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What gameplay elements should be kept/abandoned moving forward from here?


Jotari
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16 hours ago, Kiran_ said:

Personally I just think the avatar needs to be abandoned. Like Byleth was way better than Corrin, but I much prefer a Robin like character. Just give us a tactician character, that leads the army that maybe we can customize a little more than the other characters, but make them their own fully realized character and less important to the plot than Byleth/Corrin/Robin was. Basically Mark, but as a playable unit.

I somewhat disagrees with this. What I like about avatars in FE at least in regards to Robin and Byleth is that they give the other actual lord(s) to be far more fleshed out and interesting. Like it gives the writers more freedom in writing the lord character. Cause when you look at a lot of the other FE lords in the series, with a few exceptions, they're all pretty much written like a self insert(at least at first from what I can tell). Like a lot of them are written like your average nice guy with a few things here or there to differentiate them and flesh them out a little bit. This, obviously, is done so that the devs can more easily ease the player into the world before things get a little crazy. You need a perspective character for the player to relate to on some fundamental level. What I like about avatars like Robin and Byleth is that they already kind of fulfill that role so the other actual lords have more freedom to be more like their own character rather than act as a perspective for the audience to view the world in. Corrin-esque avatars need to go though cause most lords are written that way anyway so what's the point in making them an avatar. It just kinda makes writing their story harder. 

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1 hour ago, Ottservia said:

I somewhat disagrees with this. What I like about avatars in FE at least in regards to Robin and Byleth is that they give the other actual lord(s) to be far more fleshed out and interesting. Like it gives the writers more freedom in writing the lord character. Cause when you look at a lot of the other FE lords in the series, with a few exceptions, they're all pretty much written like a self insert(at least at first from what I can tell). Like a lot of them are written like your average nice guy with a few things here or there to differentiate them and flesh them out a little bit. This, obviously, is done so that the devs can more easily ease the player into the world before things get a little crazy. You need a perspective character for the player to relate to on some fundamental level. What I like about avatars like Robin and Byleth is that they already kind of fulfill that role so the other actual lords have more freedom to be more like their own character rather than act as a perspective for the audience to view the world in. Corrin-esque avatars need to go though cause most lords are written that way anyway so what's the point in making them an avatar. It just kinda makes writing their story harder. 

Ehhh.

Sigurd, Leif, Hector and Ike definitely aren't "average nice guys"(At least without caveats in the case of Sigurd). Most of the rest are just different takes on tropes Marth established. The closest FE ever came to feeling like it had a "self-insert", to me, was Ephraim, who was just flawless, smart, strong, good at everything and loved by everyone while also being a nice guy character. Older FE games had no issues exploring Lord characters without an Avatar. I'd hardly say Chrom or Ryoma are any more complex than Lyn or Eliwood with Robin and Corrin to play off of.

Anyway.

I want monsters/big enemies to stay. I like their roles in maps, and it stops you from just parking a character during enemy phase and letting the enemy army kill itself.

Edited by Slumber
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7 hours ago, Jotari said:
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Hmm. Yeah, but then what's the difference between not seeing those supports and not seeing the marriage confession scenes? It's basically the same as Awakening/Fates only the S support is left until the end of the game (and worse still, as far as I can recall, you can't save and reload to see all the scenes without doing the final chapter again).

 

Spoiler

In my case, I got to see several A supports that I wouldn't have otherwise.

 

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1 hour ago, Slumber said:

Sigurd, Leif, Hector and Ike definitely aren't "average nice guys"(At least without caveats in the case of Sigurd). Most of the rest are just different takes on tropes Marth established. The closest FE ever came to feeling like it had a "self-insert", to me, was Ephraim, who was just flawless, smart, strong, good at everything and loved by everyone while also being a nice guy character. Older FE games had no issues exploring Lord characters without an Avatar. I'd hardly say Chrom or Ryoma are any more complex than Lyn or Eliwood with Robin and Corrin to play off of.

