Mufanda

Also, the UI in the GBA titles isn't that bad. It's not as good as Awakening's, but it's not bad. It's navigable enough. Bad UIs are ones that you literally have to fight to make them work. Like record of agarest war levels of bad. If you haven't played it, then you'll have to take a leap of faith on this one, that interface is so bad that even something as simple as switching a party member from slot 1 to slot 2 is a hassle on the player's part. Or seeing support bonus ranges are impossible without actively being the character which requires you to constantly move back and forth to verify. No, Awakening's interface is just incredibly well made. GBA titles are standard UIs. They work, but with a bit more effort they could have been better. I wouldn't say the AI is pretty damned good. It's AI, it's definitely AI, but it's not that good. And yes, I do know what type of efforts and computational power it can take when making AI. I'm not asking for it to play like a master of chess. People are missing my point about the AI (this isn't aimed at you because you didn't do it necessarily, but), but it could stand to be a bit better than what we have now. The AI in Awakening is better than what we've had in the older ones, but it's still not that good, and because of some of the maps and the way they are made, it doesn't lend well to any of the AI's strengths. Thus resulting in bad AI. The AI shouldn't be godlike, because if it were, it'd always win because it has a numbers advantage and the higher difficulties, but something a bit more interesting than "I place my units and then the enemy runs up to me and dies on EP" would be nice. And even with slight tweaks to the AI that we've had in Fire Emblem from the older ones, it's not much different from say... The first one. Perhaps it's that Fire Emblem is too simple for my likes, but it seems that Awakening was trying to push outside of that scope with all the skills and the skills locked to classes and the branching promotions and the second seals, and what not. I'm pretty sure this Fire Emblem has more skills than any other Fire Emblem in existence. Except I reiterate again, I'm not complaining about the ability to actually SKIP the EP. My argument is more along the lines of "should we really be happy that we WANT to skip the EP?" And then I proceed to say, there's not enough happening that you do on EP or even that the AI does to make you want to see what it was doing or going to do based on its choices. Is that not a question I'm allowed to ask? As of now, I pretty much always skip the EP because I feel nothing of value is gained from watching it outside of my own time. I don't think I ever watched a turn after the first arc of Awakening from my first playthrough. @ Kuroi: your response about my XCOM statement is completely swung and missed. The issue wasn't "XCOM has amazing AI" it was "XCOM's AI does things that make it worth watching." While your argument might be leaning towards "the mechanics DO more than Fire Emblem," I'd still say it's something worth talking about. Because I never claimed the AI in XCOM was incredible or the game was polished (no, it definitely needs more polish because I had 2 IronMan runs ruined by the wonky saving). Just that its AI is worth watching. Hence the poker comparison I made earlier. I was hoping I made myself clearer to everyone-- I guess not.

Sure. I'm in the league that this dude is full of hot air. Well I mean I don't see why it couldn't be part of the lore. Honestly, with that dimensional gate mumbo-jumbo, it's hard to say what's canon or not in Awakening.

Yeah, but realistically, that's making use of pair up. I'd be hard pressed to find someone that wouldn't make usage of short term pairs to win. In my first Lunatic+ playthrough, I definitely made use of Fred x Avatar even though I wasn't planning on using Fred until the end. Perhaps it's that I've gotten better and I'm having a hard time putting myself in a "bad" player's shoes or something I'm not sure. But I definitely feel like Pair Up is not very difficult to master. The AI is so simple that it would never do something that would make me feel like I need to watch it... Ever. Like for instance, in XCOM, I watch the enemy AI because I need to understand what it does so that way I can better combat it when I get further in the game-- or at least remain viable with it. Here? Not so much. The aesthetics stop mattering so you don't watch it, and the AI never does anything so radical that I NEED to watch it is kinda my beef. Skip is nice, but I feel like when there is a skip to the point that I'm not even watching WHAT the AI is doing, there's kinda something wrong. Especially when it's not like say, Chess where the enemy can only move one unit, we're talking about 5, 10, 20? Units at once and I don't even need to watch it. That's my complaint. You aren't getting my complaint: the game is too simple, and the fact that you can skip everything and not feel like you need to see it can be an issue in itself. Well yeah, but we're talking about the AI's actions. The fact that the AI is so simple that you don't need to watch it does bother me. I can predict what the AI does. But it does kinda bother me that I can predict it to the point or feel comfortable enough to not even need to see it at all. It'd be like playing a game of poker and not needing to see any of the other player's prior hands or expressions and being able to still comfortably win against them. You missed my point. We aren't talking about watching the animations versus not. We're talking about watching the turn itself. Length of animations has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Rolling with your Legend of Dragoon example, it would be like if you inputted your commands, and then did something else productive every time the AI did something. As in, you didn't even need to see what the boss was doing because it doesn't matter because it's not able to do anything that can even bother you at all. Uh... Bloated stats cause more problems, not less. When my characters are expected to get 4 points per level and get a dud 2 level up, it hurts a heck of a lot more than when I'm expected to get 2 points per level and I get 1. More level ups have nothing to do with higher, bloated stats in general for the games.

