Augestein

Dush Giggles. Fantastic.

You're not. All bosses had innate Maintenance in the original game so stealing or breaking gear wasn't possible. DD sucks. I don't recommend doing it. It's tedious. Agreed. It has no purpose what-so-ever. Nothing can make that addition good.

And Swordmaster's make sure they pretty much don't get hit on player phase. Especially with access to dual Katanas, you can attack most of the weapon triangle with little fear of getting hit. It's the enemy phase you have to worry about. I agree archers are overall more useful at their niche, but I can't deny what these guys can do.

Not really. It seems pretty even split as a lot of games that have you able to choose which sex you are either: a) Doesn't matter, like some games like Gladius, Monster Racers, Digimon games and there's no actual sequel to confirm. b) Seems to be pretty random. Like Knights of the Old Republic Revan is canonically male, but KOTOR2 the Exile is canonically female. With the "canon" being dubious at best because it's technically all non-canon now. Or Bioware games in general where the default has been back and forth-- like Dragon Age, it's been female Warden, male Hawke, and we don't know what the inquisitor is. c) Forces a canon based on decisions that you made in the sequel ala choosing to be Ashe in Mega Man ZX-Advent makes "Vent" the male canon for that playthrough while choosing Grey makes "Aile" the female canon for that playthrough. I can think of more games where it doesn't force a sex over a force of the sex. Heirs of Fates would disagree. And so would the Outerrealm Gates. Those things seem to imply that everything is canon.

If anything, I'd think that Mark was a reincarnation of Robin considering that Awakening has a very similar meeting for the lords and their tactician, and their similar motivations and their similar endings. May as well go so far as to say that Tharja = Lyn at that point considering the fact that Lyndis has that connection with Mark that Tharja believes she has with Robin and Rhajat believes she has with Corrin if you're going to go that far.

Not that I know of. What would the two have to talk about to each other? SaizoxBeruka is actually different for the C support in Japanese, they actually talk to each other. But to be honest, you aren't missing anything as it's still a pretty lousy C support. What we have now in English is just the two communicating with expressions-- an interesting support to say the least, and honestly? I'd say it makes more sense than walking up to an assassin and asking them who/what they killed instead of the looks of acceptance and acknowledgement that we get from the English version. Some might call this a joke gone wrong, I call it a different way of communicating the same support. Especially from the implications of C-> B where the conversation "resumes" from where it left off.

My feelings for what make a good love interest is anyone that has a life outside of their romantic interest. Caeda for instance is a good example of this, she wants to protect her homeland, but she's also grown to become rather fond of Marth as well. This makes sense as Marth was living with her for several years after his initial escape from his own home, so there was nothing fledgling about the romance that the two may have had-- it's off screen, but it's not something that consumes all of their attention. As for most that address Sigurd's romance, I wouldn't even call it romance really, as it's clearly intended to be part of the plot, and it really isn't romantic. It's just his partner, and comes across as lust and intrigue with one another more than anything else. Sure, it's his wife, but that means very little in the plot-- whether they loved each other or not I mean, not the consequences of them conceiving a child, let alone meeting. It's not well done, but that's largely because it's not supposed to be. In that regard, it works. In terms of what I would change, there really isn't much to change about most of them, as they are just kind of there, and in most cases, they take a backseat to the main plot itself. I think the only thing I'd change about them is to make the lover more relevant if they are going to go back to "canon" pairings. As some like Lilina that are supposedly pushed aren't done well as you barely see the characters interact with one another.

Because people started thinking characters had to be dynamic to be developed. That is not true at all. Character development is learning more about the character and different facets of the character based on motivations, background, and interactions with other characters. When a character has a rounded personality, that's when you can say that they are truly developed. Just because a character is simple doesn't mean that they are poorly developed. It's a huge misnomer that a lot of critics have nowadays. I absolutely disagree with this. A character not changing could be shown as a strength. IE, a person that grows up in a bad area that has questionable morals and they decide they do not wish to follow them and take up arms against them would seem very weak if they started to change from what they initially believed in from the beginning of the plot. There's a difference between having a character having growth and changing. The woman that decides to stay and fight for the entire story isn't necessarily an undeveloped character because she decides that instead of moving away from the events, she's going to stay and fight throughout the entire story. And that doesn't mean much. That's simply a bad character. Let's make up a story, a martial artist injures himself and cannot compete anymore. So he decides to train a young student to do what he failed to do-- win the super martial arts tournament. The main character has a goal, and he's going to work hard to train his apprentice to become a master. The martial artist doesn't ever need to change his goals because he wanted to, but it doesn't mean that we can't develop him. We can learn about why he wants to even have some win the tournament through proxy, we can learn more about his martial arts style, we can learn what his fighting style means to him, we can learn if he's cold to people based on his interactions with his students... The man doesn't need to change to be developed, we just need to know more about who he is, what he does, and why he does it. Character development is always a positive thing for a character-- it literally means that the character is developed. IE, the audience can understand them more. Why would that not be a good thing? Except Micaiah gets flack for this and it doesn't even make sense. Micaiah has several bad things happen to her over the course of the game. To this day, it still baffles me how anyone can say Micaiah is a Mary Sue when she is easily the most flawed lord in the series and the game never fails to demonstrate how flawed she is by showing bad things happening to her. Even more hilarious is that she's in the same game as Mr. Perfect himself, Ike, and people still target Micaiah.

