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

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, lenticular said:

You know, one of the things that I most enjoy about this playlog is how completely differently you view the series to how I do, and nowhere is that more readily apparent than when you do the ratings. Just as a for instance that I know you would vehemently disagree with, I considered the pacing in Shadow Dragon to be worse than the pacing in Three Houses, and I consider the DS/3DS era to be the series' nadir of horrible usability (I've never played any of the Japan-only titles, mind, and would probably change my mind if I played SDatBoL). And if that isn't proof that we think about Fire Emblem radically differently, I don't know what is. But I really like reading these precisely because of how different we are, and because even when I disagree with you, I can always understand where you're coming from. I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to speak up and show appreciation, since I am a regular reader but fairly infrequent commenter.

Glad to hear you enjoy! Also, fascinating! I'd be interested to hear your reasonings for those opinions because I can't even begin to imagine what they'd be.

Edited October 24, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Alastor15243]

Hey, incidentally, quick marathon-related question: I've been seriously considering ditching the balance ranking and replacing it with another category, because it's a frustratingly complicated topic, comparing games is always a total hair-splitting mess, and I don't think a single playthrough makes me feel remotely qualified to discuss it.

If I did drop it, I'd want to put a new category in its place. Does anyone have any suggestions or requests? Some important aspect of the games you feel I've been neglecting or you'd want to hear my thoughts on?

Edited October 24, 2020 by Alastor15243

[lenticular]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Glad to hear you'd enjoy! Also, fascinating! I'd be interested to hear your reasonings for those opinions because I can't even begin to imagine what they'd be.

For usability: a big part of my problem with the DS/3DS games is simply that they're on handheld devices, and I don't really care for handheld gaming. I've always found that the place I need to hold a handheld device in order to comfortably control it isn't the same as where I need it to be able to comfortably see it. So, being exclusively on handhelds isn't a good start. (And the DS was the first Nintendo handheld without the option to play on a home console, since there was no equivalent to the Super Gameboy or Gameboy Player, and yes, I did play Sacred Stones on the GameCube.) Being on handheld alone would make me a little grumpy, but I wouldn't mark a game down too heavily for it, but the FE games also committed the DS cardinal sin of requiring frequent switching between button controls and touch screen controls. I'm sure that this isn't universal, but I have a few RSI issues and having to frequently switch controls like that absolutely wrecks my hand and arm if I'm not careful.

For pacing, there's two parts: why I like Three Houses and why I dislike Shadow Dragon. I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent about Three Houses before you actually get to that point, but the short version is that as well as playing strategy and tactics games, I also play walking sims, life sims, and visual novels, so all the parts that you -- and many other people -- view as filler, I think of as extra gameplay. For me, there was no downtime between gameplay segments, there was simply shifts in the style of gameplay between different genres that I enjoy.

Shadow Dragon, on the other hand, I had some real issues with largely related to the size of the maps, and how Marth felt overloaded. He's the only unit who can visit villages, the only unit who can seize, and one of only three units who can open chests without a key. Since he's a forced deploy and a game over if he dies, he also needs to see a decent amount of combat so he doesn't fall behind. Given that he can't reclass, he's also always going to be lagging behind high move characters like paladins or dracoknights. Combine all of this together, and I found myself way too often in positions where I had essentially beaten the level, but then spent a good while longer tediously ferrying Marth from one side of the huge map to another having him stop off at every side-objective along the way. And to make matters worse, given that a lot of reinforcements carry on spawning pretty much indefinitely, which meant that the process often was just about threatening enough to require concentration but nowhere near threatening enough to be challenging or interesting. I found it very tedious, and it really made the game feel like it dragged for me.

(In the game's defence, I've only played it once and did it ironman, and I managed to get Julian killed which left my options for chests as either Marth or a Rickard so underleveled that he'd die to a strong breeze. This probably contributed to my problem as it meant I had to do even more stuff with Marth than I otherwise would have, so that's somewhat on me. But given how strongly the game pushes ironman, and given that they explicitly decided not to make thieves replaceable via reclassing, I think that a lot of it can be blamed on the game. It was still a problem for me even before I lost Julian, with that only exacerbating it.)

48 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hey, incidentally, quick marathon-related question: I've been seriously considering ditching the balance ranking and replacing it with another category, because it's a frustratingly complicated topic, comparing games is always a total hair-splitting mess, and I don't think a single playthrough makes me feel remotely qualified to discuss it.

If I did drop it, I'd want to put a new category in its place. Does anyone have any suggestions or requests?

Maybe characters could be split off from writing into a ranking of their own? How much I like the characters tends to be a big influence on how much I like FE games as a whole. This could include the character writing, but also character design, art and animations, cool factor, distinctiveness, how well their in-game performance matches their design and writing, etc. Basically, how much the characters make you excited to use them.

[Venger_06]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

the short version is that as well as playing strategy and tactics games, I also play walking sims, life sims, and visual novels, so all the parts that you -- and many other people -- view as filler, I think of as extra gameplay. For me, there was no downtime between gameplay segments, there was simply shifts in the style of gameplay between different genres that I enjoy.

Shadow Dragon, on the other hand, I had some real issues with largely related to the size of the maps, and how Marth felt overloaded. He's the only unit who can visit villages, the only unit who can seize, and one of only three units who can open chests without a key. Since he's a forced deploy and a game over if he dies, he also needs to see a decent amount of combat so he doesn't fall behind. Given that he can't reclass, he's also always going to be lagging behind high move characters like paladins or dracoknights. Combine all of this together, and I found myself way too often in positions where I had essentially beaten the level, but then spent a good while longer tediously ferrying Marth from one side of the huge map to another having him stop off at every side-objective along the way. And to make matters worse, given that a lot of reinforcements carry on spawning pretty much indefinitely, which meant that the process often was just about threatening enough to require concentration but nowhere near threatening enough to be challenging or interesting. I found it very tedious, and it really made the game feel like it dragged for me.

Those are my thoughts on the game as well. You couldn't put it any better.

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

Maybe characters could be split off from writing into a ranking of their own? How much I like the characters tends to be a big influence on how much I like FE games as a whole. This could include the character writing, but also character design, art and animations, cool factor, distinctiveness, how well their in-game performance matches their design and writing, etc. Basically, how much the characters make you excited to use them.

I agree as well. I feel that a mediocre plot can be redeemed by great characters and interactions.

