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If Conquest's Gameplay Is 'Among the Best in the Series', What Are the Other 'Best Gameplay' Titles?


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I have finished Conquest multiple times and I replay it every now and then because I really enjoy its challenging gameplay. I have also tried other Fire Emblem titles (some for more chapters than others), but none have hooked me in the same way yet.

So, if Conquest's gameplay is often highly praised, what are the other FE titles (and difficulties) with the best gameplay? For I might have been looking in all the wrong places.

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It is hard for me to judge purely off of game play because story is what really hooks me, so I was never a huge fan of Fates. However, my personal favorites (with both great story and gameplay) are Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

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As one who also enjoyed Conquest gameplay the most out of the Series, i would recommend Thracia 776 and the Tellius games (Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, even if PoR is pretty easy). I would absolutely not recommend the GBA and the DS games

Edited by Shrimperor
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Hard for me to say, since the games are fundamentally different. But in general, if you want good gameplay, I would avoid the Jugdral saga (Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776) like the plague.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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I feel like the trend of praising Conquest's gameplay is people trying hard to find one good thing about it and Fates as a whole that doesn't sound subjective or tiredly responding with "well it didn't bother me" which is a non-argument. But yeah the gameplay mechanics can be pretty well thought out at times. Pair Up is still broken, but at least enemies will use attack formation against you which enhances the viability of tank characters like Corrin and Effie. I believe it's also the only version of Fates where standard enemies are given skills on higher difficulties which calls for new strategies. The class balance is not terrible (which matters if your game has reclassing). Chapter 10 is coveted as one of the best Defend maps in the series, but there's plenty of stinkers too like ninja hallways, the kitsune chapter, and that goddamned wind tribe map where some turns have no space where you can avoid getting blown in some direction which either leads to a reset or wastes you several turns trying to regroup before it happens again. The dragon vein in that chapter should halt the wind, not speed it up. Those maps are what I remember most in terms of gameplay and artificial difficulty. To this day I have not finished a replay of Conquest.

My answer for best gameplay is definitely Radiant Dawn. It's got as much mechanical depth as modern entries in the series or SNES era. The maps are varied but never feel too gimmicky. The animations off setting moves the game at a brisk pace while still communicating who is earning crits or proccing skills allowing you to finish this very long game in a reasonable time. I like how weapon weight works in Tellius, I like the tweaks to Laguz units, even if most of the cats are terrible. I like ledges. I like the Skill Cap system. Canto is still busted, but horse units fall off hard in the late game with their low stat caps leaving only Jill and Haar as consistently overpowered characters. This is also one of very few Fire Emblem games that promotes low turn counts by awarding bonus experience.

The only things I dislike in Radiant Dawn are the hidden items being so RNG dependent to find. Why make every map a desert map? Sothe can't be everywhere at once. And also the unit balance can be pretty terrible with several early game units failing to scale into mid game. Furthermore several of the forced story characters like Sothe, Micaiah, and Sanaki struggling to find a niche when your team is loaded with Laguz royals and other incredible units. Also dedicated healers are bad in a game with 8 use vulneraries, massive inventory space, and all magic classes gaining staff usage eventually as the game goes on.

Backup answer for best gameplay? Hmm...Echoes? It just gets carried hard by the Turnwheel, really. All the bullshit level and enemy design quickly fades away with such a mechanic.

Edited by Glennstavos
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Let me do a laundry list of everything I've played:

