Florete

Diddy/Dixie would have been similar, but not quite like Ice Climbers. Sakurai said you'd be able to switch between them mid-battle, which would be pointless if they just shared the same exact moveset like Ice Climbers, and there's also no reason they wouldn't make it in if that were the case. I theorize that Diddy and Dixie were each conceptualized with a mostly unique moveset, but their special attacks were shared and utilized both Kongs in some way. And I really wish I could travel to the timeline where this actually happened. If "pra_mai" was ever Plusle and Minun - which is dubious to begin with - I don't think they would have been a tag team duo. I think they'd be a Pichu "replacement" like how Toon Link replaced Young Link and they would simply be the first instance of alternate character skins, which we would later see with Olimar/Alph.

"Efficiency" was originally designed as a concept for judging units that would more accurately reflect how average people actually play the game, compared to the in-game rankings that were often used way back when. Unfortunately, efficiency eventually warped into the complete opposite of that, relying on only specific units used, resources allocated in specific ways, and having an ever reliance on saving One More Turn. Nowadays I see the term practically weaponized. And I can't exactly claim any moral high ground here because I was part of that movement. I still think the original goal was a good one, but I wouldn't mind letting the word "efficiency" as it has been used in FE fandom die completely so we can move on to something better.

...What?

Knives are there to give Sages a physical option and make them hybrid fighters. The problem then is, it's hard to make such a concept valuable in the first place. For this to work you need to look at a lot more than the Sages themself, you need to keep the potential viability of hybrid units in mind for most of the entire game's design. Some ideas I have: Knives that use the user's mag and the enemy def. Knives that use the Str stat as normal but the lower of the enemy's def or res. (Obviously you also need a good enough Str stat) In a theoretical remake with the appropriate difficulty, debuffs such as those seen in Fates and Engage. 1-2 range. (Practically mandatory) A reversed Fates weapon triangle, so Tomes > Knives > Bows > Tomes. This would mean taking knives on a Sage gets them an advantageous option against the weapon type they're otherwise disadvantaged against. Basic magic knives are fine for other classes, but not a solution for Sages. They already have tomes.

The positive side to gay pairs not being allowed in older games is that we sometimes get duo units like this. But why does Dagr look, like, small? She looks like a muscular kid.

Yeah, I strongly disagree that there aren't enough potential users for it to be a weapon type. Sure, there might not be many users now, but there are certainly enough to get started, and you can fill out slots with seasonals, legendaries, and new Heroes OCs, not too dissimilar to what's happened with beast units. You wouldn't even need four colors of gauntlets, I think most people, myself included, imagine gauntlets as colorless melee to round out the sword/lance/axe trio, as there currently isn't a generic colorless melee weapon (dragons do magic damage, beasts have transformation mechanics). If anything I think that's more likely what has kept gauntlets from being a thing: they don't want to introduce a new weapon type with only one color, and they don't want any potential user of it to be stuck in that color. If you consider sword/lance/axe to all be under the same weapon umbrella more-or-less, staff is the only weapon type that is stuck to one color, and staff units were designed to be support-based. There is also no potential gauntlet user that needs to be a brawler, unlike the beast units.

I tend not to care about the written ages of fictional, animated characters. How they're portrayed is what matters to me. Especially in Japanese media, because Japan loves to make characters technically underage but then design them in ways no minor would look or act, and clearly expect them to be treated as such. You can call it gross if you want and I won't disagree with you, but when this happens it's just to make things more marketable to younger audiences, and I find it's just too much hassle to worry about. I didn't even know Petra was the same age as Lysithea until reading this. I see Petra and Flayn as leaning on the adult side, while Lysithea and Cyril lean on the child side (pre timeskip, anyway). But even then they're considered old enough in-universe to be sent to die in battle, so *shrug*.

I think the female side will be two Engage winners for sure (unless we get another Gullveig, I guess). The male side is also possible, but not quite as certain. For the female side, I think it's a race between Ivy, Alear, and Yunaka. I think Ivy has the best shot, and if Yunaka isn't in the game by then she'll probably get that boost to win as well. I've seen a lot of people on other sites calling Yunaka a lock, but it feels like a case where everyone is saying it just because they heard others saying it, and not because the evidence leads to it...She's definitely popular and I do think she'll rank high, but I won't be surprised if she gets Marth'd. On the male side, as much as I'd rather not see it, Alcryst might be the one to beat. He's not just popular, his fans seem to really love him, as opposed to characters like Diamant or Alfred who are liked but not as often a person's favorite. I could also see Sigurd rising up this year. I don't see Felix or Byleth beating out Engage characters, though.

The idea of a hub world like the Somniel I don't think is a problem. I think it can even be a good thing as a wind down time after a long, stressful battle. The problem with the Somniel and the Monastery is all the stuff you can only do once per visit, meaning you have to run around and do a bunch of stuff every time you return if you want to feel like you're playing "properly." Take the FOMO out of it and it's fine.

Alear dragon unit -> no dragon form. Arts animation -> not a gauntlet/arts unit. Lmao. Now we just need legendary FKris.

