Reality

This makes me think of a game like Sigmastar (for GBA) Although I do have to ask, what does the "overworld" part of a game like this really add to a game that just goes from one battle to the next? I think cutting down on in-between gameplay stuff is one of the things that helps fire emblem games have good replay value, as you can start again (on hard or whatever) and use different groups of units relatively quickly compared to replaying other RPGs.

I bought mario strikers (gcn) from a used game store without checking the inside of the case When I got home the disc inside turned out to be True Crime: New York...

Judgral remakes seem like a bad idea because with the original writing team gone, it's shouldn't come back if it can't come back well. Obviously FE Heroe's is meant to be a little hammy and comedic, but based on certain quotes they gave even the straitlaced FE4 charathers, yeah a remake would not go well. Also I'm way in the camp that considers the gameplay of SoV to be the most disgraceful thing in all of post 2000s fire emblem. Another over faithful remake would not be healthy. I think FE6-7 remakes are semi inevitable at this point , but hope for 2, if not 3, original games before then. That would be healthiest for the franchise. Personally I'm not super keen on these games and they are more replayable than something like Path of Radiance or Jugdral already.

Gameplay - Sigurd is my least favorite Roy and Miciah being weak positively adds to the level of strategy in the early chapters in their games (not to mention miciah can make use of the wrath skill and such while their isn't much slot competetion with other recruits although you'll probbably take it off her later) Eliwood and Leif are unfairly lumped in with these two- FE5 features hordes of cannon fodder that makes him easy to level up without affecting your other units even if you don't abuse scrolls, by chapter 6 it's likely to have his bulk at a high enough level to make him reliable for the rest of the game if not by chapter 3x . In addition he has fire sword, light brand, and can level up movement. He could even use king sword later on, although you aren't really lacking offensive power in Thracia's lategame to make it neccesary. Eliwood has a much harder time leveling up, but even on Hector Hard mode he can be used in lots of situations. I would argue that General Horace's relatively heavier use of eliwood is one of the secret advantages he uses to win drafts. As a "central strategy unit" which even Leaf can manage, he is admitedly terrible, but he definately remains quite nice if you can bring yourself to see him akin to the offensive support units (mostly the frail mages with no enemy phase outside nosferatu/defense tile tanking), he can manage to hold his own. Now on the contrast to the weak lords (and the pseudo weak lords), we have strong lords, who make the game overall less fun due to hurting the map design. Sigurd helps to invalidates almost any sense of strategy for 5 chapters. Ike is the second worst (for the effect he has on map quality), due to his durability and doubling power despite at least being range locked for most of the game. Also fuck Lyn and Roy for what they did to the Heroes metagame Story - Conquest Corrin -- as far as I'm concerned Conquest is a horror story about that kid from the Twilight Zone and everyone breaks character to be nice to him out of fear of being sent to the cornfield. This is a bit of an unfair exaggeration, and you can see the intention of many aspect of Conquest's plot and Corrin's character, but the way it is in the finished game really is abominable, in both the sense that he is a bad person, and that he makes the story unbalanced from a literary perspective.

I see "beginner" as different from "newcomer" My thoughts are that if for someone interested in videogames, their first Fire Emblem game should be one that justifies their interest with its depth. Maybe I wouldn't recommend it to a child or something, but even then I feel like, a lot of people played harder games when they were young (succesfully) than when they were older. At least I did. For me, Conquest has the whole "uphill struggle" thing- it becomes attractive to play through because every time it gets hard it inspires you to play better and finally reach a real sense of accomplishment that is different from the sense of simple completion you get with a game that you pass through on a first or near-first play through..

By availability- easiest to obtain to hardest to obtain.

The tower grind is fastest if you just retreat after doing the first floor rather than doing the later maps. Grinding the tower conventionally would be slower than arena due to how mazy the higher floors are. This does prevents you from selling off the stuff in the chests, but it takes forever to run out of money for irons anyway.

The awakening LTC is funny since you've already done 51 of those turns. I'm happy to have seen the big stuff. I guess the rest will be rolling enemy skills properly and using modified versions of the lunatic strats.