  • Mystery- Simple, but its balanced. But balance is only one factor of gameplay goodness.
  • Genealogy- The maps are too divisive for this to be generally considered among the best.
  • Thracia- It really wants to be among the best. It's just a lot of rough edges from being the first take on a whole load of ideas turn off a lot of people.
  • Binding- I can't see it. Not to call it the worst in gameplay, but to call it among the best is difficult.
  • Blazing- I can see it being considered among the best. Balanced, more map variety than FE6, but it's easy, its biggest issue.
  • SS- I can see it more than Binding, but less than Blazing. Ephraim Route >>> Eirika's for gameplay.
  • PoR- I can see it, being among the best. Same as Blazing, it suffers from being easy, but it has balance.
  • RD- Jagged like Genealogy, less divisively deviant than Genealogy overall, but its Part structure and individual character balance are real issues. It like PoR does have the nuances of the Jugdral games which Awakening brought back again- Skills I mean primarily.
  • SD- Generally considered a step back, but some do love its 5* difficulty. Some ironman/draft fun if you use the weaker units who most brush off as being worthless.
  • New Mystery- Its Maniac and Lunatic(+) are generally considered some of the better balanced highest difficulties. It remains something of a challenge even on Hard. Lots of imbalance due to the severely bloated roster, but the same ironman/draft fun as SD "fun" might apply here.
  • Awakening- Well it offers a lot of choices as to how you want to play, and it has nuances, but poor map design, inflated stats, and a poorly executed Lunatic difficulty are faults with this game.
  • FB- Not among the best, but I enjoy it more than others I think.
  • FR- Certainly not among the best, unless maybe you're playing on Normal and you can actually use everyone you want without so much pains of training them.
  • SoV- Map design and dungeon fighting are the two things holding this back.
  • 3H- TBD.
  • FEW- Sounds like it is one of the best.
  • TRS- I wish I could play it.
  • BS- I really want to try this black sheep when Aethin finishes his translation patch.
  • VS- Darned SRPG Maker is Hell for translation efforts!😤
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29 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

The class balance is not terrible (which matters if your game has reclassing). 

Bullshit. Foot axes suck as much as ever. Maybe even more so.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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1 hour ago, Glennstavos said:

The maps are varied but never feel too gimmicky.

If Geoffrey's Charge isn't the very definition of gimicky, idk what is.

Actually, I'd argue RD has plenty of gimmicky chapters, such as One Survives (gimick being protect micaiah while demolishing everything with the BK), the entirety of Part 2 except Elincia's gambit (which is a trivial chapter that can easily be two turned with Elincia and Haar, anyway), From Pain, Awakening (kill XX enemies while stuff that is supposed to make you immersed on the story happen), and the tower chapters (kill the auras before being able to attack the boss, BK vs Ike, etc).

I feel like RD made a hard effort to integrate gameplay and story as far as possible, and while I can see why lots of people enjoy it, to me it led to some issues that I'd describe as gimmicky, and IMO sort of bring the gameplay down. For exemple, I feel like the high ammount of allied enemies on so many chapters, which I've seen many people describe as "making the game feel like a real war" is somewhat of a gimmick.

Edited by Nobody
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Hey, grognard answer incoming. For gameplay, FE4 and FE5 are both worth playing - though FE4 starts weak, takes around until Chapter 3 to hit its stride. If you're in Chapter 3 and you just aren't feeling it, ditch it. 5 hates you, the player, but it just has that feeling of truly asymmetrical warfare that no other FE's really managed to nail. Like 14, it has plenty of chapter gimmicks and unique stage conditions. And hey, an excellent fan localisation was released like a month ago.

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I definitely feel Fire Emblem difficulty is based around the individual's play-style. One topic I like to point to in particular with this topic is any game with encounter battles and grinding. On one hand, a player with incredible patience with grinding will snap the game's difficulty in half. On the other, a player who vows to never grind might find that later chapters are balanced with  skirmish exp in mind (this is an opinion I have on Awakening because wow the difficulty spikes between story arcs are real), unless you're specifically using a small team which naturally helps the party keep pace. Ultimately what makes Fire Emblem one of the most repayable RPG series of all time is the simple fact that it can be played in so many different ways, even if those variations make the games harder. I personally find myself playing often with a "no paralouge characters" rule, which at minimum forces me utilize a more specialized army in terms of class spread, and at maximum takes away the absolutely dominating power of child units from running away with the game (minus Lucina of course), or removes certain character classes from the game entirely (Canas anyone?).

