Reality

I suppose that in the public perception, everyone assumed that Quan's daughter died, since they witnessed the attempted persecution of mst of the holy blood families, and didn't hear from any of them until the mircaulous appearance of Seliph as the child of Light As for people ignoring Gae Bolg - Atheism While Altenna is a pretty major Thrracian "general" the importance of the general title in Judgral seems to fluctuate a lot - In Freege, Olwen is technically introudced as a general, but is still walked over completely by her fellow general Kempf. Later in Thracia, By C23 (the Cyas/Ced recruitment thing) We see that people are able to countermand Altenna to some degree. Finn also had service to Quan,, so maybe a simpler explanation is simply that her life in Thracia prevented people from recongizning the Gae Bold because it's not the country of origin so no one outside of royalty and high military would bother informing themselves on it. Blume/Leptor/Manfloy may or may not know - They have weird policies regarding which families to destroy on sight and which to try to convert to their side and use. From what I can tell the lopto cult seem to divide the holy blood families into "martial groups" and "mystic/premonition groups" - hence Neir/Tordo/Fala/Dain don't threaten them, but Sety/Baldo/Noba/Blaggi/Heim do threaten them... obviously there are some exceptions, such as Manfloy's infamous decision to keep Julia alive, and Cyas who is accepted long enough to become a respected Empire tactican but has allegedgely been on the Empire's hit list from the beggining according to the general of C22. (Thracia also has Galzus/Mareeta to show that blood alone without holy weapons is enough to cause persecution). It seems her identity is at least unknown in Lenster/Manster - While Altenna is a prominent Thracian General we do know that they have been prevented from their plans of operating in the region by Granvalle. The specifics of the pre-rebellion in Issac and the pacification of Silesia aren't really laid out, but I think it's in-line with Trabant's mercenrary policy to have helped the empire in those battles, which should have exposed the identity of Altenna to Manfloy,etc all. Why they would consent to her existence and not her brother (despite even knowning he doesn't Gae Bolg) is a bt harder to explain.

I like Fog of War in other games, but honestly I don't really have any Fog of War memories from Fire Emblem. In a game like FE5 for example, all the fog of war maps are gaidens and most of them feature indoor maps, so you are in a corrider anyway, and it doesn't add much to make thingseither easier or harder. I feel like a lot of the GBA gaiden maps were for "forest maps" which have a similiar problem - because your units only move 3-4 spaces due to the terrain, seeing where you are going is kind of less relevant (there are exceptions, especially when flier enemies are in the fog, but this was my overall impression. Honestly, I remmeber FE fog of war more for being forgettable than being annoying or anything.

A moving boss supported by a grid of 16~ or so spaced out bishop's with Rescue. The boss would be mixed offense and use high mt low durability glass weapons and their magic equivalent - probbably more extreme with 3 or 5 durability each. When the boss broke his weapons, he would be rescued at the start of his turn by a bishop considered "far away", and trade to rearm himself (all bishops would carry a set of his gear, naturally).

I feel like roleplaying with dorcas, bartre, and geitz without axes would still work technically outclass them, even with the likely E-D weapon rank max. Having a strength stat cabable of leveling up is just better for the archers statline than double tinking.

She'll pull a Queen Elizabeth and marry the country (Begnion) throwing everyone into an uproar about the succesion.

I still hold the view that both the marriage and the poessesion take place at too young an age. I don't think that the "loyal to him due to his old self" argument works properly when they could not have known each other very long and as basically only child friends besides. FE4 Ishtar mine as well be as bad as her mother imo, but it is where Julius is nicest to her FE5 Ishtar is somewhat sympathetic, although, I do feel like the Rhineheardt thing was more one sided (from Rhinehardt) than people make it out to be, although she does seem to care/protest a little, the lack of a resolution, such as her mourning him post battle or during the epilougue kind of dampens it. FE5 portrays Julius as less nice to her. The Endgame Camus angle always feels bizzare since all these royals subsumed their country's soveringnity to the granvalle in the first place (reading into the gen1 name change from kingdom to empire) It also seems redundant to have even more Camus in the game after already having enough with Eltshan, some of the Chapter 6-7 Lenster-Thracia generals, etc. Honestly, I think the narrative would benefit from definately taking the creepy angle... although I kind of want a general Julius rewrite into a (darker) Pokemon Entei movie detached child villian. I would like Julius to think of Ishtar more as an idea than something concrete, much like when Molly has the unknown create a magical adult body for her - I think that emphasizing Julius's lack of knowledge of how to act around women and attempting to to deal with her the way he imagines romance is supposed to work (granted we can't use the expression the way he saw romance in the movies for this setting, but you get the point)

