Axie

hey please don't judge my baaaaasic birthright castle/units it's the only save i could help you out from rofl also i have literally never been able to baby rinkah into usefulness, be it birthright or revelation. her stat spread is such a mess lol. i don't mind fates not having such growth disparity between units, though i could never do it if i were in charge. i'd totally be like "EVERY UNPROMOTED UNIT GETS BASICALLY THE SAME TOTAL #COMMUNISM #GLORYTOARSTOTZKA". edit: never made much use of the prison feature either. guess it would be useful for drafts that allow it, though.

RANKDOOOOOOOOOOOOWNS one of the other fandoms i (used to?) follow used to be all about rankdowns and they are a glorious mess. gameplay is more fun to talk about but it's also kind of objective at points so i get why this is a writing-based rankdown. i mean, who would have the balls to eliminate seth from a gameplay rankdown? it would be boring. SS is a solid little game when it comes to writing and characters imo so this should be a fun read. carlyle is indeed underutilised and also a boring literary device. "i couldn't have her so i had to kill her" YAWN.

oh my the accusation of fates conquest being fake difficulty we really do see every single kind of opinion when we stay in a fandom long enough. god bless humanity anyway, the topic. other than obvious QoL improvements which we don't even need to mention because even the most glorified-port of remakes give that to us, a PoR remake would most benefit from making enemies stronger. it's not always that raw stats on enemies make for a better game, but in this case they'd just be giving the enemies the stats they should have had all along. maybe then there will be point to using foot units or swords and bows. otherwise, improve the might of tomes. i always use the example of A rank tornado having the same might of E rank iron bow because there's the argument. done and done. since there are few tomes, i might as well do the work right here and add rexcalibur/rexflame: - wind/elwind/tornado/blizzard/rexcalibur: 3/6/10/11/14 - light/shine/nosferatu/purge/rexaura: 3/6/9/12/15 - fire/elfire/bolganone/meteor/rexflame: 4/7/11/13/16 - thunder/elthunder/thoron/bolting/rexbolt: 5/8/12/14/17 also add forging to the D/A ranked tomes too. it would be so expensive but also no more "forged thunder is the actual holy tome". it would be the 13 mt forged elthunder in this case. also the laguz mechanic needs to change. with the advent of 3H and its magic spells with limited charges per map, i started to think that should apply to shapeshifters too. you know? say, give lethe a beaststone of sorts and it has 10 durability per map. when it's down to 0, she is done for that map, but it's entirely under your control, and she's good to go next map. each character's beast/bird/dragonstone has its own stat attributes and durability, the laguz stone could recharge its uses in battle, the demiband could half the stone's stats while not consuming its uses, etc. many possibilities. they could even learn different transformations, a la beaststone vs beastrune in fates, by level up.

i actually think sacae and ilia are worse off than etruria, whose inner workings are very well explained in BinBla, plus across both games we get a sense of the way the eliminean religion influences etruria more heavily than its neighbours (with bern/biran standing out as secular in comparison). also, the etrurians we get in our roster are all usually super proud and patriotic. really, etruria is kind of the america of elibe? not the saviour it portrays itself as ("etrurian army"! the shit roy has to put up with!!!), hiding its flaws behind worship of god, wealthy as hell and putting its fingers in other people's pies. that's strong worldbuilding imo lol. we have broad strokes of how sacae and ilia are but little of how they actually work as countries, and said little has some logical holes. sacae would actually be great if we actually saw more than tribes djute and kutolah (lyn's tribe of one in BlaBla doesn't count), but ilia is just lol. "we mercenaries because brrrr!" falls apart so quickly you'd think fates came up with it and not an otherwise well written game.

clearly the solution is, as i proposed in another thread, to give the choice to the player before a new game if there will be skirmishes/DLC experience or not. like birthright vs conquest, except it's the same game. just always leave it up to the player even if they have to make like a dozen different choices every new game lol.

this entire decision is imo one of the few gameplay hiccups by fates, btw. why make butler/maid a promoted class... if that's the base class of only jakob/felicia (and flora but lol)... and then make jakob/felicia basically unpromoted units in promoted bodies because of their class? it's so weird. they could have a) made butler/maid the unpromoted nohrian dagger class, and then give it a dagger/staff promotion it shares with troubadour and another exclusive one (dagger/tome?), and then we just have to deal with chapters 7 and 8 of revelation being sans healer or b) made butler/maid the sole unpromoted nohrian staff class (and also remember to give us an unpromoted dagger class...? seriously we don't have one) and then give elise another class entirely i'd be fine with either just not this confusing shitshow lol

oh i still LOVE the fates games, or at least birthright and conquest (revelation is... fine). gameplay trumps storyline and fates has such good gameplay, i could withstand an even worse storyline for it. but it is indeed a pretty terrible and indefensible storyline lol. in fact, i don't think there is a single fire emblem game with truly bad gameplay, so none of the games are bad. maybe the original first game, but product of its time, and it has a remake, so it doesn't have to count anymore.

