ping

*They're worse. (personal opinion, ofc, but at least FE6's implementation was kinda predictable)

Sothe - Awesome in part 1, good in part 3, terrible in part 4. I wish he wasn't obligatory for the tower climb, but his prior performance warrants a 7.5/10. Laura - Vulneraries actually being useful is a good point which makes me think that I probably overestimate her usefulness in part 1. Still, it's nice if your frontline units don't have to spend their action healing, making Laura decent at worst at the beginning of the game. As soon as Micaiah promotes, she's little more than a backup, though, since she most likely has a sizable XP disadvantage and (until she promotes herself) no good way to earn XP fast. 5.5/10

Every 5 turns sounds neat, too, but I really liked the implementation in the DS remakes. Two or three saves during a battle can really make it a lot less frustrating without making endless RN rerolling too much of a thing. Placing the savespots on the map instead of introducing a timer also means that faster play doesn't get 'punished' in the sense of getting fewer saves per map and makes it possible for the developers to place them so that the player can save before tackling the next difficult part of the fight (or after a difficult part at the beginning of the map).

But that's why Edward isn't that great. Sure, you can invest in him and he is obviously not even remotely as hard to train as Fiona or Meg, but even if you make sure that he gets the XP he needs - Zihark will still have a significant headstart and about the same longterm potential. Looking at your scale, my 5/10 might have been a bit too low, though. I tried to use the whole width of the scale, so 5/10 actually meant "mediocre" and not "barely usable", but I'll try to keep my initial scale anyway to keep my scores consistent. Speaking of... Leonardo: 2.5/10 Yeah, he's pretty bad. The Prf bow in part 3 is nice, I guess, but in my experience Nolan does better than Leo with Beastfoe/Crossbow combo. And since his growths are distributed rather poorly, I don't see very much in him. Nolan: 8/10 I always found him really valuable as a reasonably buff unit with decent stats pretty much everywhere. I pretty much agree with Samias here.

I read it more like "Living forever sucks", tbh. In that light, her leaving the clan makes more sense, since she is afraid of bonding to people and then see them die. Stealing their stuff is a dick move, but it might be understandable: 'screw them, I don't need them anyway, let's make sure they hate me so they don't try to convince me to come back'. But I suppose that's more head canon than anything else. I dunno. Yuffie's backstory is that [spoiler=FF7 spoilers maybe?]her home country lost a war against the Shinra company (which is basically a corporation grown into a superpower) and is now their bitch. Yuffie's not too happy about that and her flawless plan is to steal all the materia (condensed magic, basically) to lead Wutai back to greatness. So at one point she will steal the party's materia, but as soon as she's caught, she invites herself into the party again after returning the materia. And other than Adelle, Yuffie is never even close to being an important character. She's completely skippable, she isn't really involved in the main plot, the rest of the party tends to be more annoyed with her than anything else... I guess both of them are written as spoiled bratty teens, and both rob the party at some point, but other than that they're presented rather different. €: Next time on FFTA2 you can't get to the random encounter because a quest battle is in the way and the encounter disappeared afterwards? Or it's a story-related encounter that I just don't recognize. :D

5/10 His growths are great, but thanks to caps and BEXP this doesn't mean as much as it would in other FE games. Both Mia and Zihark have around the same long-term potential while having a better start than Edward. Among the Dawn Brigade, he just doesn't have the same value as units like Nolan or Jill (or the prepromotes), making it easy for the player to mostly ignore him as soon as the ranks have grown a bit. He's not terrible, just... average in a part of the game where focussing your attention on the best units is rewarded, so 5/10 seems appropriate.

A propos transfer boosts: How do you want to handle them? They'll be sizable enough to bump a few units up a point or two. Seperate votes where it might matter? (I mean, who cares if Tauroneo somehow got +2 on all stats?) Assume 'reasonable' boosts (maybe +2 Strength/Magic and Speed for units that can reasonably collect them)? Ignore them?