I could have narrowed this down more, but I need a reminder. FE4 Birth of the Holy Knight : Light Inheritor : Silesia Army FE5 Beginning : Base : Near Victory : Leaf : Enemy Phase A : Crisis : Minor Victory : August Talks B : Thracia FE6 Beneath a New Light FE8 "Truth, Despair, and Hope" : Tension : Raid : Determination FE9 Puzzling Truth : Lion King Caneghis : Strategem in Black Armor : Decisive Attack FE10 Stalwarts Unite : Caneghis- King of Lions FE11 The Time to Act FE12 Advance : Liberation : Holy War : Forbidden Sanctuary : Light and Shadow FE13 Preface : Duty : Divine Decree : Conquest : Id (Purpose) : Monstrosity : Old Battlefield FE14 Dark Wastes : A Dark Fall : Condemnation : Road Taken : Destiny, Help us : Pray to the Dark : Resolve(Dark) : Path of Hero King SoV With Mila's Divine Protection : Twilight of the Gods : March to Deliverance : A Blade on the Wind (I think the chapter 3 versions of each are overdone though)

I don't really like Nier Automata due to the gameplay necessarily being a little light in order to accommodate a mixture of genres .. It's beating a dead horse to point out more focused character action games (bayonetta/ devil may cry), any number of more focused SHUMPs, or in the case of very specific Nier boss fights- the special games that combine light gun shooting into background with dodging in the foreground such as Sin and Punishment (pretty much have to settle for the virtual console n64 or the wii game) or Wild Guns (had a nice HD facelift available on steam, etc). If I had to think about it storywise- there are a limited number of RPGs (and occasionally puzzle games) with machine or machine races and their relationship to humanity or sentience/emotion as major themes. Of those that do, it tends to be side characters rather than main characters or else used as fodder for solving major conflicts.. A lot of games are handicapped in this regard either due to the machine characters having too small a proportion of screen time, or the plot being more interested in other ideas. I think this particularly would crush our hopes of finding a similiar narrative in say, Mass Effect 2-3(Most of the robots might as well be alien-robots and hence are definately intelligent already), or Xenosaga Ep1-2 (Realians already have equal status to humans at begining of story, so the question largely doesn't have to be asked except in cases of lower order machines which presumably can follow their lead anyway) I think we can leave out the whole "what is like to be an emotionless being" thing that's used in less ambitious RPGs (practically 90% of sci-fi rpg series, plus a handful of undead charathers, and in the rarest cases angels/heralds like in Lunar 2) Only a handful of times when this is a larger focus of the game. Still it feels like a lot of a stretch to say something like "The Talos Principle" is really similiar to Nier-Automata- The machine theme is there, but since there are only really 3 characters and it's not dialogue based, it takes on an entirely different mood. Also thinking about it- "Final Fantasy 9" Mostly in the main villian Kuja having parallels with the Nier charather A2 and the Genomes/Black Mages/ the creator figure of FF9, serving to drive the conflict in way akin to how the androids do so in Nier Automata. But the game takes it's time before getting to this stuff, and while it becomes increasingly sci-fi as you go on, the main part of the game uses a magical fantasy setting, and their is much more room for comic relief than in a comparable game.

When I first played the DS games I thought they were disappointing, but honestly they both have moments of creativity- I feel that PH had better bosses, and ST has better puzzles. Also I have to echo others and say that storywise it's light because it does lean on the fact that it is a sequel to phantom hourglass which itself is a sequel of wind waker. Back to Spirit Tracks- It is pretty basic, but ghost zelda is probably at least the third best as far as partner charathers go in zelda, but that might not be important for someone who started with the GBC zelda as they didn't become a tradition until Ocarina anyway. I'd say that the gameplay of the final boss isn't too bad a thing to miss, but the pre, mid, post scenes with zelda there help her already engaging character traits. I think the fact that all of the items were more or less "ranged" helps the DS games get away with their touch screen controls. I think onlly the sword itself and getting sucked into the roll animation accidentally were big problems for me. I never felt the need to have the items set to buttons, because you don't use any of them up close like the gauntlet/torch/boots, etc in other games. I do have to agree that skipping a full three generations ahead of when they first settle the continent that they go looking for at the end of WindWaker might have been a bit much... Outside of 2 charathers and the cel-shading aesthetic, you can easily forget that the ocean is out there or why Hyrule is so geographically different from the "canonized" Ocarina of Time/Twilight Princess/Wind Waker. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the GCN / Wii games... I played them a lot- they'll probably satisfy on the story front, although they can be annoyingly selective with which characters get screen time. '

