FoxyGrandpa

Clair has good strength and good speed as a peg knight. These traits allow her to double most enemies on Alm's route and ORKO calvary units with a ridersbane. Her low bulk as a peg Knight is really troublesome, however, and means that she will constantly have to be fed kills against melee units and makes her an unreliable choice when going up against squads of calvary. The Promotion gains she receives drastically improves her bulk and makes what I say here a non-issue. Dealing effective damage against terrors is not that useful on alm's route, but still helps in Dungeons. Clive ended up pretty solid in my runs of the game. He's not as good as Mathilda, but in my runs, he did have a few notable advantages over her (namely higher Strength, Defense and HP), making him a more reliable unit to go up against things like Generals. He gave useful support bonuses too.

I like Conjure in Maps like Grieth's fortress and Mila's temple. Forces the player to keep moving in order to quickly get rid of the monster spawns, while at the same time acting as a decent substitute for reinforcements. Best part is that, unlike actual reinforcements, they don't give much exp, preventing you from grinding on them as much. Most of my issues with Conjure stem more with the enemies rather than the spell itself. Gargoyles have a bit too much speed, bulk, and power for my liking, as do bonewalkers, and Revenants are a bit too tanky as well. Invoke is good, though the spell does have several issues, such as limiting player movement. AI is also a bit wonky. Personally liked the summoner's phantom in FE8 a lot more because the player could actually control that.

TBH, Clive turned out fine for me. He was able to promote immediately into a paladin after the zofia castle map and his bases and ridiculous mobility allowed him to to work on most of the maps I've played in chapter 3. Gave him Clair's lance and he's become a great mage killer as well. Did wind up to be a bit worse than mathilda, but his mobility and strength as a paladin always gave him some use. I do feel the developers did not raise his growth rates enough from the original game, but 25% growth is still salvagable enough for solid level up gains (my Clive on average gets +1 in 2 to 3 stats per level up).

Faye is probably the best cleric on alm's route since Physique is ridiculously good and the Support bonuses she gets from alm are so ridiculous and actually make her a potent offensive unit with Nosfuratu. Silque is nowhere near as good as Faye due to no Physique. That being said, recover and Warp are still really useful for most characters.

My expectations are about average. I do have expectations for a pretty solid story but if stuff like Outrealms, deep realms or time travel are included, my expectations are immediately dipping, just because of how much these elements detract from the immersion of a fire emblem game. They were kind of OK in Awakening, though they still diminished the immersion the world had. However in fates, these elements just ruined any seriousness the plot had, especially since virtually every problem the world had in that game was pinned on these other worldly elements.

I would be interested in seeing what happened to the first exalt, if only to clear up some of Awakenings plotholes like how the Falchion is able to time travel and how Lucina is able to wield it despite being female, in addition to other things like how the Mark of Exalt came into fruition. Would also be cool to see how the first Exalt and his supposed lover were influenced by some of Shadow Dragon's characters and what they heard of them in stories. I really don't want to see any outrealms and time travel bs in the plot itself, save for maybe one or two points for time travel, since I felt these elements really weakened the immersion of Awakening's world. I would like to see some more things about the labyrinth of thabes and thabes tower shown, maybe more insight on the alteration of archanea's continent for things like name changes, geography changes, etc. I would like to see some insight given on Valentia too, like what happened to the Valentian Falchion, how the various new kingdoms were formed, etc.

Kliff was a really good archer for me. Thanks to the hit support bonuses he gets from characters like Tobin, he is usually pretty accurate, even if the enemy is on a forrest tile or something similar. An issue with the archer class for him, however, is that his defensive growths are compromised. A big issue for the archer class in this game in general is that all bows drop speed by a substantial amount. I decided to not even give some characters liike kliff a bow because of this issue.

As villains, I think their inclusion strengthens the story of Gaiden by a fair bit. I like how the devs worked them into the game to make the few maps maps they were in a lot more interesting for story related purposes like that one map with the 3 paladins. I see alot of people complaining about Berkut and Rinea's relationship, but I feel the issue was that the development of the relationship wasn't fully portrayed rather than the actual relationship between the two characters being bad. The memory prism does show how the two initially met, but it doesn't show enough, like how or why Berkut proposed to her despite her lower social status. His actions during the story only shows his romantic feelings towards her during your first encounter and last encounter with him. At the very least, this is understandable since he is enraged during most of the story due to losing the war, but its still pretty disappointing nonetheless. Fernand is okay, though I feel a lack of development really hurts him. His betrayal of the deliverance doesn't really mean anything to me since the I can't control him outside of DLC. I felt a character like Orisin had a much more impactful betrayal, since the player actually controlled him and did see his relationship with Ephraim in the main game. I think both are on par with Gangrel and Walhart as villains, and better than Validar, Grima, Garon, Hans, Iago, and Anakos.

