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


Alastor15243
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47 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

So being blown away no matter where you are (which is one formation) is not underhanded? Anyway, I still think gimmicks that move the player's units against their will are a deadly sin as far as strategy games go. I'd go so far as to say not even the worst gimmicks Revelation threw at me (except for this, of course) are as cheap as this.

It's not underhanded, because unlike Same-Turn Reinforcements, you have time to prepare for it. Most of the time, you can move your units outside of the wind's path. If there's a unit whom you can't move out of range, you can instead pair them up with a unit who can do so, then move them out of range (and separate, if you so desire). Even in the rare case that a unit has literally no way to get out of the wind's range, you can still position and pair up your units so that the exceptionally vulnerable ones won't be at major risk from the enemies.

You don't have to like the mechanic to acknowledge that it's dissimilar to Same-Turn Reinforcements, in the information provided to the player. If anything, it's closer to "inconveniently-placed Next-Turn Reinforcements".

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...The... the lava.

The dragon vein flavor text just flat-out calls it lava. Not burning water like the story said... lava.

Weird, I really thought it was lava. Not sure why they just didn't consistently refer to it as such. Lava is radical.

 

17 hours ago, Jotari said:

I would actually love it if they did do that some time, give two characters in the same game the same name. Fire Emblem manages to stick to the one Steve limit very admirably for a series with like over a thousand characters, for them to just say fuck it some time and name a bunch of characters Louis or something would be hilarious. And would be such a troll move for the fan base as we obsessively talk about the strengths and weaknesses of these units which would just be confusing if a bunch of them had the same name 

Seems like there could be some hijinks associated with this. Like, an opportunistic brigand named Jerry passing himself off as "Prince Jerry", before his deception is discovered. Or the humble Sister Mary gaining a following of sellswords, after being mistaken for the Mighty Mercenary Mary.

Tangential, but it still bugs me that the boss of Awakening's Cynthia Paralogue wasn't named "Chrom". Coulda been a funny part of the deception.

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10 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Seems like there could be some hijinks associated with this. Like, an opportunistic brigand named Jerry passing himself off as "Prince Jerry", before his deception is discovered. Or the humble Sister Mary gaining a following of sellswords, after being mistaken for the Mighty Mercenary Mary.

We already have one of those- Shannan Shannam.

 

17 hours ago, Jotari said:

I would actually love it if they did do that some time, give two characters in the same game the same name. Fire Emblem manages to stick to the one Steve limit very admirably for a series with like over a thousand characters, for them to just say fuck it some time and name a bunch of characters Louis or something would be hilarious. And would be such a troll move for the fan base as we obsessively talk about the strengths and weaknesses of these units which would just be confusing if a bunch of them had the same name 

Monarchs not infrequently named their children after themselves. Brandenburg-Prussia during its rise loved alternating between Frederick William and just Frederick, Philip II-IV during Spain peak and fall, Louis XIII-XVI (plus prince killed in the Revolution bestowed the honorary title Louis XVII). 

As Frederick William indicates, FE could get into double-first names too. Or we could do the thing that historians often do when referring to famed Greeks of antiquity, name them "X of Y Location", like Isidore of Miletus.

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7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

fates-map-all.jpg

I'M LOOKING AT THE MAP RIGHT NOW. THERE'S NO FUCKING WATER BETWEEN FORT DRAGONFALL AND DEMON'S FALLS. WHAT HORSESHIT IS THIS!?

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Okay, so while the backdrop is indistinguishable from the open sea, Ryoma says they're traveling “upstream”, so, what, are we just going along a tiny river not marked on the map or something? Shit, game, that's lazy.

If you look at the zoomed in version of the map, there is a river between that purple lake, and the falls, so if they were heading directly towards Windmire/Krakenburg from the fort they would hit the river, and could take it all the way to the falls, although if they were heading towards the falls directly, there is no water in their path...

 

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...The... the lava.

The dragon vein flavor text just flat-out calls it lava. Not burning water like the story said... lava.

...sigh, oh Fates why is your story so blatantly inconsistent...

 

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

I don't mind the inclusion of crossover characters in principle, but only when it actually makes a reasonable amount of sense. I've not played Gaiden itself, but I don't have a problem with the character crossovers in Echoes. The story there is just "we're on a different continent and a few of the people from Shadow Dragon traveled to that continent after the end of that game". It's simple, but it makes sense. Similarly, having "Marth" be referenced in Awakening makes sense. He's a legendary figure from the world's past. The problem I have with the Awakening characters in Fates is that they are seemingly entirely different worlds with different cosmologies and no interconnection, and then there's no explanation for how they got there. It basically feels like the writers saying "we don't give a shit about the lore and worldbuilding of our games and so you shouldn't either". Of course, this is Fates and Awakening that we're talking about here, so it's not as if they were ruining an otherwise-spotless track record, but it still irks me.

There is a DLC which is supposed to explain why, and how the three from Conquest got there. I haven't actually bought it, or played it, which highlights a bit of an issue with this method of world building, but its better than the Birthright versions. The Birthright doppelganger children have no explanation, with the exception of the Revelations only possibility of Caeldori being Selena's daughter, where they have a unique support about Selena's daughter being the spitting image of Selena's mother, which is actually kinda interesting (and a reasonable explanation for the similarities...)

