Renall

They're not really that great on GBA, especially with the limited range on some of them and the paucity of staves to actually get. They're useful but not game-breaking in FE4 (other than a glitch, and we can't count glitches as fair game). They're average at best in FE9 and almost (but not entirely) pointless in FE10. So that's, y'know, more than half the series.

Hell, they deserve to be broken in at least one game, given that they're bad to mostly just above-average in most of the others.

Noish X Fury is actually alright. Give some good physical stats to Fee, and while Sety doesn't have a lot of magic, the multi hitting skills and Berserk tend to make up for it. He doesn't need more than Lightning. My only concern with that one is the lack of Holy Blood. Certainly, the skills are nice (Pursuit/Duel/Critical? With the Hero Lance? Sure thing, Chief). Sety of course doesn't need it (again, Hawk is awesome and he's merely a replacement), but I would worry about Fee's growths given how bad her mother's are and her low starting level.

You are a little bitch and Cyas will prove it to you. You can't do shit to that smug bastard. I'm not sure if approaching him helps hasten his retreat, but it couldn't hurt to try (well, it could if your unit gets killed). I believe you can jack the staves Coen has in 22, but Cyas you just have to ride out with Restores. I presume this holds every time he appears. EDIT: Just to clarify, that's the generic "you" which includes everyone playing Thracia, myself included. We're all pretty much Cyas's bitch. :(

If Lex didn't have Elite, he'd be an okay unit. If he didn't have the Hero Axe, he'd be a bad one. If he had neither... well. As it is, he does, so he's really quite easy to use, and there's not really any particularly great reason not to. If you're playing ranked, he's your best friend in the first gen. Trouble reaching 30? Not this guy.

Basically you're pairing Fury for (1) Fee and (2) whatever you want out of Sety. What you want out of Sety is not growth rates. You want a gigantic asskicker (Levin) or a versatile attacker with staff utility (Claude). Just about any other pairing is inferior and incidental to benefiting Fee (though I can't think of too many pairings for her better than Levin or Claude anyway). Not that Sety is ever truly bad, even with the worst possible father. Though he can be worse than Hawk.

That's because it basically is just small maps strung together in one chapter. The big maps are pointless because most of them don't even get used for anything during most of the chapter. Your observation is essentially the truth of the matter. I find the larger maps tedious. That's not to say I think tiny-ass maps are better, but the maps in FE4 are just too damn large.

Boycotting this one for lack of Boss Abuse. Come on, how can you forget that! RNG and Battle Save abuse are the worst though, just because they're boring. And RNG abuse doesn't even really work very well if you aren't on an emulator.

He doesn't really need to go anywhere fast, I usually have him plug the west side and kill things with swords. Not for WTA, just for weapon level.

I'd say give Wrath to Leaf, as per normal, but given how well Marty's workin' out for you... welllll, you might consider him, eh? Not like he's getting to attack more than once very often anyway, might as well make sure the one attack is all he needs. 14 is a real dick. Green units attacking, ballista batteries right up against you, endless swarms of Hammer enemies... Dalshien's useless, another point for Marty and Dagda and even dismounted Brighton if he develops tanky. Never tried your hyper-aggressive strategy, but I think it's probably worth it. Ripping off the boss with Tina is a win/win, though that's a lot of Thief Staff uses. I suppose two masters and a Tornado is worth it. The mages only appear on the east side. Might as well plug up the east and kill it off slowly so the mages have nowhere to crowd in, and break out through the south and west. Did you get Resire? I find that to be one of the harder parts of the map, forget about the Dragon Lance.

Yeah, the issue is overspeed, not being too slow. I'll poke around at it, I haven't used ePSXe seriously since I replayed all my Final Fantasy games a few years back. EDIT: Gameplay question, how do you tell the game not to deploy people? YayMarsha's playthrough shows that there's some button you press to put down a red line which I assume means 'do not deploy anyone under this,' but I have no idea which button that is.

