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What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?


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3 hours ago, Soapbar said:

Conquest Chapter 18 (the one where Zola captures and threatens to execute all of the Hoshidan Royals) is not actually that poorly written. The only actual stupid part of it is the fact that Zola's men don't back down at all from, you know, the entire Nohrian Royal Family and their accompanying army telling them to stop. The actual politics of the matter are generally sound:

  • Letting Zola go through with executing the Hoshidan Royals would leave a massive power vacuum in Hoshido. The end result is that while the war itself may end quicker than normal (highly debateable), there's still going to bloodshed for years, arguably for longer than if Nohr wins the war conventionally, as civil strife would engulf the country with the remaining Hoshidan nobles vying for the throne. Even if none of the above happened, Hoshido wouldn't forgive Nohr ever, all but ensuring that a follow-up conflict between the two countries is assured in the future.
  • Stopping Zola's plan but then capturing the Hoshidan Royals anyways is still not very smart, as Garon would want their heads anyways, and trying to hide them is highly improbable, because of all the witnesses to the act, the fact that some of those witnesses (Izumo) are liable to be very pissed that Nohr broke a signed treaty and violated their sovereignty to capture them, and the fact that Hoshido is going to notice the fact that their royal family went missing in Izumo.
  • Either of the above two plans (which I find that fans often suggest as the "right" courses of actions) will piss off Izumo, and likely many other neutral states, ruin Nohr's reputation on the world stage, making rebuilding after overthrowing Garon even harder than it's going to be, especially since neither of the plans were actually on the orders of Garon (Zola was acting on his own, IIRC). It would also make actually winning the war and getting Garon's fat ass onto the throne much harder, since a lot of those states would be liable to just up and declare war on Nohr, especially any that were already on the edge.

All of the above is also why Ryoma has no reason to be grateful to Corrin and co. since none of what happened in Chapter 18 should've happened in the first place, and the fact that it did only serves to further prove how far Nohr has fallen to the Hoshidan Royals. Saving the Hoshidan Royals and letting them go was not only morally right, it was literally the only sensible option. The fact that Hoshido forgives it happening in the first place is a miracle.

None of this is to imply that Conquest is well written as a whole (quite the opposite) but I've seen a lot of people on reddit, YT, and I also remember on here a few years ago, imply that Zola is some kind of unsung hero who would've ended the war without bloodshed if only stupid Corrin and co. didn't stop him, when the exact opposite is true and it's apparent if you spend more than 30 seconds thinking about it.

I agree with all of this. The whole thing makes Zola seem more like a duplicitous warmonger that was clearly in the wrong than anything else. It also makes me wonder what the hell Zola was thinking, IF he was thinking at all, which I doubt he was because he refused to stand down when he should've.

4 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Isn't early promoting considered optimal in Awakening, too? You get the second class skill as soon as level 10, and with infinite levelling, it's not as though you're missing out on level-ups. The only negative is that the next few level-ups take slightly longer than they would unpromoted. 

In any case, it's not like Dawn Brigade members can expect to hit 20/20/20 (at least, not without serious BEXPing). As such, I don't see early promoting causing them to miss out on many levels. And you can't even sell the Master Seals, so you may as well use the ones you find.

Only if you reclassed beforehand and/or are planning to do postgame, imo. Otherwise, I'd consider it questionable. 

Back to the DB, I am not convinced that an early promotion is such a massive upgrade as to turn Edward from "liability" to "actually an asset". 

7 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Zola comes off pretty favorable compared to Kotaro who also turns on the royal family and hopes that Garon won't mind. The difference is that Zola's plan might actually achieve something while Kotaro would rather turn both Nohr and Hoshido against him than give up a single captive who's not even that important. And even Corrin comes off better there because abusing the neutrality of a country and then kidnapping people probably goes against the Fates version of the Geneva convention.

Like what, inciting all-out war between Hoshido and Nohr? Or making Nohr look even worse than it already does? Regarding Kotaro, he's a case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, except unlike Naesala in the Tellius saga, he is only looking out for himself.

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21 hours ago, 5PointGordin said:

Permadeath is a bad mechanic and should be retired I think, esp seeing as it feels like the latest games are not designed around the mechanic.

Fire Emblem 3 Houses and Shadows of Valentia have a time wheel mechanic, largely making permadeath a non-issue in these games. Additionally, the way stats scale in 3 houses (esp on higher difficulties) makes Permadeath a massive hassle since raising a new units from scratch is pretty hard. In Shadows of Valentia, enemies aren't AS strong so its not as bad on this front. I think you can play w/ permadeath in mind and still do well.

I am playing through Fates right now, and I am not fond of Permadeatth in this game either. Again, enemy levels scale pretty hard from level to level & you don't get many prepremotes during a normal playthrough. I don't like early promoting in these games either enemy stats & levels are progressively raised throughout the adventure. Losing one unit locks you out from paralogues too, effectively meaning that you lose two units. I do prefer playing this game in casual mode since you have access to battle saves, thought there are some maps where the position you are at in the end of a turn is so bad, you are gonna be losing a unit no matter what.