Went with 6/10, too. If I had to look at pt.1 seperately, I'd probably give her a 4 or 4.5, but if you level her up, she'll become a pretty great healer after her promotion.

But the regular gamer still has access to the classical mode, so everyone should be happy, right? (€: directed at Quintessence) What you're describing is basically a movie that requires pressing one button in regular intervals to move on to the next scene. Do you honestly feel that Fire Emblem in classical mode has no gameplay aspect whatsoever? To add another allegory to what seems to be a competition: It's as if the waiter in the restaurant asks you if you want a dessert and you complain that since the dessert is a key component in any meal he might as well have asked if you don't want any food at all. Because having dinner but no dessert is functionally identical to just watching someone else eat, giving the option not to have dessert ruins the very concept of going to the restaurant. After all, it's just the first step towards not serving soup and ultimately no main course, either. Am I doing it right? Disclaimer: I, too, enjoy the occasional hyperbole. :D Additional disclaimer: I'm not exactly rich, so I rarely have dessert or soup at a restaurant.

I'm usually not really into hip-hop, but that's really spectacular.

I haven't played any game with eugenics mechanisms, so I can't really say anything about that. But about the Est characters: I am fine with 'not really worth the effort' or 'not optimal' (e.g. Fir), but if a Est character has potentially higher end game stats (relevant or not), that's at least something the superior bases-oriented competotor doesn't have. But characters like Sophia or Samto in New Mystery that have literally no (mechanistic) selling point to them, I don't like.

Arena Abuse was possible in Dark Dragon, so the series was ruined from the very start. ;) I love that post though, it's pretty much what I tried to say earlier. But you claimed that using the reclass feature or playing casual/phoenix mode was "playing the game wrong" (post #155). That's a pretty strong and definite statement and kinda implies that your idea of "superior experience" is objectively true. I found the tone of your posts rather elitist because as I said - you implicitly claim that your idea of ideal gameplay is more viable than someone else's and you denounce changes in the FE formula, even if they don't affect your playstyle whatsoever (which basically means that you don't want the game to be accessable to players that aren't as good as the game as you are). And sorry if I misinterpreted you, but I assumed that your post (#163) was wholly adressed towards me.

Honestly, realism isn't very high on my priority list of qualities in a FE game ;) It's probably little more than personal preference, but I do look at numbers a lot when playing FE and I absolutely hate to invest into a unit if I know that none of its numbers will ever catch up to another candidate for its spot on the team. That, otoh, I can absolutely live with. I'll take Fir as an example: I know that she's objectively worse than Rutger, but I'm fine knowing that she can potentially become even dodgier than him, even though it's hardly relevant at all. I would absolutely love this. :D

Bolded: I didn't make that argument. Don't make shit up. Of course you're free to dislike anything, but I don't see how more options are a bad things if they don't influence the gameplay when you choose to disable them. I actually do not like playing on casual mode (in FE12, that is - can't tell you how it would be in 13 or 14, but I consider a fight lost if any unit dies), but the only discomfort it brings me is one additional button to press when starting a new game. As far as I can tell, all FE games that feature a casual mode are still balanced around permadeath gameplay, so yeah, I find it silly to complain about an option that makes the game more accessable for other players. I can agree that more isn't always better. I didn't like the mastery skills in FE10 because of the added RN roll for (usually) instakills and they're a part of the game that you cannot ignore. But Casual mode is literally one checkbox in an entire playthrough. Also, is permadeath really THE selling point? I mean, I don't disable it either, but I can see why others find it more annoying and frustrating than anything, especially because low%-crits are a thing and FE games tend not to have permanent battle saves. From what I've seen in this forum, people play FE for a variety of reasons, but I don't know if permadeath would be high on a list. Well, I value variety in my gaming series. Say what you will about Final Fantasy, but I absolutely love how no game of the franchise is like its predecessor. And I'm really happy that the Archanea remakes play distinctly different from the GBA games. And while I don't agree with every design decision in Radiant Dawn, I appreciate that they tried to not make it the same game as PoR. And that's another reason why I'm happy that FE11 introduced reclassing. While they probably went overboard with the execution (especially in FE12 where every character can change into anything you want), it's a new toy to play around with - or even to ignore if you don't like the idea.