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23 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

If you look at the zoomed in version of the map, there is a river between that purple lake, and the falls, so if they were heading directly towards Windmire/Krakenburg from the fort they would hit the river, and could take it all the way to the falls, although if they were heading towards the falls directly, there is no water in their path...

My issue is I don't see why getting on the ferry would get them closer to Windmire. Demon's Falls was apparently a dangerous shortcut they took because there were no docks nearby, and there was a fork in the river they took to get there, which I'm still not seeing even after you pointed out the river to me (thanks for that btw).

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2 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

If you look at the zoomed in version of the map, there is a river between that purple lake, and the falls, so if they were heading directly towards Windmire/Krakenburg from the fort they would hit the river, and could take it all the way to the falls, although if they were heading towards the falls directly, there is no water in their path...

I've been feeling weird about Fates' map for a while now, and it just dawned on me why - it's basically satellite imagery with a points layer imposed over it. No boundaries, no country or region names, no stylistic flair. Whereas the maps in most other games in the series look like something a character could own in-universe, the Fates map could only be owned by someone with a nigh-impossible access to high-definition multispectral aerial imagery, coupled with a profound disinterest in political realities on the ground. It does nothing to advance the storytelling and worldbuilding. The Fates map was, in all senses of the word, a mistake.

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6 hours ago, lenticular said:

I don't mind the inclusion of crossover characters in principle, but only when it actually makes a reasonable amount of sense. I've not played Gaiden itself, but I don't have a problem with the character crossovers in Echoes. The story there is just "we're on a different continent and a few of the people from Shadow Dragon traveled to that continent after the end of that game". It's simple, but it makes sense. Similarly, having "Marth" be referenced in Awakening makes sense. He's a legendary figure from the world's past. The problem I have with the Awakening characters in Fates is that they are seemingly entirely different worlds with different cosmologies and no interconnection, and then there's no explanation for how they got there. It basically feels like the writers saying "we don't give a shit about the lore and worldbuilding of our games and so you shouldn't either". Of course, this is Fates and Awakening that we're talking about here, so it's not as if they were ruining an otherwise-spotless track record, but it still irks me.

Oh absolutely, like I said, it was poorly implemented. But the original point was why Fates decided to have the Awakening fanservice, to which the answer is, well, it's fanservice. And the basic idea to do so wasn't a particularly bad one (in my book). That they utterly failed to actually do it in an interesting way is just typical Fates story telling.

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

Tangential, but it still bugs me that the boss of Awakening's Cynthia Paralogue wasn't named "Chrom". Coulda been a funny part of the deception.

Or go the Shannam route and name him "Chron" or "Chrome" or something. Doing so would have also freed up the name...*checks wiki*...Ruger to go to a future character.

5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Monarchs not infrequently named their children after themselves. Brandenburg-Prussia during its rise loved alternating between Frederick William and just Frederick, Philip II-IV during Spain peak and fall, Louis XIII-XVI (plus prince killed in the Revolution bestowed the honorary title Louis XVII). 

As Frederick William indicates, FE could get into double-first names too. Or we could do the thing that historians often do when referring to famed Greeks of antiquity, name them "X of Y Location", like Isidore of Miletus.

Yeah I picked Louis specifically because the French royal family had a tonne of Des Louis.

6 hours ago, Samz707 said:

Yeah I think character crossovers should either A: be explicitly non-canon or B: when they're already in the same world.

(Actually what was the reason for them all being in Warriors? outrealms?)

As for the Lava, who knows, maybe it's like No One Lives Forever and it's just fake Lava that's actually superheated water!

 

 

Once the series established Outrealm gates, I actually have no issue at all with character cameos coming from different continuities (and while not playable, they did just ignore continuity to have Anna and Jake cameos in other games). Hell I would have preferred if Gaiden had been in a different continuity to Archanea, because, as I think I've mentioned here already, shoving the two in the same continuity makes Zeke's story absolutely ridiculous. In my attempt to remake Sacred Stones so you play both Eirika and Ephraim's route's in a single playthrough (which necessitated creating more characters as the two routes share characters despite taking place in geographically distinct areas), I added Kliff in as a summoner prepromote. I didn't provide any explanation as to how he got to Magvel beyond that he's traveling (established in his ending in his own game) and has an interest in the monsters in that plague Magvel, which resemble those in Valentia. So, yeah, in other words I think it's fine for characters to just be there without explanation. And in fact I think it's better if the explanation is as basic as "They're exploring far off places," or in the case of the White Wings "This is a crazy adventure they accidentally found themselves on while fighting pirates."

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Birthright Day 14: Chapter 22

So, will this finally be the end to a 5-chapter consecutive slump of lame levels? Will it just be a quarter of the game that I have to concede is little better than Revelation? Let's find out today!

First off, as I discovered yesterday, I've got a new character-building objective: Get. Saizo. Darting. Blow. He needs it as a kinshi knight, more than I'd like.

Oh yeah, something I think I forgot to mention at any point and that I put a reminder to myself to talk about: I like how this game took a lot of the skills from Awakening and turned them from hit/avoid boosting skills to damage boosting skills. Way more interesting and reliable effects. Patience and prescience in particular are far better in this game as strong riposte and quick draw.