I mean I've made it clear recently that I've gotten deeply into Western RPGs, and a big part of it is an appreciation for gameplay and mechanics > story. There are 3 really offensive JRPGs to me. All 3 of them are good as individual games, but as series, I think they cause severe damage to their genre. Dragon Quest/ Warrior In the beggining, there was Wizardry. Dragon Warrior is a really tremendous game, but one of the most obvious things in the Western>Japanese traditions is the way stats and level ups are handled - In a normal D&D derived setup, The only "Hard" stat that improves on level up is HP, and most of the benefits of level ups are to "soft" stats, such as Thaco or spell slots. Stat-gating, if it appears at all, is done through equipment rather than charather level. Dragon Warrior (and in ripple effect, almost every RPG) put Hard Stats (attack, defense, speed,etc) into the level up system. Perhaps this does makes low-level gameplay quicker. But the cost of it is obvious in a huge variety of ways - the level grind, threshold based gameplay, the way some gamess seesaw between either having impossible difficulty if underleveled or trivial difficulty if On-level or over with no middle ground: All due to stats being moved from core to an attainable resource. Obvously, both good and bad results. But I do think that accepting this as "baseline" without reflection is dangerous - many younger RPG players probbably don't even consider that "Hard" stats wouldn't be affected by level up. The extent of this has even long ago filtered back into Western RPGs (4E D&D and 5E D&D sometimes being called "gamelike" not even being the tip of the iceberg) - I like Dragon Quest 3, 8, and 9 well enough (6 and 7's fanbase I understand but I think the length of the game helps you forget the painfully slow start ... 3 hours before the first combat with slimes lol) Final Fantasy 5 - Final Fantasy started out with deeper roots in D&D systems than DQ, and the first game even had a kind of spell slot system. Really though, FF 1-4 do not bother me as such, as I can see them as a continuaton of the Dragon Warrior trend(and 4 is quite fun in its own right). My main gripe with Final Fantasy is how it developed from 5 onwards. I largely regard FF5 as being the major player in a paradigm shift across the majority of Japanese RPGs. FE5 heralds a new kind balancing curve for JRPGs by bringing major class customization into the "norm" rather than the "exception" for major RPGs (I know about DW3, Saga, etc) However, this comes at a steep price - there can be no "wrong" option and a second imperative seems to have gone out at the same time - All players must be able to see all content, regardless of their ability. FF5, 6, 7, 8, 9 are all, (some more infamously than others) very easy games casually, and filled to the brim with broken combinations, etc. All of them have battle systems which are really interesting on paper, and even in practice before your resources get too out of control, but in practice, you don't actually need to explore any of the battle systems to any real degree, because the enemies simply aren't worth it. As beloved as Kefka and Sephiroth are as charathers, as boss fights they almost laughable. (I honestly think Safer Sephiroth was intentionally given enough HP to use Meteor once and die 2 turns against an expected casual party) Kefka's world of ruin is great, but as it telegraphs where the point of no return is, it's almost impossible not to collect your old party members and inadverdtendly pick up chainsaw, or the heavy duty magic for Sprite form , or a number of other things . 7,8,9 really don't need much explanation. But the real tragedy is the kind of chain impact this haves on other RPGs of the time period (and obviously many Sqaure Enix ones among them). This kind of "deep" class/combat system appears again in again, but almost no RPG dared to risk making "Any" party unusable, so the. . A particularly bad offender results in a game like Chrono Cross, with it's field color and spell slot system being fascinating, but almost irreleavnt casually since you can just use Fierce attacks constantly (with eagle eye at the most) through all of the game with no problem, and mid-lategame even further encourages you with autocrit weapons like the mastermune and einhander... This mechanic depth>encounter/difficulty depth paradigm still has fun (and great) games, but I feel that it was a bit toxic for it to happen in what many people associate with "main" RPGs, as it reeks of "light RPG". At best, the games are only broken with combinations (at which point they become puzzle-box RPGs) but at worst, paricularly in class-changing games, the anyone is viable hing inadverdetly also lets in the most boring, least engaging gameplay - The 3 physical beaters+1 healer "Mash X to win party". In a way, the low difficulty betrrays the mechanical depth of many RPGs from the mid 4th generation