I kinda like the dude from frozen (blonde guy whose name eludes me at the moment), that portrait has so much character. Though it goes without saying that these are all pretty good. I'd certainly have no problems with looking at them if I saw them in a game.

I know this is gonna sound weird, but there's one thing I've been wondering about, are we going to have things like races be able to be programmable in there? And no, I don't mean like a racial class, but an actual race? Like how in Awakening if you marry Nowi, your Morgan will, like Nah, be part dragon and have a permanent weakness to slaying weapons even if you aren't a dragon class. Also, is this going to be an executable or are we getting the base program scripts and then going to be able to run it...? Long story short, could I muck with the source code if I wanted to? Or is that off limits for us peons? I honestly didn't see anything like that in the early pages...

I hit the gym and start training. I start pushing myself to a limit that gives me something else to focus on outside of my worries. I especially love to go to the pool, just swimming around for a while and then getting into the spa is enough to loosen me up a bit. Sometimes I also sit down and have a nice cup of tea and get myself a manicure or a massage. Although caffeine might make you more twitchy. Another is to get a good book. Honestly, if you need to talk, try talking aloud. Even if you don't have someone to voice the problems too, just being able to vent can help a lot.

You missed my point. The fact of the matter is that the characters can find weapons that reference other Fire Emblem games. The fact that they can means that it's also possible that Priam's Ragnell was found as well. Just because your characters don't find any other Ragnell swords doesn't mean that there aren't other Ragnell's based off of the story of the Radiant Warrior.

It's also got Adept in there too. It attacks twice for one attack. So no, Priam does not know Aether. He knows what makes Aether, but he can't do it. He can't do true Aether. Besides, everyone knows that Priam doesn't know Aether because only females can learn Aether from parents. Now if Priam were a chick? She'd know Aether. That assumes a lot don't you think? Mist makes a lot more sense to wield it from a story perspective. The blades are sibling blades, and one sibling wields one and the other... Wields the other one. Hell, the blade even gives +5 defense which makes Mist even more well rounded than she already was. You don't use it for the attack, you use it for the defense and the two range. Ike probably wouldn't leave the blade with anyone at all. Really? Because I'd say Aimee is the most likely one to do so. I can see Ike eventually breaking down and giving up. And Aimee is a merchant and she travels anyways, so she can travel and provide Ike with a job (her bodyguard), food, and potentially shelter. Aimee makes more sense than Mia. It doesn't even need to be the real Ragnell. Honestly Priam could just be some insane lunatic that believes in the legend far too much. I can believe a character is two ticks closer to crazy than Owain. With as bizarre as the cast is in Awakening, I can see that being more of the truth than anything else. It doesn't need to actually be the same Ragnell. After all, in Awakening, we can find Roy's Blade despite the fact that Roy probably didn't leave an infinite amount of his blades around in another world. Or at least I'd hope not, he probably could have used those.

I can't say I have a problem with those choices of restricting weapons like that. Although, Marcus always struck me as a Sword/Axe sort of guy...