Like I said there are exceptions to it. Though I’d argue that Ike at least starts out that way. From what little I’ve played of PoR, Ike really does start off as that kind of protagonist. He’s kind and strong, a little in over his head, and eager to throw himself in the fray. he’s also relatively ignorant of the world around which is done as an excuse to exposit things to the player. Obviously Ike does grow into his own character by the end of the story but from what I can tell he at least starts off that way. Honestly besides Ephraim, I’d say Alm(at least in SoV) is about as much of a generic self-insert LN protag as you can get. Ephraim is more shounen style self-insert. Alm is more light novel self insert which I would argue is worse. But anyway this is getting a little off topic. 

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I like the idea of the monestary exploration I just wish there was more to do. Like near the end of the game I was actively struggling to find ways to use up all my activity points because at that point it all just felt so pointless.

Batallions could use some work. I like the idea but I feel they were a little too limited especially when there were like 5 demonic beasts on the map so every gambit counted. Like I feel there should be a way to either increase the amount of gambits you can use or be able to replenish them more consistently mid map.

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1 minute ago, Ottservia said:

Like I said there are exceptions to it. Though I’d argue that Ike at least starts out that way. From what little I’ve played of PoR, Ike really does start off as that kind of protagonist. He’s strong a little in over his head and eager to throw himself in the fray though he’s still relatively ignorant of the world around which is done as an excuse to exposit things to the player. Obviously Ike does grow into his own character by the end of the story but from what I can tell he at least starts off that way. Honestly besides Ephraim, I’d say Alm(at least in SoV) is about as much of a generic self-insert LN protag as you can get. Ephraim is more shounen style self-insert. Alm is more light novel self insert which I would argue is worse. But anyway this is getting a little off topic. 

—-

Eh. Even early PoR Ike isn't just "another Marth". He's brash, terse, doesn't like people acting above him, and is casually(Though not on purpose) racist when he first encounters Laguz. Him throwing himself into conflict isn't just used as an excuse to explain things about the world, it's also to establish that, like Hector and unlike nearly every other FE protagonist, Ike actually likes fighting and is very talented at it.

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I think Three Houses establishes a lot of great concepts to be improved upon in future games.

1. The Monastary is the best hub world we've had yet, and I hope they continue to build on it. Now they just need to bring some more variety. The place does get a little stale since it doesn't really change all that much throughout the year. Some things like weather and maybe some different varieties of music could liven up the next hub.

2. Byleth is a step in the right direction for Avatars. I hope they keep the silent aspect and make the dialogue choices more varied. Don't re-use Byleth's emotionless gimmick (even though the story does explain why he's like that).

3. Battalions were an addition I ended up liking more than I thought. Again, just need work on being a little more varied in the future.

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Keep

- Battalions, not specifically Gambits mind you, I think Battalions should have other gameplay effects. Stuff like the early-demo Formations and all that affecting unit placement could be interesting. Ideas like having three armored shield units line up could pull interesting stuff like a Phalanx or a battalion of Bow Knights pulling a Parthian Shot. I think they could do better with this and I want to see it improve. A personal dream would be if clashing Battalions have secret advantage and weakness against each other. Think like archer battalions aren't as effective against armored unit battalions or something like that.

- New Game+: It's a beautiful thing really, and definitely gives the incentive to replay the game if one wants a more casual game. I would honestly not mind a route like Lunatic+ if we had something like New Game+ carrying over things. It's not perfect in this game of course but it was definitely a welcome.

- The Magic system: I like the limit of it, it needs to be tweaked cause it's still overpowered here but it still works.

- Three-way battles: Should be more of these, less monsters and more humans fights with this. I like the idea of a third force complicating everything, or having them appear at a tight spot can change the outcome of a battle. 

- Goals is a really nice idea, even if there is no grinding spots in future games having units train themselves towards weapon ranks help some units catch up.

