RPGatWill

Awakening never really had a 'postgame' anyway. There were the spotpass paralogues, but either IS is already planning to release those or they've been cut in favor of developing the two/three routed you can play instead. Either way, it's not like I particularly mind it. It would have been nice to have a save after the final battle especially if you get some great levels out of it, but I'm not going to pull hairs.

It's good to see the game standing strong. Hopefully we'll see some real results once it releases in other countries.

Your awakening stuff was really great. Looking forward to the bits and pieces of this one. I may peel off near the end of chapter 5 since I'm mainly interested in the build-up to the choice, but I'll see. Thanks for translating!

Yeah most people probably agree these designs are beyond silly. Nobody would ever wear these outfits. >_<

I'm also curious as to this. I would imagine they would want to limit this, but maybe they don't? Aftert all, for people who want an easier time they can go to a ton of my castles. For those who don't they can take the harder route and not use online. Still, would be nice to know if there's a limit.

I do like that pairing, but Her stats take a rather huge hit on higher difficulties. Add in the loss of the Falchion if you change her class from great lord, and generally it's just easier to use Sumia or Olivia for the galeforce she needs to really wreck havoc. Maribelle!Lucina doesn't have the strength/defense growths to survive lunatic. Again, that's gameplay mechanics talking though. I've also heard that Maribelle!BrideLucina can be quite the beastly addition though. Might try that next time.

Sign me up! I would guess it would have to have rulesets though to address which version since Nohr has limited grinding and such, right?

Doubtful since this was present during streams as well that had no other sound issues.

One of the main reasons I hoped children characters were nerfed/not as important this time around was so that there'd be no issue with choosing your favorite pairing. It always bugged me that my favorite Chrom pairing (Maribelle) resulted in probably the weakest Lucina due to her being based of Chrom so neither of them had good magic growth. because ehr stats were influenced heavily by the parents, you'd have to be crazy to use Maribelle in any mode other than normal.

Yeah if they weren't going to have the cast fully dub the support convo lines I'm not necessarily going to miss it. Awakening's supports ended up sounding a bit weird because of the one word sayings.

So far there is no evidence of a bad ending like that.

You make some good points in that link. It's not that I don't understand where you're coming from either. I think my nonchalance in regards to some of that is in the very basic game design I've taken, along with all the narrative storytelling lessons I've learned. In a video game, these are MUCH harder to do. Unlike a novel, you can't tell the story you want to all the time. oftentimes, you need to tell a story that draws in and appeals to the player. This becomes even more important when you implement systems where the player is directly involved in the story. What's difficult is the solution. Unless they had a much longer development time and much more money to do it with, the support conversations likely can't be expanded upon/personalized to the point where they would be unique enough for every combination. even enough combinations just to avoid over repetition would possibly take weeks to implement, especially to avoid crossing stories between the 40+ characters. The only other way to potentially solve this would be to restrict the number of supports a character could have again. However, I think you'd agree that we likely won't see that happen. I am an optimist though. I was hoping there would be a small improvement in the variation this time around, with maybe some changes to the dialogue depending on if the characters were married. Sure, it may not happen, but I felt that was the next solid step. The awakening cast being stuck very much in their initial identifier I give you, mainly because one thing that I remember irking me is Cordelia's unchanged golden space and DLC lines about Chrom even after she was married. Bit of a bad impression can be given there, even knowing it was just 'general lines' the characters were meant to say. Will Face-rubbing make it ten times worse? i don't know. I know some people will still be irked by it even if they avoid it simply because it's there. I know I can be that way too. I'll continue being optimistic though. It's what I'm good with.

It was a joke. I know why they might do it I was just joking about that since we know that most everything is out of touch with everything else. After all, since I like games and not rocket science, I couldn't even begin to comment on what's going on there. That kind of joke.

Sure, if you can figure out who we send it to >_< I'm pretty worried about censorship myself. We're supposed to be pretty big on free speech and not restricting people, so it's weird that a game has fans so worried about butchering happening during localization. So Teenagers can't handle the idea of people getting married or in swimsuits? Somebody's out of touch here and I don't think it's us...