well, you can also finish sacred stones without seth, but that doesn't make his contributions replaceable by another unit in the slightest. i guess the "without gimping your team" after "replaceable" was implied and not that clear lol. camilla just makes your life so much easier always.

just have the give command not give exp anymore in this case! not like anyone was using it to grind as it is anyway.

fire emblem fates literally happened in the west lol. it bends itself into a pretzel to say "but they are not blood related so it's fine i sweeeeeear", but come on. it's not blood that matters when it comes to actual lived brotherhood, and fates still very much suggests someone raised as your actual sister wants to fuck the shit out of you. regardless of your gender even. elise and even xander also cross the line of "this is a comfortable sibling relationship" regularly in the main script. leo is the only normal one in this regard among the nohrians. the hoshidans get a pass without counting supports, but with supports all 8 end up crossing this line anyway. fates really shouldn't have had the avatar be their sibling for this kind of divide to not be so squicky. anyway, back on topic, if fates happened then people can deal with genealogy just fine. the only intentional (by a character, i mean) incest in it is lachesis's failed attempt anyway, and she is nothing compared to camilla. the lachesis/eldigan thing was even sort of repeated with priscilla/raven (with added "raven and lucius are gay for each other so no luck priscilla"!), which we got in the west, and was also fine.

oh this is something i actually didn't notice and it's an interesting observation! granted, it doesn't change my actual grievance (the female avatar being apparently meant to be played by a male gamer), but still i never really noticed how f!corrin could be the default, and it makes sense. they indeed wrote corrin with all the bad writing habits they usually have for female lords lol. if that's the case, then that's unfair because fates didn't really do anything that awakening already didn't in those regards, and some of those aspects weren't even really entirely dropped off in 3H, which still gives me almost as much the quirky anime shenanigans vibe as awakening did, at least in artwork and general characterisation. maybe 3H didn't have thinly handwaved incest lol but that's about the only thing fate really should have avoided. but i guess we will know how intsys truly feels with the next new game.

the worst part about camilla is that she acts the absolute exact same if your avatar is female, which to me reads as the developers just assuming girls don't play games because i think no woman would actually enjoy being on the receiving end of this, so why would they put a woman playing this (and therefore their avatar) through this? tharja wasn't anywhere this uncomfortable. camilla's behaviour on a dude would read as downright harassment. in fact i still kind of do read her as such. terrible character. in writing. of course they also made her the absolute best one in gameplay so all the horndogs would have all the ease in the world using her and the rest of us would just have to put up with it. she's just irreplaceable in both conquest and revelation. but yesssss i am so glad you love ththe fates gameplay so much because SAME. to me it's the definitive fire emblem format and i am mad they didn't keep building off it and instead apparently made three houses... partly build off echoes or something...? i don't know i haven't played it yet but fates seems to be much better. i really want these mechanics attached to a good storyline.

what we are not gonna do is a) talk about LGBT people like we are an unwanted spice in your food instead of people that exist and should be acknowledged, and b) suddenly care about realism in a game where there's a massive child-sacrificing cult led by a dude looking to revive a dark god through some kid. "that era"? sorry, i don't think any of us are versed in the situation of human rights of mid-late 700s jugdral. my reservation is that none of the characters were even subtexted to be LGBT in this game, which is unfortunate, but i don't want a remake to change that just because. if there was someone like leon, it'd be great (and i like that echoes went there a bit), but alas. that IS the kind of thing we can indeed demand of newer games, though. back to gameplay: i think splitting the chapters is the only thing that would truly make this a different experience anyway. anything else is actually minor in comparison and more likely to be kept as is either way. i am rethinking "holy weapons for minor blood" now because of the story implications, though. it wouldn't be HARD to justify manfroy still needing someone with major loptyr, but it's still an unnecessary hassle probably.

oh i understand this entirely! i know i am being annoying about it lol. blazing blade's story has its charm and i don't deny it (it is my first fire emblem too, i wouldn't be here if i didn't love it too, at least at first). also, the way you treat blazing blade is how i treat sacred stones (a willingness to forgive flaws because it was told in a way i enjoy), so i am no stranger to loving a holed story. though, to keep it on brand... BlaBla does have the biggest holes imo. like, it's up there with awakening sometimes for me. i don't think i'd like sacred stones as much if i thought it was that holey lol. ooh, glad to hear this! binding blade is my everything (and that's probably why i grew to be frustrated with BlaBla's writing lol). i like the characters a lot, the gameplay can be either mindful fun (normal) or a big challenge (hard), and the story keeps it simple but it's more than the archanea copy people give it credit for. elibe is a setting with so much untapped potential. i really hope it's the next remake, genealogy be damned.

