Reality

FE 5 is harder than FE10 (answer- the hype is not real. despite some nasty pre-promotes enemies during the escape and mechanics) FE4 is harder than any game that isn't FE1, FE3, FE8, FE9, or Awakening Normal/Hard mode (answer- Holy blood boosted growths, enemy Paladins being grind-tier enemies for new recruits, Replacement runs not actually making game harder due to the fixed units you still get AND their own usuable stats ) FE3 is Harder than any game that isn't FE1, FE4, FE8, FE9, or Awakening Normal/Hard Mode (answer- low enemy stats, funnel friendly map design) Being weighed down significantly matters in FE7-9 (answer- you still double 90% with the speed penalty so feel free to use Javelin!pegusus knights and Soren) There's a list somewhere, where I claimed that FE games are worse SRPGs than any other Japanese SRPG from a really broad list of games (answer- it's ridiculously broken on the whole, but not THAT ridiculously broken) The only thing preventing FE from being a good franchise is removing "strategy" from the title of the genre it is in. (answer- answer)

I mean I'm a little hyperbolic about this story, but IT is rough around the edges-for all that it's better than later games The time spent in Verdane-Agurstria-Silesia- The pirates in Agustria- The spirit forest in Agustria basically represents a third religion-

I've already approached you a lot about the game, but I guess a few more things come to mind- 1: When allied forces/officers fight enemy officers off-screen, how does the game weigh the calculations for the battle compared to other warriors games- does it focus on morale versus morale, or weigh in type effectiveness / powered up status? 2: Do enemy officer's ever attack allied officers/generics while the player controlled character is nearby, or do they just get their priority switched to the player? (not counting incidental wide attacks) 3: I played DW 4 too much, it ruined my ability to comprehend new games When offscreen allied vs enemy officer is resolved, does the game take any health away from the winning side to imply that their was an actual fight, or does it simply destroy the losers and leave winners at their full health? 4: How do allied officers recover health midbattle- I know that some warriors games gives them a boost when you "rescue them" by going into a small radius of them when prompted, but others games leave your options more limited. 5: If you make a bastard save file for experimenting, what does the game do if you kill off most/all of the playable cast- especially in missions that autodeploy X character who is now missing?

Like the "laguz" kind of solidifies the blatant appeal to nostalgia.

FE16 will be set in the Parfait kingdom, and feature Jerry, Blooey, Torque, Hayzee, and Screamy's epic battle against the Chestnut king. The major themes of the game will be helping people to remember times when no matter how hard they tried, they failed anyway, and went away feeling their time had been wasted- The weapon triangle would be Boots/Hammers/Magic The games art style would be more subdued and flatter compared to Awakening and Fates. It's kind of a guess, but I think that they would keep using Awakening/Fate's idea of humorous personality traits.

I'm interested, lot of memories of this game. I mostly like it for the music and a couple of the more surreal levels. I played it all the way through Single Player twice, and multiplayer once. I's got to say that I don't really consider it a good multiplayer game, mostly because one player gets screwed out of actually playing due to having to carry the chalice (if mog was in MP it would be an okay experience even with the gimmicky GBA cables). My only suggestion is to fight the urge to spam charge shot (even though Selkie has the best one on the upgraded weapons), because even if it's the most effiecnt way to play the game, it won't be exciting for viewers, especially those who haven't tried it themselves, as if you mixed things up some more. Why aren't fire/ice/thunder/cure rings in the poll

I've been under the impression that the Weapon Triangle only mattered for when you made allied units fight the computers and that with skill you could personally (unit controlled) overcome fighting enemy officers with Triangle disadvantage. However, just a few minutes ago, I read KingDDD's first impression thread, and he said something along the lines of "Weapon Triangle Disadvantage removes your hitstun against the enemy officer". Anyone familiar with the Warriors series (or even 2D beat em ups) should be able to tell that this would be a HUGE disadvantage, much moreso than extra damage and so on. So I would just like any of the people already playing the game to explain in neat detail what the weapon triangle's actual mechanics are, because most of the people giving "subjective opinions" have basically said "it's important/unimportant" without explaining it's actual physics so that people on a different level of playing ability from them can judge for themselves.

