[Fire Emblem 7 Remake?]

Personally I don't like FE7, since I consider it to be as just as overly-easy and flawed in gameplay as 8 and 9. The only difference is that it's mainly due to UP enemy stats instead of OP player units.

I'd like the difficulty beefed up a lot if it was remade. The characters and story are okay as is. Well maybe the reason for fighting in some of the minor kingdoms and locations felt all over the place and some of nergal's morphs could be written more tragically.

Would prefer FE6 with official translation. Didn't they officially translate random names through outrealm gate charather DLC? FE6 needs way more story tweaks than FE7. It's gameplay is already the best in the GBA era.

[Tips on starting FE1]

You can't see how much damage your people are going to deal and take in FE1 without doing math, but it isn't exactly a problem as others have said. Your units have generally strong stats compared to the enemy generics, ala FE 7 or 9 and can even snowball out of control (not as extreme as 8 and 13 though). Personally I think this makes it the 4th or 5th easiest game in the series.

[I plan on buying SMT IV for the first time, any tips for a beginner?]

I kind of feel like smt4 is choppy compared to the other games. The beginning to Medusa is difficult, but then I curb stomped basically everything until I got to Pluto, and then moving from there to the end of the game was difficult again (not quite forced to heal between every other random encounter and Minotaur level hard though)

I met some people who dropped the game because of the first two bosses, so here's some emergency strategies.

If minotaur is annoying, I really recommend just catching fairy twice, and fusing it with other stuff so you have the ice spell on (non-fairy monsters) Even A "fire type" like Pele can carry around bufu no problem. If he really messes with you, and want to win no matter what RNG he gives you then recruit Tangata Manu (in the domain, and also a rare spawn on basement 4) and keep it in your party for an obnoxiously long time (4 levels) and it will learn sukukaja. It doesn't really have the MP to use it himself, so you need to fuse him afterwards. I don't think I've ever lost to minotaur with this spell available (of course I have extra levels on main charather from lugging him around).

If medusa is annoying, go to Basement 1, and get a Lham Derg (the Scottish guy with swords stuck in him) and then Basement 2-3 and get a melchoim (the tax collector). They can fuse into Zhu (looks like a chia pet). Zhu's abilities are nothing special, but it is immune to both of medusa's attack types (needle and electricity) so even if she wipes your party, he can kill her solo* (You have to lower her health enough to get her into phase two of her attack pattern, she has attacks in phase one he isn't immune too, so don't die TOO fast).

Pluto to endgame doesn't like Marakaram, Terrakaram, Megido (your monsters need the second stage of it, but the main charather's magic stat just lets him spam the first one) Of course it's different for physical main charaather, but you still basically want those skills on your demons (megaton press=physical megido... kinda) Don't forget to have defensive, offensive, evasive buff spells and to stack them all the way to level 3(don't do anything after that). Debuffs help every now and then, but honestly, until pluto, no mandatory enemy is worthy.

Two general hints.

Save all the time, especially before and after bosses. Sometimes the only thing keeping you from winning is the bosses "extra turns" from hitting your weaknesses, so remember to switch the main charathers armor (have two types at all times, even if one has bad stats, extra enemy turns>extra 8 HP) and what demons you bring.

When a monster tells you that it is about to evolve, make sure that you go to the compendium, and overwrite the current monster data (not fuse). You might not think you'll want this, but there are things that evolve twice in quick succession (divinity, power) and when you want to use the "early form" for special fusions, it's nice to be able to re-summon one that already has some attacks ingrown. Especially compared to the timesink of remaking a 2nd-3rd stage demon.

[Love-hate games?]

Custom Robo: Battle Revolution (Arena and the n64 games have similar problems, though)

This is really fast paced and fun to play in multiplayer. It's fun to customize the robots, and then dodge shots with the aerial dashes and go for knockdowns. Not really as dignified as Virtual On if you have xbox live or a sega saturn, but more arcadish than MechWarrior. Sadly, it's unbalanced as all hell, even with the illegal parts off.

The story itself, I found funny, but it can't be replayed. If you do, the sheer length of the script and the slow text scrolling becomes apparent. In a nutshell, when you finally find the person you spend half the game looking for towards the end of the story, the exposition dump is so long that the game autosaves 5 times in the middle of it. Truly ridiculous.

Pokemon

For me Pokémon means smogon. I haven't played Pokémon the RPG since GBA ruby and sapphire. They are definitely quality games for time wasting. (I'd prefer puyo puyo fever or smash tv though). It offers much more as a social game though. I don't really have to explain why 3 generations of the smogon meta, brushing with elitism, internalizing it in myself, getting suspect voting priveleges by laddering, tournaments, etc... Obviously that has its ups and downs.

LoonyLand 2 and Dr. Lunatic Supreme with Cheese

Obviously no one's heard of Mike Hommel, indie developer. These two games are hardly recognizable as indie games. Both have a simply mind boggling amount of content, and lots of humor. Of course if I'm truthful, Dr. Lunatic is kind of just a gauntlent/twin stick shooter, except instead of fast action, it has puzzles... and Loonyland, which I'm only going to describe as Garfield meets Diablo, has the problem of all singleplayer diablo games. You can just feel in your bones that it should be an essentially MP experience. They are also still priced as If 20 years and the invention of bundles, drm, game managers, etc never happened. For all the problems, I regret nothing, and after all it's actually full of heart on top of being a weird look back in time when indie developers thought of themselves as third party developers.