I mean, I'm not against it, but a problem that I have with it is that in games that avatars are in, the female avatar's relationship with the main character usually overshadows the main character's relationship with their lover. For example, in New Mystery of the emblem, the dialogue that Marth and Kris speak to each other throughout the game make Marth's relationship with Kris seem significantly stronger than his relationship with Caeda. For Awakening, I feel that the best friend dynamic worked fine for the first act of the game, but in the second and third acts, I felt that Female Robin ended up overshadowing Chrom's chosen spouse as well. You can probably say that the male avatar also overshadows the Main characters lovers in these games as well, and I don't deny it, but it just comes across as a more natural type of Friendship, since the male avatars aren't the same gender as the MC's lover, so they naturally don't pose any competition as love interest in the story (unless you think Marth and Chrom and bi, to which I feel there isn't enough evidence present in these games to determine whether this is true or false).

What? Given that Link primary weapons are swords and Arrows / some variations of arrows like Bombs, Boomerang, and Slingshot, Bowknights / Horseman pretty much have most of what he can do covered. Maybe if you count games like Majora's Mask or Skyward Sword where he can do a lot of unique things, then I can see your point.

I am disappointed that the game will be limited to a few characters in the base game, but honestly, after the initial trailer for the game, and what happened with Hyrule Warriors, I think it was to be expected. Assuming this game sells decently well like Hyrule Warriors did, then there is a huge chance that DLC will be added to the game, so at least a few characters from other games will be added (though its likely just going to be the Lords and maybe one to two other characters based on what I've seen for the characters they added in Hyrule Warriors DLC). That being said, the excuse of "too many characters with swords" is beyond stupid and whoever thought this would be good PR should be ashamed of themselves. Since I'm a huge fan of a majority of the characters of the characters in Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem, I am still excited that my favorite characters from those games like Tiki, Catria, Camus, and Caeda still have a solid chance of getting in. I'm not as fond of most of the Awakening or Fates cast, but there are still a ton of gems within the cast of those games like Henry, Walhart, and Takumi that I would still love seeing in this game. Overall, still pretty hyped about the initial cast ______________________________________________ Some of the new mechanics and features announced for this game have really gotten me excited. The game being fully voice acted is great, will definetly help me get immersed in the world. Bond Conversations have an incredible amount of potential between the Shadow Dragon and Awakening cast, though not so much with the Fates cast (really makes you wonder why the developers didn't elect to use the Shadows of Valentia characters instead). Weapon triangle being in will probably be an annoyance for most people, but i think I'll end up enjoying it. Other elements like Archers being effective against pegasus knights will probably have the same effect. Archers, Cavaliers, and Mages being playable was obvious, but is still a nice confirmation nonetheless. Not sure how to feel about the game having more characters than most of the other first musou collaboration installments. If I'm not mistaken, most musou collaboration games have around 15-20 non DLC characters, and usually, at least a few of those characters are original characters, which still leaves me worried about the size of the games roster.

Personally, I would like 2 to 3 separate lords with an avatar character accompanying only one of them. At least 1 Male lord and 1 Female lord with separate stories handled in a similar manner to Radiant Dawn or Gaiden / Echoes. A bit of a weird choice here, but I would like the male lord to use bows and the female lord to use lances, since these weapon types haven't really been used before for lords in their starting class. Since I want this game to have 3 tiers of units, I think that the male lord should get a fairly early, story related promotion allowing him to wield Swords and get a promotion later down the line that does something to improve his bow proficiency, like a skill that gives the bow 2-5 range. For the Female lord, I think she should get an early promotion that allows her to wield Bows and get a promotion later down the line that improves her proficiency in Lances. I think the Avater should be a long-time friend of the male lord rather than some new recruit who meets the main lord at the beginning of the game. Depending on the gender of the avatar, they can either be the lord's best friend or lover. The avatar should be the only unit in the game who starts out in the villager class and also go through a forced promotion to become one of the game's base classes, through the level doesn't reset for balancing purposes. The avatar should be able to support with every unit in the game like in Awakening and fates and the supports should changes based on gender like in those games. However, S-Rank supports should be unattainable.

