ping

But Marcia and Rolf join in the same chapter, so comparing their base stats actually makes sense. ;) In case of Oscar and Mia, there is little point comparing either their base stats or their stats at equal levels. Oscar will almost certainly have collected quite a few levels and thanks to his higher mobility (plus access to Javelins), he will keep his EXP advantage unless the player is really adamant in investing into Mia. Which would be totally fine, of course, but for the sake of this argument ("Who is the better combat unit?") it would be unfair to assume either of them getting special care. But I'd say that's why Rolf is considered so bad. He needs that special care to catch up to the rest of the team, but thanks to his lack of 1-2-ranged weapons (or even just a 1-range weapon) he'll always be less useful than other characters who got the same or even less investment.

Doesn't that mean that literally no country should even concider taking in refugees? Has there ever been a society completely without (non-selfinflicted) poverty? Do you honestly think that at some point such a society will be remotely realistic?

Ah, OK. I don't think that's a big issue though. A Mt+4 or +5 Iron Bow should be affordable and is two or three points stronger than Rolf's Bow anyway; BEXP is another thing Rolf has and Neimi doesn't and it's not like Neimi can one-round enemies at base, either. If you want to use your shitty archers, you'll have to set up kills for them anyway, so the beefier enemies hardly make things more difficult for Rolf.

...it isn't? Seriously, which enemies do you mean? I guess Naesala in Ch. 19 is potentially scary, as well as the dragon laguz in Twisted Tower. But other than that (and the BK, I guess) I can't come up with any really tough groups of enemies.

I'm aware of that, but Rolf is in a game where enemies don't have good stats, where forges can help him overcome initial issues with hitting and killing weakened enemies and where BEXP can be used to let underleveled characters catch up. Of course, these additional resources can be used more efficiently on other characters, but PoR really doesn't require optimal resource management and in a casual playthrough it's perfectly possible to make Rolf a decent combatant (only in PP, of course) very quickly and without making the game super hard.

True, but the strong competition also make his decent averages less impactful because even disregarding his weapon choice, there is little incentive to feed him kills or BEXP when he offers neither higher stats nor special skills or utility compared to all the other characters that require less investment (read: almost everyone). OTOH, the low difficulty of the game makes him look better compared to the other shitty archers in the series. ;) In my experience, even Neimi takes more effort to raise, despite FE8 being FE8, simply because you can't give her BEXP or a forge to help her land the killing blow. It also means that complaining about Rolf is somewhat silly because he's still not that hard to use.

Come on, you know that bows vs. lances is a huge deal. Forgeable 1-2 range is amazing, especially in a game with wimpy enemies and a fuckton of money as soon as you hit midgame. To be fair, part of Rolf's problem is his lack of utility that comes with not having a mount. He also joins in the same chapter as Mist and Marcia, both of which get more out of the BEXP you have at that point (and Jill comes not that much later, so there goes the next heap of BEXP). But honestly, if we compare stats, we should rather look at their bases. Marcia wins Str by 3, Spd by 5 and Def by 2 points, so even if Rolf somehow managed to find a pegasus that is into boys and a lance instructor that is a total asshole, he'd still lose. Your 20/20 stats are completely misleading. Also, while Rolf might earn more EXP per fight (or kill), but Marcia with her better mobility and existing EP potential will still earn way more levels (unless you drown Rolf in TLC), so comparing stats at equal levels is misleading, anyway. I won't try to defend Ranulf, though; being a laguz does suck in both Tellius games.

How can he be a really good trainee if he needs the extra growths to stand out? I mean, he'll turn out alright if you tower grind, but he's not special at all compared to the other magic users while needing a lot more effort to be viable.

Something seems off with these numbers, but I can't quite lay a finger on it... ;) Well, I guess they're from different sources, but the links on wikipedia don't seem to work for me.

Don't bother. Lyn gets it repaired when she rejoines in Eliwoods story.

