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FE 11's Take on Storytelling/Less is More


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Often times I see stories criticized for not giving enough information or specific details to the player in many different aspects and, to an extent, I would agree that there is merit to some of those arguments and even to the game I'm about to talk about you could convince me that there are times when we don't get enough information but, sometimes I don't think people know what they want when they throw out accusations toward narratives for not explaining every little thing and in all my runs of Shadow Dragon I have discovered that there is a lot more to the story than people think, which is a game often accused of being the most basic, bland, and lifeless game in the series.

I can understand peoples frustration with the games for it's time especially when it came after Radiant Dawn which was pretty deep and really dialogue heavy compared to Shadow Dragon in which the latter has few lines between each battle explaining why you are there and then exploring Nyna and Marth's feelings about the situation each level to add context and drama to which it jumps you right into the battle with little to dwell on in between. This is seen as an omen for some and a refresher for others and I have seen people torn between this for many years, especially because Marth and non playable characters are the only ones who get lines at all minus Minerva and Caeda who get there lines cut if they die. And while the game only tells you a little there are a lot of advantages that the simple/open ended story have that I want to list as well as ask a question to whether a game like this is something you would like to see in the future.
 

Spoiler

 

1. no long/detailed expositions that interrupt the flow of the story and instead are hidden behind house dialogue and cryptic words from certain characters in the narrative. For example you can learn a ton about Gharnef, who seems like a basic villain at first, from reading house dialogue, carefully reading Gotoh's words about him, and studying his interactions with Marth. You will see just how many things it's implied hes done as well as hinting at lot's of backstory and reason for his motivation. He orchestrated the conflict of that game way more than you might already think the game gives you a lot of hints which I found to be more interesting than having a part devoted to explaining everything, especially when the game never confirms and shoves that information in your face. In short it feels more rewarding to discover than to just be told.

2. Shadow Dragon is one of the only games in the series that has everyone die when they fall in battle and has no character retreat at all, and while you could argue that it's cheap because two characters that get lots on lines aren't even playable and have no chance to die but as I said before Minerva and Caeda's lines actually get replaced if they fall before said scenes, and even though they only got a few lines towards the end it's something that I think should be continued in future installments. The story stays true to your decisions in the gameplay which is nullifies those jarring scenes where a character is getting all these lines even though they have been "wounded" for the whole game.

3. Lower stats and lower growths makes certain levels on characters more meaningful and less predictable letting people have many different experiences with the game with different units shining from playthrough to playthrough. This is something the newer games are guilty of in my mind, and an example of this is I challenge you to ask anyone who has played through Fates and used Benny to the end and see if any of them will tell you that he wasn't a super tank at some point in the game, this is because of his massive growths in defense and his access to wary fighter to which every time you play through fates Benny is essentially the same unit which is nice for consistency but lessens the randomness of the growth rates which the games were originally designed around. This is why Silas is fun to use for me because his growth rates are averaged around 50%-40% which is most units in fe11. This is why you will hear splits in peoples playthroughs where in 1 case my Abel stopped being useful late into the game but in a different run he leveled speed every level up and was dominant for the whole game.

4. Having a weaker lord and not requiring him to be dominant allows for game to played differently everytime and since that game gives you less scripted events the gameplay more smoothly connects to the story, infact you can beat the game without Marth getting Falchion and not even killing Gharnef, and unlike other games where the lord has to get the final hit anyone who is strong enough can slay Medues can be the hero of the story and the game allows you to explore that in anyway you want. In short as cool as it is to see Alm through his shield away and kill Duma, or Ike filled with power slay Ashera, that is going to be the same every play through and both of those Lords in said games are super strong and dominant every playthrough, to which Shadow Dragon allows you to have Diversity in who does what.

 

There are many examples but the topic is really long already so in short, the game has a narrative that allows you to explore and imply things you wish and the gameplay complements the narrative and stays true to it and only builds up Marth as a leader instead of the ultimate warrior who saves the world with is skills, allowing anyone to be the heroes of the story and for the game to be a simple and customizable narrative that heavily differs playthrough to playthrough to which I'm arguing does better than any game in the series.

So to rephrase the question, is a story like this so bad? and would you be fine with a future installment going back to formula like this? I seriously doubt IS would ever do that given the narrative direction they are going with FE nowadays but if they did would you mind?

tl;dr: Sometimes less is more, do you agree?

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Rather then the idea of less is more is inherently good or bad depends on where it's used in the story. Less is more works well when you are talking about horror since your brain can go wild as to what that sound was around the corner. Unlike horror, I feel like Fire Emblem should focus on explaining as much as the world and its characters as possible or else we won't care about the cast of characters we are interacting with on the screen. Now I have never played FE 11 or FE 12 so can't judge if the story is good enough for the less is more actually works in the context of the story. 

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I've always been pretty strong on the matter that Shadow Dragon's approach is ''less is less'' for me. 

Partly its because I feel that everyone being a mute goes against what Fire Emblem is supposed to be. Fire Emblem is separated from Advance Wars by every member of the army being a unique individual with their own hopes and dreams. This aspect of Fire Emblem vanishes if people don't have lines aside from a death quote. Some people avoid this fate but a lot of others don't and are extremely boring as a result. 

I actually feel opposite about Gharnef as I see him as an example of Shadow Dragon's writing style not working. Gharnef interrupting the flow of the story is exactly what he should have done He's responsible for everyone's woes, his actions destroyed Marth's family and he keeps his sister prisoner. Due to this Marth and Gharnef should have a very personal animosity that just isn't there. Marth doesn't care about Gharnef other then it being his duty to stop him and Gharnef doesn't care about Marth aside from the fact a villain needs to oppose a hero.  I wish Gharnef acted like Nergal and occasionally visited the Heroes to torment them. Gotoh being able to communicate through a magical image of himself even gives Gharnef an opportunity to borrow Nergal's strengths as a villain without it raising the question about why he doesn't just kill Marth already. Gharnef should really have contacted Marth after he liberated Altea by rubbing it in how his mom still died and his sister is still gone even after Altea has been freed. We've seen him rub Eremiya's misery in her face so we know its something he'd do. 

I don't feel things being hidden in villages and implications saves Gharnef because the Gharnef we are presented with gives us so little when he's on screen. He's just the bare bones crazy dark mage template without any real character trait to sets him apart. He doesn't have Nergal's relation to the Heroes, Jedah's piety, Validar's incompetence, Manfroy's success or Lyon's sympathetic side.  Hiding stuff behind optional stuff can work really well as shown by how Legault turns out to be deeply connected to two units you'd never have guessed but if the character itself doesn't have anything it doesn't work. At least for me. 

And what I said about Gharnef's goes for lots of characters. Because Shadow Dragon refuses to give info or details it leads to every archetype being a watered down version of those that would come after them. All they do has been done a lot better by their successors. 