Hey, you guys got me to 900 battles! I think that's unlocked something new! Let's see... Aw, that's a shame, it's Xander's lance, which is a weird gimmick weapon that makes enemies stronger and makes you weaker. But thanks for getting me there anyway! Speaking of... visit time! Everyone gets a hero mask today. Shame I had to do it a bit later than ideal...

We also got Izana, which means I finally have a magic user. Problem is his personal skill is a bit annoying, reducing the damage of all enemies and allies within 2 spaces of him by 2. Now, given he's a back-of-the-lines mage... that penalty's far more likely to be applied to my allies than to any enemies, especially since most times I want enemy damage reduction are going to be on enemy phase where I don't want him anywhere near them. Still, as long as I'm careful about his positioning, he's a better deployment option than Jakob at least.

Let's do this. Chapter 22.

Ah yes, now Silas talks about Nohr's history of conquering other countries to “prosper”, and... they must have a terrible tendency to mismanage everything they touch, because how could they possibly have a long history of taking over more resource-blessed countries... and still be this resource-poor and desperate to conquer to survive? It's like they just wanted to pull this freudian excuse for Nohr out of their asses in order to make their relationship with Hoshido sympathetic... without realizing this excuse would have to have a history behind it.

And of course, Ryoma reveals he somehow had no idea about Nohr's food problem and resolves to send food aid as soon as the war is over. Yeah. Okay. That makes no sense whatsoever. Ryoma has the knowledge of an extensive spy network of fantasy ninja, and in spite of all the the random trivia he's shown to have learned about Nohr from them, he somehow doesn't fucking know about the famine that ravages the entire damned country?

Yeah, so, spoilers for anyone who had even a passing interest in reading Dakota's War Journal despite it being indefinitely incomplete:

Spoiler

This is what gave me the idea to make Yukimura into a villain, deliberately feeding Ryoma misinformation about the state of Nohr in order to facilitate the war, because Yukimura would have to know about this, and so the only reason he wouldn't tell anyone would logically have to be because he doesn't want Ryoma to know.

Alright, so, let's move on with the map.

Shura: This is the bad part of town, kiddo. You shouldn't be walking around here by yourselves. After all, you might run into some real bad characters. Not unlike... us. Heh, heh.

Dakota: Us? What are you talking about – Oh.

Takumi: Yep, we're surrounded.

It would've been nice if this were a map scene, and the camera panned to behind them to show the enemies behind them. Would've been a nice visual gag/effect.

But YES! FINALLY! AN INTERESTING FIRST TURN!

The siege towers are probably gonna make the top of the map annoying, but once again we're surrounded by enemies on the first turn and have to come up with a clever player-phase gambit to take them all out!

...Wow, I'm gonna need a good plan for this. My player-phasers aren't as fast as I'd like them to be, and they aren't hitting good damage thresholds for some of these.

I cooked a str/spd/def meal, which should help, and I'm also gonna give tonics to anyone who needs a boost on this first turn. Let's see...

I've got 10 enemies to deal with if I want to clear out those ballistae guards. Three on the left, three on the right, and four in the middle. If I have Silas stand on the right ballista and kill the berserker, that'll cut off the other two on the right from attacking my player-phasers. That brings me from 10 to an effective 7, and should give me an opening to take out everyone else.

I bought a dual club for Scarlet so she can reliably hit these mages, and while she has a lance rank, she's better with axes, so I figured, might as well. Getting double WTA is better than the single WTA with a lance anyway, especially when the WTA is a higher weapon rank. The main issue is these mages have nasty attack power, so I'll have to go in first with the units with good res, which means my kinshi knights, starting with the ones with the highest res because they'll have to eat up the nastiest dual strikes.

Alright, so I've got three dark mages and a sorcerer in the center arranged like an upside-down Tetris T block. I can have Subaki attack the top one from the left in melee, then Saizo can attack the left one from the diagonal top left with a bow so he can get some support training with Subaki, then Mozu will come in to take out the sorcerer with her illusory yumi from two spaces to the left with Saizo's dual strike help because that sorcerer's attack power is nasty, and then Takumi can come in and take out the maid over with the left group with Mozu's pair-up. Then I'll take the remaining dark mage out with Dakota so she can get injured in the process of killing him with a brass katana, and that'll be our vow of friendship activation for the chapter. That leaves me with Asugi, Scarlet, Reina and Azura to take out the last two enemies on the right, which is beyond plenty. It should also be a good buffer in case anything in this plan goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Everything's going reasonably well, but the illusory yumi is just one shy of killing with the dual strike, leaving me to assume I forgot to take WTA into account or something, so Mozu has to resort to the silver yumi she's been carrying around for emergencies because hey, I got it for free, might as well have it as an option to save money stocking my army. Thankfully the strength loss isn't enough to stop Takumi, the guy who's gonna have her as a dual strike partner, from just barely one-shotting the maid and not eating either the dagger attack or the berserker's crit-risking dual strike. The surefire yumi would've killed the sorcerer too, but it would've made the damage the enemies did too strong and she would've gone down in one hit, even with Sakura's aura.

And she critted anyway, so pushing her luck for a crit with the illusory yumi would probably have paid off. No matter, what's done is done.

