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

[Emperor Hardin]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

1: Is it possible that it's because he's the only male mage who promotes? Wendell gives the impression he used to be a healer. Maybe they're supposed to be different classes from what Wendell is?

1. 

Spoiler

He isn't the only male mage, the other male mages all promote to the regular Wendell style Bishop, which gets smaller promotion gains then Merric.

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

2: I am really, really torn between showing off the arena and giving my thoughts for completion's sake and avoiding it given how much it usually breaks the game.

Show it!

[Jotari]

I've never played around with the Arena in Fe3, but I do know that it can randomly throw manaketes at you, which I find hilariously unfair (and no, you can't enter the arena with your own manaketes).

[Emperor Hardin]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

I've never played around with the Arena in Fe3, but I do know that it can randomly throw manaketes at you, which I find hilariously unfair (and no, you can't enter the arena with your own manaketes).

Well now that was revealed, may as well say only certain classes like mounted Paladins and Bishops face manaketes. Also the arena notices support bonuses too.

[Alastor15243]

8 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Well now that was revealed, may as well say only certain classes like mounted Paladins and Bishops face manaketes. Also the arena notices support bonuses too.

Is it only one type of manakete? Can I choose a weapon for effective damage against them?

[Emperor Hardin]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Is it only one type of manakete? Can I choose a weapon for effective damage against them?

Varies depending on class, but most face either a Fire, Mage, or Ice Dragon and Wyvern.

You can't choose a weapon, but its possible to get a matchup with a fire equipped magic user against an ice Dragon or a Wind or bow user against a Wyvern. Dismounted classes don't face manaketes, except hunters but only against Wyverns who they have an effectiveness advantage against.

Also note you can always back out at the beginning of each round and your physical units+plus the next recruit can survive a hit from a manakete(none of whom can double), so its safe for you to use the arena as you can't be killed in one round by a Manakete. From what I remember, 23 damage is the most a manakete in the arena will deal. 

Edited October 12, 2019 by Emperor Hardin

[Kruggov]

On 10/11/2019 at 11:48 PM, Alastor15243 said:

1: Is it possible that it's because he's the only male mage who promotes? Wendell gives the impression he used to be a healer. Maybe they're supposed to be different classes from what Wendell is?

2: I am really, really torn between showing off the arena and giving my thoughts for completion's sake and avoiding it given how much it usually breaks the game.

1. In Book I yes, but in Book II you also get Jubelo and Arlen, who both promote into generic bishops.

2. Definitely show it off, idk about overginiding with it.

[Alastor15243]

Mystery of the Emblem Day 16: Book 1, Chapter 16

So, now we fight Camus. It’s amazing how much earlier in the game cutting out those chapters makes this feel.

It occurs to me that I DEFINITELY had Est by this point last time. I don’t know what’s going on, but here’s the weird thing: there aren’t any free recruitment spaces for this map. I deploy a full team of 16. And if that means I can get Lorenz anyway… maybe it could mean I get Est anyway too.

More importantly, I’m going to do my best to solo this map with Marth until he reaches level 20, then try to solo it with Merric, making sure each has the Starsphere when they do it.

Anyway, things went pretty well. Marth’s first, second and fifth of his last five level ups were defense. Also, I've decided I'll make Xane copy Castor since he turned out so well and that low HP makes enemy phasing a no-no.

Also, the second I had Marth visit the village, Est just decides to fly out of the castle to greet him. Well, good of her to finally show up, but I wonder what they broke the 16 unit limit rule for. But at any rate, Mercurius definitely sped up the exp thing.

I panic every time I see the paladins attack. I keep getting reminded of the FE4 lance cavalry critical animation.

Merric unfortunately gets 6 consecutive level ups without a single boost in strength or defense despite having a 50% growth rate in each with the Starsphere. He finally gains a point of strength at level EIGHT. Thankfully, at level 10 he gets both, once they’re the only stats he hasn’t capped, and the curse is somewhat broken from that point onward.

