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


Alastor15243
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On 2/11/2023 at 2:53 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Alcryst’s silver bow gets the Ike boost. Like I said, I only put the thing on him to power up his special. And when he uses that, he tends to be away from enemies anyway, so no risk of him getting fucked while holding it.

 

On 2/11/2023 at 3:20 PM, Acacia Sgt said:

I'm reminded I want to put it on a Thoron for Ivy to use... but I keep forgetting.

This and the Roy engravings are the ones that I really have to wonder "What were they thinking?!" with regard to those; the downsides are too severe for what they offer.

On 2/12/2023 at 1:21 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Nope! That can happen? Also, no, single minded didn't seem to activate.

He just casually blows it up as if it were a paper cup. On your end, though, this can cause you to go "OH SHIT!" because you're now exposed from that end. At least, unless you got away from there.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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45 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

The primary goal of a video game is to entertain with gameplay, not the story

I don't think that's really true. There's a complete spectrum, going from games that are almost entirely story (visual novels, walking sims, etc.) to games that have basically no story (abstract strategy games, old school arcade games, etc.) and everywhere in between. Different games are aiming for different balances of gameplay to story, and it's generally better to judge them based on what they're actually trying to accomplish. Criticising Doki Doki Literature Club for bad gameplay is just as absurd as criticising Asteroids for having a bad story.

Fire Emblem, like most RPGs, falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum and has extensive story and gameplay both. So I tend to think it should be judged on both. Or to put it another way, if a decent portion of my time with a game is going to be spent with story elements, then I want them to be good. I'd rather have no story at all than a terrible story. Of course, with a series and genre that does tend to prioritise both sides of things, there's going to be a lot of variance in the tastes of individual players. Which is as it should be.

 Another factor that complicates matters is that "story" is a category that can be further broken down. There's plot, sure, but also characters, setting/world-building, dialogue, and so on. And a lot of the time when people say "story", they just focus on the plot. But for me at least, that's not the most important factor in Fire Emblem stories. For me, I care about interesting and well written characters in Fire Emblem more than I care about a good plot. So while I'd consider Engage's plot to be pretty wretched, I found some of the characters pretty decent. Which makes it hard for me to say how I would rate it's story or writing overall.

1 hour ago, Sunwoo said:

Discussing story in a video game is always going to be a bit ... difficult, honestly.

So, yeah, after rambling a bit towards no ultimate conclusion, I'll just say that I agree with this.

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On 3/17/2023 at 1:46 PM, joeygreedy said:

Meanwhile, stuff like Merrin, Timerra, Boucheron, Ivy is so hard to take advantage of in any meaningful way, they aren't bad, but a small boost like that is so hard to actively take advantage of, or notice in practice.

Boucheron’s personal will always be hilarious to me. Needs someone else to chain attack for him… but he’s the only one who can chain attack for like the first 5 maps you get him. By the time you get Anna (or second seals to reclass someone into a backup unit) good chance you’ve benched the poor guy. I don’t even think it’s too bad once you can actually use it but it’s just so unfortunate.

 

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Unless she gets close to a flier.

True but ideally you’d just bait her with a mage and watch her die before she can even hit them. 

 

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I'd say that is either PoR Bolt Axe or Aura Knuckles.

Tbf to the Aura Knuckles, at least Constance’s budding talent put her in a good spot to use them and actually get great results with them. Sucks that you need DLC to really take full advantage of it, but at least the option is there. Hurricane Axe may get good results if you use it against a flier, but it’s far less likely to kill other stuff with its single hit than the brave effect from aura knuckles. And yeah, the struggle is finding a good unit to use it- Anna may be the best bet but she’s so frail she doesn’t like being forced to hit last.

 

Anywho, congratulations for finally beating Engage! Glad you enjoyed the game overall, I was surprised by just how much fun it was all the way through. Looking forward to whichever game you end up playlogging next!

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3 minutes ago, Anathaco said:

True but ideally you’d just bait her with a mage and watch her die before she can even hit them. 

Unless you get Broken by Fracture first. Then you do jack shit to her.