to 6th generation SNES/PS1/PS2/GCN - when the simpllest solution works... the potential and beatuy don't really matter anymore. Fire Emblem - It would be more naturally to expect YS here as, Falcom/Nihon is the other traditional RPG giant in Japan. However, I find that Nihon's games were open about presenting themselves as "light crpgs" perhaps partly because they were originally for home computers and thus had to face off against imported "hard" rpgs. This was not the case with Dragon Warrior / Final Fantasy on console, as stated earlier, which is why they marketed themselves the way they did. From Kaga's day, Fire Emblem was in a weird position, especially early on. It actually evolved more heavily out of famicom wars than the proto-srpgs (langrisser/warsong, etc) did, hence giving the subgenre the name T(actical)RPG in Japan as opposed to the SRPG more commonly used by English speakers. However, in developing this swcond parallel tradition (and eventually displacing the first), Fire Emblem opened itself up to unfavorable comparisions right away... The most pressing of all of these, is relative unit fragility between the player and enemy. It goes without saying for most of the franchise, that the problem of the enemy outnumbering the player and not having to deal with resources, was addressed by making the few units the player has... have a lot more potential than enemy units. In theory, the large numbers of weak enemy units would balance out with the fewer player units. But in practice.... it kind of robbed Fire Emblem of lots of growth potential, in the ability to create specific map challenges, etc. Historically, the SFAC FE game's were more open to this kind of criticism than the FAM games... I'm mostly refering to the Hiroyuki Takahashi's famous criticism of Fire Emblem (The Shining Force lead developor) Shining Force developed from the earlier SRPG tradition, abd is an SRPG without permadeath, and therefore it is free to have generic enemies with semi-meaty stats, and fairly difficult boss battles. While I do not think SF1 has ideal balancing or anything, compared to FE3 and FE4, it's a bit noticable how primitive encounters are in the latter... I also feel (and this is an observation more unique to me) that FAM FE1 's release 4 and 6 years after Pool of Radiance and Rebelstar (Julian Gropp's early game that would evolve into XCOM) is kind of daming of it's simplicity - Not it's decision to simplifly mechanics (Pool of Radiance indeed would be more interesting with ust it's battle engine than the dungeon crawling part) There was a market and artstici need for a game that did that... But FE1 other (less emphasized) influence, led to the thoughtless adoption of a level up system, and the result was that besides the beneficial simplication of mechanics/interface, the combat and encounter design was also simplified. Fire Emblem's growth is also comical compared to the other two - While the state of Pool of Radiance, Rebelstar, and Fire Emblem in 1988 can rightly be said to not really mattter, the much quicker evolution of the former cannot be blown off so easily. I think Timestamping a couple periods is illustrative- (1999-2002) - FE6(2002), XCOM (1995), and Temple of Elemental Evil(2003) - (2012-2015 )- FE13(2012), Firaxis XCOM(2012), and Divinity: OS(2014). (I could go closer to SSI derived RPGs in Temple of Evil's place, but it's not really going to make FE6 look like a larger evolution, especially as FE4 and FE5 actually hamered out most of what it retained other than support conversations and some minor things...) In 2001 - Ai and map improvements were basically non-existent, and the mechanical changes to combat math in the modern doubling formula, and things like support conversations and rescue command are not really enough to say that the sub-genre represented by FE has moed foward. Meanwhile, the Pool of Radiance type of RPG and the Rebelstar type of strategy game have already left hard grids behind (not to mention dozens of other things). In 2013 - FE - Support conversations have been re-balanced to grow faster, and thus the hit/avoid buffs they bring actually factor into normal gameplay instead of being a grind only feature. Skill System. The Maps in FE11-13 on Normal Mode have not moved forward whatsoever. FE11-12's higher modes show off the promise of simplicity, simply by eshewing the usual combat design due to the forged and stat capped enemies, while FE13's L+ has gone into a direction that makes it into a kind of puzzlebox metagame where unit placements is less important than pre-preparation and getting skills and reclasses needed on a few units. Both require considerably more player effor than what has come before, but... this is quite a small step for the genre rather than an evolution. Meanwhile Firaxis's XCOM and Divinity:OS... well the scope of the change they bring to their respective sub-genres is kind of hard to understate.

