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

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I think you are right about it being FE12 (after the combining); that is a game I have played far more. It is a shame as archers are useless before they promote, and hunters are useless after...

Starting Hunter as prepromote, and Warrior after, is probably the best option for bow wielders in this game.

 

If you need a break between the Fates paths go for it, but if otherwise not really.

 

Than again the European names have the incredibly awful Nabarl, and Macedon is a lot better than Medon as well...

The European translation is surprisingly shy to reference older European kingdoms in its names I guess.

I don't think Nabarl is that awful. Macedon is better though. Medon's fine, but it's no Macedon. Going full Macedonia would be even better though. The European translation also managed to keep Amiee's name consistent to what it had been before too.

[Interdimensional Observer]

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

I do have to wonder which would be worse for the people's morale, though: "Our princess has left us!", or "Our princess is taken prisoner!"

Option C- She lied!

During the Imjin War, Japan's 1592-1598 invasion of Korea under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Seonjo, the King of Joseon (Korea), told the people in the capital city of Seoul "Don't worry! I'm staying here to the bitter end!". Then, Seonjo's messengers informed him of how the Korean army was being chopped into sashimi and the Japanese were advancing up the peninsula at a breathtaking pace. Fearing he'd be lucky if his corpse was pickled into kimchi when the Hideyoshi's forces arrived, the king realized he had to get out of the capital ASAP. He left some generals and troops behind to try to fend off the Japanese.

When defense of Seoul collapsed and the Japanese army entered the city, the Korean urbanites discovered their king had secretly abandoned them for his own safety. This was a betrayal, no longer could the people take solace in the shared suffering of their sovereign, and no longer could they attempt to escape before the usual invasion orgy of pillage, rape, and murder unfolded. Trust in government was dead, and those who didn't die in Seoul burnt more of the buildings of the now-absent Korean monarch to the ground.

Seonjo took up residence in Pyongyang and made similar promises of staying to the end there, but he broke those too. Though thankfully he didn't have to swear and forsake a third time, Chinese military aid and Japanese slowdown averted that need.

 

...More relevant to Shadow Dragon, Elice could've fled and the Queen could've stayed behind. We don't see her anywhere in the Prologue, but we can guess she might not have been with Cornelius.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Punished Dayni]

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

I wish they'd kept the European names. How many people honestly read Caeda and didn't pronunce it as something like Kay-da? Also Dolhr? Have you heard of vowels!

I never pronounced it as Kay-da actually. Doluna would still be better though.

I'd prefer 8-4 generally though.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Watched the OVA like once, I remember it only going up to Navarre's recruitment or something. I own FE Warriors, friend got it for me when I bought a switch for Christmas, but I never beat it. TMS I don't have, but since that's on Switch I guess I could get it with little issue...

Well, that or as an epilogue to the whole thing

 

(Then again, you deciding to do Kaga Saga in the middle of it just threw me a little because that is a pretty big thing to be sticking in the middle of it, but that's just me.)

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Dayni said:

I never pronounced it as Kay-da actually. Doluna would still be better though.

 

Did you pronounce it as Shiida? Or was it just fhjkdfhjkdgh?

[Alastor15243]

1 hour ago, Dayni said:

(Then again, you deciding to do Kaga Saga in the middle of it just threw me a little because that is a pretty big thing to be sticking in the middle of it, but that's just me.)

Still not sure where the Kaga Saga is gonna go. All I know for certain is that I'm not playing it until Awakening is over, so I can fully appreciate every lore detail I see in 11 and 12 that Awakening shat on.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Punished Dayni]

40 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Did you pronounce it as Shiida? Or was it just fhjkdfhjkdgh?

Shiida.

14 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Still not sure where the Kaga Saga is gonna go. All I know for certain is that I'm not playing it until Awakening is over, so I can fully appreciate every lore detail I see in 11 and 12 that Awakening shat on.

So something like Kaga Saga -> Fates 1 -> OVA -> Fates 2 -> Warriors -> Fates 3 -> TMS would happen if you did as some others were suggesting?

And I can see exactly were Awakening's going to go already, oh boy.

[Alastor15243]

17 minutes ago, Dayni said:

Shiida.

So something like Kaga Saga -> Fates 1 -> OVA -> Fates 2 -> Warriors -> Fates 3 -> TMS would happen if you did as some others were suggesting?

And I can see exactly were Awakening's going to go already, oh boy.