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I'll go through the numbered points individually.  Gonna play devil's advocate.

  1. Since Gharnef is, in my opinion, the better of the two main antagonists in Shadow Dragon, I don't really have any qualms about him.  That said, I'm never inclined to believe that any writer should rely on their audience doing post-reading research to make their characters compelling.  I understand that looking more into characters can make them more compelling (e.g. Alvis is so much more intriguing a villain when you really look into him), but there needs to be the hook that inspires people to do so.  Some may not find Gharnef intriguing enough to look further into his role in the story.  My point is, you can't rely on subtlety and hints alone to make a villain compelling, there has to be something on the surface - enough for the average player to detect and be intrigued by.  Otherwise, it's not good writing because good writing is about appealing to laymen who don't typically give stories a second thought after skimming through them.  The stuff that's hinted at is only used to enhance an already well written character, not to make a character good.
  2. I will give you credit for appealing to the gameplay-narrative angle - I'm always a man who enjoys games that integrate storytelling into their gameplay.  However, I'd offer the counter argument that they die because the story could do without them.  Aside from Caeda, no character deaths really affect much of the story as you witness it unfold.  Of course you could argue that the changes would come in the end, such as Macedon not having a successor to the throne if both Minerva and Maria die, but again I'd emphasize the value of the surface narrative.  Epilogues are never any story's strongest point, and neither is speculation.  Outside of that, nothing changes except that the characters are absent.  The little touches (such as the conversations some characters have) don't count - they're not enough to make an impact on the experience as a whole.
  3. You say Benny's boring for consistently being the same kind of unit in most playthroughs, I say the other side of the scale is that everyone's too similarly low in stats and unpredictable to have any identity as units.  There's a balance between giving a character an identity and making them too rigid that there's no variance whatsoever in subsequent playthroughs.  Now, I will say that Awakening made the stats way too massive that character identity became totally meaningless by endgame; when you have stat caps ranging in the 40's, possibly 50's, and maybe even 60's with limit breaker, and when you're able to grind and level indefinitely until you're ready to take on Apotheosis, a 3-5 point stat difference or a 10-20% growth rate difference hardly means anything.  Though at the same time, so many Archanean units blend together.  They did more to differentiate them in the DS remakes, but I can't help but see shades of Cain and Abel when I look at the, say, 5-or-so other cavaliers you also recruit later down the line.
  4. I don't like the game railroading me into killing the big bad with the protagonist (I had Oboro kill the final enemy in Revelation), but I also don't like being forced to take along a liability.  Though I think this point is ultimately moot, as Marth's not all that bad a unit in the first place.  Not super powerful like some units such as Seth or Sigurd are, but not every unit needs to be a demi-god on the battlefield.  If these games should truly endeavor to be diverse, how about they let us choose to not field the protagonist for any battles?  Especially if they actually are to be mediocre, because again I don't want to be forced to drag along a liability.

I will also say that speaking about gameplay, it kind of hurts your points when you compare Shadow Dragon to Fates.  I know that game isn't for everyone, but most people around here would suggest that Fates has the best gameplay in the series.  I mean hell, look at how Fates deals with difficulty increases versus how Shadow Dragon does it.  Fates adds in more enemies, changes reinforcement arrivals and numbers, their stats, the skills they have, and even whether or not enemies can use dual guard (I know this from playing Phoenix mode in my quest to build an army of Oboro einherjar units).  Meanwhile, as far as I know, Shadow Dragon maybe adds some more enemies and increases stats, which is honestly just a lame approach to difficulty increases.

I'll end by saying this.  There's an extent at which leaving something too open-ended and up for further exploration is a detriment, and it varies from story to story.  At some point you may as well just close your eyes and imagine stuff - or just simply get into roleplaying.  I don't think that point is reached with Shadow Dragon's story, but I do think it offers little enough that I can't in good faith say that less is more in that case.

Structure is not a limit on writing if you don't let it be a limit; it's a guideline.  And showing isn't always better than telling.  Not every little thing needs an embellishment or a slew of subtle hints, sometimes it's good enough to just hear it from people flapping jaws.  This especially applies to lore, because it's very difficult to convey stuff that happened either behind the scenes or long ago unless either you use exposition segments to explain the lore or pull some plot device BS to transport our eyes to scenes that show us this stuff.

And I'm not normally one to say that something is right because the majority say it is... but people don't complain about the story for no reason.  So to answer your question, I would say that sometimes less can be more, but it isn't really so in the case of Shadow Dragon.  There's not enough on the surface to intrigue a lot of people to dig deeper.  It's the same issue with practically any piece of cult-favorite media that has fans that would imply that naysayers just aren't smart enough to understand.  People say this kind of stuff about anything that has lacking surface appeal.  Even I've said that kind of stuff before, usually about Metal Gear games because lots of people never bothered to figure out their convoluted stories while I gleefully played each of them, like, ten times over.

3 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I wish Gharnef acted like Nergal

I agree.  I'd say I felt something for almost all the major villains in Blazing Sword, while I barely remember how I felt about any Archanean villain that didn't debut as such in the Book 2/New Mystery story.

Hell, even silly ol' Batta the Beast is more memorable than a lot of the smaller bosses in SD.  I'll never forget that arrogant basic bitch beginner boss spouting his name as if I'm supposed to know it.  Although I still get a chuckle out of Hyman because how can anyone take someone with that name seriously.

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44 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Partly its because I feel that everyone being a mute goes against what Fire Emblem is supposed to be. Fire Emblem is separated from Advance Wars by every member of the army being a unique individual with their own hopes and dreams. This aspect of Fire Emblem vanishes if people don't have lines aside from a death quote. Some people avoid this fate but a lot of others don't and are extremely boring as a result. 

 

At least Advance Wars cartoony and simple style means the characters have charm unlike Shadow Dragon. 

As for he OP, I do agree that you should be allowed to kill the final boss with anyone you want because the game should allow you to complete it how you want to. 

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2 hours ago, JimmyBeans said:

Having a weaker lord and not requiring him to be dominant allows for game to played differently everytime and since that game gives you less scripted events the gameplay more smoothly connects to the story,

This isn't really connected to the rest of your argument. Narrative minimalism and lord godliness or lack thereof have little to do with each other. One could write a minimalistic RD with Ike still being a powerhouse, one could write SD fitting an entire visual novel between chapters with Marth still only an average lord.

And Marth from a narrative perspective is already a brilliant lord. He doesn't one-man army entire chapters (but in narrative- neither does Ike- he always has at least his fellow GMs with him, he is a Marine, not a Musou character), but he through goes all of SD being forced to retreat/lose a total of one time, not you'd necessarily remember it, since the narrative being thin means there is no drama associated with it. He must therefore be very smart, which can certainly compensate for any lack of strength when you lead an army.

