The Geek

Surprise Halloween banner at the end of October. Seems kind of late to do one but okay. Anyway, we get good stuff out of it, including some representation of the Hoshido side of Fates finally. Sakura and Henry are drawn by the same artists who drew their normal art in Heroes. Jakob is now drawn by the same artist as Male Robin and Seth. Nowi is drawn by a new artist who it seems mostly does background art for larger projects.

I was able to buy all the copies of Halloween Princess and Maid in Halloween in the shop just by doing all the single time battles for pumpkins and apples. Just need to get one to drop/get one in the gacha and I'll be able to LB it. Also @Sire why are you saying no to a free NP5 4 star Servant? You've at least been getting her ascension materials, right? After I finish all the one time missions I'll probably go back to beating up Vlad in hopes he drops another Halloween Princess.

Yeah, I think the Awakening/Fates style of cutscenes were much better than the cutscenes in SoV. I was excited when I heard they contracted a well-known animation studio to do the cutscenes, but in the end it turned out they were of the same quality as Berserk 2016. Maybe if they got a good animation studio and gave them a worthwhile budget, then we could have anime-style cutscenes, but IMO the Awakening/Fates ones are great.

Yeah I don't think there'd be a Thanksgiving event. Maybe a general harvest festival banner? Or would that have already happened in that case?

In terms of which ones would be good to start on, this is how I view it: Blazing Sword (just called "Fire Emblem" if you get the physical GBA cartridge): Has a very thorough tutorial that explains most game mechanics (I believe weapon weight is the only thing not explained) and isn't too terribly difficult unless you play Hector Hard Mode (which you can't even do on your first time through so there you go). Not too hard to get your hands on either unless you don't have a Wii U, since it has jumped up in price since FE Heroes came out. Sacred Stones: Arguably the easiest Fire Emblem game, allows you to grind for levels, and is one of the shortest FE games to boot. Also not too hard to get your hands on. Shadow Dragon: Fits thematically as a remake of the first game, has some of the most basic mechanics of any FE game, and has very flexible difficulty with 6 difficulty levels. Awakening: All of the benefits Sacred Stones has plus the inclusion of Casual Mode which takes out the frustration of having your run ruined by bad RNG. Very easy to get your hands on even the physical copy. Fates Birthright: Same story as Awakening. Echoes Shadows of Valentia: Is fairly different from other FEs but has the same benefits as Sacred Stones as well as the inclusion of Casual Mode and Mila's Turnwheel which allows you to rewind a few turns. I leave out Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn since they are difficult to obtain legitimately.

I think it would be a good idea for you to hold back for now and just do some grinding until you can build up a bigger Servant roster (remember you can do a free 10 roll of the Friend Point Gacha once per day which can give you up to 3 star Servants and Craft Essences) And there's no need to restrict yourself to using the story support Servants unless you want to since all you get out of it is more Friend Points which are easy to come across. Also SR is a notation of rarity that parallels the star ratings. SSR=5 star, SR=4 star, R=3 star, UC=2 star, C=1 star

Hmm... right now your front team is a little unfocused. You have TamaCat who is very Buster-focused while Georgios is focused on Quick and Arts and Caster Cu (naturally, as a Caster) is Arts-focused. This means that you'll have trouble forming Chains in your attacks and Chains are incredibly useful (Arts Chain automatically adds 20% to the NP gauge of every participant, Quick Chain gives 10 Critical Stars that help you to land Critical Hits, and Buster Chain gives a raw damage increase to all attacks). For recommended changes, keeping Tamamo Cat is fine, though as a Berserker she can very easily be killed off during boss battles. Personally I'd swap out Georgios for a different Rider as his NP isn't that great. Ushiwakamaru is a strong Quick-focused Rider and one of the few low-rarity Riders with a strong single target Noble Phantasm. Medusa is the same deal except her NP is AOE. Alexander I haven't used all that much so I can't comment on him. Boudica is a decent replacement for Mash if you're determined not to use her (since her NP and Mash's are essentially the same). If you're just looking for someone to act as a tank, I believe Leonidas is generally considered to be the better option. Caster Cu is decently strong and has his dodging skill that's good for keeping him alive so I see no problem with keeping him if you aren't worried about Chaining. Could you tell me again what SR Servants you have (since I assume you'll have all or at least most Servants who are 3 star or lower. And yeah, Eurayle is a good pick for an Archer. She's especially good against male Sabers (who just so happen to start showing up at around the time that the game goes through a serious difficulty spike) For Assassin you can't go wrong with the REGEND (Sasaki Kojirou) though Hassan is also very good. Most 1 and 2 star Servants aren't really considered worth using for the most part (the obvious exceptions being Sasaki Kojirou (decently strong NP and good for gaining Critical Stars), Arash (very strong AOE nuke NP if you're willing to sacrifice him for it), Spartacus (good for farming the daily missions), Hassan (same deal as Kojirou), Andersen (good at keeping the rest of your party alive), and Leonidas (good tank).

