PeaceRibbon

I can definitely relate to wanting to use whoever I want. 😛 And I agree that normal mode can be stimulating in its own right, it just takes longer for the game's challenge to speed up unlike harder modes. I think the only games in the series I played that felt too easy on normal were Birthright and Three Houses, barring the last few maps, though I think their less difficult nature makes them easier for me to replay oddly enough. Seeing your popular series playthrough thread might actually have been one of the catalysts for making this thread. Definitely something to keep in mind in regards to Awakening and Three Houses difficulty. This brings in the interesting question of difficulty semantics. I feel like there are trade-offs to either route in terms of naming the lowest difficulty. If we were to rename all difficulties targeted at newcomers to "easy" I feel like what happened in Radiant Dawn would invariably repeat itself over and over because people are too used to easy modes being the "I'm unskilled" mode instead of the "start here" mode it actually is in the FE context. The benefit to changing the name would be to encourage people like me to play on harder difficulties more often because while I mentioned I'm not a prideful gamer, I do appreciate being skilled enough to play games on their normal modes at minimum, and taking the "easy-normal-hard" route would maybe have pushed me to start the middle difficulty much sooner then I have now. As it stands though, the lowest difficulty calling itself "normal" helps ease new players into the experience, but it does make me a little shameless about sticking to lower difficulties.

Recently I've been looking to replay the Fire Emblem games I have access to, and while booting up Awakening I thought of upping the difficulty of the game in order to change up the experience a little, and I was taken aback at just how different the experience was, almost to an uncomfortable degree. After trying and failing to be chapter 2 with no casualties several times, it got me thinking about this site and the community in general, and how I've always been under the impression that most fans serious enough to spend time on sites like this one play the games on Hard difficulty. In that moment I was struck by the possibility that, despite being a fan of the series for about half a decade, I might have been playing a completely different series of games, philosophically speaking, from most of my FE peers. I might be playing these strategy games as long-term games, which emphasizes efficient recourse management to successfully scale to the late game enemies with a dash of strategic combat to keep me on my toes, while others might play them as hit-the-ground-running against the odds tactical thrillers. Now, I'm aware that there is nothing wrong with playing the games on any difficulty I choose to, and I don't particularly have any sort of gamer's pride which mandates I "get good" enough to play hard difficulty modes. However in reflecting on the differences between difficulty modes I wonder if my experience of the series is foreign to most other hardcore players, and am filled with a distinct worry about both breaking down communicating about a given game's challenge with other fans, and missing out on an appeal of the series which might deepen my appreciation of it. So, I wanted to ask around about how others play Fire Emblem in regards to difficulty. What difficulty setting do you think is the "normal" setting for the series? Does the answer depend somewhat on the entry you are playing? What difficulty have you perceived as standard based on community interactions, and how important do you think playing the same difficulty is to discussing the series? Are there different appeals to different difficulty levels that could potentially make one's opinion of Fire Emblem more well-rounded? Feel free to discuss anything you think is relevant to the topic.

You can't start on Xenoblade until you've killed every last one of them.

Thank you so much for the links! One last question in regards to the tourney, is Dual mono-type as described create teams made up of pokemon with at least one of the types or at most both of the types? I was ruminating on the format and thought about how tricky it would be to run flying outside of normal/flying types if the latter was the case. 😛

This looks interesting and you have my attention. I've actually never been into competitive battling before though, so what's National Dex OU mean? How does it impact team building?

That's three excited for The Labyrinth. I see you all are also people of culture.

https://serenesforest.net/2020/05/14/tokyo-mirage-sessions-fe-remastered-theme-songs-published-june-27th/#more-60287 So today I popped in to find this gem of a news article on the website's main page. 7 songs re-recorded in long, short, and instrumental versions. I am a bit sad we are not getting one of Yashiro's songs, but besides that I am unreasonably excited for the instrumental versions to come out so I can try making some English covers. Anyone else with feelings or thoughts on this release?

On a course to course basis they won't just say it in isolation, but if you press a teacher about why you need to learn something on a practical level they usually say something to the effect of "its about the thought process that goes into it." Or at least, that's what I've noticed. I did have this one math professor who I pressed to give examples of where any sane person would use certain kinds of precalculus math, and she actually gave compelling scenarios. She's awesome.

At this point you could make a meme about how college professors emphasis the problem solving skills over the specific material. "Problem Solving™" is my nomination. I gotta hand it to you though, that's a really thoughtful way to ease the burden on the students. Take it from a college sophomore, memorization is the last thing I want to spend time doing when I could be completing assignments or reviewing study guides.

I am glad my efforts brought an inkling of wonder to you.

Hardcore. Maybe after I take care of some coursework tomorrow. It's stoichiometry in chemistry this week, and these measures of sodium phosphate ain't converting themselves into units of mol.

Making decisions on what is a valuable use of my time.

So I was staring up a new mission mode profile on Soul Calibur VI and just for fun I started mashing the random name button to see what names the developers had put in their name generator. After a few mashes, the name "Itsuki" was generated. I proceeded to spend the next hour painstakingly crafting this. Someone please put me on a restraining order.

... So i'm not a Fire Emblem fan? (I picked Blue Lions for PRE-Time Skip Dimitri.)

I would never let the length of one's hair get in the way of finding actually meaningful reasons to like a person. ...Long, well kept hair is really nice though. And you can style it in so many equally appealing ways.

Cool insights, I certainly never thought of those things. I think the main problem here is that having the entire game take place in Gareg Mach Monastery when the characters aren't on a mission seriously inhibits the game's ability to properly develop a plot thread about globalization. Even if there are characters who represent other nationalities in the home base, many of those characters have worldviews colored to some extent by the amount of time they've spent in the Fodland. The only real exceptions to this is Claude and Petra, but even Petra is difficult to pin down due to her attitude changing completely based on whether she's supporting the professor or Edelgard. I absolutely feel the solution to this problem would be to include some scenarios that let you talk to the lay people of foreign countries to see how they truly feel, but I also have difficulty imagining what sort of scenarios of that ilk could realistically fit in a story centered around conflicts within Fodland, on top of the established hostilities other countries feel towards the continent which inhibit diplomacy anyways.

Because it had ageusia. Poor thing really didn't know any better. Why does time have to move so slowly anyways?

I must say the insight on the blue door red door chapter is really impressive in particular. I myself found it easy enough to pick blue only because of the whole eldritch spirit thing but I like how overall it tells the story through the game-play and let's the player inhabit Corrin's mind for a minute. Overall I think these analyses do a great job in exploring what the authors were getting at with this story, and it really is a shame how the final execution makes these themes and ideas less accessible to those not willing to put in the extra effort to study it. Fates will always be something of a guilty pleasure of mine because for all it's flaws and decisions which felt tailored to fan popularity alone, there lies in it a spark of passion for its wonderful premise I can't help but admire. Thanks again for the write ups!

Soulcalibur developers + Fire Emblem. I'd like to see a Fire Emblem action RPG with fighting game elements!

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At least all of your suggestions have engaging gameplay loops attached to them. The Linhardt game is 2 minutes of finding a quiet spot and 120 minutes of sleeping.

I can actually afford to buy my immediate family members gifts for once so that will hopefully make this Christmas extra special. A shame we have to go visit relatives on the 25th though, I was really looking forward to putting all my choir practice to use at the Mass. Not that I dislike my relatives or anythings like that.

I vote everyone being mages (and mercenary for Kliff). Because it's better than it sounds.

Eclipse is the mom figure of Serenes Forest and I want to show her all the love I can.