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Can we talk about how Binding Blade is kinda a huge mess?


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It's also one of the absolute worst games for ironman runs, but that's neither here nor there.

This is somewhat subjective, and there are plenty of people that disagree with you on this.

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I dunno about you, but when the replacements are too poor to last long themselves and need a truckload of effort to get anywhere, something is obviously wrong.

You mean replacement units like Noah, Zelot, Echidna, Bartre, Klen, Tate, or Percival? How about units like Fir, Cecilia, or Igrene? You seem to be focused on the few examples that are bad (or on thieves who are not meant for combat anyway), but those are also examples of units that are stuck in bad base classes. Wendy would not be good even if she had decent bases. Magic users are generally useful only for their staff ranks, so even units like Lugh don't perform all that well later on into the game despite joining early on.

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Ogier when he doesn't stack up well compared to Deke even when trained

The game outpaces Deke not long after Ogier joins, so Ogier doesn't really stand a chance. You're committing the same mistake as before though. It doesn't matter how a character stacks up to similar characters. How well they perform overall matters. You either don't realize or neglect to mention that it's sometimes (it's actually true most of the time) good to have two or more of the same unit type in a map.

Edited by samthedigital
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On 4/18/2020 at 7:48 AM, Shadow Mir said:

I dunno about you, but imho, quantity over quality is a poor creed to submit to regarding FE units, and this game demonstrates the pitfalls of such a creed (AKA, Archanea Syndrome; ergo, I find it hard to find reasons to invest in, say, Ogier when he doesn't stack up well compared to Deke even when trained, much less Rutger, and even Fir is better despite joining later). It's also one of the absolute worst games for ironman runs, but that's neither here nor there. Sorry, but I find your explanation to be flimsy and unacceptable.

I dunno about you, but when the replacements are too poor to last long themselves and need a truckload of effort to get anywhere, something is obviously wrong. Also, this mentality only worked in Archanea, where the stat scale was lower, and even there, I'd say it was folly. It's even more foolish when certain units must be alive to get the true ending. Also, most of the playerbase doesn't play that way, largely because it's quicker and easier to reset and keep the good unit than to try to train up a replacement.

I don't think most of the playerbase cares about min-maxing. Only a few units need to be great. The rest just need to be good enough and it doesn't really take much extra time to get them to that point. There will be some inconvenience, but no way in hell is it quicker to reset unless it's within the first few turns. Plus that time is spent actually playing the game and not looking at the GBA BIOS and file select screen.

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Binding blade has too many problems to even begin on where I would start.

The first problem was that it takes too many steps back either for better or for worse. There is nothing here that makes it stand out other than the RNG which is kinda messed up and was later on tweaked in later games and then of course, the supports even though many of them are terrible.

The only appeal to the game was that its a Fire Emblem game that can be played on the go but frankly, Fe7 does this better due to having a much better difficulty and having shorter maps.

The other problem is the amount of units you get and a lot of them are either worthless or are forced to be with you. None of the generals are worth using considering how huge the maps are, Merlinus..does anyone ever mention him? And the replacable units require baybing to the point that you may as well develop an incentive to keep your earlier units alive.

The only purpose with replaceble units is to get other replaceble units and to keep them to get the gaiden chapters which is easy to do as all you'd have to do is avoid using them. 

And while long maps many can get accustomed to, I'd be one to not like long maps here especially considering the brutal difficulty that is designed on a portable console. Its for this reason that I like FE7 better.

Legendary weapons are too good but if you break them, you can't get access to the last chapter and preserving them isn't easy even with the hammerine staff. Besides, a lot of them require high rank uses which mean only few units can get access to that and by the time that happens, you're at the end and really, the legendary weapons are meant for the endgame and nothing else.

And then lastly..the lord who's just trash the entire time. Swordlocked, late promotion, very fragile and required in everything just make Roy not my boy.

Its for these very reasons that a remake is badly needed.

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7 hours ago, anikom15 said:

I don't think most of the playerbase cares about min-maxing. Only a few units need to be great. The rest just need to be good enough and it doesn't really take much extra time to get them to that point. There will be some inconvenience, but no way in hell is it quicker to reset unless it's within the first few turns. Plus that time is spent actually playing the game and not looking at the GBA BIOS and file select screen.

Perhaps, but most people tend to reset after someone dies nonetheless. Also, like was said above, when you have units that come underleveled with poor bases and they don't have the growths to make up for them, the only thing I get is incentive to keep my earlier units alive, as it's ten billion percent easier than having to babysit the wannabe replacement. The shortage of promotion items doesn't help matters.

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9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Perhaps, but most people tend to reset after someone dies nonetheless. Also, like was said above, when you have units that come underleveled with poor bases and they don't have the growths to make up for them, the only thing I get is incentive to keep my earlier units alive, as it's ten billion percent easier than having to babysit the wannabe replacement. The shortage of promotion items doesn't help matters.

That's exactly the point, but for me the game doesn't stop being fun when someone dies. I enjoy seeing how my contingencies play out. What's not fun is playing the same chapter twice in a row after a reset.

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22 hours ago, anikom15 said:

That's exactly the point, but for me the game doesn't stop being fun when someone dies. I enjoy seeing how my contingencies play out. What's not fun is playing the same chapter twice in a row after a reset.

Having to babysit a replacement unit who looks like - and in fact probably is - more trouble than they're worth isn't fun either.

