Augestein

The story haha. I'm so glad you decided to hit up the bars/taverns as well. Beautiful.

Spells are decently accurate with decent faith (like not sub 50 on both caster and the target) between both targets and compatibility to help. Raise/Life will definitely have 100% accuracy with "not bad compatibility" and decent MA (pretty much any mage class or a Geomancer with magical boosting equips). If it's still too inaccurate, you could inflict the faith status effect on yourself with equips or the faith inducing skill from the Oracle/Seer class. Tactics Ogre PSP (the original absolutely did not use this, it used the same Fire Emblem system) is the exact same system as Final Fantasy Tactics with a person having the ability to "die" 3 times over the course of the game before they die forever. The three turns are still three turns because the timer goes down based off of the fallen's CT. So unless the person's speed is something ridiculoulsly over everyone else's, you should have around 12 of your units' turns to revive them. I feel like if you didn't revive someone in that long of a time by any of your allies, I feel like that's a fair response to lose a unit, because even in Tactics Ogre PSP, if you ignored your ally like that 3 times, they're dead. The only difference between TO: PSP and FFT at that point is that you'd have lost 3 units in FFT as opposed to 1. Which I guess is "nicer" but it's not exactly better for being more forgiving.

I actually like the idea of FoW too, but that might be because I played RTS first so a strategy game without FoW was kinda strange to me initially.

I'm confused on how giving you a turn counter to revive a person is a bad mechanic. Like a "so bad I quit" mechanic. You are literally given 3 turns to revive a fallen comrade or they die. This literally means that you can finish the fight before they reach 0 or just revive them, and each time they die, it starts at 3. It's honestly one of the better "fallen" mechanics for a game with perma-death. And no, it's not incomparable. They are both SRPGs with perma-death.

As opposed to Fire Emblem's instant death upon someone's hp reaching 0? I really don't understand how this is bad mechanic.

Bingo. Brave also affects Knight sword damage, fist, and Katana damage as well. Low Faith means less accuracy on status effects as well. It's not entirely true about magic though, as there are magical attacks that don't use faith: Draw Out / Iaido, and Geomancy / Elemental attacks are also registered as magical damage (despite having PA in their formula as well). I like the idea of Brave and Faith, it's just not used very well. There's also Malik's Hell Skill which uses the reverse of the formula and Rapha's/Rafa's skills also ignore faith. Most people don't even bother to do it as it's a complete pain in the butt. If you want to do it pretty fast, I recommend using Threaten (or whatever it's called in the PSP version. The Mediator move that lowers brave) on Rafa/Rapha. Losing brave is very slow unless you're using "chicken" from Chocobo which you need BeastMaster/ Monster Skill for that. I actually don't know if it's in the PSP version of FFT to be honest, as there are some things removed from the PSP like Spell quote text. The PSP version is much more difficult to have people desert than the original version of the game. In the original Tactics Ogre, people lost loyalty every single time they got knocked out and revived, and it was incredibly easy to get OHKOed at moments. The only way to gain it was through dialogue choices, MVP (a bonus which was the result of killing many enemies with 1 unit and a free level for the unit that did it and bonus EXP, I can't find an image for that either to be honest), or leveling on non-training fights (this was also a removed mechanic from the original Tactics Ogre). In the PSP version, you can still see loyalty via using the select button and going on their name. The messages are catered within the unit's alignment. It's super obscure. Anyway, in the original for instance, Arycelle would auto-leave if you chose in route for chaos for instance, and all of your Bacrum soldiers took a much larger hit for loyalty than they did in the PSP Version. PSP version, I believe she simply loses 80 loyalty, which considering she had 100 when you actually get her, it's not as bad as getting -100 like the original had. The PSP version actually takes a lot more cues from FFT to be honest and ends up being a hybrid of both. With some extra pains that ultimately somehow make me like it less than both FFT and the original Tactics Ogre despite the fact that with most of its changes, it *should* be better. Also, I forgot to mention I agree with the fact that "better than a bad mechanic" doesn't make it a good mechanic, but you have to understand that it was a massive improvement over the original cryptic version. I'm actually really looking forward to this, as I don't think the game has necessarily aged poorly, just that it has a ton of broken mechanics-- like many strategy RPGs. It's just not a very tactical game but it's a good strategy game for building units. It's funny because I feel that FFT and Tactics Ogre (original and remake) as well as Knights of Lotus all have decent foundations but make some atrocious decisions all over the place that stop it from being a "mileage may vary" sort of thing. PSP Tactics Ogre for instance? It has so many things that drive me bonkers that it's not even funny.