i love this new ranking system enough to overlook that +6 to BlaBla's writing that single-handedly put it above my sun and stars BinBla. no, i will literally never stop being annoying about it lol. concise yet thorough, and you shouldn't feel bad that most games are in the negatives. four of them are the first games anyway, massively bogged down by hardware and writing categories. the others are near 0, except T776. it's fine and what i would personally expect from such a format.

advice for the ranking to be more accurate: - give weights to those categories. do you actually think usability and presentation are as important as balance or difficulty? those categories that are basically bound to reward the newer games every time, and while i do think it's important to talk about them, gameplay matters so much more. - speaking of balance: i reiterate my advice to change it to something like "cheeseability". games aren't ever balanced, so if you keep yourself restrained by that word you will never get that category off the ground, and you need it because awakening is clearly the worst one. - maybe don't assign points relative to their placement in the ranking and start assigning grades. this definitely solves the balance category problem, even if it becomes a bit of extra work. on a personal note: i'd put awakening's writing under the the first three games lmao. zero is a higher number than a negative.

is future past at all feasible gameplay wise for you? because that sounds interesting for the playlog

the sad thing is, it's both that you are right - gaiden/echoes does have mediocre writing - and that the affirmation is still true, because awakening and fates were just that bad in the writing front. awakening is mostly because it fucks over archanea canon and then its own canon with spotpass paralogues, but fates is just astonishing.

my solitary only problem with 11A is the 10% chance of klein and thea not moving with their squads, makes recruiting them while also keeping their stupid squads alive for the promotion items a bitch. last time i just didn't restart when one of klein's archers died because meh, orion's bolt. i was just gonna sell it anyway. now, i did restart to keep that elysian whip and basically every time i needed to it was because thea was a lazy bum and i couldn't recruit her before one of her squad killed themselves on basically anyone. one of them attacked my wolt with a javelin once. top notch AI right there. i don't remember 10B being quite as stupid with klein and thea because i haven't played B route in so long, but also echidna can actually kill a manakete sometimes because of wyrmslayer, so i never go B route anymore. also ilia always and forever. i don't even think the sacae maps are that bad, i just don't see much of a reason to give more experience to sin and specially sue lol (yes i just said i was using wolt i am aware. keep scrolling.)

wait, are the spotpass paralogues canon? do they count? even though they explode the game's already [cindy this is a skeleton this is bones.gif] writing integrity? can't we ignore them please?

ohhhhh you went 99% of way there of something i have always thought lmao. this part of the fandom wants difficulty and also wants to play as quickly as possible and talk about their LTCs, but the moment the former makes the latter actually harder for them, it becomes a negative. binding blade is the biggest example of intended difficulty features being criticised because... they are making the game hard. it's not fake difficulty and most of the time not even unfair either - for example, i never had a problem with the light arrows in 16x because you know where they come from. you just have to go... a bit more slowly GASP. maybe that's the point! but back on topic, making difficulty as customisable as possible is obviously the way to go. to me, the ideal difficulty settings are: - an easy mode, a normal mode, and at least two options above normal - casual (has both turnwheel/pulse and no permadeath), rewind (has permadeath but keeps turnwheel/pulse) and classic (has permadeath and no turnwheel) mode - scout (allows for exp grinding outside main chapters) and conquest (no grinding) mode

as alastor basically said though what purpose do themes serve if the art doesn't appeal to me? art is subjective. awakening's writing is stupid, therefore its themes mean not very much to me at all. the end.

i don't appreciate being called dismissive and ignorant because i am aware and fine with the fact i am posting an opinion that is unpopular. i will keep using that remark and don't intend it to be dismissive, thank you. also, i still entirely disagree with your philosophy. new people can experience the game for the first time... with a port, which i would love and play endlessly too. a remake, on the other hand, is supposed to be a new experience. think final fantasy 4, which got both a remake with a different playing experience, and a mostly faithful port that still added QoL features, in a small window of time from each other even, and it was great to have both. now, if you really want the echoes experience of having only the updated graphics part of a remake, and everything else feel like a port, then you lost me. i mean, "lost" me, i still play it lol, but i'd rather have an actual remake. (and then also a port!)

i don't even go here but someone here needs a therapist probably everyone heck i think i might bring up this thread to my therapist when she's back from her recess rofl dude other people have other opinions. it's a game. it's fine. it's all fine. we are all valid here. you love flayn and she's just the fish girl to someone else and then other people might hate her. it's fine. if it doesn't have real life implications it's fine.

the point of remaking it IS to turn it into a more typical FE game and god knows a) it always needed it to begin with and b) they probably should have done it to gaiden to some extent too. the fire emblem remakes have been way too faithful, we desperately need a remake that actually plays as a new experience, and genealogy is in need of a new playing experience that is less clunky anyway (tears?). if they are not going to, well, make the game again, then they shouldn't bother with a remake. give us a translated port like dark dragon.