So his defense isn’t as fantastic as I was hoping, but he did cap not only everything but strength, defense and resistance, but when I say that I include HP. He’s got 50 HP, which apparently is gonna be real useful once we start fighting dragons.

NEVER MIND! APPARENTLY 50 ISN’T THE CAP!

Really not all that much to say about the actual map. It’s not nearly as hard as I remember it being in FE1.

And since this is going to be a really uneventful update otherwise… fuck it. Let’s do the arena.

If I understand correctly, you only have a second or two to figure out if you’re gonna die and back out if so. I was just about to when I saw my opponent was a dragon… but then I saw how completely nuts Merric’s stats are against this guy. 50 HP vs 18 damage? When I do 21 per hit? Yeah, good luck with that buddy.

Fuck it, if dragons can’t hurt me, what the fuck can? Let’s go a few more rounds, see if anything genuinely dangerous comes up.

Well, next fight is a hero, who instantly dies to a crit. Merric’s really become a menace since his magic power allowed for one-rounding when he promoted.

Third fight took five rounds, mostly because it was against a powerful mage. But Merric was still way stronger.

Unfortunately, back on the actual map, any hope of the final gauntlet being a challenge is foiled by all of the enemies outright refusing to move, making it trivially easy but tedious to beat them.

Anyway, Merric reaches level 20 just as the last enemies are getting defeated, leaving his final stats at 16 strength, 11 defense, 13 resistance, 52 HP, and capped skill, speed, luck and weapon level. Overall, pretty badass!

Anyway, I recruit lorenz, then get ready to curbstomp Camus with Merric, because I don’t want any nasty crits while trying to beat him with Hardin. Hardin’s luck is a stat I’m really hoping some time with the Starsphere and Gradivus can improve.

Oh sure Marth. Go ahead and tell Camus to drop his “sword”. Given that his weapon is an actual lore-significant lance, it seems utterly bizarre for him to say that.

It feels a LIIIIITLE bit out of character to hear Camus say “you guys are out of luck”. I love the Shadow Dragon “a pity you had to waste your life” a lot better.

Okay, Hardin is going to be an absolute menace in the next chapter. Starsphere, Lightsphere, already ridiculous stats, AND GRADIVUS? YES. FUCKING. PLEASE.

NEXT CHAPTER IS…

I mean I hesitate to call it fun, it’s mostly gonna be a movie… but it sure is going to be amusing!

[Espurrhoodie]

I'm so used to TH that when you mentioned Lorenz I got really confused and kept imagining him as Mr Bad Haircut Man.

[Interdimensional Observer]

23 minutes ago, Espurrhoodie said:

I'm so used to TH that when you mentioned Lorenz I got really confused and kept imagining him as Mr Bad Haircut Man.

As if the old Lorenz was much of a looker:

Spoiler

-I only just realized they've been swapping the missing eye. Not sure why they've canonized right eyepatch over left. 

[Emperor Hardin]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I panic every time I see the paladins attack. I keep getting reminded of the FE4 lance cavalry critical animation.

FE units just loving spinning before an attack.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh sure Marth. Go ahead and tell Camus to drop his “sword”. Given that his weapon is an actual lore-significant lance, it seems utterly bizarre for him to say that.

It feels a LIIIIITLE bit out of character to hear Camus say “you guys are out of luck”. I love the Shadow Dragon “a pity you had to waste your life” a lot better.

I can't help thinking that this is a translation loophole and the original line was a basic "drop your weapon."

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay, Hardin is going to be an absolute menace in the next chapter. Starsphere, Lightsphere, already ridiculous stats, AND GRADIVUS? YES. FUCKING. PLEASE.

Starsphere leveling is always fun!

43 minutes ago, Espurrhoodie said:

I'm so used to TH that when you mentioned Lorenz I got really confused and kept imagining him as Mr Bad Haircut Man.

I have to admit I'm annoyed the localization chose to spell the Three House's characters name, the same way as the Shadow Dragon character. Especially when they've changed character spelling before.