Drop or the return of old mechanics

- Return of weapon-triangle: Might be slightly unpopular but weapon-triangles make units who are proficient in one weapon to be useful when going up against certain enemies. I know that there are breaker skills that are suppose to emulate them but they aren't enough.

- Certification: It make sense here because of how school-focused this game is but no thanks, don't want RNG class-change.

- Recruitment of other students: I'm not one who enjoys teatime so this is a big no for me. Promoting the use of other stats as requirements is also tedious.

- Adjuvants, I like the ability to grind with it but either drop it or bring back Pair Up. 

No Opinion - Needs Tweaking.

- Avatar: I never had too much of a problem with the Avatar. I don't mind if they drop it or keep it in the future but it definitely needs some tweaking for a better experience. Byleth is both a good and a bad step. The Good is that they are properly an avatar with nice dialogue options, the bad is that they are a main character in the story where some personality would have been needed. They also lack the customization of Robin and Corrin which makes me think that Byleth should have been more of their own character especially with their backstory. I'm not saying it can't work and that recent FEs (not counting Echoes) try to have the Avatar be the main focus into the plot in order to keep people who likes Avatar stuff invested. The best of both world would be that an Avatar is just a customizable unit who maybe is friends with the Lord or is a mercenary (yeah similar to Kris but not as spotlight-stealing or so I heard), have dialogue options or action choices depending on what kind of story, but isn't as important as said Lord. Either way, it's probably here to stay though.

- Divine Pulse: I'm not finicky with it. It was helpful for the most part but I don't have much to say on it.

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I may be in the minority here, but my biggest gripe with this game is the limited number of deployment slots. 10-12 units per battle makes it pretty damn difficult to divide my squad up and multitask without getting overwhelmed, leading me to resort to strategies like Warp skipping, turtling, etc.

I know that Shadows of Valentia had a fairly small roster too, but mutlitasking was so much easier in that game because most maps had less enemies and a majority of my units still had enough buik to take a hit or two from the enemy. In this game, most enemy infantry classes pack high speeds and a faire skill, meaning they'll double (or quad) your unit, likely killing them. I'm not against having powerful enemies like these, but I would also prefer having a larger roster of deployable units to compensate. 

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This is somewhat difficult to explain but it’s one of my favorite things about 3H. The limitations and bottlenecks that you have to play around when deciding on efficient ways to assemble your team and how it allows each character to be unique and have their own identity AND be valuable even if they are objectively worse than another unit because they might be a more efficient addition to the team as a whole. Having 9 core units for most maps, limited tutoring sessions, and completely unique proficiency strengths and weaknesses is genius. For example compare a unit like Lysithea to a unit like Raphael. If you invest in Lysithea relics, tutoring, movement increases, combat exp, etc. she will become a god with a unique identity and magic list that matches this fantasy of growth and potential. However you can’t have a whole team of Lysithea type characters because there is not an unlimited number of these resources to dump into units with a lot of potential. So sometimes adding a Raphael type unit to the team is better because even if you neglect them entirely, they will still be useful. Raphael will always have HP, strength, and a guaranteed 2 hits with gauntlets. And the best part is that simplicity matches his character design and personality. (Also dancers and rally bots like Ignatz and Annette can also be always useful and it matches their design).

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After a lot of consideration I think I am actually strongly opposed to the class system and class freedom that Three Houses provides. It's hard to explain succinctly, but think back to early game Awakening or Conquest for example. Many of those battles on higher difficulties feel like there is only one or two possible "solutions" to your problems. Think about Awakening's chapter where you first get the expanded cast and need to use that plateau to your left as soon as you start to survive the surrounding bandits, or in CQ where you are forced to abuse Elise's personal skill to survive the swamp monsters in that early chapter, or that defense mission on CQ ch. 10 where you are forced to basically do absolutely everything perfectly.