Personally I think "redefining the series" is an unhealthy attitude. Breath of the Wild (and hopefully Mario Odyssey) managed to do quite well by breaking the mold, but it shouldn't be taken as meaning that "originality" is inherently good. There are a lot of profoundly original (indie games) that unfortunately take big missteps by not trying to focus on playability and simple "fun" first. In the context of SRPGs, being too original IS VERY Dangerous. If you think about Tactics Ogre, or Final Fantasy Tactics, you might remember heavy duty class/job system, and mechanics like zodiac compatibility- even though they might add "depth" to the game, they also run the risk of being overly cumbersome, or worse, arcane and difficult to learn for players. An over-designed game can achieve it's goal of being unique much more easily than the goal of being good. Personally, what fire emblem 16 needs to do is to simply focus on making another game with level design of the quality seen in conquest- there are a number of FE games that had equally good (or better) mechanics/systems, but not level design- it is an element that is fairly weak in the greater part of FE games, which is a shame considering how tightly designed Advance Wars Campaign maps were- If you really want to brainstorm ways that a Fire Emblem game could "redefine the series" (limiting myself to 3/4 view turn based strategies here) A:You could imagine a FE game using a D&D tabletop engine, complete with attacks of opportunity, vancian magic, and the A/C system to determine hit rate. . B:You could have a FE that played up strategy elements and stripped down RPG elements much more (or entirely), possibly to the point of being a spirtual advance wars game (no unit carried over between maps, just the ultra-fragile people built in bases/forts for that individual mission) C: You could have a FE that went all in for full complications- besides of just Shadow of Valentia's "white magic/black magic/arts" any unit line could have it's own command list ("chivalry" for paladins, "trickery: for thiefs etc) and each units abilities would open up a number of non-standard attack/support commands. I've said elsewhere that I HATE this kind of thing, and imo it wouldn't even be original since EVERY non-FE SRPG does this, and that it is FE's dedication to the basics that makes it so interesting to me in the first place, but in the context of someone else who only played FE games, it would be a change of pace within the series itself. D: You could a game that finally tried to succeed the legacy of Master of Magic (albeit with a greater emphasis on hero units to showcase FE's strengths in charather interaction) As far as using "past FE" games- Radiant Dawn and Thracia 776 have the most wholesome mechanics of those that haven't been explored very well (eg the DS/3DS games) The GBA games were all startlingly conservative, and mechanics wise don't really have anything to offer. The same goes for FE1-3. I would suggest that FE11-14 should be the primary source of mechanics, but that kind of goes against the OP- FE4 had mixed mechanics, to say the least- the Holy blood system isn't really as interesting as growth bands/star shards/Crusader scrolls, and is anyway kind of redudant with modern FE games combining personal growth rates and class growth rates. Besides this it was unabashedly broken , The love point system was had no tutorial within the game itself (And how many English fans have even read the translated manual) and besides that it had no visual indicator like the meters on modern CBAS support, and in the case of one charather pair, was even bugged to prevent them from using their other partners; The individual money for each charather was ONLY a nuisance, and people defending it as "essential to the game's balance" should admit that it A: it's not that hard to work around, only time consuming. and B: In no way prevented the game from being the sixth easiest (at most, it COULD be even lower) FE in the series.