I guess it's been 2 months since "series that prioritize your backlog" and all the "what would you like sequels for" threads technically apply to one-off games as much as series. Anyway, uh. I have lots of stuff. Donkey Kong -Country gets preferential treatment, but I'm not going to lie about loving Jungle Beat, 64, and the Mario vs Donkey Kong puzzle games as well Rayman- Few bad entries 2d or 3d, and even a lot of the spin offs are fun. I find that the way that the triggers are used with collapsing levels makes Rayman Origins/Legends much more MP friendly than other modern co-op Platform games. Twisted Metal- There are lots of TM games with problems, and heck, I prefer rival series Vigilante 8/Second Offense over the 5th gen games. Bu I adore the car-combat sub-genre that the series stands for, and TM: Black, and TM: 2012, ARE the kings of the genre. The developer David Jaffe is a cool guy, and I can be excited for when it comes back. Mario Kart- I almost defected from Mario Kart. Almost- However I had to go back to it as a survival strategy no one would agree to play MP with me long term to my alternative kart games And at any rate, the series is healthier than it was when I was growing up, and it was no slouch then in the first place! MicroMachines- I still consider these games to be pure genius. I'm unusual in that V3 is my favorite, but I still find both the late rV4 and earlier the genesis/SNES games pretty good for translating Super Sprint-esque gameplay into a more creative setting. The only problem is that MM 2017 kind of wrecks my confidence in the series making a comeback... but I think that it at least demonstrates that there is interest in MM, and while a lot of it was bad, that Hungry Hippo race track was at least one moment of pure genius. Doom- Doom 2016 has proven that the new id software is not going to do something like Doom 3 or Quake 4 again. However as a series, I prefer Doom because Doom 1 and 2 were better than Quake ever was as a single player experience. Quake 3 is indeed a top tier MP game, but I chose Unreal Tournament growing up for the most part, and Quake Live and it's derivatives have largely crushed hopes in a new Quake- Id software could definitely make a good SP Quake episode, but the lesson to be learned from Quake Live was that the community was not there, and so will probably never be so again aside from specific private community group servers. Doom on the other hand will surely continue to reign hard. Mario- I still have and play the physical carts for pretty much every GB game and all the GBA-SNES re-releases. But I don't reserve my love for Mario to just 1986 through Super Mario World- I can't imagine parting with the 3D games either. I'm aware that New Super Mario Bros/ Super Mario 3D land, etc get flack from people... but I don't quite get why, I've found them all to be pretty high quality, and only really begrudge them timesinking me from ever getting around to playing all of Archie's 3rd-4th gen obscure platformers. Wario- I liked Wario Land 2-4 for the puzzle focus, but honestly Shake it and Wario World were a little disapointing.(moreso the former than the latter) And it's hard to combine Wario Ware and Wario as a franchise the way I can do with Donkey Kong / Donkey Kong Country. I really enjoyed Wario Ware GBA, GCN, DS, Twisted played on GCN's GBA player as god intended because I didn't have a backlit GBA SP yet but I couldn't get into DIY and Smooth Moves at all. Neverthless, I can imagine Wario Land 5 (for switch) joining the host of good 2d platformers that were all over the wii-wii U, and Warioware recapturing its past glory. Yoshi- I adore SMW2 Yoshi's Island and Wooly World... I can enjoy Yoshi's Story in short bursts.... but Yoshi's New Island, and that other game make me kind of wary of Yoshi as a platformer series. Puyo Puyo- Just because I think that Tsu is perfect doesn't mean that I don't think that the other rulesets are bad- by other puzzle game standards a lot of them are pretty good actually. Of course it's hard to say "I would buy Puyo Puyo" because Sega largely keeps it in Japan and anyway I would probably keep playing it online for competition instead of bothering with a physical game anyway. Megaman- difficult, between the Anniversary Collection, and the X collection, whenever my thoughts turn to megaman, it is in the context of replaying games rather than looking for the new kid on the block- That said they're damn easy to get back into and when I do it I usuually go through like 4 of them in day. Castlevania- see Megaman, although more with Castelvania 3, Rondo, and the GBA games than SotN and its family. I would say Divinity: Original Sin- but the game's before it are only "spirtually" part of a series- and also crap by comparison anyway. And Divinity 3 is way too far in the future for me to even imagine. Divinity OS and Divinity 2 alone definitely inspire more loyalty from me than pretty much any other RPG series I can think of no offense to Chrono Trigger, Lufia, Final Fantasy, Grandia, SMT, and especially Wizardry Then there are games that technically ARE a series, but that I never think of as being such- Lemmings, Bomberman, Star Fox, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Mario Tennis, and Worms come to mind- In cases like these certain games just tower over the others to the point of rendering the other games irrelevant. There is also tons of small franchises with 2-4 games like Timesplitters, Colony Wars, aki corp wrestlng, Mr. Driller, Descent, Freespace, MDK, Ape Escape, - but I don't include them as they are games I don't have the optimism to hope sequels from. Tony Hawk- Obviously, post Neversoft Tony is... fairly awful. However, it was never like Neversoft had a golden touch that nobody else did- handheld ports of the game held up well, the Sk8te franchise happened, Aggresive Inline, BMX and ATV games quietly took the trick based sports game in a bearable direction in the 6th and 7th gen before sinking in to obscurity due to not having a recognize brand to build a franchise out of. However, although the license is still in the grip of Activation and whatever studios it chooses to outsource too... Neversoft Employees are supposed to be releasing a feature length documentary in 2018. This probably won't lead to rebirth in a short time frame, but at the very least, the memory of the franchise should inspire other developers once again.