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I find Binding Blade to be very underrated. It seems to get way more hate than it deserves. I love this game, and think that it does a lot of things really well. I'll be the first to admit that the game has its share of flaws, but other FE games aren't without flaws either, and I think the amount of hate that Binding Blade gets is disproportionate to the problems it has compared to other games in the series. A lot of the criticisms of Binding Blade apply to other FE games too, and I think that Binding Blade does plenty of things better than a lot of other games. Personally, I think this is one of the better games in the series. A lot of this comes down to perspective. I do not think it's fair to say that a game is bad because you don't like the mentality it has. Does every unit really need to be balanced in a single player game? Not necessarily. Fire Emblem is a series that is known for its permadeath mechanic, and the games should be designed with that in mind. Units are only worthless if you reset every time a good units dies. That's a perfectly fair way to play the game, but it's a limited perspective to be criticizing the game with and calling it a huge mess.

 

Too many units?

I don't see what the problem is honestly. The game gives you a lot of options to use. Many of them are worse than units you already have but that's fine. A lot of them can act as 'replacement units' in case your good units die or maybe get bad level ups, or you just feel like using different units. If you really like Mercenaries and Heroes, than you can use both Dieck and Oujay. Obviously Rutger is a lot better than Oujay, but you have this option, and you don't have to use him if you don't want to. If certain units die, then other units become a lot more useful. Saying that most units in this game are "unusable" is a huge exaggeration. Most of them are fine. "Not one of the best top tier units" does not equal "bad" or "unusable" Most of the units in this game are more or less average, and are serviceable. The fact that the TC thought that Noah and Treck make Allen and Lance obsolete rather than the other way around show that the so called "unusable" units really aren't that bad. There's nothing wrong with Noah at all.

It's a fair perspective to say that Noah and Treck are useless because Allen and Lance are just plain better. Oujay and Fir are worthless because Dieck and Rutger are much better. Most of the Axe users are worthless because they aren't worth using one of the very limited Hero Crests on them. This is a fair perspective to have but its only one limited perspective, and I don't think its fair to say that because of these things, the game is bad. If you want to only use the top tier optimal units and reset every time one of one of them dies than you can do that. The existence of worse units doesn't take away that option. All it does is give you more options, which is great for people that don't want to reset when units die or just want the option to use other units. I do agree that the game should probably be more balanced than it is, but I also think it's fine for some units to be better than others. You are supposed to be able to lose units and keep playing without resetting, and having 'replacement units' available helps make that possible. I think the game would be worse if it only had the top tier optimal units and didn't have any average units. 

 

Weapon Balance

“Lances and Axes have low accuracy and are bad. Swords are too good. This makes the game unbalanced and makes some units unusable therefore removing variety and replay value”. Some of this is true. Swords are very good in this game. Some Lances and especially Axes are very inaccurate. So, Swords being good with Lances and Axes being bad is a problem in this game, but Swords being bad and Lances and Axes dominating in other games is okay? In most FE games in the series, Swords and Bows are both widely considered bad and the worst weapon types in the game. Lances and Axes are much better than Swords and Bows. In this game, it's kind of the opposite, and that makes it worse?

How bad are Lances and Axes really? Are they really as bad as some people say they are? Are Lance and Axe users "unusable"? It's true that some Lances are pretty inaccurate, but that doesn't stop a Lance user from being the best unit in the game. If she specialized in Swords, she might be even better. But does anyone promote Miledy, give her a Sword, and then never have her use Lances? No, I don't think so. Miledy is very effective with Lances. She will probably use a combination of Swords and Lances. Cavaliers and Paladins can use both Swords and Lances. Since Swords are better than Lances, does that mean that you should only give Cavaliers and Paladins Swords and never have them use Lances? Again, no. Lances are plenty useful for them. They will use a combination of both.

How about Axes? Axes are very inaccurate in this game. I do agree that it might be better if they were a little more accurate, but does this inaccuracy really make Axe users "unusable"? Geese and Gonzales are okay. They're not great, but they're not terrible. FE6 Bartre and Garret aren't terrible either. They're mostly just not worth using because Dieck and Rutger deserve the limited Hero's Crests more, but they're definitely not unusable. Lots of people say that they find these units fun to use. I honestly don't know if Dorcas and FE7 Bartre are any better than these units. They're definitely not top tier optimal units either. What about units that can use both Swords and Axes? Heroes and Paladins can use both, and if Swords are really so overpowered and Axes so useless than these classes should probably never use an Axe. Again, I do agree that some Axes should be a bit more accurate, but in the game as it, Axes are already useful for Heroes and Paladins sometimes. They can be effective.

In the meantime, Sword users are actually in this game when they are considered bad in most of the other games in the series. Bow users too. If anything, the weapon balance kind of seems better in these games than in FE7 where Lance and Axes and more specifically Javelins and Hand Axes dominate the whole game, with Swords and Bows being bad. There's actually a reason to use almost every weapon in Binding Blade. Effective weapons are also useless in FE7 but very useful in this game. Javelins and Hand Axes are much more balanced in this game. They're still very useful to give melee units a ranged option but they aren't overpowered like they are in FE7 and a lot of other games. Bows are a lot more useful in this game and are almost useless in FE7.

 

Unit / Class Balance

Armour Knights are possibly the worst in the series in this game. But it's not like they're much better in most games. And Archers and Sword locked units are considered very bad in most games but are better in this one. One of the best units in the game is Sword locked. The game really isn't dominated by any one class in this game. Mounted units are good but are not the only units worth using. There are multiple good infantry units too. It's not like mounted units aren't some of the best in other games too. Overall, the class balance seems pretty good to me in this game.

There are specific cases like Wendy and Sophia who are possibly the worst units in the series, but these are outliers. Most units in this game aren't that bad, and other games have bad units too. Having a lot of units kind of makes up for having bad units in a way. There are plenty of good options, you don't need to use Wendy or Sophia if you don't want to. After those two, I don’t think that there are any other units as bad as the worst units in FE7 or FE8. Wolt and Dorothy are bad but I think that they're better than Wil and Rebecca.