[Alastor15243]

6 hours ago, lenticular said:

For usability: a big part of my problem with the DS/3DS games is simply that they're on handheld devices, and I don't really care for handheld gaming. I've always found that the place I need to hold a handheld device in order to comfortably control it isn't the same as where I need it to be able to comfortably see it. So, being exclusively on handhelds isn't a good start. (And the DS was the first Nintendo handheld without the option to play on a home console, since there was no equivalent to the Super Gameboy or Gameboy Player, and yes, I did play Sacred Stones on the GameCube.) Being on handheld alone would make me a little grumpy, but I wouldn't mark a game down too heavily for it, but the FE games also committed the DS cardinal sin of requiring frequent switching between button controls and touch screen controls. I'm sure that this isn't universal, but I have a few RSI issues and having to frequently switch controls like that absolutely wrecks my hand and arm if I'm not careful.

The DS games don't ever need you to use the touch screen, actually. That's used for a wholly optional and completely separate alternate control scheme. You can do everything with buttons.

As for the 3DS, I'll have to play again, but I remember rarely needing to take out the stylus to activate the extra info for stuff on the bottom screen. My thumb/fingers worked just fine, or at least fast enough that I don't remember it ever being faster to get the stylus out. Plus, the more you play the game, the less you need the tap tips anyway. But I will keep an eye out for that!

Shame you and handhelds don't mix well though. That's gotta be a pain.

[Eltosian Kadath]

On 10/23/2020 at 6:07 PM, Alastor15243 said:

 

Also, I'm concerned there might be too much missable content in this game for me to go at it ironman. What do you guys think?

Hmmm...the big thing is you need to reset if you miss any of the star shards or spheres, as missing one of those locks you out of the last few chapters. The Gaiden chapters are interesting in that there are two different means of getting them, either a story based condition, or a turn count on the chapter before them that scales with the difficulty, and generally aren't be too hard to get (and seeing as you missed most of the gaiden in SD, I don't think missing one or two in New Mystery would be a big deal either). I kinda want to see you try and ironman New Mystery, but I would not be surprised if you have to drop that at some point due to the difficulty causing a reset condition at some point.

Side note you should probably play through the bonus maps based on the Sattelaview maps.

 

18 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hey, incidentally, quick marathon-related question: I've been seriously considering ditching the balance ranking and replacing it with another category, because it's a frustratingly complicated topic, comparing games is always a total hair-splitting mess, and I don't think a single playthrough makes me feel remotely qualified to discuss it.

On the other hand it is an important thing to look at when assessing the games, and it is a gameplay related criteria. If you are going to replace it with something, I get the feeling you will be more satisfied with a gameplay related criteria, as opposed to the more story related one that have been suggested so far. From what I have seen so far in this series review, gameplay is clearly a key factor in what you look for in a Fire Emblem game, and taking out a gameplay related criteria without adding in another would probably lead to ranking that feel very unsatisfying.

Not sure how well this suggestion would work, but you could ask for input from readers that have played the game in question about their thoughts on a games balance, which would be a way to compensate for the lack of experience with some games, but that would come with its own issues.

 

[Jotari]

I don't think the balance rating should go. Balance is something people talk about a lot in regards to these games even if it's not something they actually really attempt to have. And from here on out you might find the cast getting more balanced (though also more samey).

[Interdimensional Observer]

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

I don't think the balance rating should go. Balance is something people talk about a lot in regards to these games even if it's not something they actually really attempt to have. And from here on out you might find the cast getting more balanced (though also more samey).

I distinctly remember that on Lunatic, FE12 could be divided as follows:

• Top
• High
• Upper Mid
• Lower Mid
• Low
• Free Silvers- Everyone who joins after Chapter 11 barring Xane and maybe Leiden and Beif, though I don't get why Jake isn't a Free Silver. Basically, these characters are waaaaaay too much effort to use and the quality free weapons in a cash-strapped game is all they're worth.

[Jotari]

41 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I distinctly remember that on Lunatic, FE12 could be divided as follows:

• Top
• High
• Upper Mid
• Lower Mid
• Low
• Free Silvers- Everyone who joins after Chapter 11 barring Xane and maybe Leiden and Beif, though I don't get why Jake isn't a Free Silver. Basically, these characters are waaaaaay too much effort to use and the quality free weapons in a cash-strapped game is all they're worth.

Oh I wasn't really counting New Mystery. I was thinking starting form Awakening. Yeah, I don't think there's really anyway you could expect a balanced cast as ridiculously big as New Mystery.

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Jotari said:

Oh I wasn't really counting New Mystery. I was thinking starting form Awakening. Yeah, I don't think there's really anyway you could expect a balanced cast as ridiculously big as New Mystery.

Unfortunately, Awakening's cast is ridiculously imbalanced as well, in the sense that nearly the entire cast is useless on the highest difficulty settings.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Oh I wasn't really counting New Mystery. I was thinking starting form Awakening. Yeah, I don't think there's really anyway you could expect a balanced cast as ridiculously big as New Mystery.

New Mystery has what, 77 characters? Is that right, or am I off by a few?

Edited October 25, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Hello72207]

4 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

New Mystery has what, 77 characters? Is that right, or am I off by a few?

According to FE Wiki, it has 77 playable units.

[Interdimensional Observer]

38 minutes ago, Hello72207 said:

According to FE Wiki, it has 77 playable units.

Yep, thats the most in any FE from what I've counted, setting aside GatchaHellEmblem and Einherjars and the Fates logbook/bonds stuff. Second place goes to Radiant Dawn at 72, third is Revelation with 66 (.6 adding in Scarlet), fourth place goes to TearRing Saga at 62. 

Dead last is either: original Gaiden at 32 (31 considering you only get one of Deen or Sonya), Genealogy because each Gen has only 24 units, or Sacred Stones at 33.

[Alastor15243]

Oh hey, just wanted to address these too:

On 10/24/2020 at 10:30 AM, lenticular said:

For pacing, there's two parts: why I like Three Houses and why I dislike Shadow Dragon. I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent about Three Houses before you actually get to that point, but the short version is that as well as playing strategy and tactics games, I also play walking sims, life sims, and visual novels, so all the parts that you -- and many other people -- view as filler, I think of as extra gameplay. For me, there was no downtime between gameplay segments, there was simply shifts in the style of gameplay between different genres that I enjoy.