I think permadeath is fine in some of the earlier games since you don't really tangibly lose much if a unit dies. If Mattis or Roshea die in FE3 / Shadow Dragon, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day since several other units can easily fill their role. However, I believe that this also hinders the story in those games as a byproduct. Because it is possible for Mattis and other units in the game to die, they don't participate in the story as much, meaning the main stars of the show are Marth and several NPCs like Nyna rather than the characters you are using. In recent games, a lot more emphasis has been placed on the cast of the games, their personalities, etc. so I think removing permadeath might help them shine a lot more in the story.

I'm not sure whether this qualifies as a popular or unpopular opinion. The Classic Mode debate has always been painful. I personally find that some of my most enjoyable playthroughs are ones where I've left units dead... but there's always the obvious issue of content locked behind certain units living. Losing or missing Stefan in PoR can actually lose you out on a valuable Occult Scroll, for example, and losing Claud in Genealogy costs you the Valkyrie staff. Not to mention some games (RD, 3DSFE and especially 3H) just aren't built for you to lose units.

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1 hour ago, GlitchWarrior said:

I'm not sure whether this qualifies as a popular or unpopular opinion. The Classic Mode debate has always been painful. I personally find that some of my most enjoyable playthroughs are ones where I've left units dead... but there's always the obvious issue of content locked behind certain units living. Losing or missing Stefan in PoR can actually lose you out on a valuable Occult Scroll, for example, and losing Claud in Genealogy costs you the Valkyrie staff. Not to mention some games (RD, 3DSFE and especially 3H) just aren't built for you to lose units.

Yeah, losing units is more so an issue in 3DS FE / 3 Houses. In games like FE3,, I don't mind the mechanic as much, esp as the difficulty of that game is not too high.Really my issue is moreso the story presentation sacrifices that are being made in the process.

I liked the ensemble writing in games like FE7 a bit more because every character was participating in the story more. Characters like Kent, Sain, Pent, Louise, etc. all played a big part in some portions of the story, which was nice, and made the world of that game feel more alive than in other entries, where the consequences of permadeath are more pronounced.

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I do not believe that the story issues that arise from a game designed around permadeath are unsolvable. At the very least, I don't think it's a big enough issue to warrant removing permadeath or to stop designing around the mechanic, because I think the permadeath mechanic, in combination with the many RNG elements of the series, makes for a lot of unique choices even without playing Ironman or similar challenges. Fire Emblem stories have never been particulary impressive anyways, and even the recent games which discard designing around the mechanic haven't had stories that I think are worthy of sacrificing the mechanic. Particularly Fates, which, in routes besides Revelations, is not very iron-man friendly, is regarded as having one of the worst stories told in video games period, let alone FE.

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15 hours ago, DarkSage861 said:

Old post but I thought I reply anyway (I barely have time to check on here as much anymore) 

Sorry but Koei Techmo made the Switch FE games visually ugly, compared to the early Switch games or even the ones later, Fire Emblem has no excuses for the visuals to still look like a Wii game

The developers said that Three Houses would have been impossible to make without Koei Techmo's help so I think that the tradeoff of visuals was worth it. Besides, its not as bad as the recent Pokemon games in terms of the visual department; and there are things like fully animated cutscenes that is the first in the series, and I hope FE continues it. 

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6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Only if you reclassed beforehand and/or are planning to do postgame, imo. Otherwise, I'd consider it questionable. 

I don't get this assertion. Wouldn't I prefer the immediate boost of promotion? An extra skill, more move, new weapon types? It's not as though EXP is hard to come by in Awakening.

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Back to the DB, I am not convinced that an early promotion is such a massive upgrade as to turn Edward from "liability" to "actually an asset". 

Okay, then - who would prefer to use the Master Seals? The other candidates are Leonardo, Nolan, Laura, Ilyana, Aran, Meg, Jill, and Fiona. Out of them, Ilyana leaves after Part I, Laura can staffbot just fine in Priest, and Meg and Fiona are generally agreed upon as being among the worst units in the game. So we're left with Leonardo, Nolan, Aran, and Jill. You could use the Master Seal on all of them, but I imagine with someone like Jill or Nolan, you'll want to get them to promotion naturally to maximize their stats. Edward certainly seems like one of the better candidates for a Master Seal, even if you're not planning to use him beyond III-13.

1 hour ago, ZeManaphy said:

The developers said that Three Houses would have been impossible to make without Koei Techmo's help so I think that the tradeoff of visuals was worth it. Besides, its not as bad as the recent Pokemon games in terms of the visual department; and there are things like fully animated cutscenes that is the first in the series, and I hope FE continues it. 

That's comparing Applins to Orangurus. It's possible for both series to be underdelivering from a graphics perspective. 

Also, how did 3H break new ground in terms of cutscenes? I don't see any way in which it particularly exceeded Awakening in that regard. 3H has good cutscenes, sure, but that's something we've had since the start of the 3DS days.

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1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I don't get this assertion. Wouldn't I prefer the immediate boost of promotion? An extra skill, more move, new weapon types? It's not as though EXP is hard to come by in Awakening.