I think pre-promotes are balanced very well in Binding Blade. Marcus is strong enough to help your other units get past the early game. He shows them how to get things done and then can finally retire when they no longer need him. Zealot is great when he first joins but falls off by the late game. He's very useful for a while but isn't overpowered. Echidna is similar. The late game pre-promotes range from decent to great. Perceval is amazing but isn't too overpowered. It's not like he is going to be soloing the game with how strong enemies are in this game. Even he needs help from your other units. FE7 Marcus, Pent, Harken, Seth and arguably Hawkeye are downright overpowered in comparison. In Binding Blade, you use a combination of growth units and pre-promotes. They are very useful without dominating the game like some pre-promotes do in other games.

 

Map Design

I don't really understand this one. What's wrong with the maps? I agree that Chapter 8 is slow and boring and I can see a few other maps having some problems too, but it's not like the map design is flawless in other games. Overall, I really like the map design in this game. I think it's good overall. Maps often give you secondary objectives that give you incentive to play quickly. They reward you for playing well and quickly rather than punishing you for not playing quickly enough. You often have multiple options for how you want to play any given map. It's great.

The desert map isn't that bad. It's pretty straight forward and the time limit is very lenient. If you don't like FOW then how do you like Blazing Sword? That game has way more FOW maps. There's a portion of FE7 where almost every other map has FOW for a while. And in those maps, you need to worry about getting attacked from behind more than you do in FOW maps in this game. As long as you lead with your strongest units and don't send them too far ahead on their own, while using torches and thieves to light up the way, they're fine. FE7 has Battle Before Dawn and other cases where you can get a game over for failing to save a green unit in time. Battle Before Dawn combines both saving a green unit and FOW. In Binding Blade, you are rewarded for successfully saving green units, not punished for failing to do so. 3H has worse FOW maps too.

 

Mission Objectives

People criticize this game for only having Seize as the only objective for every chapter. I'm not against more variety, but I don't think having only Seize is inherently bad either. It's not like this makes every chapter the same. You still use different strategies for different chapters and can use different strategies for how you want to approach a specific map. Do you want to go straight for the throne/gate, or do you want to play through the whole thing? Like I said, I'm not against more variety but it depends on how it is implemented, and the execution of mission variety is kind of hit or miss sometimes. Some of the missions objectives in FE7 make me think that the developers were going out of there way to add in more missions just for the sake of having more objectives instead of putting them in because they actually add something to the game.

Defend is an interesting concept, even if I do find certain Defend maps annoying. It would be interesting to see Defend implemented more often in a FE game, kind of like a combination of FE and Lords of the Realm II. That would be a lot different from FE though. Anyway, I like that in Defend, you can choose to actually defend the area, or take the offensive and go out and kill the enemies. Killing the boss becomes a secondary objective that you can be rewarded for doing. It is weird when you already killed every enemy and the map still doesn't end yet though. I also don't like that you fight Riev again in the next Chapter even if you defeat him the first time. I think he should have actually died. Overall, Defend is fine.

Kill Boss / Claim Space are basically just variations of Seize anyway. I do like Kill Boss, and wish that it was used more often. This is one of things I like about 3H. One of the cool things about Kill Boss and that sets it apart from Seize, is that the boss can move. The problem is that bosses very rarely move even in Kill Boss chapters. I wish bosses moved more often in all of the games. That would be interesting. As long as you have some way of knowing so you don't get caught by surprise. Speaking of which, FE7 has a FOW battle with a boss that moves. That's dumb. Claim Space in the Georg and Kaim chapters is literally just Seize with a different name. I had thought that other characters could claim that space too, but no, it has to be Eliwood. Earn 3 Points in the Pascal chapter, I think would have been better as Kill All Bosses with all three promoted enemies counting as the bosses.

Rout is annoying. There are a few monster maps in Sacred Stones where Rout works fine, but for the most part I don't like it. I think in some cases, Rout maps would have been better as Kill Boss or Seize. Remember that I said I like when maps give you multiple ways for how to approach them? In a Kill Boss map, you can choose whether you want to kill most or all of the enemies, or go straight for the boss and end the battle quickly. But in Rout, you don't have a choice. You just have to go around killing every last one of them, and in some cases, this can be very annoying. I would like COD better if it was Kill Boss or Seize. It's annoying when you've already killed Linus/Lloyd and then have to mop up the spams of Wyverns that keep appearing from behind you. It's annoying in Erik's chapter, when you've already killed Erik and most of the other enemies but now have to wait for a Pegasus Knight to come back from healing at a Fort. It feels weird when you've basically already won the battle and then have to hunt down the remaining enemies like an exterminator. Jerme's map is very annoying too for multiple reasons. It would be less annoying if it was Kill Boss instead of Rout. I think the Sacred Stones desert battle should have been Kill Bosses too. You should win when you've killed both Caellach and Valter.

 

Enemy Spam

I don't know where else to put this so I here I go. I hate that FE7 and to a lesser extent FE8 spam hordes of enemies at you. There are some maps where the screen is almost full of enemies. It's super annoying. In Binding Blade, each enemy is purposefully placed and defeating each enemy is a small accomplishment on its own. Enemies are strong but there aren't nearly as many of them, and in a lot of maps, there aren't very many reinforcements. What you see from the start is what you will need to deal with. FE7 and one map in particular of FE8 have so many reinforcements everywhere. I hate it. 