Like FE7- Eliwood Famously bad lord. Actually I'm convinced that heavily using Eliwood is one of the secrets General Horace uses to win HHM drafts, so he isn't really as bad as people claim he is (and you have to consider enemy speed bases in FE7 lol) Beyond that, I find him to be a really endearing character and easily one of my top 3 lords personality/story wise. FE13- Panne I think I can say that she is disliked by the community, largely because of people thinking either that she's bad as a unit due to a desire to keep her in the taguel class or because they think that "bunny-girl" is too much of a sex-appeal character, although you don't see that complaint as much since Fates exists now. I mean I'd prefer a Ivalice iron work aesthetic viera, but I've seen bunny girls in other games that didn't give up their character traits due to their appearance, and Panne certainly doesn't in her supports/dialog either. Actually, I find her to be one of the more serious charathers personality wise in the game, which is refreshing considering the rest of the cast. She also has a great "gameplay personality" if you like to use the reclass function, even on L+. Dislike FE4- Levin Levin is the charather with the most dialogue in Genealogy. A lot of it is flat out exposition. He isn't used well due to age of the game I guess. But there's more to me not liking him than the unavoidable stuff- His actual personality traits are also pretty off-putting. I don't want to repeat the stuff from the "Judgrall story thread" but the bottom spolier of this post covers why I dislike gen 2 Levin. gen1 Levin is hard to love as a drifter/bard, because we are also expected t acknowledge him as one of best magic users so he should really take the throne even if he doesn't want to, especially when it ends up costing the lives of his wife and mother..... As a unit, he is completely uninteresting to use since Holsety makes him into an unkillable dodge tank that OHKOs anything you could possibly make him fight in the context of gen1 and even if you want to conserve it his stats are godly with the other tomes anyway. Obviously not responsible for the bulk of my problems with FE4's gameplay, but definitely not a healthy example from the game either... FE8- Tana Maybe I just haven't participated in drafts enough. Frankly I have never felt the need to use her despite her higher growth potential than Vanessa/Cormag, because I just never had a reason to put up with her early chapters (she can grind her recruitment chapter and next few easily on NM but definitely not HM) Also I found myself siding with Innes against her too often whenever they argued. Granted I dislike most est characters (including amelia/ewan from this same game), but I think that the general fanbase at large has gotten over hyping them the way it used too. They still hype Tana though, probbably because she is more of a midway growth unit rather than being really bad to start out with. FE9- Soren I used to describe PoR Soren as the mage with the most potential, but the worst practically/easiness of use in Path of Raidance not counting tormod/bastian. Honestly, every time I play the game I end up really annoyed with him on early chapters, which seem to purposely feature javelin units more heavily than the rest of the game, and anyway only having wind tomes available initially doesn't do him any favors. Thankfully once you get forge and the ability to train him in a real magic rank this isn't so bad.... but then again, Calil and Illanya do that stuff for free without the early bad period. Late game his speed/skill/mag make him pretty intimidating, but not as intimidating as the handaxe/javelin squad. Maybe an unnecessary evil in LTC drafts, but even there I would rather take the 1 turn slower brainless cav rush strategy over hoping to get him the proper level ups in many chapters along the way and then reseting over and over for his siege tomes to finally crit. I am so-so on his personality- I don't think his psedo-racism for laguz is explained very convincingly compared to other characters. Obviously it's a kind of halfling backlash from being rejected by both races thing- but it's hard not to agree with first time PoR players who just see him as doing it out of irrational jerkiness. I feel like Titania comes up for strategies in more maps than he actually does (granted there's lots of maps where Ike does his own thing against advice) which creates a bizarre feeling that he is one of the least pro-active strategists in the series. His support where he opens up to Ike is pretty good though. FE10 causes his gameplay to get another disapointing grade, but helps his personality by explaining the consequences of being a branded in more detail/doesn't feature open hostility from him the way FE9's gallia chapters did.