Okay, then - who would prefer to use the Master Seals? The other candidates are Leonardo, Nolan, Laura, Ilyana, Aran, Meg, Jill, and Fiona. Out of them, Ilyana leaves after Part I, Laura can staffbot just fine in Priest, and Meg and Fiona are generally agreed upon as being among the worst units in the game. So we're left with Leonardo, Nolan, Aran, and Jill. You could use the Master Seal on all of them, but I imagine with someone like Jill or Nolan, you'll want to get them to promotion naturally to maximize their stats. Edward certainly seems like one of the better candidates for a Master Seal, even if you're not planning to use him beyond III-13.

That's comparing Applins to Orangurus. It's possible for both series to be underdelivering from a graphics perspective. 

Also, how did 3H break new ground in terms of cutscenes? I don't see any way in which it particularly exceeded Awakening in that regard. 3H has good cutscenes, sure, but that's something we've had since the start of the 3DS days.

I don't see how it is comparing Applins to Orangurus. Both are Switch Games published by Nintendo. Regardless, what I meant was that Three Houses was the first to have fully animated support conversations, as with actual backgrounds and movements of characters. Even if it wasn't the best looking, I really felt immersed when I watch them, especially with the Voice Acting.  I find hard to go back to the 3DS supports after being spoiled by Three Houses. 

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2 hours ago, ZeManaphy said:

Regardless, what I meant was that Three Houses was the first to have fully animated support conversations, as with actual backgrounds and movements of characters. Even if it wasn't the best looking, I really felt immersed when I watch them, especially with the Voice Acting.  I find hard to go back to the 3DS supports after being spoiled by Three Houses. 

I have to strongly second this. No, they're not the most advanced graphics ever, but the full voice acting coupled with body language goes a long way to making support conversations feel more genuine and immersive. There are so many conversations in 3H that just wouldn't hit the same without the voice work in particular.

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19 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Isn't early promoting considered optimal in Awakening, too? You get the second class skill as soon as level 10, and with infinite levelling, it's not as though you're missing out on level-ups. The only negative is that the next few level-ups take slightly longer than they would unpromoted. 

In any case, it's not like Dawn Brigade members can expect to hit 20/20/20 (at least, not without serious BEXPing). As such, I don't see early promoting causing them to miss out on many levels. And you can't even sell the Master Seals, so you may as well use the ones you find.

Early second sealing is also an option in Awakening to pick up the most useful tier 1 skills you might want (or to just get them in the class line you want as soon as possible). That also increases the exp gain for a few levels. 

18 hours ago, Soapbar said:

Conquest Chapter 18 (the one where Zola captures and threatens to execute all of the Hoshidan Royals) is not actually that poorly written. The only actual stupid part of it is the fact that Zola's men don't back down at all from, you know, the entire Nohrian Royal Family and their accompanying army telling them to stop. The actual politics of the matter are generally sound:

  • Letting Zola go through with executing the Hoshidan Royals would leave a massive power vacuum in Hoshido. The end result is that while the war itself may end quicker than normal (highly debateable), there's still going to bloodshed for years, arguably for longer than if Nohr wins the war conventionally, as civil strife would engulf the country with the remaining Hoshidan nobles vying for the throne. Even if none of the above happened, Hoshido wouldn't forgive Nohr ever, all but ensuring that a follow-up conflict between the two countries is in the future.
  • Stopping Zola's plan but then capturing the Hoshidan Royals anyways is still not very smart, as Garon would want their heads anyways, and trying to hide them is highly improbable, because of all the witnesses to the act, the fact that some of those witnesses (Izumo) are liable to be very pissed that Nohr broke a signed treaty and violated their sovereignty to capture them, and the fact that Hoshido is going to notice the fact that their royal family went missing in Izumo.
  • Either of the above two plans (which I find that fans often suggest as the "right" courses of actions) will piss off Izumo, and likely many other neutral states, ruin Nohr's reputation on the world stage, making rebuilding after overthrowing Garon even harder than it's going to be, especially since neither of the plans were actually on the orders of Garon (Zola was acting on his own, IIRC). It would also make actually winning the war and getting Garon's fat ass onto the throne much harder, since a lot of those states would be liable to just up and declare war on Nohr, especially any that were already on the edge.

So, those two points. They're both true, butbtheybalso kind of speak more volumes than your presenting. The case is that Zola, while not acting directly on Garon' s orders, was acting like a perfect Nohrian. Such duplicity, and yeah, stupid hostility is totally in line with the regime. The mistrust from the neutral countries is something that's already there because it's entirely expected of Nohr (except Kotaro's nation, but he likely wouldn't care either way). The ethical decision is far more to dispose Garon to begin with as it's him that is encouraging such actions and destroying the nation with excess actions of villainy.

7 hours ago, ZeManaphy said:

I don't see how it is comparing Applins to Orangurus. Both are Switch Games published by Nintendo. Regardless, what I meant was that Three Houses was the first to have fully animated support conversations, as with actual backgrounds and movements of characters. Even if it wasn't the best looking, I really felt immersed when I watch them, especially with the Voice Acting.  I find hard to go back to the 3DS supports after being spoiled by Three Houses. 