 

48 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I wish Gharnef acted like Nergal

Nergal is Gharnef reborn. Elibe draws its inspiration from Archanea. FE7 does not do it as heavily as FE6, but it has some some, like Isadora and Harken a reborn Midia and Astram. Athos and Nergal are Gotoh and Gharnef, and Athos fetching Aureola to kill Nergal mirrors Gotoh forging Starlight to penetrate Imhullu.

Like Nergal, Gharnef is irrational, Gharnef is tragic in principle, but not in feeling. But of the two, while Nergal is an insane husk for me (and I feel this more than I do with Gharnef despite also likely being one to some extent, since I can offer a modicum more of sympathy to Nergal than Gharnef), and Gharnef actually did accomplish more, a lot actually, I think I'd possibly still pick Nergal over him.

 

28 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

I say the other side of the scale is that everyone's too similarly low in stats and unpredictable to have any identity as units. 

Or, a character becomes defined by their base stats if growths are too low. Growths at all 90% and growths all at 10% can produce the same degree of identity.

 

16 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

Hell, even silly ol' Batta the Beast is more memorable than a lot of the smaller bosses in SD.  I'll never forget that arrogant basic bitch beginner boss spouting his name as if I'm supposed to know it.  Although I still get a chuckle out of Hyman because how can anyone take someone with that name seriously.

In Japan, he apparently calls himself Batta-sama- "Lord Batta". Not uncommon for someone arrogant in Japanese to do. NoA changed it to "the Beast", which gets the same ego across, but I think it's better adapted for English.

 

3 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

As for he OP, I do agree that you should be allowed to kill the final boss with anyone you want because the game should allow you to complete it how you want to. 

I think the best solution is to separate the gameplay and the cinematic final blows. Let me kill the final boss with anyone in gameplay, but make it in story only cripple the final boss enough for somebody important to then do a flashy movie finisher.

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1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I think the best solution is to separate the gameplay and the cinematic final blows. Let me kill the final boss with anyone in gameplay, but make it in story only cripple the final boss enough for somebody important to then do a flashy movie finisher.

I had this in mind as well. Make it a bonus scene you get if you used the correct character. This way, you get to make your own hero but the canonical events stay the same. 

 

4 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

He must therefore be very smart, which can certainly compensate for any lack of strength when you lead an army.

Hmm was this shown explicitly in strategy discussions in FE11? One thing I like about RD is that it allows you to see the strategist's intelligence at play through the narrative events. What's important to me is not how successful the strategist is but the planning behind it. One thing I dislike is a character is called smart but never shows it in a believable manner. 

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43 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

This isn't really connected to the rest of your argument. Narrative minimalism and lord godliness or lack thereof have little to do with each other. One could write a minimalistic RD with Ike still being a powerhouse, one could write SD fitting an entire visual novel between chapters with Marth still only an average lord.

And Marth from a narrative perspective is already a brilliant lord. He doesn't one-man army entire chapters (but in narrative- neither does Ike- he always has at least his fellow GMs with him, he is a Marine, not a Musou character), but he through goes all of SD being forced to retreat/lose a total of one time, not you'd necessarily remember it, since the narrative being thin means there is no drama associated with it. He must therefore be very smart, which can certainly compensate for any lack of strength when you lead an army.

 

"Having a weaker lord and not requiring him to be dominant allows for game to played differently everytime and since that game gives you less scripted events the gameplay more smoothly connects to the story, infact you can beat the game without Marth getting Falchion and not even killing Gharnef, and unlike other games where the lord has to get the final hit anyone who is strong enough can slay Medues can be the hero of the story and the game allows you to explore that in anyway you want. In short as cool as it is to see Alm through his shield away and kill Duma, or Ike filled with power slay Ashera, that is going to be the same every play through and both of those Lords in said games are super strong and dominant every playthrough, to which Shadow Dragon allows you to have Diversity in who does what. "

 

 

This is whats always mistaken about Marth: his gameplay weakness is actually ridiculously incidental

 

Narratively speaking Shadow Dragon Marth is a complete, utter wrecking ball. A trait picked up from how ABSURDLY OVERPOWERED he is in the game Shadow Dragon is based in, something you can STILL see by playing Shadow Dragon in Normal Mode. Lets put it this way, Shadow Dragon Normal Marth is so overpowered, the speedrun strategy for SD is quite literally a Marth solo. Case in point, following Marth's purging of pirates of Talys(which let me remind you, gameplay wise this pirate purging business isnt just hard it features THE hardest bossfight in fire emblem history in H2 onwards), Marth proceed to make a clean sweep to Aurelis, where he SAVED Hardin, one of the most powerful character in the canon, freed Aurelis, and proceed to make a straight beeline into Archanea. The Archanean League is so unstoppable it took Gharnef showing up before they even slow down

You can contribute some of these to Hardin, as Mystery makes a nod of it(and Hardin is a monster of a strategist and management according to Mystery's story, turning Archanea into the strongest it have ever been in a time record), but consider that the same Marth proceed to make a journey through Anri's Way something that need both Physical and Mental prowess, and later dueled Hardin in a restricted time span. Its really clear he is meant to be a fairly strong lord.

This is why Shadow Dragon Marth is an extremely cocky, and proud person(you seriously can't tell the guy who boasted about his importance over the hope of the people as ANYTHING but prideful). He have no reason not to. Since he started his journey he only win. This isn't Roy who genuinely spend the first third of the game being touted as weak before he prove himself as a godly strategist on Ostia and even then he almost lose to Narcian ambush if not for Cecilia's interference, and STILL get sent to the sidelines before joining the front. Marth's journey in Shadow Dragon is a steady dominance over the continent

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The problem is less with the story and more with the absence of character growth for most of the cast. The game succinctly and clearly explained about the countries and conflicts going on (something fates dropped the ball on), but if I want to find out more about Vyland, Shadow Dragon gives me nothing. There are no houses that tell me his life story, there are no optional supports that I could unlock to flesh out his character, there are no Radiant Dawn style base conversation, or Genealogy style in chapter conversations between characters, (beyond the occasional introduction to Marth). They had numerous options that were used in the past to give these characters something without intruding on the narrative, and this lack is the issue I have with Shadow Dragon's storytelling.They did try to give Marth some growth, but there were serious issues with presentation that hampered that (although they did a good job with Nyna), and Caede and Minerva get just enough lines that I feel like there is something (and the vastly different narrative style of the prologue give the Altean knights a tiny bit of life as well).

