bethany81707

On the idea of thematic teams, is Elincia the only pegasus healer in FE?

I'm considering another kind of poll gauntlet in the near future. However, I'm facing a slight problem- the variety in the different brackets is wildly different. The largest sample is, I believe, 60 large, while smaller samples can go as low as 3. So what I'd like to ask is how large can Serenes's polls go? I suspect I may have to split the larger-end polls anyway due to user-end convenience, but it'd be nice to know what I'm getting into beforehand.

I've done several playthroughs of Sacred Stones's story (including an All-Girls challenge), but I have yet to attempt the postgame areas. Is there any way I should be going through the story mode to adequately prepare for Creature, or should a regular playthrough do the job?

...Are there any Fortify Peg skills? Because I want to screw with Takumi a little, if only in theory.

Well, this cast was a little 'meh' for me. I'm basically not dropping Lissa even for a character I enjoy more, and I know I'm not lucky enough to have more than a passing hope at these characters in the first place. I only managed a 5-star after hearing Ana did, and that was an Effie. (At least it was an armour when I needed one, but still... I don't know her, and her little dialogue in Heroes doesn't make me want to know her). But when your favourite characters are a Judgralian enemy mage and a Magvelian royal who was added at the last minute, you shrug philosophically at the problem.

I don't remember the ending all that well, but I feel like Genealogy has a lot of problems with this.

Well, there's a problem we have in Australia right away. You associate ESRB 'T' with Australian 'M'... but if you want to bump up the rating, you go to the soft-banned 'M' in America, but the hard-banned 'MA' in Australia.

Yeah, I think in that case, it was Clarine being good more than Lance having depth... but for that conversation to work as well as it did, Lance almost had to be bland. It helps to throw Clarine's eccentricity into greater spotlight, and you can always make something bland funny by putting it in a funny situation.

I dunno... Lance/Clarine was pretty good. I just like how desperately Clarine's trying (emphasis on trying) to invoke tsundere on Lance.

Good ones: Cormag/Duessel A is a great example of character development and backstory, though the latter is for a character who isn't present. I really liked the way that Duessel explained his family legacy, and the fact he even states "I'm not saying Valter was a good person before he nicked it..." helps the idea that Cormag could take the lance and one day use it for good. Amelia/Duessel A is also a lovely backstory, but subs a little character development for an emotional moment that still makes me cry a little. Funny ones: Oscar/Janaff A. As it turns out, twenty-four is quite young for bird tribes... Gilliam/Neimi A has Gilliam take a crack at vision training, and in the process does what I do all too often: stare frighteningly at whatever's in front of him.

Europe uses the PEGI rating system, which goes 3, 7, 12, 16, 18. No points to what those numbers mean. They are judged on violence, bad language, fear, sex, drugs, discrimination, gambling and online play. Australia uses a general classification system that goes G, PG, M, MA, R, X. G is for General audiences, PG requires Parental Guidance for young children, M is for Mature audiences, MA is for Mature Audiences (restricted to 15 and over), R is for Restricted to 18 and over, and X is R rating specifically for sexual content. Examples of M rated games in Australia: Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, Hyrule Warriors (both ports), Twilight Princess (Wii). This list is just the games I happen to have. According to the PEGI boards for Fire Emblem, Radiant Dawn and the 3DS titles are 12, Path of Radiance, Shadow Dragon and the GBA titles are 7. The older games are listed as such due to the poorer graphics showing less detail, though the newer games list the violence as causing 'minor injury only'. All 12 games are listed as having mild bad language, and Birthright (but not Conquest) is listed as having sexual images and/or sexual innuendo. (I couldn't access a more detailed analysis like the large blurb Awakening has on the ESRB, so until I can, I'll assume PEGI doesn't have it). Where does localisation fit into this? I don't know, but the fact that the ESRB goes E, E10+, T might suggest that our non-restricted ratings are actually applied to material appropriate for younger kids. What's ESRB 'T' like in America? How does it compare to PEGI 12 and Australian 'M'?

I actually don't own Fates- and I haven't even seen a Fates playthrough in American. Hell if I know who's named differently. Yeah, apparently it was supposed to be PAL only, but I don't think blackface is as prominent or as heated in either Europe or Australia. Still possibly a good reason to change, but I think they'd have had the luxury to try and fix the Black Wreckage, at least. (Or maybe it was last-minute and they didn't have the time to fix Black Wreckage).

I'm largely going to echo the popular opinion of 'changes should be made if the alternative is that only extreme afficianados would actually understand what is being said'. As an Australian, I have another perspective here: the games passing through America/Europe on the way. Both Fire Emblem and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks have names that are altered between NTSC and PAL releases (Ositia/Ostia, Biran/Bern, Lahus/Laus, Renault/Renaud for Fire Emblem... way more than I can start listing off memory for Spirit Tracks), and that makes living in an age where I discuss these games with a predominately American audience very confusing. And while I'm on a Xenoblade kick, an example from that game of translation changes being for the better- the Mechon Face Units being changed from colours to minerals. Call 'Metal Face' a stupid name all you like, it's a lot better than 'Black Face'. That's probably all the evidence you need to say Xenoblade was always planned to come to America. (Though that, in itself, is also a case of a not-quite-thorough translation).

Wonder when Lyn got her turn-around. I'm guessing 2008.

