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

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh it certainly could be, but I think we can safely say that it isn't. Consider: the character with no supports, Anna, is a huge competitor for worst character in the game.

3H!Anna is an interesting data point, to be sure. Having no supports (more likely a result of her playable version being rushed, than any intentional balancing) certainly makes her a worse unit than she would be otherwise. That said, I'll confess that this absence has predisposed me against her, without trying her out or considering what she brings to the table. It might be that she's a perfectly competent unit, aside from the lack of supports. She's good in Speed, Luck, and Charm, with a few solid proficiencies. Then again, that Authority bane and lacking offensive presence are... unfortunate. At the very least, she looks like she could provide a better version of the "Rescue Holy Knight Bernadetta", given her Faith boon, earlier spell access, and higher magic growth (both sharing Pass from a Riding talent).

That said, I think it's safe to say that you and I have different preferences in terms of what we want out of a support system. That isn't to say that your own are wrong, of course - I appreciate hearing a different perspective. I hope my objections didn't appear to cross the line into questioning the validity of your own thoughts.

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

That's a fair point. I'll admit that I'm not really super familiar with Awakening, so I was basing that particular comment on what I've seen others say about the game rather than my own experience of it.

Most Awakening kids are already compromised by joining well behind contemporary enemies (at least, at higher difficulty levels). Inheritance matters, sure, but if you're willing to grind (pretty much necessary to get someone like Brady or Noire off the ground), then a bad pairing just means more grinding is needed.

Fates alleviates the underleveling issue, but I don't have enough pairing experience to say whether kids can get "screwed". ...I mean, aside from by Corrin.

[Alastor15243]

Wow. This may very well be the single most controversial thing I've ever said, in the history of the entire two years I've been doing this. I don't think I've ever said anything in the entire history of this thread that was met with this many people responding with 100% unanimous disagreement with me. On one hand, I'm kind of impressed it took this long, but on the other, I totally didn't expect to still be so alone on this point.

Oh well. Guess I'm going to have to move on then, because it's become pretty clear that the disagreement here is due to fundamental differences with what people want out of a support system, and at least in this thread, what I want out of it seems to be pretty unpopular.

[Jotari]

31 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Wow. This may very well be the single most controversial thing I've ever said, in the history of the entire two years I've been doing this. I don't think I've ever said anything in the entire history of this thread that was met with this many people responding with 100% unanimous disagreement with me. On one hand, I'm kind of impressed it took this long, but on the other, I totally didn't expect to still be so alone on this point.

Oh well. Guess I'm going to have to move on then, because it's become pretty clear that the disagreement here is due to fundamental differences with what people want out of a support system, and at least in this thread, what I want out of it seems to be pretty unpopular.

For what it's worth I'm mostly in agreement with you. GBA supports suck from a useability aspect, but there's surely a middle ground between the likes of them and Three Houses. Radiant Dawn had the best supports XD

[Sunwoo]

I'm not a fan of how 3H does supports, tbh.

[UNLEASH IT]

I always felt like 3H's supports were more geared towards fleshing out the story as opposed to affecting the gameplay. In Fates and Awakening, supports were extremely important from a gameplay perspective since they provided large stat boosts, unlocked extra chapters, gave you extra units, and in the case of Fates, gave you extra classes. It was for that reason why every unit in Awakening/Birthright/Conquest had to be able to support with nearly every unit of the opposite gender, to give you as many options as possible. 

3H's supports don't really give you much from a gameplay perspective, and battalions essentially replaced pair-up with regards to giving you large stat boosts (though with a significantly lower opportunity cost than the latter.) 

Edited August 26, 2021 by UNLEASH IT

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses Day 17: Monsters!

Alright, let's try this again.

I had a hot take prepared for today... okay, actually yesterday, before what was supposed to be a quick note took way longer than expected... where I was going to make the case for why the concept of more than two tiers of classes is asinine. But I'm gonna save my notes on that for tomorrow, because I'm not even going to attempt something that would risk sidetracking us from actual gameplay two entries in a row. Three Houses does that shit enough already.

Make no mistake, though: I will discuss that tomorrow.

So, moving on to the pre-battle story...

So apparently an extremely difficult-to-breach tower was just left... abandoned. I get that the conflict it was originally made for is no longer a thing, but... do we just leave perfectly-good, highly-fortified buildings abandoned like that? That sounds like a massive liability. If they weren't going to repurpose it for some other military purpose, perhaps as an anti-bandit watch tower... they should've destroyed it, rather than leave it completely open to be taken over by thieves.

But yeah, this is Gilbert. Annette's estranged father, and apparently a big candidate for “worst FE dad ever”. I know he abandoned his family and changed his name over some weird shit that's apparently more sympathetic in Japan than in the west, but the specific details of what I've heard about him escape me. At any rate, I wasn't trying too hard to learn much, because obviously I needed to experience Blue Lions for myself.

...But lemme tell ya, he's gonna have to work pretty damned hard to turn out to be a shittier dad than Claud.

Dimitri: Professor. Did you see the local villages? They were in rough shape, no doubt because of the thief attacks. They're not going to make it through the winter in that condition.

Two things:

First, note yet again that the game uses the term “thief” interchangeably with “bandit” and “brigand”, something that's almost completely unheard of since brigands were introduced as a class. I still find that perplexing.

Second, this is why you shouldn't assign this job to fucking students who can't be mobilized until a whole month later.

And then Sylvain shows up, and... uh...

...Holy shit is his emoting weird here. It occurs to me that I don't think I've ever heard him talk in any tone of voice other than the one he's using here. He's talking about his contempt for his disowned bandit brother in almost the exact same tone of voice he'd use to talk about how much he loves flirting with girls. Doesn't help that he's still using his smiling portrait.