Saying Three Houses supports have backgrounds is a bit generous. They have a form of eldritch multi dimensional horror lingering behind the characters that will drive you mad if you focus on it too long. 3D rendered conversations might be more modernist than what was before, but that doesn't make them inherently better. Voice acting is a bit different in that regard (as, generally speaking, so long as the voice acting isn't God awful than it's preferable to have it than  it have it, and for those that don't want it, turning it off with an option is more than possible to implement), though it was SoV that first took that plunge.

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4 hours ago, Jotari said:

Saying Three Houses supports have backgrounds is a bit generous. They have a form of eldritch multi dimensional horror lingering behind the characters that will drive you mad if you focus on it too long. 3D rendered conversations might be more modernist than what was before, but that doesn't make them inherently better. Voice acting is a bit different in that regard (as, generally speaking, so long as the voice acting isn't God awful than it's preferable to have it than  it have it, and for those that don't want it, turning it off with an option is more than possible to implement), though it was SoV that first took that plunge.

I've never focused on a support conversation background, so I wouldn't know. I'd argue they serve their purpose well regardless, though: they immediately let you know where the conversation is occurring (the library, the greenhouse, the mess hall, the wilderness, etc.). Granted, some of this is taking advantage of the fact that the game already built these settings by having you run around the monastery, but still, it's an improvement over not having any sense of where a conversation is occurring until the characters tell me, which I definitely remember being the case in some 3DS supports.

There's also the movements/body language of the characters, which is the other reason I'd consider the 3H style of conversation to be inherently better. SoV had voice acting for its (very small number of) supports and it deserves credit for that, but it didn't have the "fully animated support conversations" ZeManaphy was talking about.

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5 hours ago, Jotari said:

Saying Three Houses supports have backgrounds is a bit generous. They have a form of eldritch multi dimensional horror lingering behind the characters that will drive you mad if you focus on it too long. 3D rendered conversations might be more modernist than what was before, but that doesn't make them inherently better. Voice acting is a bit different in that regard (as, generally speaking, so long as the voice acting isn't God awful than it's preferable to have it than  it have it, and for those that don't want it, turning it off with an option is more than possible to implement), though it was SoV that first took that plunge.

They are backgrounds though. They are not the prettiest, but they are there, and you can tell they at least tried to make every support conversations visually appealing by giving every conversation a different background, which also can potentially change depending on factors like whether or not it is part 1 or 2. Also, I think you are exaggerating on how visually unappealing the backgrounds are. 

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1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

There's also the movements/body language of the characters, which is the other reason I'd consider the 3H style of conversation to be inherently better. 

Would you consider movies inherently superior to books by the same logic? Or anime as superior to manga? It's not like body language is even something that's all that impossible, or even really that hard to do, using sprites. True, fire emblem hasn't gone full Ace Attorney in using body language with its sprite based games, but it's not like generally tried to implement much body language into Three Houses supports. Despite the 3D environment over 90% of the supports are characters standing in front of each other and nothing else. Whenever something does come up where seeing a character move might be a benefit, like a fight scene, it cuts to black.

1 hour ago, ZeManaphy said:

They are backgrounds though. They are not the prettiest, but they are there, and you can tell they at least tried to make every support conversations visually appealing by giving every conversation a different background, which also can potentially change depending on factors like whether or not it is part 1 or 2. Also, I think you are exaggerating on how visually unappealing the backgrounds are. 

They literally aren't 3D. Three Houses does nothing in terms of support  background that hasn't been done before. The only difference is that the exporable world gives specific locations.

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58 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Would you consider movies inherently superior to books by the same logic? Or anime as superior to manga? It's not like body language is even something that's all that impossible, or even really that hard to do, using sprites. True, fire emblem hasn't gone full Ace Attorney in using body language with its sprite based games, but it's not like generally tried to implement much body language into Three Houses supports. 

Despite the 3D environment over 90% of the supports are characters standing in front of each other and nothing else. Whenever something does come up where seeing a character move might be a benefit, like a fight scene, it cuts to black.

Books have many advantages over movies, obviously. That's an apples to oranges comparison. "Support conversations without voices or movement" don't seem to have much advantage over "support conversations with voices and movement", by comparison. I think this is closer to movies vs. silent movies than the examples you gave. (You can of course still do good storytelling with silent movies, but there's a reason that they hardly exist any more.)

Yes, you can do body language via expressive, full-body/half-body sprites, as Ace Attorney does. Fire Emblem historically does not; its sprite changes are almost entirely limited to faces (which to be clear, is a lot better than nothing).

There's quite a bit of body language in the 3H conversations. They only fade to black to hide actions (like swinging weapons or moving furniture), but actions aren't what is usually meant by body language. Body language refers to the way characters hold themselves, the way they tilt their face up/down/to the side, what their arms and hands are doing, the distance the characters are standing from each other, etc. that says a lot about the mood a character is in. 3H does this a lot.