[What do you like about Sacred Stones?]

I like the hilarity of having a general that can double everything in the game after only 3 chapters of feeding. Amelia might be a waste of time, but the sheer comedy value of a unit like that is too much to pass up.

I liked the layout of ephriam's maps, the last 2 eirka maps, and the maps after the routes merged. The awful growths on the enemy units hold them back, but they are actually pretty comfortable to move around in, and the enemy phase isn't too reliant on hitting you in one spot+GBA time pressure with green units and villages. Orson and Selena tricked me into thinking I was doing it wrong and could recruit them. They didn't read "bad guy" as much as the other people. My most remembered scene is just the early eirka chapter where you save the civilians from a spider: if any other lord said, "I don't believe you see our people as animals to be killed" I'd probably be annoyed, but it felt genuine with eirka(although her naiveness in later chapters doesn't work so well). And I guess the generic boss's reply is cartoonishly evil instead of bringing her down to reality.

Coincidentally I think it's the only FE game where I never turned the music volume down. Didn't stick out at the time, but it's true.

[Favorite and Least Favorite Classes?]

Favorite: Heroes

I always felt like these were the most functional axe unit, since they usually have the best balance of speed and defense of all axe units (sorry wyvern). This is in the pre-skill games. Afterwards they get sol, even if berserkers get more serious as a rival.

I like paladins 2nd best, because of their over the top usefulness, and my love for them even spread to other games, like ogre battle and final fantasy tactics advance.

Least Favorite: Priests, Bishops, War monks, Troubadour, Valkyrie

I despise these units. I usually just rely on vulneries in the first few chapters and then promote a mage or shaman, and use them exclusively when I want to deploy a staff unit.

I don't really like myrmidons and swordmasters that much either, because I always feel like they are a strong early and midgame unit that is only useful until the enemy has accuracy on all their units, and is bad from the get-go in hard modes. I don't discard them nearly as harshly as I do healers though.

[Are you guys burnt out with fire emblem]

Extremely.

At this point I can't be bothered to play anything other than 5,11,12,14conquest without modding them. The design flaws and ways to exploit through are just too hard to unsee, especially for someone who likes hard games. Self imposed unit restrictions help, but not enough. I'm really grateful to FE for introducing me to the SRPG genre, but at this point, FE is my easily my least favorite SRPG out of all the ones I have played, and even other "low difficulty" srpgs still worked better as time wasters. When I first played awakening, I noticed I was grinding characters that were already stronger than any enemy I would fight, even in postgame. This made me turn to actual strategy games, mainly starcraft and wesnoth, which I hadn't thought much of when I first played way back, but now seem like gold.

I had the same reaction against RPGs after playing chrono trigger, which got me really into stuff like 2nd edition D&D, because the idea of stats not increasing when you level up, among other things, just seemed much more satisfying than putting up with the necessary evils that even the good RPGs contain.

[Thoughts on FE Remasters?]

Remakes have been pretty far from simple HD remasters lately. Consider Majora's mask for 3ds, pokemon omega ruby, or the ds/mobile final fantasy ports. Lots of small and large changes throughout the entire game.

In most cases I kind of prefer a simple "emulate original system specs that works on modern systems" that you see in compilation games like sega's genesis/mega drive collection or rare replay.

Obviously that would be GODAWFUL with FE 2 and FE 4. Language is not the only one keeping people from playing those. FE5 could be remade as is with translation though. FE 9 could stand to be made harder (beyond the removed difficulty), despite it's good story, it's gameplay is just as lightweight as 7 and 8. FE 10 needs the skip enemy phase from modern games and improved battle models to justify the effort of remaking it. 1 and 3 have technically already been remade but I guess the whole "marth In smash bros" thing might get them done again. Probably more conservatively than last time. Also the import feature of FE10 kinda demands that Itbe remade at the same time as FE9, possibly as a combined game.

Personally I wouldn't buy any FE remake at release, and would only consider them after enough months for people to review them and confirm whether they had a difficulty setting with the depth of 11,12,14conquest.

[IS needs to define character genders better again. Agree or no?]

I don't really have that much problem with the gender of fire emblem characters. I have an unusually strong background with anime though.

To this day my sister doesn't know that the title character of Kino's Journey is a girl. This always makes me laugh. I can objectively tell that their are far fewer context clues in that than for pretty much any FE character. I still think at least half the audience should know by the middle of ep3.

Personally I am REALLY bad at remembering the gender of people online with or without voicechat. Like, 2 year relationship bad. A lot of them correct me right away, but I don't feel embarrassed personally. I don't treat any gender claim with "but that's impossible because you have such and such personality".

Whether it's appropriate for Fire Emblem? Hmm if the series wants to play up high fantasy tropes, then women disguising themselves as men to get access to the battlefield are to be expected. If the series wants to get closer to sakura wars a dating sim hybrid, then characters who "mischievously" refuse to reveal their gender and wear unisex clothing are also an archetype.