2 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

-I only just realized they've been swapping the missing eye. Not sure why they've canonized right eyepatch over left. 

I think the portrait flips, though I can check later.

Edited October 14, 2019 by Emperor Hardin

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I only just realized they've been swapping the missing eye. Not sure why they've canonized right eyepatch over left. 

Two words: Ambidextrous sprites. Far as I know, Chrom is about the only instance where it's subverted.

[Alastor15243]

Day 16 bonus: Book 1, Chapter 17

Alright, so, I have a feeling that beyond this point my army is just going to snowball out of control, so I figure I might as well get this done quickly to move on to book 2 and hopefully some better fucking map design.

I am very, very confused by this newly-established relationship between Gotoh and Michalis. Why doesn’t Michalis want Gotoh hurt? I barely know enough about the ways Michalis is fucked up for this to make much sense. All I know is that he killed his father out of blind ambition (and not because he’s a dragon fanboy who totally fucks his wyvern, thank goodness that portrait was fixed). I don’t get what Gotoh and Michalis’s relationship is.

Moving on though, time to warp Hardin over to the mouth of the mountain and harvest some fucking sheep for the slaughter!

Oh look! Michalis is moving too! I remember this! This is gonna be hilarious!

Honestly, this is such a weird map that I wonder how it would play normally.

NOT ENOUGH TO ACTUALLY DO IT NORMALLY THOUGH! Especially not when that thief is heading to Gotoh's village with such a massive head start. So warp abuse it is!

So, I get Hardin a bunch of levels, and he caps everything but luck, which is still at 8 at paladin level 10. So I give everything to Cain to try and see if I can make a second amazing paladin, and literally the next time he levels up after getting the Starsphere, he levels up defense for the first time ever.

…And from then it kind of snowballed to an insane degree, and Cain’s luck alllllllmost held out enough to get him to cap defense.

Oh. I see. So it’s not Starlight here. It’s STARLIGHT EXPLOSION. I mean, as much as I love how JoJo-y that is, I think I prefer Starlight.

Anyway… Final results of the Starsphere’s use: Four badasses with mostly capped stats. Hardin has 3 more defense, but Cain has slightly better HP, significantly better res and WAAAAAAY better luck. All in all my team’s looking terrifying.

If only there were literally anything in this entire fucking game that could stand up to even one of them.

BONUS BONUS: Book 1, Chapter 18

So… the map decides to completely flip out and go all wavy and nuts, which I can only assume is due to the fact that Gharnef’s tower is hidden behind an illusion.

Oh no, actually apparently Gotoh just fucking warped us without this coming up in the previous map’s ending cutscene.

Honestly, I don’t know if I really brought this up, but while I was initially impressed with the improvements on FE1’s storytelling… I think I liked it better when it sucked and it was funny. This is just in some really uncomfortably boring middle ground now and I’m not invested at all.

Oooh! This is a change of pace! I like this new map design. Less windy, less narrow, and more actual strategy!

…Pity the game let me make four demigods without grinding.

Seems like Tiki’s divine dragon form has two sets of wings, one draconic and one angelic. At least that’s what it looks like when she does her elaborate movement animation in divine dragon form.

At any rate, this is mostly a job for Merric, the only one of my four badasses with 1-2 range, and also, more to the point, the only one who can use Starlight anyway.

Wow. Starlight not only has its own custom attack animation, but also its own custom battle theme and BATTLE BACKGROUND? I mean the music’s not fantastic, but that’s a surprising surge in production values for a tome you’re probably almost never gonna use.

Honestly, this map really isn’t any harder than the original, though I will give it a great many points for being less tedious.

I have absolutely no idea where the promotion secret shop has been moved to, and I don’t care. We’re finishing this game TONIGHT BABY!

…Alas, my hubris has cost me dearly. The four enemies guarding the throne got lucky and just barely all managed to kill Merric.

RESTART!

I restarted. Nothing noteworthy happened.