 

Ambush Spawns

I don't know why no else has even brought this up yet. This is perhaps the only mechanic of Binding Blade that I can only defend so much. It's not a good mechanic. I don't like it. But I honestly do think it gets exaggerated a bit in this game. Binding Blade is the game that is notorious for ambush spawns but it's not the only game that has them. There are some complete bs situations of ambush spawns in this game for sure, but in a lot of cases, the game gives you warnings about them before hand or has them appear far enough away that they won't kill anyone. I think SD has worse cases of ambush spawns. That game has a lot of ambush spawns that seem to appear right when your units get to where they are and have no warning whatsoever. 3H ambush spawns are probably the worst. They are designed very very poorly in that game. There are zone reinforcements that appear right behind your units and are probably going to kill your more vulnerable units. There are a lot of ambush spawns that have Pass so you can't block them from killing your vulnerable units. And there are several cases of ambush spawns appearing without warning on top of your starting position and killing whoever is still around there. That game very rarely gives any warning about reinforcements. It's stupid. Even FE7 has some cases of unfair ambush spawns with no warning, although this is very rare in that game. Again, I will not defend unfair ambush spawns in Binding Blade. There are definitely cases of ambush spawns that are completely unfair, but why is this game the one that is notorious for it when it happens in other games and is even worse in some other games? Also, for what it's worth, ambush spawns aren't so bad once you're familiar with the game, though that's not exactly a good defense.

 

Plot

Maybe slightly off topic. No one has said anything about the game's plot in this thread, but I have seen people say that the plot is bad and boring before. I don't have much to say about this one except that I don't understand it. The plot isn't perfect nor is it a masterpiece but it's pretty good, and is a lot better than the plot in some other FE games, like FE7 that everyone seems to love.

 

Conclusion

Binding Blade is far from perfect. It is has its share of flaws, but it gets a lot of unjustified hate. People think way to negatively of this game for unfair reasons. Like I said before, the amount of hate that this game gets is disproportionate to the amount of flaws it has compared to some other FE games. I think that there are a lot of things that it does better than many of the other games and these things get completely overlooked for some reason. I'm all for criticizing things, but only if it's done fairly and without bias. Blazing Sword is a very popular and widely loved game. I like it too but not as much as Binding Blade. Binding Blade is often regarded as one of the worst games in the series. I think it's one of the better games of the series and I think Blazing Sword has a lot of its own problems that people overlook or ignore. If you don't like Binding Blade, that's fine, but maybe try looking at it from a different perspective and considering if your problems with it are personal or actual flaws of the game, before calling it terrible or a huge mess. It's not a bad game.

Edited by Whisky
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This is perhaps the only mechanic of Binding Blade that I can only defend so much.

Tate and Klain have a chance of not moving along with their group when they are enemies. There are also some enemies that really shouldn't have a crit rate in my opinion. Those are the two things that I think are indefensible. I don't mind ambush spawns much in this game, but I won't go into a huge spiel about it.

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It's a fair perspective to say that Noah and Treck are useless because Allen and Lance are just plain better. Oujay and Fir are worthless because Dieck and Rutger are much better.

You already outlined why I don't think that this is a fair perspective to have, but I will just note that I think that you are underselling Fir quite a bit by comparing her to Rutger specifically. If she gets to promotion her combat is still fantastic, and I don't find the options for the second Hero Crest to be particularly attractive otherwise in any case.

In any case I strongly agree with just about everything else you said, and I did take some of your messages out of context to expand to it a bit.

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On 4/17/2020 at 7:39 PM, Koops said:

Bartre's strength is fantastic, shame that he hasn't the speed to properly make use of that. BUT he will prove useful against those Chapter 13 Wyverns!

And here we have another case of a unit not considered amazing being helpful in some way!

Even if he won't kill, he'll take a gigantic chunk of health out of damn near everything he aims at.  Bows have passable base accuracy, so he'll hit more often than not.  Plus, he can bait archers and laugh, thanks to his gigantic HP pool.  If he can get up to better bows, he turns into a very scary chip machine.

Learning how to utilize the cast effectively is one of FE6's strong points.  Not all of it is obvious, as this topic shows!

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Bartre would be so amazing if he started with Brave Bow (or at least Killer Bow) access. I never grinded up his bow rank that far, because I suspect that once you get there, his 10 Spd catches up to him (he get doubled a LOT in ch.21, for example). But the prospect of a 22 Str Brave Bow user is pretty appealing, even moreso if you don't have to train Dorothy to level 20/12 (or Wolt to 20/20, lol) to get one.

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Thank you @Whisky, for your write-up. I wholeheartedly agree.

I'm not going to regurgitate my usual blabla about hitrates and the weapon triangle, but I do want to add this about unit balance: If you feel that a unit isn't worth using, you can just not use them. Boom, problem solved, you now have slightly more space in the convoy. The only bad recruits that will spawn in a spot of bother are Sophia and (arguably) Treck, and I consider that part of those maps' "tasks". Make sure you have enough map vision not to walk Sophia into wyvern range. During the first turn, get into a position that allows Roy to reach Treck immediately.

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Man what an awesome thread! The defenses for Binding Blade in here have been really good reads. What I want to add is that units tend to get solely judged on pure combat usefulness compared to others. A character like Milady and some others are going to mainly be doing the majority of the combat wherever you send them, but you don't need to "feed" or "baby" certain units who are able to contribute at base level as filler units. Someone like Douglas who is pretty bad can be sent to bait enemies at a side objective with some of your mages cleaning up afterward, archers early can chip which can be really useful against FE6's stronger enemies, and anyone on a mount can do some nice rescue dropping to get some key units into certain positions. It's similar to how anyone in FE11, no matter how bad the growths, that has C or higher base lance rank can do a lot of work right out of the box because of Ridersbane access. 