With a meal, defender, the brass katana, swordmaster Ryoma pair up and the Noble Yato, Dakota has 27 speed. That is one more than double her normal speed. It's kinda ridiculous. The dark mage had a much harder time hitting than I'd have liked, but thankfully he hit anyway, and Dakota got to exactly half HP and got a level up.

Sakura finally got rally speed, which is fantastic. Wish I had that a turn earlier, but oh well. I still wanna get darting blow for Saizo though. It'll be important to make sure he can double reliably whenever.

Man, it's fun having this many fliers, I've gotta say.

Okay, yeah, this map, at least the first half, is pretty dang fun. Even after the first turn, I've got enemies coming at me in waves from all sides, and reinforcements that keep coming in from the south, and I've gotta work out how to take them out safely while maximizing my unit training.

Alright, it's turn 7, and the reinforcements have stopped. Time to take on the rest of this map. I tend to hate dealing with siege towers, but at least they aren't shuriken launchers. I'll just send in Ryoma or Silas to take the rest of the enemies out once I've taken out everyone I can bait in from outside the ballista range.

The boss was pretty easy to bait in, so that's no problem.

Yeah, the rest of the map was a bit of a pain, but the map was still way more fun than the last five levels, that's for sure.

So yeah, then we try to interrogate Shura in order to learn about the secret passage Azura was kidnapped from Castle Krakenburg through, and-

I'm sorry.

No.

I'm not discussing this.

Fuck this plot point in its entire ass.

Azura is telling Ryoma about the existence of a secret passage into the castle.

A secret passage that Azura was kidnapped through as a child.

A kidnapping that was instigated by the royal ninja spies of Hoshido.

Yukimura has to know full fucking well where this secret passageway is, and he didn't think to let Ryoma know about it by this point!?

AND THE NOHRIAN ROYALS DON'T KNOW ABOUT THE UNDERGROUND, BUSTLING TOWN SET UP IN THE SEWERS OF WINDMIRE!? THE FUCK!?

Of course, that claim isn't entirely true, as we're about to find Elise, but SERIOUSLY, WHAT A FUCKING STUPID THING TO EVEN SUGGEST IS REMOTELY PLAUSIBLE.

Oh, and despite what we've heard about Nohr's history, apparently Garon didn't like conquering other kingdoms in his youth. So what, was Garon supposed to be a more progressive king compared to his conquering predecessors? Or are they just contradicting themselves because they don't care about what they're saying about the backstory anymore?

OH THANK GOODNESS, SAIZO AND SUBAKI GOT THEIR B SUPPORT.

So it should take one or two more chapters to get them to A+.

Hahaha, this is a really dumb duel. They're following anime logic where they have time to say multiple sentences between attacks apparently.

Aaaaand they stop before they reveal who the winner is. Man, I miss when supports actually had some semblance of narrative closure to them, don't you?

Anyway, I'm thinking I might be done with this game by next week. But I'm not gonna double-dip today. I don't quite have enough time. So for now, this is farewell.

Stay safe, everyone!

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On 2/28/2021 at 11:21 PM, Jotari said:

Owain and the like I have no issue, in concept. It is handled rather badly with the main game giving no explanation as to why they're there and the DLC that does explain it giving them a lot of responsibility when they do absolutely nothing in the story.

It gets even sillier considering they're creating new identities... when they're heading to a land where no one would know of them anyways. What the heck is the point? 

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18 hours ago, Jotari said:

 

Once the series established Outrealm gates, I actually have no issue at all with character cameos coming from different continuities (and while not playable, they did just ignore continuity to have Anna and Jake cameos in other games). Hell I would have preferred if Gaiden had been in a different continuity to Archanea, because, as I think I've mentioned here already, shoving the two in the same continuity makes Zeke's story absolutely ridiculous. In my attempt to remake Sacred Stones so you play both Eirika and Ephraim's route's in a single playthrough (which necessitated creating more characters as the two routes share characters despite taking place in geographically distinct areas), I added Kliff in as a summoner prepromote. I didn't provide any explanation as to how he got to Magvel beyond that he's traveling (established in his ending in his own game) and has an interest in the monsters in that plague Magvel, which resemble those in Valentia. So, yeah, in other words I think it's fine for characters to just be there without explanation. And in fact I think it's better if the explanation is as basic as "They're exploring far off places," or in the case of the White Wings "This is a crazy adventure they accidentally found themselves on while fighting pirates."

Personally it just sorta makes the series a mess if Time/Universe travel gates are canon.

Not to mention, sure, there was one in FE7 but it was very much a big deal how it was only one and hard to use, as opposed to "Lets go to the beach for the mandatory anime fanservice episode" like in Awakening/Fates, it kinda cheapens the entire ending of that game if Gate Travel is now suddenly an easy thing to do and suddenly everywhere. (Kinda like how even in the FE games with revival staves, from what I hear they're super rare so you aren't left wondering why no one just uses those constantly or why the bad guy never revives one of their best troops who'd probably still be of use.)

Then you have all the interacting with past characters stuff in Awakening and Time Paradoxes/time stuff.

 

 

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21 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ah yes, now Silas talks about Nohr's history of conquering other countries to “prosper”, and... they must have a terrible tendency to mismanage everything they touch, because how could they possibly have a long history of taking over more resource-blessed countries... and still be this resource-poor and desperate to conquer to survive?