Okay, well, not exactly. I did promote Lena with the bishop ring the enemies dropped, mostly because who the fuck else am I going to give it to at this point, and might as well make Lena a better healer. Nice to see that there’s a female bishop sprite and they aren’t using the hood as an excuse.

…EXCEPT I DID THIS FORGETTING THAT I HADN’T HEALED MERRIC YET AND HE FUCKING DIED AGAIN.

RESTART.

I RESTARTED.

NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED.

NEXT.

FUCKING.

MAP.

 

 

 

….TOMORROW.

[Espurrhoodie]

3 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

I have to admit I'm annoyed the localization chose to spell the Three House's characters name, the same way as the Shadow Dragon character. Especially when they've changed character spelling before.

We also have a Claude and a Hilda in FE4, except TH Claude can't resurrect the dead and TH Hilda isn't a horrible person who deserves to get hit in the face with a chair made of vibranium.

 

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

As if the old Lorenz was much of a looker:

  Reveal hidden contents

-I only just realized they've been swapping the missing eye. Not sure why they've canonized right eyepatch over left. 

Still better than TH Lorenz and his 90° angle haircut that you could use to teach the Pythagorean theorem.

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

As if the old Lorenz was much of a looker:

  Hide contents

-I only just realized they've been swapping the missing eye. Not sure why they've canonized right eyepatch over left. 

I expect the first two pics there aren't definitively showing the euepatch on the left. It's probably more of a case they flip the sprite depending on which side of the screen Lorenz is on and the right facing on is the default for all characters.

And Lorenz is very much a looker.

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Two words: Ambidextrous sprites. Far as I know, Chrom is about the only instance where it's subverted.

I think maybe Vanguard Ike too.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

Mystery of the Emblem Day 17: Book 1, Chapter 19

So, we’re bringing Marth’s sister Elice…

…who… is not… on the roster. And yet I can pick 16 again. Is this another instance of the game being weird with recruitment?

Let’s start and find out.

Right off the bat, I like how they explain why Medeus stays inside his lair and why we have to go in.

Also, looks like, yes, the demon dragon sprite’s body is supposed to be buried half in the ground.

And yes, Elice shows up… with literally no fanfare or dialogue at all. Classy.

Anyway, given the fact that most of the enemies pierce defense, this might be slightly harder to cheese than last time. But I’m still gonna try so I can assassinate the thief at least.

Also, I think I know where the secret shop is, and I’m gonna use it. There’s a conspicuous patch of plains in the middle of the southwest mountain range. Sending Minerva there immediately.

Yeah, those dragons mostly suicided onto my warped Merric like idiots, and now there’s nothing left but a bunch of (REALLY? STILL?) unarmed sages to deal with before reaching the boss’s lair.

Okay, one of them was armed, with Swarm. Fat lot of good that did him as the only one.

I like Marth’s Falchion animation. Some really heavy, impactful swings with real feling in them.

Jeez, these stat boosters are expensive, to the point that without selling shit I can only buy four, even with the silver card. So I’m just gonna focus on boosting the one stat that some of my best units haven’t maxed: defense. Not that I would’ve been keen to max out my whole army anyway. Well, at least now I’m cheesing the game with four units instead of just two and a half.

Just as I finish giving the stat boosters to everyone, I have Hardin give the Iote shield to Minerva. AND THANK GOD I DID THAT, BECAUSE THE IMMEDIATE NEXT TURN, A SNIPER AMBUSH SPAWN ATTACKS HER.

Anyway, time to use the Aum staff for completion’s sake, get the treasure behind the altar, and get the fuck out of here.

“Midia returned to sense”

…Okay, seriously… to whoever translated this… I get being faithful… but at a certain point you have to realize that literal translations turn out like gibberish.

The chest had a firestone. Not much use to us now.

“HA… FOOLISH KID. DON’T THINK YOU’RE SO GREAT!”

…That’s Medeus’s first line. The first line we hear him say. KEEP IN MIND THAT HIS PORTRAIT CLEARLY INDICATES THAT HE’S CURRENTLY GIVING AS MANY SHITS AS SAURON SLOUCHING ON THE THRONE OF FUCKING MORDOR.

