Interceptor
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Posts posted by Interceptor
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Good thing those existed in the GBA games then, right?
At least get your facts straight.
Sorry; Blazing Sword gives me PTSD whenever I load it up, and I haven't seen you concede a point in two years, so I don't have much incentive to be thorough.
Never really got the point of Optimize since optimize means different things for different people.
Which apparently makes it worthless.
So yeah, the only improvement is unlimited storage space [...]
I guess you missed the part about restocking and combining items.
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But they can be separated from each other. Lyn mode is only required until the game has been beaten once. One never has to see it twice.
Irrelevant to the point (and not even entirely accurate). The fact of the matter is, if you want to play HHM in FE7, something like Lyn Mode is tied to it at some point.
Playing through lower difficulties to unlock higher ones isn't uncommon in Fire Emblem or in any video game to this day.
If it was common for video games to come with free Anthrax spores, does that makes it OK? It's dumb as hell if there isn't any particular reason for a difficulty unlock. Awakening actually has a sensible one (Lunatic Casual/Classic for equivalent mode in Lunatic+), whereas the unlocks for other games range from annoying (Radiant Dawn) to extremely annoying (Blazing Sword).
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Yeah, that's basically where I was going with that, and why I said "simple walls". One of the nice things about Lunatic+, is all of the new crazy things that are available. Some of them were always possible (but inefficient), but some are brand-new.I just want to point out that Pass actually opens up new strategies if you know how to use it [...] So while these skills do shut down major strategies, they also open up new ones if you look hard enough.
Well for one, the stories from the older games are far, far, far better than anything Awakening has. And while Fe4/5's gameplay are somewhat affected by "Super Nintendo Era Strategy Game Syndrome", their gameplay go much more hand in hand with their stories than Awakening's does.
Playing Fire Emblem for the story seems to me like watching a soap opera for the acting, or reading Maxim for the articles. Being "far, far, far better" than Awakening's story seems to be about as difficult as leaping over a sheet of paper. Isn't that like saying that a punch in the face is better than a kick in the junk? The story in Awakening isn't good, but it's entertaining. I have never been impressed with the story in any FE game.
The fact that they were really good for their time is not reason enough? I don't consider Awakening good for its time.
No, it's not. Horse-drawn carriages were "good for their time", but they still filled the city streets with horseshit, and we actually live in the 21st century now.
Your complaints of a bad interface among other things are nonsensical.
Something isn't nonsensical just because the reality of it is devastating to your case. The cumulative QoL improvements present in Awakening really make the old stuff look like ancient artifacts. Old doesn't mean bad; sometimes an interface does actually hold up over time (see: Tetris, Mega Man, etc). But Fire Emblem is not one of those franchises.
As far back as the GBA games, you can easily manage your items, arrange your units in the order you want, use items, trade items, buy or sell items just as easily as Awakening. The only improvement is unlimited storage space. The battle interface is pretty much the same too. Auto battle isn't new either and has existed since FE2. Only an idiot would have any trouble with the interface, at least as far back as the GBA games.
"Only improvement is unlimited storage space" is an offense worthy of ignoring your entire argument. Hyperbole is one thing, but if you can't think of a single other thing... especially if going all the way back to the GBA. Optimize, store all, automatic restocking/combining, trading items from a master list (with portraits and current locations!), and that's just the damned inventory.
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Your argument was that people defend it out of nostalgia but no one actually does that.
Well, that's certainly your understanding of it.
Just like the amount of gravity observed in the universe can't be explained by known visible matter, reverence for old Fire Emblem titles can't be explained by looking at known gameplay elements. You need to fill the gap with something; astrophysicists have "dark matter", I have "nostalgia".
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Funny that you say previous FEs are tedious and then defend Tedious+ mode.
Lunatic+ is the ultimate challenge for a Fire Emblem Expert (read: most people never touch it); unskippable nonsense and crappy interfaces are a pain for everyone. Imagine playing L+ with a GBA-era UI. Although I personally don't consider L+ to be tedious, because the time spent is time when you're actively constructing plans and executing moves. AKA, playing a game.
Except being forced to play through Lyn mode is something that is universely criticized and was never considered good. No one is saying it was ever good so the nostalgia arguement fallacy doesn't apply.