3 hours ago, JimmyBeans said:

3. Lower stats and lower growths makes certain levels on characters more meaningful and less predictable letting people have many different experiences with the game with different units shining from playthrough to playthrough. This is something the newer games are guilty of in my mind, and an example of this is I challenge you to ask anyone who has played through Fates and used Benny to the end and see if any of them will tell you that he wasn't a super tank at some point in the game, this is because of his massive growths in defense and his access to wary fighter to which every time you play through fates Benny is essentially the same unit which is nice for consistency but lessens the randomness of the growth rates which the games were originally designed around. This is why Silas is fun to use for me because his growth rates are averaged around 50%-40% which is most units in fe11. This is why you will hear splits in peoples playthroughs where in 1 case my Abel stopped being useful late into the game but in a different run he leveled speed every level up and was dominant for the whole game.

I'm going to point out Shadow Dragon's Sedgar and Wolf are far worse offenders of this than any of the fates characters.

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3 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

 

I'm going to point out Shadow Dragon's Sedgar and Wolf are far worse offenders of this than any of the fates characters.

DSFE General base stats is just silly lol. Its kinda understandable that Post Kaga era decided to nerf promotion in general althought t makes promotions feels much less epic

 

Yeah DSFE is in the end effectively the cause of problem that Fates and Awakening had. The absurdity in stats growth was something done first by NM, and Shadow Dragon exp formula was the model ended up used on Awakening, which is already obviously problematic even before Awakening put it into highlight

 

Honestly even Caeda would have been even more broken if it didnt use DSFE dodge formula since her speed is just stupid high

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7 hours ago, Cure Naga said:

Rather then the idea of less is more is inherently good or bad depends on where it's used in the story. Less is more works well when you are talking about horror since your brain can go wild as to what that sound was around the corner. Unlike horror, I feel like Fire Emblem should focus on explaining as much as the world and its characters as possible or else we won't care about the cast of characters we are interacting with on the screen. Now I have never played FE 11 or FE 12 so can't judge if the story is good enough for the less is more actually works in the context of the story. 

Good point. I will also add that it works better through imagery as well when you look at a game like Dark Souls where you walk through a world full of rich history but your only way to find out what happened is by reading item descriptions and looking at the world. Every item, enemy, and structure is placed intentionally reveal something about that area or an event that happened, in fact I'd say that Dark Souls series is the pinnacle of "less is more" and "show not tell" in gaming, or at least narratively speaking. This is something I feel FE has yet to find the sweet spot in, and we could do good to take some lessons from that. But even those games don't answer everything, and there are still a lot of questions that people are searching for the answer for even to this day, which IMO make a lot of those narratives more interesting. And to use Horror as you said as an example who here would disagree that in a movie like insidious that the tension was all lost when we see the Demon for the first time and he is some wannabe Darth Maul? The creepiest and "scariest parts" (scary if your like me) of that movie are all before we know anything about it, the mystery of it is what made the movie interesting and so my point in this ramble is that sometimes answering ALL the questions can lessen something but it goes both ways, Like in fates where actual important information for the plot is locked away for the sake of Revelations.

7 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

(snip)

I can agree that more optional stuff like support convos and base conversations have no reason to be absent in this game but these point against Gharnef actually is what my points are about because he appears to be what you described only on the surface. You say the both Marth and Gharnef don't really care for each other but the point is Marth doesn't know everything Gharnef has done. He knows he is evil and is the one who started the war but other than that he is just one of the many enemy countries leaders that Marth grew to hate and he doesn't hate or love Gharnef anymore or any less that he hates Michalis, Medeus, Jiol, and the king of Grust although you could argue that he hates Grust more given in what he says in the Wooden Cavalry level.

Spoiler

 

Nyna:
“Spectacularly done, Marth. …Does something ail you? I thought you would be happier.”

Marth:
“Today, there was this commoner… She mentioned Grust was divided about the war. Some of its people wanted to fight with Altea, she said…Ever since I lost my father and kingdom, I’ve held nothing but hate in my heart for Gra and Grust…but not once did I give any thought to what must have been going on in their heads.”

Nyna:
“And now you find your hate for them has been lessened?”

Marth:
“No… the hate remains. I will never forget the pain they inflicted upon me, the rage I felt. Yet now, at least, I can tell you it’s not just hate…Not anymore.”

Nyna:
“Not all evils are wrought of evil purposes. Perhaps this sounds naive, but…A true leader needs to look at his opponent and see more than just an enemy.”

Marth:
“….”

 

Marth doesn't know Gharnef spread the rumors that caused Michalis to kill his dad, he doesn't know Gharnef manipulated Jiol into betraying Altea, Marth doesn't know at that moment that Gharnef is the sole being responsible for literally every conflict on the whole continent, Marth is only filled with rage at everyone who wronged him and to Marth Gharnef just is another evil guy. And with each enemy nation he crushes Marth learns that they really aren't evil and he puts all the pieces together after the defeat of Michalis in Macedon in which he had learned the truth up to that point through Gotoh and Nyna to which he says.

Spoiler

 

Marth:
“First General Camus of Grust….Now Prince Michalis of Medon. Men of such promise…Had the times been different, the two might have led illustrious lives.”

Malledus:
“Yes, Prince Michalis was a brilliant man with great things ahead of him. But in the end, the rashness of youth did him in.”

Marth:
“Only because Gharnef found his weakness and exploited it. Until we stop that fiend, this spiral of misery will never cease.”

Malledus:
“Then shall we go to Thabes? Lord Gotoh said the city lies someplace far to the north of Khadein.”

Marth:
“Yes, in the heart of the desert…”

Malledus:
“Thabes is an old city… None in recent memory have gone there and returned alive. Within its walls remain many powerful apparatus crafted of long-forgotten magic. Lord Gotoh believes Gharnef is harnessing their power, and that is why he wields such influence over the continent.”

Marth:
“And he has Imhullu as well…This will be a struggle.”

(Malledus leaves)

Marth:
“Still, Gharnef’s reign must end. The world was so much more beautiful before he painted it red…”

 

 

And on the flip side when you said Gharnef didn't appear to care about Marth at all and I am going to guessing you are referring to this quote when he leaves in Khadein?

Spoiler

Gharnef:
“Altean prince! I fear you are not quite imposing enough to warrant my staying here. But if it’s Falchion you want, come and take it. I shall be waiting at the Temple of Thabes.”

This comes off as very cocky and just stupidly evil on Gharnefs part but he had a reason for it and you find out in your final confrontation with him.

 

Spoiler

 

Marth:
“The Temple of Thabes… He’s here…somewhere…”

????::
“Heh heh heh… Come to play, little Marth?”

(Gharnef, warps right in front of Marth)

Gharnef:
‘Tis I, Gharnef. I have been waiting for you.

Marth:
“Waiting?”

Gharnef:
“Oh yes. For you to dance around the continent, collecting powerful weapons and killing off my competition. Thanks to you, Camus and Michalis will trouble me no more. You have my gratitude, diligent prince.”

Marth:
“You…monster!”