Just because one country has too many resources for its people does not mean that it has enough resources to meet the demands of another country. In addition, as Nohr gains more territory and grows, so does its population. What happened must have been that Nohr sucked up too many resources from the places it conquered, and that led to their depletion and the exodus of people living in those places for others.

Edited by Maof06
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8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Or are they just contradicting themselves because they don't care about what they're saying about the backstory anymore?

oh sweet alastor thinking fates EVER cared about its backstory. maskless people care more about covid19 spreading than fates cared about its backstory in all three games. i still think you should put it below the NES games in the story ranking, as funny as it can be to see how bad it gets. garon is probably the worst fire emblem main villain ever, and one of the main villains of the franchise is fucking veld, he of the "i have like four lines total in the game i am the main villain of" fame.

also, i was catching up and was totally ready to argue birthright not deserving to be the same as revelation in ironmanability just because of the ice tribe village chapter when revelation has a bit more of bullshit, but then i got to the asugi escape. lmao but also OOF. not sure child paralogues should count for the ranking since they are entirely optional, but that was reee-ough.

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3 hours ago, Samz707 said:

Personally it just sorta makes the series a mess if Time/Universe travel gates are canon.

Agreed. The whole thing reminds me a little of the Zelda timeline thing. Sometimes, it's just better to keep things things apart and trying to squish them together into a single unified whole just creates an unpleasant squishy mess.

47 minutes ago, Axie said:

not sure child paralogues should count for the ranking since they are entirely optional, but that was reee-ough.

The problem is that if you don't count the paralogues, then the game is Three Houses level terrible at providing new recruits as replacements for anyone who dies, which would probably hurt it even more in the rankings.

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29 minutes ago, lenticular said:

The problem is that if you don't count the paralogues, then the game is Three Houses level terrible at providing new recruits as replacements for anyone who dies, which would probably hurt it even more in the rankings.

it wouldn't hurt it that much if it's not that likely that people are going to die to begin with, would it? also fates does offer a couple of prepromotes in the second half of the game that don't need paralogues at least

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10 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Of course, that claim isn't entirely true, as we're about to find Elise, but SERIOUSLY, WHAT A FUCKING STUPID THING TO EVEN SUGGEST IS REMOTELY PLAUSIBLE.

 

I guess I'll mention it now, but I really would have liked it if Elise was playable for this section of the game. Not because I actually want to use her in Birthright, but because by not making her playable and just having her hang around, her death suddenly becomes super telegraphed.

3 hours ago, Samz707 said:

Personally it just sorta makes the series a mess if Time/Universe travel gates are canon.

Not to mention, sure, there was one in FE7 but it was very much a big deal how it was only one and hard to use, as opposed to "Lets go to the beach for the mandatory anime fanservice episode" like in Awakening/Fates, it kinda cheapens the entire ending of that game if Gate Travel is now suddenly an easy thing to do and suddenly everywhere. (Kinda like how even in the FE games with revival staves, from what I hear they're super rare so you aren't left wondering why no one just uses those constantly or why the bad guy never revives one of their best troops who'd probably still be of use.)

Then you have all the interacting with past characters stuff in Awakening and Time Paradoxes/time stuff.

 

 

What can I say? I for one have no issue at all with the concept of multi dimensional trade and travel.

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4 minutes ago, Axie said:

it wouldn't hurt it that much if it's not that likely that people are going to die to begin with, would it? also fates does offer a couple of prepromotes in the second half of the game that don't need paralogues at least

It depends. If you know the game well and are playing at a difficulty level that you're comfortable with, then you're probably not likely to see many deaths. If not, then you probably will have at least a few. I know I certainly did. And for Birthright, the only recruits in the second half of the game are Shura, Izana and Yukimura. And I don't count Izana and Yukimura, since they have a ridiculous recruitment requirement that you have to either stumble into by luck or know about in advance.

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Out of that "Birthright mid-late" slump and entering into what I'd define as the actual lategame, will the rest of it be good or bad? Who cares when the Dark Purple Majesty of the Night and Prince of All Emblematic Tactics lay just around corner amirite?

 

33 minutes ago, Jotari said:

What can I say? I for one have no issue at all with the concept of multi dimensional trade and travel.

I don't think I would either, although I think you need to build it up as that being absolutely normal. Slipping that into a world which otherwise remains firmly set in one dimension is the issue.

Thus, my preference for FE would lay in a game itself set within its own set of dimensions without gatcha *throws salt at the devil*. And without significant inclusion of prior worlds devoid of interdimensional travel being common.

There also has to be some kind of spoken limit on dimensional access. Parallel realities branching off from every little decision would be too numerous to allow them all to be accessible! You killed three separate Dark Dragon God Ammuts? Sorry but there are another 10^35982714 to go! An evil cultist survived who is opening the portal to one right now -no wait they are the head cultist from that dimension looking to spread into this one. Parallel realities should probably not exist. Which would boil down alternate dimensions to being a border separating continents no different from an ocean, except instead of a boat to reach the other continent, you need someone able to work the magic on a cross gate.

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5 hours ago, Axie said:

oh sweet alastor thinking fates EVER cared about its backstory. maskless people care more about covid19 spreading than fates cared about its backstory in all three games. i still think you should put it below the NES games in the story ranking, as funny as it can be to see how bad it gets. garon is probably the worst fire emblem main villain ever, and one of the main villains of the franchise is fucking veld, he of the "i have like four lines total in the game i am the main villain of" fame.