There are many roles that can be filled with FE6's deployment, and you don't need every unit to be a min maxed combat unit. 

 

Also @Whisky Thanks for that read that must of taken a while to put together.

Edited by JimmyBeans
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16 hours ago, JimmyBeans said:

Man what an awesome thread! The defenses for Binding Blade in here have been really good reads. What I want to add is that units tend to get solely judged on pure combat usefulness compared to others. A character like Milady and some others are going to mainly be doing the majority of the combat wherever you send them, but you don't need to "feed" or "baby" certain units who are able to contribute at base level as filler units. Someone like Douglas who is pretty bad can be sent to bait enemies at a side objective with some of your mages cleaning up afterward, archers early can chip which can be really useful against FE6's stronger enemies, and anyone on a mount can do some nice rescue dropping to get some key units into certain positions. It's similar to how anyone in FE11, no matter how bad the growths, that has C or higher base lance rank can do a lot of work right out of the box because of Ridersbane access. 

There are many roles that can be filled with FE6's deployment, and you don't need every unit to be a min maxed combat unit. 

 

Also @Whisky Thanks for that read that must of taken a while to put together.

This. IMO, 99% of grinding is unnecessary. Opportunistically giving a kill to a weaker character is a good way to build up, however.

Edited by anikom15
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I think the fact that someone as strong as Dieck being considered only "okay" really helps the point that units in this game aren't as bad as people think. Dieck starts strong with good bases and is an absolute monster for the mid-game if promoted early and he stays pretty good throughout the whole game. This beast of a unit is generally considered only "okay". That's how "unusable" units in this game are. And that brings me to this:

On 4/21/2020 at 8:05 PM, samthedigital said:

Tate and Klain have a chance of not moving along with their group when they are enemies. There are also some enemies that really shouldn't have a crit rate in my opinion. Those are the two things that I think are indefensible. I don't mind ambush spawns much in this game, but I won't go into a huge spiel about it.

You already outlined why I don't think that this is a fair perspective to have, but I will just note that I think that you are underselling Fir quite a bit by comparing her to Rutger specifically. If she gets to promotion her combat is still fantastic, and I don't find the options for the second Hero Crest to be particularly attractive otherwise in any case.

In any case I strongly agree with just about everything else you said, and I did take some of your messages out of context to expand to it a bit.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Klein and Tate not moving sometimes. That is pretty dumb. I'm interesting in seeing what your opinion of ambush spawns is, but if you don't feel like sharing then that's fine. I'd also be interested in the Crit thing which I may or may not agree with. To an extent, I might agree, I just don't like seeing people blaming the game's RNG for a death that they could have avoided with better strategy. I do agree that it should be toned down a bit though. The Cavaliers in Chapter 4 having low % Crit rates against most of your units is really unfair. That battle is hard enough even if they don't get a Crit.

You already said that you purposely took my message out of context to expand on it, so I don't need to explain myself too much. I was just saying that that was one perspective someone could have, and not what I actually believe. But about Fir; I wasn't comparing her only to Rutger specifically. I was comparing her to both Rutger and Dieck. I consider Dieck better than her. But the fact that we can disagree about which of these units is better just shows how much better the balance is than a lot of people say. Fir joins under leveled, joining on Chapter 9 at level 1. But it's easy to get her leveled up just in time to promote her with the second Hero Crest, and you got yourself a pretty decent unit. Being under leveled isn't always as much of an issue as it might seem.

On 4/21/2020 at 8:09 PM, eclipse said:

Even if he won't kill, he'll take a gigantic chunk of health out of damn near everything he aims at.  Bows have passable base accuracy, so he'll hit more often than not.  Plus, he can bait archers and laugh, thanks to his gigantic HP pool.  If he can get up to better bows, he turns into a very scary chip machine.

 

21 hours ago, ping said:

Bartre would be so amazing if he started with Brave Bow (or at least Killer Bow) access. I never grinded up his bow rank that far, because I suspect that once you get there, his 10 Spd catches up to him (he get doubled a LOT in ch.21, for example). But the prospect of a 22 Str Brave Bow user is pretty appealing, even moreso if you don't have to train Dorothy to level 20/12 (or Wolt to 20/20, lol) to get one.

I haven't used Bartre much. You do have 10 Chapters to get him leveled up a bit though so he should have a few more points of Spd by Chapter 21. Bartre can be a Brave Bow user with more than 22 Str if he gains some levels too.

21 hours ago, ping said:

I'm not going to regurgitate my usual blabla about hitrates and the weapon triangle, but I do want to add this about unit balance: If you feel that a unit isn't worth using, you can just not use them. Boom, problem solved, you now have slightly more space in the convoy. The only bad recruits that will spawn in a spot of bother are Sophia and (arguably) Treck, and I consider that part of those maps' "tasks". Make sure you have enough map vision not to walk Sophia into wyvern range. During the first turn, get into a position that allows Roy to reach Treck immediately.

Oh man, I would have liked to read that "blabla". I agree that those are both secondary objectives of the map. You are not punished for letting Treck or Sophia die. If you get Sophia to the end of the map, you are rewarded with a Guiding Ring. By the way, Roy doesn't recruit Treck. Zealot does. It is possible (although not easy) to get Roy in position to recruit Zealot on the second turn who can then recruit Treck, however, this all needs to be done all while fighting half a dozen strong enemies and one of the Wyvern Riders is swooping in to threaten your team. I'm not gonna lie, I have a hard time saving Treck's life in this map.

 

On 4/21/2020 at 8:09 PM, eclipse said:

Learning how to utilize the cast effectively is one of FE6's strong points.  Not all of it is obvious, as this topic shows!

