Dark Holy Elf
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Posts posted by Dark Holy Elf
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The best trueblade in FE10 is either Zihark or Mia, and they're difficult to compare. Both are quite good on their own paths (Zihark really good at first), so it depends if you value Zihark helping out on a harder route more, or the fact that Mia will be stronger going into part 4/endgame. I could see voting either way on this one.
Edward isn't even in the conversation. As has already been observed, his "greater potential" is a myth; he beats Mia in nothing beyond a barely-relevant amount of concrete durability, and that's it. Even Zihark, who has worse stats, is probably better at Endgame due to earth supports, since the stat disadvantage is only slight and earth affinity is far better than light affinity for a swordmaster (or almost anyone, really). And of course, both crush him at every point before Endgame.
Re the FE9 discussion which has randomly spiralled off, I think Mia vs. Zihark is a decent fight but not one worth caring about given that both are mediocre and generally inferior to Ike, Makalov, and Stefan as sword-users. -
I don't like Knights much but pair up makes Kellam better than many of his predecessors (not amazing or anything, but okay enough), since he can pair up with someone more mobile and then they can switch to him when his tanking is needed. Works best with someone who already has good speed but could use more Str/Def, e.g. Sumia (would be an amazing combination if they could support), Sully, Cordelia, etc. Obviously he's not as good as Frederick but there's no shame in that.
As a character, I find his gimmick pretty funny. *shrug* -
Like a couple other people here, the elder Nohr royals are my favourites appearance-wise, honourable mentions to Leo, Nishiki, Belka, Rinkah.
I'm also sad at how much of a minority my opinion is... :( I find Camilla to be very ugly and Xander to be ugly too.At the risk of stating the obvious... there's no reason to feel sad about having differing opinions on which characters (or people, for that matter) are attractive! Different people have different tastes and that's okay.
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Since it hasn't been mentioned yet: Bishop gets boosted Exp growth (by ~50%?), Sage does not. That makes the choice clear even if Slayer weren't on the table, IMO.
The boosted exp doesn't affect staves, but if you plan to use nothing but staves anyway, you might as well still go Bishop and get the boost to staff exp because nothing else matters (although realistically that won't matter either). EDIT: Oh wait, no, Espinosa is correct, the +1 magic is probably most important for a pure staffbot.
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I liked:
-Good plot/characters by the standards of the series, particularly the villain cast as mentioned. Lyon is a great character, and I also like Valter and Orson a lot too.
-Branching promotions.
-A high level of polish: you can shop between chapters, no reinforcements acting the turn they appear, HM available on a fresh file, etc. It seems like almost every Fire Emblem screws something like this up, FE8... really doesn't.
It's not the most exceptional game in the series but it generally does most things pretty well at worst. My biggest issue with it is that NM sucks (they screwed up the stats for promoted enemies), but since NM is these days lower challenge than I like from FE, I don't actually care any more. -
I always figured it was to help out Edward and Zihark a bit, since they come out of part 3 almost surely still in tier 2 (especially Edward), so this lets them catch up to Mia more quickly in terms of wielding the SS-rank swords. And swordmasters, having only one weapon type, feel like they more badly deserve to be caught up in sword rank than, say, Reavers or Dragonlords of Generals in their respective weapons.
Although there's also a decent chance it was just someone entering the wrong number into a database. To be fair, it's not the first such oddity in series history (e.g. steel axe at a lower weapon rank than other steels in FE6-9), and at least this one is relatively meaningless in practice.
(To respond to the original topic, I would consider Micaiah and Ike to be co-mains.) -
I believe is pronouced Levelin, but I'm not sure if it is the only way to pronouce it.
I've never heard it pronounced with a v, myself, and the pronunciation listed in Wikipedia pronounces it as a w. I've generally heard it pronounced with some variation of Luh-well-in (second syllable stressed) or Lew-well-in (either first or second syllable stressed).
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I really hope game devs aren't basing decisions based on YouTube comments or video gaming will be in the toilet by 2020.
Walletvoting is, I suspect, really effective as a verdict on the entirety of a purchase, like a pierce of DLC, a movie, or the entirety of a game. It is terribly ineffective if you dislike some aspects of a game, and like others, because you can't really send a good message about what parts you do and don't like with it. It would be interesting if FE-amie were a DLC thing because then we'd be able to much more easily communicate whether it's a desired feature or not. (And I'd be very, very curious about the numbers...)