For the maps themselves, I think the devs will make very detailed 3d environments that are noticeably higher quality than the 3ds and console games. That being said, I think they'll elect to go for a more colorful and anime-like artstyle present in the 3ds games rather than the very realistic graphical style of the telius games. The developers will most likely still use sprites for maps rather than 3d models, though the sprites will probably be less pixelated and have more detail compared to the 3ds games. The developers might elect to give the sprites map battle animations like in the tellius and SNES games, but based on what they've done for the last 5 fire emblem games, I highly doubt they will do this. For the actual on map battles, I think the game's character models will have definite improvements over the 3ds games (so things like mouths no longer look plastered on to the character's faces) but the models will still be rough around the edges and have clear issues. Since this is the first Fire Emblem game on an HD system, some of the problems present in the earlier 3ds games might still be present in this game (things like pop-in, models clipping with the ground, and the game showing only one location of the map rather than different parts of the map). 3d model animations will probably be around SoV quality, but I might be mistaken. Support conversations and story cutscenes will probably the SoV trend and just using character portraits in tandem with 3d backgrounds, with 3d models only being used at important moments in the story. Not sure what artist they'll use. Cutscenes are probably going to look a million times better than the 3ds games since the game is on an HD system. I think they'll elect to use the awakening / fates style of cutscenes over the SoV style.

I think branching promotions are cool, but a big issue I have with them is that its inclusion leads to a large amount of class imbalance. For example, in the sacred stones, there was practically no reason to use the Assassin class over the Swordmaster (and to a lesser extent, the reverse is true in awakening, though Swordmasters have better skills going for them). There are a lot of other examples of imbalance as well. Like, there's barely any reason to use Malig Knights over Wyvern Lords, Generals over great Knights, etc besides skills. I also feel like branching promotions sort of go against classes having a designated role. In some cases, I think its good, such as the Thief class being able to gain added utility or offensive power depending on whether they promote to a Rogue / Trickster or an assasain, but in most cases, branching classes usually just makes a class choose between an option thats specialized in a role or just well rounded, like the option between a Sniper and a Bow Knight, or a General and a great Knight, or a Sage and a Mage Knight. I like Third tier classes a lot more since it lets a class keep its designated role. I haven't played Radiant Dawn at all, but from my expirience playing Gaiden and SoV, most of the third tier classes have specific roles in the army which only they can fulfill, like the Dread Fighters being really good Magic tanks, Bow Knights being able to outrange every unit while at the same time having incredibly high movement, etc. I think that third tier units would also synergies a bit better with reclassing than branching classes since a units role will change depending on the class they change to. Reclassing for skills can still be thing, but the final class a unit uses serves to give them a completely different role than the other. For example, you could say, change a Marshal to Gold Knight to acquire something like Sol, but the effectiveness of one over the other is dependent on the map design and objectives. Ideally though, I would really like it if the next game had both Third tier classes and branching promotions since it ultimately gives the player a lot more options and it would allow the game to have a lot more replay value depending on how you leveled up your units.

I loved the story, mainly due to the voice acting adding so much immersion. Previously, I always saw voice acting as a superfluous addition and never understood why so many people begged for its presence in other games like The Legend of Zelda, but after playing this game, I finally do see major benefits it has. I think the overall plot had a lot of really high points, like Zeke's entire squadron going against Jerome after you save Tatiana and Celica being coronated queen. Other moments like Clive handing over the the leadership of the Deliverance to Alm immediately after meeting him are presented in a manner where it does make some sense (Lukas and Clive are still overseeing a majority of the Deliverance activities, but Alm serves as a figurehead for the army initially). I do feel that the story had some dumb moments like Celica's pendant somehow repelling Duma's curse, but overall, a majority of the plot was solid. For characters, I liked pretty much all of them, but I am disappointed by the lack of support conversations, since a lot of characters like Silque, Faye, Jenny. Jesse, and Atlas end up feeling underdeveloped. I understand the reason for this, namely the stacked bonuses from supports being able to completely break these characters, but it still ends up being disappointing.

I decided to start a new save file on hard mode after beating most of normal mode and after beating act one, I do notice some obvious improvements to the enemy placement of the game, such as the archers with anti-flier guarding the door in the Zofia castle map. I think the AI of the game has been improved on hard mode as well, since when I had Clair try to lure the calvary to her from the side, most of the enemies (including Slayde) charged forward instead.

