NekoKnight

Your defenders are out of control! Reign them in!

inb4 defenders of Fire Emblem's integrity sink this into a casual vs hardcore debate I don't think there will be a difference in difficulty settings between game versions. Nohr is stated to be more challenging but that could easily be attributed to the lack of world map/grinding. I find it hard to believe IS would make Hoshido casual ez-modo and Nohr the 'go hardcore or go home, scrub' version. They want to sell both games so they will make both games accessible to a general audience.

Monsters only appear in Gaiden and Sacred Stones iirc. I don't want to call Risen monsters outside of revenants... The ogre-like monster we saw looks like it will belong to a neutral faction (chaotic-evil, rather). I'd like to see monsters as just being part of the world and not "the legions of hell summoned by the dark dragon god". Kamui's shock at seeing Nosferatu could be attributed to the unatural increase or range of the monsters. I'm betting on the Mouth of Truth being a magical construct created by Nohr. Now I really want to see a Hoshido chapter based on evading it and attacking it from afar with ballista.

I'd be totally okay with the sword having some spiritual properties but no greater story importance, such as the Mani Katti. Why does only Lyn get a Katana? Wouldn't it be neat if the sword "leveled up" along with your weapon rank? A higher rank would increase the might and maybe at S rank, you'd get access to a Ragnell-like shockwave attack.

I'm all for interesting weapon designs but it's really weird for a sword belonging to not!Japan. A golden broadsword with a vajra for the hilt.... Not really feeling the "east Asia". Kamui chokes Dancina at some point in the game. Perhaps the sword itself influenced him to. Or maybe Dancina is just into BDSM [spoiler=What a twist!]

You'd think Kamui's dragon form would be more serpentine and less... deer-y if they wanted to create a solid parallel. For an alleged good guy, he's got a pretty evil sounding sword.

I always thought lances made more sense than axes or swords because they have a long reach, which is probably important when your mount is a large winged animal that likely won't get as close as a horse and foot soldier would. It's noteworthy, for example, that Jill and Minerva carry poleaxe weapons in their official art.

Serenes Forest, the #1 place to discuss your favorite mediocre mainstream anime! And sometimes Fire Emblem as well!

My thoughts exactly. It's only natural that Ryoma would be cautious of his own brother when said brother spent most of his life with an enemy nation. The only reason Kamui has to side against Nohr is Hoshido's moral superiority. If not for that, his personal bonds with his Nohr family would win every time, and Ryoma is probably aware of that.

Game of Thrones with Theon Greyjoy [spoiler=Game of Thrones spoilers, beware] Hopefully Kamui ends up in a better place than Theon.

We had two threads concerning this topic not too long ago. I think you'd be better off posting in one of those threads instead, just saying.

Considering the smooth map to battle transitions that we now have, Ablaze versions seem appropriate. .hack pulled this off very well by having calm, atmospheric overworld music seamlessly transitioning into a more engaging version. (battle starts at :50)

Possibly, if Chrom is any indication. Then again, Kamui's unique lineage might lend itself to a different signature skill. (I'm taking a guess to say that Dragon Vein will only be usable on certain maps)

I don't think there will be THAT many exclusive characters for the 3rd route. I'm sure it's hard enough developing enough characters for two versions let alone a third. It's easier to tweak conversations than to create brand new characters. Granted, there are very few supports in the series that change based on different circumstances (Makalov's supports will be tweaked if Marcia is dead by that point, for example) so this is brand new territory for IS.

Is anyone else curious about how supports will work between the routes (particularly the 3rd route)? While many supports are self contained, others reference things that happen in the story. Will some supports be changed or exclusive to each route?

I agree that choosing the starting class for your avatar would be really cool (Wyvern Rider Avatar, YES!) but I enjoyed the look and playstyle of Awakening's tactician very much and think Kamui will be fun as well. If in future games the avatar/tactician is less story important, I'm all for choosing your own class but as it stands, a unique class is appropriate for the main character. I wouldn't even mind if they couldn't be reclassed.

I'd like a mix of the Tellius/Awakening skill systems. Skills being tied to class gives each one a unique feel (at least it would if reclassing/grinding weren't a thing) and gives each class something to work towards. Personal skills are great too so I wouldn't mind everyone having one skill that can't be unequipped. It would be like some of the spotpass/DLC characters who had a skill non-native to their class. Additionally, I'd like a few skills like Iote's Shield to be made into scrolls you can get in game. There was a point to keeping the personal skill on it's original owner in Tellius because it didn't take up any skill capacity. I think that's a fair compromise.

I could see something like that happening on the Hoshido path. Say the enemy captured the family of a Hoshido officer and is forcing his soldiers to fight for Nohr. You mission objective is to rescue the hostages while avoiding the 'enemy' Hoshido units. After the hostages are rescued, the 'enemy' Hoshido units turn into allied units and the rest of the map is a rout mission. I liked that map. All the enemies had high movement so you basically had to one round each and every unit that came your way. And Tiki could only take like 2 hits so I thought it was pretty intense. More complex Defend maps are also welcome, however.

This is the ideal set up, in my opinion. Make it a tad bit more expensive than a standard 3DS title and leave the last route for DLC. Any money 'lost' by bundling the games will be made back by the sheer size of the foreign market, compared to Japan. I'd say Fire Emblem's commercial success is more contingent on the North American/European market than it is the Japanese one. Sticking to the Japanese marketing model will take away the momentum Awakening started.

That's not how it ends! [spoiler=True Path Golden Ending] Trust me, my dad works at Nintendo.

Haha, I agree with all of those criticisms. The primary antagonist only loses because of mind-numbing stupidity and Shiro survives through massive amounts of plot armor. So how could the 3rd route be sold with a sufficient amount of drama? We've still got a Kamui-choking-Dancina scene and Fire Emblem unaccounted for.

The quality of the writing is subjective but I was making a comparison to narrative structure. Some characters die in all routes, some are saved in some routes but not others. Each route has a satisfying ending but you'd not be getting the full story unless you complete all routes. I speculate that Dancina will be heavily focused upon in the 3rd route compared to the personal struggles of the Hoshidans and Nohrians in their respective routes.

I'm just building off what we've seen so far. I don't like the generic "band together to defeat world ending threat" very much either but monsters are already shown to be a threat of some kind and the 3rd route is stated to be one where you don't side with either faction, so yeah. What I'm really hoping for is the 3rd route not to be the perfect "everybody wins" canon ending for FE14. Each route should have a valid conclusion that required sacrifices to be made and no ending is explicitly better than the others. It would be kind of like Fate/Stay Night where each route focuses on different characters and each has their own 'complete' ending, but to fully appreciate the whole story, you need to play all three routes.

It might be interesting if the family you don't side with suffers a terrible fate without your help. If you side with Hoshido, after the disastrous military campaign in Hoshido, there is widespread civil unrest in Nohr and your family there is murdered by Nohrian rebels. If you side with Nohr, while you are trying to reform your country, Garon completes his invasion of Hoshido and kills off the royal family there. 3rd path DLC is to stop the war before it even begins while dealing with a world ending monster threat. Dancina (maybe revealed to be your manakete mother?) is a more prominent character in this route and sacrifices herself before the end.

It wouldn't be that hard to do. You can just make the attacking enemies progressively harder so you couldn't possibly defeat the ones who appear later in the chapter, actually necessitating that you escape. The Jeigan can also be dealt with by giving the enemies effective weapons like horseslayers and hammers.