It's a thing that makes Blazing Sword a pain in the ass. Even if everyone and their mother agrees that it's bad, the two cannot be separated from each other. Whatever good the game has to offer, is tempered by the fact that you have to wade through the Shit Moat™ to get there.
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I did in no way say that Awakening's Generation system is not popular. So I'm kinda lost what you meant with that. Their popularity can not be compared anyway since FE4 never even left Japan to begin with.
You're trashing the implementation of the generations system in Awakening, but the fact of the matter is that people really love it. So I'd say to consider the possibility that you're wrong about how bad it is; at worst, most people really don't seem to mind the bolted-on feel, because it adds a fun customization element to the game.
I see. Thanks for checking. And again I am really sorry for how this went down, seeing how you already went through the trouble of writing a response and now I can't give it proper credit because what is left in my head most certainly won't match up with what was on your screen back then.
Oh well, no helping it.
What is this rake you speak of? I've never encountered anyone who tries the older games after Awakening and found them as unplayable as claim they are, at least not as far back as the GBA series. Beyond that, there is a lack of modern conveniences but now you're exaggerating. As far as the GBA, DS and Tellius games go, I've yet to see anyone make a ridiculous analogy like that.
They are not unplayable; they are tedious, and each more than the last, the further back you go. One is reminded of it constantly when playing, especially after having been exposed to modern standards. You really start to feel it with Blazing Sword, but even RD is good at wasting your time with unskippable nonsense.
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Please explain how Ch 2 Lunatic+, a map with 9 strong enemies who have randomly-generated super skills charging at you immediately, is not dumb. No, seriously, tell me. I want to actually beat the mode one day.
Chapter 2 is really hard, sometimes even moreso than Chapter 3. It's one of the things that I would tweak if I was king for a day (by introducing Aegis+ and Pavise+ one chapter earlier). But if someone literally can't get past Ch. 2 Lunatic+, it's because of at least one of the following things:
1) Doesn't possess necessary tactical skills to deal with the in-game challenges.
2) Lacks a suitable strategy to prepare for Chapter 2 in the first place.
3) Is held back by some rule or another that the game doesn't actually inflict on you.
You're already a skilled player, so I'd say you need to tighten up your strategy and maybe let some people die. Force-feed a +DEF Avatar using the Water trick in Prologue, Fort-tank in Ch. 1, and consider sacrificing Sully or Stahl (or both) in Ch. 2 so that Avatar/Fred can get to a Fort and everyone else can get to safety. Or just use a standard clear where you do a lot of damage on Player Phase 1, and just button up the LHS, using the scrubs to gang-up kill on strays. Some clever Pair/Switch/drop shenanigans help there.
I know one map isn't the whole game but Ch 1 isn't much better. The Prologue also relied on a bit of luck with what skills were generated. It's hard to appreciate the mode when I can't get past the 3rd map, and I can just imagine what some other maps are going to feel like if I don't grind.
It does get better once you get past Ch. 3. As long as you have some sort of overall strategy for dealing with the Lunatic+ skills, more time to execute said strategy just makes things easier on you.
I do see some merit in it (for example, all Luna+ skills are primarily offensive instead of defensive, supposedly being a good thing), but taking the already jacked up stats and illegal forges of Lunatic enemies and throwing a random number of a specific set of OP skills on them just looks like an artificial way to add another game mode to me.
All of the skills shut down a particular strategy, which is what makes it clever.
- Pass: counters simple walling
- Counter: counters over-leveled super-units, who will kill themselves
- Aegis+/Pavise+: counters armies with mono weapon types
- Hawkeye: counters evade-tanking
- Luna+: counters DEF-tanking
- Vantage+: makes it more difficult to weaken/finish units (training is harder, damage taken is higher)
They could have given enemies big stat sticks, like All Stats +2, but they didn't, they chose these ones. I prefer it, since it fundamentally changes the way that you approach the game, rather than just giving you a steeper hill to climb.
Do you maybe still have the page with my post open in a tab and could maybe send it to me as a whole? Maybe, those quotes from are all that is needed but in your last post they were pretty brief and the longer I wait to ask, the more likely hypothetical tabs are already closed.