My feelings about the authencity of the leak aside - Pokemon Go mechanics: Capture: I know the normal pokemon capture mechanic's are treated as iconic, but... you don't really adapt to them very much aside from lowering health. It usually isn't till lategame when you can do the other things to improve % success (status/specialized balls to fit target) aside from just having the generic poke/great/ultra and the opponet on low HP, Pokemon Go isn't really an improvement either, but I'm honestly open to a change of some kind from the classic. The Ultra Balls being equal in weighting to the specialist balls at their best is also detrimental I feel. Battle: Obviousl I want the classic battle system preserved for normal situations but... I've never really felt the gym leaders or elite four functioned as boss battles, I don't think that Pokemon Go's Raids against legendary pokemon are ideal, but I do think that an occasional different kind of RPG / statline setup could be used within a pokemon game to emphasize the story threat/strength of an opponet who wouldn't really be protected gameplaywise from players ordinarily.

I only regularly visit three. Six Flags at Kentucky Kingdom , Louisville, KY My Hometown Park :D It's a little trippy to go there nowadays because the looney tunes and Superhero branding for certain rides has been removed, as has a couple of the rides I was used too. The park also kind of has a bad layout since it is bi-sected by the interstate, which means that the entire waterpark (and several major rides) can only be accesed by a tedious footbridge. A visit to Kentucky Kingdom can be difficult if you are out of shape. Has the full range of non-rollercoaster thrill rides, so I think of it as the archtypical theme park, and it made it my favorite park when I was younger and too afraid to ride roller caosters. Holiday World , Santa Claus, IN My current favorite park, many great roller coasters and smaller rides, the free soft drink thing is exceptionally convenient, and it has the largest water park of the three parks, which never dissapoints. It's actually a pretty small and cosy park, which makes it easy to navigate, especially as it's original design had 2 of it's 4 roller coasters right next to each other. The Voyage is probbably my favorite Roller Coaster of all time some really chill attendants that let people ride again if you were near closing time and there was no line helped. King's Island , Mason OH Honestly, I think it's roller coasters are good, but I really have a distaste for most of the other rides at king island. This is partly due to doing undergroud queues the "bad" way as opposed to the other parks, but also because for me, King's Island also seems much more crowded than the other parks. It does have a larger kid's area than most parks which is interesting, which could be nice, but obviously isn't for me (I associate those kind of rides with state fairs more than theme parks ) it's waterpark is somewhat underdeveloped, but functional.