You're allowed your opinion, of course. I'm just explaining why people "treat Whitney of all things as the Pokemon's answer to Kaptain K Rool or a Dark Souls Boss." Because relative to Pokemon's average difficulty, she kinda is. And what kid likes to do homework, anyway? Fuck homework. I haven't been in school for almost a decade and I'm still holding a grudge against that shit.

It also explained why those might not have been enough for many players. Also agreed with gnip's post above.

This post reads like you didn't watch the video you posted. "Use a female Pokemon." What if you don't have one? Starters are male 87.5% of the time. No player before this point who doesn't know what's coming is thinking about the gender of their Pokemon for battle purposes, so it's not at all unlikely for them to not have any trained female Pokemon, or to only have a female Pidgeotto or something that will get destroyed by Rollout. Also, unlike other status conditions, Attract has no way to cure it aside from KOing the opponent or switching out, so it's very possible for a player to be locked in with this. "There's a female Machop that gains bonus EXP in the same city!" That only matters if people find and talk to that specific NPC. And they need to go catch a Drowzee, which has only just become available in tall grass that is 100% skippable. As far as I can tell there isn't even a trainer with a Drowzee on their team at this point in the game, so the player could be left entirely unaware of where they can find one. And that Drowzee (and therefore the Machop) is only level 12, so it's still entirely possible to be RNGd out by Stomp. And God forbid you're playing Crystal where the trade for Machop requires catching an Abra with its 10% appearance rate before it teleports away. "Even better, catch a Female Graveler that resists both her Rollout and Stomp, and has 115 Defense (one of the highest you can get in the early game) - which is what I did." Catch a Graveler...where, exactly? As far as I can tell Graveler isn't available to be caught at this point in any of the games, only evolved from Geodude...at level 25, which you very likely have not reached yet. "You're an idiot for not using a Geodude/Graveler anyway because Rock is supereffective against all of Bugsy's Pokemon and Silver's Zubat line" Bugsy isn't all that tough without Geodude to begin with, especially if the player chose Cyndaquil and/or brought a Pidgey, and Zubats are cannon fodder, so it's not at all strange for a player to skip out on it. Besides, even a Geodude will eventually take a lot of damage from a high-power Rollout if RNG isn't in your favor. Pokemon are casual games that tend to be lenient about letting players choose which creatures to send out in battle. It's pretty rude to call people idiots for not picking a specific one. "Speaking of the Chikorita line, although it comes with the caveat of being Female" ...What? First-time players will not know Rollout has 90% accuracy, and this is praying to RNG regardless. Miltank is probably faster than anyone on your own team so you have to pray you get lucky enough before she starts to kill you without you being able to do anything. Mareep's availability: Gold/Silver: 20% appearance rate, 10% at night, at level 6 all the way back past Ilex Forest, Azalea Town, and Union Cave. Crystal: Nowhere lol. HG/SS: Same as G/S but also available from an egg received in Violet City. Eggs hatch at level 1. Any other random HM friend you might have taught Flash to has probably not been leveled and therefore dies immediately. And if you didn't get a Gastly, just walk all the way back to Sprout Tower to get one (and wait until night as well)? And even if you did get one but didn't train it, you now must grind it (probably on wild Pokemon since you fought all/most of the trainers) from level 3 at least until level 16 where it can use Curse, the first move it can learn to deal damage to Miltank, which will probably get it killed because Curse halves its HP and Miltank already hit you with Rollout. Hypnosis also has 60% accuracy, so pray to RNG again. Oh, and sure hope your Gastly is female. See above for Mareep. Paralysis is still just more RNG; it'll help you go first (maybe not even that if you're relying on Geodude, though), but paralysis only stops actions 25% of the time. Miltank is more likely to hit through paralysis than Hypnosis is to hit, even factoring in Rollout's 90%. A lot of what you're saying relies on the player knowing the fight is coming and how to prepare for it, or just happening to be using the specific Pokemon - of the specific gender - that counter her. There's a lot that can go wrong in the fight. It sounds like you just got lucky.

Faerghast actually did a video that covered the lawsuit against Emblem/Tearring Saga in depth: The gist of it is that there were actually two lawsuits: in the first Nintendo sued over similarities in the contents of the game, and lost. In the second they sued over the fact that it was essentially being pushed as "Fire Emblem on Playstation," and won. Watch the video for full context, but imo, both cases went as they should have. What we can learn from this is that it's perfectly safe to create a game that is essentially a clone of FE as long as it's not pretending to actually be FE. Also keep in mind, SRPG is a pretty niche genre, to the point where there are very few series that come up when we think of it, but that doesn't make it any more protected. There are a million and one 2D platformers, but none of them are getting sued by Nintendo for being Mario clones...unless they try to tell people they actually are Mario.

