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Am I the only one who doesn't like this game at all?


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I remember back in October of 2016 when I was still in my early days of being an FE fan, a friend of mine let me borrow his copy of FE9. I was pretty excited, since everyone I spoke to about it said it was an amazing game and one of the best in the entire series. I had really high expectations and when I finally got to booting the game up, after a couple of chapters I began to notice something: The game talks a lot. Like, Metal Gear Solid 2 levels of talking. I thought the story was okay, nothing spectacular but it sufficed enough for me not to complain about it. After a while I began to notice how easy the maps were, and how bonus EXP can really break the game at times.  Many units people told me were good were average at best, and I couldn't figure out why.

Was it bad level ups? Were my expectations too high? I realized that people probably shoved ridiculous amounts of bonus EXP into these units and maybe a few stat boosters. Now I know what you're thinking: "why not play at a higher difficulty then?" Simply because this was still my haydays of FE and was easing my way into the harder stuff.  Keep in mind, up until that point, the only games I had under my belt were FE11, 12, 13, 14 and a little bit of 3 and 6. I was by no means new to the series. The disappointment  reached its maximum when I got to the final map and faced off against Ashnard. I was expecting him to move and have a second phase, but I didn't realize that was a hard mode exclusive. I beat the game and didn't feel accomplished, I just felt empty. I felt like I had wasted around 30 or so hours of my life on a game that was, at best mediocre. 

I tried to like this game, I really did but after a while it just became a major slog. Am I the only one who feels this way? I've never met anyone who said they disliked this game, in fact many of the fans I've met say this is one of, if not their favorite.

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Yeah, FE9 on Normal mode makes it about one of the easiest in the series - to say nothing of its Easy Difficulty. Hard Mode does address a lot of what you don't like in the gameplay though. It is of course harder, and with lower experience gains across the board to compensate for more enemy units in each chapter. Bonus EXP is also drastically reduced. 

Not sure what you mean about the game being too wordy. I guess there's a lot more exposition and world building in the early chapters where there isn't in the other Fire Emblem games you mention, but I felt like the writing and scenario kept you from getting bored. And the delivery of that text was well paced with the gameplay and there are several base conversations you can skip if you're not interested. When I think of Fire Emblem getting boring with dialogue I think of the chapter 13 or 14 ish of Eliwood Mode of FE7 where it's constantly introducing characters, their backstories, and political intrigue that doesn't get a pay off later. Or how Conquest would stop everything in Chapter 7 where you're in a dire ambush against monsters but on Turn 3 here's a five minute text based introduction of four new characters, their personality gimmicks, and Silas mentioning Corrin's favorite food. All dialogue that you'd think was written as if the battle were already over.

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As a game, PoR's about the middle of the pack for me.  I think the issue is that Tellius has become grossly overhyped, so expectations are through the roof.  It's also an issue of time - it's been two years, so expectations and whatnot will change.

I'm on the fence on whether or not this topic should stay open.

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I always prefered radiant dawn personally, as for PoR it's maybe my third favorite, and sacred stones is second (always had a soft spot for it), but RD always felt tighter gameplay wise, also it's difficulty wasn't butchered in localization.

Edited by thecrimsonflash
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well i feel PoR is perhaps the series at it's best writing, the gameplay is fairly middle of the road all things considered. good ideas here and there handicapped by sloppy execution in a lot of parts (i love a lot of the level concepts but the execution could have been done better in a lot of them, and well the laguz are a good idea they just end up being too finicky in execution)

radiant dawn actually does a bit to address some of my concerns for PoR's gameplay and on a personal level i like it a bit more, even if overall i feel por is the stronger game.

Edited by NobodiePichu
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I liked FE9, but than I played FE10 and found it very hard to play FE9 once again for some reason lol V_V

 

And while I prefer the older FE games, FE9 is one of the few old games that I see myself preferring to play a new FE game over, but it's still a good game with good characters in my opinion, it's just doesn't set my world on fire.

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Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn are easily my favorites in the series because of the great characters, dialogue and story. ive played path of radiance 20 ish times and Radiant dawn 167 times. My favorite games of all time tbh. gotta say that its just use. if for some reason the story isnt enough for you which is strange play at a harder difficulty to make the game play harder. otherwise yeah cant like everything i guess. 

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I don't think FE9 is a bad game by any means, I just think it's really boring and underwhelming, and like Eclipse said, a lot of it is just the game being overhyped. More problems come up later down the line since I played all of FE3 (Both books with no deaths and all units recruited) and I absolutely adored the minimalist story telling. I already really liked Shadow Dragon for how quick everything went, both gameplay and storywise. I went on to play FE4 and 6 too and the more I compared the stories and how they handled dialogue and their dilemmas just makes it even harder for me to wrap my head around how FE9 is as well liked as it is. To me, it just seemed more like nostalgic bias than anything else. I do intend on replaying FE9 at some point since I do own my own copy now but odds are I'm just gonna skip the story entirely and maybe do some major support grinding.

