NekoKnight

Gosh, aren't you a slowpoke? This has been discussed a lot already. The way it works in Fates is that all the characters (even if they are children themselves) all decided to get married and have children (we skip that whole "pregnancy" thing, presumably because IS thought it would be awkward to give Elise a sprite with a baby bump) immediately and at the same time. When it turns out having children in a war is actually a really bad idea (hindsight is 20/20, man!), they decide to put the children in a pocket dimension that rapidly increases their aging. The parenting is left to nameless retainers who apparently don't mind living out the rest of their lives in another dimension. And then the 2nd generation (some of which are still young children) are recruited to fight in the war! It's... multitudes worse than Awakening. It's unlikely they would all have children at the same time but it is still logically consistent with the narrative.

The problem is the sheer contrast. I agree that making Hoshido equally scummy as Garon and friends would undermine the conflict of Hoshido being the more moral choice, but as it stands, the contrast is so stark, Kamui is made to look like a selfish idiot for choosing the bad guy side. They don't focus enough on WHY the Nohrians must invade Hoshido and they act like Hoshidan aggression is totally blameless. There are two moral dilemmas for Kamui's choice between nations. The first is about family. Love and loyalty vs blood and honor. The second dilemma, which unfortunately isn't well balanced in Fates, is the moral one. Hoshido is "good" because they are peaceful defenders. But is Nohr "bad" if they can't survive without taking resources from others? On paper, it sounds obvious but for Kamui who is entrenched in the situation, it should be a difficult choice. The issue with the Nohr route, is that Kamui, being the moral champion that he is, belongs in Hoshido, not Nohr. If we were to equate Kamui to a dragonfish, Hoshido is the ocean and Nohr is a desert. When you choose Nohr, all you can do is watch Kamui flail around helplessly and you wonder why a fish would be so foolish as to choose a place without water. Now, if the conflict was framed as Kamui wanting to make that desert fertile and debating whether it's right to steal water from the ocean, you would have a real moral dilemma. EDIT: My analogy gets a little confused. "Water" in this represents both necessary resources and strong morals. Nohr is lacking both, which makes Kamui a bad protagonist for Nohr. Whether it's a single country or not isn't the point. Those "duchies" have an association with each other and (one would presume) common principles to make them want to form an alliance in the first place. When we go into map narration, the Lycian Alliance is discussed as a single unit, comparable to Bern, Etruia, etc. If the moral depth of each territory seems black and white, it's because as individual countries, they are too small and insignificant to focus much on.

That's a good point. There was probably a disconnect for a writer who (to the best of my knowledge) has never written a story for a game. That said, there should be people at IS who are familiar with story-writing so there is no excuse (besides out of control fan-pandering) for how they botched the story. They had themes and deliberately undermined them. They had an interesting premise and setting but they filled it with plot holes and left it undeveloped. They had characters, and they weakened many of them to sing more praise for the self-insert.

Have you not seen the murder-machines, Takumi and Elfie? Archers are good now because outside of magic (which is now countered by several weapons and classes) there are no ranged weapons that don't also have some kind of drawback (can't crit, easier to get doubled, can't double yourself, low hit). Plus they can be used to take out fliers (another reason why Knights can be better than Dracoknights).

I don't think it's a lack of resources. There is a lot of content in the game. As we've discussed in the story threads, all the parts for a good game are there, they are just horribly implemented. A lot of the class models look great!...But fanservice demands battle-panties... Some characters and supports are really intriguing!.... and here's a boatload of incest, pedophilia and other dodgy things... Having a self-insert is fun!....and now several characters and the story are gutted to worship me... It's nice to have a game focused on platonic, familial relationships.... and now you can have children with them....

Huh? What's with those ethnic names? Neva' heard of 'em! I think you mean Olivia and Harry. American characters should have more American sounding names.

As far as strategic gameplay taking a lower priority, I'm not concerned with the fate (uugh) of Fire Emblem. FE14 has some of the most progressive gameplay changes to the series and kept most of the positive elements from past games. It's not perfect but the effort on the developers part is duly noted. As for style and story, there definitely is a crisis. On one hand, you have the group who wants to write a compelling story and characters, and you have another group that wants "to make a truckload of money". Waifus, shipping, self-inserts and fanservice are all very popular, and the style and story are sacrificed to accommodate them. Everything is fine in moderation, but as Fates has shown, "moderation" isn't a word they are familiar with. With its inconsistent tone and hamfisted storytelling, Fates is the definitive example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Fire Emblem creates its own lore. I don't see anyone complaining about dragons being depicted as intelligent beings going feral just because real world mythology doesn't mention it.

It's not really the issue of the kunai themselves, it's just you need someone (Elfie for my Nohr playthrough and Rinka for my Hoshido playthrough) who has enough defense to 1) not take damage from the kunai, because you are probably getting doubled by the ninja and 2) survive the other enemies after your defense gets dropped. Whoever gets attacked by the ninja is going to be chain pulled into the thick of the enemy soldiers, so they need to be hardy. There is a mix of enemy weapon types (but mercifully no magic) but I'd consider the ninja as the biggest threat because of their Strike Through skill and high avoid. They pop out of the 4 forts on the map 2-3 times, so the "fun" doesn't stop.