Weird thing: I like visual novels too. ...Okay... I like Danganronpa and Ace Attorney, I haven't really played any others. But I have been more than willing to just sit down for long stretches of time and watch a story unfold. I just didn't find the writing of 3H nearly as engaging or interesting as those games. And in fairness... I don't really replay Danganronpa or Ace Attorney games, I've only ever played any of them once. I have rewatched parts of them, but I've never had the inclination to sit down and replay them unless it was long enough ago that I'd forgotten enough of the details for the stories to be interesting again. So even if I did enjoy Three Houses' gameplay, the existence of a visual novel with a lot of stuff you can't just press start to skip standing between every single bit of proper Fire Emblem gameplay... it was barely tolerable once, and it makes replays a living hell.

 

On 10/24/2020 at 10:30 AM, lenticular said:

Shadow Dragon, on the other hand, I had some real issues with largely related to the size of the maps, and how Marth felt overloaded. He's the only unit who can visit villages, the only unit who can seize, and one of only three units who can open chests without a key. Since he's a forced deploy and a game over if he dies, he also needs to see a decent amount of combat so he doesn't fall behind. Given that he can't reclass, he's also always going to be lagging behind high move characters like paladins or dracoknights. Combine all of this together, and I found myself way too often in positions where I had essentially beaten the level, but then spent a good while longer tediously ferrying Marth from one side of the huge map to another having him stop off at every side-objective along the way. And to make matters worse, given that a lot of reinforcements carry on spawning pretty much indefinitely, which meant that the process often was just about threatening enough to require concentration but nowhere near threatening enough to be challenging or interesting. I found it very tedious, and it really made the game feel like it dragged for me.

Weirdly, while I definitely had this problem with FE1 and FE3, I haven't had it at all with FE11. The interface just lets you do things so quickly without any speed-up assistance necessary that I never had time to feel like something was tedious. And I've found that there's generally always something for my army to do while Marth's running around doing stuff.

Also, full disclosure: I've been replaying the game on H4 over the weekend. I'm on Chapter 15 now (saved Sedgar this time around, though did lose others), and yeah, there's just something about the game's speed that keeps me from feeling like any of the unchanged things I hated about FE1 are an issue in FE11.

 

Anyway...

Tomorrow's the big day! I still haven't decided what difficulty I should do and whether or not to ironman, so if you have any advice, I'd love to hear it!

...I guess one question I have is: what difficulty is most comparable to H3?

[Venger_06]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Tomorrow's the big day! I still haven't decided what difficulty I should do and whether or not to ironman, so if you have any advice, I'd love to hear it!

Go for it!

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...I guess one question I have is: what difficulty is most comparable to H3?

I don't think there is any, tbh. Hard 1 is easier and hard 2 is harder than SD H3.

[Benice]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...I guess one question I have is: what difficulty is most comparable to H3?

Maybe Maniac? I know Lunatic is supposed to be excellent, but I don't know if it is practical for a first playthrough, (or first in a long time.) If you want a huge challenge, I'd go Lunatic, but otherwise Maniac, I think.

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

 

Weirdly, while I definitely had this problem with FE1 and FE3, I haven't had it at all with FE11. The interface just lets you do things so quickly without any speed-up assistance necessary that I never had time to feel like something was tedious. And I've found that there's generally always something for my army to do while Marth's running around doing stuff.

Also, full disclosure: I've been replaying the game on H4 over the weekend. I'm on Chapter 15 now (saved Sedgar this time around, though did lose others), and yeah, there's just something about the game's speed that keeps me from feeling like any of the unchanged things I hated about FE1 are an issue in FE11.

One praise that can be given to the underwhelming combat animations is that they do at least load and play out pretty swiftly.

[Alastor15243]

New Mystery Day 1: Prologues I-II

Alright, let's do this!

Thanks to this marathon, this is the last game in the entire series I have never seen the “The End” screen for. After this, I've only got two routes of Three Houses left before I can say I've beaten the entire series.

...Christ, suddenly Three Houses feels a hell of a lot closer this side of Radiant Dawn. Especially without how quickly I finished Shadow Dragon.

I'm gonna have to buckle down and actually finish my Silver Snow route soon.

I've been stalling on and off for months.

I haven't even gotten to the end of White Clouds.

Anyway, this isn't gonna be entirely blind. I've done the prologue before, ages ago, back in college. And I got a certain distance into the game. Not very far though. I remember something about Caesar and Radd and a very, very tiny map causing me to give up entirely for reasons I can't quite remember.

I don't remember what difficulty I was playing on.

Speaking of, I've decided I'm gonna be playing on hard difficulty, and ironmanning. I've heard that the higher difficulties are apparently way harder than Shadow Dragon and require far more flawless strategy in order to not be obliterated. And I'd like to see firsthand how this game compares to Shadow Dragon in terms of ironmanning, so... better to not do difficulty modes that require direct familiarity with the game.

And for those of you just joining in, here are my rules for ironmanning a game in this marathon. I will play this ironman, refusing to reset for any reason until any of the following things happens:

1: I get a game over.

2: I lose all of my healers.

3: I lose all of my thieves.

4: The total body count ever exceeds the chapter number divided by 2.

However, due to reclassing I will be suspending rule 2, and I don't think that rule will be coming up again until Echoes and then the Kaga Saga. And as for rule 4...

...Given that this game apparently gives you seventy seven fucking characters, I'll be suspending that rule again as well.

Oh yeah, quick update on the whole question of the balance rating: I'm keeping it, but I'm gonna be changing a few things. I looked at my original description of the balance rating, and I think I've kinda slowly lost track of what I was actually supposed to be judging. Shadow Dragon will be going down on that list next time, and some other things will be changing. The frustrating part, though, is that this is one of the hardest things to remember anything more than basic impressions about, and with the extremely notable exception of Shadow Dragon (which I replayed immediately on H4 over the weekend and am now on Chapter 16), playlogging a game tends to leave me with very little desire to revisit it any time soon, so replaying these games in my free time to refresh my impressions just does not feel like a fun or practical idea on top of doing the playlog.

One idea might be to turn it into a pseudo-vacation, have you guys vote on which game you want me to replay and refresh my thoughts on, and then turn the playlog into a weekly update thing, rather than a daily one, so that I have more free time and there's less pressure, and I just jot out random notes that stick out at me and then use those notes to discuss the game at the end of the week. Similar to what I did for my Igavania play-and-rank, though that was whenever I finished a game. Anyway, then I'd resume with the next game in the marathon.

