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Alastor15243
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1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Since when the fuck has a country ever been justified in invading another when the other country doesn't even know what the invading country's grievances are?

 

Ask the Three Houses fans

*Shots fired*

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Oh boy, FE8 it is now. It's my second favorite in the series alongside FE6, all the more reason to see someone else's scope! Also curious to see your stance on the lords in some later cutscenes, since they're my personal favorites in the series and I know there's some fucking controversy somewhere.

Good luck for this.

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5 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

HA HA HA HAHA.... I've seen better Excuse Plots than the shitfest that is Sacred Stones's story. Just.... Be ready for me to tear it a new one.

FE7 may have have had an ostensibly more ambitious plot, yet it clearly had less care put into it than Sacred Stones and its basic, formulaic story, since between the two its only Sacred Stones which manages to approximate competence.

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Curiously, with the exception of having much better luck, Seth's starting stats are actually pretty much on par with FE7 Marcus's, with slightly worse HP, strength and skill, but slightly better speed and defense, and equal resistance. Of course, his growths are drastically better. Seth has 25% more HP, 20% more strength, 20% more speed, 25% more defense, and only 5% less in skill, luck and resistance.

Seth also fights weaker enemies. Part of why he's so good isn't because he has bigger numbers Marcus, but because he eclipses the enemies so much more than Marcus does.

And yeah, he's got growth leads in strength and speed, AKA best stats, and having a little more speed and defense is better when you already hit and 2HKO everything anyway.

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Just now, AnonymousSpeed said:

Seth also fights weaker enemies. Part of why he's so good isn't because he has bigger numbers Marcus, but because he eclipses the enemies so much more than Marcus does.

Last time I checked, tho, FE8 enemies are actually slightly stronger than FE7, right? I can hardly really call the rabble you fight in that game anything close to a thread, but to my experience, FE8 enemies aren't entirely helpless.

Seth is just that good.

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2 minutes ago, Koops said:

Oh boy, FE8 it is now. It's my second favorite in the series alongside FE6, all the more reason to see someone else's scope! Also curious to see your stance on the lords in some later cutscenes, since they're my personal favorites in the series and I know there's some fucking controversy somewhere.

Good luck for this.

Thank you! Hope you enjoy reading!

2 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Seth also fights weaker enemies. Part of why he's so good isn't because he has bigger numbers Marcus, but because he eclipses the enemies so much more than Marcus does.

And yeah, he's got growth leads in strength and speed, AKA best stats, and having a little more speed and defense is better when you already hit and 2HKO everything anyway.

Yeah, that's what I figured. I'll have to see for myself though.

Edited by Alastor15243
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Eyy, Sacred stones, my second favourite game! It'll be interesting to see your perspective on it given that you loved FE7 and I hated it in every aspect. Weird how I'm like that though.

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4 minutes ago, Benice said:

Eyy, Sacred stones, my second favourite game! It'll be interesting to see your perspective on it given that you loved FE7 and I hated it in every aspect. Weird how I'm like that though.

Funny thing, I didn't actually like FE7 all that much. The issue is more that the first three games are just so flawed by modern standards that its current place on the ranking looks great.

I don't know how much longer it'll stay in the upper half.

At any rate, hope you enjoy the ride!

Edited by Alastor15243
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7 hours ago, Jotari said:

Eirika might hold the idiot ball pretty tightly in that one scene, and Ephraim's success level might be quite unreasonable, but I find Blazing Blade to have far more of an excuse plot than Sacred Stones by a country mile.  Most of my complaints with Sacred Stones would be about how basic it is along with how rushed the ending feels.

I'll admit that Blazing Blade's plot is rather low-stakes by FE standards, as there's no full-scale war. ...But I do think that it's still better than Sacred Stones's plot, which is not a very high bar to clear, even with its issues.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

FE7 may have have had an ostensibly more ambitious plot, yet it clearly had less care put into it than Sacred Stones and its basic, formulaic story, since between the two its only Sacred Stones which manages to approximate competence.

You mean the same competence that gets Eirika made into a laughingstock who's only notable for her naivete and makes the whole thing sound more like the only reason the plot's even a thing is because one of the main characters was a complete fucking moron (who also happens to be the crappiest attempt at a tragic villain I've ever seen by far)??? Yeah, that's some real competence there.... not.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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According to the main site, Sacred Stones uses the same XP formula as FE7 on normal difficulty, so overleveled characters such as Seth gain more XP than they do in EHM/HHM. If I remember correctly, Seth taking all (or at least most) bosskills will be approaching Lv.10 at the time your growth units start promoting. Well, Seth is technically a growth unit as well, but you know what I mean.