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I have to disagree with this. If we were looking at Ike using Radiant Dawn in a void, then this would be true. But to really analyze Ike you have to look at both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. In PoR, what happens immediately after Greil dies? Shinon and Gatrie leave the company, and Shinon was a lot more hostile about it. Mist and Rolf decide that they can't stand back and watch anyone else die and join the group, and even then in chapter 8 the team was almost wiped out.
Ike gets handed the leadership of the Greil Mercenaries despite the fact that he's 16-17 and there are many other competent, more senior members of the group to lead it (Titania most obviously) because... his dad led it I guess? But everyone gushes about what a good leader Ike will be, I pretty much remember that being the majority of the Ike/Oscar support which I get every single playthrough and am thankful the start button is a thing. The one character who disagrees with this decision, Shinon, is a composite of negative traits: racist, money-loving, disrespectful to his comrades. His disliking Ike kinda gets thrown in with that, I never got the feeling I was supposed to agree with him even though he has a decent point about not wanting to follow some kid just because he was Greil's son.
I do agree that he had to work to get some of what he earns (particularly Sanaki's trust. Sanaki is one of the most refreshing characters in PoR because of this) but he gets an awful lot with very little effort: the leadership of the Greil Mercenaries, the respect of all of them except the one you're told is an unsympathetic douchebag (and Gatrie I guess, but Gatrie is generally shown as weak-willed and easily pushed around by Shinon, and joins up pretty fast when you meet him again), the respect of everyone who knew Greil (who himself is a huge Gary Stu, but I digress), particularly Caineghis. There are worse than him in the series, but even in Ike's less Stu-y game he's a pretty problematic character I feel.
I haven't played Fates yet but I think Fire Emblem in general has a big problem with these sorts of characters and it's a big reason why it's less respected for writing than various other RPG series.
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Doubt it'll be censored. There's a pretty similar scene in Hyrule Warriors and it was left untouched. And from a purely self-serving standpoint for Nintendo of America/Europe, it's a virtual certainty that removing this scene would lose them more sales than it gains them, and net them more bad publicity than good.
As usual I am shaking my head at the fact that people consider this to be more censor-worthy than, I dunno, all the violent warfare present in the game.
(I say this as someone with no particular opinion on the scene itself.)
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Llewelyn is hardly some obscure, unpronounceable name. It has appeared in another prominent RPG before (Valkyrie Profile) and is the last name of the actor who played Q in James Bond films for like 40 years, apart from being a real, normal name which real English-speaking people have.
Dunno who it might be, besides someone on the Nohr side.
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My two cents about this:
First of all, I do think it's absolutely possible for an optional feature to hurt a game. The hypothetical "rape simulator" already posed is a good example. Even if it were totally optional, and even if it were approved by the ESRB/similar organisations (or such organisations didn't exist), it's hard to argue that such a "feature" would not hurt a game overall, and that "well you can just ignore it" is not an acceptable defence. Obviously FE-amie/skinship is nowhere near that crass, but the point is that there certainly exists a line beyond which optional features become detrimental to their game no matter how optional they may be.
Is FE-amie over that line? That, I think, is far more debatable. Even in this thread there are pretty reasonsed arguments why it may or may not be. And where that line is depends on exactly what you're looking for in the game, or what your standards are. For my part (and people are by no means obliged to agree with me), I think FE-amie does hurt the game in some ways. Even if the game is perfect in all other ways, I suspect the FE-amie feature would seriously hurt the game in a "best game of all time" discussion that we might have 20 years later. A game which you are willing to hold as among the most complete and artistically sound should have a coherent tone, and I think feeling up your characters interferes with that tone. Other people have already made the arguments here; I basically agree with them.
However, if we step back from such lofty standards, then I don't think FE-amie will hurt the game much to me. Hell, I'll probably toy with it myself. As far as "silly optional fun" goes it seems pretty harmless, once I resign myself to taking the game's writing less completely seriously (which I pretty much have to do with every Fire Emblem ever anyway). So I see both sides pretty well here, and I agree with either depending on exactly what my standards for the game are.
