Alastor plays and ranks the whole series! Mission Complete! ...For now.

[Alastor15243]

23 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

That's okay. What is the game, btw?

Skyward Sword's Switch remake. Never played the original. It's decent, definitely scratching the Zelda itch the extremely unconventional BotW failed to scratch, but the motion controls are... weird.

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses Day 6: And we're back!

Ahhhh, much better! Yeah, I'm in a way better position to be doing this stuff now. So, after a nice little week off, time to get back to playing Three Houses!

...But, first, obviously, I've had thoughts, both stuff I've thought about over the break and stuff I've been meaning to get to. Best to get those out of the way.

First off, I've decided that what I really want to do after this marathon is make my own Fire Emblem game in SRPG Studio. Early on in the marathon (peaking around FE6 I'd say), seeing what the old games did wrong and also what they did right gave me a ton of ideas for how to make my ideal version of a game at that tech level and style. I've been dithering back and forth about it for ages since then, but now I've decided I really do want to actually make it. Hopefully it'll be good!

Also, so, yeah, a lot has been made, mostly by me, about how much of a disconnect there is between the final ranking list and my actual personal feelings on each game. But I don't think I've ever actually made it explicitly clear what my personal feelings are.

Well, to be completely bluntly honest, I have almost no desire to ever play roughly half of the games in the series ever again. That might just be the two-year-long burnout talking, given that I've barely touched even the games I enjoy outside of the playlog, but here's my raw, emotional response to the prospect of playing any of these games again for fun:

Dark Dragon: Fuck off.

Gaiden: Used to be yes, but nearly two years of playing better games have gradually turned that into an emphatic no.

Mystery of the Emblem: The DS games exist and by doing so basically strip replaying this of any fun or merit for me.

Genealogy of the Holy War: Maybe, maybe one day, but it would only be for the story. Listening to FE4's most emotional music on Youtube reminded me exactly why I ranked FE4's story so highly despite all the dumb stuff in it and how comparatively minimalistic it is compared to FE7 and FE9. It just goes places that no other game in the series dared to go with its emotional gut-punches. The remake, if it doesn't fuck it up with stupid time rewinding nonsense, is going to make me cry like a fucking baby. But the gameplay itself just holds no appeal for me, and I'm frankly amazed it ever did.

Thracia: I might revisit this one when and if the general pall of burnout fades. For all it does wrong, if there were a “dumb fun” category on this list, Thracia would top it the fuck off with flying colors. Name one other game in this franchise that gives you more toys than Thracia does. Self-teleporting mages, fancy and powerful weapons and staves in ludicrously plentiful supply if you know how to steal them, and more personal weapons than multiple Fire Emblem games combined. There's a lot of bullshit you have to put up with to get to that stage, but hooooooly shit does part of me want to get to that stage again.

Binding Blade: A definite revisit when and if the burnout fades. One of the few games in the series that actually makes my mind come alive in the category of raw strategy and gameplay, and its extremely liberal attitude towards what you should be allowed to buy at shops gives it a pretty high “dumb fun” factor too. A little while after beating it, I did a reverse recruitment run that kind of lost steam, but hopefully I'll one day have the emotional energy to play it again, because in theory it sounds really fun.

Blazing Blade: I'm replaying it right now, actually, if only on and off. I've got a way to play it handheld and I'm using the mandatory normal mode first attempt to justify a run using Lyndis's Legion. Dorcas is turning out surprisingly good, and Sain is winding up shockingly terrible. But anyway, it's got one of my favorite stories in the franchise, and I have a ton of nostalgia for it.

Sacred Stones: Aside from the awesome randomizer hack? ...Actually, the prospect of playing it again isn't too unbearable to me. The bad parts of its gameplay aren't exactly torturous to get through, it's just not very stimulating, which isn't always a bad thing depending on the mood I'm in. Hence why I'm managing to get myself through an Eliwood Normal run of Blazing Blade (though admittedly the mandatory use of some terrible units is giving me an interesting challenge in some places). But is there anything in the game that makes me actively want to replay it again? No. No, not really.

Path of Radiance: Like with Genealogy, it would only be for the story. The gameplay just does not appeal to me at all anymore.

Radiant Dawn: Maaaaaybe. Part of me is still morbidly curious about Hard mode.

Shadow Dragon: I replayed this game to completion immediately after finishing the playlog of it. In fact I played it obsessively until I reached the point of burnout with it as well. So while the answer now is “probably someday” like with a bunch of others, I have to point out that I've replayed this game since playlogging it more than any other game in the franchise.

New Mystery: Maybe when the burnout's passed. Most of my hatred for aspects of this game is on principle and due to the subjective experience of just barely being able to ironman it, painfully. On replay most of its bad parts would probably be no more frustrating than stuff in Binding Blade.

Awakening: While it doesn't have much appeal, it would be even more painless than FE7 and FE8, so... a really, really weak “no”.

Birthright: Definitely one day, but not right now. I still think it's pretty great ironman junk food, but the thought of picking it up again now just does nothing for me emotionally.

Conquest: As much as I still adore this game, I don't know when I'll regain the emotional energy to attempt this thing again. This project has just sapped me of so much enthusiasm for playing this game purely for fun, and Conquest is such a big mental and emotional investment. It's the ultimate Fire Emblem experience, I still maintain that, but... where I currently stand, it's too ultimate for me right now.

Revelation: Never. There are definitely other games in the series where I'd rather play this instead, but this is the only game that is basically completely and totally invalidated by the option of playing one of the others. I will never be in a position to enjoy playing this where I wouldn't enjoy playing either Birthright or Conquest almost infinitely more.

Shadows of Valentia: Probably never again, though that may be the fact that the playlog is still so fresh for me. It just doesn't have much appeal for my playstyle, especially with its weird system of grinding and random battles and its incredibly loose, user-generated concept of pacing and balance.

Three Houses: Guess.

...Okay, that wound up taking longer than I thought it would. Alright. Time to talk about the lesson system some more.

So, I've been giving a lot of thought to how exactly I should phrase my criticisms about this thing, but one thing I find myself needing to say up front is that...

...The funny thing is, I can actually hear the rebuttals to my own arguments in my head coming from the perspective of someone who actually enjoys this game, and I can't... really tell them they're wrong. Or at least I have no frame of reference with which to argue with them because their tastes would be so wildly different.

The lesson system is a needlessly complicated, needlessly involved, needlessly repetitive, and needlessly time-consuming method of distributing extra experience outside of combat, something that Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn managed with a single menu and a minute or two of using it. Getting the most out of this system and optimizing your units to the greatest extent the game realistically allows takes way, way more time and energy than I have any conceivable patience for.

But if, as I've sarcastically said of the game, it actually was designed to make the player feel like a massive amount of time is passing... I mean, it succeeds. In some alternate universe where I found the story genuinely gripping and emotionally engaging, could I see myself making an argument that the game would be lesser if it streamlined this system into something more manageable? ...No, sorry, I was going to say yes, but I just can't psychologically conceive me being that emotionally invested in the story. It would have to be fucking amazing.