Okay, fair enough. But her base level is 6. I did the calculations instead of guessing, and yeah, that defense boost she would hypothetically get would make her a slightly more fragile Jill but she'd have about 4 more speed at 20. And I admittedly did underrate how much those changes to bases would help. Yeah, PoR Swordmasters are kinda trash now that I think about it. Worse in the Japanese version because they don't even get the critical bonus. That's... Horrible. Duelist blow is a good skill. +30 avoid on an attack is really good. Sure it's once / twice (if you are danced for) per turn, but it's basically a 1 range archer with the evasion being pushed to reliable levels. Vantage is still a decent skill if you're not placing your unit in 1-2 range units but rather, just 1 range. It happens enough in Fates to be considered. Astra isn't that bad when you place it with a unit that frequently doubles and can be paired up to have more defensive power with dual guards and the like. Hana's offense is actually pretty solid. If it weren't for Raijinto, they'd be about the same. The biggest problem with Hana is that miserable base 20% hp growth. They should have made it about 35 or 40.

They might not make it though. Remember when everyone kept saying "Grey" was going to happen?

Guy would definitely be better as a different class. Randomizers show that enough. He's still decent though. So Joshua is the same deal. Mia on the other hand? Is just mediocre. She's basically Ike but weaker. Changing her class wouldn't help with that outside of giving her different base stats. She'd still be lackluster. In Fates, Swordmasters get a bonus of +10 critical and + 10 avoid. Sure the critical is less than 15 or 30, but it also reverted back to PoR styled Astra where you can critical on the hits, AND it fills up a shield gauge automatically if you're paired up. With Duelist Blow, they are looking at a flat out +40 avoid on player phase-- combine that with any unit that has decent speed, and the chances of you getting hit are pretty low. Swordmasters in Fates are basically 1 range archers that point at a unit and destroy it. It's nice to have, as there are enough 2-range units that wreck you at moments to cause problems. Hana isn't a great unit, but that's largely because people are used to throwing their Swordmaster into a sea of enemies and watching them all die-- something people like Ryoma can do, and because screw dodge tanking when you can use people like Azama, Rinkah or Oboro. Instead what Hana does is look at someone on Player Phase and they die with little problems. But if you had someone tankier like say... Silas turn into a swordmaster? He'd be pretty happy too. Having extra avoid would be nice, and the base speed for Silas would help him to actually start doubling things that he wouldn't as a Pally or a Great Knight. And with his durability, he could make some use of Vantage as well-- which is now HP reliant rather than speed like RD. The class isn't winning awards for "best class," but it's no longer just a crappy hero that can't use axes and gets an underwhelming critical bonus. Instead it's a 1 range nuke. And it's one of the few classes that gets good skills from start to finish. It's easier to see in Fates that they wanted Swordmaster to be the offensive sword class and hero to be the defensive one with skills like Good Fortune that heal you on your turn, Sol, Strong Riposte (more damage on enemy phase counters) etc. It actually has a niche now.

Not really. Without raijinto in his inventory, he's just above average. But having extra avoid and critical is enough to make swordmaster a good class. Without that, he still has shaky defense and okay attack... Still needing to rely on evasion.

Yeah, but that's my point. He's not entirely broken. The weapon makes him broken, but he's still a good unit with his prf.

True, but something like say Ryoma as a Butler isn't broken.

Then doesn't that show that Swordmasters are fine then?

From what little fanfiction I've read, I think the biggest problem a lot of people have with OC's is that they just don't know how to incorporate them into the dynamic of the already established characters. It might be a wish fulfillment sort of thing, but I also think it might be that they don't understand the source material as much as they believe as well. Often times, I think the issue is that there have no real way of introducing the character which is why you see so many "long lost sister/brother of character x," because it's just easier to have them meet someone and gives the excuse of having everyone instantly like them-- despite the fact that in many cases, being introduced as a family member would cause distrust among the cast instead. The writer then recognizes this problem, so instead decides to focus their attention to have the OC fit in with the cast, but what ends up happening is that the OC ends up becoming too centralized rather than simply being another character within the realms of the plot. Honestly, it's the reason I don't write fanfics, because I honestly find writing fanfics more difficult than writing an original short story.