Both. I want them to look good, but at the same time when you've got characters like Nowi... I dunno, at leats some armor to indicate their at least battle ready is nice. So both matter to me.

Yeah, I can understand where you're coming from now. In my experience, I feel pretty differently about it. Characters who try to find fun and enjoyment in the middle of war are a bit more relatable to me, not only because I myself have never and hopefully will never be in a war, but also because if I imagine myself in that situation, I'd try to find fun where and when I could. You could argue that them frolicing on a beach goes against the realities of war, but at the same time it's not as though army platoons aren't given time off to enjoy themselves. A lot of time they go out to bars or beaches and spend their days doing things they enjoy. When I think of Fire Emblem supports in the context of "These guys are doing things they enjoy during their freetime" it doesn't really bother me as much. Your right I did focus on awakening a bit much there, as I was trying to illustrate the point. From what I've read the plot in Fates is much better, and the supports may end up feeling a lot like awakening and they may not. I'd rather give it a chance before consigning it to terrible or pandering nonsense though. There's ways to write deep and interesting characters that technically pander to people's taste as well. So I guess we sort of agree to disagree there. Not that you don't make solid arguments. Okay, I'm trying to fully understand but forgive me if bits slipped past me here. You do agree that using the trope is not inherently bad, but in how well they use and develop the character from that trope. For example, a Tsudere style character who is well written and developed as opposed to one who simply rockets between punching you and blushing. Here is where you believe FE13 had much of it's problem. I do agree that a few characters present very strong fronts, but I found most if not all the characters had deeper issues lying beneath. This is especially true about the future children, many of whom use these facades to pretend/bet away questions about the future, which was really horrible. Now, again this depends on your opinion regarding those supports, but I found most of them interesting in their own right. I believe most of the backlash came from how similar the supports were (Like Olivia's generally being about her shyness), the S ranks having no sufficient build up (an issue they likely won't manage to solve until another installment or two, I'd bet. Writing good relations that can be interpreted as friendship or romance depending on where the player stops building that support is difficult), and that the children didn't have different dialogue with their parents (a restriction of having everyone marry everyone else being possible). Are you wrong in these thoughts? Personally, I don't think so. However, this is also where we reach our disagreement (Amicable, of course). Video games are made for people to play. More so, the Fire Emblem series now has the Avatar, which is meant to be You/Your character fighting alongside your army in this universe. It's what brought me fully back into the fire emblem fold. I felt that Fire Emblem 7's tactician system was great, and that what IS needed to do was expand upon that system. It took them a few installments, but they've now gone that direction. I like that, but I also understand others may not. however, just because a character is made to be appealing or to get across certain tropes in a limited time to the player does not make them uninteresting. again, this is where our disagreement comes in. I don't think of them as pets or things to be played with, I think of them as new characters with new personalities that I may or may not want to explore. However, if all I got was a unit every chapter without even an introduction to that unit, I doubt I'd be as interested. Admittedly yes, this is because the game is not making an active effort to make me care about that character. Sure, it could also be my bias, I prefer the game to introduce these characters and give me glimpses into who they are before I put more time into them and you may think that's wrong or that entirely defeats the point. I understand our opinions differ here. One thing I will agree with and hope for: I think it would be cool to see improvements to the script. Of course I want each character to be even more interesting and in depth. That would be awesome. I'm just one of those who's actually pretty satisfied with what I got in awakening and Fates has shown enough to win my confidence. As for your last point, I think most people ship things knowing full well most of their ships will change once they have the game. It's just a fun way for me to keep my hype going during a long wait. As for the Outfits and stuff, I just consider it another option. I don't have to touch it if I don't want to. I probably won't looking at how hard it seems to be to farm resources and you have to give up precious resources for those outfits. I dunno. Reserving judgment there. Thanks for debating with me though. I see your points of concern. hopefully we find that happy middle ground in here somewhere.

Frederick and Joker was the best conversation ever. Now I seriously want to see a competition between these two and Chrom and Kamui being all like 'seriously?'