I'm re-watching Gungrave... it's still a problem anime for me... EP 2-14 are amazing outside of occsionally foreshadowing shit in E10-11. (The Flash Forward EP 1 is also horrific). It's a really great yakuza show that turns horrible once it reaches what should have been the conclusion and then it turns into budget hellsing. EP 15-26 just plain suck. This is mostly because monster design's are all over the place and because of character assanitation (the guy known for his intelligence and computer work is a brute charather, a cool and collected guy becomes a psychotic slasher, And I don't even want to mention helicopter legs, and the totally unnecessary extra POV charather) I mean the sci-fi part of the show has a couple redeeming qualities (Harry's final encounter with the former boss, little character moments like Harry trying to grant the wish of the abused clerk/manager, Bear flashing back to executing the one guy at the dock and resigning himself to being as wrong to him) . And obviously, seeing Harry get what he deserves is inherently satisfying, and I appreciate the theatrics of their conversation in 26, even if Harry isn't written well enough to deserve them(His breakdowns and assertions of being in the right vs really only wanting the respect of Brandon and not greater freedom work great up till 16-18ish, but in the last episodes the way it is handled just makes him seem dense) Honestly, it's a show that reeks of potential- If the creators had just reigned in the urge to cash in on Hellsing and trust in their well written plot (as well as probbably settling for a shorter run than 26 because as great as Harry is, does require a more condensed format in order for him to retain the gravity that he has when he first "falls") Then it could easily be one of the shows that I universally recommend to people with no strings attached. What we got with the finished product- 13 wonderful episodes in a mostly realistic yakuza settings (E10-11 foreshadow later Sci-fi, but not too much) And then 13 episodes of a bad action anime which unfortunately uses the established characters.... but even those 13 episdoes have handful of good scenes that are of interest to people who want resolution. It is not "bombastic" like some other gangaster/mafia anime, rather it is somewhat sombre and focuses on what the freedom of being in the mafia really means to two characters who once lived in a ghetto as street gang.

From looking at the enemy stats, I think the lost turn in C8 is worth it- without vengeance, I think even a crit forge isn't enough on the higher res guys since they'll all be at or near the HP cap by C23. .