This is something that bothers the hell out of me. It must mean a game is boring or too simplistic when I don't even want/need to watch the AI at all in the game. It's 13 games into the franchise and we praise the fact that we don't have to watch the computer because it never does anything interesting enough to be WORTH watching? This... Bothers me a lot. Because let's face it, the AI in this series sucks ass. It never does anything that just generally surprises me or doesn't give me an incentive to watch. The UI is pretty solid, I suppose. It's a functioning UI. Woo. I shouldn't praise it for something it should have had. I do appreciate that they do allow me to use multiple styles of UI though. That's nice I guess (ooh look, praise). The reason Chrom talks to everyone is simply because the characters all seem to not know each other or have any real prior relationships with each other so there's no way that could happen. I actually didn't have a problem with this, because I hated having to field random losers that I wasn't planning on using to recruit someone else that I might want to use or even just strip them the next chapter after I recruit them. Pair Up is not really balanced well though. In lower difficulties, it's imbalanced, and in higher difficulties, it's not really optional (which is not necessarily a bad thing to be optional, as expecting a player to actually have MASTERY over a system on higher difficulties makes sense... The problem is there REALLY isn't anything to master about Pair Up outside of you know... doing it which is what causes people to even moan about it. You can't realistically use Pair Up better than someone aside from the person going well out of there way to make bad pairs.). I suppose that's really the issue with Fire Emblem. It's too simple. Literally most of the people that are "strategic vets" or whatever have simply... Played the game more. It's not really like they are better at tactics or strategy, it's just they've seen the chapter so many times that they pretty much HAD to get something right at some point. And I get what it's supposed to be going for thematically, but it still bothers me because it feels like a "MORE STATS" sort of thing, and I don't like that Fire Emblem games seem to become progressively more obsessed with high numbers. I wish there was more to it outside of just getting more stats. Skills like Dual Guard+ are a start with encouragement of pairing up because it's an ability that can be used between two units, I just wish there were more interesting skills like "pass" that allowed people to do things that they normal can't do on their own but can with a friend. Otherwise Pair Up is totally boring to me. It's like "hey guys, we just realized that WE CAN FIGHT TOGETHER!" You don't say...? Man, Robin you sure are smart realizing that an army can fight together! What's next!? Horses run faster than people? Brilliant! Admittedly in Lunatic(+) I have used it for psuedo-rescues and chained switches and transfers at moments to move people farther than before, but still I feel like Pair Ups could use a lot of work. Make them less boring. Good instances of pairs being sorta interesting is stuff like Flyers x Anything. It gives you the ability to transverse terrain that you normally wouldn't. There should be more things like that except with more emphasis on each class bringing something special to the table aside from stats. Hell, maybe make it to where certain combos do things! Like Sage and Sorcerer get some special unique spell between the two of them. Perhaps a Hero and a Swordmaster get a special unique Pair Up skill between them (hurray? A reason to use swordmaster aside from getting swordfaire?). I guess my beef with Pair Up is that it's just so dag-blasted boring to me. As for the story, I honestly think that Awakening's story is the worst in the series. Bar none. It has a lot of ideas and it's all over the place and doesn't really do anything particularly well. Act 1 should have just been longer and possibly the whole game. It would have been nice to have your characters in a situation crafted because of their ancestors and having an antagonist that, while misguided, did have a somewhat justifiable rage towards your characters. Also, Robin is just an awful avatar. I especially love the chapter where Robin makes a plan that even the player isn't aware of with Basillio. It really sums up how bad of an avatar Robin is. An Avatar should never know more than the player does at any moment. I thought the whole point of you being an "avatar" in this case was to justify you moving all of these units around. NOT so you could actually play a vital role in the story. Next Fire Emblem, I hope they either drop the avatar or just make the avatar the lord. It'll save everyone the headache. Let's be honest, Fire Emblem Awakening kinda sucks at moments, but it's level of suckage isn't much more than any of the other Fire Emblems. I kinda don't like the first two Fire Emblem games, and I kinda like 3, 4 is probably the most interesting one mechanics wise, but my god is it really imbalanced. I like 5, no problems there, and the GBA ones are fun little handheld games. Honestly, looking back, Awakening sits in AT LEAST the middle of the series. So why are we being so hard on this one...? Probably because we expect it to learn from it's mistakes... And instead it seems to sometimes willing embrace them. Map regression is kinda unforgivable for instance.