But if someone were to tell me that streamlining the lesson system into a much more simple, once-a-month affair would cause the game to lose something in their eyes... I mean I can believe them, at the very least. This isn't a change that I can say with absolute confidence would make the game objectively better for everyone.

...But like I said, the sort of person who likes this system taking as much time as it does would have to be way more emotionally invested in the story than even feels physically possible to me, and when that isn't the case... hooooooooly shit is this entire system just the worst.

Gameplaywise, speaking purely from a gameplay perspective, there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for making this system as time-consuming as it is. There's no reason why playing the game outside of auto-pilot should involve going up to potentially as many as seven students a lesson, and button-mashing on them to fast-forward through their inane, repetitive, generic comments four or five times apiece. And there's no reason why you should be expected to repeat this entire affair two or three more times before you can get to the month's actual damned gameplay. And even if there were, there's no reason why getting your first perfect instruction per student per lesson should prompt the option to praise them rather than just automatically boosting their motivation, or just giving more of a boost. Why is praising them optional? Why would you ever not want to praise them? Why is this even split into four or five packets? By the end of the game, the boosts from individual tutoring sessions become such a goddamned drop in the bucket with regards to your overall weapon rank exp that I cannot see how you would ever appreciate the option to distribute them between multiple categories. Just make it one big boost! On one thing! With one push of one button! Please! I am begging you! For the love of god!

And I know, all of this is technically optional, but there's still no gameplay justification for making getting the most out of training your units take this much time. Let me put it this way: did the developers of the Tellius games include an option to automatically distribute your bonus experience across your most-used units? No, it didn't. The thought to include such a feature wouldn't even occur to them, because using the bonus experience system normally doesn't take up multiple hours of playtime per file.

...Uh... okay, incidentally, at the start of Day 6 this playlog is at 40 pages long. Path of Radiance got to 50 pages long in that time. So that might sound like Path of Radiance was a more emotionally-draining and burnout-inducing affair, and make no mistake, it definitely did give me some issues that first week... but...

...You know how far into Path of Radiance I got in the process of writing those 50 pages?

Chapter nine.

So we're comparing writing 50 pages by Chapter 9... to 40 pages by Chapter 2.

I am very, very scared about how long this is going to take me.

So I'm going to save the subject I was planning to bring up today for tomorrow, and just get on with the damned game.

...Oh thank god, we're actually doing a battle today.

Dimitri yet again is the source of the tutorial, and... holy shit, seriously, there's no reason why these tutorials had to be in-universe, especially when it involves having one of Professr's students explain shit to her that it's ludicrous to suggest she wouldn't know. Here it's talking about commanding battalions, something she should know about being a mercenary, and...

...Deep breaths, deep breaths, Alastor...

...Looks like this map lets me bring everyone, finally. Now, I know I said I'd talk about my plans for every individual unit in my army, but... right now I really feel like just talking about that next lesson opportunity I get. I just want to get to the damned gameplay.

Yeah, so, one annoying thing about the prep menu is that “inventory” has been made to encompass not just items, but also battalions, abilities, combat arts, and reclassing. Which makes “inventory” suddenly kind of ridiculously non-descriptive. It should've been called “outfitting” or something.

But yeah, mercifully, there's not much time I need to spend here today, because this battle requires precious little preparation, or indeed thought.

Literally every fucking enemy on this map is using lances, something that feels profoundly bizarre. I guess that's just one of the exciting things that ditching the weapon triangle allows you to justify.

Oh, also, amusing graphical nonsense: The clouds below us on this apparently ridiculously high plateau are 2D images that will always face the camera, which causes some pretty ridiculous shit if you change the camera angle.

There's this weird and awkward pause between each enemy unit moving. On the one hand, it technically solves that minor complaint I had about it being difficult to press start to skip the enemy phase entirely when surrounded by enemies who don't have to move to attack you, but it comes at the cost of looking kind of ridiculous, especially when sped up.

So yeah, thankfully the enemy AI, at least at the start, puts pressure on you by advancing towards you, forcing you to take out each group before the next one arrives. Doing that isn't particularly difficult, but credit where credit's due, there are many games that fail to even hit that benchmark.

...But also, the damage these enemies are doing is... Uh, remember when I said I was doing a Lyn-mode-units-only run of FE7? I genuinely found myself needing to put more thought into my strategies there than I'm doing here.

...Did this say it was a mock battle? I don't remember seeing that. Storywise, the fight with the bandits at the end of this month is supposed to canonically be the first time any student outside of the house leaders has taken a life, so I'm assuming we're not really killing these Church of Seiros soldiers... but if it turns out this isn't a mock battle, that means technically they can brutally cripple us (though apparently nobody actually dies in part one and they all still show up in story scenes from what I've heard...?)

Also, holy shit, forests give 30 evade.

That's as much as a Binding Blade throne.

Thankfully, like in Gaiden, magic isn't affected by terrain bonuses, but it's still crazy to see the sorts of things that a simple remake is enough to make the devs decide is brilliant.

Ah yes.

And now I use my first gambit, and...

...Okay, honestly, I really don't like gambits. They just annoy me for reasons I mostly struggle to put into words at the moment, but there is one solid, incredibly concrete complaint I have about them that I can convey right now: the sheer amount of information about how they work that the game doesn't tell you.

Nowhere on your unit info screen can you find any information whatsoever as to what impact your assorted stats have on the damage and hit rate of gambits. None. This always infuriated and baffled me, but it wasn't until I looked up what those calculations were that I realized why they didn't do it: because it would be way too complicated.

https://fe3h.com/battalions

The most damning thing here is that they can't tell you what your accuracy with gambits is because there's an upward limit on how much of that accuracy can actually apply to your attacks which depends on what the gambit evasion of the enemy is, and vice versa.

Also, apparently your strength/magic has way more impact on gambit damage than charm does, when I went through all three of my previous playthroughs thinking it had no impact at all.

While they don't overstep the boundary by an insane amount, these are still well and thoroughly beyond the sort of formulae that Fire Emblem has any business having. This sort of thing belongs in Final Fantasy and Pokemon, games where the calculations aren't really strictly necessary for a normal player to fully comprehend because they don't need to know exactly how much damage things will do in order to make informed decisions because the consequences for failure aren't as dire.

As I've said previously, one of the things I love about Fire Emblem is that in contrast to a lot of other games, the actual math involved is fairly simple and transparent, allowing basically anyone to accurately assess and predict the danger they're putting their units in without breaking the mental bank. Which, of course, then allows the devs to create situations where the player would need to accurately assess and predict the danger they're putting their units in. So needless to say, the fact that this game doesn't do that with its gambit mechanic is pretty damned annoying.

...Also, can I just take a moment to point out the absurdity of the gambit hit rate formula? The developers apparently thought that dexterity and speed should only contribute 1% to your hit and avoid respectively per point, but decided that when it came to charm, each point should contribute a whopping five. What, pray tell, is the reason for that massive disparity? How could they possibly justify that difference? It's almost like the need for a single stat point to have more than a 1% impact on hit rates is inherently obvious, but they just didn't think to change the formula for the mechanic they didn't invent, and just assumed the one that was used in the previous game would be more or less fine.