And of course, now we get to the infamous Chapter 5. Hated for, in addition to the shit that apparently happens on Maddening, being excruciatingly long. The reason, of course, is because this map is a spiral. Also known as the objectively mathematically longest non-overlapping path you can make from point A to point B in a structure.

And nearly everyone is still in a four move class.

If we move at absolute flawless breakneck speed, we will reach the fight with Miklan on turn fifteen. Make no mistake, I have definitely seen worse on that front, but still, it's pretty obnoxious map design, especially since it's basically just a long hallway for all intents and purposes, save for the stuff you can do with archers.

And then, of course, the game makes you leave a couple units behind to help protect Gilbert from the piddling trickle of reinforcements to the rear that are just barely enough to reliably obliterate him. At least if you want the extra reward you get for keeping him alive.

Really, this chapter is a slog. I'm hoping I can get through it today.

Also, hey, uh... doesn't it kind of defeat the purpose of having the market facilities on the combat prep screen... when the merchant who sells the materials you need to use the blacksmith isn't available there? If you forget to buy smithing materials during your free time, you're completely boned.

Also also, I have to ask... what the fuck is “replenishing” battalions, canonically? What am I doing here? Why are my battalions completely ditching their commanders after suffering losses so amazingly minor that they can apparently be financially compensated with less than one seventeenth the cost of a single iron sword?

I genuinely wonder if the devs realized how broken battalion vantage and battalion wrath are when they designed the battalion system, because it genuinely seems to me, given how stupid low the prices are, that the only reason there's a price at all instead of just automatically replenishing after each battle... is because they recognized some people would want their battalions to stay “damaged”.

I start the fight, and Sylvain's still smiling while talking about how his brother is going to “pay for everything he's done”.

Dimitri, Annette and Dedue all stay behind, because they're all level 9 and can probably easily reach level 10 on the rear reinforcements.

Come to think about it, given that Gilbert basically never leaves the starting area due to the reinforcements, the devs would have to know that they're basically making him comically useless here, right?

Oh right!

And this is that weird moment where the game just arbitrarily decides to have literal ambush spawns even outside of Maddening!

I don't have clue one why they did that here, but what I can't say I am is surprised. Nothing is sacred in Three Houses. There are no rules with what might happen on enemy phase. Other games can be shitty about their reinforcements, but at least they're consistently shitty in the same way. Three Houses just... does whatever the fuck it wants with regards to how to fuck you over and make you paranoid of your surroundings, and it made my blind ironman a living hell.

We're going to witness some more of what I'm talking about, but suffice to say, the devs do not give a single shit about people who are playing this game without divine pulse. As a matter of fact, at times the devs seem to actively hate them, or more charitably, think ruining their ability to enjoy the game was a worthy trade-off for making... “cinematic”, I guess, excuses for the player to rewind time.

...Huh, wait, no, apparently these aren't the ambush spawns. They spawned like ambush spawns, at the beginning of the turn, but they didn't do anything that turn. But I distinctly remember there were reinforcements in this chapter that did. And what the fuck was the point of making them spawn at the start of the turn instead of the end, then?

Weirdly, this time Gilbert's also traveling with the main group rather than chasing after the rear reinforcements. Guess I managed to head off the rear ones in time to make the reinforcements further afield more tempting?

Also, if reinforcements are coming in from behind, does that mean we don't have anyone outside securing the area?

Oh hey, take note: usually, when indoors, especially in games with ambush spawns, the spaces reinforcements can come from are stairs.

Here...

...The only indication the game gives that reinforcements can come from the spaces in the northeast corner... is a subtle detail in the walls next to them.

Walls that, despite still being labeled as walls on the map, are visually doors.

...YEP! WAVE TWO FROM THE SOUTHWEST WAS IN FACT AN AMBUSH SPAWN!

There were four of them, and I only sent three units down there. I expected Gilbert to be around to be more of a meat shield. Thankfully I managed to use a gambit to avoid being overwhelmed, though it looks like gambits can't kill anyone they aren't directly targeted at, something I could've sworn wasn't the case.

So yeah, regardless of whether they attack on this turn or not, reinforcements, at least on this map, always show up at the start of the turn. Basically leaving you to guess what sort of reinforcement it'll be.

...Did they just forget to flag that one group of reinforcements as being supposed to end their turn after showing up?

Now, I don't know about you guys, but I find myself only ever using gambits for two main purposes: rattling large groups of melee enemies, and breaking shields on monsters quickly. For both uses they're really useful, but for everything else... I generally find them never worth using. I dunno, battalions in general just feel like an overall weird system to me. Not sure how to describe my feelings on them. It just feels like this system intended to add a sense of “realism”... when their actual impact on battle is hilariously unrealistic in how minimal it is. Tiny stat boosts and occasional special attacks.

Anyway, funny enough, the guys I sent down because they were level 9 and could probably get to level 10 off the reinforcements... all got to level 10 on the reinforcements. So, great guess there, me.

I have Sylvain start making curved shot potshots at his brother from across the wall, though most of the damage comes from the after-battle effect of using that weapon. I dunno if this will make him charge, but I'm hoping, because that'll get this map over with just that much sooner.

Yep! He's moving!

...I've been getting a ridiculous number of underwhelming level ups. Weirdly the same thing is happening on my FE7 normal mode Lyndis's Legion run (long story), so... I'm really hoping this doesn't come back to bite me. Admittedly, some people are getting good level ups, while others are getting just plain weird ones (Dedue has more speed than defense right now).

...Generic enemies can use combat arts? That's a thing? I don't remember ever seeing generic enemies use combat arts before, but this fucking knight just used helm splitter on me!