Of which never gets off the ground of going anywhere. Racism is very superficial. It doesn't really deal with several issues outside of "racism is bad." The closest thing we get for that is Jill and maybe Naesala (which is ruined by RD BTW). But considering she's not the main character, it's barely a focus of the story. But rather, a subplot. a good one, but a subplot nonetheless. It fits in with the story, but it's not really complicated, because it's never something Ike himself needs to focus on or even understand for that matter. Corrupt nobles? That's still simple. It's just a standard obstacle in the heroes' path. It doesn't cause Ike to reflect on anything except "man, I really hate nobles! See? Look, they suck." FE6 Hector however...? He's undeniably bigger than RD Ike.

It is simple. It's quite literally the Hero's Journey: Fire Emblem Edition. It just has a lot of nice things like base conversations and decent character interaction to help make it more enjoyable. As for Hector, take a look at that mountain of muscle for Fire Emblem 6. FE7 Hector is buffer than FE9 Ike, but FE6 Hector is a slab! Even FE7 Hector is pretty big though... Look at how tiny Farina looks in that ending picture with them. Or heck, Florina! He's totally holding her on his shoulder. If I tried that with a woman I'd be crushed.

I thought I should clarify things about the zodiac systems. These are all expansions on the systems in Tactics Ogre. In Tactics Ogre, there were elements Fire, Water, Earth and Wind. Fire did more damage to Water and vice versa, and Earth and Air were paired together as well. Using Earth elements gave damage boosts etc for matching correct spells. It was meant to be a more elaborate version of that. The problem? No one knows the freaking zodiacs off hand on a first playthrough, so you're going to be spending more time looking at the status menu or having a piece of paper next to you to remember them. The idea of having the zodiac teams is actually a pretty solid idea to be honest: it allows some actual variation in damage differences between units without having random variance on damage and making it unpredictable. All damage can be calculated by considering PA, WA etc right off the bat, so that is kinda nice. It encourages you to have a team of units that have good compatibility chains with one another. I'd argue that THIS system itself isn't bad, what's bad is that you can't create units and dictate what their signs etc. are when you recruit them, so it requires constantly entering and exiting the Soldier Office Menus to get what you want. This is actually a better system than Chaos Frame from Tactics Ogre to be honest. In Tactics Ogre, people had different factions, races, and alignment that affected their liking to your leader, and would determine if the unit would stay or go. And the game didn't actually show numbers for what the units were for raising loyalty either. So you'd just get warning messages that some character hated you and you had no idea WTF you were supposed to do stop this from happening. With Faith, that's not entirely true about the person leaving without warning. You did get warnings. A bright red flashing text of "WARNING" would flash on the screen at you. And the character would start saying crazy nonsense. Incidentally, the same thing happens if your unit's brave gets to low as well. They leave because they are too afraid to fight. Considering that you have the mediator class to regulate these stats and no Faith alteration ever happens in the game, having a unit leave for faith would simply be the player's fault. Unlike Loyalty from Tactics Ogre, where you could simply recruit a person that has low loyalty and they immediately leave a battle or two later. The faith value has to be at >94 IIRC for them to leave. So you have to royally botch this to even have that happen.

