Dark Holy Elf
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Posts posted by Dark Holy Elf
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Sniper's down there and I understand the kneejerk to call it worst because Panne > Virion, but yeah Taguel is worse. Even if you could change anyone else into a taguel you'd never even consider doing so.
(Sniper certainly isn't god-tier in Fates. It still has the same problems as always, at least on Birthright [Revelation has the Mini Bow] just has some perks to make up for it and make it balanced instead of suck.)
Sorcerer seems a sensible pick for best. Most of the high-mobility classes get a solid honourable mention, as is so often the case.
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FE6: Develop the PC cast in the main story far, far more. I failed to care about them at all.
FE7: Make Ninian less passive. As mentioned, stuff just happens to her, again and again and again. She's one of the most important PCs yet I can't really remember her doing much of her own volition.
Everything about Nergal is terrible so I can't think of one quick fix. Yeah, you can improve his MO, but you still have his lack of interersting reasons for being evil, and his completely inconsistent plot power, etc.
FE8: Make Ephraim's route less of a boring afterthought. Seriously, the entire route is "Ephraim moves towards Grado's capitol, wins a battle because he's that great". To be clear this is a problem in some other FE games, but most of those FEs are worse-written than Sacred Stones, which has few major flaws.
FE9: I've ranted about this before, but I'll do it again: the part of the game where Ashnard just sits on the throne of Crimea as Daein is overrun is complete and utter nonsense which totally ruins any suspension of disbelief I could have for the war.
Ashnard's army is made up of humans, not a bunch of soulless morphs or monsters. These humans have families and homes in Daein. Yet not once do we see a single soldier give a damn about the fact that their homeland has been conquered, and neither Ashnard nor his generals make any move to reclaim their country. FE has a serious issue with dehumanising the soldiers of the enemy country in a few games, but this was certainly the worst, and it ruins every character involved. It's extra frustrating because right up until that event FE9 was actually doing a better job with this issue than most (consider the scenes in Talrega, where Jill has to deal with the grey morality of invading Daein).
FE10: I'm... pretty okay with the Blood Pact, though certainly open to ways it could be tinkered with. I just take it as the fantasy equivalent of Lekain saying "we've set up a nuclear bomb somewhere in Nevassa, if you stop doing as we say or our spies see you trying to evacuate we will detonate it", and that's fine. I'm also pretty okay with Zelgius! Far moreso than I was in PoR. So... hmm. I guess the biggest thing I'd do is spread out the screentime in part 3 more, it focuses far too much on the Greil Mercenaries, who do no real developing this time around (although Skrimir is cool). More Crimea please.
FE11-12: I'm pretty sure these are beyond saving to me. See what I said about FE6, but apply it to the villains and setting as well.
FE13: Remove the Valm arc entirely and focus on the sympathetic-if-violent aspects of Plegia (i.e. how Chrom's father was a jerk to them) instead of turning them into a group of cultists. There's not really much game left at this point, but I'd rather see those good parts salvaged into something.
FE14: Make Garon a compelling, primarily political character, capable of being a worthy menacing adversary in Birthright and someone you have to craftilly manipulate in Conquest. Birthright should have been a primarily defensive war, not a boring offensive one (see also: Ephraim route complaints). And yeah, Valla sucks. -
Lyon is great. The protagonists have a strong personal connection to him (and the nuances of the connection are different for each character), we have a backstory which shapes the way he acts, and the "just how much is him and how much is the Demon King" is always fun. Terrific stuff.
Honourable mention to Sephiran, who has a very, very sensible reason to act the way he does. I think most of the major RD villains play their assigned roles pretty well... in contrast to Ashnard who is one of the stupidest villains in the series. (Yes, let's just abandon our home country... I'm sure none of my own soldiers will have any issues with their families being subjugated back home while I sit my ass on the throne of Melior. Armour of invincibility is an incredibly stupid plot point, too.)
Most of the rest are pretty terrible tbh.
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Yeah, but too much customization ruins class / character identity. There has to be a balance and reason to use one class over the other. I'm much more in favor of less class skills and more personal skills, if there are to be skills and re-classing.
