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

[Koops]

33 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I think Cormag shows up after turn 4 is over.

No, definitely not turn 4. Especially not if you have to WAIT some time to be able to kill the boss and recruiting him.

My memory tells me that he shows up around turn 10. I believe you gotta spend 13 (or 15) turns to beat the chapter and Cormag shows up around the last two thirds of the map.

But yeah, he doesn't show up that early. Maybe he starts moving on turn 4 Ephraim route but defi itely not Eirika route.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Glen has his moment, and does stuff for Valter and Cormag. But he feels like the victim of having six Gemstone Generals, Orson, Lyon, and the Demon King. So many villains to write, so little time for each of them except Valter. We never once see Glen on a battle map, he never confronts the heroes except for that one Eirika encounter before he becomes a kebab. Not to say fewer villains is an assurance of quality.

Dying with a Silver Sword equipped makes me want him just a little in FEH as another "canon" sword flier. I used to wish he could join Eirika and Selena Ephraim on uncanonical second playthroughs, though his Creature Campaign stats would be too impressive other than low Spd for that.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I may be reading a little too much into the comments (hence the ()). The most egregious one is a big part of the justification for Asbel not having a rural accent is due to him being educated. People from rural areas can be educated; the note even baffling references going to study in the big city, implying rural speech patterns, and mannerisms melt away as soon as they are educated, as if ignorance was their source. That sorta painted a few of the translation notes in a new light, like the justification for some turns of phrases, and references that have more rural feels or connotations to them being scrubbed with notes that I felt were already strangely phrased (I will add that the way the note about Asbel's speech was placed like a header lead to me reading it far latter than where it was placed in the translation notes). The first example of this I see looking over the translation notes being a justification for cutting a line about Ronan shooting bottles, with it being described as first a liberty, and as inconsistent with him being called a huntsman in the epilogue, which is hard not to read as willfully ignorant (given how often its depicted in media) to it referencing how many who grew up in rural communities learned to shoot before going out into the woods to hunt. I could go through others, but I would rather not. I don't know why I always bother to read through the new translation noted when they arrive when I know its just going to bother me.

Wait, does Asbel have a country accent in the original Japanese? I don't recall that ever being pronounced before.

2 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

You could just read through the changelog, as the translation is very well documented. The displaying of Guard AI is the phrase being used to describe enemies that don't move displaying that they will not move when you check their movement.

Ah. So the thing Alastor loves, but I actually find pretty weird in regards to class continuity.

53 minutes ago, Miacis said:

First, you can't deploy in empty slots, only swap characters slots. So, if you only bring 5 units out of 10, you won't be able to put anyone in slot 6. Chapter 19 alternates slots between the north and south, and slot 1 is in the south, so it's literally impossible to have nobody in the south (unless Leif is the only unit in your army). Every map that splits your army does the alternating slots thing, so you can never just ignore one side. Thracia's thought of everything!

Second, the minimum deployment in ch19 is 16 out of 20. So unless your army's numbers are below that, you'll always have at least 8 people in the south.

Ah, so you can't just redeploy the 8 people down south up north.

Edited May 18, 2020 by Jotari

[Miacis]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Wait, does Asbel have a country accent in the original Japanese? I don't recall that ever being pronounced before.

To my knowledge, nobody in the JP script has any notable speech accents, though there are a few unique speech mannerisms, like Sarah trailing off.

All the country accents in PE and LM are extrapolated from the characters's own backgrounds.

[Alastor15243]

10 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Ah. So the thing Alastor loves, but I actually find pretty weird in regards to class continuity.

Class continuity? Do you mean the fact that they're marked as having 0 mov stat? In fairness, 1, that doesn't happen here, clicking on them just doesn't show them moving, and 2, even if it did, movement ranges aren't exactly class-sacred in this game anyway, right? They fluctuate wildly all the time due to randomized growths.

2 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

It will noticeably change how an informed player would play the game, which is treading enough into changing the game that I would rather it be optional. The other non-optional changes add information that could be easily looked up by an informed player, either by paying attention to stats and calculations, or from trivial to find online sources. AI behavior isn't well documented, and can rarely be looked up, and understanding it has a profound impact on how you will play the game.

I agree it will noticeably change how an informed (but blind) player will play the game... in a good way. Anything that tempts a blind player to slowly tiptoe around something they actually don't need to worry about moving probably isn't a good idea. Letting a blind player know when they don't need to overreact to a problem that only exists due to their own extrapolation means less wasted time on their part, and also less disappointment when the challenge they've been hyping up in their brain is actually way less impressive than they thought it was.

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

13 minutes ago, Miacis said:

To my knowledge, nobody in the JP script has any notable speech accents, though there are a few unique speech mannerisms, like Sarah trailing off.