But I have literally no idea what you guys would think about that concept, so I'm just putting that out there to hear your thoughts before seriously considering it at all. I know that ideas that slow down the linear progress of the marathon generally get pretty mixed reception.

Aaaaaanyway...

Let's go.

So, we're back to playing on my computer, which makes playlogging a bit more convenient, but I dunno, I've found there's a charm to playing on original hardware, especially when it's handheld and doesn't require any annoying setups. Alas, for this one, I have no choice. This game didn't get sold in my country or in my language.

Alright, so I'm watching the pre-title sequence now. I like the music. Alas, this emulator has no way I can find to put a gap between the screens to simulate the gap between the original DS screens and make combined images less awkward. Oh well.

Ugh. Right, so the sequence is going on about the series' very first avatar, and how they were kept out of history, and how they were Marth's close friend and an instrumental ally in the events of Book 2, and... uuuuuuuuugh. I can't deny, the idea of making a custom unit with custom stats has, gameplaywise, always appealed to me. But this opening just blares warning sirens about how fanfic-y Kris is going to be as a character.

Ah yes.

And for the first time ever in this marathon, I'm asked to choose between casual and classic.

I can't help but think that the crashing and burning of the first game that came closest to outright stating in-game that it was intended to be ironmanned... might have had an influence on this.

And I'll be honest, viewers: that makes me sad.

Because I don't like casual mode.

Not just that I don't like to play it.

I have issues with the fact that it exists.

...Hear me out.

Permadeath has always been the foundation of Fire Emblem's difficulty. Even in games where ironmanning isn't ideal or even fun, every single game in the entire series, including the ones with casual mode, has been balanced around the core premise that any victory that comes at the cost of a unit's life is a victory with consequences. Difficulty revolves around getting through challenges while keeping people alive. And whether you reset after a death or not, the core concept of avoiding losing allies forms the foundation of the game's fail state.

Reaching the fail state of casual mode, however, requires either the death of the lord (in earlier casual games), the failure of the defend/arrive/etc objective... or a total party wipe. And that last one, at least, is so much harder to reach than the “fail states” of classic mode that in practice, there is functionally no difference between casual mode and phoenix mode.

And the reason why that bothers me is that casual mode is just a fundamentally inadequate alternative for anyone that its mere existence wrongly scares away from classic mode. Because permadeath just sounds so, so much scarier than it actually is.

This series isn't some psychotically horrifying meatgrinder only intended for the clinically insane. I managed to beat some of these games when I was an incompetent twelve-year-old who barely understood what stats were. This isn't like playing Pokemon and doing a Nuzlocke or some hypothetical no-fainting run, where you're trying to avoid deaths in a game that was originally balanced around death being far, far cheaper, and thus it's a major challenge you need extra planning and precautions for. Fire Emblem has always been balanced around the permadeath system. The developers, to varying degrees but certainly well above an accepted minimum standard of sanity, designed these games so that getting through them without any deaths is actually pretty damned realistic, especially with the power of hindsight.

For anyone who likes the idea of a turn-based strategy RPG but is under the false impression that classic mode plays like a Nuzlocke, casual mode is doing them a horrible disservice, first by merely existing and thus tricking newcomers into thinking the game is so bullshit that the mode's existence is necessary (and that even easy mode is likely to be way too hard for some people), and second by likely teaching them several very bad tactics (namely anything revolving around sacrificing a unit to cheese a part of the level) that will serve them very poorly if they ever want to transition to classic mode.

Personally, I think if they wanted a mode to invite the people scared off by permadeath, this game should have introduced rewinds. Not the omnipresent, plot-integrated and plot-ruining Mila's Turnwheel or Divine Pulse variety, but just... a game mode that lets you rewind to previous turns when you fail. No story justification, maybe not even a limit on uses, just an alternate game mode that lets you save scum your mistakes until you get it right. That would be more forgiving than classic mode, and it would technically be impossible to lose, but at least then, any strategy that worked on rewind mode (aside from the “strategy” of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks) would work when they decided to move on to classic mode, and the game wouldn't let them proceed without working out an actual solution to the problem placed in front of them. People who don't like the concept of permadeath would be able to play without it without being completely robbed of the challenge in front of them, and then when they've gotten familiar enough with the game to maybe realize it's not as bad of a concept as they thought, maybe they'll be daring enough to try it on classic eventually.

But alas, to my regret, that is not the world we live in. Instead we have casual as the optional game mode, and the rewind mechanic is a plot-integrated, omnipresent special attack present on all difficulties and game modes and taken for granted when designing levels.

...Fuck it, let's just play the dang game already. I'm depressing myself.

Alright, we're starting, and in what now qualifies as tradition for this playlog, I'll be naming my avatar Dakota, after the “hero” of my ill-fated-but-very-fun-while-it-lasted Fates LP.

I'm going male, because I want access to the mercenary/hero class.

We've got 13 hairstyle options, 10 hair color options, and 10 eye options. I'll be going with 10-10-3, since that's the closest I think the game will let me get to what the original Dakota looked like.

And now the game does something super annoying and makes your stat customization dependent on an arbitrary and obtuse personality quiz. Thankfully this isn't as convoluted as the one in Langrisser, and a quick look at a guide is all I'm gonna need to work out what stats I want. But holy shit would I have been pissed off if I had to do this blind.

While the game asks a lot of barely-if-at-all-related questions about your past, present and future, what the game's really determining is which three stats you want to have a bonus in. There are three bonuses you can get:

Past: Big base stat boost but tiny or nonexistent growth rate boost, lowest boost long-term.

Present: Medium base stat boost and medium growth rate boost.

Future: Tiny or nonexistent base stat boost but big growth rate boost, biggest boost long-term.

My choices were as follows:

Past: Noble's child. Spd/skill +2, spd/skill growth +5%. If I'm ever going to need help doubling enemies, it's going to be starting out. A 55% speed growth should be plenty to make sure I never stop doubling once I start. Especially since a lack of skill learning means there's very little incentive to change classes except maybe between hero and general or dracoknight and paladin.

Present: Strength. HP +2, HP growth +20%. This will give me exactly a 100% HP growth as a mercenary, which is pretty tempting for reliability and ensuring bulk, especially since my last choice is:

Future: Humane. Def growth +10%. I know this is going to be my best unit, and I think it's important to make him bulky. Especially since losing him means a game over.

With that out of the way, let's get going!

...Right after I create a casual mode save real quick to see if there's a visual save file difference. There is, allowing me to be sure that I didn't accidentally make a casual file when pausing on that screen to rant.