In the old games, Raven was a mercenary and Rutger was a swordmaster. It's who they are. Now Selena is a mercenary but also a sky knight but also whatever her partner is? It's great for people who like their units to be whatever, but at least make all skills class locked or personal. Otherwise there is no reason to stay anyone class. Customization is great - too much isn't, I don't think.
I'm not advocating that re-classing be taken away (although I'll be the first to admit I don't like it), but re-classing creates a lot of the problems that I have with skills - and that's that any one character has access to too many. 1/2 skills are neat, but 5!?
I think character identities are still pretty strong. Sure, Selena has access to Sky Knight... with an E rank, and by expending an item which is rather limited for a good while. That makes a huge difference. I agree that character differentiation is good, and that's a good reason to have limited class sets like Fates (as opposed to Shadow Dragon/New Mystery), but I certainly don't feel the series is currently failing to differentiate characters well. In fact, Selena is more distinct from Laslow than, say, Sain is from Kent, because they have a different primary reclass option (as well as different personal skills).
I'd be fine with certain skills being class-locked and I definitely think skill buying hurts the game's skill system (my solution is not to do it), but I do overall like reclassing to gain skills, it introduces some great options. As well as supports opening up class options (also: this is a great way for the first gen to compete with the second, if they insist on having that).
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I'm not a fan of proc skills, since as mentioned you can't really rely on them. We already have a mechanic that covers that niche, it's called critical hits. I don't value such things very highly. That said, I don't think removing them would be a significant improvement (since I don't think their existence hurts the game), and some people like them, so hey whatever.
I actually liked how RD handled them better than most. Everyone gets them, they make Skill slightly less crappy as a stat (still crappy, but they're trying!), and it's a nice little psychological feeling of power for reaching tier 3, even though ultimately they don't impact gameplay that much. And they don't let you instagib the bosses since they get Nihil/Mantle. By contrast when I get Luna as my Level 5 skill in the 3DS games I feel like I've been cheated.
I also like them on bosses (certainly not randoms) since yeah having to plan around bosses using them (or crits) is one of the more fun things about FE boss fights IMO. So I guess that justifies they're continued existence somewhat.
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In fairness, that particular line is pretty easy to just miss altogether, since you could easily take down Aversa using only other characters without the Avatar ever engaging her in combat.
I have to agree, especially since Aversa has higher Res than Def by a fair bit, and Robin is typically oriented towards magic.
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Blaming someone who had a chance to kill teen Zephiel and didn't for Zephiel's later actions is nonsensical. Jaffar and Nino can't see the future.
The only people who deserve blame for Zephiel's actions are Zephiel himself, and his father who drove him to madness by trying to murder him multiple times.
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I didn't like how Awakening did it; randomly generated skills is lazy design and I don't find it very compelling. But I loved how Fates handled enemy skills. You could really see the thought put into enemy setups in a way FE has rarely done in the past, and skills were a big part of that (as were formations and AI wakeup settings). Going back and playing other FEs and watching how easily enemies are manipulated really drives this home for me.
I may be in the minority but really liked Lunge chains, since there were so many valid ways to deal with them (find someone who could tank them, have someone who OHKOs on a counter, or use freeze/entrap/etc.). But if you just charged blindly they'd wreck you. That's really what I want, for FE to make me think about how to approach situations, instead of "throw a big ball of stats at the problem".
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Oscar and Kieran, pretty easily. Kieran is one of my favourite characters in the series; he's just so hilarious, whether it's bouncing off Marcia, Geoffrey, or Oscar. Oscar is pretty bland normally, but his Kieran interactions are some of my favourite comic moments of the Tellius games.
Gameplaywise, I'd say it's reasonably close between PoR Oscar/Kieran, and Alan/Lance. In both cases, some of the best stats in the game + great class + a great support with each other. FE6 and FE9 are the only game where I'd say both Cain/Abel types seriously challenge to be the best unit in the game (along with one or two others, of course). -
There's Venus, as well as variant spelling of other names like Agnus.
Venus is a pretty excellent counterexample, I agree!