Canary Mary- Banjo Tooie- Strictly speaking, Canary Mary isn't one of the bosses in Banjo Tooie, but she's associated with 4 A mashing minigames. The first 3 of these are completely free to anyone with Mario party experience and are a so-so change of pace. The 4th one though>< It is probably the be-all end-all of A mashing challenges. I remember that I left that one cheato page, collected everything else in the game, and came back years later. But it wasn't possible- I can mash an average of 111-118 times in 10 seconds (from my mario party records and getting the silver racket in Tennis GBC) but this doesn't help. Also the minigame lasts for about 70 seconds so it's literally beyond human endurance. I finally beat it by taking finger breaks by pausing. Skin and blood were lost. Rogue Sqadron- Moff Seerdon- it was probbably improbably bad luck, but for some reason I remember the fight against the imperial shuttle being really difficult. (In reality you just hit him with like 2 advanced proton torpedoes and he's a huge target even if you don't have homing for some reason). I think that his appearance is the only time that Rogue Squadron actually plays the "Imperial March", Moff Seerdon taunts you in the cutscenes of the last 4 levels, and finally, he is the only enemy in the game to use Blue lasers instead of green or red.(pretty sure they have a different sound effect too) Bombastic- The Cat Attack- Most of the bosses in this game are pretty trivial, but the third one is actually pretty hectic.- You start surrounded on all sides by minor enemies, the boss endlessly spawns more of them while running laps around the edge of the stage, and because of how the explosions work, you can only actually hurt it with the long explosions (5 and 6) since it never comes into the arena. Like all the other bosses, you have to do it in just 1 of your 5 lives in other to get the Perfect on the score card. MDK2- The first BFB fight (stage 3) - The electric jumprope boss- He wouldn't be as annoying if it weren't for a really dumb hitbox on his attack- you can ONLY get past it undamaged by doing neutral jumps (IE straight up without using the stick), trying to jump toward/across it will lower your height (or something) and despite being the instinctive solution to his attacks, just gets you killed. His homing attacks and bombs are pretty annoying too, and he's even a small, airborne target. MDK2- Little sparky (stage 2) - This boss is basically a spinning reactor core thing, but instead of being a joke (like Bolse in Starfox 64), it fires solid beams that take up 1/3 of the room, and as you damage it steps things up. And on top of everything you have to refuel your jetpack mid-fight. The jetpacks controls are REALLY "heavy" for boss-fighting purposes and considering it's mostly an evasion challenge makes it surprsingly difficult for how early it is.. Last Resort- (stage 6) One week I decided that I would 1CC the "best shoot-em-up on the neogeo" It's uh, not a very pleasant game to try to 1CC on high settings due to enemy bullet speed increasing to pretty intense levels and asteroid belts. It also follows the gradius design philosophy of stripping your powerups ups upon death, so even with checkpoints, trying to actually use the 2 extra lives is usually harder than just starting the whole thing over again and trying to hold onto full power. I really like that the boss's have low health in this game since it means that even with some pretty nasty patterns, you don't need too much endurance to get through. However the final boss is one I still don't understand to this day- He's a mouth-thing on the far right of the screen that shoots a projectile forward which then splits into 5 others in a star pattern- but he's made difficult by having 4 respawning turrets on both the floor and ceiling. While you have an option pod that can take an infinite number of hits orbiting you, it's not really feasible to actually adjust it when you are being shott at from above and below simultaneously. I usually fight this thing with short up and down taps to manipulate the shot pattern instead of actively trying to dodge them. Very dumb fight in that you pretty much have to get the enemy to shoot at you in the correct way rather than trying to dodge it or even moving too much. Mischief Makers-Cerebus Alpha- In the last stage of Mt. Snow you fight the hardest boss of the entire game. Aesthetically it's a really cool fight, since you get to surf on a missle and everything, but it's insanely annoying to replay for several reasons, including the somewhat awkward way of damaging the boss, how close you have to get to him to trigger his backflips in the second phase, and it being somewhat awkward to grab missles while riding your own. getting the A rank and the Gold gem is fairly obnoxious on this stage. Mischief Makers- Migen Brawl- Migen Brawl is one of the easier bosses in MM, but the par time for A rank is WAY too low- simply catching the first possible fist every time is NOT enough to get through; you also pretty much have to do 2 hits while the father is alive (to avoid the long pattern punches) and on top of that you have to pretty much pray for short patterns. The worst thing is that he has the longest cutscene of any boss in the game. Sin and Punishment- Spider Seeker (stage 3-1) - I think most of the bosses in this game are sheer awesome due to their well done setpieces, and they manage to look good and even feel good to play against (and many of them have difficulty on hard mode without giving up their coolness factor). However Spider Seeker is both the least intimidating looking boss and IMO, has the most annoying pattern of any boss in the game. The design of the Spider Seeker is just a giant spider, and the reason for fighting it... is the main charather wants to eat it- considering the military, dream sequence, and psychological bosses in this game, this is just a disapointment all around. The spider seeker is one of the longest bosses in the game, since you have to chase it for about half to the level and it has multiple forms, which can be described as big spider>medium spider>legless spider- Nevertheless, they all have wildly different attack patterns, and unlike most bosses can't really be fought very aggresively. Custom Robo Battle Revolution- Rahu 3- Rahu 3 is the final boss of this game. The main problem with him is that he causes a narrative shift from lowbrow comedy to "super serious post apocalypse" which the game does not handle very gracefully. He's also unapolegtically broken: The story mode handles this by letting you fight him 3 on 1 and the arcade mode simply refuses to spawn him and favors the other illegal robots. While his guns are powerful, his true strength lies in his bullshit HP- All robots in the game including him have a display of 1000 health, but he has an 82% damage reduction, meaning that his "effective health" is 5000. It's worth pointing out that the Metal Grapplers, which have the next most health- only have a 10% damage reduction (1100 effective health). If you play the game in multiplayer, he can quickly provide all the incentive you need to disable illegal parts in the option menu. I genearlly like letting my brother or niece play broken charathers to level the playing field, but Rahu is just too much. King's Quest 1 and especially2- The Dwarf- while he's a pretty minor character, he's honestly the most annoying of all the villians (at least when you are young and don't abuse save restore properly). In King's quest 1 he can even show up in the narrowest part of the game (hate taking the key instead of beanstalk for max score). In King's quest 2, he can kill you with his dumb trap, steal quest required items from you forcing you to go into his cave, and last but not least, he cuts the bridge near the end of the game, forcing you into a stupid pixel hunt for part of the bridge you are supposed to grab to save yourself. also the VGA version gave him a suitably jerkish voice actor