Miklan saying he'll “kill every last one of [us]” is just, uh... I mean, he's even doing it while holding a relic lance...

To be clear, I'm not blaming the game for this. No game can predict their own memes. But it's still funny.

...And so, in an absolutely horrifying cutscene... we're introduced to the concept of demonic beasts. Basically, crest stones do... unpleasant things to people and animals who touch them without crests. They turn into massive, horrific monsters.

Now, this is intense, and cinematic and all, and in many ways it's a really cool gameplay mechanic that I think the older games could have benefitted from, especially for final bosses... but uh...

...I have questions. Questions that I am going to be on the look out for answers to. Questions I remember asking previously, and not finding answers to.

Why is Miklan surprised this happened? How can someone who grew up in a famous crest-bearing household not know that you aren't supposed to touch relics with your bare hands, and why?

Why is anyone surprised this happened? How can the existence of giant fucking kaiju motherfuckers that Garreg Mach regularly runs pest control missions on be a secret?

Why do crest stones do this? Is it part of a magical draconic immune system that's attacking things in contact with dragon body parts that it doesn't recognize as a part of its own body? If so, what possible practical survival purpose could it serve to turn foreign biomatter that would presumably be inside your body into giant fucking monsters? What possible practical purpose could this serve period?

And finally, why is the tutorial for fighting these monsters such complete garbage?

For some inexplicable reason, when they throw the tutorial for these giant monster fights at you... literally one hundred percent of the tutorial... is spoken in-character, by Sothis.

First off, the fact that they even felt the need to make this tutorial so thoroughly in-universe is frankly ridiculous, considering the fact that Professr should not need to be instructed on this in-character if she's been an accomplished, village-rescuing heroic mercenary all her life. There is no conceivable way that these fucking things roam the countryside and pop up whenever a fucking bird eats something funny off the ground, and she hasn't killed hundreds by now.

Second, having literally one hundred percent of the tutorial text be in-character... means they have to be metaphorical and not speak of explicit game mechanics and numbers, which kind of hinders the game's ability to teach you. To say nothing of the fact that they just throw all of this shit at you and expect you to absorb it right before a climactic boss fight.

Words cannot express how fucking terrified and confused I was when this happened in my ironman. Thankfully, I managed to fight my way through, but it took ages after this fight before I fully processed how demonic beasts work, because there's just so much to absorb, and due to the fact that they never explicitly gave any numbers or referred to mechanics outside of accompanying pictures, I was scared shitless that I was misinterpreting something.

Thankfully I manage to break all of its shields with an initial charge, and after getting a very handy 5 umbral steel...

...No, wait, you can get more of the material used to repair relics... by killing these monsters?

...So the demonic beasts... are made out of the same material as dragon bones?

Wouldn't that imply that... draconic bodyparts are some sort of self-replicating end-of-the-world gray goo scenario...? Why do they only work on animals, and not plants? Why would an alien lifeform's biology make a distinction directly along earth taxonomical-

...Stay focused, Alastor, you're almost done with the chapter.

...I just realized Annette can't talk to her father here. That is... so weird.

...But yeah, Monster Miklan is down. Sorry, I don't have time today for the ending story segment. We'll leave that for tomorrow, along with support catch-up.

Stay safe, everyone.

Edited August 26, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

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

Fates alleviates the underleveling issue, but I don't have enough pairing experience to say whether kids can get "screwed". ...I mean, aside from by Corrin.

Lategame prepromotes with at least semi-usable stats that don't require any EXP means they can be alright at least, if mediocre.

Variable parent growths do matter more now, thanks to the exclusion of the fixed parent's growths. And leveling being finite barring extreme grinding increases the value of growths. 

If we took an extreme example, let's quickly compare Effie and Elise for Ophelia in one-two stats:

• With Effie Ophelia's Mag growth would be (0 + 45)/2 = 22% before class, pretty bad for a dedicated mage character.
  • Her Str would end up at 37% pre-class, which is very slightly below average, not quite enough to make her physically strong to compensate for butchering her Mag. Not helped by Ophelia having 3 Str at base. Percy makes 4 work for a physical unit, but other children have upward of 8 here.
• Elise would provide Ophelia with (65 + 45) = 55% Mag growth, more than double Effie's.

This is an extreme case, as there is no growth difference as big as this. For most parent comparisons, the gulf wouldn't be anywhere near as massive. A more reasonable 10% growth lead in a mother would equate to but a 5% lead in their child. 5% is but 1 point per 20 levels, which given children have at most 29 levels to get, is 1.5 points by 20/20. Three points by with a 20% mother growth difference is bigger, but still two-thirds coverable with a tonic on the weaker variant of the kid.

Class growths pad the difference further, as an extra 10-20 growth reduces the relative size of the difference, if not the absolute value of it.

So there is more room for screwage in Fates. Not sure I'd say totally unusable though.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

So apparently an extremely difficult-to-breach tower was just left... abandoned. I get that the conflict it was originally made for is no longer a thing, but... do we just leave perfectly-good, highly-fortified buildings abandoned like that? That sounds like a massive liability. If they weren't going to repurpose it for some other military purpose, perhaps as an anti-bandit watch tower... they should've destroyed it, rather than leave it completely open to be taken over by thieves.