Another option would be to put all of that shit between Echoes and Three Houses so I can postpone my eons of torment as long as humanly possible.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Punished Dayni]

3 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Another option would be to put all of that shit between Echoes and Three Houses so I can prolong my eons of torment as long as humanly possible.

Did you put yourself to Maddening? I completely understand that logic.

As someone currently playing it, you can't convince me to do it a second time, because these maps combined with the sheer prep time is just wild. I'm near the time I took in my first playthrough, while skipping most of the cutscenes and animations.

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Dayni said:

Did you put yourself to Maddening? I completely understand that logic.

As someone currently playing it, you can't convince me to do it a second time, because these maps combined with the sheer prep time is just wild. I'm near the time I took in my first playthrough, while skipping most of the cutscenes and animations.

I tried maddening once and then gave up in frustration and boredom after the Red Canyon map. I just do not like difficulty modes that over-inflate enemy stats to that degree. It was clearly a childish and desperate attempt to create something, anything that could challenge players despite the unfettered mastery of space and time they were irresponsibly given, and it shows.

Of course, the next lowest difficulty is ridiculously easy, and the game's gonna be boring enough as it is for me either way... not sure what to do here.

[Punished Dayni]

3 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I tried maddening once and then gave up in frustration and boredom after the Red Canyon map. I just do not like difficulty modes that over-inflate enemy stats to that degree. It was clearly a childish and desperate attempt to create something, anything that could challenge players despite the unfettered mastery of space and time they were irresponsibly given, and it shows.

Of course, the next lowest difficulty is ridiculously easy, and the game's gonna be boring enough as it is for me either way... not sure what to do here.

Honestly, when I actually cleared Zanado I wasn't as mad as I expected to be. It was tricky figuring out the first few groups, but I actually wasn't as put off by it and I got a bus ride done with at the same time.

Reunion at Dawn on the other hand can go back to the hell it clearly spawned from, that is absolutely a frontrunner for the worst map in the series. I'm curious if you think there's any map that could halfway compare so far.

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Dayni said:

Honestly, when I actually cleared Zanado I wasn't as mad as I expected to be. It was tricky figuring out the first few groups, but I actually wasn't as put off by it and I got a bus ride done with at the same time.

Reunion at Dawn on the other hand can go back to the hell it clearly spawned from, that is absolutely a frontrunner for the worst map in the series. I'm curious if you think there's any map that could halfway compare so far.

Not so far. My candidate for worst map in the series is actually also in that game, and it's largely out of sheer principle and just what agony the map inflicted on me even on hard mode.

Foreign Land and Sky. Just on principle, the gimmick of that chapter is completely inexcusable, and anyone who suggested it before time rewinding was a thing probably would've gotten thrown out a window.

But I have heard the horror stories about the first map of AM/VW/SS on Maddening.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Punished Dayni]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Not so far. My candidate for worst map in the series is actually also in that game, and it's largely out of sheer principle and just what agony the map inflicted on me even on hard mode.

Foreign Land and Sky. Just on principle, the gimmick of that chapter is completely inexcusable, and anyone who suggested it before time rewinding was a thing probably would've gotten thrown out a window.

But I have heard the horror stories about the first map of AM/VW/SS on Maddening.

I was curious about maps from other titles, but I get the argument, as someone who just said "Fuck it, Shamir's dead from Meteor" when first playing it on my SS run. The gimmick is dumb, but only BS for me with Hubert there and with EP about to start. I didn't find it as frustrating on Maddening because I knew he'd be there and worked around it.

Oh, the horrors are true, I did it a few weeks ago. Fuck that map into Valla.

[Alastor15243]

1 hour ago, Dayni said:

I was curious about maps from other titles, but I get the argument, as someone who just said "Fuck it, Shamir's dead from Meteor" when first playing it on my SS run. The gimmick is dumb, but only BS for me with Hubert there and with EP about to start. I didn't find it as frustrating on Maddening because I knew he'd be there and worked around it.

Be grateful that you will never know true pain. There is no agony it is possible to experience in Fire Emblem more profound than getting hit with that map's gimmick while doing a blind, divine-pulse-free ironman run of the game.

  

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Did you pronounce it as Shiida? Or was it just fhjkdfhjkdgh?

Incidentally, I did originally pronounce it like "cicada" without the first syllable.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But I have heard the horror stories about the first map of AM/VW/SS on Maddening.