...And while we're on that menu, honestly, I'm kinda disappointed that we don't get a cover of that cool and mysterious flute song from Mystery of the Emblem's main menu.

Alright, into the game proper. We're getting into the game, and... yeah, while Shadow Dragon taught me to be wary of judging these remakes by their prologues, I like the story so far. Dakota's not a very interesting character right now, but at least there's actual proper character writing. Though again... I have to judge this by a fan translation. I hate doing that, but I have little other choice. This is the best way available to play New Mystery in English, so this is the experience that I'm ranking the writing of.

I love how they actually gave personality and character to those starting knights from Book 2. Even though the actual characterizations they chose are... well, they're not all winners, shall we say.

Ooh! That's new! I tried pressing the “dialog transcript” button, but accidentally thought the button was L due to the button constantly changing depending on the generation of game, and discovered there's now a new feature mapped to that button where once there was nothing: a lexicon of terms, like in Radiant Dawn! Guess they felt that sequels need something like that. I like how you can access it during dialogue scenes.

Anyway, Katarina says she can't fight. She's training to become a strategist, but she doesn't know how to fight at all. So why is she applying to become a knight?

That said, I know that later in the prologue she reveals that she's lying, and that she can actually fight pretty damned well. But I wonder what her motivation for lying is, other than the obvious Doylist reason that it would be a massive dick move to have a playable character for the entire prologue that you could potentially be heavily using, only to turn around and take her away from you at the prologue's climax and leave you with an under-trained army.

But anyway, we've gotta carry her through this, and Jagen's somehow gonna find that acceptable.

Oh god, I remember this music. This fucking music.

This map theme and this battle music have been drilled into my soul whether I like it or not, and anyone who has ever attempted to train up an army for Apotheosis will know exactly fucking why.

Yeah. Not a huge fan of it. But I know for a fact that the New Mystery soundtrack has so much more to offer. So let's keep going.

So, looks like my decision to boost Dakota's speed base has paid off already, as there's already an enemy that +2 speed makes a difference against: Jagen!

Jagen swiftly falls because he refuses to move around to take advantage of that javelin (probably for the best), and Dakota gets his first level up: everything but magic, speed and resistance! Speed would've been nice, but that was a very good level up regardless.

Yeah, anyway, there's literally no explanation for why the Altean knights allowed Dakota to just carry Katarina like that. Apparently they just let a bunch of weaklings into the knights as long as they paired up with someone really impressive. Somebody in charge of organizing this should definitely be fired.

Anyway, no way we're stopping there. I recognize this is already 5 pages, but I can't just stop with that. Let's keep going, on to Prologue II!

Ooooh! They actually label the countries on the map here! Nice!

...Huh. I don't know how, but somehow I never noticed that Dolhr was its own island nation, and not connected to the rest of the landmass.

...Also, it makes me realize just how much of this fucking continent hasn't been explored by this point in the DS remake duology. Am I missing countries that are missing here, or is that entire upper half of the continent devoted to nothing but Khadein and Anri's Way?

Okay, so they do the whole “countries turning red and blue depending on enemy or ally control” thing... and in the end, Dolhr turns blue... that raises the question.. what exactly happened to Dolhr after it lost the war? Were there any military sanctions? Was it occupied even briefly? Did anything happen to Dolhr to prevent it from having the capacity to try to take over the world again?

Anyway, we're done with the recap and back to the prologue chapters. Katarina comments how they were both made part of the 7^th Platoon, and apparently that was luck, and not the fact that they were partnered together originally? It's kind of unclear. I'm still frustrated they never made her demonstrate usefulness in order to pass the preliminaries. She didn't even offer strategic advice.

And here's Luke, who's basically Sain if he were more like Inigo and more of an immature teenager. And he fancies himself the “Paladin of Dawn”.

And yep, since the 7^th Platoon has an odd number of members thanks to Ryan, Gordin's younger brother... that confirms that it was apparently sheer luck that Katarina and Dakota still wound up together. But the fact that Luke and Rody also didn't get split up when we're left to assume they were a pair too... makes me suspect that it's more that a fifth of the duos were randomly split up in order to make the fifth members of two groups of 5. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but then I'll have to see what the explanation is for why Cecil joins us later.

And now Katarina is recommending that Dakota be the leader, despite her entire claim to value for the team being her ability to devise good strategies.

And yeah, Katarina's openly admitting to the 7^th Platoon that she became a knight despite not being able to fight, and not even Luke bats a fucking eye at that admission. Nobody does. It's just accepted as normal that this girl got into the royal knights without demonstrating any qualification for the role whatsoever.

Anyway, Luke insists on a duel to see who the leader is, so it's him and Rody versus me and... Ryan.

This is a really small map, and since Luke's a cavalier there's basically no way to stop Luke from attacking Ryan if he wants to. I could go on the offensive, but I'd be going into Rody's range and I don't know if that would aggro him and put me in bigger trouble. So I'll have both Dakota and Ryan stand on the nearby forts on this map to minimize the damage of Luke's first assault, and then start attacking him afterwards when he's safely out of range of Rody's “covering fire”.

Ah yes, Luke is arrogant and decides to attack Dakota instead of Ryan. That makes things so much easier. If this was deliberately giving Luke AI reflecting his character... kudos.

...I'm noticing that this game doesn't seem to have separate enemy-phase themes right now.

...I would love it if that means a certain song I thought was enemy-phase exclusive turns out to not be.

Oh yeah, one thing before I forget: this game ditches weapon weight entirely, so with attack speed, what you see is what you get. I'm not the biggest fan of a reduction of ways in which weapons can differentiate themselves, but the strength-based weapon weight system basically made weight irrelevant past the early game unless you're a mage. So okay, let's go with that for now.

Alright, so, Luke's battle convo with Ryan seems to confirm that yes, Luke will only attack Dakota. And when attempting to double-check, I discovered that the text archive function... doesn't seem to work during in-battle text scenes. That's... lame.

And this time Dakota gets HP, strength, speed and luck. I mean, those are his highest growth rates, so it's not really that surprising. Though his skill growth rate is slightly higher than his speed, for what it's worth.

I've gotta say, getting all of this hero-worship and praise based on some trivially easy battles is starting to get on my nerves. If that's gonna happen to me at all, I like to earn it by doing shit that's genuinely hard. Starting as some nobody and then slowly becoming somebody by earning it.