Historically, leaving good forts abandoned seems to been unlikely in Medieval Europe, according to this one bit of notes I jotted down from a book.:

1. Up to ~800 AD, many “castles” in Europe were simply converted classical Roman buildings. Their solidly built masonry, even in a semi-ruinous state, was still sturdy enough to mount an effective resistance to ill-disciplined raiders, such as the Vikings and Saracens.
   1. Ironically, the Vikings, raiders par excellence, against whom castles usually protected, ended up pillaging a Roman fortress in York, only to hide in it during an English counterattack.
   2. In Rome, the huge circular tomb of Emperor Hadrian was converted into a fortress, and connected to the papal palace of the Vatican via a secret passage. The popes renamed this tomb-turned-fortress the Castel Sant’Angelo.

As for why from the 400s AD to ~800 new fortresses and castles weren't being built in large numbers. Blame the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Germanic "barbarians" who replaced the Empire might not have been savages incapable of forming civilization, but you can't deny an intellectual decline. And so too with the breakup of the Empire came a reduction in resources a monarch could draw upon, due to increased decentralization of political authority. Castles require a decent (but not book-smart) understanding of engineering and lots of resources to build.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also also, I have to ask... what the fuck is “replenishing” battalions, canonically? What am I doing here? Why are my battalions completely ditching their commanders after suffering losses so amazingly minor that they can apparently be financially compensated with less than one seventeenth the cost of a single iron sword?

Hearing you say this makes this sound very unbelievable indeed.

I take it the Battalions are comprised mostly of mercenaries or knights/men-at-arms, not "free" feudal levies giving inexperienced grunts, nor slaves. Each of whom of course has to eat, get paid, and maintain their weapons and armor which the army will probably have to provide. Thats a lot of individual costs multiplied by many individuals there.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

It just feels like this system intended to add a sense of “realism”... when their actual impact on battle is hilariously unrealistic in how minimal it is. Tiny stat boosts and occasional special attacks.

And yet, in the character rating topics here on SF, I noticed a good deal of criticism whenever someone had an Authority bane. And nobody ever actually explained why that bane was so bad. Why?

Is it because you'll always be using a Battalion? A bane in *insert weapon type here* isn't so bad, because there is always weapon types where a character has a boon and you'll be using that instead, so weapon banes don't matter as much? 

As for the stat boosts *Edits incorrect information into the void*

 

-But I am no 3H metagamer. And admittedly, thinking Battalions would be too expensive, went through almost the entirety of my first playthrough leaving everyone without a Battalion, to little ill effect barring enemy Petra.

Edited August 26, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer
I erred the data I was consulting.

[AnonymousSpeed]

18 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Wow. This may very well be the single most controversial thing I've ever said, in the history of the entire two years I've been doing this. I don't think I've ever said anything in the entire history of this thread that was met with this many people responding with 100% unanimous disagreement with me.

Boi what did you say?

[Alastor15243]

Just now, AnonymousSpeed said:

Boi what did you say?

Long story short: that Three Houses' support system is terrible because it takes all the gameplay fun out of matchmaking and essentially throws six hours of story filler at you instead.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

Long story short: that Three Houses' support system is terrible because it takes all the gameplay fun out of matchmaking and essentially throws six hours of story filler at you instead.

Oh yeah, I totally agree. I'm well past the point of dreading reading supports because there's so many of them and they take so long while rarely being interesting.

Yo, you check out that Sylvain-Leonie support? The guy will hit on a scarecrow but has to be consciously reminded to hit on Leonie.

[lenticular]

54 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I genuinely wonder if the devs realized how broken battalion vantage and battalion wrath are when they designed the battalion system, because it genuinely seems to me, given how stupid low the prices are, that the only reason there's a price at all instead of just automatically replenishing after each battle... is because they recognized some people would want their battalions to stay “damaged”.

My guess is that yes, they knew exactly what they were doing with battalion vantage and battalion wrath. Consider that there are 8 characters who learn two "battalion blah" skills. Of these, two get saddled with the abysmal battalion renewal. Of the other six, three get the pairing of battalion desperation and battalion wrath, two have battalion desperation and battalion vantage, and only one gets the combo of battalion vantage with battalion wrath. And that one is a deliberately-overpowered Lord character. That's pretty much how I'd split things if I knew that BR was garbage and that BV/BW in combination were ridiculous.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Now, I don't know about you guys, but I find myself only ever using gambits for two main purposes: rattling large groups of melee enemies, and breaking shields on monsters quickly. For both uses they're really useful, but for everything else... I generally find them never worth using. I dunno, battalions in general just feel like an overall weird system to me. Not sure how to describe my feelings on them. It just feels like this system intended to add a sense of “realism”... when their actual impact on battle is hilariously unrealistic in how minimal it is. Tiny stat boosts and occasional special attacks.

I think that part of their function is to be a bit of an equaliser between characters and serve as bad luck protection. It matters a little bit less if (for example) Ingrid gets bad strength level-ups when a decent chunk of your might is coming from your weapon, abilities, and battalion. Of course, you'd still rather that she get good level-ups, and she's still not going to be doing as much damage as Dimitri regardless, but the difference isn't as stark as the raw differences in strength stats might imply.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Why is Miklan surprised this happened? How can someone who grew up in a famous crest-bearing household not know that you aren't supposed to touch relics with your bare hands, and why?

It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me that  "don't touch the relic" might be passed down but "...because this will happen if you do" might easily be lost. Especially since there's a religious element involved here and the potential for ritual, tradition, orthopraxy, etc. "This is the way we do things, because this is the way they have always been done."  Of course, if that was the intent then it would have been nice to have a line or two of dialogue confirming it, but I don't think that this is a huge plot hole.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

For some inexplicable reason, when they throw the tutorial for these giant monster fights at you... literally one hundred percent of the tutorial... is spoken in-character, by Sothis.

The sooner that in-universe tutorials stop being a thing, the happier I will be.