Hey the NES games had a lot of ingame lore and world building, moreso then Awakening, I'd argue.

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6 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Hey the NES games had a lot of ingame lore and world building, moreso then Awakening, I'd argue.

shadow dragon not so much (it took the first remake at least), but i absolutely consider original gaiden a better story than awakening, fates or even blazing blade lol. rudolf's plan being a bit of a WHAT doesn't take away that much from an ambitious attempt in an 8 bit console.

 

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

And for Birthright, the only recruits in the second half of the game are Shura, Izana and Yukimura. And I don't count Izana and Yukimura, since they have a ridiculous recruitment requirement that you have to either stumble into by luck or know about in advance.

oh, i mean, you are bound to stumble upon the my castle recruits if you keep up with the castle stuff. at least i always made sure to have everything as upgraded as possible even in my first playthrough lol. i actually got izana after yukimura because the puppets seemed more important, but still i did get izana and he ended up being useful in endgame.

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Birthright Day 15: Chapter 23

Alright. Since I've done pretty well with regards to keeping my army alive, at a certain point I'm gonna use my paralogues to get as many of my player-phasers as possible to level 15 for certain skills (most crucially bowfaire), but I'm gonna wait a little longer for that in order to maximize the level and exp rewards from the enemies. So for today, we're going straight into Chapter 23. Can't do My Castle visits today since I was too late yesterday. I'll be sure to be better about it tomorrow.

So Elise is tagging along with us in the hopes of trying to help with diplomacy and talk people into not fighting. In a twist that is simultaneously both hilarious and tragic, she completely and totally fails to convince anyone who wasn't already loyal to her.

Oh god, and Elise comments on all of the character development Dakota's gone through that I basically haven't seen.

So, Effie and Arthur hear Elise laughing... and report this... to Camilla? Why? Sure, they've been told something might be wrong and she might be in danger, but she's laughing. They distinctly say that they recognize her laugh. Why don't they just go straight to Elise, because clearly she doesn't seem to be in any sort of distress and it's highly likely this is a false alarm?

Oh my god, poor Sakura. She thought the corpses littering the trail were something like halloween lawn decorations. But then when Dakota goes to hold her hand through the dangerous part, Elise gets super jealous, it's adorable.

...How hard is that corset Camilla's wearing? If it's supposed to be in any way rigid, this game was atrociously lazy with its jiggle physics, because I saw the corset jiggle right along with the boobs inside of it.

But yeah, Camilla's had a full psychotic breakdown and has apparently decided to forget everything Dakota told her and go right back to being violently crazy.

Anyway, fuck this map. I'm not sure why I didn't notice this the first time around, either this only happens on Lunatic or not suffering from the dangerous parts of it was just a consequence of playing super defensively... but Camilla uses the dragon veins on this map at the start of her turn... and the flavor text is hilariously useless in warning you about what the fuck they do. Camilla will basically throw a massive column of fire down whichever of the three waterways it can do the most HP damage to, I'm pretty sure, either that or just the one with the most of your units in it. She will do this every turn. But the flavor text of the dragon vain, crucially, both neglects to tell you what manner of HP damage it will do... and that it destroys all of the little abandoned shops, crates and barrels in that waterway the first time she uses it in one.

God, I forgot how annoying this level is. I hate inescapable damage effects like this in games like Advance Wars. When I play this, I usually low-man it with my best units and have the rest of my army stick in the first area, keeping my proper fighters healthy to fight reinforcements while everyone just eats up fireballs to keep my enemy-phase juggernauts safe to tackle the rest of the map.

Alright, I think I'm all set. I replaced Jakob with Shura, a heal bot with equal magic and better other stats, and I've got my two enemy-phasers ready. Silas will hold down the fort at home, while Ryoma's going to head off to fight Camilla. I've got concoctions for him to keep himself healthy as he mows down enemy after enemy. And once I activate vow of friendship, Silas is, yet again, in the clear. I'm gonna stick around to eat some map damage if Dakota dodges the sorcerer by the first tunnel though.

Ah yes, and they say I can talk to Arthur and Effie with Elise, who's invisibly tagging along with Dakota. I don't know if there's any reward for doing this and keeping them alive, I don't remember there being one last time, but I'll see if I can do it anyway.

Ah yes. The final Hoshidan map theme, Alight. As I've said before, while I think the storm version is awesome, I think the calm version is really, really lame. The drum beat is just way too weak, as are most of the instruments playing the melody. Even in its calm version, it really feels like this song should have an energy resembling some sort of march. Lemme put it this way: imagine this game didn't use the dynamic map system, and Alight (Storm) didn't exist. Could they possibly justify using Alight (Calm) as the final stretch map theme? No. No they could not at all. It would be anticlimactic and lame, and people would despise it.

The map attack does 10 damage. Duly noted. So far Silas is having no trouble at all keeping everyone safe.

Man, it would be awesome if my kinshi knights had amaterasu now, pity it's a level 15 skill.

...Surprisingly, I'm actually having more fun with this map than I thought I was going to. My player-phase units don't really mind all the damage they're taking, since my numerous sun festal healers can just heal them up when they need to take a counterattack.