To expand on an answer to your first question: Get a single team to a good level (I'd recommend around 40) then start grinding EXP and create single class teams (these make chapters that are single enemy types much easier since you can just pick your team that is all the class that beats them). I'd say having 2-3 Servants of each class and then pick a Support Servant of the same class is good. Remember when making your teams to ensure that there is good synchronization of each Servant's card decks.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! I now have her in EN and JP FGO!

My argument earlier wasn't "Other similar games already do this so it's okay for this one to" it was "This type of game is inherently scummy, so why are you only complaining now?" What's been done with the main FE4 banner and the new Ayra banner is the practice known as a "Bait Gacha" where they offer something that people will want to tempt them to spend their summoning resource right before releasing a new character that people really want. It's scummy, but that's how these types of games work.

I'd be all for Hidari returning. For Heroes artists, I'd really like Asatani Tomoyo (Ephraim, Eirika, Berkut, and Ayra) since their stuff is all great.

Man, you must not be familiar with gacha games at all. This is the name of the game. I don't get why people are complaining about this being scummy when you consider that this is the entire point of these kinds of games. This is where they make all of their money.

I don't really get the "power creep" argument in FEH. It's not like the game has PVP or anything. Sure you have the Arena and everything, but it's honestly not that hard to get into at least the range where you're getting 3 free orbs per week (which is pretty damn good honestly). And honestly IS would be stupid to give a character as popular as Ayra away for free. I mean, it's definitely frustrating that we have to decide whether we want Ayra or Sigurd/Deirdre/Tailtiu more and can't build up a pity rate as easily, but that's how this kind of game is. As for the things with Warriors, I'm gonna give IS and KT the benefit of the doubt and guess that all the DLC characters were in development but couldn't be entirely finished before the game released. Not to mention that the Warriors DLC also adds tons of additional gameplay content.

Yeah, everyone's acting like the characters are the only things in the DLC and basing their decisions entirely on that.

Drew Olivia from the Performing Arts Banner. Also I have a Twitter now.

Yeah there's no evidence currently that Echoes was a flop. Sure it didn't sell as well as Awakening or Fates, but it still sold well. As for Fates being a "critical failure" I have no idea what you're talking about, since all three versions of Fates got fairly high scores from professional reviews and most of the complaints about it come from a vocal minority within the fandom. Sure most people agree that Fates' story is hot garbage, but I think the majority of people still think that it's a good game.

I wouldn't mind it if they made the different types of anima more distinct from one another (different effects or being better against certain unit types, or what have you) but I'm not a fan of making them all separate weapon ranks. That didn't add anything of substance to the game, just made it a nuisance trying to train up all your different tome ranks.

Yeah, she's been in a lot of stuff. http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/Brina-Palencia/

And according to FE Wiki the Japanese VAs are

Looks like we've had leaks of three characters. Not gonna put them in the OP yet until we see them officially in the game. Character 1 Character 2 Character 3 Now adding to OP.

Vote Fae Part 1 (Animation): https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65442908 Vote Fae Part 2 (Animation): https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65442908 Azura Reacts to the Sakura Nendoroid: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65441539 Deirdre: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65440262 Lyn: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65439968 Nina and Ophelia Dressed as Linkle and Cia from Hyrule Warriors: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65438991 Eliwood and Roy: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65438941 Dancer Inigo: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65438900 Camilla: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65424508 Performing Arts Olivia: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65422972 Ninian: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65414400 Olivia: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=65411411 Valter Wisseau Python and Forsyth in the "When Mom Isn't Home" Meme Titania Bride Eirika Ninian Azura and Shigure Lewyn/Erinys Sigurd, Deirdre, and Tailtiu F!Corrin Losing the Gauntlet Linde and Cain

The only real improvement with a Pence presidency would be maybe our relationships with other countries right now. With Trump most other countries seem to be either reviling us or continually mocking us. Or both. And Pence probably wouldn't be so easily baited by Kim Jong Un. Maybe.