Lyn and Hector are only forced in a few chapters, so if you don't like using them (or if their level-ups suck) you can bench them and just deal with fielding one or two bad units in these chapters. It shouldn't be too hard to keep them alive in these chapters, even if they were at base level. Marcus is a freaking god in this game. He'll be a great combat unit with high movement despite his bad growths. Especially on Eliwood Normal Mode his bases should carry him almost to the final chapter. Don't worry too much about the lost experience; unless you literally solo the early maps with Marcus, your other units shouldn't fall behind. In general, this game has few terrible units, so don't worry too much about your unit selection. You might want to bench your archers - bows isn't a good weapon type and neither Wil and Rebecca have the stats to make up for it. If you want a bow user anyway, Rath is the strongest choice. The fighters don't really shine, either. Dorcas has alright bases but an atrocious 20% speed growth while Barte can be alright longterm, but sucks at the beginning unless you're lucky with his 40% speed growth right away. But on normal mode you should get away with using anyone you like, really. One exception: Keep one Luna tome for the very final map. You won't be disappointed! :D

Roy can also recruit Klain. I guess Clarine is somewhat to be expected to be the first victim. Better luck with Saul, although you might not want to make him into a combat unit. 2 Luck is still a thing and personally, I wouldn't want to lose my only (trained) healer in this game. I'd probably still use Lugh despite his low Magic, but this is not a recommendation, I just have a huge bias and would drop an Energy RIng on him. ;) But since he can wield Elfire without penalties, the low magic only mostly screws him. GL against those fucking wyverns!

This probably describes my preferences, too. I do like to train up underleveled units (like Fir, Lilina, Astrid or even Nino), but I usually don't bother with units that are just worse than their counterparts even if they manage to catch up in levels, like Matthis or Noah and Treck compared to their respective Chrismas Cavs.

Little nitpick in Soren's concept art: (last line in the notes) I guess the 2nd "tighter" is supposed to be "more slim" or something like that? While I'm not a huge fan of Soren's character, I really like his outfits, especially before promotion. Neither boring nor overly convoluted.

Civilization IV: Kinda old at this point, but still really fun to play. I'm not super good at it though - I'm winning pretty consistently on Noble, which is the "fair" level, but Civ AI is usually so bad that this is hardly an achievement. I still really like how the game forces me to juggle multiple objectives (grab land to expand, not royally screw my economy by doing so too fast, survive Montezuma's inevitable backstab, get the necessary military techs to actually kill Monty, but still keep building up my infrastructure...) and it's pretty rewarding to get to the point where you're able to just walk over your opponents. I do not like some of the more efficient strategies that I would probably need to tackle the higher difficulties (well, that and not making horrible decisions where to invest my resources), I hate that the best strategy in the earlygame is growing your population and then just kill half of it to accelerate production.

What about covering a song? Or, to not make this about any copyright issues, using a snippet from Mozart's Kleine Nachtmusik in a pop song? That's also not what the original composers intended, but it's not really frowned upon. Cheating in single player games just changes the gaming experience for that particular player and doesn't even affect anyone else. That said, I personally try not to cheat at all, although I will occasionally use guides if I get stuck or on a second playthrough if I want to go (mild) completionist. If a game gets too hard or too grindy for me to get through, I rather tend to stop playing and maybe try again a few months later. But I really don't care at all if someone else pumps out all the god mode cheats - if they have fun doing that, it's fine. I've actually read a somewhat interesting discussion about cheating in Pokemon PvP in another forum (although I don't play it myself). It was about RNG abuse to catch 'mons with perfect stats with the help of some kind of external device - one group very adamantly claimed that this would be totally legit because said device only reads but doesn't change anything in the game; the other group replied that of course that's cheating because the developers probably wanted the RNG to actually simulate random numbers but was divided in one part that didn't really see it as a problem and another one that felt that it would give the cheater a huge advantage in the actual fights. €: Sorry, I didn't notice Balcerzak's answer in time. When talking about my personal gaming preferences, I agree with you, but I don't really see the problem if someone else prefers to, I dunno, blaze through FE6 with Percy and Milady joining in chapter 1 because they're only in for the story. It doesn't appeal to me (I mean, I could just watch a LP if I cba to use my brain), but why would I care?