…Sigh.

Let’s do this.

Day 17 Bonus: Book 1, Chapter 20

First impression: Well, they warn us that our army is split up at least.

Second impression: Jesus Christ this game’s rendition of the final map enemy phase theme is weak. I hope the player phase theme is better.

Right, time to gear up for the final battle while this obnoxiously lame music plays. And god damn but I overstocked on basically everything. That’s what I get for panicking over never knowing what’s going to be available I guess.

This final map also seems to have been drastically redesigned. I like it slightly better, though honestly the enemies here can barely scratch my main four, so…

You know the words.

LET’S WARP SKIP!

And after an intro where Gotoh tells us he “used to hate these stupid humans”, he…

…Does not join us…

…And Medeus transforms into Diglet Godzilla.

Yeah. Okay game. I’m quivering in my boots.

And Medeus is a fucking pushover now. Not only do transformation bonuses not exceed the 20 defense cap anymore, but HE DOESN’T EVEN REACH THE CAP. HE HAS 15 DEFENSE.

All I have to do is regroup and prep for a big warp skip, and unless something’s going on I’m not seeing here, I can warp in and kill him in one turn.

The biggest issue is that one of my groups doesn’t have anyone good but Tiki, whose defensive stats are kind of garbage for this point in the game, and also one of the heroes near her has a dragonslayer. I’ll have to have Merric warp in Cain.

Man, this was way scarier in the original game. Here, even in the endgame, nobody but the snipers and heroes is getting above 0 AS. It’s pathetic!

…Wow, the Falchion is really, REALLY heavy for a sword. Marth has 20 speed but 10 AS with the fucking thing! Switching that off for now!

…And I had to restart because Xane got bodied when I forgot just how fragile his HP is.

This is not a game that has me particularly strategically engaged, okay?

Okay, so now they’re just locking doors on us? Why the hell? Glad I brought a thief, but still…

WHAT? YOU LOCK THEM AGAIN AFTER I OPEN THEM? SO MY THIEF IS JUST STUCK NOW?

No matter. Everyone I need for the big warp gambit is already in the main hall.

Let’s do this.

OH, SO NOW THE DOORS DON’T RESPAWN, DO THEY? JUST WHEN HAVING THE DOOR THERE WOULD HAVE PROTECTED JULIAN FROM REINFORCEMENTS?

Fuck it. One more turn. That’s all I need.

…Or not. Looks like Medeus has a built-in pre-defense-subtraction dragonskin going on, meaning Marth only does 10 damage to him even with Falchion. Meanwhile anyone with capped str using Mercurius or Parthia would be doing… 5. Damn it. Well…

…thankfully he gets a critical hit on counter!

…And there’s no big dramatic “monster dying” animation. He just vanishes like every other boss.

So Medeus makes his “As long as there is evil in the hearts of men, I will come back” spiel like he’s fucking Dracula, which makes his alleged sympathetic nature I’ve been hearing about… really hard to swallow…

…And we win, with no casualties!

…Wait. That’s funny. So I have to seize, but it makes no difference because the enemies just… gave up once Marth killed Medeus. I mean… actually that’s kind of cool.

…I do not recall taking this many turns for these maps. 100 turns for chapter 1. 130 for chapter 2. 130 for chapter 3. 90 for chapter 4.

If I had to guess? It’s a glitch and there’s an extra 0 pasted onto all of them.

Like usual, most of the epilogues are boring except when they're hilariously weird or stupid. Like the bizarre statement that Draug’s constitution has increase by 10 kilograms.

Castor: He returned to Talis to live with his mother. However, his life is harsh.

Ouch.

Navarre: He ignored the expectations of others and left like the wind.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OH MY FUCKING GOD. WOW.

Wolf and Sedgar have the exact same fucking epilogue text.

Wendell apparently visited “all of the countries”.

Rickard: It seems he returned to thievery again.