5 minutes ago, Anathaco said:

Tbf to the Aura Knuckles, at least Constance’s budding talent put her in a good spot to use them and actually get great results with them. Sucks that you need DLC to really take full advantage of it, but at least the option is there. Hurricane Axe may get good results if you use it against a flier, but it’s far less likely to kill other stuff with its single hit than the brave effect from aura knuckles. And yeah, the struggle is finding a good unit to use it- Anna may be the best bet but she’s so frail she doesn’t like being forced to hit last.

Those still feel like a massive gimmick, because most of the units I'd actually consider taking down the brawling path have much lower magic than strength. Also, her brawling budding talent is bait in the sense that Felix's magic BT is.

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6 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Those still feel like a massive gimmick, because most of the units I'd actually consider taking down the brawling path have much lower magic than strength. Also, her brawling budding talent is bait in the sense that Felix's magic BT is.

I dunno, I think you could make magic gauntlets work. I mean you get one in Engage late-game and it's absolutely nuts.

Edited by Alastor15243
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7 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Unless you get Broken by Fracture first. Then you do jack shit to her.

Unless you hit the staff user with Silence. Then you’re good.

 

7 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Those still feel like a massive gimmick, because most of the units I'd actually consider taking down the brawling path have much lower magic than strength. Also, her brawling budding talent is bait in the sense that Felix's magic BT is.

Oh, they’re absolutely a gimmick, no question about that. But it’s a gimmick that can at least output some serious magic damage. My point is more that there is a niche use case for them to work super well. For that reason I wouldn’t say that her BT is bait, it’s just a different way to build her that can be used very effectively.

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4 minutes ago, Anathaco said:

Unless you hit the staff user with Silence. Then you’re good.

The obvious flaw with that is that you're trying to hit a mage with Silence... yeah. Second, Silence has lower range than Fracture. Which means I'd have to go deep into enemy range to use it. I wouldn't bank on surviving all of Zephia, Marni, Mauvier, AND Hortensia. . .

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1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

The obvious flaw with that is that you're trying to hit a mage with Silence... yeah. Second, Silence has lower range than Fracture. Which means I'd have to go deep into enemy range to use it. I wouldn't bank on surviving all of Zephia, Marni, Mauvier, AND Hortensia. . .

Yeah the actual solution is to bait each boss out of Hortensia's range one by one with Astra Storm and the mountain of recharge tiles right outside their door.

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20 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah the actual solution is to bait each boss out of Hortensia's range one by one with Astra Storm and the mountain of recharge tiles right outside their door.

YESZ! Being Broken means jackshit when nothing can take advantage of it. Also, that's exactly how I went about it, only with Etie instead of Alcryst.

Another thought: Has FE ever had someone like Griss before? Not in the "batshit insane" department, but rather the "sadomasochist" department?

28 minutes ago, Anathaco said:

Oh, they’re absolutely a gimmick, no question about that. But it’s a gimmick that can at least output some serious magic damage. My point is more that there is a niche use case for them to work super well. For that reason I wouldn’t say that her BT is bait, it’s just a different way to build her that can be used very effectively.

Compared to the boring ole Gremory Coco setup, it doesn't really feel worth it...

On 2/14/2023 at 2:31 PM, Alastor15243 said:

…And…

…And I just lost Merrin.

I underestimated just how powerful the generals in the area were. I didn’t throw her against that many enemies, and only one backup unit was around. I thought she’d be fine. But even with halved damage, even with all of her other myriad defensive buffs… she was just about completely defenseless against them. I was forced to watch her helplessly do 0 damage twice with her silver dagger to these assholes before they took her from her half remaining health to nothing in no time flat.

 

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1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

The obvious flaw with that is that you're trying to hit a mage with Silence... yeah. Second, Silence has lower range than Fracture. Which means I'd have to go deep into enemy range to use it. I wouldn't bank on surviving all of Zephia, Marni, Mauvier, AND Hortensia. . .

Hypothetically I suppose you could Canter back and then Reposition your Silence user out of danger. Though maybe the threat range is too big to get your Reposition user out of range completely, idk. But yeah the best strat is probably just to Astra Storm bait Marni out of Fracture range and plop a mage in front of her.

Though the true big brain strat is to Astra Storm Hortensia's first life away so she spams Diabolical Dance instead of Fracture. Truly genius.

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Compared to the boring ole Gremory Coco setup, it doesn't really feel worth it...