There might be a couple more ways to handle these situations, but it definitely feels like there is only one solution, and it's extremely satisfying for me to figure that kind of thing out. Three Houses feels absolutely brain-dead in comparison. Part of it might be due to lunatic not being here yet, but I'm now starting to think about how hard it will be for them to balance a lunatic mode properly with this much class freedom. The reason all of those early to mid-game chapters in past games could provide so many clutch situations is because the game is completely dialed into what units and skills you have available. I'm kind of skeptical of them being able to keep that same level of challenge with higher difficulties in Three Houses without making the game impossible to beat if you send your units down certain, incorrect class paths, at which point you might as well not have that freedom.

In my current playthrough I am breaking the game wide open by just making almost everyone a flyer. I just got done with the Remire Calamity and I slaughtered every single enemy, including the Death Knight and his whole gang that he rides in with very quickly, and saved every villager. Would a lunatic mode be balanced around using each unit's traditional, obvious path that the game kind of lays out for you? Or would it be balanced around getting crazy? Either way, one playstyle for your class choices would either be suboptimal or overpowered.

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12 hours ago, Slumber said:

Ehhh.

Sigurd, Leif, Hector and Ike definitely aren't "average nice guys"(At least without caveats in the case of Sigurd). Most of the rest are just different takes on tropes Marth established. The closest FE ever came to feeling like it had a "self-insert", to me, was Ephraim, who was just flawless, smart, strong, good at everything and loved by everyone while also being a nice guy character. Older FE games had no issues exploring Lord characters without an Avatar. I'd hardly say Chrom or Ryoma are any more complex than Lyn or Eliwood with Robin and Corrin to play off of.

Anyway.

I want monsters/big enemies to stay. I like their roles in maps, and it stops you from just parking a character during enemy phase and letting the enemy army kill itself.

Funny. My mind immediately went to Ephraim as the example of a lord who's not an avatar. He has some sue traits for sure, but he only takes the narrative reins a good quarter of the way into the story and even then only if you choose to follow him. He also has a pretty specific character arc (basically Simba's from the Lion King only with less guilt) which wouldn't be standard for a blank state observer character. Naive Erika going out into the world for the first time with the charatcer goal of "become strong to protect the ones I love" would suit an avatar style description better imo. Although even there it's pretty shakey as she has some strong connections to people preestablished before the start of the game that determine her actions. An avatar would best have no personal connections before the start as it's something the player would be led to established. And of course also the fact that you can ditch her and swap to another lord kind of hinders any "you are this character" sentiments.

10 hours ago, eclipse said:
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In my case, I got to see several A supports that I wouldn't have otherwise.

 

Spoiler

But you could always view all the A supports, starting from Awakening at any rate (being limited to one A supports per unit in the previous games is an entirely different problem). The only difference here is that rather than choosing to view the S point at some point in the game, you choose to view it at the ending. You're still getting and/or missing the same amount of content as the series has been providing for years now. The only difference is timing (and in fact it's a lot harder to see all the S supports yourself now as you can't save scum without repeating a final map).

 

Edited by Jotari
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On 8/17/2019 at 4:48 PM, timon said:

Also I don't see how this holds up? Very very much prefer having some dialogue options (even if meaningless, who cares, they create character) than having a preset dumb idiot like Corrin or just a random generic Robin.

Completely agree. I just think the dialogues options should be expanded on in a more diverse way, and even be voice acted.

 

Also if they want to keep default appareance for avatar, at least let me pick their boom and bane 

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5 hours ago, Jotari said:

Funny. My mind immediately went to Ephraim as the example of a lord who's not an avatar. He has some sue traits for sure, but he only takes the narrative reins a good quarter of the way into the story and even then only if you choose to follow him. He also has a pretty specific character arc (basically Simba's from the Lion King only with less guilt) which wouldn't be standard for a blank state observer character. Naive Erika going out into the world for the first time with the charatcer goal of "become strong to protect the ones I love" would suit an avatar style description better imo. Although even there it's pretty shakey as she has some strong connections to people preestablished before the start of the game that determine her actions. An avatar would best have no personal connections before the start as it's something the player would be led to established. And of course also the fact that you can ditch her and swap to another lord kind of hinders any "you are this character" sentiments.