I'm sorry, but that really comes across very elitist. I think it would be a valid complaint if the newest FE game was actually balanced around casual mode (i.e. having fights in which sacrificing a unit is basically unavoidable), but as long as it's just an option, it's an option that a) helps newer players or even experienced players that don't want to restart because of a BS crit on turn 29 and b) doesn't affect players that don't want to use it. Saying 'I don't like to play casual mode' is one thing, saying 'playing casual mode is playing wrong' (as CappnRob did) is another. I don't play shooter games at all, but I don't see why unlimited ammo would be so repulsive. It removes one aspect from the game (resource management) while keeping the others, so if you don't want to bother counting bullets, it seems like a reasonable game mode. And I do remember that, as a kid, I used to play a racing game with automatic gear change enabled, because I was too clumsy to multitask steering, accelerating/braking and gear changing at the same time. I guess I ruined racing games forever? ;) And that's how I see casual mode: It ruins Fire Emblem forever removes one potentially frustrating aspect from the game while leaving the rest intact. That's all.

I have only played 6-12, but among them, I'd probably go for FE7, even though Marcus is overpowered. FE6 - This game has imho the best approach to unit balancing, but a rather poor execution. I love how the game constantly gives the player (usually prepromoted) units that are strong for a limited timeframe, but it has way too many trash-tier units to consider the overall unit balancing good. FE7 - Yeah, Marcus dominating almost the whole game is a big minus for me. Other than that, FE7 does rather well, although it suffers from the obligatory Weak-Archer Syndrome and some of the characters still feel a bit pointless (from a gameplay perspective), Karla being the first that comes to mind. FE8 - Seth is stupidly good, the trainees need a bit of a buff. If Seth wasn't as ridiculous, I'd rank Sacred Stones over Blazing Sword. FE9 - Not a huge fan of the balancing. It has been mentioned already that making every unit good at combat reduces the differences between them mostly to Horse vs. No Horse (and to a lesser extinct Sword- or Bowlock vs access to 1-2 range). There are very few units that really stand out (by being different, not better than the rest), which is why I don't think same-y abilities equal good balancing. FE10 - A bit like FE6 in the sense that it has interesting ideas, but rather poor execution. Before the GM start stomping the game, the characters do feel unique and most of them are actunkally helpful for at least a chapter or two with Meg and Fiona being the big exceptions. Even Lethe does have her uses in part 2. But the whole issue of availability (Tormod and Co., or the Crimean knights) keeps this game's balance from being good. FE11 and FE12 - I haven't played Shadow Dragon very much, but my general memory is that it has the same issue as FE12 with units that are just plain bad. I can't recall if it goes in the same 'what were they thinking!?' territory as New Mystery with its free silvers, but I do remember that I found a lot of the units in both games rather pointless. I completely agree with the first part, but I don't think that being weaker is a good way to make a unit unique. I guess using a unit that is just worse in every possible way is one way to make the game more challenging, but I would really prefer if there was any kind of reward for training units like Wendy or Sophia. It doesn't have to be huge - I'm totally fine with a Est-y character that just has a few more Green Numbers, even if they don't matter much - but if I go out of my way to force feed Sophia XP, I don't want to discover that Raigh is still better at level 20/20.