Sorry, dog ate it; not available on other tabs. I just sliced things out as I went, to keep the post length from getting even more out of hand.
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Yes, the GBA system was really bad. But then that crappy system was wonderfully revamped in the console games. Awakening reverted back to the glue method of the GBA games, which is a downgrade even if it added some fresh paint to hide the rust.
Again: Awakening's support system is superior to the GBA system, for reasons already laid out. It's less convenient than the Tellius system, but it's also more organic. It's important for you to understand that the GBA system and the Awakening system are completely different from each other, even if they seem superficially similar to someone who isn't paying attention.
Pair up is absolutely fundamental to the entire support and generation system. Not to mention those massive stat boasts that you miss out. It's role in the game is absolutely massive. It's "optional" in pretty much the same way that promotions are optional.
Pair Up can be completely ignored in Awakening, and in fact people have done playthroughs without it. The support system depends on Support Units, which is completely different from the Pair Up system. Go look into the mechanics.
This has absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote. Please read that part again:
The game's logic is perfectly consistent. Supports units in a Pair operate under different rules than primary units: you can't directly interact with them, and they aren't bound by range restrictions. Everything else is A-OK. This is a new system, and they implemented parameters for it. It's nonsense to complain that Support Units are treated differently than primaries: of COURSE they are.
If you don't want to explain those reasons, then why did you reply to something trivial like my comparison with Baldur's Gate's mechanics in the first place?
Because those reasons don't necessarily apply to Fire Emblem, and I'm not going down a DnD rabbit hole. I just told you where the mechanic ACTUALLY came from, and now you can go do some research if you care to.
I do of course agree that you need to learn how to get good at new stuff but why would that make you forget the old stuff? As in, preventing you from changing back into your old class.
Because that was the decision that was made, and frankly it's a good one, since it makes the classes more distinct and also forces you to pay a cost for re-training. It's a game, FFS. Certain allowances have to be made for balance reasons.
With an activation rate of at the very best like 40% you can never rely on them when you are using them so they are just a luck factor. You can not compare them to stuff like hitrates since there are tons of ways to make them almost completely reliable.
This argument is rejected; 40% skill activations are no different than critical hits. Fire Emblem has always been about the RNG, whether you're willing to accept it or not. The skills in this game are generally pretty useful, even the luck-based ones.
Why do we need a breakpoint here at all?
Forces use of consumables for advancement.
Mounts were superior because of their higher movement.
And then they went waaaay past that line into "WTF" territory by additionally having Canto. The downsides did not outweigh the advantage, here. All of your complaints are neutered by the existence of Canto, which was far too good.
However, I still see things a bit different. I wouldn't go so far as to say that balance makes things boring. Just that perfect balance is near impossible to achieve. But the more, the better.
This is a fallacy. Fire Emblem is not a competitive game, so why on earth would you aspire to "more is better" for balance? Imperfect balance is advantageous for a single-player series like Fire Emblem -- as long as it doesn't get ridiculous -- because it gives you different experiences/strategies within the same difficulty settings. I can make Lunatic mode even harder by using shit units and sub-optimal skills/classes. I can enjoy raising an Est-like unit into a powerhouse.
Balance by making everything the same is just ignoring the problem.
No, it's a way to illustrate that "balance" isn't something that you'd necessarily want.
Oh, come on. "It's different; it's not necessarily worse." is literally the last thing you wrote before that line.
Generations adds a mechanic without really taking something else away: customizable late-game recruits. It's cool, and something that the other titles do not have.
If you think I am wrong, then explain how instead of leaving it to me to make your arguments.
What argument? The child system is extraordinarily popular, that's just a fact.
And it's not clear to me why you think I was thinking I had any "permission" to give. Maybe it's a side effect of my crappy English but I merely wanted encourage you to give your views on the mechanics of the game after I told you which way I saw them.
I'll give my opinion if I feel like it, regardless or whether or not someone tells me that I can do so.
A comment made by somebody who tackled me because of a comment about an long outdated DnD edition...
It's old, not outdated. People still play 2nd ed., since they don't like the newer editions, just like people still play Tetris. Not everything that's old is necessarily outdated, if it's still suiting your needs. The older FE games are OK-ish, but they quickly get more tedious/frustrating the further back that you go. The game experience has not aged well at all.