I don't get why "playable roster" is the only thing that counts as representation- it's worth pointing out that the setup of the adventure mode map represented the NES legend of Zelda, and elements of games besides OOT/TP/SS were also in HW in the form of attack animations (moon for MM), weapons (Wind Waker for ... Wind Waker, Fire rod for LttP, the chain chomp gauntlents for Link's awakening), bosses (manhandla for the NES and oracle of seasons ), and badge shop icons (Digging mits for Minish Cap, Deity's Mask for MM) Maybe these weren't representations of the same "degree" as playable characters, but they were representations none the less.

Fates was better for game play reasons. Conquest is the big one, but while Rev's gimmicks were mostly annoying, on Lunatic it still prevented the kind of challenge that anyone could work up the experience needed to handle. Awakening's Lunatic (and especially Lunatic+) are okay if you think of them in terms of being normal RPG/ setup challenges (which is still more difficult than what the GBA games provided) rather than strategic map challenges. Awakening as a game really sold me on the 3DS because I had low faith in the graphics of handhelds after semi-let downs from stuff on the original DS (Super Mario 64 DS, Okamiden, Rayman 2 DS, Starfox Command, etc)

Genealogy is really ambitious, but it's writing is not as uniformly good like some people claim- It has it's share of Radiant Dawn level "blood pacts". Chapter 2 and Chapter 9 I would still say it's still one of the best writing wise, since it at least aspires to be something most of the time. As far as GAMEPLAY goes it's absolutely abysmal. I don't think saying that it's the worst FE is bad enough, I would say that third string SRPGs like Onimusha Tactics and Vandal Hearts 2 manage to have better gameplay than it. Granted, the first 5 FE games are all problematic (FE1: too easy, no calcs, FE2: map design, encourage grinding, terrain, summons, etc, etc FE3: Too easy, enemy phase just as slow as FE4 despite less units FE4: ridiculous huge maps, low difficulty, tedious: FE5: enemy shenanigans, midgame uses ballista/siege tomes more than enemy quality, accurate dark magic status effects. ) However Genealogy is honestly the worst of all 5 of them in my opinion, for many reasons, most of which having to do with player units being comically tanky, offense being easy to get, and a design philosophy that in any other game, would be the equivalent of giving the player not just 1 seth/frederick, but 5 of them per generation. Honestly the problem with Genalogy is that it becomes obvious once you've reached the turning point of a map being clearable and a deathless outcome is inevitable, you still have to wait a huge amount of time for the game to "resolve" all the actions (player and enemy). It's pretty much "doing the motions:the game". I think the bad gameplay is especially a problem because the different pairings encourage replay value which the gameflow itself REALLY doesn't encourage due to how. That and giving the replacement children the same dialogue as the main ones><

