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

[whase]

19 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

No. While there are some cliches and such that commonly show up among the stories of the FE games (like the fact that the prologue often features the main character facing down bandits, for example), this game is about the only one that actually cribs a story from a prior game.

I may not remember the full story of Marth's games, but I do remember the basic story, in which Marth's kingdom gets taken over, and then he goes around the world to find allies to take it back, right? I'm currently playing FE6 again, and Eliwood is still sitting safely in his home in chapter 7. I don't see it, but maybe I'm missing something here.

19 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I don't see why you said "for ltc and ranked runs", because even in casual runs they take a shitload of effort to get anywhere and the payoff isn't even remotely close to worth it. I mean, I like taking weak units and building them up to be badasses, but... when you have a unit that requires a shitload of patience to raise and isn't even that great when trained... I have to question why that unit even exists. Anyway, while Fire Emblem in general is somewhat unique in having to factor in the possibility that characters have died, it doesn't change the fact that if a character is so shitty they struggle to contribute even when they join, never mind having been benched for a while because I had another unit that could do their job and now you need them, I'd rather just continue to invest in the decent units left instead of trying to babysit a unit that won't pull their weight for most of the game, if ever, and thus would end up being a liability instead of an asset just for the sake of filling a deployment slot.

It's okay that these units don't fall in the type of units you like to use, simply don't use them and accept these may not be for you, but others can still enjoy them, like me.

[ping]

37 minutes ago, whase said:

I may not remember the full story of Marth's games, but I do remember the basic story, in which Marth's kingdom gets taken over, and then he goes around the world to find allies to take it back, right? I'm currently playing FE6 again, and Eliwood is still sitting safely in his home in chapter 7. I don't see it, but maybe I'm missing something here.

Binding Blade does reference FE1/3 quite a bit, although it also uses that to subvert some expectations of a veteran FE player. It's not just a full transplant of Marthipan's journey, that for sure.

• The initial roster is extremely similar, for example - when Deke's group joins, you basically have the same class mix as you have at the start of FE1 ch.2, minus one Fighter.
• Lilina is Mage!Shiida, down to recruiting random enemies to your side. (although I always read Shiida as much more shrewd than Lilina)
• Perceval even looks like Camus and is set up to be one, although this is one of the subversions. Similarly, you have the red-haired wyvern lady whose brother remains on the enemy's side for a couple more chapters, although they're completely different from Minerva and Michaelis in their roles and attitudes.
• Guinevere and Nyna play very similar roles in the story, including their relationship to the respective lord (trustful, but not romantic). They both even give the Fire Emblem to Marth/Roy - and Guinevere doing so mirrors Nyna in FE3 in that it means that they want Roy/Marth to fight against their brother/husband.
• Elphin basically narrates the start of FE3 to Roy (Hardin/Etruria tasks Marth/Roy with pacifying Grust/the Western Isles, then invades Altea/Lycia while the majority of their army is absent), although that doesn't actually happen, either.
• I always found Idoun to be quite clever - the game talks about the "Demon Dragon", so you'd expect Medeus 2.0 to show up, but she turns out to be just a girl that got mind-wiped into obedience.

I experienced those references backwards, because I played BB before SD and NMotE, but spotting those parallels got some smiles out of me. I kinda like when a game in a series takes the structure of the story of an older entry and puts a new spin on it. Radiant Dawn's first part is doing a similar thing (Miccy and Pelleas write a similar story as Ike and Elincia, except it's set up by Izuka who recognizes the power of the narrative and many things go wrong in many ways) and that's always been one of my favourite things about Tellius.

Edited May 6, 2020 by ping