...In fact... just how much of SoV's formulas did they copy wholesale...?

...Holy shit if the crit rate in this game is half dex plus half luck...

...It is! The Three Houses combat calculations are almost identical to the Shadows of Valentia ones! Why? Were they not allowed to change them? Is that why they added in so many skills that boost hit and avoid, like the Koei-Tecmo devs were literally ordered to keep those formulas the same as the barely-changed versions from a remake of an at-the-time 27-year-old game, and seeing how patently absurd those orders were, they vowed to use a far more sane system for their new gambit mechanic and stuffed in more ways to differentiate the accuracy and avoid of units besides the stats that do almost nothing?

And if not, why does the game paint a picture of a dev team that simultaneously understood the absurdity of the one-to-one system and also somehow didn't have a clue?

I am so confused right now.

...But at any rate, the fight is over, and I'm given the opportunity to save. And yeah, I think I'm gonna stop things here. This battle wasn't very engaging, but hey, at least it was gameplay, something that's going to be a precious rarity in this playthrough.

...Christ, I really hope this doesn't turn into five months of me whining. Holy shit would that suck.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Jotari]

Simple maths is one of the thing that really endears me to the old Paper Mario games. It just feels like stats are so much more tangible and matter when a single point of defense is something you need take into account.

[Samz707]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Simple maths is one of the thing that really endears me to the old Paper Mario games. It just feels like stats are so much more tangible and matter when a single point of defense is something you need take into account.

Yeah I'm a fan of "less is more" in terms of stats.
I'm not a big fan of "LETS HAVE HIGH NUMBERS!" *Cough*Awakening*Cough* because it just makes things needlessly confusing and almost always results in less-balanced difficulty as if even the actual developers can't understand the high numbers themselves.

Honestly same with weapons too, I Feel like 3H "Anyone can use any weapon!" system isn't worth it because in addition to no weapon triangle....Swords/Lances/Axes all have Killer/Brave/throwable versions at least, so it's not like say, Killer Weapons are exclusive to Swords so there's an actual reason to branch into them.

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by Samz707

[Mars of Aritia]

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

As I've said previously, one of the things I love about Fire Emblem is that in contrast to a lot of other games, the actual math involved is fairly simple and transparent, allowing basically anyone to accurately assess and predict the danger they're putting their units in without breaking the mental bank. Which, of course, then allows the devs to create situations where the player would need to accurately assess and predict the danger they're putting their units in.

That's one thing I find so absurd about non-FE SRPGs. having simple, easy to calculate damage formulas is extremely useful. Do any others actually use a proper formula, because I haven't found one yet. Most of the time it feels like im just rolling the dice and hoping i do enough damage. Have you seen the SRW damage formula for example? It's absolutely insane and you have no hope of calculating it yourself lol.

[Venger_06]

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

First off, I've decided that what I really want to do after this marathon is make my own Fire Emblem game in SRPG Studio. Early on in the marathon (peaking around FE6 I'd say), seeing what the old games did wrong and also what they did right gave me a ton of ideas for how to make my ideal version of a game at that tech level and style. I've been dithering back and forth about it for ages since then, but now I've decided I really do want to actually make it. Hopefully it'll be good!

Do you already have an idea for the story or will it be non-existent like in the Archanea games?

[Alastor15243]

9 minutes ago, Ghost_06_ said:

Do you already have an idea for the story or will it be non-existent like in the Archanea games?

For the first project I have this idea where I'll go pretty minimalistic. I'll have more of a focus on the player's story of what happens and who lives and who dies, and mostly only give tiny hints of what might be up with the cast. For example, everyone would have a name of "The X", like "The Huntress" and "The Fraud" and "The Brother" and "The Bride". They'd also each have a personal weapon with flavor text that gives a vague direction of what their deal is, but it's mostly up to player interpretation.

For instance: The Huntress has a single-use personal bow that has hit and might stats of 255. It can kill literally anything but only has one shot. Description says she made it. What for? Is there someone you're going to fight later she has a vendetta against? When you have her use it in an emergency, do you imagine her throwing away that vendetta to protect something she grew to realize was more precious to her? Who knows? All fan theories are welcome.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Nowhere on your unit info screen can you find any information whatsoever as to what impact your assorted stats have on the damage and hit rate of gambits. None. This always infuriated and baffled me, but it wasn't until I looked up what those calculations were that I realized why they didn't do it: because it would be way too complicated.

https://fe3h.com/battalions

The most damning thing here is that they can't tell you what your accuracy with gambits is because there's an upward limit on how much of that accuracy can actually apply to your attacks which depends on what the gambit evasion of the enemy is, and vice versa.

Presumably, the hit-variation cap of 30 was to prevent massive disparities in Charm from either causing 100-hit or 0-hit scenarios. That said, maybe a better way would have just been to diminish the effect of the Charm differential on Hit rates? Like, instead of 5 Hit for every point difference, make it 2 or 3.

As for the damage formula, I think it'd be alright if they swapped in (user_Charm - target_Charm) for (Charm/5). Make each point of difference 1 point of damage, so that Charm is basically functioning in parallel to the Str/Prt or Mag/Rsl difference. Obviously, though, would be nice if the game stated this plainly.

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Literally every fucking enemy on this map is using lances, something that feels profoundly bizarre. I guess that's just one of the exciting things that ditching the weapon triangle allows you to justify.

I'd say this works lore-wise, if only because you're scrimmaging with Soldiers in the Knights of Seiros. Ergo, they're all in the Soldier class. Not that I would have complained, necessarily, if they'd thrown in some Fighters, Myrmidons, or Monks.

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also, holy shit, forests give 30 evade.

That's as much as a Binding Blade throne.

Some Forest tiles (Thickets) give 40 evade. Honestly, I like the higher-avoid forests. Gives more motivation for the player to take advantage of terrain, while also making spells and/or magical weapons all the more useful when the enemy tries to do the same. Plus, it's one of the very few advantages that otherwise-overpowered fliers cannot take advantage of. ...Okay, playable fliers can by dismounting, but enemy ones cannot.

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Dimitri yet again is the source of the tutorial, and... holy shit, seriously, there's no reason why these tutorials had to be in-universe, especially when it involves having one of Professr's students explain shit to her that it's ludicrous to suggest she wouldn't know. Here it's talking about commanding battalions, something she should know about being a mercenary, and...

Maybe it should've been Sothis? I dunno, this is the obvious problem in trying to make an Avatar character who is experienced in battle, while also accounting for the possibility that this is the player's first Fire Emblem experience.

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But if someone were to tell me that streamlining the lesson system into a much more simple, once-a-month affair would cause the game to lose something in their eyes... I mean I can believe them, at the very least. This isn't a change that I can say with absolute confidence would make the game objectively better for everyone.

In terms of setting the scene, I do think spending more time on the actual teaching role puts in some work to root the player character's profession in the gameplay. If it took, say, 10 seconds once a month, it wouldn't really convey the teacher-student relationship as well.

That said, I will acknowledge that this can breed a certain sort of tedium. I like the notion of tutoring units to guide their weapon/class development, but if a future game does it, I certainly wouldn't mind a stripped-down version (say, once-per-chapter, and limited to a select few units).