16 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

As for the stat boosts, using the SF Battalions page, it's:

• +4 Str/Mag at most (barring Dimmy's +5). I know, +4x2 or +4x4 adds up to a lot of damage, even if it seems not so big on an individual hit.
• Accuracy is less plentiful and is usually +5 or +10, but can be bigger on rare ones going up to 20 or even 30 for the best.
• Avoid bonuses cap at 15.
• Def bonuses exist at 5 points, but are usually 2-3.
• Res with one exception caps at 4.
• Charm can go as high as 10, surpasses 5 with a good deal of frequency. -But is Charm worth less per individual point?

You seem to be looking at the wrong table. Those are about the numbers for unleveled battalions, but max-level battalions have much higher numbers. Strength goes up to +10, hit to +40, def to +10, avoid to +20, etc.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...I've been getting a ridiculous number of underwhelming level ups. Weirdly the same thing is happening on my FE7 normal mode Lyndis's Legion run (long story), so... I'm really hoping this doesn't come back to bite me. Admittedly, some people are getting good level ups, while others are getting just plain weird ones (Dedue has more speed than defense right now).

Bold: ...Okay, just what are Dedue's stats?

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Shadow Mir said:

Bold: ...Okay, just what are Dedue's stats?

In that specific area? 11 speed and 10 defense at level 10.

[Interdimensional Observer]

9 minutes ago, lenticular said:

You seem to be looking at the wrong table. Those are about the numbers for unleveled battalions, but max-level battalions have much higher numbers. Strength goes up to +10, hit to +40, def to +10, avoid to +20, etc.

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♂️

Bakasme bakasme bakasme!

Whoops. How I'd make that big a mistake? Yeah, I'm seeing the Authority effects more now.

[Alastor15243]

2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Yo, you check out that Sylvain-Leonie support? The guy will hit on a scarecrow but has to be consciously reminded to hit on Leonie.

I haven't seen it in over a year, but I think the idea there was the whole "one of the boys" thing where he doesn't think of her as a girl... which is dumb, because her only even remotely arguably non-feminine feature is her short hair, and he's dated short haired girls on-screen before.

[Etrurian emperor]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But yeah, this is Gilbert. Annette's estranged father, and apparently a big candidate for “worst FE dad ever”. I know he abandoned his family and changed his name over some weird shit that's apparently more sympathetic in Japan than in the west, but the specific details of what I've heard about him escape me. At any rate, I wasn't trying too hard to learn much, because obviously I needed to experience Blue Lions for myself.

Gilbert's a shit dad and comes off as kind of a scumbag. Though obviously he can't be the worst dad in a series where Reptor, Rudolf and Garon exist. While he's an asshole I think Gilbert's ultimately more pitiful than malicious. 

The whole archetype definitely doesn't come across well in the west, and I suspect Annette being so lovable that it triggers some protective instincts plays a role as well. If he was Ingrid's dad he might not be as awfully received. 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

First, note yet again that the game uses the term “thief” interchangeably with “bandit” and “brigand”, something that's almost completely unheard of since brigands were introduced as a class. I still find that perplexing.

I low-key hate when class names, like "Thief" or "Brigand", are used to describe factions. It just breeds confusion. Like, wait, this "Thief" is actually a Myrmidon?

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also also, I have to ask... what the fuck is “replenishing” battalions, canonically? What am I doing here? Why are my battalions completely ditching their commanders after suffering losses so amazingly minor that they can apparently be financially compensated with less than one seventeenth the cost of a single iron sword?

Presumably, some of the battalion's fighters died, and you're buying new ones. Don't ask me how the NPC economy works.

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And of course, now we get to the infamous Chapter 5. Hated for, in addition to the shit that apparently happens on Maddening, being excruciatingly long. The reason, of course, is because this map is a spiral. Also known as the objectively mathematically longest non-overlapping path you can make from point A to point B in a structure.

And nearly everyone is still in a four move class.

I definitely would've preferred this map to have a "shortcut" option. Say, you can open a door and charge directly north, but at the risk of being immediately swarmed by enemies (and likely losing the Accuracy Ring drop). That said, the "forced spiral" model would be far more forgivable if this came at least two chapters later. By which point, you should have a few mounted units.

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Miklan saying he'll “kill every last one of [us]” is just, uh... I mean, he's even doing it while holding a relic lance...

Finishing your glass every time someone uses the "___ every last one of ___" format absolutely needs to be part of the Three Houses Drinking Game.

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

First off, the fact that they even felt the need to make this tutorial so thoroughly in-universe is frankly ridiculous, considering the fact that Professr should not need to be instructed on this in-character if she's been an accomplished, village-rescuing heroic mercenary all her life. There is no conceivable way that these fucking things roam the countryside and pop up whenever a fucking bird eats something funny off the ground, and she hasn't killed hundreds by now.

I don't believe it's implied that Teach has fought Demonic Beasts before (outside of theif support with Ferdinand). Maybe more "natural" monsters, like Wolves and Hawks. Still, the "Black Beast" Miklan turns into is very much an aberration to what the people of Fodlan know.

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Now, I don't know about you guys, but I find myself only ever using gambits for two main purposes: rattling large groups of melee enemies, and breaking shields on monsters quickly. For both uses they're really useful, but for everything else... I generally find them never worth using. I dunno, battalions in general just feel like an overall weird system to me. Not sure how to describe my feelings on them. It just feels like this system intended to add a sense of “realism”... when their actual impact on battle is hilariously unrealistic in how minimal it is. Tiny stat boosts and occasional special attacks.