I always liked FE8 well enough. I think they fumbled the wonder twin's portrayal a bit - to me, they come across as the Cool Twin and the Stupid Twin instead of two kids that are naive in different ways (Eirika being too trusting and Ephraim too confident in his abilities). But I like the overall cast of playable characters (some duds aside) and plotwise, the personal connection between the twins and Lyon works very well for me.

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2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

You mean the same competence that gets Eirika made into a laughingstock who's only notable for her naivete and makes the whole thing sound more like the only reason the plot's even a thing is because one of the main characters was a complete fucking moron (who also happens to be the crappiest attempt at a tragic villain I've ever seen by far)??? Yeah, that's some real competence there.... not.

Making fun of the intelligence of Sacred Stones characters as compared to Blazing Sword characters is itself a joke.

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I've played sacred stones by far the most of any entry (handheld was a gamechanger with 5 siblings and my brother lost my copy of fe7 way back when, I still have my working copy of SS) and yet I could barely tell you anything beyond the basics of the story. 

Everyone will rightfully talk about Seth but almost all of the Cavs (lol forde) are ridiculous and Ephraim has AVERAGES of 17/17/18 offense at level 20, with a personal weapon that dunks on every almost every human enemy through his promotion. Then seemingly for lulz he gets a horse, +2 move, and a whopping +5 res to patch his one bad stat on promotion; and of course gets his free 2nd personal meme lance with (effectively) 22 might. 

I fully believe that with 6 move instead of 5 before promotion he'd be tied with Sigurd for strongest non avatar lord in the series (until the power creep of 3H anyway), as Ephraim's biggest problem by far is not being able to get to the fight before the cavs have ended it. 

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13 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Making fun of the intelligence of Sacred Stones characters as compared to Blazing Sword characters is itself a joke.

Saying that Sacred Stones's story is good is even more of one. About the only part of it that was decent was the pre-split portion.

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Tbh thestory in FE8 makes way more sense to me than FE7's. The problem might just be the actual interaction with Eph and Eirika, compared to Eliwood/Hector/Lyn. It's not a top-tier story but I think it holds up well enough.

Edited by Koops
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1 minute ago, Koops said:

Tbh thestory in FE8 makes way more sense to me than FE7's. The problem might just be the actual interaction with Eph and Eirika, compared to Eliwood/Hector/Lyn. It's not a top-tier story but I think it holds up well enough.

Yeah, I can tell right away, Eirika just cannot hold the protagonist torch as well as any one of the FE7 trio, and I doubt Ephraim's gonna make the dynamic much better. But I've heard that I'm going to like the villains a lot more, so I'm curious what I'm going to notice when I play.

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27 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, I can tell right away, Eirika just cannot hold the protagonist torch as well as any one of the FE7 trio, and I doubt Ephraim's gonna make the dynamic much better. But I've heard that I'm going to like the villains a lot more, so I'm curious what I'm going to notice when I play.

I'd prepare for disappointment on the villain front if I were you. In fact, the quantity-over-quality approach on villains is yet another aspect that hurts Sacred Stones's story.

29 minutes ago, Koops said:

Tbh thestory in FE8 makes way more sense to me than FE7's. The problem might just be the actual interaction with Eph and Eirika, compared to Eliwood/Hector/Lyn. It's not a top-tier story but I think it holds up well enough.

I don't see it when one side of the story is essentially filler.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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Sacred Stones Day 2: Chapter 1

Okay, so, fun fact: I asked around about the whole Grado “Empire” thing, and Acacia Sgt, in the game's defense, pointed out that not every “empire” in the real world fit that definition either. Apparently some countries even in real life have called themselves empires just to sound cool.

Okay. I'll let that slide then. For now.

Crazy how this chapter kind of suggests Grado has the manpower to invade two countries at once.

And of course Tana tried to pull the “my dad and my brother will kick your butt” card to try and scare off the invaders, but she only winds up getting herself captured as a hostage. Not that there were many better outcomes for her than that though, as Gilliam later points out.

It's kind of hilarious how absurd this concept is here. Eirika and Seth... it's literally just those two, and Eirika just suggests they wipe out an entire army detachment that was big enough to take out an entire fucking castle of guards. I don't think we've seen anything in the series so far that's quite that level of ridiculously unrealistic odds, and they treat it like it's nothing. And people criticize Ephraim for being a Military Stu? At least with him in 5x they acknowledged how outmanned he was and actually described some of the tactics he was using to compensate for it. A lot of hit-and-runs and guerilla warfare. Here, it's one paladin and a novice swordswoman who can barely take a hit, reclaiming a fucking castle from an invading army, and even Seth eventually acts like this is something it's remotely physically possible to do.