Hah, it can be. It depends on when you do the map but if you don't have at least 2 characters who can tank kunai hits, you're going to have a bad time.

While the backstory for Micaiah hints at an older-sister/mother figure for Sothe, in the story-proper of RD (and a cryptic message in PoR), their relationship is a lot more ambiguous. They are close and trust each other but the "brother and sister" vibe wasn't that strong (and a marriage between the two only comes up in a possible epilogue). Compare this to Fates that had the "FAMILY FAMILY FAMILY" theme banged over your head from the very beginning AND THEN they act like starting romantic relationships with your siblings isn't weird. As for Camilla here, she already had an exaggerated, Kamila-obsessed character in the game. If people thought her comic version would somehow be different, they set themselves up for disappointment.

What is the knee brace for? I know you want to keep as much of the original elements in the story as possible, but what purpose does the Yato choosing its wielder have for the story? Does it push a specific (and significant) plot-line forward or is it just to mark the protagonist as being special? If it's the latter case (just as the Yato was to Kamui for Conquest and Birthright), then I'd suggest cutting it. I think it will just be passing the "needlessly special" torch if the Yato is given to another. Call it a pet peeve, but there are very few instances of destiny/prophesy that I approve of.

Considering all the Shooter skills only apply to that class, it's understandable. Who knows, you might get Warp access afterall.

They got special weapons...or something but that doesn't mean the plot revolves around them for that reason alone. My point is that influential characters should only be so important to the story for as much as their position in society or their individual power allows. "I'm important because I'm the chosen one" is just lazy writing.

I can't help you as much there because the 3rd route and the 'man behind the man' plot heavily ties Kamui to the center of the conflict. It easy enough if you cut the 3rd route out, however. In that case, Kamui is just a young lord who got caught up in the political intrigues of a ruthless king. Does anyone really need a Sword of Plot Importance or to be the chosen one? Marx is important because he's the crown prince of Nohr, not because a sword told him he was important.

I think it would be best to have them as a viewpoint character. They can be the protagonist in terms of seeing the world through their eyes but not the most important or influential individual in the story. I'm thinking more Van* to Ashe (FF12) than Robin to Chrom. *Except unlike Van, he'd actually have a reason to be in the story, albeit less important than the 'main character'.

Whoa, I hadn't considered giving it to Aqua. I gotta try this.

This is fallacious reasoning. You are suggesting that because no other influential members of Hoshido's society show up in game, we have 'no reason to believe they exist'. Is Hoshido run exclusively by one man? No other lords with their own agendas? It's not a defense of Fate's story-telling that these people are never shown; it's a weakness. Ryoma might be the highest authority in name but that doesn't mean his power and influence is unrivaled. Ostia was the highest power in Lycia but the Elibe games were full of traitorous lords who subverted that authority. Why should Hoshido be exempt from the standards set by past games (or the reality of how human societies work)?

It's a luck trigger so it should.

Holy crackers! Are you me? I agree with all of these points (minus Shadowgift being good, lol). Anna the outlaw: I would have hoped the mascot would be available in-game. She shouldn't show up in the supports list if she isn't in the default game. Invisible Kingdom: Yes. It's absurd you need a 2nd DLC to give backstory to the 1st DLC that is supposed to be the biggest "behind the scenes" DLC to begin with. To add insult to injury, both DLCs only compound the issues of the plot as a whole. Weapon DLC: This has two main problems. 1. You need to play (aka purchase) IK just to get all of the weapons, which I feel is a cheap way to incentivize the route, and 2. forging for the better weapons is impossible without it. If there is any single DLC that I feel should have been a part of the base game, it's this one. Skills: I can't comment on PVP because I don't have the intention to play it but for single-player, I like most of the DLC skills and think they are conceptually interesting (especially the Witch's latter two skills).

It's unclear how much authority Ryoma has before Mikoto's death (the way Rinka says she's taking you to him instead of Mikoto makes it sound like he's the effective king) but there is a chance he's not completely adept or ready for leadership. Even if he were, there are always generals and soldiers who cross the line if they think they can get away with it. Making Hoshido not so sparkly white could include scenes of Hoshidan soldiers doing some nasty things because they think Ryoma won't hear about it anyway. Or they could even have a scene where Ryoma acknowledges that his soldiers sometimes do bad things but he can't go around being the moral police every time if he wants his soldiers to remain loyal to him.

It saddens me that Camilla is given a cool hybrid class but her bases and growths are so slanted towards physical that her ability to use magic as her base class or switching to a witch is a total waste of her potential.

Only iron? I guess those would be the best weapons to craft anyway.

How does the Smithy Skill work? I know the trigger % is your luck but what weapons can you get? How do you add your characters to the log book?

Femui: I have to give birth to 21 children!? IS: Don't complain. Mamui has an even more uncomfortable situation for getting all the children.

I haven't read the Kamui x 2nd gen character supports but I've heard that it's said in some of the supports that Kamui helped raise some of them from infancy so even if there is no blood relation, a romantic relationship with those characters is... yeah. Far be it from me to tell you who you should or shouldn't Waifu but why would you want to pair your Kamui up with an expy (right down to the same hair color) of a character in the last game? I mean, I married Robin to Cordelia but it's a brand new game so I'd rather pick a new character to play with.