Is it "minimal", though? There are more than a few cases on Maddening where I'd essentially face a "Game Over" scenario without, say, the ability to stun a big bunch of enemy soldiers. Or to cast "Impregnable Wall" on otherwise vulnerable allies. Not to mention, stat boosts can get as high as +10 in the offenses, defenses, and charm. Oh, and synergy with certain skills (the "Battalion ___s", plus Lorenz/Ingrid/Hubert/Gilbert's personals). They feel like a big deal to me.

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Gilbert's a shit dad and comes off as kind of a scumbag. Though obviously he can't be the worst dad in a series where Reptor, Rudolf and Garon exist. While he's an asshole I think Gilbert's ultimately more pitiful than malicious. 

Don't forget Desmond! Oh, and Darin.

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Gilbert's a shit dad and comes off as kind of a scumbag. Though obviously he can't be the worst dad in a series where Reptor, Rudolf and Garon exist. While he's an asshole I think Gilbert's ultimately more pitiful than malicious. 

The whole archetype definitely doesn't come across well in the west, and I suspect Annette being so lovable that it triggers some protective instincts plays a role as well. If he was Ingrid's dad he might not be as awfully received. 

I'd say Desmond was far worse than either of these. Probably Jedah, too.

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Now, I don't know about you guys, but I find myself only ever using gambits for two main purposes: rattling large groups of melee enemies, and breaking shields on monsters quickly. For both uses they're really useful, but for everything else... I generally find them never worth using. I dunno, battalions in general just feel like an overall weird system to me. Not sure how to describe my feelings on them. It just feels like this system intended to add a sense of “realism”... when their actual impact on battle is hilariously unrealistic in how minimal it is. Tiny stat boosts and occasional special attacks.

Just wait until you start racking up the paralogue battalions - those are where the real meat and potatoes are.

[AnonymousSpeed]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I haven't seen it in over a year, but I think the idea there was the whole "one of the boys" thing where he doesn't think of her as a girl... which is dumb, because her only even remotely arguably non-feminine feature is her short hair, and he's dated short haired girls on-screen before.

It's even more dumb because short hair is perfectly appropriate for a woman to have.

Anyway, people mentioned Gilbert. I actually like Gilbert, but I'll let you form your own opinion on him.

People also mentioned battalions. I agree with you that they're pretty bad in-universe because they draw attention to the issue they were supposed to address, the fact that a war is being waged by about 12 people taking on about 50. That said, I think they do have neat mechanical functions, even if I dislike the charisma stat as a means of improving them. Stride, Retribution, and Impregnable Wall are pretty cool.

Edited August 27, 2021 by AnonymousSpeed

[Jotari]

Battalion stat boosts can get pretty damn high. Consider how it's worth it to train Felix in authority despite him having a bane in authority and a personal skill that gives him +5 attack without a battalion, simply because battalions can give him more than a +5 damage boost per hit in addition to other stats (not saying you definitely have to train Felix in authority though, as good battalions are a limited resource and he uniquely fairs well without them, just that training him in authority is not a had idea despite his whole build being about rejecting the mechanic).

Edited August 27, 2021 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

17 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Battalion stat boosts can get pretty damn high. Consider how it's worth it to train Felix in authority despite him having a bane in authority and a personal skill that gives him +5 attack without a battalion, simply because battalions can give him more than a +5 damage boost per hit in addition to other stats (not saying you definitely have to train Felix in authority though, as good battalions are a limited resource and he uniquely fairs well without them, just that training him in authority is not a had idea despite his whole build being about rejecting the mechanic).

Okay, since this has been a major point of discussion, my point was more that battalions, while useful, have an impact on battle that's rarely as significant as even having one extra unit, let alone the implied dozen. Not to say that they could have without breaking the game into pieces, but the fact that they exist and don't doesn't really help make the fight feel like it's a huge war like they were supposedly supposed to.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay, since this has been a major point of discussion, my point was more that battalions, while useful, have an impact on battle that's rarely as significant as even having one extra unit, let alone the implied dozen. Not to say that they could have without breaking the game into pieces, but the fact that they exist and don't doesn't really help make the fight feel like it's a huge war like they were supposedly supposed to.

There no real alternative though. Its either turn the game into advanced wars and have an endless supply of faceless units, or make your main units be supported by faceless units for stat boosts. Its better than nothing for the purpose of getting that feeling (the third option would be to pull a Radiant Dawn and write the story in such a way where there are much bigger battles just off screen and the stuff you do with your party are just the specialized vanguard, well either that or write a conflict that isn't a large scale war). Personally if anything I feel like, in terms of gameplay, the benefits of battalions are too large. They could be useful without being so useful (especially those broken ass C level ones the main lord's get in Part 2 that aren't even unique to the main lords). People were imaging each individual unit was representative of a larger force for years anyway, this just visualizes the idea. Something I would have liked to have seen would be certain maps where you can't use battalions, because it's in a small area where a fight with less than two dozen people makes sense. Either that or the characters are isolated for plot reasons. Like Sothis's paralogue for example. Byleth goes to the red canyon without trusting is main kord or class, but apparently trusts some random squad of Gautier knights or something to come along. Although for that chapter specifically not having a battalion on Byleth would be a major pain for gameplay reasons.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses Day 18: Super Funtime Support Conversation Day

Alright, here's what's on the docket for today.

Objective one: finish the story elements of last chapter.

Objective two: read my support conversation backlog.

Objective three, if I have time: do another hot take.

Let's go.

Okay, so, Sothis seems confused by the concept of relics turning people into monsters. The form that Miklan took was, and I quote, merely “familiar” to her.

May I remind you this is the person they had do the in-character tutorial for fighting these types of monsters.

So, to recap, we had a character who had no business knowing the answers give a butchered in-character tutorial to a character who had business needing the answers.