Anyway, I am not sure who this last part is addressing because for my part I definitely don't take these things for granted. Their lack limited my fun in those old games and even prevented me from finishing both of the NES ones at all. Many good things were added since then that made Fire Emblem games a lot more pleasant to play. The importance of these elements cannot be stressed enough.
And If these things are already enough for you to consider a game by default superior then all the ones preceding ... well I'm sure nobody wants to take that conviction from.
But neither does this invalidate comparisons and discussions about how all the other aspects were handled.... nor does it necessarily mean that the lack of these new features is enough to diminish the fun people get from all the things that those older games were doing pretty damn right.
I don't care how good your garden is. If I keep getting smashed in the face by a rake every time I walk through it, that's detracting from the experience. The two things can't be separated. That's why I bring up "nostalgia" as an explanation for whatever warm feelings people still have for the old crap, because it's surely not balance (all of them are unbalanced) or the actual playing experience (all of them are increasingly bad the further back you go).
Listen, if I drop a popsicle in a pile of poop, I can wash it off, but it's just easier to get a new popsicle.
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the award for good map design goes to FE12. you cannot possibly defend these two aspects of FE13 when literally every other entry in the series does them better (well, almost every other entry).
The map design for Awakening is actually pretty good, with some objective reasons for that. If you care to look at the layout, enemy types, reinforcements, available units etc, the missions turn into mini-puzzles. There are usually one or several moves that a player can make, in order to increase their success on a particular map. A really easy and oft-cited example: the chapter where you recruit Cordelia. You have mountains to stand on, the place is full of axes, and you've just been given Lon'qu. It's a sword-user smorgasbord. Awakening is full of things like this, and they are available for people of all skill levels.
have you considered why it is that no one cares about map design in FE13? map design is inconsequential when there exist mechanics that trivialize its importance.
Have you considered that your opinion on this only represents a fraction of a percent of the people who care about this game? And that I'm possibly too high on that estimate by an order of magnitude? This isn't even a question of Awakening having a dumbed-down average audience; your position is so extreme that it's basically intolerant of anything else.
[...] but the ease with which FE13 was optimized really shows that there was zero concern about balancing the mechanics.
Do you have any awareness of how much these nonsense proclamations undermine whatever points you're trying to make? You just took something fuzzy (the "ease" at which Awakening was optimized), read the minds of the designers, and came to the conclusion that it was mathematically impossible for them to care any less about [your extremely specific definition of] balance of game mechanics.
you cannot seriously blame a game (an old one, at that) for not providing adequate information about every single mechanic.
Sure you can; great games teach you about themselves. Not everything, but the important things surely.
i would suggest you not bring to your defense a game mode that bears all of the characteristics of an afterthought. that lunatic+ has a reputation of being "luck"-based (and rightly so) purely because a certain subset of randomly generated enemy skills can make a map unbeatable is not a testament to FE13 having good gameplay. quite the opposite.
Have you even played Lunatic+?
It has a reputation for being "luck-based" amongst people who have busted strategies. The mode demolishes most of the classic Fire Emblem maneuvers, forces you to adjust your tactics on the fly, and exposes people who cannot think on their feet. You can't plan a map out in advance, or keep trying the same configuration until you brute-force your way through it; you have to have a flexible strategy and an ability to do unconventional things. A lot of skill configurations called "unbeatable" would be more accurately labeled "really hard, and beyond the capacity of the player to overcome". People with strong fundamentals don't often run into literally impossible chapters, especially once you get beyond the very early game.
Lunatic+ is one of the best challenges that the series has to offer to experts. It has flaws, like anything else, but generally speaking they accomplished a lot with relatively little. I just roll my eyes whenever someone calls it "dumb". Lunatic+ is secretly pretty clever; just look at the logical impact of the specific skills that they chose.
while earlier entries have some potentially trivializing heuristics, in practice they're not a walk in the park. marcus, sain, and florina trivialize FE7, but we haven't really LTC'd that game to its full potential. same thing with FE8, FE9, or FE10 (though horace and chiki are getting pretty close).