Any recommendations? Or do you mean "the right plugins for your system," as I sure as heck don't know what those are. The game LOOKS fine, it's just being a bitch about playing at the right speed.

Also, what emulator do you guys use to play this thing (I'm assuming no one is using an actual PSX, although I guess somebody could use a PS2 or something)? The one I'm using has really inconsistent framerate issues where the game is running way too fast, but I'd like something with savestates and plugin support. It's been ages since I actually bothered to play a PSX game. Ugh, I tried another emulator that works better framerate-wise but periodically freezes up and won't accept inputs for several seconds at a time. I'd forgotten just how much of a pain emulation was after the 16-bit era.

I don't suppose there's a way to manipulate the RNG in any way in this? I tried doing a bunch of different things before Runan leveled up, even attacking with other characters, and he got the exact same levels no matter what I did. Are level-up bonuses determined at some particular time? Start of turns, start of the map, whatever?

So how does promotion work again? Units can go 20 levels without promoting, then they get 20 more after they promote, but levels aren't reset? So if I early-promote, the character's level is capped lower than if I'd waited and a Super Proof is needed to raise it? Also: Narron has a skill that says (lv10 Gold Knight). Will he get this upon promotion if his level is higher than 10, or does he HAVE to promote at 10 to get it?

Nuclear war is a valid strategic decision.

What's the deal with Ralph anyway? We keep talking about how he needs to go up but nobody seems to bother actually checking him against anybody. Poor Ralph, too generic.

The bandits in 7 are just sad. Until you actually try moving into their range, they do nothing. I'm a capture freak and even I don't see their shit as worth anything to capture, so I tend to just ignore them outright. I guess they're free exp, but in the time it takes to fight them you could've made it all the way down south and wasted a couple turns in the arena instead.

I don't, but I'm not sure where. Robert over Kein/Alva, Selfina over Robert?

Actually, no (actually, yes, but we'll get to that). The curvature and solidity of plate armor causes thrusts to be deflected and not get through the armor. With ring/chain armor, large weapons that thrust get absorbed by the interlocking rings and spread out the impact. The advantage of a blunt weapon is that it brings all the force down on one area and doesn't get deflected, and even if it fails to get through the armor, it damages the person inside with the force of the strike, can break bones, can crumple the armor, etc. However, piercing attacks do work better in one of two situations: 1) You're hitting an area that's difficult to cover properly (joints; light infantry dismounting a knight would pounce on them and stab them with knives in the armpits and such). 2) The piercing force is strong enough and moving fast enough that the armor in question can't withstand it (arrows in certain instances, a lance or thrust sword on a mounted fighter, or of course a crossbow or gun that is just too powerful to be stopped).

Even so, since HP = Fatigue for all characters, a Life booster is never truly wasted unless the character already has 40+ HP or something.

I'm still baffled why Edward is so popular. He's... so generic. His design doesn't really seem to stand out at all. Are people attracted to his averageness? I just don't get it.

Fatigue. It is one of her big weaknesses. Lifis gets attacked all the fucking time in Manster. He can survive it, but the extra HP would be good insurance. Still wouldn't hurt to have a dancer that's slightly less than instantly combustible. Selective capturing of high-value stuff should see you through on that front. Extra money is always handy, but I'd be wary of selling a stat booster. Especially the equivalent of a Seraph Robe.

Plenty of people would want that Life Ring. Safy, Olwen, Lifis or Lara. Bows, on the other hand... a Short Lance goes for like 200g. Short Bow is 400g. And an Iron Bow goes for 1100g, which is insane. The Silver Bow only nets you 2000g, so it seems pointless to sell ti when you could pawn Irons/Longs/Shorts for considerably more money. This is I guess a point to Selfina, as unlike the other archers she doesn't have to use up low-rank bows to get her skill up and that means you can just sell them all. That's really more of an intangible though and starts going into Heather/Shanam/Merlinus levels of questionable economic utility. But it is kind of nice.

Selfina for B-Route Goddess? Well, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Moving her out of Bottom at least seems possible though.