Having trouble quoting but in another thread you said this: It's probably actually the most polished Warriors game I've ever played out of my 15 years of playing them, in terms of just how it functions, besides Orochi 3 and Samurai Warriors 4-II Can I have a technical explanation of this high praise. From what I've seen it seems to have really good flow fora Warriors game, but I'm really skeptical of it due to potentially blowing through the game without it putting up resistance, especially with new player tools. + Switching charathers who are in different map positions Enemy officers throw out parries and dodges more often instead of relying on super-armor attacks to fight back when pinned. Badge seems as non-obtrusive as before Put in some semi-empire features with directing units via the map screen and adjusting mid battle Most charathers look pretty easy to pick up with fast/medium attack speed and good crowd control, with no awful scrub types this time around. I think maybe a few are bad at officers/weak point gauges, but that's harder to gauge from video than CC. KT seems to have caught on to it's mistakes with being able to dodge roll animation cancel out of attacks - sprinting is slower than in recent Warriors games (probbably not a problem in short term, but someone trying all of the history maps I'm pretty sure would add up) Only limited improvement to multi-officer combat. Are the level up and other things that pause the action able to be turned off in a menu, I imagine they'd especially be annoying in co-op Musous and the focus attack equivalent are more disorienting to me than usual, especially on Pegasus knights and the ?unison? musous. Map events seem on the less interesting side again (granted wall/path appearing are always going to be the main ones in any warriors game) I don't like the looks of the level-up system in the game in general, since less favored charathers looked like 30+ strength below main team by the six hour mark (and probbably undeployable as result), and I can only imagine that history mode, like HW's adventure mode and starting late free mode maps in Orochi would make them semi-unusuable with taking time to bring them up to the level. Visual indicator for taking hits was hard for me to notice- Several occasions in steams where the health bar lost 1/3 or even 1/2 and I had to rewind to tell difference between gameplay where they didn't take damage at all. Enemies seem not as agressive as they should be on default- probbably counting this among those DW games that have to be played on Hard from lvl1 to be worthwhile?

Gotta go Paladins- Even though fire emblem doesn't use the rich tradition they have in other Rpgs, it does give them reliability, a sweet "charging" animation and in the GBA games the everuseful ability to picj up (and be pickd up) pretty much anyone, including other mounted units.

I personally think that spoilers are a dumb concept. My main argument is that knowing the basic plot usually comes nowhere close to describing an experience, especially in something like theater, where the director's adaptation of the material allows for huge variety of potential intepretations (even a conservative period costumed piece will vary in tone and meaning depending on which lines actors emphasize) But even in static medium like games/movies, I do not see much of a problem- it's one thing to say "Aerith dies" and another thing all together to get there after 20 hours and simultaneously being hit with the music. Or to know what Adrian Veldt's plan in Watchmen is. Again, the actual mechanics of the plot don't hurt you, because on their ow, they arent's particualry interesting. It is only in combination with the chapter that is basically a character study and his monologue on the matter, not to mention the subtle callback to all the arguments for and against heroes earlier, that gives this scene it's gravity. This is all to say nothing of ideas about reader-response, the same material is going to be pretty different to you than it was for your friend, even if you've been told our friend's impression before watching it. Not many people would go as far as this, but in a way "the spoken spoiler" is even a form of adaptation, and therefore, different from the source material and eeven a symbol of its potentiality. Even when trying to be truthful. For me the clearest example is French "jakobite" and American "deep south" stories, many people have mental tics that cause them to try to correct the broken grammar, and hearing a public reading from them is considerably different than reading it from someone who tries to preserve the original dialect. You might still know that the story is about a servant working for his mistress (as the case may be), but it means considerably more when she is "miss'us" and when not just plot details, but even language separates characters. For these reasons and because my sister immunized me throughout the 90s and 2000s I can't agree with the idea of spoilers "ruining" something that you haven't seen yet. I can think of many occasions where I even researched entire plots before ever turning the first page, and in all cases found the material to be wholly more than what it had been described as, and additooonaly in most cases, the spoilers even accented the material.