Agnus I've never seen as a name (outside this guy). It's a masculine word meaning "lamb", as in Agnus Dei (lamb of god). The woman's name is Agnes... at least usually? I've never seen it spelled Agnus, so I'd honestly assume that if it were spelled that way, it'd be a typo. But I could be wrong.
That said any counterexamples they do exist are rare enough that it doesn't shake my general impression. By naming him Excellus the localizers were giving him a very deliberately masculine name (especially compared to the Japanese version). If they'd wanted him to be gender-ambiguous they could have named him almost anything else (Excella would be a good choice if they really wanted to send mixed signals).
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I don't find most of these weapons too useful in general, though they're free so I'm not going to turn up my nose to one when it appears.
The main exceptions are the raider/etc. weapons (+3 speed is good) and the Sunrise Katana. There are others which I will acknowledge have on-paper use but I've never really gotten much out of them, in part because one of the major things cited as a niche for them over bronze (ability to activity skills) isn't something I care about much typically.
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In NM it's very, very obviously Thany/Shanna. She crushes Tate in avoid and isn't much worse than her in anything else (somewhat less HP IIRC?), and that's before considering her availability lead.
In HM I can see the case for Tate or Zeiss, or Shanna again. I'm not sure.
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I don't think I ever even considered he might be female. While I agree that he looks androgynous, IIRC we learn his name immediately, and names ending in -us are almost invariably masculine. (from Latin: Claudius, Lucius, Gaius, Marcus, Sirius, etc.) Same reason I was never fooled by Lucius, either, and he actually looks distinctly feminine rather than androgynous.
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Bowser's Inside Story I'd have pegged for the most popular in the series; it certainly is in the circles I move in. Because Bowser is awesome. The biggest problem in the M&L games is that Mario and Luigi themselves are silent and rather dull most of the time (though Luigi does manage to be amusing), so a main character with an awesome personality (even if only for about half the time) is a breath of fresh air. Also it shakes up the gameplay in a good way; I find that M&L games often wear thing but BIS distributing things between the two battle styles was enough to hold my attention to the end.
Do you mind if I ask why you think so?
If I had to describe an RPG I expect I would despise, it would have the following:
-uncontrollable allies in a battle system which has no excuse for it (e.g. action RPGs and FFXIII get a pass here, DQ4 NES and P3 do not)
-randomly generated dungeons
-a silent main
-a main (silent or otherwise) who interacts one-on-one with other characters in a very pandery way in which they tell him how awesome he is constantly, because he's you! Sadly this one seems to have gotten more common in recent years, in both JRPGs and WRPGs.
-a battle system which punishes you for taking a critical hit, and gives you no way to control those (I loathed this in DDS too, though DDS didn't have P3's other battle system flaws)
-main character death = game over
-an awful regular battle theme (subjective, I know, but obviously a big factor)
I'm not terribly enamoured with the SMT battle system at base (though they often do pretty good battle design within said system) and really did not like the school setting at all, so the game really had nothing going positive for me, and a heck of a lot that was negative.
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I think it was the All Your Base are Belong to Us music video... except that looking things up, that came out before YouTube, apparently (I probably saw it circa 2002-3). So I must have seen it via some earlier video-sharing service. I'm not sure what specifically was the first thing I used YT for.
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-FFIV isn't really that amazing.
I don't think this one is that unpopular? FF6, FF7, and FFX are all dramatically more popular games, FF8-9 probably are too despite the detractors each has, and I feel like FF4 is even falling behind FF5 these days as Four Job Fiesta keeps the latter more relevant. I dunno.
Some of mine:
-There is absolutely nothing wrong with linearity. I can't stand how it became some sort of byword for bad game design sometime in the late 2000's.
-Zelda games aren't really for me. I've really enjoyed two of them: Zelda 2 and Hyrule Warriors, i.e. the ones which aren't "true' Zelda games. I find the fetchquesty nature of the rest of the series very dull.
-Final Fantasy XIII is one of the best Final Fantasy games, having outstanding gameplay and some really original, compelling characters, in a genre which badly needs them.