While the Heroes Voting Gauntlet is going on, let's flush out a little bit of an opinion here. Who's your favourite prince and princess from the entire Fire Emblem series? Try to choose royalty by birth. My prince would have to be Ephraim. It's a long-standing personal bias of mine that I tend to overlook male characters when choosing favourites, but Ephraim is a character who has managed to impress on the battlefield, even if he's not particularly exciting off it. Honourable mentions to Lewyn, for his character arc in both generations. My princess has got to be Tana. She's got a nice charm to her in her personality, and my luck with pegasus knights means she quickly finds herself a terrifying force to be reckoned with. I've got one sitting around somewhere with capped strength, speed and luck without stat boosters. Honourable mentions to Eirika, Caeda, Elincia, and to a lesser extent, Lissa. Actually running a poll to see proper numbers? Genealogy alone makes me terrified to try!

...I just had my team of Lissa/Marth/Eirika versus Tiki/Takumi/Takumi. Marth did not have a Falchion.

I actually decided to set my unit to Lissa. I'm not sure how close she is to a god-unit compared to the five starts I get from other people (Eldigan and Roy/Eirika in two of my runs made me so jealous about my still-lacking a five-star), but she's awesome and a healer.

I'd just like to point out that Seth had much of the same attitudes as Geoffrey. Granted, Eirika doesn't really have someone like Ike. (Well... I suppose Ephraim fits the bill, but Eirika/Ephraim isn't nearly as popular a romantic one).

Everyone has their favourite Fire Emblems, but due to the random nature of Heroes, it's hard to build a party of your favourites right off the bat without a lot of luck. So the question here is: what units have you found appreciation for by using them in your Heroes teams? I found myself being quite the fan of Lissa, surprisingly. She's been an amazing healer, and she was the linchpin of my beating a Grand Hero Battle for the first time- she was the tank. Male Robin was also a fairly nice unit, quickly gaining a role as "Plan B for anything"- though I'm still nursing a sore spot out of him coming from the Devotion pool and getting my hopes up with his cinematic.

One thing to get out of the way: This is looking exclusively at the BATTLE against the boss. Whether the boss's character and presence outside this encounter was well- or poorly-written does not matter here. We are looking exclusively at gameplay today. Final bosses, and bosses in general, tend to have some slight problems regarding the fact that they are alone on being on the level of the average Fire Emblem playable character, and by Endgame, you should have as many of those as the game lets you. Most Fire Emblem games compensate by giving the final boss big enough numbers to actually be threatening unless you're on full standby with Fortify and/or the Saint's Staff. Others employ interesting gimmicks to make the fight drag on and put your tactical skill and endurance to the test. So which of these finishers was your favourite to fight? (Medeus (#FE) and Veronica are not counted because they're spin-off Final Bosses. In addition, the former is fought in a different battle style and the latter game is still rolling out its story, so her current battle may not necessarily be her final, making it somewhat unfair to compare them regardless.)

I'm honestly more confused by Dorcas and Arden's high placement.

Yeah, that solution would be my preferred one, but I do think this might help support quantity if quantity is inevitable.

...I think you might have slightly missed the reason why I chose Radiant Dawn's example. You bring in the good Supports found in every other game, and then for everyone else you have to pair in the army to do the whole 'shipping' thing the new games do, you use the generic template instead of a random conversation that has about as much characteristion in about thirty or so more lines of dialogue.

@Kyne, Radiant Dawn implemented something similar to that, but when the unit promoted into a Marksman. I hear it made them pretty good, and add that to Shinon and Rolf being halfway decent units themselves... At any rate, as you said, it all depends on the game's balance. If you give the average Archer longbow range, you could either give them the edge in combat they need or break the system over your knee. I don't know for certain which end Marksmen fit into.

So, I've been playing a little Xenoblade Chronicles recently, and that got me thinking about that game's 'Heart-to-Heart' feature: each party member has three conversations with each other party member, and each give that pair of party members bonus affinity points. The conversations themselves often make use of their surroundings to inspire topics, and even discuss events in the story (Dunban/Melia Pink reminds me so much of Cormag/Duessel A) or even have gameplay hints (Dunban/Sharla Green explains quite a bit about item gifting, including what gifts some characters, not exclusively Sharla and Dunban, like). It has since occurred to me that Fire Emblem's Support system has a few connections to Xenoblade, but there are obviously a few key differences- mainly coming from the fact that Xenoblade's cast of seven allows them to go more in-depth with the conversations. However, as Fire Emblem moves towards the idea of everyone being able to Support with everyone, I feel Xenoblade's Heart-to-Hearts might be able to help bridge the gap between those that want the 'less-is-more' approach of older games and those that want the versatility of the newer games. Use the Radiant Dawn system of template conversations for everyone, with the obvious caveat of not requiring mutually exclusive pairs, while using Info Conversations and/or map events to host the traditional Support conversations between canonically linked characters or characters that might have mutual interests to supplement grinding their affinity for one another. I don't know if using Xenoblade's branching conversation model of a Heart-to-Heart would benefit Fire Emblem's Supports, but it's always an option. That way, the main appeal of the newer games' Support system remains, while fans of both kinds can find it easier to sift through generic Support conversations to find the gems each game has. So what do you think? Does this idea work? If not, do you have another idea for how they can help the quantity control of Supports the newer games suffer from? Are there other games with affinity systems you think Fire Emblem could benefit from?