All the country accents in PE and LM are extrapolated from the characters's own backgrounds.

Well then if the original Japanese doesn't have accents then it shouldn't even be a conversation. Faithfulness to expressing the original intent should be the purpose of translation.

13 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Class continuity? Do you mean the fact that they're marked as having 0 mov stat? In fairness, 1, that doesn't happen here, clicking on them just doesn't show them moving, and 2, even if it did, movement ranges aren't exactly class-sacred in this game anyway, right? They fluctuate wildly all the time due to randomized growths.

I agree it will noticeably change how an informed player will play the game... in a good way. Anything that tempts a blind player to slowly tiptoe around something they actually don't need to worry about moving probably isn't a good idea. Letting a blind player know when they don't need to overreact to a problem that only exists due to their own extrapolation means less wasted time on their part, and also less disappointment when the challenge they've been hyping up in their brain is actually way less impressive than they thought it was.

 

Yes. I find it weird that game will tell me that some soldiers inexplicably don't know how to walk. Especially Cervantes in Awakening who evidently learns how to do so when he's encountered as a boss a few chapters later. And also yes, I'm fine tiptoeing around something that might not actually be a threat. It gives me a sense of perverse joy when gambling on a movement range as well as a thrill when the one in a million chapter boss actually does move. One of my great desires is to see an enemy guarding a throne in Fire Emblem that is expressly coded to be able to move off the throne on enemy phase, but canto back onto it for player phase to prevent seizing. Essentially giving them half the effective movement range they display (or more if they can attack an enemy in a situation where there's no chance a player character can reach the throne before they can retreat). Not knowing exactly what the enemy will do is part of the fun for me. One of my biggest issues with Fire Emblem as a whole is that the enemies are ridiculously predictable in all of their actions. I don't exactly want chaos, but a bit more uncertainty would be appreciated.

24 minutes ago, Koops said:

No, definitely not turn 4. Especially not if you have to WAIT some time to be able to kill the boss and recruiting him.

My memory tells me that he shows up around turn 10. I believe you gotta spend 13 (or 15) turns to beat the chapter and Cormag shows up around the last two thirds of the map.

But yeah, he doesn't show up that early. Maybe he starts moving on turn 4 Ephraim route but defi itely not Eirika route.

It's Turn 5. On the player phase.

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by Jotari

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Koops said:

No, definitely not turn 4. Especially not if you have to WAIT some time to be able to kill the boss and recruiting him.

My memory tells me that he shows up around turn 10. I believe you gotta spend 13 (or 15) turns to beat the chapter and Cormag shows up around the last two thirds of the map.

But yeah, he doesn't show up that early. Maybe he starts moving on turn 4 Ephraim route but defi itely not Eirika route.

Jotari beat me to the punch, but you're confusing his arrival with that of Pablo, who doesn't show up until the last third of the map.

[Koops]

Oops, yeah you're probably right. I knew SOMETHING arrived late but I completely forgot Pablo existed despite being a generic boss who appears more than once.

Then in that case yeah it really is questionable exactly how fast did Alastor beat this chapter to miss Cormag.

Edited May 18, 2020 by Koops

[Alastor15243]

13 minutes ago, Koops said:

Oops, yeah you're probably right. I knew SOMETHING arrived late but I completely forgot Pablo existed despite being a generic boss who appears more than once.

Then in that case yeah it really is questionable exactly how fast did Alastor beat this chapter to miss Cormag.

I have to assume that since I was a kid, I just rushed it with some over-grinded trainee unit or something. You start really, really close to the boss after all. And I would have been playing on normal.

[Hello72207]

11 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

26 minutes ago, Koops said:

Oops, yeah you're probably right. I knew SOMETHING arrived late but I completely forgot Pablo existed despite being a generic boss who appears more than once.

Then in that case yeah it really is questionable exactly how fast did Alastor beat this chapter to miss Cormag.

I have to assume that since I was a kid, I just rushed it with some over-grinded trainee unit or something. You start really, really close to the boss after all. And I would have been playing on normal.

Ah yes, normal mode, AKA the mode where there are half of the enemies and your army from half the game ago could have taken them, even without Seth.

[Koops]

My younger brother once played on easy mode.

I very clearly remember Kyle one-rounding Heroes with a Slim Lance. Oh yeah, and Berserkers having like, 28 HP also.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Koops said:

My younger brother once played on easy mode.

I very clearly remember Kyle one-rounding Heroes with a Slim Lance. Oh yeah, and Berserkers having like, 28 HP also.

Oh shit. Come to think of it, I might have even been playing on easy mode at that. I know for sure I used the Tower of Valni though, whatever the difficulty.