Huh? Really? I've played Maddening and I never remember the first map being all that ridiculous. You really miss the ability to use time pulse as it's denied to you for the first few maps but it is still just tough, not like Lunatic+ unfair tough.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Jotari

[Jotari]

Oh wait. The first map of Part 2, not the whole game. Not sure why my mind just went to the whole game. Yeah, that one is really tough. Having all the units come back in gameplay is cool and stuff, but not actually letting you choose who to deploy and forcing out units you might not have even trained sucks. Especially on Maddening when you're likely to have played the game already and are recruiting from the other houses. Even that aside when you just have the Lord+Byleth it's damn difficult to do anything in the first few turns without one of them dying.

Double posting because Serenes sucks and won't let me edit.

[Alastor15243]

Shadow Dragon Day 3: Chapter 1

Right. So, here's how this is gonna play out.

I'm gonna be doing this on Hard 3, as I'm told that's the hardest difficulty before things really cross a line into comically unfair territory.

I'm gonna be ironmanning as well, and for those of you just joining us, here are my rules whenever I ironman for a playlog:

I will ironman the game until and unless one of the following things happens:

1: I get a game over.

2: I lose all of my healers.

3: I lose all of my thieves.

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

This is to ensure that I don't keep losing units until the file becomes nigh-unplayable, and that I can cut my losses while I can still actually finish the playlog.

However... for this run... due to the specifics of this game...

...I will actually be suspending rules 2 and 4 for this run.

I can always make new healers with the reclass system, and the body count required to get those gaiden chapters can be insane at times, and I want to leave open the possibility that I'll see them naturally. And besides, thanks to those generic units who join you if your numbers get too low, I trust my skills enough that I should be able to beat this game at any body count with a renewable supply of disposable meatshields.

Even if it would be profoundly embarrassing to do so.

Yeah, so, that's the other thing: I will not be using mods to get the gaiden chapters automatically, and I will not be deliberately killing off units in order to get them. I will be ironmanning the game and seeing if, in the course of a normal ironman run, it's at all realistic to unlock these gaidens. After all, the biggest complaint people have about these gaidens is the absurd player behavior required to unlock them. Part of my job here is going to be to see if that criticism is actually valid, or if, in the context of an ironman, it's actually realistic.

With that out of the way, let's go.

...Shit, so, I deleted my normal mode save just in time to realize right after that normal mode has a different opening that talks more about Marth's life on Talys in the three years since the prologue.

...Oh no, thank goodness, it doesn't. Hard Mode just opens with two separate narration sequences, one one with the map and one without.

Alright, so, we're back at Chapter 1. And man, I am just loving this version of “Trouble!” still! And we get a CG of Caeda that honestly looks a bit too much like she's a model posing for a photoshoot and using her pegasus as a prop. Only her face really gives an indication that this is serious. Still, it is a well-done image, which, uh... I can't really say for...

Yeah, uh...

...I'm not entirely sure why I found Caeda's Shadow Dragon portrait so cute as a teenager. Looking at her now... I mean she's, like, passable as a still image, but holy shit, she looks like some kind of haunted porcelain doll when her lips move. She just looks so fucking lifeless.

But anyway, the opening dialogue is kept short and sweet, and it's basically the same thing we saw in Dark Dragon, so... we're on the map!

And...

...Oh god...

...The map music...

 

Man, I was so confused when this came on. Because it sounded so much like that awesome song I heard in the Brawl Shadow Dragon medley... but it wasn't. And they even taunt me by playing that bit of the melody on xylophones towards the end of the loop, and I was so confused, and holding out hope that the song would play later in the game... but it never did.

It wasn't until later that I learned that the FE3 remake inexplicably changed this song into one much more boring, and then the DS remake of FE1... which brought back all the other things FE3 Book 1 cut... kept the new boring map music.

It breaks my heart that I'm gonna have to listen to this so much, but at least this game has other map themes that are much better than this... this dollar store rip-off.

Anyway, I have Marth visit the village (because even now only he can do that, which I hope won't get tedious like it did in the last game) to collect the 10,000 gold, take out the thief with Abel's javelin and Caeda's Wing Spear, and...

...Oh yeah. The Wing Spear. So, Caeda can't use silver lances at base anymore, but she can use her own personal weapon, the Wing Spear. It's basically single-handedly responsible for her insanely high tier list ranking, because so many enemies in this game are cavalry or knights, which this has a slayer effect against like it's a rapier. It's basically objectively better than the rapier, with only a 10 hit penalty for 3 more (really 9 more) might.