I mostly used Ephraim for the traits he displays, rather than his role in the story as an actual Avatar/player-stand-in.

A lot of the most egregious "Player/viewer-insert" characters display a lot of the traits Ephraim does. Good at everything, solving difficult problems with ease and everyone comes to love them because they're impossibly humble and nice to everyone.

But yes, you're right. Ephraim fills a role prior to the events of the story and has pre-established history with multiple characters, which makes it hard for somebody to see him and imagine themselves as him, compared to the other Avatar characters in FE.

Edited by Slumber
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-Battalions and Gambits: Battalions should stay at least on an aesthetic level. They look awesome. That said some battalions provide broken stat boosts and gambits are OP on player phase and just plain annoying on enemy phase. IMO battalions should be less focused on providing pair-up-esque stat boosts and more on providing unique tools to units. Gambit being an area-of-effect attack that can't be countered and blocks movement is just too much. A gambit could focus on just one of those things and still be useful. Finally, give incentives for not using a battalion if you're in a certain class. It never made sense to me that my super-stealthy assassins to have a noisy army of pegasus knights following them around.

-Significantly reduced weapon limitations on classes: Keep this, and expand on it by creating even more classes with less stringent requirements. Remember how in Tellius Paladins could pick and choose which of the 4 main melee weapons they'd focus on? I want to see more options like that. What if I want to be a Great Knight but my unit fares better with lances than with axes? Why should my decent hybrid unit have to sacrifice all magic utility to be in a flying class? I like that we have more options, but it can go further than this.

-Weapon level determining promotion: See above.

-Gauntlets as a weapon type: Kinda OP, but the fact that you can't use them on horseback kinda makes it so you have to choose between having an OP offensive weapon or OP movement and Canto. Any incentive to not go Horse Emblem is appreciated.

-Durability as a the resource for combat arts: This, along with the Blacksmith system, was good because it took weapon durability from being an annoying constraint that worried you to being an important limit to be used to strategic advantage. However most weapon-based combat arts (barring range extenders and effectiveness adders) hardly see any use outside of the early game.

-Legendary weapons being usable by anyone but having additional affects when used with their prf users: It worked well with the story in this game but I'm not set on it existing in future games.

-Paralogues being side character focused: Yes I like this a lot. My issue with the way it was implemented in this game is that some paralogues depended on you recruiting certain characters (and that wouldn't be an issue in a typical FE game where recruiting all of the playable characters in a single playthrough is completely normal.) Still, I didn't like how Mercedes' paralogue depended on you recruiting Caspar despite Caspar having... nothing to do with Merecedes or the content of the paralogue. Just seemed like an unnecessary complication. 

-Giant enemies: It was cool for this game. It reminded me of the GBA games where you'd have to fight giant enemies at the end and wonder in panic "how do I fight an enemy that takes up 9 spaces?" I like that there was a structure to killing giant enemies in this game. However, I wish there was more variety in the types of monsters and more creativity in taking them down.

-Tomeless Magic regenerating each map:  I liked this, though I feel like certain tomes need to be readjusted. Running out of magic was too easy early game and too difficult lategame. Characters in the beginning with only a Thunder spell were good for 4 attacks before they were useless, while characters later in the game had so many different spells that they had no incentive to ever use some of them.

-Enemy aggro indicators: These were convenient, but in Easy Mode they locked enemy AI into doing things that intelligent enemies wouldn't have done (and intelligent players would have known to plan for) and in Hard Mode they were often inaccurate, as the AI would choose to do the smart thing instead of the thing their indicator had said they would do.

-3D exploration: I liked Garreg Mach a lot. I could make an entire topic about how much fine-tuning it needs though. Also I miss the explorable dungeons (and semi-explorable villages) of SoV. Once you figured out where everything was, Garreg Mach was less like an environment to explore and more like a 3D menu. I like 3D exploration and Garreg Mach is better than nothing, but I'd prefer something that actually changes over time.