I gotta say that I agree with wyvern!Panne as a second seal candidate- one of the only lunatic and lunatic+ charathers who becomes usable through stat growths alone rather than mixture of skills really. I don't really like vaike, but it doesn't have anything to do with inherent weakness of awakening fighter class line (at least warrior, berserker not so much). Normal and Hard mode opens up more or less free hand axe use wyvern knights and great knights preffered, and the axe/bow combination allows you to control yourself around enemies with counter on lunatic and lunatic +. Granted that warrior usage in Lunatic is mostly going to be male Morgan.

Not really since the stat curve for the last 4 chapters kind of drops in the players favor. It's probably best to use it (multiple times) to deal with a slightly annoying group of druids in Chapter 24 Chapter 23- there's really nothing in this chapter you haven't seen before- You can sleep the druids if you want. The recruitable charather of this map is basically this game;s Athos character, which means that he's semi-invincible meant to make sure you can beat the game even if you got here with a heavily damaged army. Of course with all the charathers alive, this basically means you get a free super-broken unit, no reason not to use him except to avoid the ridiculous animation time on his attacks

1-Shadow Dragon 2- Mystery of Emblem 3- Thraia 776 4- New Mystery of Emblem 5- Radiant Dawn 6- Genealogy 7- Path of Radiance 8- Blazing Sword 9- Birthright 10 - Awakening 11- Sacred Stones 12- Shadows of Valentia 13- Shadow Dragon and Blade of Light 14- Revelations 15- Binding Blade 16- Gaiden 17- Conquest only real special note I have is that I think SoV has the best Cast in the series, but I have to put it low despite that because I had zero investment in the Plot of the game.

This is a big deal- I'm a little ashamed to admit that with the first game I completely blanked on the gaming press and only bought it like 2 years after release when I saw it feutured in one of Jerma's (of TF2 fame) videos. Anyway, it looks like Q1 2018 will be an amazing time for video games.

Are the requirements for the Anna memories more interesting this time around? I remember the Hyrule Warriors were like 1000 KO+ killing map specific officer/fort for the normal mode Skulls and 1200 KOs + taking less than 5 damage for the Hard mode skulltalas. I found it kind of disappointing that they weren't "mini missions" in of themselves, and trying to get them was pretty much the same on every map. Are the requirements for them more diverse in FE warriors?

Personally I think greedy Anna is a tamer version of Nabiki Tendo from Ranma 1/2- Anna can be funny in short bursts, but I think she's limited by the fact that Fire Emblem has to kid friendly.

You mention Historical Euripean Martial Arts- Personally I think the factFE maintain the shields/bucklers are only for defense fiction is worse than the other things it does with its weapons. As for halberds- I see is that halberds have already been used as the anti-horse effective weapon for axes. They'be never actually been given seperate animations from Axes despite the multiple games though. I don't really like the 3/5 kill formula- I see Fire Emblem's strength compared to other SRPGs being the simplicity/back to basics, and its rigid damage formula. While it wouldn't be quite the same as variable damage the fact that you having to do the division separately for different enemies in a mixed group would make it seem as if it was fluctuating for the player who is not willing to do the math/ only lightly invested. Part of me really likes the Quarterstaff idea.- But on the other hand I think that justifiny them because of how actually useful they were would mean having to do so across the board with other weapons, and then Fire Emblem would lose it's giant cartoon axes, for instance, which might be nice for it's historical accuracy, but which I find pretty unlikely given the series bizarre fascination with its own history as well as presumably being marketable as in-line with FE artsytlye.