I have to say no to a second generation- Just when the first generation gets out of the bad (tutorial/semi tutorial) to the first good part of the game (the first hard maps) the reset button that is a second generation kicks you down to necessarily low-intensity stuff again, even if it's only temporarily before buiding too *harder* scenarios than the hard part of gen1. I would much prefer the difficulty to rise consistently climb throughout the whole game than have a rise>fall>rise structure. How children have affected map design- FE4, C6 is a massive scaleback from the final gen1 chapter, and in the remaining chapters, instead of having the 3-or four broken units, you have a half-dozen of them due to how the holy blood boosts makes their growths sickeningly higher than they look, absurd personal weapons, and in other cases just because of having skills that were probably not meant not meant to be together on the same unit. FE Awakening- Children are used in same story as other characters, and most of them can use their combined advantages (massive skill list, growths) to quickly catch up with gen 1 units between fighting in their paralogue recruitment chapter. Very nice for L+, kind of tacked on in efficiency playtthroughs. FE Fates- Children are still used in the same story as other characters- A lot of people shit on child units in this game, but imo many of them are capable of overtaking high end units about 6-7 chapters before endgame. Of course that isn't particularly efficient, but it's also not quite in "out of your way" territory to achieve in non-efficency play through. The best draw of children units is that actually playing the extra map to recruit them gets you more items specific capturable enemies which can be at a premium, at least in Conquest. Story- FE4 wins, Awakening is bad at base, but the future past dlc kind of makes it better if only elibe tier in terms of writing. Fates is the worst, because unlike awakening, the children don't really have as good of a reason to grow up as fighters in the first place, since they don't live in an apocalyptic setting which functioned as both origin and motivation in Awakening. The thread seems o be just behind the game's reason behind the children, but I have to add also that I find that aside from Sety, Leaf, and a handful of others that most of FE4 gen 2 are VERY dry characters, and taken as a whole the 3DS children are more interesting, even if the reason for being in the first place is not as good- Anyway I feel like smaller negataive effect on map design (even if it's short term) makes the 3DS children the clear option. More in Conquest than Awakening L+

I have got to say that the updated versions help a bit- However there is this other problem with the soundtrack- (other FE games have it but not as bad) and that is how it sounds in gameplay as opposed to as a detached OST. The main thing is that you will be hearing the enemy phase music right after the chapter themes... And Genealogy's enemy phase music is awful (especially gen 1).. It had some cool ideas with giving each different country's armies their own music, but most of the enemy phase music is either way too chipper or else goes infor a "ponderous " feeling. Some of it is catchy but... sounds like it came from a different game. ALL of it is at odds with the main music tracks in the game.

For me Sacred Stones will always be the soundtrack that makes me think of Fire Emblem the most- However, I find Fates and Awakening, and to lesser degree SoV to be much more interesting and technical. I also really love about 5 tracks in DS emblem, but the rest of the music in the Arachena games (esp a lot of the battle themes) just blurs together. I have mixed opinions about Path of Radiance. Genealogy is good but somewhat old-fashioned. With a lot of the best SNES soundtracks (for non-FE games) you can feel that they go beyond what the technology's limits to achieve their timeless quality, while Geneaolgy has a VERY SNES-like sound, especially in the "rising portion" of tracks like Prologue, C5, C8, and C10 . For me, I feel like Genealogy's sound track is TOO defined by the SNES for me to consider it a really outstanding soundtrack. It's still good though. Probbably my 5th favorite FE soundtrack

I don't hate Zelda 2- because I see hack n slash platformers as being more "gamelike" in general than the normal zedla foruma games (2d or 3d), but on the other hand, I always end up comparing it to other hack n slash platform games, which beat it handliy due to it's lack of focus due to the overworld exploration, etc. I like it relative to later zelda games for being more of a game than they are, although I don't really consider it to be as much of an experience as later games. As for "T" well no zelda game comes close to competing with Tony. or even the runners up for T. I'm not especially loyal to it, I just find them all to be solid games as a group- I mostly hold them down because I really hate lazy puzzle design in certain zelda games and combat that is crippled due to inadequate/barely mobile enemies- a far cry from the two NES zelda enemies- I just want to assume that you never owned RCT 1 and RCT 2, because this just hurts my soul.

I did a "favorite video game per release year that you've been alive"- so I have a huge list of things floating around. I think for A-Z I can manage pretty easily- A: Ace Combat 4 B: Battle for Wesnoth C: Creatures 2 D: Donkey Kong Country 2 E: Eye Toy Play 2 F: F-Zero X G: Gauntlent H: Halo Reach I: Ikaruga J: Just Cause 2 K: King's Quest L: Lemmings M: Mario Tennis N: NBA Courtside 2 : Featuring Kobe Bryant O: Oddworld: Abe's Exodus P: Puyo Puyo Q: Quake 3 Arena R: Rayman 2 S: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island T: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 U: Unreal Tournament 2004 V: Vigilante 8 W: Worms Armageddon X: XII Y: Ys Chronicles Z: Whichever Zelda is stylized "Zelda:subtitle" instead of "The legend of zelda: subtitle" otherwise Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Hard Letters- S - incredibly tough between things like Super Metriod, Stephen's Sausage Roll, Smash TV, other Super Mario games, Super smash bros, etc. M was pretty rough for the same reason, the mario spin offs, Metriod (the GC and GBA ones), Monaco, Majesty: the fantasy kingdom sim, MDK2, Metal Slug, and so on. T is hard because of all the games that start with "The" RIP The Incredible Machine but also stuff like Twisted metal and Timesplitters 2 B is the only really "unexpected" hard choice- I've poured tons of time into Battle for Wesnoth, Banjo Kazooie, Bombastic, Boom Blox, the Batman:Arkham games, and the Burnout franchise. Other Tough drops- in L, D, W, and P Need category for games with Numbers as the first character in the title because 1943 Battle For Midway is too good