Gharnef:
“Tsk, tsk, don’t spoil the moment, now. You’re about to do me one last favor… Die, Prince. Heh heh heh!”

Marth:
“That’s what you think. I have something else in mind.”

Gharnef:
“Heh, is that a threat? If you mean to harm me, first you’ll have to find me, boy.”

Marth:
“And what is that supposed to mean?”

(Malledus enters)

Malledus:
“My prince! Several sorcerers have been sighted throughout the temple! They’re…They all seem to be Gharnef, sire!”

Gharnef:
“Heh heh! Fight, boy, fight! Wear yourself thin fighting puppets and shadows! But the only way you’ll claim Falchion is by defeating the real me. Heh heh, ha ha ha ha!”

 

This is part of my original point, it's easy to tell that he lied to make Marth think he just didn't care but he knew the power of Marth and his army so he wanted to use Marth to destroy the 2 men he deemed a threat to himself while they were on his side in which that plan succeeded. His actual downfall wasn't letting Marth live, because you have to remeber that Michalis and Camus were deemed to be the most threatening men on the continent, in fact his real failure is not knowing the whereabouts of Gotoh and not making sure Tiki stayed under his control (which ironically makes Bantu an unsung hero). You can figure it out by his death quote when he is surprised that you have starlight.

Spoiler

Gharnef:
“Agh! What… Where did you get…Starlight…? Still, you are a fool …Your power is not enough to defeat Medeus…I shall be waiting in the pits of the inferno…for when he sends you to join me… Heh heh, ha ha ha!”

Shadow Dragon is a war story, and besides character development form Marth it really isn't a character driven story and penalize him for not being a more personal villain to Marth I think is a slight disservice to what he brings to the table as a villain. Because to Gharnef, Marth was just another pawn in his grand scheme, but much to his surprise Marth's leadership attracted the right people including Gotoh himself to all help in his demise and he underestimated Marth and by time he realized just how much of a threat he was even over Michalis and Camus, it was far to late. Also there are very few characters in all of FE that accomplish more than Gharnef does.

Also your last point about every archetype being watered down I have to disagree with, and while you could convince me for some of the archetypes I think very few characters in Cain archetype have matched his shadow dragon depiction. Take a look at this quote

Spoiler

 

Marth:
“Cain, how are your wounds? You should rest.”

Cain:
“These scratches? It’s my pride you’re wounding sire. …Anyway, we must talk. There’s a reason I’ve returned. …Sire, I am…I am to deliver to you His Majesty’s last words.”

Marth:
“Last words? You don’t mean…Father…”

Cain:
“My condolences sire. The king died valiantly on the fields of Gra. The traitors took from him the divine blade Falchion and gave no quarter to those of our soldiers who remained…”

Marth:
“I…I see…So they’re all dead. Father, too…”

Cain:
“His last words were as follows: “Tell my son that I leave the future of Altea and our continent in his hands. He must rise now where I have fallen. As Falchion’s rightful heir, he has been born into greatness…Now…he must be great.””

Marth:
“…Father. I will try…”

Cain:
“…Sire, I…I cannot bear this! Failing to protect His Majesty…then leaving my brothers to die, slinking away like some coward…This indignity is too much to bear! One day I will repay them in kind. I will avenge the fallen…I swear it!”

Marth:
“Cain, you speak for us both. When that day comes, we will punish them together:”
Gra, Doluna…all of them!

 

The bold is the most important quote as it gives him a very personal drive to fight, and it is very easy to attribute this to his personality as a lot it may be derived from that event making his hot-bloodedness and his more aggressive nature less gimmicky and more grounded and with this quote in mind his death quote makes a lot more sense and is a little sad when you think about it.

Spoiler

Cain:
“Prince Marth… Tell them… I did not run…”

I think this grounds Cain in the conflict much better than it does many other members of his Archetype and while he probably isn't the best of the bunch he feels like he has a better reason to be there than most. But most of my hatred comes from his awful portrayal in FEH because they reduced him to that one basic gimmick and didn't include a single nod to what made him great in his quotes at all.

 

6 hours ago, Icelerate said:

At least Advance Wars cartoony and simple style means the characters have charm unlike Shadow Dragon. 

As for he OP, I do agree that you should be allowed to kill the final boss with anyone you want because the game should allow you to complete it how you want to. 

Yes and while I wouldn't mind seeing more RD Ike and Alm related finishers there is something a lot more satisfying, for me at least, watching weaker units rise up and win you the game, this is something I hope 3H lets us do.

6 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

This isn't really connected to the rest of your argument. Narrative minimalism and lord godliness or lack thereof have little to do with each other. One could write a minimalistic RD with Ike still being a powerhouse, one could write SD fitting an entire visual novel between chapters with Marth still only an average lord.

 Your counter is very true I will concede that, but don't you agree that if Marth could one round Medeus every play through that the decision to choose who to face him would be less dynamic? If Marth wasn't getting a lot of kills he might find himself too weak to face Medeus, to which an untrained Marth would have to pass the torch to someone else (This is ignoring that fact that on harder difficulties capped Marth still gets steamrolled by Medeus regardless which penalizes it a bit).

5 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

(snip)

You know that's not an POV I actually never considered about Marth, I always thought Kaga designed his Lords weak on purpose with the exceptions being Alm and Sigurd with the former being really strong and aggressive to symbolize his path of the warrior. The reason for my thinking is I believe he made them weak to show that their leadership was their selling point as you watched them lead the charge and capture each castle, hence all the seize maps in non FE2 Kaga games and while Sigurd was really strong he was out smarted and tricked by Arvis who proved to be the better leader where Sigurd was more of a warrior because Kaga even said in an interview that you could tell how strong someone was by how much damage they dealt and he said it was his way of making even his games accessible for all ages (funny how his games are the least accessible, especially fe5). In short I can see where you are coming from, but i almost prefer lords to be weaker to symbolize what they represent in the story which the most successful ones are true leaders, thoughts?

4 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The problem is less with the story and more with the absence of character growth for most of the cast. The game succinctly and clearly explained about the countries and conflicts going on (something fates dropped the ball on), but if I want to find out more about Vyland, Shadow Dragon gives me nothing. There are no houses that tell me his life story, there are no optional supports that I could unlock to flesh out his character, there are no Radiant Dawn style base conversation, or Genealogy style in chapter conversations between characters, (beyond the occasional introduction to Marth). They had numerous options that were used in the past to give these characters something without intruding on the narrative, and this lack is the issue I have with Shadow Dragon's storytelling.They did try to give Marth some growth, but there were serious issues with presentation that hampered that (although they did a good job with Nyna), and Caede and Minerva get just enough lines that I feel like there is something (and the vastly different narrative style of the prologue give the Altean knights a tiny bit of life as well).

I'm going to point out Shadow Dragon's Sedgar and Wolf are far worse offenders of this than any of the fates characters.