He hates rag-tag groups of heroes. He never confronts Hector about his beef with him and yet rages over something that he could just... You know, talk to them about? Silly Raven. He looks cool though.

Nah. Sometimes people laugh a bit delayed because they might be laughing with company. I know once my group of friends laughed a bit longer at a joke than normal because we were also laughing at how it resembled an inside joke that we already had before the movie. So I'd imagine that sometimes people are in the same boat. Sometimes humor is funnier to other people, and sometimes people are more likely to laugh at things than others.

For Fire Emblem, I honestly would. There simply isn't enough time to make a well crafted plot when every stretch of the game demands that you fight. Take something like Saga Frontier 2 for instance. Gustav's path is actually pretty well written all things considered. But if you'll notice, Gustav's path has very little fighting in comparison to Wil Knights' arc. And all of the bad parts of the story are definitely from Wil Knights. It's why plots like FE1 work so well, because it gives the player an excuse to fight without bogging the plot down with a bunch of nonsense. Crafting a compelling story where diplomacy absolutely cannot be used in any way, really puts a damper on things. No Fire Emblem game for instance is going to have you hire a hitman to track down key faction leaders and end them before they pull off a coup de grace on your lord unit. It'd be awesome, and things like that would add some interesting depth... But sadly, I don't know how you'd make that fun in a Fire Emblem game. Fair enough. If that's the case, yeah, I can see how they can etch out a little more ire than the BP. Both are pretty wretched so 1 being worse is like choosing which arm you'd rather lose.

IMO, I think what makes a FE plot good/great are these components. This is going to kinda be long so bear with me... 1) Clear objectives for both the heroes and the villains they oppose. IE, Sacred Stones has Grado wanting to destroy the stones, and the protagonist's goal is simply to stop this from happening. The path splits reveal character motivations in subplots but the main plot is laid out and simple and are attributes that may not directly tie into the . Compare this to say... Radiant Dawn where there are a bunch of subplots that make up the main bulk of the plot. That's not to say that it's inherently bad to do this, but they DO NOT connect very well despite the writer's best attempts. Part 2 may "address" what happened in part 1, but part 2 does not happen because of part 1. It was pretty much its own story. The end result is that in order to involve everyone in part 3, poorly conceived plot points are needed to be crafted to cause 3 to happen, and by the time part 4 rolls around, there's no real way to fix all of the problems part 3 had and the story is just kinda of there. The villain's goals are finally revealed, and they are kind of a muddled mess in comparison to say... The clarity of Ashnard or Medeus. Ashnard's goal is clear, so the Tellius game can instead opt to focus on the character's an their own priorities and motivations because the villain is simple. Compare this to say Fates where the goals of the characters aren't clear. Who is our antagonist for Fates? Well, Garon could be construed as the villain for Fates, but the issue is that Garon's motivations aren't clear as the more you learn about him-- of what little there is, the more you realize that Garon isn't even really "Garon," so you're left wondering who , or what you're opposing. Or even if he's simply the victim. The reason that people say Birthright works is because it's considerably simpler. Garon = bad and as Corrin put it "pure evil," and the game never stops to question anything on this route. The story works better here because the only goal is to beat Nohr. It's still abysmal in its writing as motivations still aren't well done for some characters like say... Xander but it's still easier to stomach as a plot than Conquest personal bias aside, it's still more competently written even if it's not by much. 2) Believable enough motivations on behalf of the characters. You know why people sometimes site they hate Nergal? Because Nergal doesn't even clearly remember what the hell he's doing. And there are several enough moments where Nergal could literally just rip half of the characters to shreds, gather the quintessence himself, get enough power to open the gates and overrun the entire continent of Elibe, but he doesn't... Because...? Because he might remember some shred of humanity? Oh wait, he doesn't because in Hector Mode getting all of the Gaiden chapters reveals that he doesn't remember why he wouldn't until you kill him. The end is that you're left scratching your head on what the hell is wrong with Nergal that he doesn't just make himself win when that's his goal. Compare that to Zephiel that is essentially doing the same thing as Nergal, but he makes a better villain because he does everything he can to accomplish his goal with no strange aspects stopping him from doing his goal. Fates does this too: Hey Azura, what's your goal? To not have Nohr and Hoshido fight? Well she not only fails to do this in 2/3 of the routes, but actively ensures that one of the countries gets destroyed. Please, explain game, why did she do that? A plot curse? It didn't stop her in Revelations. What gives? Little things like this add up and are the reason that Fates' story kinda sucks. In other words, simple = good while complicated = bad. Fire Emblem games don't really work well with complex stories because every moment must inevitably dwindle down to the characters needing to take up arms against an opponent. Of which, there really isn't going to be much talking with your opponent at that point outside of reacting to their tactics and strategies. Had Fates simply been "pick a side: defeat the other side," this could have been a great story, but instead, it opts to muddle this by having Corrin try to save Hoshido by destroying Hoshido. Seriously, had Corrin joined Nohr and said "screw Hoshido, I hate it, and I'll never side against my family! Adoptive or no!" I think pretty much every problem with Conquest would have flown out of the window. If Corrin doesn't care about Hoshido's fate in this case, and I can even sympathize with him more in this regard. Even if it makes Corrin come across as a colossal jerk, it's believable that a person might do this. I know I'm in the minority on this, and I don't really like either set of plot points, but I honestly find the BP to be worse than Valla's Word Curse. Valla's Word Curse IMO falls under a premise for Revelations' plot. It's stupid, but I can accept a dumb premise for a plot as opposed to simply a stupid plot point like the "Crystal Orb" or "The Magical Throne." Word Curse is basically like me saying "I want to make a story about a dog turning into an apple." It's absolutely idiotic in premise, but I'm walking in seeing this house of stupid. It's not something that totally blindsides the plot and retroactively changes character motivations and behaviors.