I agree with just filling the last to slots with laguz royals. I believe you also get more dialogue for them being there as well, so there's that.

Not really. In almost every given situation, you just use it because rarely ever does it *not* help. Early game pairing up with Frederik in Lunatic mode makes Chrom able to become an incredibly powerful unit with a couple of levels and that defense. I'd rather just see Chrom have... You know, more defense instead of Chrom basically absorbing Freddy to become a tank and then use Freddy for a retreat for a quick heal or two. Pair Up essentially becomes putting units together for more stats and dual strikes/guards than anything else. Sure, you can have some builds with leads and supports, but not in the base game anywhere soon enough for it to be a viable "strategy" without you having some sort of wiki so you know who has what skills and learns what in what class. This means that stats are what you want. It doesn't help that with supports, it makes it even more of a mess. Now hear me out on this one, because this sounds a bit strange initially. Dual Strike and Dual guards aren't strategical choices in any real sense of the word because it's a no brainer. Why wouldn't you want these bonuses? Challenge? That's about it. Well, there is map design, but none of the main maps in Awakening have it so... Moving on. With supports, we know that dual guard chances as well as dual strike chances increase. So here's the issue. The people that join earlier are at a disgusting advantage that other units that join later are not. Utility units like Anna have little chances of being used as permanent members of your group, after all, there's not much to steal, and even if there were, she barely has any supports, which means ultimately less stats for pair up and less strikes/guards. Anna might have *had* use at some point, but she's going to fade unless you pair her up with Robin. Male Robin at that, because no way is FemRobin going to invest in that when she can literally invest in any male around her to get more bang for it and pop out a child because of it. And no one else is going to bother with her because they don't get anything from her. But at least Anna gets some use. Poor units like Basilio, Flavia, Tiki etc are pretty much worthless because of this mechanic. Comparing them to any unit you bothered with versus them and it's pretty hard to even consider using them. It'll essentially be someone that is S ranked versus a person that doesn't even have a single rank and might not even be higher leveled than the unit you used. Terrible. Simply terrible. And even worse? Most units can support each other, so it's not even like in earlier Fire Emblems where you had to kinda think about who you wanted to use to maximize support bonuses for chains . Sure, there were some exceptions like Sumia, and Chrom (I'm ignoring all of those other novelty characters), but most of them had huge list stretching more than a couple of scrolls down. Pair Up isn't a terrible idea at base, but I just really hate the execution of it. I feel like for starters, characters in Pair Up should also be able to provide negatives as well as positives in pair up. Say, you pair up with a pegasus and you take on the trait of being weak to archers for instance but are blessed with 1 extra movement or something. Also, there should be more variety in maps. Tiki's map is a good example of when pair up is *not* necessarily the best choice. It's easier to defend Tiki than it is to wipe out all of the enemies (assuming you haven't grinded to hell and back). And more specifically, I wish the stats in Fire Emblem would stop being so gosh darn inflated. Radiant Dawn started that trend, and it keeps getting progressively more ridiculous. That said, the maps from what little we saw in the trailer seem to be a bit better, so there's hope that Pair Up isn't super broken this time around. IS seems to be pretty good about nerfing things from a prior game that was too strong... Here's hoping that they don't make Pair Up useless.