I like this this point and the points made by @JimmyBeans a lot. Thank you guys.

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8 hours ago, Whisky said:
On 4/22/2020 at 1:05 PM, samthedigital said:

You already outlined why I don't think that this is a fair perspective to have, but I will just note that I think that you are underselling Fir quite a bit by comparing her to Rutger specifically. If she gets to promotion her combat is still fantastic, and I don't find the options for the second Hero Crest to be particularly attractive otherwise in any case.

In any case I strongly agree with just about everything else you said, and I did take some of your messages out of context to expand to it a bit.

You already said that you purposely took my message out of context to expand on it, so I don't need to explain myself too much. I was just saying that that was one perspective someone could have, and not what I actually believe. But about Fir; I wasn't comparing her only to Rutger specifically. I was comparing her to both Rutger and Dieck. I consider Dieck better than her. But the fact that we can disagree about which of these units is better just shows how much better the balance is than a lot of people say. Fir joins under leveled, joining on Chapter 9 at level 1. But it's easy to get her leveled up just in time to promote her with the second Hero Crest, and you got yourself a pretty decent unit. Being under leveled isn't always as much of an issue as it might seem.

I do have to say, considering how amazing swords (and esp swordmasters) are in this game, there is the question of what would be stopping me from using Dieck, Rutger, and Fir (and buy an extra Hero Crest at the secret shop in Chapter 16 with the member's card). The Japanese players guide from Mainich Communications I read back in 2003 recommends using all three units! 

Edited by henrymidfields
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2 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

I do have to say, considering how amazing swords (and esp swordmasters) are in this game, there is the question of what would be stopping me from using Dieck, Rutger, and Fir (and buy an extra Hero Crest at the secret shop in Chapter 16 with the member's card). The Japanese players guide from Mainich Communications I read back in 2003 recommends using all three units! 

Screenshot_20200423-082212.thumb.jpg.e141ce004442731bd642346d78ab2847.jpg

Fear the Fir. Anyone who can one-round Murdock is good in my books.

I personally think that one of Binding blade's faults is the lack of promotion items, but that was probably on purpose given that you can take a miniscule amount of units to the true endgame and it's not a huge obstruction. (It costs 1 or 2 boots fpr each promotion item depending on if you have the silver card or not.) If the game had ocean seals, I think that they would have mitigated those problems and Geese would be usable. Maybe .

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Dieck starts strong with good bases and is an absolute monster for the mid-game if promoted early and he stays pretty good throughout the whole game.

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But about Fir; I wasn't comparing her only to Rutger specifically. I was comparing her to both Rutger and Dieck. I consider Dieck better than her.

I don't have as strong of an opinion on Dieck's mid-game. I find that he starts out strong and slowly gets worse as time goes on. His promotion helps, but I don't think that it's that helpful necessarily. I do think that he is much better than Fir because of his strong start and low investment for a second Hero Crest that Fir does not have, but I also think that there are benefits to training Fir to 10 and promoting her instead. It's like comparing Zeiss to Miledy in a way. Miledy is obviously much better, but I'd still much rather deploy Zeiss than most other units when I have him. The difference here is that Dieck is not obviously better than a trained Fir.

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I'm interesting in seeing what your opinion of ambush spawns is, but if you don't feel like sharing then that's fine.

The only thing I dislike about ambush spawns is that it's impossible to perfectly anticipate them without being familiar with where enemies spawn from or how they work. It's worse if the player doesn't bother reading the story too. On the other hand FE6 ambush spawns can largely be mitigated by not turtling, and it does add some complexity. I think that it's worth the downside because I am looking for replay value rather than an amazing first experience, but it can depend on what someone is looking for out of a game.

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I'd also be interested in the Crit thing which I may or may not agree with. To an extent, I might agree, I just don't like seeing people blaming the game's RNG for a death that they could have avoided with better strategy. I do agree that it should be toned down a bit though. The Cavaliers in Chapter 4 having low % Crit rates against most of your units is really unfair. That battle is hard enough even if they don't get a Crit.

The problem I have with low% crit rates is that they often just make things tedious rather than challenging. If I want to use an absolutely safe strategy and prevent a 2% crit I have to use a ranged attack that might not even one round the enemy, and there are not that many good 2 range units to go around if the enemy is bulky enough. I am thinking of Manaketes in particular, but I am sure that there are some other examples like the one you mentioned. I don't think that enemy crit rates are always bad; it's another reason that 2 range is balanced in this game, but it would have been nice to have an Iron Rune or something to that effect to prevent criticals in this game.

Edited by samthedigital
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13 hours ago, Whisky said:

Oh man, I would have liked to read that "blabla". I agree that those are both secondary objectives of the map. You are not punished for letting Treck or Sophia die. If you get Sophia to the end of the map, you are rewarded with a Guiding Ring. By the way, Roy doesn't recruit Treck. Zealot does. It is possible (although not easy) to get Roy in position to recruit Zealot on the second turn who can then recruit Treck, however, this all needs to be done all while fighting half a dozen strong enemies and one of the Wyvern Riders is swooping in to threaten your team. I'm not gonna lie, I have a hard time saving Treck's life in this map.