I'll have to wait for Ephraim's scenes to be sure before I start saying this is worse.

But I'm pretty sure this is worse.

Honestly, I hate it when the main lord starts with their personal weapon and nothing else, forcing you to waste its uses before you can buy more supplies. It's like the game's mocking you and your desires to save it for actual effective targes. Not that the rapier is that fantastic, but still.

Also, I find it utterly surreal that they gave the Reginleif the actually accurate description of “Effective against cavalry, knights”, while the rapier still says “Effective against infantry”.

Ooh, and now we get the new “allies recruited” theme, “Comrades”. Honestly, I was kind of surprised first time I heard it. The fact that “Together We Ride” appeared in Melee and Blazing Sword made me assume that had been the recruitment theme for the entire series up until that point. It seemed strange to change it now. But no, turns out it was just from FE1/3, and FE7 just brought it back... I have to assume to capitalize on the Melee boom they knew was coming. Who knows though? Maybe that had nothing to do with it. FE6 used an old recruitment theme too, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe FE7 was just continuing that trend for the Elibe games.

Anyway, I like it, but when you're competing with “Together We Ride”... you've gotta be pretty damned impressive, like some later ones are. I dunno, maybe I just hadn't yet gotten over the fact that Together We Ride wasn't going to be the recruitment theme forever when I first heard it, and I'm still feeling the disappointment I felt then. And maybe I had gotten used to it by the time I heard others like the Tellius one, which might be making me feel Tellius's is better than Sacred Stones'... but I'm not sure if I can really say.

I have to say, while I don't think this map theme quite suits the situation it's used in, I do like it. There's this part towards the end where the music really swells, and it gives me this weird sense of nostalgia for something other than my time playing FE8 that I can't quite explain.

My only guess would be that it reminds me of the opening of this song that I heard a bunch as a kid:

 

Other than that, I don't know what it could be.

But now we get Franz and Gilliam. Gilliam's probably my favorite GBA knight, if only because he can use that badass claymore that's as tall as he is when he promotes. That is such a cool animation. And really, it was a good idea to take away weapon triangle control from paladins and give it to generals. They definitely need it more. Frankly I still don't get what madness possessed the devs to make cavaliers the only class that can use more than one weapon unpromoted.

While his speed base is atrocious, Gilliam's speed growth isn't completely unsalvageable. I think Hector only had 5% more. Still, this is just not a game where you need knights to tank. Shame. Part of me really wants to train him just for the fun of it.

Meanwhile Franz, who starts off with a promising full left side level up, is... well I mean he's a cavalier in a GBA Fire Emblem. He can't be anything but amazing.

I can't get over how young he looks though. He looks barely older than the trainee units. Such a baby-face!

Franz exposits to the party in this talks that he explained his situation to Gilliam... who inexplicably seemed to already know Tana was in danger as well. Strange.

Holy shit, Seth just obliterates this boss. It's absolutely hilarious how radical the stat difference is here. And keep in mind, canonically he's doing this all with an untreated fucking wound.

Of course, feeding boss kills to your Jagens, at least the good ones, is a great use of exp even if you can kill them with other units, since they'll gain exp from the boss kill as if they weren't even promoted.

I let Franz stay behind to deal with the “reinforcements”, and then seized the gate. His second level up was just HP and res, but you can't win 'em all.

...Okay, okay, okay... what the...

...What exactly kind of timescale is at work here? This feels like Genealogy all over again. Tana apparently “heard” that Renais had fallen and got to the border fort in the time it took Eirika and Seth to retreat from the castle and make it to the same border fort, which also took exactly as much time as it took Grado to invade Frelia too? Can an army really invade a country and then immediately move on to invading its neighbor without any need to regroup? How fucking huge is Grado's army compared to the rest of the continent's?

AND WHAT THE FUCK IS IT FOR!?

There doesn't appear to have been an actual war between any of the sacred stone nations in ages! I get the idea of keeping a military ready just in case, but I'm pretty sure that Grado couldn't possibly need an army big enough to invade multiple other countries simultaneously unless it was actually planning to invade other countries simultaneously, or to do some America-level shit like taking up the job of policing the seas against pirates and bolstering the armed forces of its allies.

And near as I can tell, Grado never did any of the latter, and wouldn't dream of doing the former until Lyon got possessed and Vigarde became his zombie puppet. So what the fuck did they plan to use that massive army for? Is it just part of their culture in case the demon king or anything else like it should ever return?

I mean, I'd totally accept that as an answer, but unless supports with people from Grado actually go into that, it implies the writers didn't even think about it.

