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A question of what to expect as a first timer playing Genealogy of the Holy War


Agery
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Hello, I've recently been getting into Fire Emblem and after I'm done with Sacred Stone I plan to play FE4, but I'm not too sure what to expect in terms of general difficulty going from some of the more modern FE games (I've mostly beaten the 3DS games and Three Houses) to one of the older games. I'll also be trying it out on official hardware (no translation patch) so how difficult is the story to understand as someone who is not very proficient at reading Japanese? I have a basic understanding of the language and access to some older dictionaries for certain words or phrases. Also, how long is FE4 in terms of hours typically spent playing? Any advice or tips are greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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The others Geneology Veterans might be able to help you out better, but I'll give it a try:

1°-Difficulty is...medium? Well, what I mean is: If you know what you're doing, the game isn't that hard. With that said, the game doesn't forgive you as often, so you should turn the ''Auto-Save'' option on a 2° Slot to save the burden of having to do the whole map again because of 1 mistake. (And believe me, you're not going to want this)

2°-I don't speak Japanese so I can't say anything about the story.

3°-It's quite long. It has the least amount of Chapters in FE History, but in compensation the maps are huge. 

Now, about tips and such, it depends on how blindly you want to get into the game. But I'll tell you this much: Skills matter (for example, only units with Pursuit can double) and AS can take negative numbers into account (so stuff like -2 AS Finn can double -6 AS Brigand) and you only need 1 AS more than the enemy to double.

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Hello!

1. The difficulty is hard to very hard IMO especially the army you face in chapter 9, and the last army you have to face in chapter 10, I had pretty much OP units and still had a hard time beating those armies.

2. I think you could understand the story well enough without understanding the text but there are characters and secrets you might miss.

3.  The length I think is about 50 hours to 100+, if you don't have to restart I think it will be 50 to 100 (which probably won't happen).

4. As for tips, here are mine:

* Make sure you're working on the pairings you want before you get far into the game for the 1st and 2nd gens, because unplanned pairing can occur and can't be undone, I think the love system is one of the most infamous mechanics of FE4 so be careful.

* Have a guide to get the secrets in the game, the secrets are pretty useful like Finn's Brave Lance, Ayra's Brave Sword, and Lachesis's Knight Ring, and some are very hard, if not impossible, to find especially in a first playthrough, unless you want to waste 100-300+ hours moving all your chracters to unsually spots on the games humongous maps, I would highly recommend a guide but it isn't necessary.

* 50 kills+ allows critical for a weapon, so you may want to use certain weapons more then others.

I hope this helps.

Edited by Fates-Blade
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3 hours ago, Fates-Blade said:

Hello!

1. The difficulty is hard to very hard IMO especially the army you face in chapter 9, and the last army you have to face in chapter 10, I had pretty much OP units and still had a hard time beating those armies.

2. I think you could understand the story well enough without understanding the text but there are characters and secrets you might miss.

3.  The length I think is about 50 hours to 100+, if you don't have to restart I think it will be 50 to 100 (which probably won't happen).

4. As for tips, here are mine:

* Make sure you're working on the pairings you want before you get far into the game for the 1st and 2nd gens, because unplanned pairing can occur and can't be undone, I think the love system is one of the most infamous mechanics of FE4 so be careful.

* Have a guide to get the secrets in the game, the secrets are pretty useful like Finn's Brave Lance, Ayra's Brave Sword, and Lachesis's Knight Ring, and some are very hard, if not impossible, to find especially in a first playthrough, unless you want to waste 100-300+ hours moving all your chracters to unsually spots on the games humongous maps, I would highly recommend a guide but it isn't necessary.

* 50 kills+ allows critical for a weapon, so you may want to use certain weapons more then others.

I hope this helps.

I think this is a really good list, so I'm just going to add a few things to it:

* Unlike literally every other FE game, there is a skill called pursuit which allows units to double attack if they have more AS. Basically, all FE games other than FE4, units behave as tho they have pursuit, but units in FE4 without it will not double attack.