I do agree that the optional stuff had no business being absent from Shadow Dragon but I am not arguing that it's a perfect game, in fact it's very far from it. But I do like the style the game goes for and I think it gives us enough in a lot of areas, especially Marth's characterization. So if they tried this style again and added a little bit of fluff for characters like Vyland that get no lines would you be ok with that? or do you think FE should stray away from stories like this from now on?

Also for Sedgar and Wolf their growth rates can be attributed to a balancing oversight and their growths combined with the re class system was not intentionally designed to give them game breaking growth rates as a general and hero. What I mean is that in FE1 the Horseman class wasn't a promoted class at all, it was it's own class entirely that just capped at 20 not connected to Hunter at all and since Wolf and Sedgar had low bases and their class became a promotion in the remake they were given those growth rates to compensate. And while those rates are pretty high Horsemen have low bases to begin with along with lower growths, so the second you put those rates in a class with higher in those areas it gets pretty crazy. Definitely an oversight.

@Ertrick36

1. Fair point, Gharnef was interesting enough for me at first glance, but I can see why many wouldn't think so. My only response to this is that the story wasn't styled in a way that wanted to explore said character, or most characters in fact. In a response to someone else I said that SD wasn't a character driven story, and that it is a war story and so I attribute the hints to liberties the script writer took. Now I'm not going to say the script writer was a word smith but the dialogue was really good in my opinion, and who knows maybe that's just the localization team taking liberties as well, your right when you say that it shouldn't be relied on but I would argue that the story didn't warrant any of that in the first place, so I would say that it's nice that we got what we did and I hope future games can take this style and improve upon it.

2. Given that SD is a war story and doesn't focus on the characters that much I think not needing the characters is an advantage the game has, for me it's refreshing that even characters that are renowned and "important" to the world can die, and it speaks to me the scale of the conflict. Also I appreciate the agreement on gameplay and story segregation being more minimal in this game, I think SD does that aspect pretty well for the most part. And for your last point while i agree that Minerva and Caeda's absents were not enough for the game as a whole I think it asks a question for the series, and I think it's something that future games should always explore, It's funny because even games with retreating characters have something similar to this happen sometimes, like in POR when Rolf and Ike acknowledge that Boyd is dead for a line or two. What I'm saying is that it's a step in the right direction, and I would like to see IS dive into that even more and keeping everyone killable while making the story acknowledge that, would you agree?

3. While I do agree that you can lose identity SD design or rather FE1's design was meant to be played in a semi-iron man approach and they didn't take in mind the perfectionist/full recruitment approach that the majority of the fan base focus on, to which the game as an advantage over most FE games in terms of Iron man runs and the like. But when I made that comparison I didn't mean to say SD does it better than fates but for the style it went for it adds a lot more replay-ability. I'd say Conquest had the best unit balance out of any FE game and while that game has and will always have the most optimal units and the bad units it has the most usable units for sure and it really caters to the perfectionist route that the majority plays, it adds replay-ability because each unit fulfills a different niche and you can sandbox units, classes, children very well in that game. My point was SD growth rates had an advantage in that over newer games because individual units stats are more varied for even more replay-ability and for the style of the game I think it fits very well and I wouldn't mind rates like that coming back for a game or two.

4. I don't like taking a liability either but I like Marth leading the charge and seizing throne after throne while soldiers loyal to his cause defend him, other than that I agree.

As for your final points again I'm not saying that SD has superior gameplay than fates, I simply listed a few advantages that SD has that make it stand alone compared to other games. Also I'm not going to give you a hard time about SD difficulty because there are a lot of different ones and they do have more variance rather than just stats, the difficulties affect enemy positioning, the amount of waves of reinforcements that come, the triggers for said reinforcements, and the weapons. For example the higher the difficulty you choose the earlier you are gonna start seeing brave weapons, and in the higher difficulties you will start seeing forged javelins and the like in the mid game. SD does a lot more than just increase stats and the fact that it has 6 different difficulties allows for even more variability and I'd call that an advantage, but it isn't without its hiccups though, like how on H4 and H5 the first few bosses are way to strong especially Hyman with 14 SPD, 40 HP, and a hand axe which causes an annoying amount of tedium to beat unless you get lucky with a crit. I do believe those areas of over stat inflation sully SD's name, so to say that all they offer is stat inflation is a misconception.

And while I can agree that SD doesn't nail the appeal I explained I think it offers something unique to those dig into it. I'll have you know that I don't find my self elevated because of my love for this game, and I'm not saying that it's better and that people aren't giving it the proper chance, What I'm saying is that there are some things it does well and what it has could be something great if the formula is improved upon and I want to see if people would be OK with the style SD brings to the table if it upgraded it's features, think on how Fates upgraded and balanced a lot of the feature Awakening had, something like that except also with the narrative I spoke of. Again I'm sorry if I came off that way but I am not attempting to "culture" people in my ways or anything, I didn't come here to argue why SD is the best or belittle the majorities favorite games, just to offer food for thought and to discuss what we think FE story telling should be like in the future.

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@JimmyBeansThat is a complete utter bullshit of a Myth that people made up since nobody ever really played Kaga's era games with any sort of knowledge behind it

GBA era was the one that designed Lords as weak. Roy is intended. Eliwood is OH SO CLEARLY UNINTENDED IT HURTS. Dudes fucking hyped as the most powerful human being to ever ride in the previous game. Lyn is incidental. Hector being weaker than expected is more the flaw to Lord promotion system. Eliwood, Lyn, Roy, Eirika, and Hector all make the bottom half of weakest lord until FE11 brutal Nerf on Marth. Marth's history of nerfing is more brutal than Wendell, and Wendell is the one who is nerfed in every consecutive appearance

Kaga makes Marth originally as a really strong character with extreme priviledge to every OP equipment ever to the point that Kaga realized his mistake and backpedaled with FE3 Marth not getting Falchion until the VERY end of the game. A lot of FE3 gameplay changes is built around Kaga realizing how much he made Marth too strong in 1.  He had pound for pound the best overall growth in the game besides Pegasus Knights and Chiki making his lack of promotion barely a disadvantage and more of an attempt to make him not hilariously batshit.

I don't think its hard to see that FE3 Marth is deliberately made strong - he have stronger starting stats as a whole than most of your starting cast, and fairly high growth. This time around the intent with Marth is.... a Jeigan. He's very strong early, drop off mid, and picks back up later on, and its used to reflect Marth's struggle during Anri's Way and resolution by the end of it

 

Kaga's Lords range from Good(FE3 Marth) to Batshit broken wtf were they thinking(Marth, Sigurd, Seliph) with Leif standing out as the only Lord that is Great.