So Rhea tells Professr to keep the nature of the relics to herself. So what do they tell the people makes all of these monsters that she doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of fully hiding from the public?

...Then again, the specific thing she said was “People would lose faith in the nobles should rumors spread of one using a Relic and transforming into a monster.”

...Fuck, Relic is capitalized too?

But anyway, maybe they already know that it can happen, but Rhea just doesn't want them to know it happened to a noble?

...So I really do not get Rhea's deal with regards to the nobility and relics. She seems... really passionate about upholding the nobility... when the nobles are all descended from the people who killed her people, ate their flesh for power and used their bones as weapons.

Professor notices this implies she knew this would happen, and Rhea says, and I motherfucking quote...

“Of course. That is why we rushed to recover it. Sadly we did not arrive in time.”

...Bitch, do you have the slightest inkling of a concept what the word “rushed” means!?

Anyway, I hear you can apparently keep the lance of ruin for Sylvain if you say no to giving it to her to give back to House Gautier, so I try it, because I'm also curious what happens. Also, because fuck Rhea.

Yep, just as I heard, this lowers your support points with her, but given this has, like, literally no gameplay impact at all as far as I can tell, and no story impact unless you want to bang her in Silver Snow, a route I'm not doing... who cares?

Sylvain steps in to explain that he has permission from his family to use it. But did Professr know that, or did she mean something entirely different when she refused to give it and Sylvain just saved her ass?

It's funny that even though Rhea seems fine with the explanation... like, the dent to your support points with her still happens, like she's still just as mad.

Sylvain: Yes. I... I will not soon forget.

And... that's the most acting and emoting I've seen from Sylvain all game.

So, according to Dimitri, the justification for why House Gautier is specifically obsessed with making sure its heirs have Crests... is because their territory requires them to be able to repel invaders.

That, uh... sounds like the exact opposite of a reason why the ruler would have to have a crest. Having a crest should therefore mark you for a career in the military, not as the ruler. Why is it essential that the person in charge of House Gautier has to be the Gautier who takes the lance into battle? I mean, look at fucking Eldigan! He's got major Hezul blood, and he's tasked with using the Mystletainn in combat. But he's not in charge of the Hezul bloodline's domain, his king is! His king who does not need to have major Hezul blood as well, as Chagall very handily demonstrates.

And now for our next mission:

...Seteth interrupts and says Flayn is missing. Rhea says we'll discuss the mission another time, but, of course, our gameplay mission winds up being to save Flayn.

...Uh...

...Their basis for saying Flayn hasn't left the Garreg Mach is... comically baseless.

Seteth: Flayn is not the type of person to just wander off on her own without telling me where she is going!

...Unless she's been, I dunno, kidnapped? You don't honestly think she's missing entirely of her own doing, do you?

...He then says they've exhausted searching the Monastery and are now searching the town... seemingly blatantly contradicting his prior statement.

Apparently in the last few days since Seteth first learned, Dimitri hasn't gotten word of the search.

Now we get a scene with Professr and Dedue. I wonder what this is...?

...We run into Dimitri at the library after a weirdly rushed bait-and-switch...

...Dimitri's been combing through financial records of the Monastery and revealed that Arundel gave tons of donations to the Monastery until 1174. Arundel, the guy working for... the villainous group I shall touch on later.

...But alright, time for supports.

First, Dedue and Ashe.

So after some smalltalk about how to cook fish, Dedue asks Ashe why he spends time with someone from Duscur. Ashe pleasantly counters that he doesn't care, he's an outcast too, being a former thief and a peasant by birth.

...And the support ends.

...Wow! Just when I was starting to get intrigued!

Dedue and Sylvain:

By an amusing coincidence, Sylvain also wants Dedue to give him some tips about cooking. Though in his case it's solely so he can impress more girls. But to his credit, as Dedue comments on, he doesn't seem to care about the social repercussions of being seen with someone from Duscur.

And Sylvain seems to share my theory that the Duscur people didn't actually do that assassination. And now that the topic has been brought up in-universe, it all but guarantees that this theory is correct.

Ashe and Felix:

Oh yes, here it comes, Felix's disdain for knightly romances.

Ashe comes across as... kinda insistent on getting people to try out his favorite thing. It's kind of obnoxious, and I expected someone as rude as Felix to have snapped at that, but he seems to be calm for now.

But yeah, just as I thought, Felix has profound contempt for people who write tales of heroism and chivalry, glorifying the pawns used in pointless bloodshed for those in power. Though he doesn't have as much contempt for those who read them as I thought he would.

And then, hilariously... Ashe says that Felix is just like the knight in the story Ashe is reading. And I won't lie, I'm chuckling like an idiot now.

Ashe and Mercedes:

...It was mildly amusing goofy cooking shenanigans between the well-rounded Ashe and the pastry-overspecializing Mercedes.

Ashe and Annette:

A textbook asks a question, which Ashe quotes in its entirety, about the appropriate angle for a Ballista to be at to shoot at enemies outside a castle.

It asks this without specifying how far away the enemies are.

That question is literally unanswerable.

And yet they act like they do know the distance away. Bizarre.

...Still, I mean the concept of math's role in warfare was... an interesting one to bring up, even if it was really shallow.

Mercedes and Ingrid:

Ingrid allegedly envies Mercedes for, among other things, her “keen eye for fashion”, when Ingrid said quite plainly in her talk with Annette that she doesn't much care about how she looks beyond basic hygiene.

Also, both of these characters have terrible voice performances behind them, so that's another awkward thing about it.

Last one:

Dimitri and Annette:

...So apparently Gilbert's real name is Gustave.

Dimitri apparently feels guilty about Gustave working so much for the royal family, because it deprived Annette of spending time with him.