-Zooming: I loved this, but it was always very difficult to actually play the game while zoomed in. Also I feel like ideally, it shouldn't have to cut to battle scenes. 

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20 hours ago, Ottservia said:

I somewhat disagrees with this. What I like about avatars in FE at least in regards to Robin and Byleth is that they give the other actual lord(s) to be far more fleshed out and interesting. Like it gives the writers more freedom in writing the lord character. Cause when you look at a lot of the other FE lords in the series, with a few exceptions, they're all pretty much written like a self insert(at least at first from what I can tell). Like a lot of them are written like your average nice guy with a few things here or there to differentiate them and flesh them out a little bit. This, obviously, is done so that the devs can more easily ease the player into the world before things get a little crazy. You need a perspective character for the player to relate to on some fundamental level. What I like about avatars like Robin and Byleth is that they already kind of fulfill that role so the other actual lords have more freedom to be more like their own character rather than act as a perspective for the audience to view the world in. Corrin-esque avatars need to go though cause most lords are written that way anyway so what's the point in making them an avatar. It just kinda makes writing their story harder. 

I agree with the idea that they allow the lords to be far more fleshed out, 100%. I just don't want that 'player-perspective' character to be SO involved with the plot. Robin I make an exception for since I think they did him incredibly well and loved how Chrom played off him. Byleth just had no personality (and the options weren't diverse enough for me to put myself into their shoes/create their personality). And in that case, I liked how Lyn talked to Mark in the (English) OG fire emblem, because it really allowed the story to revolve around the characters, but still allowed you to feel like you were part of the game itself because you WERE the tactician. My only gripe being I wanted to be an actual unit, but I liked the actual pure silence in that.

That or just a fully realized character (like Robin), but just without the whole Grima plot (which for reference I did love). I would love a very well done avatar character, but I just don't think they know how to do that, so I'd rather they take it out, personally. And I don't hate Byleth or anything, I just don't really think it worked as an avatar character, he just felt like a separate and annoyingly mute character who I could occasionally make say random things that didn't really matter.

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Kept:

Battalions

Gambits

Combat arts

Demonic beasts / multiple bar bosses

Magic mechanics (though dark magic should be more of a thing)

Bow mechanics (possibly with some nerfs)

Durability

Forging/repairing balance

Gauntlets

 

Abandoned:

Avatars. Just let us choose a fully voiced, canon lord.

5 tier class system, unless greatly expanded.

Fishing (needs rework)

Dismounting

Slower/more weapon ranks (e+, d+, etc.)

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19 hours ago, Jotari said:

 

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Spoiler

All my marriage options at the end were A supports.  Which means I would've been locked into marrying someone if the old system was in place.

 

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6 hours ago, eclipse said:
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All my marriage options at the end were A supports.  Which means I would've been locked into marrying someone if the old system was in place.

 

The old system being the Gameboy Advance, yeah. But then you wouldn't be able to get all As in one playthrough on that. But like I said, that's been the norm since Awakening. Chrom aside.

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7 hours ago, eclipse said:
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All my marriage options at the end were A supports.  Which means I would've been locked into marrying someone if the old system was in place.

 

Spoiler

Yeah, ok, for the avatar it might make sense so you can get to A with everyone in one go, and set the romance only in the ending. But why doesn't it work like that for every other character? It's just incredibly awkward that you can have someone have two romantic supports in a row with different people, and what's worse, you can't even choose with whom they'll get the paired ending.

imo the best way of doing it is no romance in A support, but ability to unlock one A+ support between character (without conversation) that just locks in the paired ending. Having to fiddle with hidden support points is just dumb.

 

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Things to keep:

Battalions - as plenty of people have indicated, Battalions and Gambits should be tweaked and rebalanced in places, but I’m not worried because that’s almost a given between games. And as a concept I love the Battalions, they add a sense of scale to battles and make it feel less like a whole war was singlehandedly won by like a dozen people.