 

I understand theres preference to one side of the spectrum, i personally prefer it if the Lord is decently strong myself, since Leif is my favorite lord from gameplay perspective. He have a very strong niche and useful in all stages of the game. The intent with how he is used is made very clear on hindsight, and the result is there. in the end its up to the player. Weak Lord can feel insulting and frustating. Strong Lord can make other unit seems irrelevant. Striking a balance can be preferable, but some people likes it more one side or another. Its not a clear science.

Chrom would have been on the level of Leif if Awakening isnt what it is fwiw. The idea of giving the Lord a noticable headtstart and a transition in usefulness with Dragon slaying Falchion niche is brilliant. The flaw is Awakening translated Headstart into hilariously broken, making Chrom almost as broken as Robin with his lack of ranged attack as his only thing stopping him from being as broken as Robin in Lunatic.

 

For Marth, a weak commander story simply doesn't work. FE1 story is built around a dominant sweep throughout the continent under the command of Marth, and FE3 is a high octane extreme pace game where promoted enemies shows up in chapter 2, and your character promote in chapter 3. The insane pace of FE3 is so much that FE12 decided to delay the game start up with 8 chapter of prologue.

Edited by JSND Alter Dragon Boner
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9 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Nergal is Gharnef reborn. Elibe draws its inspiration from Archanea. FE7 does not do it as heavily as FE6, but it has some some, like Isadora and Harken a reborn Midia and Astram. Athos and Nergal are Gotoh and Gharnef, and Athos fetching Aureola to kill Nergal mirrors Gotoh forging Starlight to penetrate Imhullu.

And that's the great weakness of Archenea. Unless you're Japanese then its incredibly likely you experienced Elibe long before Shadow Dragon but the devs didn't do a single thing to take this into account. As a result all Shadow Dragon offers is bare bones versions of things Elibe already did better.

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5 hours ago, JimmyBeans said:

 Your counter is very true I will concede that, but don't you agree that if Marth could one round Medeus every play through that the decision to choose who to face him would be less dynamic? If Marth wasn't getting a lot of kills he might find himself too weak to face Medeus, to which an untrained Marth would have to pass the torch to someone else (This is ignoring that fact that on harder difficulties capped Marth still gets steamrolled by Medeus regardless which penalizes it a bit).

And barring Wrath + Resolve (which blind players won't be sure to know about as a great combo, nor even all non-blind will do it), Ike can't do that with Ashnard either. And it is wholly possible to get an Ike so screwed you need Ena (who is pretty weak) or Giffca/Tibarn/Naesala. What ends up happening is a slow heal-and-hit slugfest, which is precisely what unfolds with anyone against SD Medeus.

RD is even worse for Ike one-rounding, even if he deals more certain damage to the final boss. The final boss's barriers will be a team effort if you have a shred of sanity. And once they're finally down, you're looking at a boss who Ike deals 20x2x2 (via a Heron refreshing) at most, only 80 out of 120, and Ike can't crit or Aether or trigger any other skill on them. They also regenerate 40 HP a turn, will never attack Ike directly so he can't counter, and has 144 Avoid, while Ike is looking at on average a 68 Displayed Hit (79.84 True) chance with neutral Biorhythm and no Hit-boosting support. Even with Easy Mode, Ike falls 20 short of an OTKO. And the third-to-last boss is also impossible for Ike to ORKO, and requires you have the foresight to bless a Wyrmslayer if you want him to solo it at all (since Ragnell is only hitting for 5x2x2 if I did the math right sans a Support, which even with an enemy phase counterattack still fails to break the 30 HP regen).

As a fun fact, Ike's stats are calibrated such that he is guaranteed to deal at least 1 damage to the final boss even with no growths, statboosters, or Support. I checked. May also explain why the final boss has relatively lousy Def, the mandatory Ike kill was weighing it down.

 

 

I haven't played ye olde FE1, or FE12 yet, but so far, the best Marth for me is FE3 Book 2. The story where they gave him a second facial expression (and I think he is genuinely good there).

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48 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And barring Wrath + Resolve (which blind players won't be sure to know about as a great combo, nor even all non-blind will do it), Ike can't do that with Ashnard either. And it is wholly possible to get an Ike so screwed you need Ena (who is pretty weak) or Giffca/Tibarn/Naesala. What ends up happening is a slow heal-and-hit slugfest, which is precisely what unfolds with anyone against SD Medeus.

RD is even worse for Ike one-rounding, even if he deals more certain damage to the final boss. The final boss's barriers will be a team effort if you have a shred of sanity. And once they're finally down, you're looking at a boss who Ike deals 20x2x2 (via a Heron refreshing) at most, only 80 out of 120, and Ike can't crit or Aether or trigger any other skill on them. They also regenerate 40 HP a turn, will never attack Ike directly so he can't counter, and has 144 Avoid, while Ike is looking at on average a 68 Displayed Hit (79.84 True) chance with neutral Biorhythm and no Hit-boosting support. Even with Easy Mode, Ike falls 20 short of an OTKO. And the third-to-last boss is also impossible for Ike to ORKO, and requires you have the foresight to bless a Wyrmslayer if you want him to solo it at all (since Ragnell is only hitting for 5x2x2 if I did the math right sans a Support, which even with an enemy phase counterattack still fails to break the 30 HP regen).

As a fun fact, Ike's stats are calibrated such that he is guaranteed to deal at least 1 damage to the final boss even with no growths, statboosters, or Support. I checked. May also explain why the final boss has relatively lousy Def, the mandatory Ike kill was weighing it down.

 

 

I haven't played ye olde FE1, or FE12 yet, but so far, the best Marth for me is FE3 Book 2. The story where they gave him a second facial expression (and I think he is genuinely good there).

On a rather amusing note, Medeus, both version is actually notorious for being speed killed. This is because of the insane offense associated with DSFE making it more dire(more relevant on FE12, since i know you played FE3 B2 so you know about the dragon spam that is the final map no?), and partly because of the 0 luck on enemy making wild crit extremely common, and intended crit really easy to plan, especially with map save

 

A very popular alternative method for Medeus kill in both version is to abuse the insane amount of statsbooster you can gather in DSFE through Silver Card and the wtf money Shadow Dragon throws at you to drop a lot of dust on a magical character with max rank on Tome, and then forge a ridiculous Thoron. 

On New Mystery you get a limited amount of dust, since they caps the statsbooster you can buy at 3, but you can carefully manage it with some planning

 

IIn fact the go-to strats for 0% growth FE12 Medeus kill is doing this with Katarina

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2 minutes ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

On a rather amusing note, Medeus, both version is actually notorious for being speed killed. This is because of the insane offense associated with DSFE making it more dire(more relevant on FE12, since i know you played FE3 B2 so you know about the dragon spam that is the final map no?), and partly because of the 0 luck on enemy making wild crit extremely common, and intended crit really easy to plan, especially with map save

 

A very popular alternative method for Medeus kill in both version is to abuse the insane amount of statsbooster you can gather in DSFE through Silver Card and the wtf money Shadow Dragon throws at you to drop a lot of dust on a magical character with max rank on Tome, and then forge a ridiculous Thoron. 