Edited by PeaceRibbon
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1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Bullshit. Foot axes suck as much as ever. Maybe even more so.

I thought Charlotte was decent? Also I seen people meme with Gazzak and an 80% crit rate. Is the problem class balance or unit balance? 

22 minutes ago, Nobody said:

If Geoffrey's Charge isn't the very definition of gimicky, idk what is

Meh, just unequip weapons and try to get everybody to hold a path open for Geoffrey. Even on the hardest difficulty nobody can do more than a couple points of damage to your weakest guys until you get to the gate. If you can get Geoffrey from point A to point B with 10 or less kills you'll maximize the bonus experience for being a pacifist. A "don't kill enemies" map will probably fail in every fire emblem, but the ability to disarm yourself and order green units around makes Radiant Dawn a uniquely qualified game for this idea. But sure, we can count that as one gimmicky map. Out of 42. My memory of Conquest was far more spotty and I could recall three immediately problematic maps out of 26 before we start picking on paralogues, the majority of which I have almost no basis in personally so I'll leave it to others to judge Conquest's map design more concisely.

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Just now, Glennstavos said:

I thought Charlotte was decent? Also I seen people meme with Gazzak and an 80% crit rate. Is the problem class balance or unit balance? 

You thought wrong. She comes underleveled in a game with no grinding. That's a death sentence for her viability. Anyway, I'd say the problem is both - Arthur and Charlotte suck as bad as Smash 64 Link's recovery, and fighters offer jack shit that's worth noting.

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2 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Meh, just unequip weapons and try to get everybody to hold a path open for Geoffrey. Even on the hardest difficulty nobody can do more than a couple points of damage to your weakest guys until you get to the gate. If you can get Geoffrey from point A to point B with 10 or less kills you'll maximize the bonus experience for being a pacifist.

That's exactly my point, it's gimmicky because it provides no challenge, it just tries to be different for the sake of it. If a map tries to do something different and that different thing makes you have to think to solve it, then then I wouldn't call it gimmicky. Which is why maps such as Geoffrey's Charge, the rest of part 2, From Pain, Awakening and One Survives bother me so much. The stuff that make them different don't really matter much, nor do they bring in challenge, but they're there because of the focus RD has on merging gameplay and story, which, again, to me is pretty gimmicky.

All I'm saying has absolutely nothing to do with Conquest, even if the entirety of the 27 chapters of Conquest were pure gimmicky, it doesn't really affect what I'm saying.

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I'd hardly call myself an authority, but if you can get him into Swordmaster or Sniper, the Crit bonus combined with Gamble and his Personal Skill can be pretty potent. Of course, I'm just a filthy casual who uses characters because I like their personality, so feel free to disregard me.

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58 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

If you're in Chapter 3 and you just aren't feeling it, ditch it. 5 hates you, the player, but it just has that feeling of truly asymmetrical warfare that no other FE's really managed to nail. Like 14, it has plenty of chapter gimmicks and unique stage conditions. And hey, an excellent fan localisation was released like a month ago.

In a nutshell, not totally accurate, but it'll do for brevity of words: Conquest = Thracia + Stats + Quality of Life.

And minus Fatigue, and the ballistae which number just one too many >_>.

Substitute some Status Staff and Dark Magic spam for Shuriken, Savage Blow, and in the CQ finale, Inevitable End. Inevitable End I've realized is in a way a callback to the 3-5 endgames. All three of them have some affection for Status Staffs and or siege tomes.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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3 hours ago, KnightOfNohr said:

I'd hardly call myself an authority, but if you can get him into Swordmaster or Sniper, the Crit bonus combined with Gamble and his Personal Skill can be pretty potent. Of course, I'm just a filthy casual who uses characters because I like their personality, so feel free to disregard me.