And now Luke learns a comically obvious lesson about the value of fighting together. This is super corny, and the fact that this isn't a tutorial, but a core part of the game... is making this feel a bit weird.

...There appears to be some kind of text wrap glitch that I think might be caused by the avatar's variable name, where the name will be cut off if it's too close to the end of a text row, as will any other text that changes depending on the avatar's gender. I notice Dakota was cut off as “Da” and “him” was cut off as “h”. Also, there's a word missing from the end of a sentence that has “Dakota” at the beginning of it, so it might be even worse than that. Probably a result of the fan translation, but man, I hope that doesn't keep me from being able to re-read anything important.

And now Luke dubs Dakota “Dakota the Terrible”, and we reach the save screen again.

...What are we at, 7 pages now?

Yeah, I think that's a good place to stop for today. I'll try to do more tomorrow when there are fewer first-entry remarks to take up space.

...I'm a bit nervous, because I haven't reached the part of the game yet where I know if this is going to be fun or not.

But hey, it's not tedious or anything, so at least there's that.

We'll pick this up tomorrow.

Stay safe, everyone!

[Venger_06]

 5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

One idea might be to turn it into a pseudo-vacation, have you guys vote on which game you want me to replay and refresh my thoughts on, and then turn the playlog into a weekly update thing, rather than a daily one, so that I have more free time and there's less pressure, and I just jot out random notes that stick out at me and then use those notes to discuss the game at the end of the week. Similar to what I did for my Igavania play-and-rank, though that was whenever I finished a game. Anyway, then I'd resume with the next game in the marathon.

But I have literally no idea what you guys would think about that concept, so I'm just putting that out there to hear your thoughts before seriously considering it at all. I know that ideas that slow down the linear progress of the marathon generally get pretty mixed reception.

I think you should only revisit the previous games when you finish Three Houses.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So, we're back to playing on my computer, which makes playlogging a bit more convenient, but I dunno, I've found there's a charm to playing on original hardware, especially when it's handheld and doesn't require any annoying setups. Alas, for this one, I have no choice. This game didn't get sold in my country or in my language.

Do you have anything against using homebrew to play on the DSi or 3DS?

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Personally, I think if they wanted a mode to invite the people scared off by permadeath, this game should have introduced rewinds.

I'm planning to write a post about casual mode in the future, so I'll just say this: I wanted them to continue using FE4 battle saves, they are the best thing ever.

[Interdimensional Observer]

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Speaking of, I've decided I'm gonna be playing on hard difficulty, and ironmanning. I've heard that the higher difficulties are apparently way harder than Shadow Dragon and require far more flawless strategy in order to not be obliterated. And I'd like to see firsthand how this game compares to Shadow Dragon in terms of ironmanning, so... better to not do difficulty modes that require direct familiarity with the game.

A positive of this is that by finishing the game once on Hard, you remove the male reclass split for all future runs. Meaning there's no longer a "slim vs. burly" dude divide, Barst can be a Swordmaster and Roshea a Warrior. Thats good should you like this game and try it on a higher difficulty afterwards.

 

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

My choices were as follows:

Past: Noble's child. Spd/skill +2, spd/skill growth +5%. If I'm ever going to need help doubling enemies, it's going to be starting out. A 55% speed growth should be plenty to make sure I never stop doubling once I start. Especially since a lack of skill learning means there's very little incentive to change classes except maybe between hero and general or dracoknight and paladin.

Present: Strength. HP +2, HP growth +20%. This will give me exactly a 100% HP growth as a mercenary, which is pretty tempting for reliability and ensuring bulk, especially since my last choice is:

Future: Humane. Def growth +10%. I know this is going to be my best unit, and I think it's important to make him bulky. Especially since losing him means a game over.

I wish these choices actually affected Kris as a character, but they don't, barring a throwaway line or two.

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Huh. I don't know how, but somehow I never noticed that Dolhr was its own island nation, and not connected to the rest of the landmass.

Shared with Macedon of course. But it only adds to how unusually archipelagic Archanea is. Altea, Gra, Grust, Macedon, Dolhr, Talys, Pyrathi, all island nations, no other FE compares, most FE world maps are merely big solid continents. This was probably unintentional, though Archanea being based on the Mediterranean does provide a slight semblance of reality to this, considering the Med Sea was water surrounded by land, Classical European-Near East Asia-North African antiquity was mostly interconnected by readily saltwater, not dirt. 

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Also, it makes me realize just how much of this fucking continent hasn't been explored by this point in the DS remake duology. Am I missing countries that are missing here, or is that entire upper half of the continent devoted to nothing but Khadein and Anri's Way?

If Anri's Way, and the deserts of Khadein are representative of the whole, then no wonder civilization doesn't exist up north. Barbarians can subsist sure, but barbarians can't be that numerous or that civilized. This said, Thabes and the Ice Dragon temple mean that at some point, dragonkind was able to tame the wilderness, and maybe it wasn't that wild back then.

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay, so they do the whole “countries turning red and blue depending on enemy or ally control” thing... and in the end, Dolhr turns blue... that raises the question.. what exactly happened to Dolhr after it lost the war? Were there any military sanctions? Was it occupied even briefly? Did anything happen to Dolhr to prevent it from having the capacity to try to take over the world again?

If Bantu wore clothes equal to the amount of information we have about Dolhr, his thong would be a little small. We know it's probably all badlands. And it would seem the only reason Dolhr went to war is because Medeus rose up, otherwise I guess the angry Manaketes grumbled in silence? I'd honestly be surprised if even Macedon had normal relations with Dolhr.

 

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I've gotta say, getting all of this hero-worship and praise based on some trivially easy battles is starting to get on my nerves. If that's gonna happen to me at all, I like to earn it by doing shit that's genuinely hard. Starting as some nobody and then slowly becoming somebody by earning it.

The desire to gut Kris with a kris knife begins.

I'm not a super-duper Kris hater, though the trend Kris innocently started is... 😐.

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

A positive of this is that by finishing the game once on Hard, you remove the male reclass split for all future runs. Meaning there's no longer a "slim vs. burly" dude divide, Barst can be a Swordmaster and Roshea a Warrior. Thats good should you like this game and try it on a higher difficulty afterwards.