Now, please don't bite my head off, but let me try to explain where a normal person might be coming from in this case. I've studied a lot of storytelling during my acting training, so hopefully I can remember enough to explain this in a way which hopefully makes sense. Starting with how characters are made to appeal to various fetishes instead of being their own characters, let me say this: There's only so many character types and possibilities in this world. Sure, Japanese media tend to gravitate towards certain similar tropes (The loli being the one I remember most prominently due to my own distaste for it), but inevitably if you wanted to you could go out and explain how every single character in this game is similar to a character in a novel or another game and how that inevitably locks them into a certain behavior set that appeals to certain people who are attracted to that type of character. Just because a character has a defining trait does not make them a charicature. This is a mistake a lot of people make. In most media and especially video games, there's not usually a lot of chance for people to see the characters outside of the game before buying it. E3 and such maybe a little, but I think everyone has learned not to trust most things at e3. One of the few things that is pretty solid is the Treehouse stuff, since they play the games, do interviews, and can cover more over three days than you can in a 2 minute trailer. Going back to why they aren't simple charicatures. You need something defining to stick out to people right from the outset. Once people have latched onto that, you can develop the character inward. However, without that solid defining characteristic, the characters simply come off as 'another addition to your army' and don't seem unique in any way form any other character you've recruited. Sure, the units themselves in gameplay are different, but if Sumia's clumsiness and slight inferiority complex were taken away, what would differentiate her from Cordelia, if Cordelia's survivor's guilt and genius were stripped away? Sure, a bit of overexxageration of your point, but hopefully you see where I'm going with that. When you first meet Sumia, you learn she is clumsy because she trips and it is implied she likes Chrom. That's a decent amount for a fifteen seconds you get to spend with her character before she joins the army. The only other way to make characters appeal would be to give them a lot more screentime, which to be fair Fates seems to have a lot more character's having importance in a lot more ways throughout the story which is awesome. However, in Sumia's short intro, you know enough now to know whether or not you want to learn more about her or not. If not, you'll likely pair her with Chrom due to her implied crush. If so, you'll learn more about her. Same for Cordelia. She joins you during the battle and afterwards you learn she is a highly gifted pegasus knight and that she is the only likely survivor from her unit. Do you want to learn more? if not, no harm done, but you learned enough to get a small grasp on what her supports expand upon. Now, before you crush me with the counter, I do note your second paragraph addressed this to an extent. Saying that not all characters should be brooding about war and Dozla's conversation with Ewan. However, you got a little too angry at the end of this argument, saying that since it doesn't appeal we can't have that anymore. That's more of your personal opinion than a fact, however. In my personal opinion, Awakening had some solid conversations between people who were of the same gender and would not marry. Chrom's conversations with Frederick are hilarious, showing that Frederick is not only reliable but also goes way overboard in his devotion to an extent that Chrom can really get angry about it. His conversation with Lissa is a great family support that shows how the bubbly, hilarious Lissa can get really hung up and afraid about things like if she's really worthy of being his sister. Heck, even some of the eventual romantic supports do some great things. One reason Robin/Cordelia is probably my favorite is because it truly addresses and slowly helps Cordelia get over her survivor's guilt. Not only that, but Cordelia to an extent gets over the problem HERSELF, Robin more being a friend that accompanies her through these rough times. It shows that people sometimes need a shoulder to lean on, but doesn't demean Cordelia's struggle or turn her into a Robin worshipper. Sure, if you go to S rank, they get married, but even that I feel is handled really well. Similarly, characters like Lon'Qu and Gregor have several surprisingly interesting supports. Sure, Lon'qu's mostly deal with his troubles handling women, but Cherche's conversation with him addresses why he has that trouble specifically. Gregor has my favorite Tharja support, even without the S rank. I don't want to spoil it, but it shows the goofy Gregor is actually a really broken guy that can't forgive himself for his mistakes. Sure, their introductions introduced a main theme for their character, but I in no way felt they were chairicatures with no other important emotions or traits besides the one they were introduced with. See, that's a matter of opinion though. I felt their supports adding great dimension to their character. another person may feel the support did no where near enough to expand upon what was touched upon. It's all subjective. However, when creating a character, you need it to make some kind of impression and in fire emblem, you get maybe fifteen seconds to do that at most. (3-4 lines of dialogue in Awakening). If you want people to be interesting enough to explore the character, you need them to make an impression. A defining trait is the best way to do that. Otherwise, you'll never learn why the stern paladin puts on that swimsuit. was he forced into it under peer pressure from the other siblings? Don't know, but maybe it shows even Xander can let loose and have a little fun? After all, characters who can't have a range of emotions are chairactures, are they not? Again, sorry for the long post and you don't have to agree, just hoping I helped a bit.