-Justice for All is the best game in the original Ace Attorney trilogy by quite a lot.
-The platforming and stage design in Super Mario 64 was awful. The Bowser stages are the only part of that game I liked, and in general it's far worse than the 2D games (Lost Levels and Game Boy games excluded), the 2.5D games, and the Galaxy games.
-Super Mario Bros. 2 (US) is one of the best games in the series.
-Peach being kidnapped game after game quickly moved from disappointing to just plain sad and it's unbelievable we still have to deal with it in the 2010's. (This one may not be that unpopular, but Nintendo is clearly having trouble getting the hint if so!)
-Dark Souls isn't that great, and I say that as someone who loves challenging action games like Devil May Cry. I just don't see what the fuss is.
-The "Metroidvania" Castlevanias basically got better with each entry, with Symphony of the Night having clunky controls and terribly unbalanced, too-easy gameplay while Order of Ecclesia was oustanding. (I've only played about half the ones in the middle, but the trendline sure seems to be there.)
-If you look past its goofy voice acting (and you should because all Mega Man plot deserves to be skipped and/or mocked), Mega Man 8 is one of the best games in the series.
-Persona 3 is one of the absolute worst JRPGs.
-Xenoblade is a mediocre one.
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Mario, since 1989. I lost interest for a while due to not caring for the early 3D Marios but NSMB and Galaxy got me back on the bandwagon.
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Raven's fairly RNG-resistant for an unpromoted PC (that's a big caveat, I know), especially on HHM. A Raven who never gains speed ever is only 1-2 points behind Harken after he promotes, that's how silly his bases are for his level. Both are great, of course, but if you make me choose I'm going to go with Raven with his stats and availability.
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I agree. Amara has amazing animations, but the character is wasted. Both she and Nahyuta suffer from being kinda pushover-y whose blind compliance isn't really that believable, but yeah Amara in particular needed more interactions. Loved her animations on the stand though.
I also completed the game today. I think it's one of the weaker games in the series overall but still good, and certainly far above Apollo Justice. I'd probably rank the cases as 5 > 4 > 2 > 3 > 1, with a notable gap between 2 and 3. None of them are among the best cases in the series, but none are among the worst either.
1 is definitely the worst, even though I liked Gaspen Payne in it a lot. (Which says something because I didn't like him in DD.) The case itself is dull even for a first case.
2 is very solid. Not an all-time great case and certainly some aspects of it pushed belief but fun. Glad to see Trucy relevant again for the first time since AJ.
3 is... I dunno, kinda weak. I think the game wants me to have more sympathy for the culprit(s) than I do. The Anon Imus testimony may also be the biggest waste of time in the series.
4 is good ol'-fashioned fun, I felt like I was playing one of those great midgame cases from the original trilogy for a moment there. Even if localising that one must have been weird and the end product is awkward.
5 has contrivances everywhere and the first investigation day is bad but overall is pretty satisfying anyway; it reminds me a lot of 3-5 in that it's great fun but doesn't really hold up narratively if you stop to think about it.
Sadhmadhi was a weak character, probably one of my least favourite prosecutors in a while. Rayfa was cool though. The game definitely suffers from a lack of compelling new major characters, though, more than almost any other game in the series. Even Apollo Justice, which I consider by far the worst game in the series, I will give credit for introducing some cool new characters. This game did have some fun case-specific characters, though, especially in cases 4 and 5.
Maya was weirdly underused, mostly just turned into a damsel and used as a plot device.
Seances are great. Finding contradictions in them felt fresh and a lot of fun.
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Turn-based.
When it comes strictly to the gameplay of an RPG, the genre has two main strengths. One, they get you to think strategically about what you're doing. Two, you can manage a whole team of characters and think best about how to use them together, instead of just controlling one character like Mega Man. Action RPGs are notably less good at both of these. They attempt a hybrid with action games, but usually end up as mediocre RPGs and mediocre action games both. As far as RPGs with an action/time-requirement, I'm more partial either to games which integrate action either via a timed ATB element (Final Fantasy 4-9/13) or via a timed hit mechanic (Paper Mario, Shadow Hearts series, etc.)... though I tend to still mentally class those as turn-based.