The epilogue just runs out of fucking music and rolls in silence, like it didn’t assume I’d keep so many units alive.

And after that, there’s untranslated text that I can only assume in hindsight was asking me if I wanted to proceed straight to book 2.

Which I will do.

Tomorrow.

But for today, I have a question to ask you all:

Do you want me to review Book 1 and Book 2 as separate games, or give my thoughts and ranking on the whole game?

[Interdimensional Observer]

44 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

…Or not. Looks like Medeus has a built-in pre-defense-subtraction dragonskin going on, meaning Marth only does 10 damage to him even with Falchion. Meanwhile anyone with capped str using Mercurius or Parthia would be doing… 5. Damn it. Well…

It's Atk-halving. So if you have 40 Atk before the battle starts, it'll be reduced to 20 and then have Medeus's 15 Def deducted from it, for 5 damage. Atk-halving is not to be confused with Damage-halving ala Dragonskin. If Medeus had Dragonskin instead, it'd be 40 - 15 = 25 / 2 = 12 damage.

 

Congrats on getting Book 1 done! Now you won't have to see any of that again until FE11.

 

47 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Do you want me to review Book 1 and Book 2 as separate games, or give my thoughts and ranking on the whole game?

When I did a whole big review of my time with FE3, I found the two Books were pretty different experiences. You definitely should hold off on judging FE3 as a whole, but I think it's fine to judge Book 1 apart from Book 2.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

It's Atk-halving. So if you have 40 Atk before the battle starts, it'll be reduced to 20 and then have Medeus's 15 Def deducted from it, for 5 damage. Atk-halving is not to be confused with Damage-halving ala Dragonskin. If Medeus had Dragonskin instead, it'd be 40 - 15 = 25 / 2 = 12 damage.

That's exactly why I specificed pre-defense-subtraction.

[Emperor Hardin]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

…Or not. Looks like Medeus has a built-in pre-defense-subtraction dragonskin going on, meaning Marth only does 10 damage to him even with Falchion. Meanwhile anyone with capped str using Mercurius or Parthia would be doing… 5. Damn it. Well…

The damage of attacking units is halved.

 

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So Medeus makes his “As long as there is evil in the hearts of men, I will come back” spiel like he’s fucking Dracula, which makes his alleged sympathetic nature I’ve been hearing about… really hard to swallow...

Well Castlevania!Dracula was established as sympathetic.

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OH MY FUCKING GOD. WOW.

Wolf and Sedgar have the exact same fucking epilogue text.

Wendell apparently visited “all of the countries”.

Rickard: It seems he returned to thievery again.

The epilogue just runs out of fucking music and rolls in silence, like it didn’t assume I’d keep so many units alive.

And after that, there’s untranslated text that I can only assume in hindsight was asking me if I wanted to proceed straight to book 2.

Which I will do.

Tomorrow.

But for today, I have a question to ask you all:

Do you want me to review Book 1 and Book 2 as separate games, or give my thoughts and ranking on the whole game?

Wolf had a different epilogue in FE1, stating he joined the Archanea army for a while.

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Do you want me to review Book 1 and Book 2 as separate games, or give my thoughts and ranking on the whole game?

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the book 1 portion.

By the way, do you want me to answer the question on Michalis's motivation/backgrounds now or when you play Book II?

[Alastor15243]

On 10/15/2019 at 4:07 PM, Emperor Hardin said:

The damage of attacking units is halved.

Yep, that's what I was trying to say.

On 10/15/2019 at 4:07 PM, Emperor Hardin said:

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the book 1 portion.

By the way, do you want me to answer the question on Michalis's motivation/backgrounds now or when you play Book II?

Let's give the game a chance to make that compelling. I don't have high hopes, but I'm gonna give it a chance.