Regarding Sakurai's comments specifically, I definitely understand where he's coming from. His games have often featured separate modes which for whatever reason generate ire from certain segments of the fanbase. I personally do not like Smash Run, Smash Tour, or Subspace Emissary, but I do agree that optional side modes aren't going to do much to hurt a fighting game which ultimately is about its fun multiplayer experience. So I basically agree with him completely. The only thing that differentiates something like FE-amie is that, unlike optional Smash modes, it is possible to take a moral/tone-related objection with its very existence. (Again, not saying that one must, but that it's possible. Nobody should be offended by Smash Run etc. on the other hand.) -
Like everyone else said, play whatever you want. You're already living out a fictional world with magic, dragons, and who knows what else, I don't think it's that more of a stretch to live it out as a gender and/or sexuality which isn't yours in real life.
The only time it is wrong to play a Female Avvy in any game ever is if your That Guy in a DnD session
But since it's impossible to be That Guy in Fire Emblem, go the fuck ahead.
What is "That Guy" in D&D in this context? I associate the term with someone who is a jerk at the D&D table in various ways, but not sure how these would relate to gender necessarily.
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I do think Majora's Mask is probably the better comparison, as already mentioned. Awakening is the FE's Ocarina of Time: it was the most critically acclaimed game of the series and hit the highest sales figures in a series whose previous best-selling game (Zelda 1, or FE3/7... not sure which it is worldwide) was by that point a distant memory. Both games had some complaints from hardcore fans of the series but were loved by most and brought many new players into the series' fanbase. So by that token, Fates is logically the Majora's Mask: a game for the same system as the previous, with a bold premise (the time cycling of MM, the choice/split routes of Fates) and many mechanical changes despite using the same core engine. Fortunately, Fates isn't being released in the dying days of the N64, so hopefully it'll be a bit more successful. :)
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I thought Dual Destinies was great, myself. Both the final case (I'm counting 4 and 5 as one case, here) and the DLC case are two of the best cases in the series, and I really enjoyed all the new characters. They handled the multiple protagonists bit waaay better than PW3 ("play as Mia!" ... in two short, unexciting cases) or AJ (in which Phoenix completely upstaged Apollo). I find it really weird that someone could prefer Apollo Justice to it, since I thought that game was just a mess. I wrote some stuff here ranting about it but decided nobody really wanted to read that much negativity and deleted it.
FWIW 1-5 and 5-5 didn't feel that similar to me. Hell, 1-5 is pretty close to my least favourite thing in the series, while 5-5 is very close to the other end. So even if there are a few similarities, there are also some drastic differences, and anyway case can have similar ideas but vastly different executions.
I also thought AA3 was easily the worst game in the main series though, which seems to be a very uncommon opinion.
Mmm I dunno about "easily" but I tend to agree. It's a lot of fun (fourth case aside) but its serious plot is rather muddled and I really did not care for Godot. Still an excellent game though, I like all of them a lot except AJ (which still has some things going for it to be clear!). But it's... possibly second worst to me. Not sure how I feel about it vs. AAI2.
Anyway it's always hard to know how much any writer is responsible for a game's writing being good, and this goes double for games which are localised - Ace Attorney owes a lot to its localisation IMO, one of the best in the business. And well I have zero faith in Fire Emblem to compete with Ace Attorney for writing. But still, this announcement strikes me as a good thing.
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They seem to just be taking the easy way out.
Mo' of that stuff = mo' money. From a business perspective, it's to be expected.
Yet at the same time, they took the time and effort to balance Fates and introduce mechanics, enough effort that more than a few people on here are calling it one of the best in the series, gameplay-wise.
It feels like they're trying to appease everyone, but sooner or later (it's beginning to seem like sooner) they're going to have to confront whether they want to cater to their classic fans or just sell the series on fanservice. I'm both very excited and scared to see this happen.
They're very obviously trying to have the best of both worlds. From all accounts, they aren't just trying to sell the games on fanservice, as all indications show they've put more thought into the gameplay of Fates than they have any game in the series in a long time. But they add in the fanservice because they have figured that it brings in more new players than it scares away. And they're almost certainly right.
So yeah I don't think this confrontation is a thing which is going to happen.