4 hours ago, Samz707 said:

Honestly same with weapons too, I Feel like 3H "Anyone can use any weapon!" system isn't worth it because in addition to no weapon triangle....Swords/Lances/Axes all have Killer/Brave/throwable versions at least, so it's not like say, Killer Weapons are exclusive to Swords so there's an actual reason to branch into them.

Ironically, one of the motivators to specialize in Swords is that they have exclusive domain of "super-killer" weapons. Namely, the Wo Dao and Cursed Ashiya Sword, which have higher crit rates than even forged Killers. So there's at least a theoretical niche there (say I have a crit build that gets 90 Crit with the Killer Axe+, but 100 Crit with the Cursed Ashiya Sword+).

As for throwables, with the poor stats they've given to throwable Lances and Axes, there's a solid case for the unit in question just picking up a Bow instead. Bows also offer Curved Shot for extra Range and/or Hit, while Javelins and Hand Axes can't use combat arts at range.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Mars of Aritia said:

That's one thing I find so absurd about non-FE SRPGs. having simple, easy to calculate damage formulas is extremely useful. Do any others actually use a proper formula, because I haven't found one yet. Most of the time it feels like im just rolling the dice and hoping i do enough damage. Have you seen the SRW damage formula for example? It's absolutely insane and you have no hope of calculating it yourself lol.

One thing I really like about Fire Emblem's lower stats is that it makes it so when a unit changes sides they actually function the same way in gameplay. A boss that defects to your side doesn't suddenly lose loads of powers and abilities they had before (well unless it's like Delthea's teleport). They have the same stats as an enemy and as an ally. larger stats in other games usually leads to stat lines for boss character that are really lopsided compared to the player. Usually with bosses having an absolute tonne of HP, far beyond what a player characte can get. One of the most noteable examples for me is Magus from Chrono Trigger. As a fun reference to the devil, he has 6,666 HP when you fight him as an enemy, but as a player the HP cap is 999. But conversely, he also deals way more damage as an enemy than he ever can as a boss. Of course for some reason Three Houses pulls this instead of auto leveling enemy units you can recruit, giving them absurd HP totals in the 70s and the like that just vanish when they become player characters after the battle. I really  like how typical Fie Emblem can have a mid chapter alliance switch of a unit that continues to act in exactly the same way, just for another team.

18 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

For the first project I have this idea where I'll go pretty minimalistic. I'll have more of a focus on the player's story of what happens and who lives and who dies, and mostly only give tiny hints of what might be up with the cast. For example, everyone would have a name of "The X", like "The Huntress" and "The Fraud" and "The Brother" and "The Bride". They'd also each have a personal weapon with flavor text that gives a vague direction of what their deal is, but it's mostly up to player interpretation.

For instance: The Huntress has a single-use personal bow that has hit and might stats of 255. It can kill literally anything but only has one shot. Description says she made it. What for? Is there someone you're going to fight later she has a vendetta against? When you have her use it in an emergency, do you imagine her throwing away that vendetta to protect something she grew to realize was more precious to her? Who knows? All fan theories are welcome.

You'd want to have a final chapter much like Thracia then. Because that sounds like an instant win button for the final boss.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

7 minutes ago, Jotari said:

You'd want to have a final chapter much like Thracia then. Because that sounds like an instant win button for the final boss.

Oh I've considered that, I assure you.

Ah yes, that's another thing: every map is a seize map and you can't warp or dance the lord. So warp-skipping isn't really a thing, even though I plan for warp shenanigans to be a very available option. I plan on taking what I enjoyed about Thracia's toys as a major inspiration.

[Acacia Sgt]

Making your own game, huh. Ah, been there. As it turns out, I'm better coming up with ideas than actually implementing them.

[lenticular]

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

There's no reason why playing the game outside of auto-pilot should involve going up to potentially as many as seven students a lesson, and button-mashing on them to fast-forward through their inane, repetitive, generic comments four or five times apiece.

Not sure if you're aware, but you can just hold A through the entire thing to repeat the same instruction four times, which is slightly quicker and slightly less likely to give you RSI than button mashing through it each time. The only time you actually need to release and repress is when you get "praise" or "console/critique" choices. Not a huge improvement, I'll grant, but good to be aware of.

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Why is this even split into four or five packets? By the end of the game, the boosts from individual tutoring sessions become such a goddamned drop in the bucket with regards to your overall weapon rank exp that I cannot see how you would ever appreciate the option to distribute them between multiple categories. Just make it one big boost! On one thing! With one push of one button! Please! I am begging you! For the love of god!

Being able to split the tuition between multiple categories can occasionally be useful in the early game, if you're trying to chase multiple break points in time for a specific map. Like if you need to unlock a specific spell or combat art but also need to get to a certain rank in a different weapon for the class you want to go into. It's not something that comes up often,  and I don't think the flexibility that it offers is really worth the added busywork, but it's not completely useless.

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And I know, all of this is technically optional, but there's still no gameplay justification for making getting the most out of training your units take this much time. Let me put it this way: did the developers of the Tellius games include an option to automatically distribute your bonus experience across your most-used units? No, it didn't. The thought to include such a feature wouldn't even occur to them, because using the bonus experience system normally doesn't take up multiple hours of playtime per file.

I don't think it's fair to call it only technically optional. It is genuinely optional. Getting everyone to their needed weapon ranks wasn't even remotely an issue in my no-monastery run.  There are other parts of the monastery that I'll concede are only technically optional but tutoring isn't one of them. Auto-tutoring is absolutely fine. Yes, you lose out a little by not doing it, but you also lose out a little by not doing skirmish battles in games where they're available, and I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone suggest that they're only technically optional.

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Dimitri yet again is the source of the tutorial, and... holy shit, seriously, there's no reason why these tutorials had to be in-universe, especially when it involves having one of Professr's students explain shit to her that it's ludicrous to suggest she wouldn't know. Here it's talking about commanding battalions, something she should know about being a mercenary, and...

Yeah, I've never seen the appeal of in-universe tutorials. It can work, very occasionally, but most of the time I just find that the breaking of the fourth wall brings me out of the epxerience, while at the same time, putting the words of the tutorial into a character's voice makes them less clear and concise than they could otherwise have been.

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh, also, amusing graphical nonsense: The clouds below us on this apparently ridiculously high plateau are 2D images that will always face the camera, which causes some pretty ridiculous shit if you change the camera angle.

Huh. I've never noticed that. I'll have to look for it next time I play.

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Did this say it was a mock battle? I don't remember seeing that. Storywise, the fight with the bandits at the end of this month is supposed to canonically be the first time any student outside of the house leaders has taken a life, so I'm assuming we're not really killing these Church of Seiros soldiers... but if it turns out this isn't a mock battle, that means technically they can brutally cripple us (though apparently nobody actually dies in part one and they all still show up in story scenes from what I've heard...?)

Can confirm that it is a mock battle. I think it mentions in passing that it's "to hone your skills" or "further your training" or something like that, though it doesn't really dwell on it. But you can have people "die" in it and still be fine afterwards. Though, I think it's actually bugged and plays the "I'm dying" voice line rather than the "I'm retreating" one. (All of this paragraph is from memory, so take with a grain of salt.)