And speaking about the people of Grado, this invasion was basically a complete ambush, and according to Amelia there was propaganda being disseminated amongst the troops depicting Eirika and Ephraim as murderous fiends (in fact, Ephraim rather hilariously has been slandered as some kind of depraved sex fiend if his recruitment talk with Amelia is anything to go by). The populace was somehow convinced to invade and destroy their long-time-friendly neighbors quickly enough that word of warning never got back to Renais or Frelia.

Hopefully re-playing Ephraim's route after so long will help explain this, because for now... holy shit does that sound dumb.

But for now... I think I'm done for the day.

Stay safe, everyone!

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I'm pretty sure Lyon was planning to destroy all the Sacred Stones anyway, so I guess he maybe thought that dispatching a bunch of red units to Frelia to at least clear the way a little was a good idea? I mean, the boss of this chapter straight up goes to the fort itself, maybe to make it a base or something, and I guess you don't really need all that much manpower to just take the border and plan your next move from there. Notice how after this chapter no map ever takes place in Frelia ever again. It's like us being here basically stopped any of Grado's hopes of taking Frelia forever thanks to the fact that we beat them there, so that kinda makes sense? But then, that means that there is no way Tana could have heard of the invasion. Oh well.

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18 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

It's kind of hilarious how absurd this concept is here. Eirika and Seth... it's literally just those two, and Eirika just suggests they wipe out an entire army detachment that was big enough to take out an entire fucking castle of guards. I don't think we've seen anything in the series so far that's quite that level of ridiculously unrealistic odds, and they treat it like it's nothing. And people criticize Ephraim for being a Military Stu? At least with him in 5x they acknowledged how outmanned he was and actually described some of the tactics he was using to compensate for it. A lot of hit-and-runs and guerilla warfare. Here, it's one paladin and a novice swordswoman who can barely take a hit, reclaiming a fucking castle from an invading army, and even Seth eventually acts like this is something it's remotely physically possible to do.

To be fair, FE always has scaling issues if you really look at the numbers. The big decisive battle between Etruria and Bern? Big armies clashing? Nah dude, you still only control about 20 individual fighters and the number of enemies is capped at 50. Tellius tries to do something about that, I guess? Funnily enough, FE7 manages to feel wrong in that regard from the opposite direction - the enemy is a small group of elite assassins, so where do all the scrubs in Cog of Destiny come from?

In this particular case, I always reasoned that it's just a fairly small group of Grado soldiers that managed to snatch the castle because Frelia was so woefully underprepared and the castle hardly defended at all.

You also forgot to consider that Seth can bench-press a mountain, and that's before he gets some levels in. He probably snapped his fingers offscreen and the walls just disintegrated.

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I've died in SS's Prologue before. Not healing if Eirika gets hit, or having her attack, get hit, and then hit again on the enemy phase. Her dodging chances are merely coinflips here.

 

On 4/27/2020 at 11:59 AM, Alastor15243 said:

...Which begs the question: did only five heroes exist? If so, why are there ten demon killing weapons? Was everyone in an Altina situation? If so, who dual-wielded something with Nidhogg? Or did half of the heroes die in the war and only the other five lived on to found countries?

*Chucks the S-rank staff at you*

Latona says otherwise, unless "Rausten" was their family name or something else.

For the bolded, Nidhogg is paired with the lance Vidofnir. Thats an easy dual-wield, you simply shoot the Vidofnir like an arrow. Only the weak complain that cannot be done.

 

On 4/27/2020 at 11:59 AM, Alastor15243 said:

...Which begs the question: did only five heroes exist? If so, why are there ten demon killing weapons? Was everyone in an Altina situation? If so, who dual-wielded something with Nidhogg? Or did half of the heroes die in the war and only the other five lived on to found countries?

We have zero evidence of anything. The five heroes of Magvel are sorely unexplained, considering three of them have no known names.

Were I to ever write an SS fanfic, I'd set it up so that every hero had a close companion who wielded the other weapon, but for some reason or another faded from being one of the main saviors of Magvel (but not entirely out of the history books like Kris, countless ballads to Latona's dearest companion Inti the Quiet would be in order). I'd make each hero & companion embody a different form of human relationship: like lover-lover, parent-child, sibling-sibling teacher-student, friend-friend, or liege/boss-servant/employee. I think one could write some interesting characters this way.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Anyway, I like it, but when you're competing with “Together We Ride”... you've gotta be pretty damned impressive, like some later ones are. I dunno, maybe I just hadn't yet gotten over the fact that Together We Ride wasn't going to be the recruitment theme forever when I first heard it, and I'm still feeling the disappointment I felt then. And maybe I had gotten used to it by the time I heard others like the Tellius one, which might be making me feel Tellius's is better than Sacred Stones'... but I'm not sure if I can really say.