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I wouldn't say I am pro-"censorship" but I am absolutely pro-localising, meaning that text is adapted for its audience rather than just directly translated. Some of my absolute favourite games writing-wise in recent years have been the Ace Attorney series and Kid Icarus: Uprising, both of which featured localisations which were not afraid to change the text to make it funnier or more appropriate for a Western audience. In Fates' case I'm certainly expecting a few supports to be changed significantly (as Cordelia's cup size angst was) and will applaud that in certain cases, and I won't shed any tears if skinshipping vanishes either. I want the localisers to go for whatever maximises the game's success and credibility in the local markets, for the most part.
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Entertainment has all of the reason to give the entertainee what they want; after all, they want the entertainee to enjoy it enough to pay for it. It's just that some of us don't want shoddy writing as the cost for wish fulfillment. I don't like it either, but I understand why they do it, at least.
Some of us don't like this type of writing, but I've met a ton of people who just eat it right up. Unfortunately, this is just what we're stuck with until they add some sort of compromise(like dialogue trees, as Loki mentioned on the page before).
I don't want shoddy writing as a cost for wish fulfillment, but I also don't want wish fulfillment, period, or at least not so much that it is distracting or limits the types of protagnoists you can write. And I don't think I'm that alone; I think people want wish-fulfillment less than they think they do, and the history of popular fiction backs me up. How many great works of fiction strongly feature wish fulfillment? Not very many, or at the very least it is balanced out by other things (e.g. Frodo's journey to save the world may at first be seen as wish-fulfilling, but the experience is generally awful, he is constantly made to feel weak, learns to distrust most of his friends, and ends up a broken shell of the person he was at the start of the story). Even within a more wish-fulfilly genre like fantasy, the works generally held up as greats involve flawed or weak protagonists, and are better for it. Video games are generally worse about pandering, being a bit more juvenile for whatever reason (they're still often seen as "for kids" even as increasingly the majority of players are adults), but the same principle about more-respected stories featuring less wish fulfillment generally holds true. I don't think it's a coincidence that the most popular non-pokemon JRPG of all time (Final Fantasy VII) features an extremely flawed and messed up protagonist.
I agree with this. Lets face it, all of the Fire Emblem protagonists have been some degree of stu/sue. If anything Robin/Reflet was a partial exception due to being in a weird shared main protagonist spot with Chrom, allowing him/her to be less perfect special snowflake. If you really dig into his/her supports, Robin has some serious security issues, as seen from M!Robins tendency to be very passive and often get shut down in disputes by people talking over him and F!Robin's tendency to overreact and act overly agressive when faced with criticsm. Still has the whole "mostly everyone loves me for no reason" and "automatically tactics jesus", though
I agree, but (a) I think that's certainly a part of why FE isn't among the greats of the genre for writing and (b) it seems like it is getting worse.
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I generally dislike player worship, and am sad to see FE moving further in that direction. I actually didn't think Robin was too bad about this by video game standards, myself, but it sounds like Corrin definitely is. I don't need a game to talk up what an awesome person I am, thanks, and I need it even less to talk up what an awesome person the main character is when I don't identify with him/her (which is almost always these days; I'm way too old to identify with teenagers).
I hate how many characters seem to be madly in love with the main character for little given reason (sigh, Camilla, you sounded so cool for a while...), how the game seems unwilling to let the main character be wrong, and how the main character can romance literally anyone of the opposite gender because what could be more unthinkable than someone who doesn't want to have a relationship with you?
It obviously is popular to some extent as people have noted, which I find kind of sad, because I definitely think it limits the types of stories games can tell and helps keep the genre from being reaching the potential it could reach.
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It sounds like we got at least two games' worth of content, which I'm pretty ecstatic about. Anyone thinking that they should have gotten all this content for the price of one game is dreaming. One game that cost $80-100, perhaps, but I doubt people would be happier about that. (I know I wouldn't be.)
Maybe people would have been happier with another Path of Radiance or Shadow Dragon/New Mystery again, i.e. one normal-to-short-length FE game at full price, but what they actually went with sounds more interesting to me.