Some of this sounds more like the manga than the game- Re- Diadora - Arvis already stated his intent that sacrificing Sigurd was neccesary to Manfloy the chapter before- it was not a spur of the moment thing brought on by confirmation of jealously. Additionally, the way he presents the story of discovering her after her being lost for so long is quite self-serving. And his "true love" can only ever be pathetic due to Manfloy wiping her mind - which Arvis may not have known when he married her but definitely knew from Sigurd's last words at Barhara. At that point he could no more justify the marriage than you could to a girl doped on drugs. And this commitment to dishonesty continues during his 10 "good" years as emperor before the book of lopto even tips the balance of power away from him. Re- Blackmail- Arvis was already aware of his heritage - these kind of stories usually play out with good of the world vs affirming free will (ala Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen) but Arvis only really preserves himself out of self interest in Gen 1 . Granted dying in a child hunt is awful and part of his intent to "create a world without prejudices" meshes with the scene in chapter 7 that hints that descendents of the lopusou sect aren't inherently evil but the persecution/living in hiding has increased the "bad" proportion. Nevertheless, I put him more in the self preservation category than anything else, because unless he was SO confident of his ability to fix the class problems in Judgdrall, it would seem that martyring himself publcly as the last loputsou (to his knowledge) would help more people due to ending the justication for yearly witch hunts. So Arvis is already knowingly committing a crime by existing and avoiding a sacrifical destiny. This is partly understandable, if disappointing simple. However, he ramps up his moral cowardice as soon as he decides it is justified to add additional crimes on top of this first one. The biggest problem with the blackmail is Manfloy's part in it though- The threat of exposure is entirely idle, since it would completely destroy Manfloy's own agenda. The fact that Arvis caves in to such a mess of a villian weakens him. Manfloy even emasculates him more in gen 2 when, before Arvis fights Celice, Manfloy holds Julia hostage. This is the single dumbest act of blackmail in history, since Manfloy doesn't have the authority not to kill her (since he hasn't had his conversation with Julius asking if he can keep her alive yet). And somehow Arvis is manipulated by this despite already knowing about Julius trying to kill her before... Also his knowledge of book of naga pretty much gurantees that he knows the reason the lopto sect can never truthfully agree to leave her alone Re- first ten years as emperor- We are told briefly that he does actually carry out reforms (reinforced by some villages later) and more importantly we see him directly challenge the authority Manfloy will have in the new regime even before the flash-forward. However, even in his good years we have to consider stuff like North Thracia- you could argue that the Lopto sect lobbied for the appointment as part of Manfloy/Berdo's plan to keep that region in a warzone, but considering how central this is to Arvis's authority it seems less likely than him just screwing that region over to keep Travant's position as a subservient ally. Because of this, even though he wants to be reformer- I feel that it's nonethless also important to him that he is the reformer on top- The second problem is that Genealogy uses "the will/plight of the common people" in multiple villages throughout the game for chararthers like Sigurd, Celice, Leaf, and even Sety. However there is no real indication that Arvis's attention actually extends that far, as even the villages that see him as a good leader are more due to removal of corrupt nobles that a newly established positive policy toward them and as a NPC, we never get villages in the middle of a conflict land (only those in his own country) that speak positively of him. Re- last seven years. Once Julius awakens, Arvis's charather goes down the toliet. We are told once from Julius "we know what happened the first time you tried to exile me", but it's pretty important that WE don''t get to see this earlier heroism first-hand. Given that Julius kills his wife and drives his daughter into hiding, Arvis has every reason to resist him openly again, even if Julius has already demonstrated his higher power level. Arvis is shown sabotaging the child hunts (but to an utterly insignigant degree), and yes, he does covertly provides Seliph with a Holy weapon and the Book of Naga. However, I think his ability to feel guilt and do good things under duress pales compared to his moral cowardice overall. He has no reason to give in so completely to hopelessness, even with Julius's ability to teleport and invulnerability, because people without holy blood ARE able to rebel in Issac and Thracia without being magically instantaneously punished. I do not see Book 2 Arvis's passivity as justified as "he knows he can't win against them and is just being rational in order to do the most good"- Part of why that excuse doesn't work is because Julius acts so childishly and Manfloy so incompetently, that they strain our ability to beleive that they could intimidate someone to that extent- But the bigger part of why it doesn't work is because Arvis himself doesn't come off as having a strong character. His life is pretty much a meaningless existence, and yet he cannot commit to making a stand- In FE3 the outcome/effectiveness of Camus's rebellion is not important, only that he reclaims his spirit* in making it. Arvis does not even get this much dignity (even though giving book of naga actually makes the end of his rebellion more effective) His spirit is not redeemed by this action. Especially since fighting Celice's party, he apparently does so using his full ability, undermining the fact that he has aided them at all. It would be more fitting for him to intentionally lose or to injure himself before the fight. * Spirit here just refers to personal subconscious mental torment since FE4 doesn't refer to an afterlife directly. Conclusion- Arvis is weak as an antihero even given the good he does during his first 10 years as emperor, and the motivation that led to his fall as villian isn't particualrly interesting. He's probbably as fondly remembered as he is solely because he does a good job of escalation which honestly doesn't really reflect on strength of charather vs just being part of plot.

