, which was not a strictly necessary addition later on. Stat caps above twenty aren't really either.

Promotion, however, did exist for much longer than pair up. I don't like pair up as a system and reaching to compare the main grid-based gameplay of Fire Emblem is asinine

Edited September 29, 2020 by Seazas

[AnonymousSpeed]

3 minutes ago, Seazas said:

Promotion, however, did exist for much longer than pair up. I don't like pair up as a system and having to reach to compare the MAIN GRID GAMEPLAY of Fire Emblem as a means of putting down what I say is asinine. 

Pair up has been around longer than adjutants.

See, I get that my point sucks, but the point is supposed to be satirical. It sucks because it mirrors your point, which also sucks.

A mechanic isn't bad because it's a central mechanic which you are expected to utilize and interact with. It's not bad because it's new. The idea that the core ideas from the early games are more valid than core ideas from later games is arbitrary and dumb.