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15 hours ago, ZeManaphy said:

I don't see how it is comparing Applins to Orangurus. Both are Switch Games published by Nintendo. Regardless, what I meant was that Three Houses was the first to have fully animated support conversations, as with actual backgrounds and movements of characters. Even if it wasn't the best looking, I really felt immersed when I watch them, especially with the Voice Acting.  I find hard to go back to the 3DS supports after being spoiled by Three Houses. 

I have to disagree about feeling "totally immersed". As @Jotari pointed out, the backgrounds are... hardly convincing or appealing to look at. And when they need to represent an item - say a teacup, or a book, or a weapon - they plaster a 2D portrait of it onto the middle of the screen. It's too much work to show the character models actually holding 3D-modeled items, even in cases where those assets exist. The models aren't even capable of "walking and talking", so even when they're canonically running away from some "big bad", we see them all stop and stand around to have a conversation. While Fates may have had cruder models, it at least depicted those models actually moving places.

Credit where credit is due, however - Three Houses includes generally outstanding voice acting, that goes a long way in making the scenes and conversations immersive. But I don't think the visuals are up to snuff. Truth be told, if we went back to GBA-style "speaking sprites on a static background" support conversations, but with 3H-caliber voicework, I think it'd be roughly as compelling and immersive as what we got in 3H.

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

Early second sealing is also an option in Awakening to pick up the most useful tier 1 skills you might want (or to just get them in the class line you want as soon as possible). That also increases the exp gain for a few levels. 

Good point as well. Not sure whether "early reclassing" would be considered analogous to "early promoting", or something of a substitute fof it.

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2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Would you consider movies inherently superior to books by the same logic? Or anime as superior to manga? It's not like body language is even something that's all that impossible, or even really that hard to do, using sprites. True, fire emblem hasn't gone full Ace Attorney in using body language with its sprite based games, but it's not like generally tried to implement much body language into Three Houses supports. Despite the 3D environment over 90% of the supports are characters standing in front of each other and nothing else. Whenever something does come up where seeing a character move might be a benefit, like a fight scene, it cuts to black.

 

Well for starters, the 3DS games never had “ movements “ like Three Houses does. All they would do is show a portrait change to show the character’s mood. Not sure if that counts as animation, and if it does, It hardly counts. And besides, the 3DS titles do this all the time, every fight and training session is shown off screen, with no unique background. It’s not wrong to call out “ tell don’t show “ aspect of Three Houses, but don’t pretend the other games had supports that showed everything was going on with its supports. 
 

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

They literally aren't 3D. Three Houses does nothing in terms of support  background that hasn't been done before. The only difference is that the exporable world gives specific locations.

I have an idea. Go watch Three Houses support conversations again. You’ll notice that there are backgrounds to match the location of where each support takes place. Now go watch the Awakening and Fates supports. Every conversation takes place in a generic barrack setting, even if it makes no sense, like Keaton and Effie’s C support. Even if it not the prettiest, you cannot deny that Three Houses put in the effort to make each support have a unique background, something that has not been done in the series before. 

 

50 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I have to disagree about feeling "totally immersed". As @Jotari pointed out, the backgrounds are... hardly convincing or appealing to look at. And when they need to represent an item - say a teacup, or a book, or a weapon - they plaster a 2D portrait of it onto the middle of the screen. It's too much work to show the character models actually holding 3D-modeled items, even in cases where those assets exist. The models aren't even capable of "walking and talking", so even when they're canonically running away from some "big bad", we see them all stop and stand around to have a conversation. While Fates may have had cruder models, it at least depicted those models actually moving places.

I’ve never had an issue looking at them. This is just personal taste, but I find it hard to go back to previous title support conversations after Three Houses gave us full backgrounds and voice acting, especially the latter. 

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I've said this before but since the topic is back I guess I'll say it again...while the voice acting is good, I find the backgrounds and animations in Three Houses supports to be so lacking that they backfire and actually make the whole ordeal less immersive for me.

The backgrounds occasionally have very obvious corners that very obviously shouldn't be there. When not doing that, the backgrounds are fine if the characters are supposed to just be standing there talking, but if they're supposed to be doing anything else it just makes things awkward because there aren't assets for anything except standing around and talking. This goes for the character animations ("body language") as well; it was cool at first, but it doesn't take long to realize that there's a pretty limited set of model animations being used throughout the whole game, and then I'm just thinking about how I'm seeing the same gestures over and over again. I get more from just looking at the portrait expressions, which just brings it all back to the same style as older games.

But yeah it at least gets credit for voice acting.

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22 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I don't get this assertion. Wouldn't I prefer the immediate boost of promotion? An extra skill, more move, new weapon types? It's not as though EXP is hard to come by in Awakening.

Because early second sealing is a thing, which I'd recommend for the sake of getting into whatever class you want. For example, if I wanted Paladin Robin, I'd seal to Cavalier at 10 and go from there, as it keeps internal level low.

22 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Okay, then - who would prefer to use the Master Seals? The other candidates are Leonardo, Nolan, Laura, Ilyana, Aran, Meg, Jill, and Fiona. Out of them, Ilyana leaves after Part I, Laura can staffbot just fine in Priest, and Meg and Fiona are generally agreed upon as being among the worst units in the game. So we're left with Leonardo, Nolan, Aran, and Jill. You could use the Master Seal on all of them, but I imagine with someone like Jill or Nolan, you'll want to get them to promotion naturally to maximize their stats. Edward certainly seems like one of the better candidates for a Master Seal, even if you're not planning to use him beyond III-13.