This. The story is at its best at Chapter 1 and from there it becomes a train wreck.

*Miss* I think they'll keep true hit gone at the very least. I expect the insanity that is Fates' RNG.

I don't mind some of the redesigns, as a lot of them DID need to be cleaned up. Gaiden portraits somehow looks worse than even Fire Emblem 1 portraits. And skin color changes I don't mind because that's something that literally cannot be done due to technical limitations-- maybe they always wanted that but couldn't because of the limitations. The only game I can think of that actually took the time to bother with skin complexions in an 8-bit world was Mario Tennis GBC. Alex was created to be noticeably darker than anyone else in the game. It was... Jarring to say the least, as it subsequently caused everyone else to be pasty white. It's not like say... Awakening's redesign of Roy where they just completely abandon Roy's base design when Roy's base design was clearly defined enough.

Awakening suffers from bland maps more than Birthright does. After the first 6 chapters, most of them are just wide open fields or straight path corridors that you can run down with no reason to split up, no mini-objectives or any incentives to use multiple characters outside of Robin with Chrom inside of him. Ryoma's Rajinto can definitely help you to win in Birthright, but even he still has tangible hit rates on him enough and he still gets 3HKOed or less in Lunatic. Robin on the other hand, doesn't even need to really "grind" just have most of the EXP funneled into him. You can easily have Chrom be Robin's pair up partner and survive all of the game this way. Robin can easily do this. Place Chrom inside of Robin, and Robin has access to the convoy at all moments. Robin I'd argue can solo the game even easier than Ryoma because Robin has access to every skill in the game that isn't gender locked or an exclusive class skill like Shadowtouch. Plus, it had uninhibited Nosferatu, which is just gross. For me personally, it's not even the fact that enemies have enemy only skills that get me. It's the fact that you practically need a guide to deal with a good deal of them, because of ambush spawns + some skill that there's no way you could have even known existed screwing you over--AKA Hawkeye and Counter the first time you see that they can possibly exist on a spectrum of moves available. Sure, once you know it exist you can plan for it in future runthrough but that's quite the problem considering that if ambush spawns couldn't happen, this would have made the enemy only skills far less frustrating. Lunatic+ I'd argue is grossly unfair because regular Lunatic was already insanely unfair to begin with. Lunatic+ could have been really fun for a lot of people if they had literally just kept randomized skills in, but the ambush spawns make it a trial of memorization of spawns or a LTC playthrough to keep your sanity intact. When I beat it, I think most of my maps were beaten in like... 4 turns. Which is impressive that a game can jam you in such a bad position that you DO play really well, but I think it's for the wrong reasons. The jump from normal to hard is pretty noticeable once you get to promoted enemies if you're trying to use everyone. I'd honestly say that there should have been 5 difficulties, but it seems that "Casual" was used as a difficult modifier as well. Normal Casual, Normal Classic, Hard Casual, Hard Classic... I especially say this, because beating Lunatic in Casual doesn't actually unlock Lunatic+ Classic. Very suspicious indeed... @Magillanica