I meant for people who want to try or enjoy strategy games but aren't particularly great at them. For people who like that or hardcore fans, there's hard and lunatic modes to play. For people who want to enjoy the story or need help since they aren't great at the game, there's casual and lunatic mode. Heck, due to timme constraints I've played awakening on Casual most of the time because I hate the idea of units dying. However that doesn't mean I hate Classic mode or think it should be removed. I just though it's cool that there are options for fans of all types in terms of difficulty and such.

I could never forget Kellam myself. He's my bae. I mean my bro. Totally my bro and not a little cutey that needs hugs from Female MU.

Gave shared to aqua for those beautiful singing and dance sections she has. Hoshido goes to Rinka. Her unit-ness may have been disappointing, but she still looks like a badass. Second place goes to Hana for ridiculous sword skills. Nohr for now goes to Elise. Little kid that cares so deeply about her family is just like... man can't hate you. Haven't seen much nohr material yet so slightly based opinion. finally I went with Flora for the mysterious retainer. She's your servant, yet she's so mysterious in her involvement so far. just gotta know.

No problem here. If there is a problem, it's all Iago's fault. #Blame Iago

Afraid huh... Yeah, I guess I'm afraid of what could happen. I think there are three main things I'm worried about right now. 1. Localization censorship: Look, I'm not saying I'm 100% behind the whole bathhouse thing (I'm a very private person, I haven't bathed with anyone since the age of like... 5 or 6 and I'm 25 now) or entirely in bed with the marrying your siblings who are not really your siblings (It's a cultural thing that really only seems to happen in Japan, though I could just be ignorant of other places). However, those things are already in the game. I'm MORE afraid of NOA censoring things and people then feeling like they were deprived of the full experience because NOA was too squeamish about married people rubbing chests or lips or whatnot. In the long run, things that are changed drastically/taken out of a game tend to hurt its sales in the future. 2. Marketing. Look, I'm going to give an opinion. I think there will be a special edition, but I think NOA/NOJ is underestimating how many people would want that special edition instead since that way they don't need to download two campaigns and only have to download the 3rd path DLC when it comes out. Similarly, NOA needs to address how the extra campaigns will be sold in the coming month or two. If they drop the ball and each new campaign is 30-40 dollars instead of 15-20, they're going to lose sales. 3. Advertising. So far, I think nintendo has done a decent job of promoting the game, through e3 and the treehouse, but they need to make sure their advertising also mentions the two separate versions rather than continuing the trend of 'which path will you choose?' That line pisses people off because you don't choose in-game when buying a single version. you choose in store before you even put the game in the 3DS. If they don't fix that people who buy the game and then get upset because they have to PAY for the alternate path will feel like Nintendo flat out lied to them about the game, and are less likely to buy more/ buy the next game in the series. Thankfully, the game has added more for people who are bad at strategy games to play and get through the game and as long as they start mentioning the price points I think they'll be good. And seriously, make a ton of special editions. Everyone I talk to that knows about it says they'll just get the special edition because they don't have the room to download two extra campaigns onto their 3DS hardware. (Considering 3DS comes with only 4 GB not surprising, especially since not everyone is crazy like me and goes out to buy a 32 gig card just to download a ton of games) We'll see. Let's cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Needless to say, those cutscenes are dang pretty for the 3DS, and the music for both is great. Hopefully it looks good in 3D because I may try to watch it like that and see. The water effects especially were amazing to watch. Maybe I'm just easily impressed but I really liked it.