I like some action RPGs, but I don't love any, whereas more turn-based RPGs (such as Fire Emblem, but also Final Fantasy X for an outstanding non-SRPG example) are my favourites. I also really like plenty of pure action games like Devil May Cry, so I think it's something about the hybridisation which doesn't work too well for me. -
Infantalizing and completely dismissing the thoughts and feelings of someone who's already insecure and dealing with a lot of emotional baggage is everything but funny and one of the main reasons as to why I find Camilla to be such an appalling character.
I definitely thought Camilla/Takumi was funny, myself. I wouldn't say she is infantilizing him, though I could see how you get that; it comes across as playful teasing to me. And damned if Takumi doesn't need to be teased. He too often acts like a big child but is surrounded by people who fawn over him anyway (ugh, Oboro x Hinata), and Camilla is one of the few characters who calls him on his bullshit instead of enabling him or just having his issues magically vanish during their support.
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Support system: What led to this review, Fates' support system that's broken and poorly-executed, best example is support rank A+. A character can only reach this with one other character, sometimes the unintended one. This can completely screw a character out of a certain class.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, especially the part about an "unintended" partner. The game warns you that you can only get A+ support and asks for confirmation when you go for it so it's difficult to do by accident, and it certainly isn't the game's fault if you do.
Personally I really like gaining access to classes via A+ and S, it adds a layer of customization that wasn't present for first-gen units in Awakening.
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Hinoka's the least influenced by it, I agree. While the character has Corrin as a primary motivation regardless, it's in a way which sends off the same vibes regardless of Corrin's gender; Corrin is special because s/he's the lost sibling.
By contrast Camilla and Elise's behaviour makes perfect sense for a sister (they're super-tight with each other too, and Corrin is closer in age), but it's far harder to explain if Corrin is their brother, because Leo exists. I know the Camilla/Leo supports try to explain a difference but it's not enough to shake the feeilng for me. -
Leo: I go back and forth between Leo and Xander, but a few days ago my partner and I were leafing through Leo's supports and damn there's just so much good stuff there. He's a nerd but he's very human; competent but riddled by insecurities, but rises above them, and bounces off almost everyone so well. Oh yeah and his design is amazing, more mages in armour plz.
Honourable mentions: Xander, Arthur, Niles, Odin, Azama
Camilla: Her backstory was one of the things I found most interesting about Fates writing, and I love how it shaped her into someone who is simultaneously messed up yet simultaneously admirable and competent. I also like her design a lot (especially that smirk when she matches up well against an enemy), at least when I don't notice the panty window (and fortunately most shots of her hide it).
Honourable mentions: Beruka, Oboro, Elise, Selena, Nina
Female Corrin: I actually prefer her very strongly. To me, male Corrin changes the tone of the game in a few ways to give it some weird kinda sexist tones. You get all five male royals wielding special snowflake Gary Stu weapons (and zero of the women), and the behaviour of some of the female royals comes across as far weirder and more pandery if Corrin is their brother instead of sister. This is just the vibe I get and I'm not saying anyone who doesn't feel them is wrong, but it's enough to more or less ruin male Corrin for me. I alternated between female and male Robin, but with Corrin that isn't happening.
(Male Corrin also has stupid hair.)
Conquest: That gameplay is just so good, and I like its characters quite a lot better than Birthright's on average (in particular, I uh hardly like any Birthright-unique male characters, I noticed). I liked its map music more too, but that could just be an association speaking. Nothing agianst the other two routes; I certainly enjoyed them too. Even Revelation is a lot of fun, despite its plot.
If you could change one major thing about the plot in every Fire Emblem installment, what would it be?
in General Fire Emblem
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I strongly disagree with this. Black Knight in PoR is the real problem, since he literally has no motivation whatsoever besides wanting to test himself on Greil, which I think we all agree is an idiotic motivation. It's only in RD where we see how him being branded drove him to feel isolated and depressed, and this led him to unhealthily idolize first Greil, then the maniplative Sephiran. Without that backstory, the character is garbage.