"Ease of LTC" as a measure of a game's balance, has a lot of fun words associated with it, such as: poor, weak, myopic, niche, limited, ambiguous, irrelevant... I can't settle on one.
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Do you claim this only for Fire Emblem or can it extend to any expansive video game series?
Warrantied only for Fire Emblem, because that's what we're talking about, although surely there are other game series that would fall in the same general category.
Is citing examples and expecting your audience to not know what they are really that helpful to your case?
It's not my argument, it's his. I was just pointing out that dual-classing is a lot older than he seems to think it is, and that reasons actually do exist for the concept. Maybe even in ways that are relevant to Fire Emblem, but I'm not going down a DnD rabbit hole.
I assume he's referring to things like better menus that reduce prep time and cutscene skips and the like. That's different from handholding/endless tutorials, which very few people are fond of (though there is such a thing as too little).
It's always nice when someone tries to figure out what I meant, instead of assuming that I'm advocating for oven mitts in Care-A-Lot™, because it's convenient for their point.
Interceptor generally covered most of it, but here’s some more comments.
Quoted only to highlight that this is a very nice list. I wasn't attempting to be expansive, since that's almost as tedious as playing FE7.
I think Constanble Reggie's reply sums up this perfectly.
As expected.
For one level of support maybe. If you actually want to max out supports for all characters to recruit children, it takes hours upon hours and far longer than in the GBA games.
It takes nothing of the sort. S-ranks are easy because of Pair Up and the Support unit. If you want to fill your entire book, that takes a hot second, but I'd say the overall ease of Awakening's intuitive and organic support system, generally outweighs this one weird completionist edge case.
And FFS, use Spotpass or something to grind supports.
"I have no understanding of Suspension of Disblief"
Or context, in your specific situation. Look at what was being replied to.
What? His arguement is not nitpicking at all. It's a valid complaint that the support conversations suddenly pair off characters when they showed no inclination towards romance in the beginning.
Sure, it's valid nitpicking. He's entitled to make the argument, and I'm entitled to lampoon it. The fantasy world where his wishes are granted isn't really possible, so as a pragmatist I'm perfectly happy with the flawed system that time allowed. Lullerskates at the extra effort it would take to even make C to A romantic supports work in the context of the freedom you are given in this game.
Wait, you just described Awakening there. That applies to the children espcially.
No, you just don't understand what "everyone can do everything" actually means. Play FFXII, or read up on the skill system. That's the true standard for vanilla. At least in Awakening, you are limited by current class, available trees, and skill slots.
Having a certain mechanic that others don't doesn't automatically make it better.
No, but in this case it is actually better. It's a pretty neat way to get recruits.
And it's not the 're-imaging of the mechanic' that's become popular. It's the mechanic itself.
Nitpicking. Pointless, too, since there's nobody that misunderstood me.
And I'm sure that not everyone would want it to be every game. Especially if it doesn't make sense in terms of story for it to be there which it doesn't for the other games. This game had to squeeze in badly written time travel plot shenangigans to fit a 2 Generations mechanic.
Of course everyone wouldn't want that; what thing could "everyone" possibly agree on? The weapon triangle, maybe?
Given how popular the marriage/children system was, I think it's a fair bet that IS tries to do it again in the future. They'd be fools not to.
And there it is. The nostalgia based fallacy that is the cherry on the top.
Just so you know, "fallacy" isn't a synonym for "uncomfortable truth".
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...somehow is not nonsense? But hey, it most be a fact. You gave no reasons why you think this way but after all you were the one who said it. Declaring yourself factually right about subjective things is no substitute for actual reasons.
The people who know what I am talking about don't need an explanation, and the others don't merit one (because they have no excuse, or they can't meaningfully participate anyway).
For supports, I fail to see any improvements. We are now effectively back to the old GBA system were you have to glue units together in order to raise any support points.
Nope. GBA's was tedious and dumb, because you had no idea what was going on and sensible things like combat were irrelevant. Awakening's requires actual interaction between characters (THE HORROR), has visual feedback reinforcement (the hearts), and takes next to nothing for effort once you understand how the system works (four battles will max you out for a chapter).