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

As I've said previously, one of the things I love about Fire Emblem is that in contrast to a lot of other games, the actual math involved is fairly simple and transparent, allowing basically anyone to accurately assess and predict the danger they're putting their units in without breaking the mental bank. Which, of course, then allows the devs to create situations where the player would need to accurately assess and predict the danger they're putting their units in. So needless to say, the fact that this game doesn't do that with its gambit mechanic is pretty damned annoying.

One of my big issues with gambits is that I almost never even notice when the enemy actually has them up until I'm being hit with them. Which is the same problem I have with Fates. Too much stuff going on that's too easy to miss. At least (for my tastes) I can just rewind time in three Houses when I die due to stuff I didn't see.

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

Some Forest tiles (Thickets) give 40 evade. Honestly, I like the higher-avoid forests. Gives more motivation for the player to take advantage of terrain, while also making spells and/or magical weapons all the more useful when the enemy tries to do the same. Plus, it's one of the very few advantages that otherwise-overpowered fliers cannot take advantage of. ...Okay, playable fliers can by dismounting, but enemy ones cannot.

Yeah, I agree with this. Higher avoid rates makes the terrain actually be meaningful. Too low and it turns into something that I don't really actually care about as anything other than a micro-optimisation that won't actually make any real difference.

[Alastor15243]

12 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I don't think it's fair to call it only technically optional. It is genuinely optional. Getting everyone to their needed weapon ranks wasn't even remotely an issue in my no-monastery run.  There are other parts of the monastery that I'll concede are only technically optional but tutoring isn't one of them. Auto-tutoring is absolutely fine. Yes, you lose out a little by not doing it, but you also lose out a little by not doing skirmish battles in games where they're available, and I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone suggest that they're only technically optional.

This is a false equivalency. The infinite skirmishes of other games and monastery activities aren't presented in remotely the same way. Monastery activities (and in fact skirmishes in this game on any difficulty except apparently normal) are presented as a system of resource management you have to make the right decisions with using the options you have, not as an optional way to break the difficulty in half that the game wasn't consciously balanced around using. If it were truly designed as comparable to skirmishing in Sacred Stones and Birthright, they wouldn't have put limits on how much we could do it. Just like if divine pulse were truly intended as an optional accessibility feature they weren't expecting everyone to use, they wouldn't have made such a comical pretense of balancing it like an upgradeable special attack.

[lenticular]

13 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

This is a false equivalency. The infinite skirmishes of other games and monastery activities aren't presented in remotely the same way. Monastery activities (and in fact skirmishes in this game on any difficulty except apparently normal) are presented as a system of resource management you have to make the right decisions with using the options you have, not as an optional way to break the difficulty in half that the game wasn't consciously balanced around using. If it were truly designed as comparable to skirmishing in Sacred Stones and Birthright, they wouldn't have put limits on how much we could do it. Just like if divine pulse were truly intended as an optional accessibility feature they weren't expecting everyone to use, they wouldn't have made such a comical pretense of balancing it like an upgradeable special attack.

If you're talking about design intent, then I can also easily say that if they weren't intending for tutoring to be skippable then they wouldn't have included the auto-tutor option. The option exists so that people can use it. Would they prefer that people engage with all the systems that they built? Absolutely. Did they also recognise that not everyone would want to do so and therefore added an option to skip it? Again, yes.

Let me put it this way: let's get back to basics. What do you think you will be missing out on if you just auto-tutor every week? How do you expect that you will have a worse experience in the rest of the game if you do so? I feel that we're talking past each other a little bit here, and hopefully pulling back to the fundamental issues will help prevent that.

[Alastor15243]

24 minutes ago, lenticular said:

If you're talking about design intent, then I can also easily say that if they weren't intending for tutoring to be skippable then they wouldn't have included the auto-tutor option. The option exists so that people can use it. Would they prefer that people engage with all the systems that they built? Absolutely. Did they also recognise that not everyone would want to do so and therefore added an option to skip it? Again, yes.

Let me put it this way: let's get back to basics. What do you think you will be missing out on if you just auto-tutor every week? How do you expect that you will have a worse experience in the rest of the game if you do so? I feel that we're talking past each other a little bit here, and hopefully pulling back to the fundamental issues will help prevent that.

It's currently around midnight and I really should be asleep right now, so I apologize in advance if I sound harsher than I intend to come across as, I definitely appreciate having you in the thread:

My point is that they constantly gate optimal play behind ludicrous amounts of tedium. This is a continuous, recurring theme with the game, where every single way of playing the game more like an actual Fire Emblem game comes at the expense of your resources in some way.

You say the expense isn't that bad, and perhaps in the grand scheme of things you're correct, at least in some areas. But in every case, big and small, the expense still shouldn't be there at all, because nothing, absolutely nothing in Three Houses has any business taking as much of the player's time as it does, and any proper Fire Emblem game would give me this stuff hassle-free. That auto-tutoring system, no matter how slight the loss of points it results in, is still a terrible solution to a problem the devs themselves invented.

Like I said: did the Tellius devs even think to put an "auto-bonus-experience" feature in those games? No. Because it didn't need one. Because using the bonus experience menu in the optimal way isn't a sanity-drainingly tedious process.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

 

13 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And even if there were, there's no reason why getting your first perfect instruction per student per lesson should prompt the option to praise them rather than just automatically boosting their motivation, or just giving more of a boost.

Or when they ask you, if they should change what they are studying to something else - while already studying what they want to change to. Or the random question that nets you a bunch of Prof exp and motivation.

13 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Why is praising them optional? Why would you ever not want to praise them?

Hey, you can also critque like 3 or 4 students? Also, imaginary head pats.

13 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...But also, the damage these enemies are doing is... Uh, remember when I said I was doing a Lyn-mode-units-only run of FE7? I genuinely found myself needing to put more thought into my strategies there than I'm doing here.

Tbf, the forced battle in chapter 2 is always super easy - on Maddening you go from the mock battle between Houses with it´s level 7-8 enemies to the level 2(?) enemies of the church and then bam, lvl 11 Kostas with his lvl 9 Archers, Thiefs etc. 

[Samz707]

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

 

As for throwables, with the poor stats they've given to throwable Lances and Axes, there's a solid case for the unit in question just picking up a Bow instead. Bows also offer Curved Shot for extra Range and/or Hit, while Javelins and Hand Axes can't use combat arts at range.

 

Not to mention that tutoring for a weapon type gives next-to-no-EXP past a certain level...so I'm pretty sure it's probably practical to train almost everyone in Bows eventually since you get little EXP for tutoring them in their "main" weapon. (Especially if tutoring is still available in the second half of the game, I've not got to the war section yet.)

Also anyone else think that Broken Bows shouldn't still be able to be used? I always just took it as "They run out of arrows for the bow but they didn't make a new message", I dunno it just seems like maybe they should be excluded so there's a reason to train them in Swords or Lances as back-up weapons. (And you can't attack with magic once you use it all up.) and while I'm no expert on ye olde weapons, a broken sword sounds like it can still in theory be used as a weapon, while anyway I can think that causes a bow to be broken probably means it can't be used as a weapon. ( I just feel like maybe ranged attacks should be something you can run out of.)