The blabla boils down to "It is always best to have weapon triangle advantage (effective weapons excluded)". When you fight against a lance user, axes compared to swords give you same hitrate, increased damage (or higher hitrate at similar damage, if you compare e.g. Iron Axe vs. Steel Sword), more defense and more avoid. Some side-by-sides:

  • Iron Axe vs. Iron Sword: same hit, +5 damage.
  • Iron Axe vs. Steel Sword: +15 hit, +2 damage.
  • Iron Axe vs. Silver Sword: +10 hit, -3 damage.
  • Steel Axe vs. Silver Sword: -5 hit, identical damage. (Weight can obviously be a problem here)
  • Hand Axe vs. Steel Sword: same hit, +1 damage.
  • Iron Axe vs. Iron Lance: +5 hit, +2 damage
  • Iron Axe vs. Steel Lance: +20 hit, -1 damage
  • Iron Axe vs. Silver Lance: +10 hit, -5 damage

Notably, those three axes are all E rank, so even a freshly promoted Paladin or Hero gets something out of having an axe in their inventory. If you don't need the raw damage of a Silver weapon or an effective weapon to secure a KO, an Iron Axe will be better than an Iron or Steel Sword/Lance.

(being axe-locked is still bad, of course, because hitrates will be shite as soon as you go against a non-Lance user. But axes are not the meme that some people make them out to be)

---
Well, ACTUALLY, Roy can recruit Treck as well. ;): But you're right, the only realistic way to get him and Zealot on T2 is to get Zealot first. I do usually use Roy to recruit Noah, though, since Zealot's player phase action is more valuable than Roy's.

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4 hours ago, samthedigital said:

I don't have as strong of an opinion on Dieck's mid-game. I find that he starts out strong and slowly gets worse as time goes on. His promotion helps, but I don't think that it's that helpful necessarily. I do think that he is much better than Fir because of his strong start and low investment for a second Hero Crest that Fir does not have, but I also think that there are benefits to training Fir to 10 and promoting her instead. It's like comparing Zeiss to Miledy in a way. Miledy is obviously much better, but I'd still much rather deploy Zeiss than most other units when I have him. The difference here is that Dieck is not obviously better than a trained Fir.

I don’t really understand the comparison with the Wyvern Riders but the rest is fair. Early promoted Dieck really is good though. He doubles and ORKOs most enemies for a while. He is very accurate and deals a lot of damage against anything he doesn’t kill. He is quite durable. He can use both Swords and Axes (which are useful), including Hand Axes for 1-2 range (again, which is useful). He is the only unit other than Rutger that can use the Durandal for a while. He’s pretty much the next best thing after Rutger. If you aren’t using Rutger, Dieck gets the job done just fine, and does it better than anyone else can for a long time.

Quote

The only thing I dislike about ambush spawns is that it's impossible to perfectly anticipate them without being familiar with where enemies spawn from or how they work. It's worse if the player doesn't bother reading the story too. On the other hand FE6 ambush spawns can largely be mitigated by not turtling, and it does add some complexity. I think that it's worth the downside because I am looking for replay value rather than an amazing first experience, but it can depend on what someone is looking for out of a game.

I agree with the part about not being able to anticipate them. In a lot of situations in this game, they have some warning or have them appear far enough away that they aren’t a danger, but there are some cases when you will be caught off guard and killed unfairly.

The part about a first playthrough vs replay value... that’s a whole discussion on its own. I don’t know how I feel about that. I’ve played Binding Blade enough that the ambush spawns usually don’t bother me anymore but I can definitely understand someone playing the game for the first time getting very frustrated. It’s a complicated topic.

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The problem I have with low% crit rates is that they often just make things tedious rather than challenging. If I want to use an absolutely safe strategy and prevent a 2% crit I have to use a ranged attack that might not even one round the enemy, and there are not that many good 2 range units to go around if the enemy is bulky enough. I am thinking of Manaketes in particular, but I am sure that there are some other examples like the one you mentioned. I don't think that enemy crit rates are always bad; it's another reason that 2 range is balanced in this game, but it would have been nice to have an Iron Rune or something to that effect to prevent criticals in this game.
 

I guess I would rather Manaketes just be stronger rather than having a Crit chance. As is, you need to be very careful with who you have fight them. You need to use units with high enough Luc or use ranged attacks. It’s not like they aren’t manageable so I’m not sure how much of a problem it is, but I wouldn’t mind if their Crit rate was reduced. But yeah, in most cases, there are ways to avoid low % Crit deaths. Roy has high enough Luc to fight Thunder Mages or early game Mercenaries without facing a Crit chance. As do Thany and Marcus. I don’t know. In general I’m not a fan of Crits and don’t know if the game wouldn’t be better if they were just removed completely and maybe replaced with something else. Something more consistent. I just don’t like people blaming the game when there actually was something they could have done better to prevent it instead of risking the low % Crit.

 

2 hours ago, ping said:

The blabla boils down to "It is always best to have weapon triangle advantage (effective weapons excluded)". When you fight against a lance user, axes compared to swords give you same hitrate, increased damage (or higher hitrate at similar damage, if you compare e.g. Iron Axe vs. Steel Sword), more defense and more avoid. Some side-by-sides:

  • Iron Axe vs. Iron Sword: same hit, +5 damage.
  • Iron Axe vs. Steel Sword: +15 hit, +2 damage.
  • Iron Axe vs. Silver Sword: +10 hit, -3 damage.
  • Steel Axe vs. Silver Sword: -5 hit, identical damage. (Weight can obviously be a problem here)
  • Hand Axe vs. Steel Sword: same hit, +1 damage.
  • Iron Axe vs. Iron Lance: +5 hit, +2 damage
  • Iron Axe vs. Steel Lance: +20 hit, -1 damage
  • Iron Axe vs. Silver Lance: +10 hit, -5 damage

Notably, those three axes are all E rank, so even a freshly promoted Paladin or Hero gets something out of having an axe in their inventory. If you don't need the raw damage of a Silver weapon or an effective weapon to secure a KO, an Iron Axe will be better than an Iron or Steel Sword/Lance.