 

Alright, so, judging Book 1 separately from Book 2:

 

Difficulty: While most of the difficulty in previous games was built in ridiculous, bullshit mechanics or boredom-induced lapses in judgment on my part, and thus their difficulty isn't entirely a point in their favor... this game had no difficulty at all. I never found myself struggling in any way when playing this game. It was just a massive cakewalk. To the game's credit, that's only because they removed most of the bullshit of FE1 and offered nothing to replace it. So while Gaiden's moments of genuinely good difficulty mean it's still the leader of the pack here I feel, the real question here is: would I rather play a game that's hard for the reasons FE1 was hard, or a game that isn't hard at all? Let me answer that question with a ranking:

1: Gaiden

2: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

3: Dark Dragon

 

Ironmannability: There are 3 major things that the games do to lose points in this regard: 1: Ambush spawns or similar mechanics where the battlefield changes on the enemy phase without you having any means to react or prepare, 2: Luck-based mechanics with an extremely high mortality rate, and 3: Limited to no means to replenish losses in your army. FE1 had 1 and 2, and Gaiden had 2 and 3, which I ultimately decided was worse. FE3 Book 1 only has 1. So it's the new winner here.

1: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

2: Dark Dragon

3: Gaiden

 

Usability: This is just an objective upgrade on FE1, enough to bring it above the placeholder improvements of Gaiden. It's still not great, but it's easily the best so far.

1: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

2: Gaiden

3: Dark Dragon

 

Depth: Gaiden still wins here. While its new stuff is weird and imbalanced, Book 1 (and likely the game as a whole) has basically nothing to offer in terms of gameplay depth beyond the core framework. Of course, it does add a little, like transforming and support bonuses (which I barely used, but hey, they were there), so it's better than Dark Dragon at least.

1: Gaiden

2: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

3: Dark Dragon

 

Balance: This hardly feels like high praise, but given it's the first game that doesn't genuinely feel like it was balanced by a monkey, I guess I have to give the balance win to Book 1.

1: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

2: Gaiden

3: Dark Dragon

 

Pacing: Oh this is a slaaaaaaaaaaam fucking dunk for Book 1. Getting rid of all the primitive inventory management clusterfuck, while also managing to not have half of its game be about Celica, means this game shoots to the top of the list.

1: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

2: Gaiden

3: Dark Dragon

 

Writing: Fuck it, I'll give this to Book 1. Most of my criticisms and complaints this time around were clearly the fault of the translation. In the previous two games, I feel I made it obvious with my criticisms that I could tell that even the original Japanese versions were awash with bad writing. This one, while... still nothing special, was at least competently structured.

1: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

2: Dark Dragon

3: Gaiden

 

Music: Sorry Book 1, but your insane and completely unforgivable decision to get rid of the adorable Dark Dragon player phase theme means you lack even a single toe-tapper in your entire soundtrack, and if that means I ranked Bloodstained below Harmony of Dissonance in the soundtrack department, it means I rank Book 1 below Dark Dragon in that department too.

1: Gaiden

2: Dark Dragon

3: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1

 

So that's five ones, two twos and a three. That should, arguably, mean that Book 1 is the new top of the list, right? Well, here's where I come into a bit of a problem:

I had a good deal more fun with Gaiden. I'm not sure whether that means my ranking system's flawed, personal bias is in effect, or the categories aren't all equally important, but in spite of Book 1 winning the most categories, I would genuinely rather play Gaiden again than replay Book 1, even though half of Gaiden was a mess. Gaiden is a deeply flawed but still enjoyable experience, whereas Book 1 is merely... a competent execution of something way less interesting. The sum total of Gaiden's highs and lows may be worse than Book 1... but at least Gaiden had highs. And I'm really kind of torn on where that leaves me. To the point where I'm not entirely sure if I'm comfortable separating book 1 and 2 in the rankings. I had fun playing Gaiden, in-between the hilarious and rage-inducing bullshit. I played it for upwards of 3 hours a day while I was doing it. Book 1 was just a tolerable one-hour chore I did every day, something that didn't annoy me while I got it out of the way to do other things.