The spy yumi is surprisingly useful. I managed to use it to get a hammer dual strike on a great knight Silas couldn't quite finish off, all without getting into the red zone I was trying to keep my squishies out of.

Remember when I asked why Ryoma had a sun festal with him in his starting inventory? I think I know the answer. This is the second time in a row that enemy-phasing with Ryoma has gotten him to kill an enemy that dropped a sun festal. Seems to be a habit of his, along with other assorted treasure.

...Actually, that would be pretty fun, having a badass new recruit show up with one weapon... and a shitton of weapons and items they obviously got by killing enemies offscreen.

Ryoma's utterly demolishing this map, it's kind of hilarious. My other units have nothing much to do but heal people up and player-phase the occasional reinforcements.

Well, the whole map rushed me at once, and Camilla's wide open for a Ryoma kill. I'll try to finish off these enemies nearby first.

...Camilla's defeat line literally hasn't changed. It's still “I still love you, Dakota...”

...And I totally forgot this isn't a “defeat boss” map. Oh well. Good thing I didn't do anything too ballsy for the last turn.

We've got some more reinforcements to deal with, and I'd rather keep Effie and Arthur alive, so I'm gonna try and run away from them for as long as I can, then talk to them when everyone else is dead.

Nice thing is that with Camilla taken out, I don't have to deal with those dang fireballs anymore. That'll be nice.

Nope, Arthur's unfortunately caught up to me thanks to the river. I have to talk to him now.

...Aw, this conversation's actually pretty sad if you know what happens by the end of the story, with Elise asking Arthur to come to her room for tea when everything's over.

...Honestly, I think Beruka's death voice line should have been “Mission... Failed...” rather than “De...fea...ted...”

Yeah, so, Arthur stupidly picked the wrong place to escape to, and is about to get his ass kicked. Oh well. I don't think you get anything for keeping him alive.

It's frankly ridiculous how fragile Arthur is here. But thankfully he made a miraculous dodge, and now I think I can save him, if he's running where I think he is!

But god damn are there a shitton of reinforcements. Come on, this is just needlessly prolonging the map!

...Where the fuck are these two clowns trying to escape to? There are so many exits and they seem to be ignoring all of them to go towards the center of the map!

...Yeah, I think the whole thing about them saying they'll leave is a lie. There isn't a single damned exit on the map they seem to have any interest in heading towards, they seem to be chasing after enemies. Holy shit. What the fuck.

But I somehow managed to win without either one dying.

Anyway, Camilla's excuse for why she doesn't help us is that she passes out from the beating she took. Alright.

Alright, we get back, and we've got Yukimura. Weird that he uses chess terms when he's from Hoshido. Was this totally made up by the localization to cheaply make him sound more strategic, or was he using shogi terms or something in the original Japanese? Or was chess brought to Japan a lot earlier than I think?

I got a grand prize at the lottery! ...A silver club. Okay, I guess I'll put it on Scarlet.

...The fuck? Why does my My Castle card still say that I've only cleared any of the games on hard mode? I mean I just beat Revelation on Lunatic, and I know I've beaten Birthright on Lunatic before. Admittedly, my first attempt at Conquest Lunatic went rather sour, and that was at the tail end of the time I spent playing Fates for a while, so no, I haven't beaten Conquest Lunatic yet, but still...

Did I forget to save the file after beating the game or something? Oh right. Yeah, I totally did, at least with the Revelation one. I remember it's supposed to ask you if you want to turn certain of your units into einherjar and I totally didn't get that. I think I was supposed to press A or something at the ending screen and I didn't.

Right, support time.

Nothing much, just Subaki and Azura. ...The same thing seems to be happening as last time, Azura's under attack.

...This conversation only really says one thing of value: this was an assassination attempt by one of the lesser branches of the Hoshidan royal bloodline. Fascinating. I wonder if I'll see the end of this.

Not today, though. That's it for now. Talk to you tomorrow, when I do some paralogue training in all likelihood.

Stay safe, everyone!

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51 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...The fuck? Why does my My Castle card still say that I've only cleared any of the games on hard mode? I mean I just beat Revelation on Lunatic, and I know I've beaten Birthright on Lunatic before. Admittedly, my first attempt at Conquest Lunatic went rather sour, and that was at the tail end of the time I spent playing Fates for a while, so no, I haven't beaten Conquest Lunatic yet, but still...

Did I forget to save the file after beating the game or something? Oh right. Yeah, I totally did, at least with the Revelation one. I remember it's supposed to ask you if you want to turn certain of your units into einherjar and I totally didn't get that. I think I was supposed to press A or something at the ending screen and I didn't.

Weird minor nitpick, but I hate the whole "you can't save after beating the Endgame" thing that Awakening and Fates do. Or games in general, that don't let you have a "final boss defeated" save file. It's like I have no record of actually winning the game. I mean, I usually delete it shortly thereafter, but it'd still be nice to have the option.

53 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ah yes, and they say I can talk to Arthur and Effie with Elise, who's invisibly tagging along with Dakota. I don't know if there's any reward for doing this and keeping them alive, I don't remember there being one last time, but I'll see if I can do it anyway.