Magic - The whole “spells per battle” system of limiting mages is actually pretty ingenious, and I like it a lot. Honestly, I’d be in favor of handling Combat Arts the same way, a certain number of uses per battle.

No Weapon Restrictions - Being able to use any weapon with any class is a fantastic idea that I want to see more of.

Brawling - A neat weapon type that gives infantry units an actual purpose, shame they didn’t do more with it.

New Game Plus - Yes, a thousand times *yes*, more NG+ modes in future games. Feeling like every playthrough is not just fun in it’s own right, but an investment for your next run is incredibly satisfying and gives the game tremendous replay value.

Things to fix/remove:

Weapon Durability - I had thought we were finally free of this cursed mechanic, but now it’s back. While the ability to repair your weapons solved a lot of my problems with this mechanic, making it so that repairs require resources that are incredibly rare for the better weapons completely defeated the point of allowing repairs in the first place, and still led to the classic “oh boy, the best weapon in the game, better never use it” problem that made me hate weapon durability in older games. I understand limiting the player’s resources, but the weapon durability mechanic always leads to a massive, paralyzing “but I might need it later” syndrome that really reduces enjoyment of the game.

Gender Segregated Classes - I’m not about to go into the gender politics of this decision, that’s a discussion for someone else, but locking classes to specific genders is just frustrating game design. In many cases it doesn’t even make sense: the Brawler, Grappler, and War Master classes being male only basically restricts an entire weapon type to males, *despite the fact that two out of the three people who can train your main character in Brawling are female*. There’s really no benefit to restricting certain classes to certain genders.

Terrain - I know there are a lot of reasons why Wyvern Lords are OP in this game, but you know what would have made them less OP? If almost every map in the game didn’t have tons of terrain that slows your movement to a crawl. With maps like these, you’d be a fool *not* to make as many flying units as you possibly can. Desert maps are particularly bad for this, but I feel like every single map has spots where any unit that can’t fly is gonna *really* wish they could.

Adjutants/General Unit Deployment - The Adjutant system is fine, but doesn’t really do much besides provide ways to level up inactive characters, and you are allowed so few adjutants that even that does little to soften the blow that comes from aggressively small unit deployment restrictions. It makes parts of the story feel really immersion-breaking: when the cast is standing around worry about the huge army they know they’re about to face, and how hopelessly outnumbered they’ll be, I can’t help but think “well maybe if more than 10-12 of you would actually show up to battle we wouldn’t feel so outnumbered...” It’s not like the maps are small and would feel cluttered if you allowed us to deploy more troops... they don’t even bother to try and justify the small army in game. “You’ve got like 20-30 characters and you’re only allowed to bring 10 because we say so.”

 

All told, Three Houses remains one of my favorite Fire Emblem games to date. It’s got flaws, like all of them do, but I’d say it more than breaks even, and is overall a great game. 

Edited by ZanaLyrander
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59 minutes ago, ZanaLyrander said:

Weapon Durability - I had thought we were finally free of this cursed mechanic, but now it’s back. While the ability to repair your weapons solved a lot of my problems with this mechanic, making it so that repairs require resources that are incredibly rare for the better weapons completely defeated the point of allowing repairs in the first place, and still led to the classic “oh boy, the best weapon in the game, better never use it” problem that made me hate weapon durability in older games. I understand limiting the player’s resources, but the weapon durability mechanic always leads to a massive, paralyzing “but I might need it later” syndrome that really reduces enjoyment of the game

well FE isn't labeled as "strategy RPG" because they liked how it sounds, and resource management is one of the reasons behind that category

i agree with you about the fact that rare items are a pain to get, also because gambits are limited, but you should be the one who knows when to use a rare and powerful weapon and when not to

the game gives you a resource, to handle it effectively is up to you

if you can't, well, that's not really the game's problem (unless the game design is actually bad and it ABSOLUTELY requires you to use resources the game doesn't grant you enough)