Story: SoV > Awakening > Birthright > Conquest > Revelation SoV has far from a perfect story (It's a remake of a NES-era RPG with the only additions being Conrad (who is rendered fairly pointless) and Berkut/Fernand/Rinea (which is a mix of good and bad parts)) but it's the excellent presentation that sells it with a beautiful artstyle and excellent voice acting in cutscenes. I will admit that Alm's storyline is fairly pointless but I'll defend Celica's story. Awakening and Birthright are both mixed bags of good and bad things with some good things marred by a lot of bad. Awakening has the Gangrel arc making up the first third of the game, which is a fairly standard Fire Emblem story but with fairly few flaws, followed up by the pointless Valm arc which pretty much exists only to pad the game out (Walhart himself gets praise from some but I personally don't get it, he's a pretty cookie-cutter "might makes right" type of villain), and wrapped up with the storm of cliche plot twists, ass pulls, and Deus ex Machina known as the Grima arc. Birthright is much the same story except it's very filler-y in the beginning, good around the middle, and then gets caught up in plot twists, ass pulls, and Deus ex Machina in the very end. Conquest's story has been picked over time and time again from before most of us here got to play it. It's a very confused story, since Nohr is very much set up as the indefensible villain in the Hoshido/Nohr conflict (despite the Fire Emblem series having done similar conflicts much better with the Zofia/Rigel conflict in Gaiden and the Leonster/Thracia conflict in the Jugdral games) yet the game is unwilling to portray Corrin as anything but a hero. It had a fairly good set up for it near the beginning (Corrin has no choice but to fight Hoshido or else they will likely be killed by Garon) but it then falls off the deep end when Valla (though unnamed) is revealed and Azura reveals her brilliant plan of unveiling Garon as evil by conquering Hoshido and having him sit on the throne of plot convenience. If the writers had kept the angle of Corrin being an unwilling villain it would have worked much better. Revelation gets my down vote for being a plot framed entirely around the idea of creating a "golden ending" for Fates as a whole but it wasn't put together very well (much like the rest of Revelation but I'll get to that later). The plot was very much written with this conclusion in mind and it feels like the authors had an idea of where the story starts and ends and then just wrote by the seat of their pants to make it from Point A to Point B. Gameplay: Conquest > Birthright > SoV > Awakening > Revelation Much like the complaints of its story, the praise of Conquest's gameplay has been repeated many times. It's challenging but not unfair, it has varied objectives (though most maps are still "rout" or "kill boss"), well designed maps (with only one really glaring exception), and relatively good character balance (by FE standards). Birthright is Awakening 2.0 in its gameplay, but with the added bonus of the innovations that Fates brought as a whole. The revamped Pair-Up system makes for more interesting gameplay, as do the new classes and the weapon system. The one big complaint I'll make towards Birthright's gameplay is that is falls apart near the end. The total number of enemies in the last few chapters is absurd, and since most characters in Birthright rely on dodging in order to survive (the only exceptions being Rinkah and Oboro against physical and Hinoka and Sakura against magic) coupled with Fates' notoriously finicky RNG can make late game very frustrating. SoV wins points mostly for the unique elements it brings as a remake of the black sheep of the FE series. Gaiden's unique magic system, the Villagers acting similar to the Onion Knight or Freelancer from Final Fantasy, as well as the additions unique to SoV such as dungeon crawling and the Arts system. But aside from that, SoV very much feels like a 25 year old game with a fresh coat of paint and some quality of life improvements which sadly keeps it from being the best. Since Birthright is Awakening 2.0 with extra bells and whistles, Awakening is concurrently a less refined Birthright without the bells and whistles. It's not bad, but unremarkable, regardless of how fun it may be to marry all of my army together. Revelation is just badly put together. The maps tried to be unique, but most of the time the extra gimmicks they add ended up being more cumbersome than anything else especially in late game. And the unit balance is just terrible, the vast majority of characters you obtain are underleveled for the point in the game they are recruited making it necessary to grind. And by the time you get to Valla in the last 3rd of the game, the number of deployment slots means that you'll pretty much just be using Corrin, Azura, the royal families of Nohr and Hoshido, and maybe one or two other characters for the rest of the game. I'd also like to make a separate category for character preference, since that's also an important part of FE games and is largely distinct from the gameplay and the story but combines elements of both. So I present my Cast category. Cast: Awakening > SoV > Fates While Awakening's cast is often criticized for being "tropey" of "gimmicky" I have to say that Awakening gave us one of the most memorable and lovable casts in the series. Each character is distinct from one another and has their own established personality that you can enjoy or not. While I like characters from all FE games, Awakening has the most characters I like as well as the ones I like best. SoV is a mixed bag as I find myself loving the cast of Celica's side of the story while finding most of the cast on Alm's side of the story bland and forgettable (I've heard that many of them get more fleshed out in the Rise of the Deliverance DLC but that seems kind of dumb to me that the best parts of their characters are restricted to DLC). While both Conquest and Birthright have many characters I like, I find myself liking more characters in Conquest while the characters in Birthright I like I tend to like more. It's weird. I put them below Awakening and SoV since I felt that the "tropey" and "gimmicky" problems that people said were in the Awakening cast are even more pronounced in the Fates cast.

For some reason I always thought it was Nepheenee, when it's actually Nephenee (like Stephanie)

Houko Kuwashima voiced Sango in Inuyasha, Tomoyo in Clannad, and Elma in Xenoblade X Kikuko Inoue voiced Kasumi Tendo in Ranma 1/2, Belldandy in Oh My Goddess, Lust in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, and The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater (basically she's the official voice of moms in anime) Toshiyuki Morikawa voiced Dante in the Devil May Cry series, Ryuu in the F Zero anime, Naraku in Inuyasha, Kira Yoshikage in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Diamond is Unbreakable, Katsuya Jounouchi (Joey Wheeler) in Yu-Gi-Oh!, Griffith in Berserk, Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, Ryu from Street Fighter, and Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil So Tailtiu did some notable roles, Deirdre is everyone's mom, and Sigurd is a villain.