I think I mathed it out at one point, and it does end up outdamaging her Gremory build (though both can consistently kill most enemies). For a much harder time initially using her, sure, but if the end result works well and it looks funny, I'd argue its worth it (personally speaking. Not tryna say everyone should use it or anything. I just think its evidence for Aura Knuckles being way more useful than Hurricane Axe would ever be).

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I really do have to ask this, but in your conquest playlog, I recalled you mentioning you occasionally dreaded playing it despite enjoying it a lot. So my question is, does your enjoyment of Engage and Conquest differ?

Like Engage being a big, sprawling toybox giving you a lot of cool toys to play with, with enough difficulty to make the game still challenging and fun, while for Conquest, it's more the feeling of a fighting a particularly tough, well designed boss fight and winning against odds, triumphing over the game.

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On 2/18/2023 at 4:39 PM, Alastor15243 said:

I’m just gonna come out and say it: I don’t like Miasma. I think it’s butt-ugly, and I think it’s annoying to deal with. I thought I wouldn’t mind it next time it showed up because by then I’d have the counter for it on a unit I actually want it to be on, but no, now they’ve upped the inconvenience to counter that, and I’m just annoyed.

Same. I even agree on it being butt-ugly. It's also why Northern Fortress is arguably the worst location for skirmishes. You start split up, AND the misama is a pain in the arse. Ugh. Doesn't help that most of the few ways to get rid of it are engage attacks.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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54 minutes ago, joeygreedy said:

I really do have to ask this, but in your conquest playlog, I recalled you mentioning you occasionally dreaded playing it despite enjoying it a lot. So my question is, does your enjoyment of Engage and Conquest differ?

Like Engage being a big, sprawling toybox giving you a lot of cool toys to play with, with enough difficulty to make the game still challenging and fun, while for Conquest, it's more the feeling of a fighting a particularly tough, well designed boss fight and winning against odds, triumphing over the game.

To a degree. I actually think Engage's game design is pretty high up there, it just isn't on Conquest's level. But it makes up for it with just how fun the Emblems are.

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21 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Same. I even agree on it being butt-ugly. It's also why Northern Fortress is arguably the worst location for skirmishes. You start split up, AND the misama is a pain in the arse. Ugh. Doesn't help that most of the few ways to get rid of it are engage attacks.

Did they really have to make it +20 and +20 lol, it's so difficult to fight in Miasma dense areas when half the enemies are immortal inside it. Corrin helps, but some vein combinations are worse/better at clearing, so that's an additional layer of frustration. I like it in concept, but dear fuck.

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10 minutes ago, joeygreedy said:

Did they really have to make it +20 and +20 lol, it's so difficult to fight in Miasma dense areas when half the enemies are immortal inside it. Corrin helps, but some vein combinations are worse/better at clearing, so that's an additional layer of frustration. I like it in concept, but dear fuck.

Eat your heart out, Radiant Dawn endgame and Thracia. The +10 those had has shit on Miasma giving enemies +20 defense and resistance, whereas it PENALIZES you for that same amount. For fuck's sake, was that even necessary? Fighting enemies is bad enough without worrying about them becoming uber tanks that laugh at everything the player has to throw at them; even fucking mages, which have low defense, become tanks that make Generals jealous while in misama. Corrin's dragon veins can clear it, but one, she can only be used by 1 unit, and second, that's the only spammable method of getting rid of it.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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Honestly, while I do really like chapter 19 despite the miasma, 15 and 16 are a bit of a stinker. 15 for being a slow walkfest, 16 for being 15 but even worse because you can get half your army stuck in water unable to move. It's worse than miasma lol. I always go out of my way to train SOMEONE into Griffin Knight for that specific stage. 

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5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah the actual solution is to bait each boss out of Hortensia's range one by one with Astra Storm and the mountain of recharge tiles right outside their door.

That's still waiting at least 3 turns between being able to use Astra strike twice. Honestly you're better just charging in. It's a narrow corridor, so you can use Obstruct quite well to ensure you only fight who you want to fight.

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What's the verdict on effective weapons in Engage? Because I am leaning towards the ones that don't require engaging being crap.

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3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

What's the verdict on effective weapons in Engage? Because I am leaning towards the ones that don't require engaging being crap.