I think My Castle staying would be fine, but the developers need to expand upon it significantly from fates to make it more realistic. For starters, make it so that the castle is placed in the kingdom your fighting for rather than some alternative dimension. The castle being placed in the Astral plains in Fates rather than hoshido or nohr just ruined most of the immersion in that game. I liked the idea of invasions, but again, invisible warriors rather than the enemy camp attacking your castle just ruined the immersion, so that should be fixed. I think shops should be run by generic characters rather than your own units for similar reasons I also think that more minigames should be added for things like mining, farming, and cooking, but I know most people will find these things tedious so I wouldn't mind if they weren't present. Bathhouse fanservice can stay, but the developers need to use illustrations rather than 3d models. I think the world map should stay as well. After playing Shadows of Valentia, I do think the developers should add villages and Dungeons to the world map, though the developers should expand what your characters are able to do in dungeons besides just slashing at things. Maybe add an item that can temporarily repel enemies as well, though special enemies like bosses shouldn't be able to be repeled. Paralogues / Gaiden chapters should be kept on the world map like in awakening, but I do feel that the enemy's levels should scale with how far you are in the game like in Fates. I also don't think you should be able to buy weapons from the world map, but rather, examine the environment you just fought in for usable weapons and materials like in echoes.

So I played entirely through Acts 1, 2, and 3, and about halfway through act 4 on normal mode and I do agree that the map design has improved substantially from Gaiden. Its not so much the maps themselves, but rather little nuances with the mechanics of the game that makes these maps more enjoyable. For Celica's route, in maps like Mila's temple and Grieth's foretress, units have been repositioned to start closer to the enemies, allowing the player to get into the action immediately rather than spending the first 3 turns moving units. Support bonuses makes unit positioning a lot more important for both Alm and celica's parties since characters like Faye get ridiculous bonuses from supports. The addition of several new weapons, forging, weapons skills and the aforementioned support bonuses makes combat with enemies less tedious since the player is able to defeat the enemy much more quickly. The changes to the dungeon maps are a mixed bag. Early dungeon maps are significantly better than their gaiden counterparts since they incorporate terrain and natural barriers like walls to make them more enjoyable. I like the changes that were made to the maps in fear mountain as well. However, from what I have seen, a lot of the unique maps present in chapter 5 are gone, which is a shame since I felt these maps were some of the games most creative. Some of the other changes this game introduced are a mixed bag as well. Warp and Expel no longer having infinite range do give these spells more strategy in determining where your clerics should be positioned, but still leads to some maps being more tedious. The changes to physique hardly makes a difference since the range of it is still huge. The changes made to Falcoknight's banish skill also doesn't makes a difference in their ability to slay monsters since they are still able to ORKO them due to their high speed stats. The archer's new anti flier skill would ideally help the game by preventing the falcoknights from soloing the castle maps, but unfortunately, most enemies in normal mode don't even have access to the skill. All that being said, I would still say the changes made in this game improved the gaiden's map design greatly and does increase the strategy required by the player by a noticeable amount.

What? I saw that the overclasses still maintained the class growth rates. Also, not sure their purely asthetic, given that most learn new spells or class skills that make them noticeably more useful.

That's actually pretty interesting. If I'm not mistaken, I think they did the exact same thing in both Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the emblem and from my expirience playing those games, it definetly made the good elements of the map design (multiple pathways, strong anti-turtling incentives, emphasis on unit positioning) stand out more than in the original games.

IGN's review of the game is one where you have to ignore the score and just look at what the reviewer herself said about the game. Pretty much all of it was positive and it only expressed disappointment at the lack of marriage rather than actual criticism.

Make them like the dread fighter class in Gaiden; give them ridiculous resistance and superlative movement to other physical based classes.

True, but honestly, since all the maps in this game are route, I don't think 4 move is too much of an issue assuming the player isn't going for LTC. That being said, I don't think Forsyth's growths are really suited for his class.

Giving the Villager's Fork to Forsyth after promoting him to a knight. Most players on reddit generally have a negative opinion of him as a soldier and his growths seem better suited for a mercenary rather than a soldier. I'll probably save the second villager's fork for some other unit postgame. Boots are going to one of the Mage units. I'll probably give it to either Kliff or Celica.

1. If a female mage / priestess is reclassed to a cleric, does she keep the spells she had learned as a mage? 2. What advantages do priestesses have over Sages aside from Sword access?