On New Mystery you get a limited amount of dust, since they caps the statsbooster you can buy at 3, but you can carefully manage it with some planning

 

IIn fact the go-to strats for 0% growth FE12 Medeus kill is doing this with Katarina

If we assume Marth for an "ordinary" player in FE3 is at 15 Str, we're looking at 45 Atk against Medeus in both Books (all Medeus got from going Super Shadow Dragon 4 was +10 Str- a little sad). Factor in Atk halving, and he is dealing 7x2 (since Medeus has 0 AS, this is guaranteed). Medeus has 52 HP, so if assume a 15 Skl Marth without Caeda's Crit boost, he has a 15% chance of making either hit a crit, overall not bad with two crits he is dead in 2 rounds. If Marth capped Str (easy between Energy Rings and the Starsphere), then he is hitting for 10 a pop, and add Caeda for a 25% Crit rate, enough that there is a chance that Marth can feasibly ORKO Medeus.

I do in a way like that if you don't have any Again left (you're pretty guaranteed to obtain the thing- Gotoh be blessed for putting it where he did, and that Sword Killer was probably there too because Gotoh knew of Hardin's truly heroically strong Heroes) or use savestates, it becomes hard to keep everyone alive during the B2 Medeus fight if you get unlucky with Earth Dragon spawns. Although if you grabbed Ohm in the prior fight with its generous five uses, it in a way invalidates those deaths.

 

For SD Medeus on my one H5 run, I just warpskipped in someone to kill his bodyguard, and then wrapped in a suicidal Tiki, and Aum'ed her, and then warped her again for the win. I might have fed her some Energy Drops or Skill Books, but I don't think they were needed, and really, Medeus should not die to the untrained toddler of his draconic archnemesis. Thoron does sound quicker though (and needs less Warp), if requiring more investment.

As for NM Medeus I'm aware they added a kaleidoscope of dragons to the final fight. They also got rid of that Tiki weakness. From what I've seen, Medeus is actually at the peak of his gameplay power in NM, despite lacking the old Atk halving trick of FE3.

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41 minutes ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

A very popular alternative method for Medeus kill in both version is to abuse the insane amount of statsbooster you can gather in DSFE through Silver Card and the wtf money Shadow Dragon throws at you to drop a lot of dust on a magical character with max rank on Tome, and then forge a ridiculous Thoron. 

On New Mystery you get a limited amount of dust, since they caps the statsbooster you can buy at 3, but you can carefully manage it with some planning

...Doesn't SD limit the amount of stat boosters you can buy too?

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7 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

And that's the great weakness of Archenea. Unless you're Japanese then its incredibly likely you experienced Elibe long before Shadow Dragon but the devs didn't do a single thing to take this into account. As a result all Shadow Dragon offers is bare bones versions of things Elibe already did better.

Arguable.

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5 minutes ago, JimmyBeans said:

Arguable.

How?

I like SD's style, but that's because I don't need every single thing spelled out for me to enjoy a story - if anything, I prefer having a few things left to my imagination.  I think I'm a minority, though.

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Personally when it comes to the whole “less is more” argument when it comes to story telling, I think it really depends. As far as world building is concerned less is definitely more. A lot of the time the player doesn’t necessarily need that much backstory or lore regarding a certain place unless it is absolutely necessary for the story. Like for example manakete degeneration is an important factor of the game’s plot so the player would need to know this however a lot of stuff regarding the individual countries like certain cultural values and such can be leftout or shown in very subtle ways(have only played like 10 chapters of SD). In terms of character writing, however, you definitely want to the give them as much character interaction and such as possible so the player is given more reasons to truly care about the characters cause if you don’t care what reason do we have to follow their story. Just my two cents

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3 hours ago, eclipse said:

How?

I like SD's style, but that's because I don't need every single thing spelled out for me to enjoy a story - if anything, I prefer having a few things left to my imagination.  I think I'm a minority, though.

Bold: I already gave him examples but he hasn't responded to them yet and repeated what I argued against him again so I didn't want to copy paste, still what I did was lazy. My bad.

Underlined: I completely agree, yet recently I have seen a lot more fans of SD than I thought possible, or at least not as much people hate it as I initially thought, more like people just tolerate it.

2 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Personally when it comes to the whole “less is more” argument when it comes to story telling, I think it really depends. As far as world building is concerned less is definitely more. A lot of the time the player doesn’t necessarily need that much backstory or lore regarding a certain place unless it is absolutely necessary for the story. Like for example manakete degeneration is an important factor of the game’s plot so the player would need to know this however a lot of stuff regarding the individual countries like certain cultural values and such can be leftout or shown in very subtle ways(have only played like 10 chapters of SD). In terms of character writing, however, you definitely want to the give them as much character interaction and such as possible so the player is given more reasons to truly care about the characters cause if you don’t care what reason do we have to follow their story. Just my two cents

I agree with the majority of this, and it's also why I used Dark Souls as an example of story telling done right earlier. I wouldn't mind more world building if they found creative ways to tell us rather than just telling us.

On the other hand I will admit I have found certain random facts pretty interesting for countries in FE games, like how Grust arose from barbarian tribes or something of the like which the game spends literally 2 lines on before the Camus chapter. It wasn't long or disruptive of the flow, and it really held no importance but the 2 seconds of reading it provided gave a tiny bit of life into Grust, especially right before we fight Camus and the last Grust battalion you face in the game rather than being an evil nation that's known for it's cavalry that Camus is a part of for some reason. In short in 2 lines it tells you who you are fighting, a proud nation with a proud history. This is not the only example and I think other games in the series have done it well but I wouldn't mind stuff like this in the future.

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2 minutes ago, JimmyBeans said:

On the other hand I will admit I have found certain random facts pretty interesting for countries in FE games, like how Grust arose from barbarian tribes or something of the like which the game spends literally 2 lines on before the Camus chapter. It wasn't long or disruptive of the flow, and it really held no importance but the 2 seconds of reading it provided gave a tiny bit of life into Grust, especially right before we fight Camus and the last Grust battalion you face in the game rather than being an evil nation that's known for it's cavalry that Camus is a part of for some reason. In short in 2 lines it tells you who you are fighting, a proud nation with a proud history. This is not the only example and I think other games in the series have done it well but I wouldn't mind stuff like this in the future.

We also learn the Sable order was ancient and Grust has always a comparatively less hostile relationship with the Manaketes, which may explain why they and Dolhr work so well together.

I really liked the narration and bits in Shadow Dragon that were added myself. I also understand the game was made on a lower budget due to poor overseas sales of the very expensive Tellius games.

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