That bonus feature actually kinda pisses me off, since it just makes men objectively better than women after your first playthrough. Part of me wishes they let everyone have access to all three sets, and let men use female classes too, and women all the male classes, even when the models don't match up. It would be amazingly stupid, but so's the idea of an unlockable bonus feature that makes women objectively worse than men in a game that gives you the option to play as a female character.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

And now the game does something super annoying and makes your stat customization dependent on an arbitrary and obtuse personality quiz. Thankfully this isn't as convoluted as the one in Langrisser, and a quick look at a guide is all I'm gonna need to work out what stats I want. But holy shit would I have been pissed off if I had to do this blind.

While the game asks a lot of barely-if-at-all-related questions about your past, present and future, what the game's really determining is which three stats you want to have a bonus in. There are three bonuses you can get:

Past: Big base stat boost but tiny or nonexistent growth rate boost, lowest boost long-term.

Present: Medium base stat boost and medium growth rate boost.

Future: Tiny or nonexistent base stat boost but big growth rate boost, biggest boost long-term.

I honestly like the compromise here, where its easy to look up and figure out, but also works as a way of roleplaying with a character's goals and history that impact gameplay.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Anyway, this isn't gonna be entirely blind. I've done the prologue before, ages ago, back in college. And I got a certain distance into the game. Not very far though. I remember something about Caesar and Radd and a very, very tiny map causing me to give up entirely for reasons I can't quite remember.

I am guessing younger you got too annoyed by Caesar and Radd committing suicide on your units, as they are very aggressive as enemies, and are only recruited if they survive the map. The gaiden chapters in this game has an odd feel to them, as they are generally incredibly tiny, and end up with almost a puzzle feel to them, as they often require extremely fast, or unconventional play to get the recruitable character in them alive.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Ah yes, Luke is arrogant and decides to attack Dakota instead of Ryan. That makes things so much easier. If this was deliberately giving Luke AI reflecting his character... kudos.

...I'm noticing that this game doesn't seem to have separate enemy-phase themes right now.

...I would love it if that means a certain song I thought was enemy-phase exclusive turns out to not be.

Oh yeah, one thing before I forget: this game ditches weapon weight entirely, so with attack speed, what you see is what you get. I'm not the biggest fan of a reduction of ways in which weapons can differentiate themselves, but the strength-based weapon weight system basically made weight irrelevant past the early game unless you're a mage. So okay, let's go with that for now.

Alright, so, Luke's battle convo with Ryan seems to confirm that yes, Luke will only attack Dakota. And when attempting to double-check, I discovered that the text archive function... doesn't seem to work during in-battle text scenes. That's... lame.

One interesting thing about this map is that it also introduces players to the idea of the enemy AI changing on higher difficulties. On higher difficulties Luke will attack Ryan, and I think H1 is low enough that Rody wont move until Luke falls (although you had sensible enough caution not to test this).

 

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Oh yeah, quick update on the whole question of the balance rating: I'm keeping it, but I'm gonna be changing a few things. I looked at my original description of the balance rating, and I think I've kinda slowly lost track of what I was actually supposed to be judging. Shadow Dragon will be going down on that list next time, and some other things will be changing. The frustrating part, though, is that this is one of the hardest things to remember anything more than basic impressions about, and with the extremely notable exception of Shadow Dragon (which I replayed immediately on H4 over the weekend and am now on Chapter 16), playlogging a game tends to leave me with very little desire to revisit it any time soon, so replaying these games in my free time to refresh my impressions just does not feel like a fun or practical idea on top of doing the playlog.

 

Honestly I'm fine with the balancing rating. Replaying all the games again in your free time seems highly unnecessary (especially when there's a certain other game I really want you to play *cough* *cough*)

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And I'll be honest, viewers: that makes me sad.

Because I don't like casual mode.

Not just that I don't like to play it.

I have issues with the fact that it exists.

...Hear me out.

Permadeath has always been the foundation of Fire Emblem's difficulty. Even in games where ironmanning isn't ideal or even fun, every single game in the entire series, including the ones with casual mode, has been balanced around the core premise that any victory that comes at the cost of a unit's life is a victory with consequences. Difficulty revolves around getting through challenges while keeping people alive. And whether you reset after a death or not, the core concept of avoiding losing allies forms the foundation of the game's fail state.

 

I don't really begrudge people for playing in casual, but I do fear how it will effect the future design of the series (despite your claim I don't really think Three Houses is designed around Classic at all). I definitely think the series should provide more incentives to help people to "graduate" to classic mode. Things like alternate routes or paralogues that are only opened up with death conditions. And not arbitrarily slaughter half your army death conditions, but more Tiki Nagi death conditions. Maybe a middle mode too where instead of a unit either dying or not dying, they're incapacitated for three chapters. That would make intentionally sacrificing units to cheese a map come with major down sides and would simulate the effects of classic while still also keeping all the character endings and S supports and stuff that make people attached to these portraits.

Speaking of paralogues, you never did read over the scripts of the missed paralogues in Shadow Dragon, did you?

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay, so they do the whole “countries turning red and blue depending on enemy or ally control” thing... and in the end, Dolhr turns blue... that raises the question.. what exactly happened to Dolhr after it lost the war? Were there any military sanctions? Was it occupied even briefly? Did anything happen to Dolhr to prevent it from having the capacity to try to take over the world again?

 

That's something I've been wondering about recently too. As far as I can remember we hear absolutely zero about what happens to it after the war, and we even end up going to it in this game! In fact, aside from the playable ones and Medeus, we don't see any manaketes at all in this game (and that's even if Medeus still counts as a manakete after his ressurection as he never shows off a human form). As the only possible character from Doluna that has a chance of being still alive, I can only assume Bulzark took control of things.

 

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Ooh! That's new! I tried pressing the “dialog transcript” button, but accidentally thought the button was L due to the button constantly changing depending on the generation of game, and discovered there's now a new feature mapped to that button where once there was nothing: a lexicon of terms, like in Radiant Dawn! Guess they felt that sequels need something like that. I like how you can access it during dialogue scenes.

 

One thing I keep getting the feeling from New Mystery is that they were scrambling to add content to it. Book 2 wasn't originally an entire game. It was half of one game. It only had twenty  one chapters, which isn't a tiny amount, but it is the lowest of any Fire Emblem game with conventional chapter count (ie not Gaiden/Genealogy). Sacred Stones will only have twenty one chapters on any given playthrough, but because of the route split it actually has 26 chapters on the story, plus another twenty from the bonus dungeons (and another for that coastal map). They had to pair down the original Shadow Dragon from 25 to whatever it ended up being to match the length of Book 2. So when they came to make New Mystery they had a game as short as Sacred Stone's story with absolutely no extra maps in existence to compensate.