...I'm starting to think I may be missing some categories here. Some categories Book 1 is losing. But if I am... it's kind of hard to put my finger on what exactly they are.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Emperor Hardin]

47 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I had a good deal more fun with Gaiden. I'm not sure whether that means my ranking system's flawed, personal bias is in effect, or the categories aren't all equally important, but in spite of Book 1 winning the most categories, I would genuinely rather play Gaiden again than replay Book 1, even though half of Gaiden was a mess. Gaiden is a deeply flawed but still enjoyable experience, whereas Book 1 is merely... a competent execution of something way less interesting. The sum total of Gaiden's highs and lows may be worse than Book 1... but at least Gaiden had highs. And I'm really kind of torn on where that leaves me. To the point where I'm not entirely sure if I'm comfortable separating book 1 and 2 in the rankings. I had fun playing Gaiden, in-between the hilarious and rage-inducing bullshit. I played it for upwards of 3 hours a day while I was doing it. Book 1 was just a tolerable one-hour chore I did every day, something that didn't annoy me while I got it out of the way to do other things.

...I'm starting to think I may be missing some categories here. Some categories Book 1 is losing. But if I am... it's kind of hard to put my finger on what exactly they are.

Well we all have our personal preference.

Looking at your beginning post you seem to reviewed every category for Book 1.

47 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yep, that's what I was trying to say.

Let's give the game a chance to make that compelling. I don't have high hopes, but I'm gonna give it a chance.

Sounds good. 

Book 1 is one of the easier FE games, I've been toying with making a hack for FE3 which would improve difficult for Book 1 and character balance as a whole.

21 hours ago, Espurrhoodie said:

We also have a Claude and a Hilda in FE4, except TH Claude can't resurrect the dead and TH Hilda isn't a horrible person who deserves to get hit in the face with a chair made of vibranium.

I realized I forgot to reply to this post. FE4 hasn't been localized, so there's a chance we could get Hildegard and Claudeth for those characters.

I still find it funny that Fates translated Gazzak as Gazak when: 

1. Its spelled exactly the same in Japanese
2. The whole Fates character is openly and entirely based around Shadow Dragon Gazzak.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Emperor Hardin

[Espurrhoodie]

14 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

I realized I forgot to reply to this post. FE4 hasn't been localized, so there's a chance we could get Hildegard and Claudeth for those characters.

Heroes already gave them the official names of Hilda and Claud though.

Then again, Lachiesis was localized as Raquises (? Don't think I spelled that correctly) in Awakening only for Heroes to change it.

[Alastor15243]

51 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Looking at your beginning post you seem to reviewed every category for Book 1.

Oh no, I meant maybe there should be another category I'm ranking these on that I've been neglecting.

[Emperor Hardin]

48 minutes ago, Espurrhoodie said:

Heroes already gave them the official names of Hilda and Claud though.

Then again, Lachiesis was localized as Raquises (? Don't think I spelled that correctly) in Awakening only for Heroes to change it.

Thats what I mean, Heroes names for non playable characters are subject to change. Especially when they are on the character polls where the localizers probably don't think as much when it comes to translating names.

There's also Loptyr(Awakening)/Loptous(Heroes) and Orsi(Awakening)/Osian(Heroes) off the top of my head.

Anyhow on Lorenz, I think Three Houses Lorenz should've been localized as Lawrence, since that is what both Japanese names are when directly translated.

22 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh no, I meant maybe there should be another category I'm ranking these on that I've been neglecting.

What about a Graphics/Character & Class Design?

Was it mentioned that the Earthsphere works on Medeus?

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Emperor Hardin said:

What about a Graphics/Character & Class Design?

The addition of that wouldn't explain my misgivings, since Book 1 does well there too. But it might be worth discussing.

[Emperor Hardin]

5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

The addition of that wouldn't explain my misgivings, since Book 1 does well there too. But it might be worth discussing.

Its something that is worth discussing in a review.

You probably feel some misgivings as FE3 cut a lot of content, so it feels like less after playing FE1. That is just my guess?

Thinking about it, you could cover length too, but some people like a shorter length.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Emperor Hardin