You're missing the point, which is that an early promotion isn't a big boost that magically makes Edward a beast of a unit. He already struggles in part 3 as it is, and there ain't much sense in making his performance there even worse. To put things into perspective, a 10/1 Edward has these stats on average:

26 HP
12 Str
16 Skl
17 Speed
11 Luck
8 Defense
3 Res

I don't know about you, but that looks rather lousy, if you ask me. Even if I had no intention of using him after part 3, I'd consider this lousy in terms of getting through part 1.

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I'd say the argument is that while 10/1 Edward is indeed kinda mediocre (those stats are sooo much worse than base Zihark), he's still better than unpromoted Edward. Since I often end up benching Edward around that level anyway, maybe I should be throwing a master seal his way instead and at least get some filler use out of him. This does rely on actually getting one early... they're mostly hidden treasure which I usually ignore outside a couple key ones, but with a guide handy that shouldn't be a big deal.

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11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Books have many advantages over movies, obviously. That's an apples to oranges comparison. "Support conversations without voices or movement" don't seem to have much advantage over "support conversations with voices and movement", by comparison. I think this is closer to movies vs. silent movies than the examples you gave. (You can of course still do good storytelling with silent movies, but there's a reason that they hardly exist any more.)

Yes, you can do body language via expressive, full-body/half-body sprites, as Ace Attorney does. Fire Emblem historically does not; its sprite changes are almost entirely limited to faces (which to be clear, is a lot better than nothing).

There's quite a bit of body language in the 3H conversations. They only fade to black to hide actions (like swinging weapons or moving furniture), but actions aren't what is usually meant by body language. Body language refers to the way characters hold themselves, the way they tilt their face up/down/to the side, what their arms and hands are doing, the distance the characters are standing from each other, etc. that says a lot about the mood a character is in. 3H does this a lot.

 

10 hours ago, ZeManaphy said:
 

Well for starters, the 3DS games never had “ movements “ like Three Houses does. All they would do is show a portrait change to show the character’s mood. Not sure if that counts as animation, and if it does, It hardly counts. And besides, the 3DS titles do this all the time, every fight and training session is shown off screen, with no unique background. It’s not wrong to call out “ tell don’t show “ aspect of Three Houses, but don’t pretend the other games had supports that showed everything was going on with its supports. 
 

I have an idea. Go watch Three Houses support conversations again. You’ll notice that there are backgrounds to match the location of where each support takes place. Now go watch the Awakening and Fates supports. Every conversation takes place in a generic barrack setting, even if it makes no sense, like Keaton and Effie’s C support. Even if it not the prettiest, you cannot deny that Three Houses put in the effort to make each support have a unique background, something that has not been done in the series before. 

 

I’ve never had an issue looking at them. This is just personal taste, but I find it hard to go back to previous title support conversations after Three Houses gave us full backgrounds and voice acting, especially the latter. 

I wouldn't call it animation, but the old sprites did have different expressions, which I would class as body language. In addition, the old sprites did in fact have a distance factor. Sprites could move closer and further away from each other and in such a way that is more dynamic than I think anything Three Houses tried. The GBA games even had a cute little jump it could make sprites perform. The logic that fully rendered 3D sprites have body language while 2D sprites don't is just not true. Both have body language and both can utilize it to different degrees and, historically, Fire Emblem has never tried to actually use either 2D or 3D to its full degree, unlike Ace Attorney which has, for both its 2D titles and its 3D titles.

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17 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Because early second sealing is a thing, which I'd recommend for the sake of getting into whatever class you want. For example, if I wanted Paladin Robin, I'd seal to Cavalier at 10 and go from there, as it keeps internal level low.

You're missing the point, which is that an early promotion isn't a big boost that magically makes Edward a beast of a unit. He already struggles in part 3 as it is, and there ain't much sense in making his performance there even worse. To put things into perspective, a 10/1 Edward has these stats on average:

26 HP
12 Str
16 Skl
17 Speed
11 Luck
8 Defense
3 Res

I don't know about you, but that looks rather lousy, if you ask me. Even if I had no intention of using him after part 3, I'd consider this lousy in terms of getting through part 1.