SS's recruitment theme suffers from being trapped in only a GBA rendition officially, GBA is short for Garbled Bass & Acoustics. It could get a bump in popularity if a modern version freed from those portable dark purple shackles came out.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...What exactly kind of timescale is at work here? This feels like Genealogy all over again. Tana apparently “heard” that Renais had fallen and got to the border fort in the time it took Eirika and Seth to retreat from the castle and make it to the same border fort, which also took exactly as much time as it took Grado to invade Frelia too? Can an army really invade a country and then immediately move on to invading its neighbor without any need to regroup? How fucking huge is Grado's army compared to the rest of the continent's?

Agreed that Renais gets plowed into ruin waaaaaay too fast, it feels like it all happened in three days. It isn't like Eirika's flight to safety is that dramatic.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

There doesn't appear to have been an actual war between any of the sacred stone nations in ages! I get the idea of keeping a military ready just in case, but I'm pretty sure that Grado couldn't possibly need an army big enough to invade multiple other countries simultaneously unless it was actually planning to invade other countries simultaneously, or to do some America-level shit like taking up the job of policing the seas against pirates and bolstering the armed forces of its allies.

Despite the occasional clash between nations, there was enough balance of power to ensure peace in Elibe.

This from FE6's opening narration. No truly great earth-shattering war has happened in 1000 years since the Scouring ended. Just as unrealistic, if with a caveat of "minor" wars existing.

It's merely a fantasy trope that "all was well until the Evil Kingdom/Empire did XYZ", to make the bad guys even badder and the heroes by comparison more heroic.

Archanea, Jugdral, and Tellius have had by contrast between 100 and 200 years of peace/no major war since their last one when their games begin. This can be much more realistic.

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On 4/26/2020 at 9:08 PM, Alastor15243 said:

...And then on the other hand, the story is poop.

I just can't sugarcoat this. While the writing, character moments, and attempts to tug at the heart strings are frankly astonishing considering what came before... the actual story that ties it all together is a massive tangle of nonsense, bullshit, and canon violation.

 

What I found interesting is that despite saying the story is shit, you still said it is the second best compared to all the previous entries in the series. 

 

Edited by Icelerate
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18 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

What I found interesting is that despite saying the story is shit, you still said it is the second best compared to all the previous entries in the series. 

 

Yes, because of the first hand. This game does stuff with writing that makes the term "revolutionize" feel appropriate. While the actual story is full of nonsense, it's so good at storytelling compared to the games that came before it that I can only really consider it worse than the only game so far to have a story I found engaging at all. Blazing Blade managed to make me feel things. Only Genealogy managed to do that so far. I also had to consider that half the games on this list don't even beat Blazing Blade in terms of story.

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5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yes, because of the first hand. This game does stuff with writing that makes the term "revolutionize" feel appropriate. While the actual story is full of nonsense, it's so good at storytelling compared to the games that came before it that I can only really consider it worse than the only game so far to have a story I found engaging at all. Blazing Blade managed to make me feel things. Only Genealogy managed to do that so far. I also had to consider that half the games on this list don't even beat Blazing Blade in terms of story.

I think a lot of people who critique stories ignore just how important presentation is. Take Avatar the movie, for example, the core plot is similar to book 1 water but due to such poor presentation, it is easily the worst story I have ever seen while the actual show is one of the best. Blazing Blade has really great character moments and characterization compared to the games that came before it without contest. 

I want to read some of your posts in greater detail so I might end up responding to certain parts of your thread even long after you've posted. Are you fine with that? I have cowritten an Eirika analysis with Defying Fates which breaks down her character chapter by chapter. Are you interested in reading it as you proceed through the game chapter by chapter? 

Think your criticisms will be interesting in light of you going through both the game and the thread chapter by chapter. 

 

Edited by Icelerate
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9 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

I think a lot of people who critique stories ignore just how important presentation is. Take Avatar the movie, for example, the core plot is similar to book 1 water but due to such poor presentation, it is easily the worst story I have ever seen while the actual show is one of the best. Blazing Blade has really great character moments and characterization compared to the games that came before it without contest. 

I want to read some of your posts in greater detail so I might end up responding to certain parts of your thread even long after you've posted. Are you fine with that? I have cowritten an Eirika analysis with Defying Fates which breaks down her character chapter by chapter. Are you interested in reading it as you proceed through the game chapter by chapter? 

Think your criticisms will be interesting in light of you going through both the game and the thread chapter by chapter. 

 

The first question is fine. The second I'll consider!

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