And the best part? You can take basically any weapon you have... and forge it. It's not like in the Tellius games where you had to take specific pre-determined templates to modify... no, you can take your own weapons and apply forge bonuses to them. So you can forge a ridiculous amount of might onto the wing spear and use it to basically one-shot cavalry and one-round knights. That's apparently... an extremely important strategy for H5.

Okay, so, this isn't too terrifying so far, but I'm definitely feeling the pressure. This feels like a nice, comfortable but engaging difficulty, at least right now when there aren't any ambush spawns.

Enemy AI update: so, at least when they can't kill, enemies will prioritize attacking the unit that they themselves can do the most individual damage to, even if as a group they could bring someone stronger a lot closer to death. Not sure if that changes when they have a chance to kill, but I'm sure I'll have an opportunity to test that eventually.

Alright, the initial wave is done. Time to heal up and then take on the rest of them.

I'm gonna have to pay attention to how they pace enemy encounters on larger maps compared to Dark Dragon. I may have forgotten a detail or fifty about the games in the time since I've played them, but I will never forget just how messed up Shadow Dragon's enemy placement was. It was completely ridiculous. Far too often was there this huge wave of aggressive enemies running towards you across an otherwise empty, massive map, you moving your huge 16 unit army across huge swaths of empty space to meet them, and then you clash... and then there was nothing until you got to the end.

It's a little tedious that forts are my only source of healing at this specific moment, but hey, the game's still way faster than Dark Dragon, so... can't really complain! And it's pretty fast in general too, honestly, especially the interface. I miss this sort of snappy, swift movement across the map that the 2D games had.

Man, persistent enemy highlighting is sooooooooo useful here. I do slightly miss the added innovation Awakening added where “highlight all” is pink and “highlight individual” is red, so you could have tiered danger zones.

Cain and Abel's levels haven't been so hot, but thankfully this game has a defense mechanism against getting stat screwed, where every missed stat up will increase your growth in that stat by 10% of its original value, returning to normal by one tier every time you do eventually get it. It does nothing to compensate for stat blessing, however, so it's not really an ideal situation. Ideally I'd like a system that keeps track of what your averages are and, like, makes sure you're no more than 3 ahead or behind in any one stat. And maybe checks your overall average too, and also keeps that in check. I like how randomized level ups keep units from being exactly the same every time, increasing replayability, but I don't like how it makes it so easy for units to be way, way worse than they should be.

Aaaanyway... time for the boss. Even here on H3 he's pretty nasty, and can crit and/or double most of my melee fighters. So I'll be chipping away at him from range with the javelins I bought towards the start.

Unfortunately that's proving to be insanely unreliable, so I'll have to risk Jagen's life with a 2% crit in order to get a good silver lance hit in to get us going.

...Aaaand after that failed to get him close to death, we managed to kill him with an obscenely lucky crit from Abel.

Oh shit!

The “victory is near” music!

Oh man, I forgot how great this is! It's such an awesome cover of the original victory music, with this really nice saxophone part that works super well.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THIS!

So, in the original game, whenever you beat a map, you got a portrait of somebody talking to Marth, and a monologue from them.

They translated this to modern dialogue scenes with one portrait on one side and one portrait on the other...

...but they didn't actually give Marth any new lines, so he's just kinda standing there listening quietly, and by modern standards that is so fucking weird.

...Also, I'm being given the same advice Malledus already gave us three years ago about recruiting enemies, simply because this is where it was in the original game.

Oh man, it's gonna be so fun identifying all the leftover goofy shit like this.

“Understood, lad? Then go!”

It's like the king's talking to an imaginary friend! They didn't even give Marth a line when he was asked a direct question!

...Alright, well, I finished early today, but I think this entry is long enough that I probably shouldn't do another chapter today. So that's where we'll leave off!

Ahhhh, sweet simplicity. I don't wanna jinx it...

...But I think I'm gonna start enjoying this again! Like, even if this game gets bad, I think I'm still gonna enjoy the playlogging itself!

Stay safe, everyone!

[Jotari]

40 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Man, persistent enemy highlighting is sooooooooo useful here. I do slightly miss the added innovation Awakening added where “highlight all” is pink and “highlight individual” is red, so you could have tiered danger zones.

Wait you sure that's not a thing? Could have sworn they had that in this game.

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Jotari said:

Wait you sure that's not a thing? Could have sworn they had that in this game.

They do have "highlight all", but it's the same color as "highlight individual".