I think this is really nice background for people that haven't played the game themselves. I do think that the "poem" explanation for miasma might not be clear for new people, so to handle it without giving anything away- I guess you could describe how it works visually- something like, that the atmosphere of the planet is covered in the miasma poison, but the crystal's have a little oxygen bubble around them (10 feet or so for the chalices, and the town's crystals cover the entire town+ small amount of the countryside for farming etc- ) which is how the main races manage to survive the poison atmosphere.

I would say not to get if you aren't already familiar with Warriors games.... Musou games tends to be very hit or miss... If you do get it- You should know about the impressions that new players often have about Warriors games- that they are repetitive, games that are better suited to fun time wasting than challenge due to their low difficulty. While people have gone around saying that this game isn't as bad-(and long time warriors players know that on higher difficulties and later maps this stops begin a problem) I would still like to point out the case of my nephew- who went through about 1/3 of Warriors Orochi 2, the entire adventure map in Hyrule warriors and about half of its master quest map= all without knowing that attack strings other than weak attack>weak attack>weak attack> etc even existed. - From what I can see- the story maps are easy, with only 1 with Pegasus knights being mildly annoying (perhaps they should have limited the number of times you can change an ally's orders to 3-5 per map) History mode features a better balance of medium and hard maps- However there are two kinds of hard maps in dynasty warriors- Hard maps determined by being forced in position of having to defend allies on seperate parts of the map (multitasking), and hard maps determined by strong enemies (stats)- For the most part, the latter are designed not to even be attempted until you meet it's level threshold- even then, Powered up officers have large health, and while hitting harder, use the same movesets as their lesser brethen- prompting you into trying to fight them with rolls/parries for a longer period of time despite "already doing enough to win" if you had met that same enemy on a different map where they were a normal enemy captain instead of "a valued enemy captain" and/or you leveled up your characters some more. While the story mode should be seen as an extended tutorial* the bulk of the game is the history maps, some of which have the same low difficulty, some with some fairly engaging setups , and some that can be accessed early and are hard when first unlocked, but fairly disinter sting if you wait to play them as the game encourages (as in FEW, unlike traditional Warriors, you will want the whole party of charathers leveled up instead of a few player controlled characters) *(an old style tutorial- you probably will have to restart some of the maps, it isn't an auto win) As far as I am concerned- it looks like a good game, but I'm certain that most people will get sick of it without going through the whole (base) thing. I'm of the opinion that Warriors games should be played on Hard by default, but this is less for challenge as it is more for improving the game's longevity- I don't feel like people can be persuaded not to play it on normal mode by default, and therefore those people new to the Warriors genre shouldn't purchase it at its launch price- for it will disappoint some of them. Even if you are in a position to appreciate Musou games- I think 2018 is a very competitive year and there are two many high quality games to have time for FEW for the immediate future (maybe less of an issue if you are a single-console gamer) If you want to get ideas of how long it is, you check this poll of the last Nintendo crossover Musou. I think sites like this consistently overshoot how long games are though- I would expect the average player to spend 8 hours on story mode and an additional 22 hours on history mode (80 if they wanted to complete it) https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=35808