With reclassing? That's easy. Give them the best growths all around. That makes them literally the most desirable class to be in if they have something like that for at least a couple of levels. If these units were rocking 15% extra strength and def growths over other units, I would be willing to put up with a movement penalty for a couple of chapters especially if the class had good bases as well. Consequently, mounted classes should have inferior growths to go along with the fact that they themselves are good classes with high movement and for some reason a ton of weapons as well. It'd also probably help if they stopped allowing you to basically max out weapons on everything and go back to the Fire Emblem 4 method of classes. Sure, a Paladin might have Swords and Spears, but he can only B rank in both, while a Swordmaster and Halberdier can go to S rank. If Knights could be one of the classes that got good lance rank or perhaps high weapon ranks in all of their weapons, this could make them more valuable as well. Otherwise, they have skills that let them guard other people that are standing next to them ala Bleach Third Phantom where the other unit would block the attack of another one in their stead and reduce the incoming damage. It shouldn't be Awakening's NO DAMAGE levels of blocking, but they should have a skill that let's them... You know... GUARD PEOPLE sense that is the purpose of the class. IE, the more defense the knight has the more it provides for the unit it's blocking for. Low movement isn't necessarily the problem with the knight class, as low movement ISN'T a death wish in games (just like high movement isn't necessarily a boon either). The issue is that developers never seem to make up for movement loss in games which is the problem. Knights aren't "high defense" units because Fire Emblem growths are based off of the character rather than the class, and the class doesn't have a single skill that makes the class good. Big Shield in FE8 was a good idea, but it 1) didn't activate enough, and 2) isn't worth putting up with the knight class for it. The game doesn't give you a reason to have to slow down. Take something like say... XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Within most people would say that Supports are the worst class in the game, and they have the highest movement in the game. Meanwhile, Snipers, one of the least mobile units in the game (unless one goes for Snap Shot or Gunslinger builds that ignore using the movement bonuses, are one of the best classes in the game.) The issue is that pretty much every map in Fire Emblem rewards high movement, high evade and attack. It rarely ever favors defense and seems to love the whole dodge or die mentality, which is why knights are a really terrible class. Knights as a class cannot continue to exist if we have Awakening style skills again because there's no reason to EVER be that class outside of skills (I mean the same can be said for a lot of classes, but it's especially true for this one because it literally has no merit). tl; dr 1) Nerf mounted class growths 2) Buff knight growths 3) Give them a passive skill that only the knight class can use to shield other units as well as itself.

Normal/Casual because I'm getting supports and that's about all I like to do now it's my anti-stress right now. I did the other modes, and I hate how the difficulties are made in Fire Emblem. Absolutely hate them. They just sky rocket enemy attack rather than make them behave in ways that make you scratch your head and think.

Let's see. He's one of your strongest units when he first appears, and remains strong throughout all of part 1. Even assuming other characters are getting EXP and you haven't touched him, he still has some use in cases. In part 1, he doesn't shift forms and remains transformed without needing to worry about the annoying gauge or the penalties that come with being shifted constantly. He also has one of the best affinities in the game with the only other one that you can really argue for being water. So even if you aren't using him to kill people, he can be a great support unit by allowing the other person in question to snag some EXP and get some evade bonuses. He's fairly durable-- far more durable than most of your units in part 1. He has high movement, and unlike mounted units, he can still make usage of shoving. And still rescue quite a few unit types... However, unlike other unit types that have high movement, he doesn't get canto like the rest of them. The biggest problem I see with him in part 1 is that he has a glaring weakness to fire mages (which IIRC are the most common mages you fight in the DB chapters when the enemy teams have mages). Also, he cannot use forges, and he cannot use 1-2 range at all, which everyone that is beorc can. Hell, even archers can, and low damage > no damage. Especially when attacks from two range just drain the gauge and nothing good comes from it. By part 3, I honestly never thought he was that great. He's... Salvageable if you get him a couple of levels and raise his strike, and maybe get him a couple of supports, but by then, you'll notice that if you DID use any of the DBers, most of them can hold their own fairly well. Aran shrugs off cat attacks despite getting doubled, and can get lucky and maybe double a tiger or two if he's a bit RNG blessed or the tiger isn't. Edward can realistically dodge them with supports and starts to become sturdy enough to get out of 2HKO range... The ones that can't like Micaiah and Laura can at least heal other people. By part 4, I generally don't use Volug and think he's pretty mediocre by then. Pretty much any character that you put up with will be better than Volug by the end if it's a Beorc, and the Laguz that Volug is better than by the end, he was always better than them. I don't know if he's super high on tiers, but honestly, he seems like he would be the best of the mid tier units. Great for when he's there, and fizzles out towards the end.