No wonder your views are so out of the mainstream. Even this simple difference didn't register as an improvement to you.
And Pair Up turns characters into pieces of equipment that give state boast and skills. I would rather actually use those units.
It's a shame that the game forces you to use the Pair-Up system.
That was sarcasm.
It effectively throws the game's entire logic out of the window.
Fire Emblem has had illogical mechanics since the very first installment. It's a fantasy game with magic swords and dragons in it. Why start demanding logic at this juncture?
"Marth! In this continent, we obey the law of conservation of energy!"
Support conversations are also pretty much the same as always. But in addition to that, there is the fundamental problem that you can support everyone to A while S-Rank is reserved for lovers. This means that there is no romance whatsoever between C and A because after all, the character might already be married. And consequently the love confessions in the S-Supports come completely out of nowhere. And that is the end of the relationship. You would think that once they are in a serious commitment, things would get really interesting but they never talk to each other again.
[filed under: nitpicking]
[subsection: no awareness that the last X games didn't even have this option]
I already didn't like Reclassing in the DS games either but I think the changes made here are for the worse. Once you change classes, your character somehow forgets all the things they learned until they reaches level 10 and get another seal at which point they forget those new skills. It's effectively the same like that multiclass nonsense for humans in the original Baldur's Gate... which was from 1998.
Which is actually from the late 80's, since that's when DnD 2nd edition was released, and that's the ruleset that Baldur's Gate was based on. Gary Gygax actually had a reason for the mechanic in pre-2nd days, not that I imagine you have any idea what I'm talking about.
Reclassing like this serves the purpose of 1) constraining abilities to the primary class, and 2) forcing you to protect units that are training (see: Bronze weapons). The payoff for the curve, is better attributes along with some lingering aspects of prior classes. And of course, not everyone has access to every class set.
We've had games before where everyone could do anything. There's one called Final Fantasy XII. Everyone turns into bland poop by the end. I'm glad that Fire Emblem didn't go that route.
Also, if we have infinite levels, why do we still have that antique lv 20 cap? This game sticks to certain traditions when they lost all meaning.
Why not? It's still a useful breakpoint for seals. Level 20 is just one of those Fire Emblem things, like the weapon triangle and blue-haired Lords.
Skills are for the most part just as pointless as ever. Random boni, random activated special effects that make them completely unreliable for actual strategy, same old story that already sucked in the console games.
Basically this is nonsense. The majority of the skills offer some useful benefit to the user, even just as a passive stat stick. If something has a random activation, that's because 1) this game is predicated on random events anyway, and 2) the skill would be too powerful or too lame with 100% effect. The RNG in Fire Emblem is one of the nicer things about it; events unfolding during gameplay cause you to change what you were going to do.
But the few good skills we already did have are missing. Like, what happened to Canto? This skill made a fundamental difference in the way mounted units are used compared to infantry.
Yes, and it was toxic. Canto was too good for the disadvantages of a mount. It just meant that mounts were always better than anything else.
Besides, before that skills were given to individual units, making them more unique as a result. Now everyone in the same class pretty much feels the same.
Units are still customizable with partners and class paths. It's different; it's not necessarily worse.
The Generations system in Awakening compared to FE4, well: In FE4, the entire game was designed around that system.
The Generations System in Awakening as compared to every single mother-effing Fire Emblem that's not FE4: easily beats their "nothing" entry. The re-imagining of the children system is extremely popular, so perhaps consider the possibility that you are wrong about it.
Feel free to state what you think is great about these mechanics and why you think they are more then mere fluff. Or you can just declare yourself right and just dismiss me or anyone else as blinded by nostalgia yet again.
It's not clear to me why you think that I need your permission to comment; I either will or I won't, as I feel. In this conversation, you have no authority whatsoever.
None of the classic games could be released today, and I don't just mean the graphics. The QoL changes that people take for granted are serious barriers for anything resembling fun. Go watch a video of "Geoffrey's Charge" some time, and see if you can stop your hand from reaching for a phase skip button that doesn't exist. Or play a GBA title and dream wistfully about having a base screen for basic feng shui. Or go further back, and have fun doing math in your goddamned head.
Sorry, but that rocket ship is powered purely by nostalgia at this point.