I never said that early promotion makes Edward "a beast of a unit". Moreso that it's better for Edward to be promoted, than not. In fact, let's do a comparison: I think it's reasonable to imagine Edward gaining a full level in the Prologue, Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6i, and 6ii.That means he's already at level 12. From there, deployment slots become limited, so let's say it's a choice between using Zihark and Edward in chapters 7, 8, and Endgame. Let's assume that Zihark would gain 1 level in each such chapter, whereas Edward gains 2 each in the first two, then promotes before Endgame, and gains 1 level there. Here's the comparison between level 4 Zihark and level 7 Zihark, rounded down, for 3-6:

Spoiler

HP: 30 / 32

Str: 17 / 18

Mag: 6 / 6

Skl: 22 / 25

Spd: 23 / 25

Lck: 11 / 12

Def: 13 / 14

Res: 11 / 12

Now, here's the comparison between unpromoted level 12 Edward, 12/1 Edward, and 16/2 Edward, rounded down, for the start of 3-6:

Spoiler

HP: 25 / 26 / 32

Str: 11 / 12 / 15

Mag: 0 / 2 / 2

Skl: 16 / 17 / 20

Spd: 16 / 17 / 20

Lck: 12 / 12 / 14

Def: 7 / 8 / 10

Res: 1 / 3 / 4

Broadly speaking, an invested (16/2) Edward is still weaker than an uninvested (-/4) Zihark. He'll have higher HP and Luck, but Zihark will be better in other stats. He does, however, have other advantages. He gets an earlier start on building supports (say, an Earth-Light support with Nolan), and he gets exclusive access to the (high-Might, Luck-boosting) Caladbolg in Part III.

If Zihark is fielded over Edward, then he'll become stronger still, and the margin between the units becomes more dramatic. I can see the case for focusing on him, as an -/7 Zihark will double even 10-Speed enemy Laguz. Still, the margin between -/4 and -/7 Zihark is clearly smaller than that between 12/1 and 16/2 Edward; he'll gain 4 more HP, 2 more Strength, 1 more Speed, 1 more Luck, and 1 more Defense than Zihark would've in the same period. So it's a choice between 2 "pretty good" units, and one "very good" unit with one "mediocre" unit. In DB Part III, I'm inclined to favor the former, but other players may consider the latter scenario preferable.

One more thing - it should be evident that 12/1 Edward is better than 12/- Edward. For starters, he's not doubled by 10-speed enemy Laguz. He's also able to survive 9-Strength enemy Tigers with S-rank Fangs (33 Atk), as well as 11-Strength enemy Tigers with A-rank Fangs (32 Atk). If it's a choice between fielding a level 12 Myrmidon Edward and leaving a Master Seal in the convoy, or fielding a 12/1 Swordmaster Edward, the preferable state should be obvious.

11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I'd say the argument is that while 10/1 Edward is indeed kinda mediocre (those stats are sooo much worse than base Zihark), he's still better than unpromoted Edward. Since I often end up benching Edward around that level anyway, maybe I should be throwing a master seal his way instead and at least get some filler use out of him. This does rely on actually getting one early... they're mostly hidden treasure which I usually ignore outside a couple key ones, but with a guide handy that shouldn't be a big deal.

Yeah, basically. If you have any unused Master Seals as of III-6, you may as well use them. I'd see a case for selling them, but bizarrely, that isn't even an option. A 10/1 or even 12/1 Edward isn't gonna be "Tower-viable", but he'll be able to do more in Part III than his unpromoted counterparts.

11 hours ago, Jotari said:

I wouldn't call it animation, but the old sprites did have different expressions, which I would class as body language. In addition, the old sprites did in fact have a distance factor. Sprites could move closer and further away from each other and in such a way that is more dynamic than I think anything Three Houses tried. The GBA games even had a cute little jump it could make sprites perform. The logic that fully rendered 3D sprites have body language while 2D sprites don't is just not true. Both have body language and both can utilize it to different degrees and, historically, Fire Emblem has never tried to actually use either 2D or 3D to its full degree, unlike Ace Attorney which has, for both its 2D titles and its 3D titles.

Yeah, like it's pretty obvious when Neimi is crying in Sacred Stones, both by the text and by her closing her eyes. Because of the technical limitations, we don't need to see the tears to accept that they are there. Whereas, in Three Houses, I can't recall if they ever attempt to represent crying. If they were to have the character simply close their eyes, I would find it to strain credulity. These are full-body 3D models, so I have higher expectations of a proximity to reality than what shoulders-up 2D sprites present. And if they tried to represent 3D-modeled tears in the 3H engine, I have to imagine my Switch would instantaneously catch fire.

As for the bolded portion, I'd attribute this to a difference between genres. Since Ace Attorney leans upon the "visual novel" genre, expressive character representations becomes more important. And they don't have to worry about, say, map or battle sprites, so they can devote more resources to how character portraits look in conversational settings.

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1 minute ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

As for the bolded portion, I'd attribute this to a difference between genres. Since Ace Attorney leans upon the "visual novel" genre, expressive character representations becomes more important. And they don't have to worry about, say, map or battle sprites, so they can devote more resources to how character portraits look in conversational settings.

Oh yeah, that wasn't meant to be a dig at Fire Emblem, just to be clear. While I certainly wouldn't object to more being done with facial expressions it's certainly not a requirement like it is in Ace Attorney (and conversely, I wouldn't hold Fire Emblem having better fight scenes against Ace Attorney!). The purpose of the comparison was to point to body language absolutely being used in a game that was formally 2D and later became 3D, to show that no  3D is not inherently better at showing body language. I'm both cases be it 2D or 3D it depends on how much work you put in and Fire Emblem has never put much work into it. Three Houses isn't even the worst. I'd say the DS games with the perfectly expressionless immobile sprites were. Though for a lot it isn't as immediately noticeable in the DS games due to the verisimilitude angle.