(being axe-locked is still bad, of course, because hitrates will be shite as soon as you go against a non-Lance user. But axes are not the meme that some people make them out to be)

Good points. Thank you for bringing up this information. One thing I will add is that it’s kind of weird that an Armour Slayer is more effective against a General using a Lance than a Hammer is. But overall, like you said, Axes are very useful for Heroes and Paladins. There’s also Killer Axes at higher rank. And also like you said,  Axe locked units aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be. There are a lot of Lance enemies after all, and the game does have Sword Reavers too. Fighters in most other games aren’t much better anyway.

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Well, ACTUALLY, Roy can recruit Treck as well. ;): But you're right, the only realistic way to get him and Zealot on T2 is to get Zealot first. I do usually use Roy to recruit Noah, though, since Zealot's player phase action is more valuable than Roy's.

Oh my bad. Thanks for correcting me. It would be hard to recruit him with Roy just because Zealot is in the way though. If you wait, then Treck becomes less likely to survive. He is about to get attacked by several enemies including a Wyvern Rider after all.

Edited by Whisky
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If you aren’t using Rutger, Dieck gets the job done just fine, and does it better than anyone else can for a long time.

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I don’t really understand the comparison with the Wyvern Riders but the rest is fair.

The point is that it's advantageous to use both Wyvern Riders. It really doesn't matter if Zeiss is the worst of the bunch because he's still more useful than most of the other units when he joins. It's a little different for Fir because she needs the time to get levels to promote (and the utility that wyverns have is better than combat utility), but it's not as if there is no merit to having a second slightly worse Rutger.

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Early promoted Dieck really is good though. He doubles and ORKOs most enemies for a while. He is very accurate and deals a lot of damage against anything he doesn’t kill. He is quite durable. He can use both Swords and Axes (which are useful), including Hand Axes for 1-2 range (again, which is useful). He is the only unit other than Rutger that can use the Durandal for a while. He’s pretty much the next best thing after Rutger.

Dieck is honestly not even close to being as good as Rutger. If we compare them directly for our first promotion choice Dieck has problems with some of the tougher bosses, and his speed is low enough that he won't double faster enemies. He's also relying on his speed growth a lot more. If we're comparing a trained Fir to Deick then she compares rather well to him. She doubles just about everything, and she will one round more enemies that both normally miss because of her crit. She isn't quite as bulky, and she can't fight some lance users as effectively, but she holds up better for the whole game because of her speed.

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I don’t know. In general I’m not a fan of Crits and don’t know if the game wouldn’t be better if they were just removed completely and maybe replaced with something else.

Scrolls and other items that remove the enemy's ability to crit are fairly cool in my opinion. I don't exactly dislike the crit system, but I just don't see the fun in having to deal with low% crits. It's not as if I am unable to deal with them most of the time; it's just tedious as I mentioned previously.

Edited by samthedigital
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On 4/22/2020 at 11:12 AM, Whisky said:

Plot

Maybe slightly off topic. No one has said anything about the game's plot in this thread, but I have seen people say that the plot is bad and boring before. I don't have much to say about this one except that I don't understand it. The plot isn't perfect nor is it a masterpiece but it's pretty good, and is a lot better than the plot in some other FE games, like FE7 that everyone seems to love.

I think the world-building is definitely better than in some other FE games - with the obvious exceptions being Tellius and Jugdral. The nations and the localities all have descriptive backstories, and the characters on a broader spectrum of moral good vs evil overall. Especially Etruria which featured obviously evil traitors such as Aracard, Douglas and Perceval who unwillingly joined the traitors, and Klein, Saul, and Cecilia who stayed loyalist. Compare that to, say, Plegia or Valm vs Ylisse and Ferox in Awakening, or Mokushu vs Hoshido in Fates, where the group of people between two nations has a one-sided contrast of morality. (Nohr is a possible exception in Fates, but that has a mess of its own in the form of Garon, Iago, and Hans vs Corrin's faithfuls.) Also, kudos to Zephyr for relying on his own charisma and his nation's industrial-military (economic-military?) complex, as opposed to just some supernatural magic. 

Edited by henrymidfields
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You just made me realize that during FE4, every single nation is an enemy at some point. There's the war against Isaach in the opening narration (even though you never really fight them yourself), the two Verdane chapters, and then the two Agustria ones, and then Silesian factions, Grannvale itself, and in Gen 2, there's the Yied army, Manster District, Thracia, and Miletos. There's enemies who come from everywhere.

FE6 sorta has the same thing, where you travel through the entire continent. It kinda sucks that not all of it was used in FE7, tbh. Would've liked a battle on the Western Isles other than the Armads chapter.

Edited by Koops
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On 4/22/2020 at 8:39 AM, eclipse said:

Even if he won't kill, he'll take a gigantic chunk of health out of damn near everything he aims at.  Bows have passable base accuracy, so he'll hit more often than not.  Plus, he can bait archers and laugh, thanks to his gigantic HP pool.  If he can get up to better bows, he turns into a very scary chip machine.

Learning how to utilize the cast effectively is one of FE6's strong points.  Not all of it is obvious, as this topic shows!

Utilize? How can you utilize every unit here when literally 90% of them start of at low level? Sure, Bartre's alright but his skill needs to be fixed otherwise he won't hit well. 

Like really, there's no reason for nearly all these units that the game throws at you to even show up since you're better off using most of your earlier units. I'll give you the benefit that there are SOME that can be utilized but not all especially Sophia who is a waste to train when you can just wait for a better druid.

Atleast FE5 had a lot of units that were manageble to use given the less of the cast that it had. Fe6 takes it to another level.

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