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Wiat what? How is that an admission that Awakening is better than pre-DS titles? He's said before that Shadow Dragon is not as well designed as previous games in the series.
It's not an "admission", it's a roundabout way of pointing out that his assertion is nonsense. Shadow Dragon is the closest cousin to Awakening, gameplay-wise. As soon as you go even one step further back, Awakening waves "reclassing" in your face, and calling it "thin" becomes self-evidently silly even before you get into the rest of the fusillade of features that the title has going for it.
Using old features in new combinations is nothing to be praised if those features still haven't been balanced at all. Reclassing, skills and forging are more broken than ever before. That hardly makes the gameplay superior. In fact, it's far inferior to games with less but better balanced features.
I find it pretty amusing that you consider Awakening's versions of forging, reclassing, and skills to be the most egregiously broken ones, as if the games after FE8 never happened.
This series has never been about perfect balance: Fire Emblem has had abusive mechanics and a healthy mix of good/shit units since the dawn of time. The balance here by comparison is just fine. Pretty good even, if you can exercise some small bit of restraint.
Checkers is well-balanced, but it's boring.
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The game is still fundamentally as thin as Shadow Dragon was. It's just not as good designed. (and that game was not well designed) And due to his nature as a remake, the game threw out most of the stuff introduced by the preceding games. Awakening has a lot of fluff added but otherwise the only new mechanic that really changes the gameplay is Pair Up. Which on top of reducing a perfectly playable unit to a glorified piece of equipment is really just Adept, Great Shield and a stat boast thrown together.
If you're reduced to comparing Awakening to Shadow Dragon, that seems to be an implicit admission that Awakening murders every pre-DS title, and I couldn't agree more on that point. The contest is not even close.
Awakening's gameplay superiority does not rest solely upon "new" features; it uses old ones in new ways, or in combinations that haven't been seen before. Supports, generations, reclassing, forging, skills, etc. It's all there. Dismissing any of that as "fluff", or disqualification because it wasn't created from whole cloth, is basically nonsense.
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To me it seems more like taking the good parts of the old games and puting them into one game without understanding what made them good to begin with, but thats me
Indeed, that's you.
The old titles are no great shakes; they are thin, limiting, tedious, and have been left behind by modern TBS games. The best that you can say, is that they were good for their time. The rest is mostly nostalgia, if we're being honest.
Awakening has a potpourri of various and sundry mechanics, that appeal to a wide variety of players. As collateral damage, it offends the Stop Having Fun Guys -- i.e. people who can't abide it when someone likes something they don't like -- but that's not Awakening's problem.
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Am I allowed to count myself a member of the elite Lunatic+ club if I cheat and play Semi-Casual? (Suicide people in chapter 2 to make my life easier, and once past the stupidly RNG based chapters treat it like Classic, resetting if someone dies.) Oh and this would definitely be grinding. I'm not masochistic enough to do no-grind.
Is it really cheating if you tip the odds to beat a mode that's already unfair? I say no. You can even do this on Classic, just throw away some useless unit in Ch. 2 like Stahl or Sully.
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The difficulty jump from Hard to Lunatic is a little much; I think that they could have used one more step between them for the people who are completing them in sequence.
Full deployment for first-run Lunatic is probably the biggest drag on your performance. You might be doing OK now, but you're in for a rude awakening once the Valm arc lands (and particularly once promoted enemies start showing up). FYI.
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Special Dance is worth abusing for, if you're going to do it. Several times during my run, I was glad that I had it available.
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honestly, I don't get it.
People have different tastes, and there are a lot of "things" in Awakening to enjoy. Add that to the wide reach of the game in general, and you have a recipe for a lot of praise. It's not astrophysics.
The music... it's good, thats really all, it's not that memorable and didn't stand out in any way for me while playing, it was just there, it's good ipod music, but I wouldn't call it the bes fe score, it's not bad, it's not just memorable.
The music is quite excellent. There's no accounting for taste, I guess.
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^ Congrats, welcome to the club. How did you generally approach the game, out of curiosity? Any challenges that were particularly difficult?