[Boomhauer007]

Cormag doesn't just come late, it also takes a couple of turns for him to get near you since he spawns pretty far from the action.

All the things together feel like such an odd decision; he comes late and he takes a couple turns to get to you, but the map also ends if you KO the boss which is completely doable in 6ish turns. You also have to wait even longer for Pablo to show up, but he's so far away he poses 0 threat even with bolting.

In story terms it seems cool that of you escape quickly enough then Pablo never catches you, but in gameplay it's almost Tharcia levels of rewarding slow play.

[Hello72207]

1 hour ago, Boomhauer007 said:

Cormag doesn't just come late, it also takes a couple of turns for him to get near you since he spawns pretty far from the action.

All the things together feel like such an odd decision; he comes late and he takes a couple turns to get to you, but the map also ends if you KO the boss which is completely doable in 6ish turns. You also have to wait even longer for Pablo to show up, but he's so far away he poses 0 threat even with bolting.

In story terms it seems cool that of you escape quickly enough then Pablo never catches you, but in gameplay it's almost Tharcia levels of rewarding slow play.

If Eirika walks over there, and she's not gonna be doing much else, she will be in position for recruitment asap.

But yeah, Pablo's not that hard.

[Eltosian Kadath]

I think you missed the point I was making. That additional commentary was about the translation notes, and what they had to say, not necessarily the translation itself.

3 hours ago, Miacis said:

 

 But I do stand by my argument about how a strange amount of playable characters in the Munster arc are given rural accents despite Munser being very urban. Consider Halvan or Tanya's background, and ask yourself why they should have neutral English speech whereas knights from the big city would be speaking like farmers.

You might notice that I singled out Asbel, and I did so for a reason. In multiple places, and ways education is brought up as a key reason for his accent being inappropriate for him, and is explicitly stated as such at the end of the note about Asbel. When being educated is stated as being the reason a rural accent is inappropriate for a character, that brings with it the clear message that people with rural accents are ignorant. There may be solid arguments for changing character's accents, but the one used for Asbel forces rural people into a blatantly negative light, and made me look more carefully at the motives given when a part of the script erased rural accents, mannerisms, phrases etc. Hence my added comment about the Ronan quote.

3 hours ago, Miacis said:

 

In PE's translation, Ronan claims that some meager bottles-off-of-fenceposts training makes him good enough with a bow. If the kid's been hunting wild animals for years, I don't see how that would be relevant. He's good enough with a bow because he's been practicing with live targets, not bottles.

Imagine how silly it'd be if Ogma came to Caeda and told her "hey m'am, I'm real good with a sword, I been beating training dummies for years now".

In the PE translation Ronan was talking to his mother. In the context it was used it made perfect sense, and it isn't Ronan's life as a hunter, but the new framing of the line which makes it inconsistent, and only because of way it is written; rephrase it as him offering to display (or actively displaying) his skill by shooting bottles off the fencepost, to show off his skill, and the line would work just fine. In the translation notes this line is explicitly called out and distanced from the talk about the change of context with a line break, and it is immediately dismissed first as a liberty, and then as inconsistent with his character as a whole when it clearly isn't. People are not born able to shoot a bow, and constant regular practice is needed to keep those skills sharp. Ronan practicing with a bow in a way that evokes rural imagery isn't inconsistent with Ronan being a hunter. There may be ways to dismiss it as inconsistent, like commenting on bottles not being ubiquitous enough in the ambiguous past to warrant their use as practice targets, but that wasn't the justification given, it was that it was inconsistent with a core aspect of his character. The more neutral line of the new translation has a justification that feels tacked on at the end of that same sentence in the translation notes, as though the need to remove this reference to rural life from his very character is more important than what replaced it. The way the translation notes are written gives the impression, whether intentional or not, that the writer has a negative view on rural people. That is what I was commenting on, because that was what I was asked to give further explanation about. I am sorry if this comes across as particularly blunt, or if I am reading too much into it (as I previously speculated), but I was simply analyzing the words written in the script revisions.

As a side note, the comparison with Ogma is not a good one. Shooting at targets is a fairly common way of proving an archer's skill. Many archery competitions in both modern and olden time involved shooting at stationary targets, and great feats like the story of Robin Hood splitting his arrow's shaft in the bullseye, is no less impressive because he was shooting at a stationary target.

 

3 hours ago, Miacis said:

I will fully admit that I am no writer, just an editor. Cirosan, for all his faults and poor understanding of Japanese, had a pretty good writing hand that we all found difficult to emulate.

However, I do find it a bit concerning that our edits would be so atrociously written that a script that's so often demonstrably false would be a better option.