I think the critical bonus and evasion bonus they get in Fates is kind of enough to balance them. Their standard skills they learn through leveling are all good too. I think they are fine now.

I've seen games with leveling that still allow you to die even at max level to basic grunts. Alpha Protocol and Mars War Logs come into play for that. In Mars War Logs, you have to select a feat to get more hp-- you never get it through leveling, and Alpha Protocol still demands the player utilize their skills to win. Whether they have them or not. Also, Megaman has levels in it. The game tells you the level of your Megaman based on the gear you have equipped him in. And this is done to tell people for versus around how sturdy your Megaman is comparatively to their own. RPGs are weird in mechanics, because realistically, if I hit you with a sword, it should kill you. So bringing up realism is pretty silly don't you think? And a lot of on-rail style RPGs don't really allow for grinding very much. Take something like Vandal Hearts it's a SRPG, but you can't grind at all in that game.

You have to fight special classes of bosses that are flagged immortal. Battle 1 are white knights Battle 2 are engineers. You can't steal from them. Battle 3 are assassins. Same deal here. Battle 4 the boss is ??? Flagged and has 0 faith. Mustadio is your best unit here. If you want I can share the battles. I have all of them.

Quite a few games have caps on leveling systems. Mass Effect 1 has caps on your stats for certain level (IE, you can't level Decryption passed a certain skill height until level 10) , D'n'D places level caps on skills / abilities as a form of progression without hiding what you can work towards for your character (to allow freedom of choice within the restrictions of your class). Basically, leveling can be a way to say that you can only have X amount of skills at a certain point, while a game like Elder Scrolls has no real cap for anything thus enabling a person to o nothing but use a bow and max it out, and be far better with a bow than the designers would find reasonable for certain points etc. In other words, it can really help out a designer in some regards, and it keeps the player from wanting to skip enemies by virtue that it gives them something to work towards. Take something like Ultima 8, there's no reason to really fight anyone when you can just abuse the fact that you can swing your weapon at a mannequin for an hour or so and max out on strength. From then on, you only need to fight bosses. Saga styled leveling is literally what you were talking about where your stats level up based on what you do in battle. Want to get better at magic? Cast magic. Want to get more hp? Get attacked a lot. Want to get better with swords? Well using that axe certain won't help. Want to gain defense? Use Shields and heavier armor. It sounds interesting for a turn based game, but it can have really nasty effects like having your mage become some sort of juggernaut tank because the RNG kept attacking the mage over your actual tank. Or having a person morph into a healer type of character because you fought a couple of strong enemies and had to spend most of the battle healing instead of punching someone.

Leveling can be a nice way to put a cap on a person's ability to increase their skills but placing an easily view able limit on what the person is capable of doing. IE, seeing that I cannot increase my sneak more is a nice way to actually demonstrate that I cannot increase my sneak more without having to notify the player every time they sneak that it cannot increase, or requiring them to view a menu to check if they are allowed to do it now. Realistically though, it depends if the game is turn based or not that primarily matters. In action games, I *would* prefer for my actions to dictate how I level more than anything else, but in turn based games, I'm not a fan of the Saga styled leveling. It requires too much scumming to actually build a decent character. Plus, it makes it hard to customize a character to be well rounded when sometimes there might be a situation where your character might need to do some patch up healing and suddenly he's a cleric and oh my gosh you can never be the ninja class so forget about it-- aka The Last Remnant.

She says that yes, and he simply doesn't want to hear it. Which either implies he doesn't believe her, or he's just a complete dickhead. Which isn't surprising. Dude is a douche that kidnaps people for hostages. This guy was already scum before we even saw this scene. No. Because it's not necessarily shitty writing for this to happen. The way FFT handles it is what makes it absolutely shitty writing. There's a key difference. Ditto. I always kick him out because I hate him.

No. But you're the one that raged over the underaged part. So then I'm confused on what in the seven layers of hell is your reasoning here. As you're still trying to demonize me for no reason. And this is just wrong. He didn't believe her, largely in part because he's a complete massive pile of dung, but he wasn't judging her for being raped. Fine. You're right. Sorry. I'm leaving.

So what's your point? You guys obviously did before I even corrected that. THERE ISN'T ANY DIFFERENCE. WHICH IS WHY I'M WONDERING WHY PEOPLE WERE EVEN ACTING LIKE HER BEING THIRTEEN IN THE FIRST PLACE MATTERED.

Because someone was trying to make age even a point and incorrectly pointed to her being 13. You don't want to see my point. She could be literally 20 by the time you get there. Honestly, Im' pretty sure IIRC that she eve has to be 15 by that point. My point was, is that throwing the child part is an attempt to make a bad thing somehow worse. And I countered by saying that the game wasn't even that sick. Like they have their limits too. Either way, I'm done here. Because you're still somehow just trying to fight.