1: Awakening kind of made me retroactively check the difficulty of all the game's before itt... Instictively I wanted to prove that they used to be hard, but rvrn in 2013 I found that most of the series (I only played lcalized until a 2-3 years later) was easy, maybe not as easy, but close enough in degree that I didn't find the need to think through combat. 2: I think (in a very early post) I contest that FE is worse than almost all other SRPGs, because I was enamored of the class systems and active commands and such in games like Disgaea, FFT, Front Mission, Arc the Lad Trilogy, and so on. 3: Watching my niece play Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and get slowed down a ton by having to remember the facing system changed my mind somewhat and made me appreciate FE's stripped down design.Later I kind of noticed that most of FFT, Disgaea, etc all, kind of also have the low blind difficulty curve (and lower with past experience) that Fire Emblem had. 4: I used to buy into the "FE5 is the hardest ever" mentality, even after the first time I played through it, but during and after the second time I played it I noticed just how large and reckless you can be with enemy phases in the first 2/3rds of the game, the way most enemies don't achieve AS comparable to player units until about Chapter 18 (with the 0-2 AS during most of the first 10 chapters being the most absurd example) I still enjo it, especially compared to the games 4 games before and immediately after it (1-4 and 6-9) 5: When I first got into Western CRPGs, I got deeply, deeply angry at Fire Emblem for it's insistence on stripping things down mechanically. Much moreso than I did with the #2, because this time it was coupled with the knowledge that the foundations of their mechanics were laid at the same time with (and even earlier) than the very first FE . 6: I think I made a concsious effort to avoid horse units in my second fire emblem game (Path of Radiance) because I had literally used all the cavaliers and duessel in Sacred Stones. 7: Playing Wesnoth made me realize one of the more formal reasons why I don't like how big enemy phase combat is in Fire Emblem. I feel like in fire emblem, I spend my time planning out ways to convince the enemy to commit suicide, to the extent where I kill more enemies by "waiting turn at them" than I do by actually attacking. Granted "wait turn" can be done aggresivelly and pro-actively with me moving my units into the enemy territory, but it's still fundamentally about total player control over enemy movement. 8: A Wesnoth (and to a smaller extent Advance Wars) made me appreciate a certain kind of map design where you slowly gained a positional advantage and grinded down an opponet with a superior income, and how obviously, the perma-death made ever attemting such a thing in Fire Emblem unthinkable. 9: In FE5, I thought that enemy capture made the game harder during my first playthrough, but after accidentally getting lara captured early in my second playthrough (chapter 4x) I started intentionally forcing the enemy to capture stripped units (mostly the thieves, sometimes mages, sometimes leaf) to halve their stats and severely reduce the number of enemies in a group I had to fight. 10: I used to think that angelic robes were the least useful of the stat up consumables, but after a while (I think during my first FE6 HM) I grew to consider the best and most important.

Olwen - Getting Betrayed by Kempf is good, and her relationship with Rhineheart is good, but at seperate ages! When Kempf imprisons her, it is as a full general. Rhineheart's dilema is that he is overprotective and thinks she is still too much a child to make her own decisions. I think it's touching, but it should be happening between two younger people. Also she's a huge dissapointment gameplaywise in Thraccia 776 Swordmasters - I think Mia and Zihark are the ones that come to mind for being during my period of disenchantment. I think the hype about them should last more than one game. Julius - Honestly, I don't even know why he wants to take over the world, he acts disconnected from reality all the time. His scenes with Ishtar come to mind where he offers to buy her things or walk in a garden come to mind.He frames his first gameplay appearance as a "game". Even at endgame, he seems more concerned with theatrics than actually crushing the resistane, as I find the collection of the other country's bosses to be impossible to interpret another way. He does sometimes expound a very basic philosophy that explains that the child hunting and so on will help a might makes right kind of sciety, but it's very hollow, and never far from the child persona (usually re-emerges in same conversation). There is potential in like a unintentional child villian, but.... this isn't the Entei pokemon movie... Julius is overall really jarring for the setting and does not act how the rest of the story sets him up as, making him even worse than the bland or bad villians... at least they still work as villians or within their respective settings.

I feel like Ishtar has been locked in for the enxt Genalogy banner forever. Personally not a fan of her populairty, her personality is terrible in FE4, and only okay in FE5. Even Gameplaywise I think her first appearance is only a Novelty (not to mention that enthustaic participation in a hunting game destroys any sympathy you could have for her) , and her second ppearance is the typical Bad Genealogy dodgetank boss that sits on it's castle and can only be fought by the 3 units that can live the counter. Ares is one oof the more ambitious gen2 charathers personality-wise in that he is a foil for his father, which is naturally more drastic than most of the what the gen 2 cast get. Also I like his Heroes prf the most, since the only cooldown skills I ever have the leisure to inheirt are Ike's breath skills, and I don't have many cavalry usable special units. Lene is fine. I only have two daners, so you know. Honestly I probbably have never even read her dialog in FE4. Gameplay benefits over story presence can only be a good thing when it comes to Genealogy. I want to see if the Julius GHB keeps the standarized (purple flame poession) thing that we've been seeing or they go in a new articistc direction with him.