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I haven't beaten it yet but I really liked this game, something about it's weird realistic and yet tile grid graphics just gives me an urge to play FE for some reason, just like seeing an Erk with 37 HP for some reason (I guess it just makes me think of FE)

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4 hours ago, Florete said:

Yep, you're the only one.

I do find it hard to go back to this game after later games, though. It's really sluggish.

Nah, he's not, it's not that great.

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I'm not creative enough for the minimalist approach. Shadow of the Colossus, for an extreme example of minimalism, didn't really do it for me, I kinda forced myself to like this "classic", and it did have a measure of emotional pull, but I didn't love it from the authentic lachrymose depths of my heart.

I instead prefer a world that is already built for me, and built well. I'm sure I'll find things to fill in with fanfiction later even if it is this way. And I don't like VNs or overly long bouts of dialogue either, yet Tellius is totally fine to me. I play Etrian Odyssey, dungeon crawling narrative minimalism, but for the gameplay really, I've never given my characters elaborate backgrounds. 

 

Admittedly, I haven't played PoR in years. Animations-wise, it is slow and that is a real fault, but the maps themselves largely aren't terribly tedious. If anything, I find Mount Emblem a little too brisk here in some cases. On minor gameplay issues besides the mount lead, mages are a bit underpowered (and then RD made them their worst ever), archers are pretty bad, and the new thing called Laguz needed to be better. And of course, the game is too easy, even on Hard, although I heard the Japanese Maniac Mode was a bit too tedious with HP bloat- so it seems there was never a perfect goldilocks difficulty here- a fault shared by Awakening, albeit that game had hyperoffensive imbalance.

As for narrative, I'm not an Ike fan, nor a hater, but I can see him being boring and underdeveloped. I can also see the various other narrative faults of the game. Nonetheless, I consider the good to outweigh the bad significantly. I can't actually say which FE is my gameplay favorite, which is weird because I'm always gameplay over plot, but in narrative and world- particularly the world- Tellius as a whole is the top of the list for mine.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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I always end up going back to Tellius.  The great world building, objective/map variety and the amazing art design always suck me back in. Am I the only player who plays PoR and RD with the map only animations turned on.  Awakening/Echoes has a lot of replayability as well but the objective/map variety is pretty lacking.  Tear Ring Saga and Berwick Saga may be to your liking. You should give those a go. 

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18 hours ago, Vaikanfu said:

I remember back in October of 2016 when I was still in my early days of being an FE fan, a friend of mine let me borrow his copy of FE9. I was pretty excited, since everyone I spoke to about it said it was an amazing game and one of the best in the entire series. I had really high expectations and when I finally got to booting the game up, after a couple of chapters I began to notice something: The game talks a lot. Like, Metal Gear Solid 2 levels of talking. I thought the story was okay, nothing spectacular but it sufficed enough for me not to complain about it. After a while I began to notice how easy the maps were, and how bonus EXP can really break the game at times.  Many units people told me were good were average at best, and I couldn't figure out why.

Was it bad level ups? Were my expectations too high? I realized that people probably shoved ridiculous amounts of bonus EXP into these units and maybe a few stat boosters. Now I know what you're thinking: "why not play at a higher difficulty then?" Simply because this was still my haydays of FE and was easing my way into the harder stuff.  Keep in mind, up until that point, the only games I had under my belt were FE11, 12, 13, 14 and a little bit of 3 and 6. I was by no means new to the series. The disappointment  reached its maximum when I got to the final map and faced off against Ashnard. I was expecting him to move and have a second phase, but I didn't realize that was a hard mode exclusive. I beat the game and didn't feel accomplished, I just felt empty. I felt like I had wasted around 30 or so hours of my life on a game that was, at best mediocre. 

I tried to like this game, I really did but after a while it just became a major slog. Am I the only one who feels this way? I've never met anyone who said they disliked this game, in fact many of the fans I've met say this is one of, if not their favorite.

10 is worse, though I wholeheartedly would say that this game is way to overhyped. The characters are boring, the designs are cartoony and off, and the gameplay is boring, no hard mode can fix that. Just because the difficulty is higher doesn't mean it's more fun, because it isn't.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ahh the Tellius games. FE9 is tied for my favorite with FE8. FE10 is my least favorite for reasons I won’t get into here. 

While it may be wordy, I always thought the story was pretty good in FE9. I like the way it all played out. Plus after my first play though I always skipped the story.

For me the map designs were great, and never felt boring or lazy. 

Bexp needs to be handled properly to get the most out of the game. As a draft/LTC player it makes Bexp use much more fun. Basically, if a unit is a good class (mount/flyer) you should pump it into them early on. Bexp is great for making sure that you can use whoever you want whenever you want. 

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