If I didn't have the PE translation to compare it to I doubt I would be as critical of Lil' Manster. An apt comparison to make is between the international version of FE7 and PE, both have numerous inaccuracies, but are made compelling through their characterization, and distinctive styles of storytelling. While the Lil' Manster version has cover up a lot of inaccuracies, in doing some of what made it so compelling was stripped away. Perhaps I will come back to the Lil' Manster version at some latter date to see what it has become, but for now too much of it lies in the shadow of the PE translation.

 

4 hours ago, Miacis said:

I would argue that the state of fan documentation in 2020 has little to do with the design direction that was taken in 1999. If enemy AI had been thoroughly documented by the community, instead of, say, scroll bonuses, would you be okay with it? Ultimately, as long as the player is able to make informed decisions, whether the information came from the game itself or outside resources produces the same results. Except one keeps you within the confines of the game, and the other takes you completely out of it and into a meta-space, lurking with possible spoilers.

If it were better documented I don't think it would significantly change how the game plays, or feels, but seeing how it works in Mang's LP, it does which is why I think it should be optional. If scroll bonuses weren't as thoroughly documented as they were I would feel more comfortable having their extended description added as an optional patch, as its inclusion would have a noticeable impact on gameplay. As an alternative, having an optional patch similar to the wait at top patch would be nice for those who would prefer not to alter the game in this way.

 

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Boomhauer007 said:

Cormag doesn't just come late, it also takes a couple of turns for him to get near you since he spawns pretty far from the action.

All the things together feel like such an odd decision; he comes late and he takes a couple turns to get to you, but the map also ends if you KO the boss which is completely doable in 6ish turns. You also have to wait even longer for Pablo to show up, but he's so far away he poses 0 threat even with bolting.

In story terms it seems cool that of you escape quickly enough then Pablo never catches you, but in gameplay it's almost Tharcia levels of rewarding slow play.

I don't think start of the fifth turn is really that late. Without significant grinding most players would have significant trouble killing the boss in four turns.

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I don't think start of the fifth turn is really that late. Without significant grinding most players would have significant trouble killing the boss in four turns.

...Fuck it.

Eirika route's non-canon anyway.

Challenge accepted.

[Jotari]

6 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Fuck it.

Eirika route's non-canon anyway.

Challenge accepted.

Makes me wonder what Cormag does with his life if you don't encounter him on that map. So he just gives up his revenge quest and goes home because he missed Eirika once?

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Makes me wonder what Cormag does with his life if you don't encounter him on that map. So he just gives up his revenge quest and goes home because he missed Eirika once?

Yeah, curious how apparently Amelia is more persistent than this guy? Does she really show up here if you didn't recruit her earlier? I heard that somewhere, but doesn't she show up pretty early on in a rout map? How can she still be alive to recruit if you didn't get her the first time?

[Hello72207]

12 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

16 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Makes me wonder what Cormag does with his life if you don't encounter him on that map. So he just gives up his revenge quest and goes home because he missed Eirika once?

Yeah, curious how apparently Amelia is more persistent than this guy? Does she really show up here if you didn't recruit her earlier? I heard that somewhere, but doesn't she show up pretty early on in a rout map? How can she still be alive to recruit if you didn't get her the first time?

She leaves on like turn 12 or something, and just comes back.

If your not planning on using her you can get two speedwings off her by stealing the first and recruit her second.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Hello72207 said:

She leaves on like turn 12 or something, and just comes back.

If your not planning on using her you can get two speedwings off her by stealing the first and recruit her second.

Oh wow, that would be cool. If only she was the one with the dragonshield.

[Jotari]

3 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh wow, that would be cool. If only she was the one with the dragonshield.

Why is she being deployed with Speed Wings, twice! What is her commander trying to suggest that he'd restock her with these expensive items twice! Or did she get them from somewhere else?

[Hello72207]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

3 minutes ago, Hello72207 said:

She leaves on like turn 12 or something, and just comes back.

If your not planning on using her you can get two speedwings off her by stealing the first and recruit her second.

Oh wow, that would be cool. If only she was the one with the dragonshield.

IMO speedwings are just as good as dragonshields in gba FE's, maybe even better. Speed is very good in the games because of dodging and doubling being so good, and two speed being enough to get most characters doubling.

[Boomhauer007]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Fuck it.

Eirika route's non-canon anyway.

Challenge accepted.

Seth with a javelin might be able to ohko every enemy around his starting point on turn 1 EP.

Boss himself has like 10 speed / 13 res, that crazy mage knight Lute you have will obliterate him, although he does start with a short spear. Also as a great knight he's weak to pretty much any special weapon in the game. Stealing his knight crest is a bit of an extra hassle if you're going for that.

[Shadow Mir]

6 hours ago, Boomhauer007 said:

Stealing his knight crest is a bit of an extra hassle if you're going for that.

It's not necessary to steal it, since he drops it when killed.