I think I would tentatviely say I want it gone.. I feel like I played much harder games when I was unger than I do now and I found a lot of satisfaction in powering through things that beat me the first few times. Also to go along with what I say about "which FE should you recommend to new-comers" I feel like reccomending a game that is too easy to someone who is new to the series can backfire - I understand trying to ease them in with an easy game first, BUT if the game comes off as too shallow, then they will probbably dismiss the rest of the series before moving on to the hard games (or the second/third difficulty). Therefore it's better to start or be forced to start with at least a medium-hard game. I might be thinking more because for me my non-FE friends have heavy SNES/PSX RPG experience and can adapt to mechanical things quickly, maybe the easy game first suggestion would be better if I was reccomending for my niece or something.

I think I would say Stats > Skills in Awakening and Fates - both games are VERY playable with keeping all units in their base class, after all. Re-classing does give players things to use against the map design, but it itself isn't always skill based ... Sure Dark Fliers in Awakening and stacking buffs in Fates exists... but other units are reclassed solely for growth rate multipliers or weapon access and soft stats (movement) such as Panne and the dark mage eligble people, or well, a ton of units to Wyvern Rider (nevermind how FE11-FE12 use reclassing with a huge emphasis on Base class stats). I think that FE4, FE5, and FE10 are where Skills are at their most important. Although if you interpret movement and PCC as stats rather than soft stats they would still have the disadvantage. FE10 is also VERY playable without ever moving skills , but moving critical based skills (for Pt 1) and moving Nihil around (most of Pt 4) nearly change the game on a fundamental level and make it much more reliable to play.. Finally, there is Canto : Whether you interpret it as a core gameplay mechanic or a skill (due to the mounted unit lock) would obviously have a huge impact on the total importance of Skills. Of course there is Canto for only non attacking options (GBA) and the full on everything Canto, but both are obviously top-tier compared to both stats or lesser skills. Getting multi attacked by cavalry with only 1 slot on you even makes it a more dangerous enemy skill in FE4/FE5/FE9/FE10 than most of the Boss exclusive skills. In the player hands it's still outrageous. When picking off an enemy in a group and then taking no enemy phase is only the simplest application of a skill, you know it's special.

I think an AW style FE would be too polarizing. People who don't like AW gameplay will see it as taking the place of a FE-mechanic FE, and people who do like it will probbably commentate on the absense of AW itself (although less so as opposed to DS-Wii era when AW's Battlaion Wars spin offs gave some semblence of hope for the series revival) I also don't really want the all commanding officer cast approach that the series would have, even in a medivel context. It either makes it feel like the plot charathers are too removed (most RTS) or in the case of Advance Wars, it is brushed over to the point where most of the cast don't feel like soldiers. Personally, I feel like even the worst AW game is better than best FE, (taken as a a whole, not in specifics) so i don't really want it because of the indirect commentary it would have on mainline games. It's the same too good problem that occasionally bothers me about Heroes (even if the Infenral maps and chain challenges are more puzzle-booxy than strageticgallcy hard, it's more than FE10 and Thracia do)

I prefer Lances over Axes tbh. Sacred Stones was my first FE after all, so maybe I just think of them like that. I also like their lance animations because they one are of the only units that look like they are using lances rather than spears. I'm also generally against pointless weapon parity for movement types, so being the same as peagaus doesn't bother me. If I had to give a half-assed gameplay reason, I would say that senselessly playing enemy phase (which a high def/high atk class like wyverns tends to do) with Javelins is weaker than doing so with hand axes due to lower durability/mt, especially in game's with forging (and what Wyvern in the series takes con penalities from either). That's kind of mostly a FE10-13 issue though.

FE5 magic is wonky in a lot of ways.. I mean with physical weapons, if you break them on enemy phase and another enemy attacks you, youll automatically equip a broken lance/etc, while magic users will automatically equip the next tome with durability since broken tomes are unequippable. (Preventing a gigantic AS and Avo penalty) Honestly I think that the Build AS system was developed with the E and D rank weapons in mind. Magic units not having it keeps their peanlties relatively equal with infantry units at the beginning of the game. It only really breaks down with the B-A weapons giving Magic units a much worse time than their Physical counterparts lategame. Other than Olwen and Salem, most of the magic users will double everything despite the penalty anyway.