Lou Mayvin: Lunatic+'s enemy only skills aren't even that bad honestly in the sense that they are 100% activation. In this regard this makes it better because it removes all of the RNG from what they do. The issue is that the enemies' stats are so stupidly high and they all zerg rush the player combined with ambush spawns makes for a nightmare. Counter is by far the worst skill enemies can have on Lunatic+ and it's not even enemy only. Because in Awakening, it doesn't just activate on Player Phase. It activated on both... Which is a pile of garbage.

That's a nice story. I'll probably post one later when I'm not on the phone.

I found the character designs to be superior in Fates tbh. In Awakening, there's some very distracting and stupid looking armor in the game. I do like the coloration though. In terms of balance, I honestly can't say Awakening is more balanced. Awakening because super stat war like from the start. Even birthright doesn't start out that bad. It gets Awakening like later, but at least it had it's fun portion.

NICKT has free portraits for people to use, so you can use those as placeholders. And there are so many that variety is not a problem. If you're looking for bug testers, just get some progress on that hack-- 2 or 3 maps, and most people will start bug testing from there after you make a plug for it. Honestly though, I'd say sprites should be worried about much later. As for skills, what are you skilled at? Just so people have an idea of what they are dealing with or what you expect them to do to help.

Pretty much. Although some like Tana work fine both ways as well, and the obvious ones that are route exclusive. Also Kyle and Forde work fine on Ephraim's route too.

I can see it what you're saying, but I was more so talking about the fact that it never really addresses this outside of Conquest sadly. Hence why I said it's not as big of a deal as the others. His inferiority complex is there, but it seems to be a general one rather than just a problem with Corrin.

Yeah, and people can be hypothetical like xander. The issue is that his behavior in Revelations and birthright demonstrates justifiable distrust against corrin. Conquest turns around and has takumi state he always wanted to be close to corrin yet the two routes he has the opportunity to, he doesn't get very close to corrin in cutscenes. It's not as obnoxious as azura, xander, and ryoma, but it's there.

This. The problem with Xander is that it doesn't even feel like he's necessarily stupid, so much as the plot is dictating that he MUST do certain things to allow for certain events to happen. Xander is probably the one of the most obvious examples because he's so frequently present in the routes, but this nonsense is actually all over the place. You have things like Birthright with Ryoma just disappearing, Takumi in Conquest's death speech which contradicts how he initially behaves in Birthright (if he always wanted to be close to Corrin, then why is his initial behavior towards Corrin so harsh?), Corrin being sorta braindead over Silas depending on the route (seriously, this makes absolutely no sense), Azura refusing to open her yap about things considering that her only objective is to quite literally tell people about a certain kingdom so that Nohr and Hoshido don't fight. "No quality control" or "poor management" sounds like an accurate enough statement.

We'd find out that her purpose was to make sure that all Exalt children were weakened through her genetics. What if Chrom became the conqueror after defeating Walhart?