I assume that by "him" you mean Arthur. The issue is, critical hits generally favour the enemy more than the player because of the way the game's designed - I'm just not sold on the return on investment being enough to override the fact that you're constantly gambling every time Arthur sees combat. Especially since those classes either have to come from Mozu, who requires a lot of investment herself for a payoff that I'm convinced is anything but worth it, or force you to play as a girl, which I am not okay with when it comes to these games, for the most part.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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57 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

I thought Charlotte was decent?

Charlotte will end up with very high damage output, but her durability is poor even by Fighter/Berserker standards, with her low defenses rendering her very high HP practically moot.  Her hit rates may also be considered questionable depending on who you ask.

She's probably worse in Conquest than in Revelation, though at the very least you could probably use her as a stat backpack for Xander until you get Siegbert, if you plan to do so.  If you nevertheless insist on using her, Hero might be the more practical (if boring) option.

Whatever happens, I love my Berserker waifu with big Critical Hit rates.

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Before Conquest, I considered Radiant Dawn to have the best gameplay in the series. Blazing Blade would be right behind that, so those would be my top 3. Genealogy, Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, Awakening, Birthright, and Revelation would be next in no particular order.

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answers to the title

1) spoiler alert: it isn't

2) probably PoR and RD, and maybe New Mystery

Edited by Yexin
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12 hours ago, starburst said:

if Conquest's gameplay is often highly praised, what are the other FE titles (and difficulties) with the best gameplay? For I might have been looking in all the wrong places.

from what i've played before:

- Mistery of the Emblem » reworked gameplay mechanics from FE1, the 1st Book has a good difficulty progress. the 2nd Book has more difficulty spikes in late game chapters.

- Genealogy of the Holy War » has huge maps(basicly 1 map is about 3 "traditional" chapters) and requires good management of battle formations. has some difficulty spikes from early chapters to late game. skills and inheritance was also introduced here for the first time.

- Thracia 776 » requires micro-management of items and units, and it makes full use of its gameplay features. a really good strategic game overall, especially if you like puzzles. probably one of the best in the franchise, and it's basicly an improved version of Mystery of the Emblem gameplay-wise.

- Awakening » has a good difficulty scaling, post-game chapters can be quite challenging too.

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3 hours ago, Yexin said:

answers to the title

1) spoiler alert: it isn't

2) probably PoR and RD, and maybe New Mystery

Fates in general has the best gameplay SYSTEM of the series, in my opinion. I’m not sure if any of them have the best GAMEPLAY. Birthright’s map design is...nothing special, really. Revelation has a few good chapters, but most are gimmicky and kind of frustrating. Conquest’s levels fluctuate between “great” and “AAHHHHGGG!!!”

From what I’ve seen, I’d say Path of Radience is the best. Good basic system, largely good level design, and very good character balance. Maybe it’s too easy, but for someone like me, that’s just what the doctor ordered.

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22 minutes ago, KnightOfNohr said:

From what I’ve seen, I’d say Path of Radience is the best. Good basic system, largely good level design, and very good character balance. Maybe it’s too easy, but for someone like me, that’s just what the doctor ordered.

I'd mostly agree with the character balance being good if not for Canto on mounted units being OP.  I'm also pretty sure Rolf and Sothe are just wastes of deployment slots.

Of the Fire Emblem games I've played, I'd probably rank Thracia 776, Path of Radiance, and Blazing Blade as having the best gameplay in that order.

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Awakening: It allows so many options and freedom of choice for the player, allowing for multiple playthroughs without being the same.

Genealogy of the Holy War: for those who like more of a challenge with some flexibility still intact, this is also a decent choice, of course, you might not want to bother considering balance on this one or you'll be disappointed.

Also, I'm curious why people rate Thracia 776 so high, the battles are always the same thing, attack, enemy attack, critical hit, in that order, it's never different. Sure. I guess the fatigue system and capture system are neat, but there isn't much in terms of the player having total control. Although I will admit, it's cool to see the CPU go shopping for weapons.

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