50. Inside the human body, using the logic of the Osmosis Jones animated movie.

For me it's difficult to talk about but... Good Maps - 3, 6, 8, 9. Bad Maps, P, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10 , F 8-9 are the traditional best maps, while 3-6 are good for being being inoffensive and short for what they are. I think that maps like 2, 10, F, are better than other bad maps since they let you see the potential of the big gameplay, although they don't quite realize it themselves. 7 has some merit points simply because the begining of gen 2 temporarily discourages big enemy phases. at least as big as gen 1 and late gen 2 it's still GBA big

I like to think that Anima is done through study and incantation, light is done through faith, and dark is done by environment draining like in the dark sun setting.

Reinhardt is kind of a bad boss in Thracia 776... it's more or less like the berserk ashnard design where you can only fight him with certain charathers. Him being too strong works against how hard he is as a boss, since you don't even have an incentive to try using less effective charathers. When you can only even try to fight him under optimal conditions, he is less hard than if there were a potential for using combinations of weaker charathers,etc. 1.Eat magic water with a sage 2. Commit to ORKO on whoever you gave the awareness(nihil) scroll 3. Get the sword from him with Olwen 4.Status Staves 5. Bait him into capturing to half his stats. Trying 1 can actually force 5 to happen since his master sword will usually force his AI to try capturing versus Asvel/Homer anyway. It isn' neccesary to strip people to cheese him or anything. The armors and cav reinforcements are a more interesting threat in the same chapter. the status staves I can live without. As for his story importance as a Camus.... Thracia is not really a chartherization-heavy game... He's built up a little by the Freege geneals, but we don't ever hear his own opinion on fighting for the empire/seperated from Ishtar, and Ishtar doesn't have a scene where she mourns his death or anything afterwards... his devotion may as well have been one sided. Speaking of Freege charathers, both Eyrios and Amalda are more interesting than him flat out. Sais's own status as a descendent of a crusador overshadows Reinhardt in his own chapter, since the boss implies that Saias has a moral imperative because of it (Thrud apparently forgotten after it's earlier use as one of Reinhardt's titles) This is all on top of the Freege arc outstaying it's welcome and monopolizing the game's narrative to the point that Leidrick is almost a "who is he again?" charather by the time you reach C24. So yeah, going by his FE5 merits... I don't really think he qualified as an amazing series reperesantive. Finn is also pretty quiet in FE5, but his appearance in the opening movie and a couple pre-chapter discussion of him from other charathers () help fill him in charatherwise. FE4 Finn barely exists charatherwise in gen1 since he leaves early. He can leave a nice impression beause of his combat performance, but that's about it. Both of his non-lover conversations are practically the same (Cuan giving him weapons). His lover conversations are decent, but not the best the game has to offer, and the way they are implemented is pretty much the worst in the game (GBA support levels of slow, not to mention having less chapter to build up) He has his best charatherization when in C7-C9 of gen 2. His return is a little problematic because if you married him he's using iron lance until you pawnshop something onto him, but if you leave him unmarried he has less charatherization. His personal FE5 Brave Lance would be kind of silly to implement in heroes, since the real benefit of luck +10 in Thracia is 30% miracle activation (which reachs the gamebreaking 90% once Finn's own luck stat grows). And it's extra durability over the other doubling lance (master) is kind of a moot point in Hero's as well. I don't really think Heroes Fin needed a prf weapon or unique skills. I don't like Reinhardt either, but I think it's more a case of Thracia's larger cast deserving better than Finn deserving better.

Overall : GBA probbably FE7>slightly ahead of FE8 and FE6 UI : Awakening Portraits : Shadow Dragon > slightly ahead of New Mystery (feel a little zoomed out despite same art style) Map sprites: Awakening Battle animations: FE8 For me Awakening has one of the most important artstyles in the series personally, because I never had faith in 3-D graphics on the original DS because they always looked cheap and PSX-N64 level to me. Seeing the opening cutscene and battle animations in Awakening is what made me believe in handheld 3D's ability to be decent (outside of artstyle trumping hardware) That said I don't really like Awakening's portaits, or map sprites that much. I do think my overally favroite would be one of the GBA games due to getting second best in so many categories. They have above average portraits, the map sprites and such are what I will always immediately think of when I think of Fire Emblem, and the batttle animations are fun.