Then again I did get an (Not sure if exceptionally RNG blessed) Good Shamir, who can already haave a 70-ish chance to hit with a broken Iron Bow, so I can honestly just save gold on bow repairs by having her shoot everyone with a broken bow so maybe I'm a bit biased on the effectiveness of Broken Bows. (Since Bernadetta isn't as good.)

Edited August 10, 2021 by Samz707

[Jotari]

36 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

 

Not to mention that tutoring for a weapon type gives next-to-no-EXP past a certain level...so I'm pretty sure it's probably practical to train almost everyone in Bows eventually since you get little EXP for tutoring them in their "main" weapon. (Especially if tutoring is still available in the second half of the game, I've not got to the war section yet.)

Also anyone else think that Broken Bows shouldn't still be able to be used? I always just took it as "They run out of arrows for the bow but they didn't make a new message", I dunno it just seems like maybe they should be excluded so there's a reason to train them in Swords or Lances as back-up weapons. (And you can't attack with magic once you use it all up.) and while I'm no expert on ye olde weapons, a broken sword sounds like it can still in theory be used as a weapon, while anyway I can think that causes a bow to be broken probably means it can't be used as a weapon. ( I just feel like maybe ranged attacks should be something you can run out of.)

Then again I did get an (Not sure if exceptionally RNG blessed) Good Shamir, who can already haave a 70-ish chance to hit with a broken Iron Bow, so I can honestly just save gold on bow repairs by having her shoot everyone with a broken bow so maybe I'm a bit biased on the effectiveness of Broken Bows. (Since Bernadetta isn't as good.)

Clearly units with broken bows are using them like baseball bats to inaccurately hit arrows at their enemies.

[lenticular]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

It's currently around midnight and I really should be asleep right now, so I apologize in advance if I sound harsher than I intend to come across as, I definitely appreciate having you in the thread:

My point is that they constantly gate optimal play behind ludicrous amounts of tedium. This is a continuous, recurring theme with the game, where every single way of playing the game more like an actual Fire Emblem game comes at the expense of your resources in some way.

You say the expense isn't that bad, and perhaps in the grand scheme of things you're correct, at least in some areas. But in every case, big and small, the expense still shouldn't be there at all, because nothing, absolutely nothing in Three Houses has any business taking as much of the player's time as it does, and any proper Fire Emblem game would give me this stuff hassle-free. That auto-tutoring system, no matter how slight the loss of points it results in, is still a terrible solution to a problem the devs themselves invented.

So, I may be wrong here, and please correct me if I'm grossly misrepresenting your opinion, but I think that part of the issue here is the question: why do we optimise? Is optimisation a means to an end or is it an end in itself? I think that in discussion, we tend to phrase things as if optimisation is a means to end. "If I perform exactly these tutoring sessions then that will get this character to this skill level by this chapter which will let them learn this skill which will let them more easily kill this boss" and so on. But I also think that this can often be a bit of a convenient fiction. A lot of the time we don't really care about how easily we can kill the boss. We're actually just optimising because it can be fun to optimise things. Even things that are completely pointless. Especially things that are completely pointless.

I actually think that this is one of the biggest tensions within Fire Emblem as a whole. It is fun to build people up to be superhuman demigods who can solo endgame maps without breaking a sweat; it isn't all that much fun to actually have those superhuman demigods. At least, not for very long. It can be fun to break out the maniacal laugh and declare "cower before me, you puny fools!" at your console when you finally bring your unstoppable build online, but that fun only really lasts for about one full map, after which it just becomes a monotous slog of "oh look, Robin killed everyone again, must be thursday". If we optimise the strategic and logistical parts of the game then we often end up optimising the fun out of the tactical parts of the game.

Still, we persist in optimising these games to within an inch of their lives, even when we don't actually care about the end result, even when the end result can actually make the game less fun. Why do we do that? Well, I think there's two main reasons. One is that, sometimes we just can't help ourselves. We get into the mindset where we focus on beating the game rather than on playing the game. We make it all about the destination and forget about the journey. This is, frankly, daft, but it's an easy trap to fall into. I know that I fall into it sometimes, no matter how much I try not to.

But the other reason -- which I touched on before -- is, I think, a better one: oftentimes we will try to optimise the game because optimising is fun. It's fun to look through all of the different skills/abilities that you can put onto a character and dream of all the different synergies that they might have with each other. I suspect many of us had a moment at some point in the past when we realised "wait, what if I put Vantage and Wrath onto the same person?" (and possibly then got destroyed by an enemy archer, and had another eureka moment of "but what if I give them a hand axe?"). It's fun to figure out what works and what doesn't. It can fun to micro-optimise every single turn to squeeze out as much xp as possible even when it would be far easier to just kill the boss  straight away instead.

So, when we look at Three Houses and compare manual tutoring with auto-tutoring and we note that manual tutoring is the optimal choice, I have to ask, what are we optimising for and why are we doing it? If the idea is that we are optimising as a means to an end, because we desire the results of the optimisation, then I would dispute that. The actual results of the optimisation are largely (though I admit not entirely) inconsequential. To anyone who doesn't enjoy tutoring but is worried that avoiding it would unduly weaken their characters, I would reassure them that just isn't the case.

But that's not the only reason why people optimise. I do have a lot more sympathy with the position of "I want to optimise because I enjoy doing so, but I don't like this particular form of optimisation". Because I know that in games if I try to ignore one feature but then optimise everything else, then I often have that nagging feeling in the back of my head of "yes, but I could be doing more". And sometimes I manage to look past that, but sometimes I find it hard to. In Three Houses, for instance, I dislike tea time so I've managed to basically pretend that it doesn't exist. I play the game as if it weren't there at all, and I don't have a problem with that. However, in Fates, I hated the social aspects to My Castle and didn't use them at all, but that also left me feeling less willing to engage with the rest of the game. I was always left with the feeling that I was losing out by not having a chef's hat or an arena shield, or enough of whatever ore I needed, or whatever else was bugging me at the time. Did I actually need these things? No. Was the game perfectly playable without them? Yes. Did the lack of them still detract from my enjoyment of the game out of proportion with how much I would have gained if I had them? Yes.

So, yeah, I guess I do sort of get it. Even as I also sort of don't get it? This has got long and rambling and is basically just me thinking aloud, but I hope that at least someone will find it a little useful or interesting.

[Jotari]

Having an option to just dump all your characters tutoring into one stat instead of individually doing it four times would have been a small, but appreciated, change. Though I don't know how you could play that into the whole Critique/Console thing. Well I guess other than it working exactly as it does and automatically dumping the extra motivation into the same stat if you get it.

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses Day 7: Plans for the Future

Right, so, here comes week 2 of classes for the month, and since I'm not left with as much time today as I expected to have, I think I'm going to devote today to talking about two main things. The second will be my plans for my army, and the first...

...Okay, so I've been looking for the right opening to discuss this for ages, but I've had this idea for a while that I feel would address multiple issues I have with this game. Those being:

1: The fact that Byleth is ironically the least-customizable unit in the entire cast due to being just as untrained as everyone else but being way more expensive to teach.