If you take the time to watch a generic officer- would you say that they have a full moveset- or are they PS2 Huang Zhong stripped down templates that are just limited to a short attack string +dodging+parrying+ a handful of combos, probbably only up to C3. More interested in the generals and beast guys than officers with similar classes to player characters/gharnef and co.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that the story deserves to be condemned. My impression of when the OP quoted me was that it was a thread for the storyline's problems and thus, I didn't really talk about things that I liked or when the game's theme's did work together- If I didn't show appreciation of the game, it was because, I find that far larger than any of the actual story's problems, is the problem of the fan's reception of it as so holy that it is either no longer written as a game, and that it totally/nearly transcends genre boundaries. However, I'm not willing to chalk the game's problems solely up to the time period it was made in. Yes half the game is pre-chapter narration or Levin, but even if the script's presentation were changed - it does have problems of unity regarding certain themes in addition to a handful of badly used characters and events. New stuff- It's mentioned by Integrity that most of the minor villains in this game are not very nuanced, but this is actually kind of inevitable based on how the game is designed. A lot of people comment on how the Arachnea games suffer from character bloat and hence many characters having no chance at being fleshed out, but Genealogy manages to suffer from a kind of villain bloat- Yes, a lot of fire emblems will have 3-5 bandit chapters, and lots of opportunistic low-level generals and regents to mow over, but Genalogy has the basic problem of having to write for the villain of each castle- Hence instead of 1 boss each for 25-30 chapters (give or take a few for rare chapters with 2 bosses in them or defense maps), Genealogy has 6+ bosses each in 12 chapters for a total in the 70s- There is really no help for a lot of them being flat characters without much bearing on the plot. Perhaps the translation went a little far with "familiar language" making some of them sound like rapists and "take no prisoners" generals, but even with that aside, not TOO much can be expected from a great many of them, even in a high-quality remake. RE: Sigurd's Agency- I kind of have to side with Integrity on this. Sigurd as a lord, pretty much always does what's put in front of him with only two major exceptions 1: Not taking Shanan captive 2: Marrying Deirdre. I don't really think this makes him a bad character, he loyally does what the king orders in Verdane/Agustria, and then he makes his way towards the capital to sue for his innocence, mostly acting against antagonists on the way that he doesn't need to decide for himself are worth fighting, but mostly when they coincidentally commit actions that help them fit better into a framework that justifies him fighting them (especially the Silesia Uncles, Reptor,Langobolt). It does mean for me that Sigurd's loyalty to the king is less interesting than Marth's loyalty to Hardin, but that doesn't disqualify Sigurd from being a good character. The only time I have a problem with Sigurd's "lack of agency" is when dealing with fan interpretations that explain him as having antihero qualities or going too far, etc.. i do not find that the bulk of his turning point in Chapter 2-3 supports this very well. The kind of minor nitpicking I would consider unfair is attacking Sigurd's decision not to use Shanan as a hostage- There is the argument that by doing he prolongs the war and thus puts two people he is stated to love/respect in danger for a longer amount of time (Prince Kurth and his father)- But the game is clearly using this purposely to show Sigurd's humanist character. Also he seems fairly confident that their country is winning anyway. While I would praise a game like King of Dragon Pass for going all out to maintain the in-setting value system to the point of rewarding the "hill tribe" ethics system and the necessity of stern actions that would never be done by "good" charathers in other games... That is more a case of a game going above and beyond, and I cannot complain about FE running into common pollution. It does create a little dissonance compared to how he treats Eltshan though RE- killing the heroes- Personally I think power level arguments aren't too big of a problem with video game stories, otherwise there wouldn't be a game. While I don't really like Manfloy, I don't worry about how his demonstrated potential influence/power could translate to doing even more to hinder the heroes. (Same with Gharnef/Nergal) Julius might be one of the rare cases where it does detract from the story, but mostly because Celice and company aren't told that the book of Narga exists in Chapter 6 or when Celice first finds Julia... it might be a trope to know that the Mcguffin exists as a motivator for going on their rebellion, but not being told kind of makes the heroes look like they have a death wish. At the very least the player should be aware of it from the narration earlier. As far as Julius not "acting" on his power to blow them away, that is no more of a problem than WoR Kefka/Ganon waiting patiently in their towers while the heroes mow down their followers and power up. Big argument about gen 2 Levin on the discord server- Caution- not formatted!

This personally makes no sense to me. I mean we are talking about arcade games here. I find in situations like this, bad videos still attempt the same strategies as good videos, and differ mainly because of execution. It's not really like speedrunning or naturalistic replays- the old videos don't retain value because of interesting route differences. I think of Pasky's channel, and I really have no need to see his old metal slug or knights of valour alongside his modern ones (when same category).