The things that come most ot mind are Kino from Kino's Journey and Ed from Cowboy Bepop. Althouugh I guess it was more me correcting other peope about it.

I mean I'll say God tier, but it's like rating skills at Kirby in 50% of cases .... In most genres, I'm not really good at "adaptive strategies" and I rely on massive playtime/memory to reach high skill, but even randomized I don't really bat an eye at an SRPG. I think having experience with a lot of the other games in the genre (FFT, Front Mission, Disgaea, Arc the Lad Trilogy, etc) does help with Fire Emblem, even though Fire Emblem is much more stripped down than most. I prefer to play on the hardest mode to enjoy games the most. It's a big reason why I like Shadow Dragon and New Mystery more than most people seem to. I play all the emulated games with Fast Forward on the whole time, because I really don't have things to worry about.

I've played Pokemon since gen 1. I used to really love the RPGs, but I quit in 4th generation when I discovered smogon, where I switched pretty much entirely to simulator play. I will say that I aggree that the Battle Tower / Battle Frontier / Battle Subway, are terrible for casual play from what I can tell, it really asks for turtling through with like a sub/calm mind + exploder + 1 random sub-legendary that isn't banned - Those are the only kind of teams I see people recomend for people who don't set up their natures and EVs, and that degree of "luck mitigation" is not fun. Having no natures or EVs would make speed ties much more common. This is especially so since most pokemon don't have distinct numbers for their speed, but cluster around numbers like 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110 There are easily more Speed 90 pokemon than speed 91-99. Always having to put up with dice/roll chances of being faster would be annoying. The availability issue of properly Natured/IVd pokemon is real, but I think it's better to just join a serebi/smogon/bulbabedia clan and request them through the players who *like* to breed and clans usually will accept art or being a main tournament battler or whatever in return. I did this in Pearl, but afterwards I didn't need to due to the simulator beign more convenient. I think the ingame RPG trainers having illegal movesets isn't too much of an issue (Lance, Ghetsis, etc) ... the in-game trainers G/S Lance can even be beat down by like a Level 35 Poliwhirl with ice punch practically fresh from using good rod in the water east of Mahongany Town. I feel like their illegality usually doesn't actually make them harder. Mega Evolution and Z-Moves - I really didn't like Mega-Evollution when I first played gen 6, but I eventually got used to it. I still wish it was more interesting (mega evolution's with differnt types than original) instead of most Mega-Evolutions just being bigger beaters of the original. Z-moves have this once for battle restriction because they are clearly desined solely for 6v6 play. I don't think they translate as well to the RPG. Techincally the un-nerfed gen 5 type gems (dragon gem, flying gem, etc) had the same 1.5x multiplier they did, just without the ability to choose not to use it until needed (and being annoying in the RPG rather than simulator due to disappaering). I think the 5th UI option is a little out of place, but otherwise I can understand them. I think the way they encourage wallbreaking on neutral attacks is slightly unhealthy and they are obviously overkill when fighting a type you already have advantage against, but they definately aren't hard to find applications for. Probbably because the RPG trainers don't use switching, it isn't usually neccesary to want type netural wallbreaking moves. The Z-move dance animation does seem like a bizarre appeal to like Mazinger-Z or Super Sentai... even with a focus on a Japanese demographic, I think Sun and Moon is using weirdly old (not to mention tonally different) source material. I usually play with the animations on simulator, but I can see why they'd be annoying, to someone who likes the regualr attack anims. I know people who practically went full World Trade after a while, so I agree that a new pokemon game with only it's own region's pokemon in-game is actually possible. I think it could kind of re-kindle a kind of uncharted territory angle to the battle system, since returning players won't have an armful of pokemon they know are reliable from before. I wasn't a fan of pre-box trading XY OU though, so I think competetively, It would annoy me if a region locked generation extended to trading as well.