That's one of the reasons why Kris had to be invented at this point. The game needs a sub plot like that to fill it out. And anyone who's experience the original Mystery of the Emblem knows that it's "plot" consists of about 96% lore exposition, so having a new character in there who's guaranteed to not be dead was a good choice to try and inject some more actual characters into this story.

Other things they did to fill the game out included making every goddamn playable character in Archanea's history available in this game aside from the ones that they absolutely couldn't because they died in the plot (and Gotoh for some reason, I'm surprised they stayed loyal to him not being playable in this game despite they're being no real story justification at all). This is something people kind of make fun of the game for, but it did kind of have to do it to some extent. We do want to uses axes in New Mystery after all, which the original Book 2 didn't let you use at all (take notes Shadows of Valentia, I'll not forgive you for that). They probably didn't have to go quite as far as they did though, and if they were going to add so many characters they definitely could have done a better job implementing them. I would have left most of the recruitment to Gaiden chapters. You can still have the assassin plotline since they just need to show up as the enemy. Characters just showing up on the map or before battle saying "Oh I'm here to join you Marth!" just removes all the fanfare about actually getting the character.

Last thing they did to fill out the content, which was the best thing they should have done and I wish other games would follow suit in this, was to remake Archanea saga at the same time. It's great to get that obscure part of the series history adapted into a more readily playable fashion...I was about to say localised into English there, but alas, no, for this game never was, and I weep. There was also some dlc maps that had original stories, but aside from getting to wreck things as Gharnef it didn't really chaptalize on any part of Archanean history that I'm interested in. Rescuing the Grust nobles would have been a perfect opportunity for something we know actually happened there instead of some random stuff with Ogma and Nabarl.

48 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That bonus feature actually kinda pisses me off, since it just makes men objectively better than women after your first playthrough. Part of me wishes they let everyone have access to all three sets, and let men use female classes too, and women all the male classes, even when the models don't match up. It would be amazingly stupid, but so's the idea of an unlockable bonus feature that makes women objectively worse than men in a game that gives you the option to play as a female character.

Personally I'm a big fan of Fates's "You get one class change option" for every character. It wouldn't have worked for New Mystery here with how much focus they put on class changing, and it does devolve it down to "Is class changing to the one option optimal or not optimal for this character?" especially in a game without branched promotions, but damnit all if I don't love how much of an opportunity it is for characterizing units by giving them a second class. Like making Castor's class change option being a thief (not possible in this class change system, but it's not like they couldn't have given us rogues and made thief a regular class) since he's always in need of money for his ailing money, or making Hardin's class change option an Armoured Knight in Shadow Dragon since we know he ends up getting involved in that fighting style.

Edited October 27, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

They had to pair down the original Shadow Dragon from 25 to whatever it ended up being to match the length of New Mystery.

That is an astonishingly pathetic motivation for those removed chapters, and yet it sounds so plausible. Is there a source for that?

 

9 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That's one of the reasons why Kris had to be invented at this point. The game needs a sub plot like that to fill it out. And anyone who's experience the original Mystery of the Emblem knows that it's "plot" consists of about 96% lore exposition, so having a new character in there who's guaranteed to not be dead was a good choice to try and inject some more actual characters into this story.

I... hadn't considered that. Excellent point.

16 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I am guessing younger you got too annoyed by Caesar and Radd committing suicide on your units, as they are very aggressive as enemies, and are only recruited if they survive the map. The gaiden chapters in this game has an odd feel to them, as they are generally incredibly tiny, and end up with almost a puzzle feel to them, as they often require extremely fast, or unconventional play to get the recruitable character in them alive.

Oh dear. Well, I'm ironmanning, so I'll have to be prepared to cut my losses if I can't recruit some of them. Come to think of it, are Caesar and Radd better in this game, or was I likely just being obsessively completionist in wanting them alive?

[lenticular]

On 10/24/2020 at 9:59 PM, Alastor15243 said:

The DS games don't ever need you to use the touch screen, actually. That's used for a wholly optional and completely separate alternate control scheme. You can do everything with buttons.

As for the 3DS, I'll have to play again, but I remember rarely needing to take out the stylus to activate the extra info for stuff on the bottom screen. My thumb/fingers worked just fine, or at least fast enough that I don't remember it ever being faster to get the stylus out. Plus, the more you play the game, the less you need the tap tips anyway. But I will keep an eye out for that!

Yeah, my memory is fuzzy. Honestly, I'm lucky if I can remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, so it's entirely likely I'm conflating memories of different games here. I do remember it definitely being a problem at some point, but maybe that wasn't in Shadow Dragon, since that had way fewer mechanics so less need to look up additional details.

On 10/24/2020 at 9:59 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Shame you and handhelds don't mix well though. That's gotta be a pain.

Yep. It really makes me appreciate the Switch though. Having all the series that Nintendo shunted off onto handhelds for a while finally be back on home console is very welcome.

23 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Weirdly, while I definitely had this problem with FE1 and FE3, I haven't had it at all with FE11. The interface just lets you do things so quickly without any speed-up assistance necessary that I never had time to feel like something was tedious. And I've found that there's generally always something for my army to do while Marth's running around doing stuff.

I wonder if difficulty level has anything to do with that. I think that I played through Shadow Dragon on Normal, because I'm not normally an ironman player but wanted to make an exception for Shadow Dragon given how much it's pushed there, and was wary of over-taxing myself. I probably would have been better served by a harder difficulty level, though, that would have kept me more engaged. I definitely played at something below H3, because there is absolutely no way I'd have sat through the early-game boss nonsense. I'd assume that the higher the difficulty level, the longer it takes to clear each level, whereas the time doing errands with Marth probably stays fairly constant.

And as I read back what I wrote, I realise it also ties into what you were saying about the existence of casual mode. Casual mode isn't at all appealing to me, but I'm generally a reset-when-anyone-dies sort of player, and I kinda did exactly what you were talking about by being more scared of permadeath than I actually should have been and making the game worse for myself as a result. It's not the same as people who play on casual and complete every level trivially by throwing bodies at it, but I do think it's related. So my wish for Fire Emblem difficulty is this: it should always be possible to change between difficulty levels in the middle of a run. I'm sure it would introduce a few weirdnesses here and there, but I doubt it would be anything too serious. I definitly think it would be worth it, though. I'd be more eager to try harder difficulties if I didn't fear being locked into something too hard and having to restart halfway through.