* Also unlike every other FE game, each unit has their own money. There is no common money that all units can pull from to repair weapons or buy new weapons. Money can only be moved from married partners to each other, or from a thief to anyone. Which brings me to...

* Weapons can be repaired with money. This is pretty similar to Three Houses, but takes slightly more money management because of the above. 

* There is no item trading. The only way you can move an item from one character to another is by selling it to the pawn shop and then buying the item back from the pawn shop on the unit you want the item on for twice what you sold it for. So be careful what units you use to kill enemies who drop weapons and such.

I'm sure there's more, but those are the only key points I thought were left out.

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Thank you all for your input. Money and item management looks like it's going to be a huge pain, as well as double-attacking only being a skill for certain units. Well. here's hoping I don't get too frustrated with the older mechanics. Another thing I meant to ask about is if Fog of War was introduced in FE4 or the next game. I always get mixed up with which games have this feature. 

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FoW is not in Genealogy. It is in Thracia and it's at it's strongest in that game because it's pitch black.

Would you want any hints on the more out there recruitments or not?

Edited by Dayni
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  • 3 weeks later...

- In the Units window (Press A on empty space, first(?) option), you can see when a unit can talk to another. This is super important for things like recruitment, getting powerful equipment, and building love points.

Honestly, I would not play through FE4 the first time without a translation, there are a ton of things that are hinted at in dialogue (especially in the PN patch), and the story is one of the best in the series IMO.

For difficulty, if you are playing blind, it can be pretty unforgiving, but otherwise it's really not too bad if you're willing to forgo things like the Knight/Bargain rings in Chapter 2 and you don't rush.

- Waiting on a church will fully heal a unit at a (negligible) cost of 5 gold/HP. This is generally more useful early on than it is later.

- Mend staff heals exactly 2x as much as the Heal staff and requires the same staff rank. The last use of a staff heals double.

- There is an Arena that is accessible from every castle on every map except Prologue and Chapter 6. You get money if you win, and if you lose your unit will be left with 1 HP, but won't die.

- Trading around the Paragon Ring at the start of a chapter is a very good idea. Clearing the arena will net a unit 17.5k gold, and buying+selling the Paragon Ring just for the arena means that it only costs them -2.5k to double their experience. The only downside is that they actually lose a little bit of money after the arena, so just do it on units with tons of gold. Make sure you clear the arena LAST with whoever you want to have Paragon for the actual chapter.

- Units with the Bargain skill or the Bargain Ring can buy items for the same price that they sell them. That means they can borrow any items in the pawn shop free of cost, assuming they have enough to buy it at half price. They can also stock up on items that nobody else needs in order to go above the 50k gold limit.

- Only using a unit's best weapon is generally the way to go, in order to hit 50 kills asap. Don't bother trying with Iron or Steel weapons though, it's not worth it.

- Thieves can give all of their gold (all or nothing) to any other unit. Married couples can do the same between each other.

- As has been mentioned, it is never too early to start planning your pairings. If someone gets married and you don't want them to, you can reload an earlier save and kill off one of the characters. You do have the ability to revive fallen units starting midway through Chapter 3.

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Is the ability to revive fallen characters something that you can do an infinite amount of times? Or is it more limited like in Echoes? 

I also might have either missed the Paragon ring or am not far enough to have it yet (I believe I'm in chapter three now). Is it located in one of the earlier chapters, or is it later?

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1 minute ago, Agery said:

Is the ability to revive fallen characters something that you can do an infinite amount of times? Or is it more limited like in Echoes? 

It is limited but in a far more malleable way, as after each use it requires whoever is wielding it to spend 30,000 of their personal gold repairing the staff to use it again.

 

5 minutes ago, Agery said:

I also might have either missed the Paragon ring or am not far enough to have it yet (I believe I'm in chapter three now). Is it located in one of the earlier chapters, or is it later?

You should have gotten it in "chapter 2" from a named paladin boss that attacks when trying to capture the second red castle. That beings said this game's first chapter is called the prologue, so it is the third chapter overall...

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