Most and Least Balanced Fire Emblem Game?

[Thinks Their Own Way]

I have a hard time thinking what was the most balanced (can none be an option) because their often is that one nagging thing about that ends up contradicting anything resembling balanced. When I says Fates is the closes to being the most balanced, I really mean Conquest because how I never felt one single unit could solo the whole game, while everyone can be usable in a game that is not a cakewalk(Birthright has Ryoma doing #ryomathings and Revelations might as well have grinding as a requirement for certain units if you want to get everything the game has to offer, and you need the Royals for certain chapters). I also don't feel it suffers from being dominated by a singular class (Master Ninja comes close but they don't have the benefits of horse and flying units). I agree with all of the FE 7 centiments that it has less outrageously busted aspects, I think the pre-promotes in FE7 in comparison to other units (Pent vs. Erk) are the closes it gets to imbalanced.

Awakening as the least balanced for me is a no-brainer if only because pair-up is just that busted, along with Nosferatu taking. I don't have to mention Nosferatu taking while paired-up.

[Shadow Mir]

On 9/6/2019 at 10:49 AM, Etheus said:

I can't think of a single time an FE game has ever been anything approaching balanced.

 

As for the most unbalanced, I have to go with Radiant Dawn. Unit availability is all over the place. Many units join too weak, too late in the game to be anything approaching viable. The most difficult part of the game is the first act, and most Act 1 characters are dead weight. One of your required lords is a liability. Some required units in endgame are a liability at that point (Sothe!). Non-royal Laguz are even more worthless than in PoR, while royal ones are gamebreaking. A number of units are so obviously weak that one is left to wonder if they were literally put in as a joke. Oh, and Hard mode disables the weapon triangle, inadvertently nerfing characters into the ground who could have otherwise been useful (caugh, Edward).

 

There is just nothing balanced about Radiant Dawn, and that's a pity because I'd love to love that game.

For a game where racism is one of the main themes, making virtually all non-royal laguz unusable and thus encouraging the player to be racist in terms of unit choices is an odd design choice.

Edit: Just noticed.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Fabulously Olivier]

5 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

For a game where racism is one of the main themes, making virtually all non-royal laguz unusable and thus encouraging the player to be racist in terms of unit choices is an odd design choice.

Edit: Just noticed.

I'd almost applaud that if it were intentional. Ie: Zihark in Radiant Dawn is most true-to-character when the player makes the conscious choice to make him less useful (by moving him from the Daien army where he's needed to the Greil Mercenaries where he isn't needed). 

 

This feels like just plain incompetence.

[Shadow Mir]

On 9/9/2019 at 1:59 PM, Etheus said:

I'd almost applaud that if it were intentional. Ie: Zihark in Radiant Dawn is most true-to-character when the player makes the conscious choice to make him less useful (by moving him from the Daien army where he's needed to the Greil Mercenaries where he isn't needed). 

 

This feels like just plain incompetence.

I would agree - most non-royal laguz require much more effort to make useful than beorc do, and they don't become nearly good enough to make up for it (it doesn't really help that beorc can just be given stronger weapons if they're struggling, whereas laguz require you to raise their strike rank for them to get a boost in attack... and strike rank rises really, really slowly. Nor does it that laguz don't get to benefit from promotion bonuses). For all the risks I have to take to level up laguz at any appreciable speed, the reward feels rather low. Anyway, while the laguz royals are indeed gamebreaking, their lack of playtime limits their domination. That's better than I can say of Binding Blade, which combines Horse Emblem with Archanea Syndrome (ergo, the phenomenon where nearly all the best units come early, and most later joiners are obsoleted by units that came before them, like Oujay being obsoleted by Dieck for example). Not to mention having more throwaway units than Radiant Dawn did (which is really quite sad, and given that Radiant Dawn has one of the biggest rosters of any Fire Emblem game, says a lot).

Edited September 10, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Jotari]

Best balanced is Thracia. It's bullshit, but for the most part it's evenly balanced bullshit.

[Life]

Most balanced: Sacred Stones.

Maybe it's because this game is really easy but outside of Seth and the trainees, no unit feels too powerful or garbage compared to the rest of the army. Even the prepromotes (again, not counting Seth) don't feel too out of line here.

Least balanced: Geneology

Two reasons: Sigurd and Horsesety. Argument over.

[Alastor15243]

35 minutes ago, Life said:

Least balanced: Geneology

Two reasons: Sigurd and Horsesety. Argument over.

Fe1 Marth can have the same movement rate with infantry terrain penalties, is even more invincible no matter what weapon he's using, can be teleported right to the boss on turn one, and you get two of him.

Edited September 15, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Life]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Fe1 Marth can have the same movement rate with infantry terrain penalties, is even more invincible no matter what weapon he's using, can be teleported right to the boss on turn one, and you get two of him.

I've never played FE1.

Wait, is FE1 Marth really as good as Sigurd? Remember that Sigard both starts and ends as the best unit in FE4.

Edited September 15, 2019 by Life

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Life said:

I've never played FE1.

I almost envy you.

Edit: He doesn't start as good as Sigurd, but the stat boosters in this game are so plentiful and ridiculous that around the time he gets the boots (very early on), which skyrocket him to 11 movement, nothing can kill him and he can kill everything. And then you get Xane, who lets you double all that stat booster investment by copying him and letting two of him walk around, and then there's warp skipping, the buyable rapiers...

Edited September 15, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Life]

11 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I almost envy you.

Edit: He doesn't start as good as Sigurd, but the stat boosters in this game are so plentiful and ridiculous that around the time he gets the boots (very early on), which skyrocket him to 11 movement, nothing can kill him and he can kill everything. And then you get Xane, who lets you double all that stat booster investment by copying him and letting two of him walk around, and then there's warp skipping, the buyable rapiers...

I also hated FE11 with a passion so I'll never play FE1.

Your log of FE1 looks tedious.

I still hold Sigurd because in your own words, Marth takes some time to get going. Sigurd is FE4 from Turn 1 of the Prologue and then Horsesety and 5 Ring Celice pick up the slack once Sigurd's midgame falls off of a cliff.

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Life said:

I also hated FE11 with a passion so I'll never play FE1.

Your log of FE1 looks tedious.

I still hold Sigurd because in your own words, Marth takes some time to get going. Sigurd is FE4 from Turn 1 of the Prologue and then Horsesety and 5 Ring Celice pick up the slack once Sigurd's midgame falls off of a cliff.

Fair enough. FE1 wins out for me because everything in FE1 was balanced completely blindly, and it shows.

Speedwings give you 6 speed, out of a cap of 20, and you get THREE of them, ignoring the secret shop in the penultimate chapter that lets you buy all the stat boosters with no limit. Dracoshields boost defense by 3, talismans boost resistance by 7, power rings boost strength by 4, and boots boost movement by 4.

Warp staves have infinite range and you practically get one use for every chapter in the game, even ignoring the 12 use Hammerne.

And that's just the obvious stuff. Every single aspect of this game is just wrong in ways that make Genealogy's tome weights look totally normal.

[Jotari]

It's less that Marth is broken, and more that stat boosters in general are really broken in FE1. Universal stat caps are 20 (except for Res which almost doesn't exist), and stat boosters boost a stat by 4 (except defense which is 3). And considering most units don't have a base of 0, a single stat booster is basically bringing them half way to the cap even without growths being taken into account. Marth is of course the smartest unit to invest in because he has to seize, but it's less that he's really good and more that FE1 is bonkers (his growths aren't much to sneeze at either though). Enemy unit quality is also pretty low (thankfully as there's no battle forecast so you're working off assumptions mostly) which means just a little push puts you into a threshold where a unit is invincible. Throw a stat booster on anyone and they immediately become way better. Bantu is another good option as his weapon is unbreakable and he already has 20+ defense making him almost invincible.

I'd say OG Alm is probably better than FE1 Marth though He's way ahead of the curve right from the get go and unlike most characters actually has extant growths so the distance never diminishes. Warping Alm into basically any mob of enemies is a viable solution, especially when he promotes and can counter attack at range. He doesn't have a horse like Sigurd, but horses are much less valued in Gaiden compared to Genealogy. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say Gaiden is the least horse friendly game in the series. Celica doesn't even get a horse unless you promote Atlas (which is probably intentional as horses would not like all that sand and bog).

Edited September 15, 2019 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

10 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It's less that Marth is broken, and more that stat boosters in general are really broken in FE1. Universal stat caps are 20 (except for Res which almost doesn't exist), and stat boosters boost a stat by 4 (except defense which is 3). And considering most units don't have a base of 0, a single stat booster is basically bringing them half way to the cap even without growths being taken into account. Marth is of course the smartest unit to invest in because he has to seize, but it's less that he's really good and more that FE1 is bonkers (his growths aren't much to sneeze at either). Enemy unit quality is also pretty low (thankfully as there's no battle forecast so you're working off assumptions mostly) which means just a little push puts you into a threshold where a unit is invincible. I'd say OG Alm is probably better than FE1 Marth though He's way ahead of the curve right from the get go and unlike most characters actually has extant growths so the distance never diminishes. Warping Alm into basically any mob of enemies is a viable solution, especially when he promotes and can counter attack at range. He doesn't have a horse like Sigurd, but horses are much less valued in Gaiden compared to Genealogy. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say Gaiden is the least horse friendly game in the series. Celica doesn't even get a horse unless you promote Atlas (which is probably intentional as horses would not like all that sand and bog).

Yeah, that's more what I was trying to get at, that this game gives you so many tools to break it that you can basically make anyone into a Sigurd, often without even training them. Marth is just the example I used because, as you said, he's the smartest investment and can seize, leading to crazy warp abuse.

Edited September 15, 2019 by Alastor15243