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WRT Counter from fliers, it's worth noting that you also have nothing to fear from Counter if you can OHKO. Off the top of my head I don't know how feasible it is against the RES-heavy Pegs in Ch. 14/16, but I remember considering using a powered-up
WrecksRexcalibur for the job. -
^ Check the link in my sig for specifics, but Avatar and Chrom can both occupy a Water tile, so basically you hide Chrom/Fred and Avatar/Lissa out of range of anything except mages. Easy to feed Avatar kill that way with Thunder.
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^ I'd suggest starting over (stick with your +DEF Avatar) and just feed Avatar all the kills. It's feasible to have Avatar kill everything in Prologue except 2-3 kills (using the Water trick), and kill everything in Chapter 1. That will get you to Chapter 2 with a level 9-10 Avatar, and full uses of the Elixir.
Since you are on Casual mode, you can just sacrifice a couple of people so that Avatar + Frederick can make it to the fort in Ch 2. Mountain is also good, except it doesn't have the healing bonus.
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Perhaps. But in the end, I still see it as akin to Swagger in Pokemon - it adds next to nothing to the game, emphasizes luck over skill (even if it doesn't throw skill completely down the tubes like Swagger does), and just is no fun to deal with whatsoever.
I don't see how there is a "perhaps" about it; if you are a skilled player, the "randomness" of the Lunatic+ skill distribution is a lot less intimidating to deal with, because you can come up with new strategies on the fly to play whatever hand you are dealt. Lunatic+ rewards tactics and strategy more than any other mode in this game, relative to your success rate. This isn't really a controversial observation.
Thus I'd also dispute that it adds "next to nothing" to the game: it clearly adds a difficult challenge for the expert to tackle, and that's a valuable thing. If you don't think that Lunatic+ takes skill, just look at the difference between the people who know how to beat it, and the people who don't.
The first time I ever played Lunatic+, I cleared Prologue in one shot as well. It's honestly reliable enough that I've considered manipulating an event tile for a Leif's Blade (pseudo-killing edge) which makes Cht.2 massively easier.
I noticed a bit of this yesterday; I'd always approached Chapter 2 as a defensive challenge, but it's also an offensive one as well. None of the enemies have anything to mitigate damage (just to deter it), and things like crits and doubling can dismantle some of the pressure that placement puts on you.
I was looking at wasting time in Ch.1 to build supports, too. Avatar is pretty close to a useful doubling threshold in Ch. 2 with C Chrom, even without a SPD asset.
As a newcomer to FE who is trying to beat Luna + for ther first time, i can also agree here. It's quite unfair. I would think the reason im getting nowhere is that im not planing things out. Like people pointing out to use MU x Fred pair up. I always use Chrom x Fred pair up and that's why i fail. So i guess reworking strats would get you farther.
If you go into Lunatic+ with any goals other than "I want to beat this mode", you're doing a lot of damage to your chances of success. Every artificial restriction you add ("I won't let anyone die", "Avatar always paired with X", "I like Swordmasters") will take options off the table.
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I know you have a different opinion, and I respect that, but I personally think it's too luck based relative to vanilla Lunatic - whereas vanilla Lunatic requires about equal measures of skill and luck, Lunatic+ tips that scale into needing much more parts luck relative to skill thanks to the random skill configurations. And having to reset or leave the map hoping for a better map configuration (i.e. not getting 1/3 of the map with Counter early on) just gets tedious in a hurry.
As I said before: this is mostly a function of poor planning or tactical mistakes. There aren't all that many skill configurations that are truly impossible, and they are found mostly in the earlygame when you have fewer ways to deal with them. If you are getting punked by Counter, it's because you either didn't prepare for it, or weren't equal to the task in the first place.
The more skilled you are, the less you have to reset.
I still don't get the praise of this game...
in Fire Emblem: Awakening
Posted
Precisely; as you get further from the Bad Old Days™ and closer to modern titles, you see this stuff start to creep in.
Agreed, why start now? Keep the streak going.
I think I should note that I said "and that's just the damned inventory". There might be a hundred little things peppered all over the place that make Awakening more of a game and less of a chore; I even love the minor crap like quickly cycling between weapons on the pre-battle window. The things like skipping phases/animations has already been covered, and stuff like improved enemy ranges and the like hasn't even been brought up yet.