Edited by Yexin
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7 minutes ago, Yexin said:

well FE isn't labeled as "strategy RPG" because they liked how it sounds, and resource management is one of the reasons behind that category

i agree with you about the fact that rare items are a pain to get, also because gambits are limited, but you should be the one who knows when to use a rare amd powerful weapon and when not to

the game gives you a resource, to handle it effectively is up to you

if you can't, well, that's not really the game's problem (unless the game design is actually bad and it ABSOLUTELY requires you to use resources the game doesn't grant you enough)

I’ll be honest, if they just made the repair materials accessible and available for purchase, even if it wasn’t until somewhat late in the game and they were very expensive, I wouldn’t have a problem with weapon durability. Having to maintain your weapons occasionally feels like needless busy work and doesn’t really add much to the game, but it doesn’t take away much either. But being unable to repair your best weapons freely even with more money than you know what to do with is frustrating and suffers from the same problem as weapon durability in previous games.

For all the flaws Fates had, the lack of weapon durability was a true blessing, so I’m just sad to see them bringing the mechanic back. It always bugged me that the game gives you fantastic weapons then punishes you for actually using them. It’s also just immersion-breaking: a sword that breaks after 20 swings doesn’t seem particularly “legendary” to me, unless the legend is about a really lousy blacksmith.

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i could stay here and tell you how game design works, especially for strategy games, but i think it would be a waste of time, you clearly wouldn't care, nor even change your mind

also the fact that awakening and fates were much more resource-wise generous kinda strayed away from the "strategy" aspect of the series and i don't really consider them as SRPG, but as JRPG with strategic elements

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12 minutes ago, Yexin said:

i could stay here and tell you how game design works, especially for strategy games, but i think it would be a waste of time, you clearly wouldn't care, nor even change your mind

also the fact that awakening and fates were much more resource-wise generous kinda strayed away from the "strategy" aspect of the series and i don't really consider them as SRPG, but as JRPG with strategic elements

There’s really no need to talk down to people and act so pedantic, especially if all your saying is “I could explain why you’re wrong but I won’t because reasons.” I’ve played plenty of turn based strategy RPGs, many of which were quite focused on resource management, and were quite successful without needing a weapon degradation mechanic. Don’t act like this is some necessary feature for a game to feel strategic. If you like the mechanic fine, just say that. If you’d rather not have the discussion, that’s also fine. Your little “this is beneath me and not worth my time and I doubt you’d understand anyway” act kinda just makes you seem like a jerk, no offense. Either stick to your guns or let the conversation drop, that kind of pseudo-intellectual “you clearly don’t care about my wisdom” approach to discussion is really immature. I respect your opinion on the matter, have the decency to extend the same courtesy. If you’d rather just agree to disagree, that’s fine. 

Edited by ZanaLyrander
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30 minutes ago, ZanaLyrander said:

There’s really no need to talk down to people and act so pedantic, especially if all your saying is “I could explain why you’re wrong but I won’t because reasons.” I’ve played plenty of turn based strategy RPGs, many of which were quite focused on resource management, and were quite successful without needing a weapon degradation mechanic. Don’t act like this is some necessary feature for a game to feel strategic. If you like the mechanic fine, just say that. If you’d rather not have the discussion, that’s also fine. Your little “this is beneath me and not worth my time and I doubt you’d understand anyway” act kinda just makes you seem like a jerk, no offense. Either stick to your guns or let the conversation drop, that kind of pseudo-intellectual “you clearly don’t care about my wisdom” approach to discussion is really immature. I respect your opinion on the matter, have the decency to extend the same courtesy. If you’d rather just agree to disagree, that’s fine. 

i never said i like weapon durability (although i'm all for its presence in FE titles), nor that you're not worthy of my time; i'm sorry if that's the impression you got

what i meant is "you have your well-defined idea and you don't seem willing to change that, thus trying to do so would end up in a failed attempt"

simple as that, i never meant to offend you

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