2: The fact that Byleth's position as teacher seems completely undeserved due to that whole “not having any high skill ranks” thing.

3: The fact that the game acts like fighting other students should be a gut punch despite giving you damned near no opportunities to get emotionally attached to anyone the game is going to force you to fight.

My solution:

Give Byleth a damned subject to teach, either in addition to or instead of a house.

Let the player pick their own specialties, in addition to the default swords and authority. Let them choose to be talented at something else too, and have them start at, bare minimum, a C in those fields. Then have the students from each house who are inclined towards that talent share classes with Byleth, and maybe even be temporarily playable at times. But, and here's the kicker: at least most of these students shouldn't automatically side with you when shit goes down at the end of the game. You get to know them, but you don't get to recruit them.

...Of course, this would help more if all three houses were at each other's throats for ideological reasons instead of it being red vs white, blue and yellow, and then blue and yellow refusing to team up for assorted contrived bullshit.

...Though that would even further justify the need to make the decision of which side of the conflict you ally with not be tied to what students you choose to teach. That's barely tolerable as-is, and that's only because all of the sides are fundamentally the same except for one you get the option to jump ship on.

Honestly, while there would be some issues I don't immediately have answers for just by thinking about it, I think that having you pick a subject instead of a house, but having the houses still be there, would make for a pretty awesome climactic finale to Part 1, where lines are drawn in the sand as the three houses' nations come to a boiling point, and you have to choose who you're going to side with and which of your beloved students you're going to have to say goodbye to and potentially have to kill someday.

...That would also make it so you could see all of the routes while only having to do White Clouds once, via multiple saves a la Sacred Stones, which would be a huge boon for people who don't have that kind of time on their hands, while still having something there for the diehards to come back to if they want to retry the game with a different subject and a different mix of students.

But anyway, yeah, Byleth really should be more customizable than they are, it would fix so many problems.

Moving on, though, time to go down the line and say what builds I have planned for every unit.

Dimitri: Right now he's working on axes and flying. I plan to make him a wyvern rider, because in case you didn't know, fliers in this game are absolutely broken. Because like every single console game since the concept of canto has been introduced, and only the console games, this game has “super canto”, the version that lets you move again after just about any action, including attacking. It also allows dismounting if you absolutely need to resist arrows or enjoy a terrain bonus, meaning that there's basically no downside whatsoever to picking a flying class. And wyvern lords in particular have absolutely busted stats. I'm gonna have to have him work on axes early and often though, because he's apparently bad at them.

Dedue: A mix between brawling and armor classes. End goal is to make him a general with quick riposte, because that's basically the only way to salvage his terrible speed stat. Near as I can tell, that terrible speed stat really typecasts him.

Felix: This guy is an absolute offensive menace, especially at the start of the game when not equipping a battalion to activate his personal skill isn't a huge deal-breaker. I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing with him long term. Wyvern would be a pretty damned safe bet for any situation, but I dunno, part of me really wants to make him a swordmaster or something. I'll see how things play out with him.

Ashe: Sniper. Hunter's volley is absolutely ridiculous, and given that Ashe does not have the bulk to get the most out of enemy-phasing with a bow, there's no good reason not to go all-out with player-phasing with him.

Sylvain: I'd really, really like to make him something that synergizes well with Leonie. They have complementary personal skills and each gain +2 attack and defense when next to each other, so ideally I'd love to make him a bow knight just like her, especially since he has comparable physical stats to her. The problem, of course, is that he has a bane in bows. ...Now, I'm gonna do it anyway, because I need to milk all the dumb fun I can get out of this game, so I'm hoping sticking him with bows as a goal as long as I can will let that eventually work.

Mercedes: She's going to be my bishop. She's got physic, restore and fortify, some pretty damned great spells, and I'd like her to have as many uses of them and as much healing for it as possible. I might make her a gremory by the end of the game, but bishops heal better, so it depends. I will be training her in reason alongside faith at any rate though, since it would be a waste of her magic stat not to.

Annette: Dark flier. Dark fliers are amazing, and I'm making all of my offensive magic users into dark fliers. Pity she doesn't have the best speed, but then, precious few mages seem to.

Ingrid: In a slight deviation from expectations, she's going as a dark flier as well. Her magic's the exact same mediocre 35% as her strength, and she's got fantastic speed, so she's easily my best option for a speedy dark flier, which I'd really like. And one of the limited upsides to the “any weapon” system of this game is that this doesn't stop her from using her legendary lance.

...I think that's everyone for now. Alright, let's get going.

Alright, so, biggest benefit of this week's schooling is that Mercedes just got Nosferatu and now has a better means of attacking enemies than that stupid bow of hers, which I will be taking off of her immediately and giving to one of my physical units, probably Sylvain.

...Hey, also, while I remember: It's really, really annoying that the game doesn't give you any way to see the skill rank requirements for class changing while you're in the classroom. That'd be some pretty handy info to be able to have somewhere. Also, it feels like I should be able to see what a character's goals are when instructing them rather than having to go to goals to do it. There's so much empty space on this screen, that's definitely something I'd do with it.

Ah yes, and here's the week where it's a mandatory seminar or rest. I'll be doing the seminar because rests suck.

I pick Hanneman because he has the most interested students, at 6.

As a result, Mercedes also now has fire to attack enemies with. Excellent.

...Alright, and now we get the cutscene where...

Dimitri: Professor. I just got word from the knights that the last of the thieves have been cornered.

Ingrid: Just as planned. They're in Zanado, the Red Canyon.

Ashe: We certainly can't allow those underhanded thieves to get away. Let's work together and do our best to take them down!

Dedue: It matters not who we're up against. They will not harm His Highness.

Felix: Hmph. We're just fighting common thieves, right? I don't expect much of a challenge.

Sylvain: Aren't you a spoilsport. I'm actually quite excited myself. Who knows... there may even be some cute lady thieves.

Annette: Hmm. Well, at any rate, a real battle is a great opportunity for us to see how far we've come.

Mercedes: True. The mock battle was a success. We'll be fine so long as we stay the course.

(Everyone simultaneously walks way in different directions, leaving only Dimitri and Professr)

...Christ these “whole class” scenes feel so weird and unnatural.

First off, everything up until Sylvain's line read like one of those “everyone says a line before the final battle” things, where they're all disconnected and mostly just talking to themselves. And then when they actually did start talking to people other than themselves... seriously, have you ever seen a group of eight people in a single room? They never talk like this. And that's to say nothing about how simultaneously hilarious and ungodly creepy it was when they all just simultaneously walked off in different directions, practically in lockstep with each other.

Seriously, these scenes have no business existing. There's no reason to force all eight student characters into this many scenes if they're each gonna have basically one line. Why not only have like four or so at a time, with Dimitri and maybe Dedue being constant fixtures, and have the others show up when it would actually be appropriate and when they would actually have interesting things to say to carry a scene?