I liked all of Engage's lategame maps. The main problem I had was how illogical the avalanche map was. Instead of using the rocks to block, you just...let your units get smacked by an avalanche and pushed into rocks. Yeah, I'm sure that's not painful at all. What I've come to realize about Engage's story, though, is that it's not exactly bad, per se, it's just so soulless. It feels like someone thinks that as long as you have pretty characters, well-animated cutscenes, and some basic tragedy bait, you only need the most basic, generic plot. I feel like they didn't care one bit beyond checking those boxes. Even Fates, for as much as its story gets clowned on (deservedly), doesn't feel this way to me. I believe someone, at some point in the process, honestly cared about the story being told in Fates, it just got too screwed up in other ways.

Oh, I voted in this, but never posted. Despite my general dislike of Three Houses as a whole, Byleth remains my favorite series avatar. She had just the right amount of presence for me; being important to the story, but not necessarily the central figure. I also felt like I got more of a personality out of her than most of the others despite the lack of lines. A lot of it was probably me transposing my own ideas onto her, but what works, works. Sometimes less is more. The big problem I have with Kris, Robin, Corrin, Shez, and Alear is that they feel like they're trying to both be player-inserts and standalone characters at the same time, and doing neither very well as a result. Whereas Byleth is like 80% player-insert, so the 20% standalone ends up supporting the 80% rather than feeling like it's trying to fight for dominance. Mark I think was a product of their time. When I was 12 and I first played the game I really liked being included in that way, but it's all nostalgia and being referred to so directly as an off-screen "you" just doesn't work for me anymore. I don't even know what to say about Kiran. Kiran feels like less of a character even than Mark, yet they're shoved into the story so often and so awkwardly.

Maybe it was this? I mentioned on my own Bioshock 2 being the best one, and you responded saying you'd been meaning to play it. So not misremembered identity, just misremembered...context. What's funnier to me is that this is not even the first time this year someone has tried something I happened to mention off-hand and misremembered it as me recommending it to them.

Um...what? I mean, Bioshock 2 is my favorite of the three, but I don't remember this being a thing.

What leap? Someone said ironman runs should be considered, and I responded with a less exaggerated version of "no one actually plays like that." And not only do people not play like that, the games haven't properly been pushing players to play like that since the SNES (and the relevant remakes). The way people play any game for their first time is their "natural" way to play it, and even people who like to play ironman typically don't do so the first time they play through a new FE. Ironman runs are more akin to personal challenges, and while it's great if a game can reasonably accommodate challenge runs, they shouldn't bend over backwards for them. So I ask, why not remove ironman runs from your perception? For the record, I have played and enjoyed ironman runs of FE games myself. But I don't think it should be part of the design focus of the games.

Probably less than 1% of players do ironman on their first play of a new FE game, so I think excluding that is pretty fair. Even when I first played FE7 twenty years ago, once I understood how the permadeath system worked I was resetting for unit deaths. It's not at all like that because practically no one does that. Unless it was someone whose death causes a game over. Then you do have to reset. And probably an even smaller percentage of players than mentioned above do hardcore ironman runs where game over is just game over, which means most ironman runs have a funny little loophole where they can technically "revive" units.

I've made it known in the past how I don't think permadeath fits in FE anymore, and some posts in this topic have brought up some more good points that I haven't previously. Various games have tried to work with permadeath in one way or another (Shadow Dragon is a notable one), but from the very beginning it was never a great fit, and over time it's become less and less fitting. However, I do wish there was some middle ground between permadeath and casual mode that still incentivized not letting units fall in battle. That, to me, is the true value of permadeath, but it's something you can achieve without permadeath.

I think the most logical time to introduce it would have been Radiant Dawn, for a few reasons: RD was on the Wii, a more casual player-focused console. RD was pretty difficult compared to past entries, so much so they went out of their way to add a mid-map save feature (only in international versions iirc, but still) which was kind of a precursor to Casual mode. Because of the difficulty, players would be less likely to feel like casual mode was making the game too easy. RD came right about when games were really becoming more mainstream and readily available, and everyone was starting to get phones in their hands (among other things). This means there were more games available to play in general and more things to do in the average person's downtime, leaving them less likely to dedicate a lot of time to any one specific thing, like a long RPG that might force you to reset a couple hours of progress if you make one mistake. Though given Nintendo's penchant for being behind the times, it was probably too early for this to come up even if they'd been considering casual mode at the time. You could say (as some posters have) that the mode could have been there from the beginning or at any point since, and that's fine, but as far as having factors that would make casual mode appealing to as many potential buyers as possible, as early as possible, I think this is it.

Ah, another "Blood Pact bad" topic. Thrilling. My thoughts are that it's fine. Micaiah very clearly - and unsurprisingly - trusts Pelleas more than Izuka. She's not even technically wrong to trust Pelleas here, as she continues his fight after he dies.

I mean, just because Cordelia and Gaius got summer alts doesn't mean Tharja had to as well. Tharja is the only one with a desert alt (and spring alt if you count her backpacking), and Gaius only has the summer alt. I don't think them being the "Fates reincarnation trio" really means anything for FEH. For the record in case it's not clear, I'm in no way upset by Tharja getting this alt, it's just funny to me.

> Ivy is the only Engage character. > Another Tharja alt. > Fjorm but no Hrid. Lmao.