And then there's some... “big brother” stuff, and Dimitri implying that he feels that literally any story about his childhood would be embarrassing... which probably made more sense in the original Japanese when that was before he started putting on a macho act...

...And we're done.

Okay. Alright, so...

...Okay, so this time was going to be devoted to a hot take denouncing Three Houses' multi-tiered class system... but a couple of things happened when double-checking my research that have given me pause on that. I still stand by my sentiment, but I no longer think Three Houses is quite a fair example of it. I'll explain why later. For now, permit me to give Three Houses a brief respite from my perpetual volcanic scorn, and use another game as my example for why more than two tiers of classes is an incredibly wasteful idea.

The punching bag of the hour I speak of?

Fire Emblem Gaiden. Or for the purpose of this example, its more contemporary remake, Echoes.

Echoes has 20 generic classes in multi-tiered paths, some paths having 3 (ignoring DLC), and others having 4 (again, ignoring DLC).

Now, 20 classes is a comically tiny class list to begin with. Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance have about that many promoted (or promotion-irrelevant in the case of the laguz) playable classes. But it gets so much worse. Because, thanks to all the classes they have to make for a single class path... do you know how many of those 20 generic classes are relevant by the endgame in Echoes?

Fucking eight. If it were one fewer that would barely be a third. And keep in mind, this is when only half of the generic classes in the game actually use that three-tier (ignoring villagers) system, rather than all of them. If all of them did it, twenty generic classes wouldn't even be enough to support more than six.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we took this game, kept the villagers, but made cavaliers promote straight to gold knights, made archers promote straight to bow knights, made mercenaries promote straight to dread fighters, and made knights promote straight to barons.

That's four mediocre middle classes we've cut out of just four existing class paths, each with their own special animations, models, sprites, everything. We take that budget out of there, and what could we do with that cash?

...Why, we could create two entire new class sets. Not classes, class sets.

With that, Echoes could've added player-usable axes by adding playable axefighters and playable wyvern riders!

Do you see my point here? When you add extra tiers to the game, you aren't making the endgame cooler. After all, there's no sacred law that says that endgame classes are only allowed to have a level of cool that scales with the number of tiers in the game. You're just adding mediocre fluff to the middle. And for what? Nothing, really, except an increase to the cost that each class set takes to produce. The more tiers of classes you put in the game, the smaller and smaller a fraction of those classes will ever be relevant at any given stage of gameplay. It's empty, shallow spectacle that comes at the cost of genuine variety.

The only game that I think can remotely justify its choice to have three tiers of classes is Radiant Dawn, and there it mostly works because it's a sequel and they needed to properly convey that the returning cast was still as badass as when we left them but still had room to grow. But still, it definitely comes at a price. Because while a lot of it has to do with them splitting up armor, mages and cavalry into multiple classes, one for each weapon type... there's still like sixty classes in Radiant Dawn, ignoring the non-humans, and yet the number of endgame-relevant human classes is still just 20 (keep in mind I was counting unique classes for both numbers there because I don't have all day and Radiant Dawn's class list is fucking dizzying).

As for why I ultimately decided using Three Houses as an example of this wouldn't be fair?

True, Three Houses' system isn't the most resource-efficient, creating models for 36 classes (ignoring DLC and personals), 18 of which are realistically relevant in the endgame (taking both the master and advanced classes together and then removing wyvern rider, warrior and grappler for being obsoleted by wyvern lord and war master). So, basically exactly half. Meanwhile, Fates created 47 classes (again ignoring personals and DLC and the like), 25 Hoshidan and 22 Nohrian, and 29 of them are relevant in the endgame, a little under 2/3.

But really, “only half of classes are relevant in the endgame” is true of every system before branching promotions made it so that there were more promoted classes than base classes. Due to the weird and wonky way they stretched the existing series' classes out into those four tiers, and due to the fact that this isn't really strictly a clearly-defined, objective multi-tier system since the last two tiers are more or less equal, when all is said and done this system basically comes out even with games of the past.

At least by the endgame. Before you get to advanced and master classes it causes unit variety to start at rock goddamned bottom, make no mistake. So it does play a role in how mediocre and same-y character performance is in the early-game. But by the endgame... they didn't misallocate their budget nearly as much as my instincts told me they did.

...Alright, I think that's about all I wanted to say on the subject.

So we'll be picking up with this on Monday.

Stay safe, everyone!

Edited August 28, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Shadow Mir]

29 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Anyway, I hear you can apparently keep the lance of ruin for Sylvain if you say no to giving it to her to give back to House Gautier, so I try it, because I'm also curious what happens. Also, because fuck Rhea.

Yep, just as I heard, this lowers your support points with her, but given this has, like, literally no gameplay impact at all as far as I can tell, and no story impact unless you want to bang her in Silver Snow, a route I'm not doing... who cares?

The only noteworthy thing that supporting Rhea does in terms of gameplay is open a paralogue after the timeskip. At least, if you aren't on Crimson Flower.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Interdimensional Observer]

30 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

At least by the endgame. Before you get to advanced and master classes it causes unit variety to start at rock goddamned bottom, make no mistake. So it does play a role in how mediocre and same-y character performance is in the early-game. But by the endgame... they didn't misallocate their budget nearly as much as my instincts told me they did.

Well, that's evidence of self-reflection, and openness to accepting being wrong, good things in a world where there is too much arrogance.🙂

This has happened to me before. Sometimes you need to write out a great big polemic, collecting empirical data to you expect support it, only to discover the foundations are shakier than you had imagined them to be. Not to say you have to jump to the other side of the argument, but making concessions and refining your lively critiques is for the better.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer