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Favorite Endgames in the series


SubwayBossEmmett
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13 hours ago, Jotari said:

I agree, but I would have liked it if Yahn was threatening to compensate.

Yeah, he shouldn’t have been scarcely stronger than the war dragons we’d been killing throughout the chapter. Taking into account FE7, I choose to believe he’s just a Sonia-level war dragon.

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On 10/19/2019 at 12:12 AM, Baldrick said:

I feel like Binding Blade's true end is underrated as a climax. As far as tragic villains go, the gameplay tends to undermine the character arc, but in Idunn's case it's complementary. The "bad" ending meets the requirement of a challenging final boss, which is also complementary since you're facing the villain who has driven the plot.

I don't mean to bring in a bunch of negativity, but to me Binding Blade probably has the weakest endgame in the series because it ends just like the rest of the story has played out: with exposition being dumped on you. This might be an odd criticism as well, but it's extremely video game-y, too, with Yahn delivering the exposition to you piece by piece after getting one of his projections.

As for my favorite endgames, I think it's hard to beat Radiant Dawn due to characters from across two games have come together to tackle a threat that has been hinted at since the first Tellius game. I also believe the Blue Lions route ends on an emotional high note and a finishes tumultuous arc very well. And then I also believe Awakening manages to sell its ending thanks to amazing music and an imaginative final map.

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5 hours ago, Thane said:

I don't mean to bring in a bunch of negativity, but to me Binding Blade probably has the weakest endgame in the series because it ends just like the rest of the story has played out: with exposition being dumped on you.

I get what you mean, but there isn't really any other way for Roy to learn about what happened during the Scouring.

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I mean, I don't like PoR's Endgame either. That one doesn't even have a dedicated final map theme. The entire last third of the game feels like something desperately cobbled together so that the game's true finale could happen in a sequel. At least that's my theory.
But Awakening's Endgame was just so bad. Such an insulting and desperate avatar wankfest. Back then I didn't think it was even possible to get genuine mad at a game.
And it's so fitting that the game would end on a map that's just a flat surface with 100% of it's enemies being instantly moving reinforcements. Only good thing I can say about it is that at least at that point you no longer need to care if one of your goons dies to a cheap shot.

 

Anyway, I suppose I do like Gaiden's Endgame quite a lot. The entire disturbing atmosphere of the final area punctuated with the constant updates on Celica's party slowly dying against an overwhelming foe. The addition of a more dramatic player attack them is a nice touch.
The final map itself... well, no one likes Gaiden swamps of course. Still, the dedicated player phase and enemy phase themes really set the mood there. Adding a more urgent version of the player battle theme was also a really nice touch.

Gaiden's Duma is easily my favorite boss in the series. I suppose one good thing about all the swamp is that it creates quite a lot of anticipation for when you finally come face to face with Duma himself. You can see his map sprite of course. But you can't really get a proper grasp of what you look at. Best description I can give is that he looks like an unfinished wood figurine of a pegasus. Add in the fact that his HP is listed as ??/?? and you really have no clue what you are dealing with. So even if you do finally reach him, what then?
Once you finally get to exchange blows, you get to see Duma in his full glory. And needless to say I absolutely love it. Everything about it is unsettling. How can you even describe what you are looking at? The melting skeleton of a Pegasus?
And then it attacks and it just gets so much worse. You could say Duma is vaguely dragon shaped, but his attacks just do not reflect that. You wouldn't expect a dragon to attack with tentacles, let alone with such creepy fleshy looking things. It looks like he is attacking you with his entrails or something. And they snap so suddenly. Just ewww.
And then there is his eye beam. How can you make an eye beam creepy? Well, having a giant single eye stuck in your head is one thing... but eyelids are not supposed to open like a freaking zipper!!!
The whole thing is just a beautiful 8-bit horror show. This abomination is a pretty good take on what a decaying god would look like, to say the least.

Duma is the first opponent in the series whose HP breaks the display. And he actually stayed that way for a long time. By the time the trope came back in the GBA games, they seemed to have forgotten why it worked for Duma in the first place. I mean, they used this on the Fire Dragon in FE7. One of the guys you killed by the dozen in FE6. A glorified grunt. They seemed to have used the trope just as a cheap way to make an opponent seem more powerful.
Thing is, Duma is really more like Giygas then any old dragon. The reason his HP is hidden is because it's questionable that this thing can be killed AT ALL. You struggle to survive while keep attacking the guy and have no way of telling if you even make any sort of progress.
So when you finally manage to whittle his 182 HP down below the 52 HP cap that the game can actually display, and Alm drops his shield and rams him sword through that creepy eye, it really feels like both an accomplishment and one hell of a relief.