I've been to Hungary last year and and it was absolutely horrible language-wise (great in every other aspect, though) :D We could derive exactly one whole word from our linguistic knowledge (Iskola because someone from our group speaks swedish) and we were completely helpless otherwise when dealing with any signs. Luckily, German plus English (plus a lot of gesturing) worked reasonably well. I've never been to Finland (or anywhere else in Scandinavia), but I suppose it would be a comparable challenge. Dating tip: You probably shouldn't bring up future children at your first date anyway. :D I'm not saying that it isn't an important thing to agree on in a relationship (and I know that many couples break up over it), but I don't think it's something to think about before even planning to move in together.

Oh, sorry about that. Boris wasn't my cup of tea. Couldn't really see where it was going, so it was just... sound to me. Hella is great. I generally prefer music with vocals, but I will add this to the list of exceptions. Madeleine Peyroux I liked. Pleasant song, very relaxing, and a great voice.

Fair enough ;) I prefer a system that prevents single persons from accumulating too much power, so I'll always favour a system with too many checks and balances than too few. That said, I pretty much agree with Irysa's post and heavily disagree with Emperor Petitt's stance. To me, his parable of the sheep and the wolves is just an explanation why decision-making purely based on majority is not a functional form of democracy and why democracies tend to have a constitution that is very difficult to change (and often even invariable in its core). What does that part about Canada and the UK even mean? If that comparision is supposed to make any sense, we would need a single elected ruler or representative of both Canada and the UK, in which case it's not even remotely as obvious how that election should be handled. The way I see it, the POTUS is the representive of every single US citizen, so I would (if I was involved ;) ) prefer if I could vote for him individually, not through any kind of middleman. Although I do like a parliamentary system in which I vote for the parliament and the parliament elects the ruler. I believe I do understand the point of the electoral college, but I still don't agree that it's the best available way to determine the president.

Yeah I pretty much agree with this. Low Con feels far too punishing in the GBA games, especially because it tends to punished classes that were supposed to be speedier than comparable ones. Peg Knights vs. Wyvern Knights is probably the most obvious example. Another possible implementation I could think of: Make the weight more unified across the different weapon types. Iron weapons can always be wielded without speed loss, Steels reduce speed by 5, killers by 2, silvers by 3 (just to throw out some numbers) and the Con stat (going from 0 to theoretically 5, but in reality almost never more than 2 even for the bulkiest characters) can buffer these numbers the same way it does in the GBA games. That way, weapon weight wouldn't be as influencial, but unlike the Strength-based system in the Tellius games, it wouldn't be completely irrelevant by the midgame. Or, y'know, just keep the Fates system because it seems just fine and maybe it's not a good idea to just add more and more parameters to the combat mechanisms. ;)

That's a relief! I'm happy to read that.

Ehhhh... Federalism is a lot stronger in Germany (parliamental; President's little more than a representative figure) than, say, France (the President is very powerful). Also, Angela Merkel's coalition in the Bundestag has 503 out of 630 seats in parliament. Close majorities and deviators are not the big issue with that. Also, why couldn't the parties elect their head candidates the same way they do now? The Green party in Germany does exactly that, although I'll admit that the two big parties don't. But that's not an inherent quality of parliamentarism. In short, I don't see how your arguments apply against parliamentarism. I guess they're sound, but they're against centralism and against the party establishments choosing candidates on their own, but then you just sorta assume that both of these things are inseparably connected to a parliamentary system and I find that a rather big leap to make.

'Nice', not used in the little-brother-of-shitty kind of way, seems fitting. For me, that's the kind of music I can leave on for hours, but rather in the background without really listening to it consciously all the time. It's good, but it doesn't make me stop in my track because some particular part is so overwhelming.

As a kid, somewhere around 8yo I think, I had nightmares about LeChuck in the first Monkey Island game after I watched my siblings play. The line "On days like this, it's great to be dead" (or something like that - it was in German) absolutely horrified me. In hindsight, it's probably a good thing that our mother didn't let me watch them play Fate of Atlantis. :D

Huh, I never noticed. But then again, I've played Nomura-designed Final Fantasy, so I guess I've been overexposed to belts...