Gen 2 Lewyn moment

14 hours ago, Jotari said:

I guess I'll mention it now, but I really would have liked it if Elise was playable for this section of the game. Not because I actually want to use her in Birthright, but because by not making her playable and just having her hang around, her death suddenly becomes super telegraphed.

See also - Zola in Birthright. Would've been cool to get a Dark Mage, even temporarily. Give him a personal skill that's like Xane's ability, now we're talking.

3 hours ago, Axie said:

oh, i mean, you are bound to stumble upon the my castle recruits if you keep up with the castle stuff. at least i always made sure to have everything as upgraded as possible even in my first playthrough lol. i actually got izana after yukimura because the puppets seemed more important, but still i did get izana and he ended up being useful in endgame.

Not necessarily - if you don't visit other castles, or do the Paralogues, you probably won't have enough Dragon Vein points to fully update those features. And why would you? The Hot Springs are fluff, and the Fire Orb and Puppets are only useful in rare castle defense challenges. I'd certainly prioritize maxing out the shops, forge, lottery, and Arena, at least, before those.

16 hours ago, Maof06 said:

Just because one country has too many resources for its people does not mean that it has enough resources to meet the demands of another country. In addition, as Nohr gains more territory and grows, so does its population. What happened must have been that Nohr sucked up too many resources from the places it conquered, and that led to their depletion and the exodus of people living in those places for others.

They could've explained this in one of a couple ways. Either A) Nohr has serious wealth inequality, where a few rich people (including the royal family) hoard food and resources, leaving the masses destitute; or B) Nohr actually has very poor and inefficient practices, say in terms of mining and farming, that nets them less resources than they could be obtaining. Maybe a mix of the two. Of course, the game never bothers to go into specifics.

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5 hours ago, Axie said:

oh, i mean, you are bound to stumble upon the my castle recruits if you keep up with the castle stuff. at least i always made sure to have everything as upgraded as possible even in my first playthrough lol. i actually got izana after yukimura because the puppets seemed more important, but still i did get izana and he ended up being useful in endgame.

I don't see it happening unless you do outside-of-story stuff regularly. Doesn't help that the stuff needed to get those characters isn't exactly high priority to upgrade...

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8 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I don't see it happening unless you do outside-of-story stuff regularly. Doesn't help that the stuff needed to get those characters isn't exactly high priority to upgrade...

Just putting in my two cents on this: I didn't get either during my blind hard ironman of Birthright.

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4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Man, it would be awesome if my kinshi knights had amaterasu now, pity it's a level 15 skill.

That's not the worst of it. It's that the healing is rather underwhelming for being such. If it was like 40% healing, then we'd be talking. 20% is bleh.

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

Not necessarily - if you don't visit other castles, or do the Paralogues, you probably won't have enough Dragon Vein points to fully update those features. And why would you? The Hot Springs are fluff, and the Fire Orb and Puppets are only useful in rare castle defense challenges. I'd certainly prioritize maxing out the shops, forge, lottery, and Arena, at least, before those.

Exactly this. To go into more detail, if you are doing story missions only, you get 21 DVP over the course of the game. One when you first unlock my castle after chapter 6, then one per chapter thereafter up to chapter 26. Maxing out the armory, rod shop, forge, lottery and arena takes 15 of those 21. Maxing out your food and ore nodes costs another 4 and puts you up to 19 of 21 spent. Already we're up to the point where you don't have enough left to get a max puppet or hot springs, and we still have several buildings left that I'd prioritise over either of those two, like the mess hall, accessory shop, and prison.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Anyway, fuck this map. I'm not sure why I didn't notice this the first time around, either this only happens on Lunatic or not suffering from the dangerous parts of it was just a consequence of playing super defensively... but Camilla uses the dragon veins on this map at the start of her turn... and the flavor text is hilariously useless in warning you about what the fuck they do. Camilla will basically throw a massive column of fire down whichever of the three waterways it can do the most HP damage to, I'm pretty sure, either that or just the one with the most of your units in it. She will do this every turn. But the flavor text of the dragon vain, crucially, both neglects to tell you what manner of HP damage it will do... and that it destroys all of the little abandoned shops, crates and barrels in that waterway the first time she uses it in one.

This level also highlights two problems that I have with the UI for Dragon Veins in general. The first is that when their effect is a long way away from the Dragon Vein itself, you often can't see the affected area, even when completely zoomed out. It's not too terrible in this map because you can make a reasonable guess that they're going to cover the entire map, but it's worse in some Conquest maps, and I'd rather not have to guess at all. The second problem is that if an enemy character is standing on a Dragon Vein, it becomes essentially invisible to you. If you know what you're looking for then you can just about make out the sparkles behind the character on the map, but it's not at all obvious. And if you put your cursor over the map square, it doesn't tell you that it's Camilla and a Dragon Vein; it just tells you that it's Camilla.

This isn't helped by the fact that, up until now, I'm pretty sure that Dragon Veins have all been single-use only. When I first saw this level, I assumed that would be what happened here as well. I was expecting I'd have to deal with three Dragon Vein attacks over the course of the level, one in each lane. Essentially, we have a situation here where the enemy follows different rules to the player and then the UI doesn't make this clear. I was caught very unaware when she sent a second firestorm down the first lane, and though it didn't wind up getting any of my units killed, that was entirely down to luck.

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