Also I don't get the problem with Day 1 DLC? It's optional content. You can buy it if you feel it is worth it, or not if you don't. Mario Kart 8's tracks were released after the game itself (which has a lot more to do with marketing strategies to keep the game relevant months after its release rather than any sort of "favour" to gamers) but would you really complain if they had been available day 1? They would still be tracks beyond the number that had been in any previous Mario Kart, so you can't call them content that were cut from the main game for DLC purposes, but rather content that was only created for DLC purposes.
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In this thread, you kill Karel if you recruit Harken, you kill Wallace if you recruit Geitz, and you kill Karla and Farina every time you play Eliwood route.
If it's not clear, my answer to the question is "I don't care at all about recruiting all the children". <.<
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Maybe the problem is that people put too much of their stock in their sexual identity?
If I were gay, I wouldn't flaunt my orientation as my identity. I wouldn't be super into the communal aspect. Sure, it'd be a hotly controversial part of me, and a part of me that will affect things I do, but it wouldn't be something I really put investment into. It'd just be part of who I am and that's it.
See if I were to put a lot of stock in that, I believe I'd be pretty offended at anything resembling opposition to that. I'd probably be pretty militant against stuff like this. I would be really into everything related to this part of me and dedicate my time, resources, and energy to it all. Like, I know me. When I'm really into something, I'm REALLY into something. This doesn't apply to everyone but you get my point?
So maybe, just maybe, people should not put so much stock in their sexual identity?
It's pretty easy to not put much stock in your sexual identity if it's one everyone assumes is the default: one which doesn't put you at far greater risk of bullying, social ostracisation, and extreme cases your family disowning you and/or suicide. If you haven't had to deal with that, don't presume to judge the choices of those who have.
Really, the biggest mistake Intelligent Systems had made was actually introducing gay marriage into the game. Now every tiny detail related to characters' appearance, dialogue, relationships with people of the opposite sex, of the same sex, etc. will be scrutinised (or casually misrepresented as something else) by the craziest and most hysterical dwellers of the internet. I promise you this is just the first of the many, many ridiculously asinine gay FE scandals still to come, all because IS put themselves into the spotlight with that first notorious decision.
The game would have gotten some bad press for being 100% heteronormative anyway... y'know, like Awakening already did. Not enough to dent its success, of course, and Fates will be the same way. Just based on my casual observations so far I believe the announcement of the gay marriage options (which was official and Nintendo-sourced, unlike this narrow-reaching clickbait crap we've seen for articles on this topic) has done far more to enhance the game's publiciity than things like this have done to drag it down, and I can't see that changing.
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I'm pretty psyched at the comments that it's actually balanced and requires strategy as to when to use it and when not to. This game seems to be fixing pretty much every complaint I had about Awakening's gameplay which is wonderful.
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In Fates the calculations for damaging an opponent with an effective weapon have changed a little bit. Here's how it changed:
Damage in FE1/13 = Str/Mag + (Weapon Might * 3) - Enemy's Def/Res
Damage in FE14 = (Str/Mag + Weapon Might) * 3 - Enemy's Def/Res
Ugh, why did they do this. FE13 already IMO went too far with the super-forged weakness-hitting weapons allowing too many one-shots, this will just make those OHKOs all but inevitable. I guess that's a valid design goal (and goodness knows flyers need the arrow weakness to keep them from being ridiculously OP) but it feels like a strategic blunt instrument to toss out OHKO units like that.
Does anyone else have a hard time choosing Nohr (conquest)?
in Fire Emblem Fates
Posted
I tried to come at the choice from a roleplaying perspective and I chose Nohr, though with some reservations. I get why some people are saying Hoshido is "obvious", and if I were an impartial third party I would also counsel Corrin to side with Hoshido. But... in his/her shoes? There's no way I could betray the siblings I had spent my entire life growing up with and close to (and the game sells you very well on the bond they share). I would want to stay with them and protect them, and if my dad were super-evil, well, we'd try to do something about that I guess. I'd probably even want to see if I could get through to my dad and make him be less evil. Seems easier to accomplish if all five of his children worked together.
Having said that, for all that I'm on Team Nohr, I don't really have a problem for the game judging you for it. It's an in-character choice to make, for sure, but it's arguably not the "right" one, and if that choice leads to more bloodshed/bad things for the world (seems possible; I'm only at chapter 9!), then Corrin feeling guilt about the choice seems immensely believable!