Secondly, may I just point out that this scene starts with Professr walking into a hallway that the rest of the class is all already in? The reason why that matters is that it means that for some reason, whatever the sequence of events is, Professr is literally the last to be told this information about the bandits. Either someone called the whole Blue Lions house (except the generic Blue Lions students the story likes to forget exist) to inform them that the bandits had been located and cornered... and didn't see fit to call Professr to that meeting...

...or Dimitri found out about this some other way, decided to tell everyone else in the house about it, and decided Professr should be told last.

I'm struggling to think of a logical chain of events that would lead us to this moment in time.

Anyway, Dimitri awkwardly mentions that both of his parents are dead but gives no further details...

...and then says it's “time to depart”.

And then after he says that it's “time to depart”, a day passes, and we're still at Garreg Mach Monastery, because fuck the entire fabric of space and time.

...And we've got supports.

Well I'm sure as shit not doing the fight today, but I guess I can do the supports. I only see three names lit up, so it's probably just two.

Let's see...

So Annette and Mercedes step onto the green screen set that every single support conversation is filmed in front of, and the camera pans around them to make it horrifically obvious that the background they're standing in front of is not in any way real. And they start talking about the shopping trip they totally both just did.

Ah, but after some smalltalk about Annette being a shopaholic, looks like we're getting some stuff about Annette's time at magic school in Fhirdiad.

Ah, so Mercedes and Annette both went to school together? Hmm...

...Someone at the voice direction team didn't let Annette know that “That's just what I was about to say!” was supposed to be annoyed. Her portrait is pouting, she does these big dumb flailing arm gestures, but her voice is full of a tone of “you said it, sister!”

Okay, I'm kind of annoyed that this conversation talked so much about their shared history... without giving a single concrete detail. Lots of shit like “so much has changed” and “we've seen at least as many hard times as good”, but not one mention of an actual incident or event.

Next support: Annette and Ingrid.

...For some reason this camera perspective is making Annette look way, way taller than she's supposed to be. She appears to be the same height as Ingrid in this scene, and Ingrid's supposed to be 14 cm taller according to this chart I found:

https://i.redd.it/ycpug6hia9i31.jpg

Anyway, Annette and Ingrid are talking about fashion and makeup and stuff. Or rather, Annette is talking about fashion and makeup and stuff, and Ingrid's talking about how she really couldn't give a rat's ass about it, but eventually is guilt-tripped by Annette into taking her spare makeup kit she doesn't need so she won't throw it away.

...Okay yeah, while I didn't find either of these scenes particularly entertaining, interesting or humorous... they're certainly more substantial than anything we've gotten after Awakening, I'll give the game that. And since my brain hasn't yet been fried by the prospect of watching and playlogging two fucking Lord of the Rings movies worth of these things... I'm in a position to appreciate that.

Alright. Tomorrow, we start with our first proper mission.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Shadow Mir]

23 hours ago, Samz707 said:

Honestly same with weapons too, I Feel like 3H "Anyone can use any weapon!" system isn't worth it because in addition to no weapon triangle....Swords/Lances/Axes all have Killer/Brave/throwable versions at least, so it's not like say, Killer Weapons are exclusive to Swords so there's an actual reason to branch into them.

Frankly, this game is the worst for throwing weapons; they are much weaker than bows, as well as heavier and less accurate. Also, the higher-end throwing weapons need Wootz Steel to repair. Simply put, just use a bow instead if you want to attack from range.

[Samz707]

13 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Frankly, this game is the worst for throwing weapons; they are much weaker than bows, as well as heavier and less accurate. Also, the higher-end throwing weapons need Wootz Steel to repair. Simply put, just use a bow instead if you want to attack from range.

Pretty much from what I understand.

I do at least like how Bows have higher range but suffer accuracy penalties in this, that was a good change much needed IMO, reminds me a bit of more "Traditional" turn-based games like Classic X-Com/Jagged Alliance handling guns.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Three Houses Day 7: Plans for the Future

Right, so, here comes week 2 of classes for the month, and since I'm not left with as much time today as I expected to have, I think I'm going to devote today to talking about two main things. The second will be my plans for my army, and the first...

...Okay, so I've been looking for the right opening to discuss this for ages, but I've had this idea for a while that I feel would address multiple issues I have with this game. Those being:

1: The fact that Byleth is ironically the least-customizable unit in the entire cast due to being just as untrained as everyone else but being way more expensive to teach.

2: The fact that Byleth's position as teacher seems completely undeserved due to that whole “not having any high skill ranks” thing.

3: The fact that the game acts like fighting other students should be a gut punch despite giving you damned near no opportunities to get emotionally attached to anyone the game is going to force you to fight.

My solution:

Give Byleth a damned subject to teach, either in addition to or instead of a house.

 

 

 

Yeah 3H...isn't very good...at alot, I do feel IMO it at least has heart but the devs bit off way, way more than they could chew it seems, honestly almost anything would be better than what we have right now. (Like Byleth, as you said, teaching a subject to all 3 Houses.)

Literally the only big interaction you can have with other students is tea-parties, which has no dialogue from them, so it practically doesn't count, (Again, feels like an feature in early Alpha.) sure with mission help and those you can unlock supports...but well, are you going to focus on getting supports for a ton of students instead of your own?

I'm still on the Month with Kronya but with the exception of Armor/Riding taking too long to grow, I don't feel like Byleth is as "forced" into a class as Robin is, Robin has magic (Which is literally objectively better than their sword in every way.) and Nosferatu is OP, which means you feel more than slightly "Encouraged" for Dark Mage/Tactician Robin.

While sure Byleth has a unique Sword weapon (That I only use on Demonic Beasts), I've been able to have them pick up Lances and some magic for healing without feeling like I'm playing super sub-optimally, while in Awakening, well, Nosferatu gets the game over quicker much faster. (though I guess that partly is the result of the Sword of the Creator being not that great.)

That said, I don't think there's any moments where having supports with someone you don't recruit matters. (There was that cut thing where Edelgard could recruit some of the Black Eagles on Silver Snow but we don't know how that ends up mattering.)

I almost wonder if they should have just had 2 routes, Edelgard and non-Edelgard since it seems like from what I hear that the non-Edelgard routes mostly re-tread themselves. 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2021 by Samz707

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Hey, also, while I remember: It's really, really annoying that the game doesn't give you any way to see the skill rank requirements for class changing while you're in the classroom. That'd be some pretty handy info to be able to have somewhere.

 

You can. You have to press Zr when selecting a student to instruct.

 

[Shadow Mir]

21 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Pretty much from what I understand.

I do at least like how Bows have higher range but suffer accuracy penalties in this, that was a good change much needed IMO, reminds me a bit of more "Traditional" turn-based games like Classic X-Com/Jagged Alliance handling guns.)

It wasn't the first time the series did this - Radiant Dawn had hit penalties for using bows at 3 range, as well as for using the Double Bow at 1 range (iirc). This made the longbows even more impractical than they already were, given that their accuracy was pretty lousy (most bows in Radiant Dawn have accuracy around 80; the longbows in that game only have 65 hit at most [iron; the steel and silver have 60 and 55 hit, respectively]). And this is putting aside the fact that they were rendered obsolete the moment your snipers promoted to marksmen, which had boosted range.