I haven't heard nearly as many people say FE7's story was bad FE6 on the other hand It's uneven, but I kind of like it, there are a couple stand out moments : the death of Hector's spy , EliwoodShinji doubting himself, the zephiel related charathers in Bern (even though I hate how these charathers were used in FE6), and Sophia's realization before death that she isn't a real human. Hector is pretty enjoyable- He's treated like dumb brute up to about Chapter 18, but that aspect of him is limited to teasing in the latter half of the story. proving that Lyn is an awful charather totally incapable of moving on Early on his differences from the moral paragon Eliwood are pretty interesting- Eliwood is almost shocked that Hector employs theives and spies, and it will be Hector who comes up with the idea of going to pirates. Hector actually creates some tension with Jaffar (which i wish was followed up on). In the later half of the story, he gets fleshed out a bit by his relation to his brother Uther- Hector has the utmost respect for him and its mostly through Hector that the delicate situation of him keeping up appearances is what is keeping the Lycian league from being preyed on when some of its marquess fight among themselves. Eliwood himself is actually a very enjoyable lord- He is kind of moral paragon, but even though he's written very straight, I couldn't help but find him endearing. I liked that his ability to forgive others could cause limited conflict (mostly with Hector) because of how different he say the world. In the later half of the story finally being accepted by the heaven seal after initially insisting that he was no great hero is earned after what he's been through. Some people complain about Nergal having the chance to kill the heroes but not using it multiple times, but in fairness- the first time he is crippled by Elbert which he doesn't seem to heal from until after consuming (Chapter Four Fanged Offense linus or lloyd). The second time he gets what he wants in Nina. And the third time I feel like he has a kind of condescending affection for Athos + he gets what he wants again. I think it's actually refreshing for him to personally taunt the heroes anyway, since standard FE villains have committed such big crimes (and so far in the past) that you only ever feel the heroes personal anger at them in a somewhat abstract way. There isn't really much talk about the mythology/quintessance- Some people question how Nergal had enough left over for making Morphs when he needed it for Dragons- My assumption is that actually calling Dragons wasn't a problem for Nergal (Hence calling Ninian and Nils originally) . It was only the process of controlling them that required the reserves of energy. Also the hidden city of Arcaida in Athos/Nergals backstory is kind of an interesting idea, although kind of a throwback to similiar idea with the earth dragons in Arachnea. Personally I think a lot of the FE6 setup hamstrings the quality of FE7 but in a few places it's actually cool : I like that when Hector and Eliwood get Urvan/Durandal, there is kind of a hint of a curse or fatal destiny is in store for those that wield them. FE7 is somewhat low on the list of FE games that I like, but if one thing that elevates the game for me it would be how the father/son and mentor/son figure relationships in this game are handled, esppecially with eliwood/Elbert and hector/uther, the latter being especially amazing since it's established with Uther mostly offscreen! In other FE games filial loyalty is either mishandled (Fates) or kind of hurt by the parent figure being at such a distance or achieving folk hero status to EVERYONE, not just the son himself (Leaf virtually respects Sigurd equally as much as Celice does, Greil for Titania/Oscar/Boyd as much as Ike, etc). Similiarly the way other FE handles Mentorship (or brrotherly relationshis) is pretty often dumbed down to the level of LOL Training! It isn't as rare as good parental relationships, but that still means that when I see how it's handled in FE7- with the characters palpably respecting each other, I can still approve of it.