Hurricane Axe is very situational, but usable on an EP tank for flier baiting. Bows are always useful. Anti-Dragon is usually pointless since Wyverns are easier to just shoot in the face, but the paralogues have a few Dragon enemies like the Phantom Wyrms. Anti-Cav is great, Ridersbanes aren't too expensive to forge up and there are multiple enemy types that use Cav, Paladins and Wolf Knights are notable ones lategame and you really want to hit them both HARD (IDK Poleaxe not sure how well it forges ).  Armor effectiveness falls off since their Def gets so high that Rapier and Armorslayers don't do much, just wipe them with magic. Corrupted Weakness is hilariously good (Only Sieglinde and the 3rd Fire Emblem weapon ) unless it's Seraphim with poor base Mt, but no regular weapon has it. 

EDIT : Poleaxe has 1 more Wt and 10 less hit, but same Mt as ridersbane, that's it. 13 Mt fully forged, tripled to 39 Mt against Cav. Wolf Knights at Pact Ring paralogue have 20+ Def to my knowledge. Minimum of 20 damage on hit is quite solid, for those speedy assholes. ( Halberdier can force a double with Pincer attack, if both hit it ends up being a one-round )

Excalibur reaches 15 Mt fully forged, which means 45 against fliers. Probably not able to one-round any fliers with this unless you're doubling.

Radiant Bow hits Res, 19 mt base, but has 24 Mt fully forged. That's 72 mt against fliers, do I need to say more. ( The Levin Sword and Radiant bow have oddly high Mt )

Armorslayer and Hammer has 9 mt, forged to 14 mt, 42 Mt against armor. Generals hit 50s by the endgame...

Wyrmslayer has 8 mt, forged to 13, 39 against only Wyvern riders. Pass, I'll just shoot them with a Silver Bow +1 for 15 mt, tripled to 45. And that's just the +1 version. Forging a Wyrmslayer to +5 is more expensive than just grabbing a generic bow and making it +1 for 1 silver and a handful of iron and steel.

If you want to kill those Phantom Wyrms, use an engage attack or something. 

Engravings can add 1-3 Mt, which is tripled to 3-9 mt with effectiveness calculations using the weapon's base Mt. 

Edited by joeygreedy
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Oh yeah, just wanted to ask, what did you think of the Avatar Worship in the game relative to Awakening/Fates/3H/Shadow Dragon(?)

Awakening, Robin was mostly just the tactician, but I don't remember any explicit "Oh you are so smart" beyond the firebomb ships thing. Also, Robin is so broken it's kinda hilarious they aren't proclaiming themselves god and soloing the continent.

Corrin, the little sibling everyone seems to love for no explicit reason, and the many plot contrivances to keep them... Pure of heart. Like the "no killing" policy ( Minus the random kitsune genocide, for some reason ), the way they constantly make stupid decisions like walking into a trap to trigger it ( 'I will break your weapon with my face' energy there ) and people inexplicable dying so they never get their hands dirty,  jumping off a cliff on their word alone, Valla ( Corrin even goes last, lmfao )...

Byleth wasn't so much worship as respected. Except how everyone has supports because Avatar, and Rhea obviously knowing something, and Sothis being inside their heart. And how they become god-emperor in most endings. But hey, at least Professor is a more natural sounding title than "Divine One" and "Divine Dragon". ( At least Byleth never talks enough for me to get sick of their personality and decisions, or... the lack of one. )

Alear has the most blatant use of the word "Worship" but it seems to be mostly played for laughs, which I do like. Even if the joke occasionally gets dull like with Framme and Clanne. I don't find it as "Story warping", oddly enough, despite it being the driving force of the plot.

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14 minutes ago, joeygreedy said:

Oh yeah, just wanted to ask, what did you think of the Avatar Worship in the game relative to Awakening/Fates/3H/Shadow Dragon(?)

Awakening, Robin was mostly just the tactician, but I don't remember any explicit "Oh you are so smart" beyond the firebomb ships thing. Also, Robin is so broken it's kinda hilarious they aren't proclaiming themselves god and soloing the continent.

Corrin, the little sibling everyone seems to love for no explicit reason, and the many plot contrivances to keep them... Pure of heart. Like the "no killing" policy ( Minus the random kitsune genocide, for some reason ), the way they constantly make stupid decisions like walking into a trap to trigger it ( 'I will break your weapon with my face' energy there ) and people inexplicable dying so they never get their hands dirty,  jumping off a cliff on their word alone, Valla ( Corrin even goes last, lmfao )...