As for crying, that could be rather easily achieved by having the character rub their eyes and tilt their head in 3D.

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On 3/14/2022 at 12:50 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Yeah, basically. If you have any unused Master Seals as of III-6, you may as well use them. I'd see a case for selling them, but bizarrely, that isn't even an option. A 10/1 or even 12/1 Edward isn't gonna be "Tower-viable", but he'll be able to do more in Part III than his unpromoted counterparts.

I'm not concerned about the tower here, but rather part 3, because Zihark, who is much better than Edward, already has issues in part 3. What does that tell you about how Edward is gonna do in part 3??? Because it doesn't tell me anything remotely good, that's for sure. WHich is not good when making him work in part 1 is already a Herculean labor in and of itself.

On 3/14/2022 at 12:50 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I never said that early promotion makes Edward "a beast of a unit". Moreso that it's better for Edward to be promoted, than not. In fact, let's do a comparison: I think it's reasonable to imagine Edward gaining a full level in the Prologue, Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6i, and 6ii.That means he's already at level 12. From there, deployment slots become limited, so let's say it's a choice between using Zihark and Edward in chapters 7, 8, and Endgame. Let's assume that Zihark would gain 1 level in each such chapter, whereas Edward gains 2 each in the first two, then promotes before Endgame, and gains 1 level there. Here's the comparison between level 4 Zihark and level 7 Zihark, rounded down, for 3-6:

  Reveal hidden contents

HP: 30 / 32

Str: 17 / 18

Mag: 6 / 6

Skl: 22 / 25

Spd: 23 / 25

Lck: 11 / 12

Def: 13 / 14

Res: 11 / 12

Now, here's the comparison between unpromoted level 12 Edward, 12/1 Edward, and 16/2 Edward, rounded down, for the start of 3-6:

  Reveal hidden contents

HP: 25 / 26 / 32

Str: 11 / 12 / 15

Mag: 0 / 2 / 2

Skl: 16 / 17 / 20

Spd: 16 / 17 / 20

Lck: 12 / 12 / 14

Def: 7 / 8 / 10

Res: 1 / 3 / 4

Broadly speaking, an invested (16/2) Edward is still weaker than an uninvested (-/4) Zihark. He'll have higher HP and Luck, but Zihark will be better in other stats. He does, however, have other advantages. He gets an earlier start on building supports (say, an Earth-Light support with Nolan), and he gets exclusive access to the (high-Might, Luck-boosting) Caladbolg in Part III.

If Zihark is fielded over Edward, then he'll become stronger still, and the margin between the units becomes more dramatic. I can see the case for focusing on him, as an -/7 Zihark will double even 10-Speed enemy Laguz. Still, the margin between -/4 and -/7 Zihark is clearly smaller than that between 12/1 and 16/2 Edward; he'll gain 4 more HP, 2 more Strength, 1 more Speed, 1 more Luck, and 1 more Defense than Zihark would've in the same period. So it's a choice between 2 "pretty good" units, and one "very good" unit with one "mediocre" unit. In DB Part III, I'm inclined to favor the former, but other players may consider the latter scenario preferable.

One more thing - it should be evident that 12/1 Edward is better than 12/- Edward. For starters, he's not doubled by 10-speed enemy Laguz. He's also able to survive 9-Strength enemy Tigers with S-rank Fangs (33 Atk), as well as 11-Strength enemy Tigers with A-rank Fangs (32 Atk). If it's a choice between fielding a level 12 Myrmidon Edward and leaving a Master Seal in the convoy, or fielding a 12/1 Swordmaster Edward, the preferable state should be obvious.

Caladbolg is literally the only thing he has over Zihark, and it ain't enough to justify investing in him, frankly. And tbf, it'd make part 3 easier to just not bother with him because he doesn't pay off in any remotely meaningful way.

Anyways...

Wyvern Elise and Wyvern Annette are both overrated. If I really wanted to go the physical route with a magical leaning unit, it's easy to do better than having a low skill unit use the most inaccurate weapon type (Elise) or having to rely on an inaccurate magic weapon for magic damage (Annette).

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44 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I'm not concerned about the tower here, but rather part 3, because Zihark, who is much better than Edward, already has issues in part 3. What does that tell you about how Edward is gonna do in part 3??? Because it doesn't tell me anything remotely good, that's for sure. WHich is not good when making him work in part 1 is already a Herculean labor in and of itself.

Caladbolg is literally the only thing he has over Zihark, and it ain't enough to justify investing in him, frankly. And tbf, it'd make part 3 easier to just not bother with him because he doesn't pay off in any remotely meaningful way.

How can investment not be worth it when the investment is free?

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I'm not a fan of map animations, but that's only because in most of the games that had them, there was no way to turn them off, and some of them got unbearably slow considering that if I'm choosing this option, I'm doing so because I want faster gameplay. As long as they can be turned off, I think it'd be cool to have them there for those who like 'em. Radiant Dawn (after one playthrough) had the best solution of having detailed / map / off as options.

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