Of course that's not the end of it. In his final moments, Duma seems to regain his sanity. In what little time he has left, he speaks to Alm, asking him to take care of the people of the continent in place of him and his sisters, urging him not to repeat the mistakes they did. This fierce battle against an unstoppable abomination ends on a beautiful somber note, as the true nature of the monster is revealed to be a caring shepherd.

So yeah, it's a pretty decent finale for an NES game.

Edited by BrightBow
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39 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

I mean, I don't like PoR's Endgame either. That one doesn't even have a dedicated final map theme. The entire last third of the game feels like something desperately cobbled together so that the game's true finale could happen in a sequel. At least that's my theory.
But Awakening's Endgame was just so bad. Such an insulting and desperate avatar wankfest. Back then I didn't think it was even possible to get genuine mad at a game.
And it's so fitting that the game would end on a map that's just a flat surface with 100% of it's enemies being instantly moving reinforcements. Only good thing I can say about it is that at least at that point you no longer need to care if one of your goons dies to a cheap shot.

 

Anyway, I suppose I do like Gaiden's Endgame quite a lot. The entire disturbing atmosphere of the final area punctuated with the constant updates on Celica's party slowly dying against an overwhelming foe. The addition of a more dramatic player attack them is a nice touch.
The final map itself... well, no one likes Gaiden swamps of course. Still, the dedicated player phase and enemy phase themes really set the mood there. Adding a more urgent version of the player battle theme was also a really nice touch.

Gaiden's Duma is easily my favorite boss in the series. I suppose one good thing about all the swamp is that it creates quite a lot of anticipation for when you finally come face to face with Duma himself. You can see his map sprite of course. But you can't really get a proper grasp of what you look at. Best description I can give is that he looks like an unfinished wood figurine of a pegasus. Add in the fact that his HP is listed as ??/?? and you really have no clue what you are dealing with. So even if you do finally reach him, what then?
Once you finally get to exchange blows, you get to see Duma in his full glory. And needless to say I absolutely love it. Everything about it is unsettling. How can you even describe what you are looking at? The melting skeleton of a Pegasus?
And then it attacks and it just gets so much worse. You could say Duma is vaguely dragon shaped, but his attacks just do not reflect that. You wouldn't expect a dragon to attack with tentacles, let alone with such creepy fleshy looking things. And they snap so suddenly. Just ewww.
And then there is his eye beam. How can you make an eye beam creepy? Well, having a giant single eye stuck in your head is one thing... but eyelids are not supposed to open like a freaking zipper!!!
The whole thing is just a beautiful 8-bit horror show. This abomination is a pretty good take on what a decaying god would look like, to say the least.

Duma is the first opponent in the series whose HP breaks the display. And he actually stayed that way for a long time. By the time the trope came back in the GBA games, they seemed to have forgotten why it worked for Duma in the first place. I mean, they used this on the Fire Dragon in FE7. One of the guys you killed by the dozen in FE6. A glorified grunt. They seemed to have used the trope just as a cheap way to more something seem powerful.
Thing is, Duma is really more like Giygas then any old dragon. The reason his HP is hidden is because it's questionable that this thing can be killed AT ALL. You struggle to survive while keep attacking the guy and have no way of telling if you even make any sort of progress.
So when you finally manage to whittle his 182 HP down below the 52 HP cap that the game can actually display, and Alm drops his shield and rams him sword through that creepy eye, it really feels like both an accomplishment and one hell of a relief.

Of course that's not the end of it. In it's final moments, Duma seems to regain his sanity. In what little time he has left, he speaks to Alm, asking him to take care of the people of the continent in place of him and his sisters, urging him not to repeat the mistakes they did. This fierce battle against an unstoppable abomination ends on a beautiful somber note, as the true nature of the monster is revealed to be a caring shepherd.

So yeah, it's a pretty decent finale for an NES game.

In agreement on all of this (well POR's end game isn't that bad I guess, but I find that game underwhelming unilaterally). The swamp isn't even that bad in the final map, as there's only one small section where you actually have to cross swamp ground and it's better there than not as it stops Celica's team getting ahead of Alm's (though maybe a bridge after you defeat Jedah would be appreciated, as the map useually boils down to only bothering to send your best units across to the final section). I'd also add that pre Three Houses, Duma had the highest HP of any enemy in the series, counting stuff like Ashera's aura and Anankos's hands as separate units.

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Radiant Dawn would be my pick. Climbing the tower with all of it's different challenges is really fun and challenging as well.

If we're talking about final map I'll go with FE3H Golden Deer final map. I really like how the final boss mechanic that they put there.

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