Byleth wasn't so much worship as respected. Except how everyone has supports because Avatar, and Rhea obviously knowing something, and Sothis being inside their heart. And how they become god-emperor in most endings. But hey, at least Professor is a more natural sounding title than "Divine One" and "Divine Dragon". ( At least Byleth never talks enough for me to get sick of their personality and decisions, or... the lack of one. )

Alear has the most blatant use of the word "Worship" but it seems to be mostly played for laughs, which I do like. Even if the joke occasionally gets dull like with Framme and Clanne. I don't find it as "Story warping", oddly enough, despite it being the driving force of the plot.

I'd say Alear is my favorite of the avatars character-wise. He seems the most human, ironically, and I really like his straight-man attitude to the absurdity that is the rest of the cast. The fact that the worship is both justified and also acknowledged by Alear as weird as hell is pretty refreshing.

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2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'd say Alear is my favorite of the avatars character-wise. He seems the most human, ironically, and I really like his straight-man attitude to the absurdity that is the rest of the cast. The fact that the worship is both justified and also acknowledged by Alear as weird as hell is pretty refreshing.

And I guess not being brokenly game-soloing helps too, lol

I was surprised my first playthrough in midgame when I looked at the stats on my Alear and found his strength barely comparable to Clanne, but at least you have speed aplenty. After Robin/Byleth/Corrin could be setup to solo their respective games, Alear ended up having middling growths, bad weapons and a middling class, with barely double digit strength. It just didn't really hit me because Marth carried that strength and speed score, but then Chapter 11 happened and suddenly, no more Emblem. 

Unironically would bench the Alear on Maddening if I could from chapter 12 onwards, until chapter 14 is finished and I can staple Byleth to the Dragon type.

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People are talking a lot about how bad Alear is as a combat unit, when my Alear was fantastic as a combat unit. But I gave him Corrin, so I guess the Emblem kind of makes the man. I can see the sense in giving Corrin to someone else and leaving Alear for support. But then, even before I got Corrin I never felt like Alear was holding me back in his ability to kill things. Everyone was having problems killing things. Liberation is a sword you can forge very cheaply to max level very early in the game. I remember having him deal with all those pesky wyvern knights by himself in the fog of war desert chapter by standing on a forest tile and baiting them in with an avoid engraved forged Liberation.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

People are talking a lot about how bad Alear is as a combat unit, when my Alear was fantastic as a combat unit. But I gave him Corrin, so I guess the Emblem kind of makes the man. I can see the sense in giving Corrin to someone else and leaving Alear for support. But then, even before I got Corrin I never felt like Alear was holding me back in his ability to kill things. Everyone was having problems killing things. Liberation is a sword you can forge very cheaply to max level very early in the game. I remember having him deal with all those pesky wyvern knights by himself in the fog of war desert chapter by standing on a forest tile and baiting them in with an avoid engraved forged Liberation.

I think Alear got strength screwed my first playthrough on hard, aforementioned 11 strength. On my later maddening runs, Alear still struggled to actually deal much damage, Marth helped but that's Marth being good. But the speed growth and middling defenses made him a decent enough dodgetank with engravings, and still able to provide some damage. Too bad Lucina and Lyn are just better off on actual combat units ( or Qi adept/Knife user ) from chapter 12, 13 and 14, leaving Alear as a mediocre unit since Emblems are what make Alear actually good. There aren't enough Emblems to go around from 12-16, and Alear is best wielding the support emblems, so I'm not really that tempted to invest into them via XP. It's just the middling growths and weapon choices. It feels harder to salvage bad Strength in the Dragon class since enemy Def tends to get so much higher, but forging up the Liberation does help early game. 

Or go Wyvern rider to patch up strength and give your lord flight I guess, that works too. But Dragon typing is just so good once you actually get the Emblems to use it. Still, Alear is no Roy, more closer to Lyn with some extra bonuses ( Dragon ) stapled on.

That and Engage making it pretty easy to fix up any unit with engravings, skill inheritance ( Especially post-well update ) and Emblems.

Except Bunet and Vandar, guys have literally negative bases in some stats I think, compared to their growths. And even then, you can still make them... Usable. 

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