Also, might as well say this now, it won't change the overall ranking any, but I checked back on my Radiant Dawn ranking and realized I got two games backwards in the ironmannability ranking. I'll be fixing it shortly.

[Hello72207]

50 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

before things really cross a line into comically unfair territory.

oh yeah. I haven't actually played hard 5, but from FEtubers i can see that it's kinda dumb, especially considering things like how it's practically impossible to defeat the final boss without killing at least one of your units. I'm sorry, but when the meta for defeating the final boss without losing someone is to suicide your op as hecc divine dragon onto the final boss, and then revive them and do it again, you might have made to strong of a boss.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Hello72207

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

before things really cross a line into comically unfair territory.

Speaking of, are you gonna avoid Lunatic in New Mystery for the same reason?

13 minutes ago, Hello72207 said:

oh yeah. I haven't actually played hard 5, but from FEtubers i can see that it's kinda dumb, especially considering things like how it's practically impossible to defeat the final boss without killing at least one of your units. I'm sorry, but when the meta for defeating the final boss without losing someone is to suicide your op as hecc divine dragon onto the final boss, and then revive them and do it again, you might have made to strong of a boss.

And then they go and do it again in the next game. Whoopee. I mean, when only the main character can reasonably be expected to do anything to the final boss, but they need to be capped to not die horribly AND you have to hope you have someone else that can pry the one weapon that can do anything to the boss from the cold, dead fingers of the prior boss (which all but mandates THEM being capped as well), you dun goofed.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Not so far. My candidate for worst map in the series is actually also in that game, and it's largely out of sheer principle and just what agony the map inflicted on me even on hard mode.

Foreign Land and Sky. Just on principle, the gimmick of that chapter is completely inexcusable, and anyone who suggested it before time rewinding was a thing probably would've gotten thrown out a window.

But I have heard the horror stories about the first map of AM/VW/SS on Maddening.

In terms of being just bad, it doesn't compare to Arcadia or 24x in Thracia imho (the latter in particular comes to mind as practically unplayable without a guide). Hell, in my book, even Wooden Cavalry in this game (let's just say I'll have a lot to say about this when the time is right and leave it at that) is a bigger headache than Foreign Land and Sky. And let's not forget Revelations, AKA "Let's force three units that haven't been seen since part 1 for shits and giggles!".

Edited October 7, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Jotari]

35 minutes ago, Hello72207 said:

oh yeah. I haven't actually played hard 5, but from FEtubers i can see that it's kinda dumb, especially considering things like how it's practically impossible to defeat the final boss without killing at least one of your units. I'm sorry, but when the meta for defeating the final boss without losing someone is to suicide your op as hecc divine dragon onto the final boss, and then revive them and do it again, you might have made to strong of a boss.

I haven't played Hard 5, but honestly as a ridiculous difficulty mode I don't actually mind the idea that units will die taking down the final boss. Makes for a more memorable and interesting battle than the pretty standard whittle them down slowly. And since there's no gameplay after that particular battle it's not like losing units is a big deal. Though it does suck that Marth with Falchion is utterly incapable of going toe to toe with Medeus in Hard 5. Should have given Falchion protection from being doubled or something. Is such a disappointing weapon in the DS games. Keeping the Starsphere for infinite Tiki or Gradivus use is far more useful than getting that glorified wyrmslayer. Hell a wyrmslayer is probably even better as you can forge a wyrmslayer to have crit. All Falchion has going for it is being unbreakable, when there's only two damn chapters left in the game! It doesn't even give Marth a flashy combat animation. No wonder they dropped it from the game's title.

[Icelerate]

Do you guys think Ike turning into Goku could have been handled better or was the idea dumb to begin with? 

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Do you guys think Ike turning into Goku could have been handled better or was the idea dumb to begin with? 

Checked out the thread real quick. I was interested to learn that a lot of BK's more villainous lines in PoR were made up by the American localization. Cool to know, but ultimately worthless for my purposes as I can't judge the experience of playing anything but the game I played.

[Icelerate]

On 10/5/2020 at 5:32 AM, Alastor15243 said:

Not really. You might be able to make that argument for something like Fates, but SS got me so passionate to criticize it ironically because it was both stupid and boring.

Also, you said you were enjoying RD's story as much as SS back in chapter 1-3. 

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Also, you said you were enjoying RD's story as much as SS back in chapter 1-3. 

Yeah, but Part 1 is probably the weakest from a storytelling perspective. My opinion improved since that, though not my enjoyment of roasting it.