What are you trying to prove, exactly? I'm legimately completely lost. What does the stance of the Democrats and Republicans from 50 years ago have to do with their stance right now? I mean, of course it's important to know about the roots of the parties, but (to once again use a German excample) the fact that the Green Party in Germany had quite a few pedophiles trying to abuse the whole sexual freedom thing does not make the party pedophile right now.

This is amazing stuff. However, you forgot the part where the avatar learns that, in fact, s/he isn't really related to Elincia and Micaiah, but rather a descendant of a formerly unknown fourth hero who fought alongside Soan, Altina and Dheginsea. That unknown hero was the only laguz in history that could transform in any known laguz form, be it beast, bird or dragon, and in a big traumatic scene the avatar discovers that s/he has had these powers all along! More importantly, now it's perfectly fine to bang both Lincy and Miccy.

Great to have you back! :) Yeah, it really only recaps what the game offered anyway, so a few of these are really sparse. I still enjoy reading them a lot, if only for nostalgia. Oh, my! :D On a more serious tone - it's a bit strange that Zihark's (designed as) 22yo, but had a relationship with a laguz "a long time ago". Might just be because I'm old, but for me, less than 5 years would defenitely not be a long time and more than that would be a bit silly. But I suppose that's just jRPG age syndrome striking again.

People actually use the knowledge about the RNG and the fact that the string is perfectly consistent and predictable. It's a fact that the first RNs used in a chapter (if you restarted at the start) are 8-56-21-47-66-60-46-77 and that the next number is always calculated from the three last numbers (thank you, dondon, for this short explanation in your 0% growths run). Take a look at Irysa's LTC run of gloriously rigged level-ups and tell me that he didn't know where to find the needed string beforehand. Sorry, you're just plain wrong about this.The RNG of the GBA games is literally solved and it's a fact, not an opinion or a guess, that it's neither biased against nor in favour of the player. Although technically True Hit might rather favour the player, since he tends to have more >50% hitrates than the AI does.

Dude, you're fighting a losing battle here. You're just bringing up personal experience, while the string the RNG generates is completely known. It's also proven that the game uses the same string for player units and enemy units, and also that FE6 uses the same True Hit mechanism as the later games. Keep in mind that 20 hit translates to a 8.20% chance to hit, so it's not exactly surprising if you get hit by it once in a while, especially if you try to dodgetank multiple enemies that way. You seem to have the mindset that <20% hit should never hit and >80% should never miss, but that's not how random numbers work. If you play long enough, of course you will occasionally see some BS happening, but if you pick up this game again, please try to watch out for the RNG favouring you by having the enemy miss that 70% or Ward hitting a sword cav with the halberd (happened to me!).

It's mostly in his support with Allen: Roy: …I think they can be. I might sound naive, but I don’t consider a victory with casualties to be a true victory.

Well, a quick google search that I probably should have done beforehand gave me this: http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/is-a-priest-obligated-to-baptize-a-baby-even-if-the-parents-are-not-married-or-are-no So I suppose you're assuming correctly, although I still find the reasoning strange. So because they're worried that Leo might suffer from a non-christian upbringing (not my perspective, I should add), they make it even harder for him to find the "right" path (again, not my perspective)?

Unless my calculus is failing me, Roy needs 16 Strength and 20 Speed to one-round Idoun. On average, he'll reach that speed at Level 20/10, so it's not completely unreasonable to reach this even without stat boosters. :D I always considered Jahn to be the final "real" boss in the game, kinda like the Final Aeon in FF10 or that Latin-chant fight in FF7. There is technically another fight coming up, but that's more of a formality; someone or something that needs to be dealt with even though it's not a threatening warrior in itself. Idoun was formed into the demon dragon to create war dragons, not to fight herself, after all. And while divine dragons are supposedly more powerful that fire dragons, she was still a girl when she was transformed. That's why I find that Jahn is the real disappointment. His chapter is super repetitive, his underlings fall easily to your legendary weapons (even though Jahn tells us that they had lost most of their strength...) and Jahn himself is not as strong as 1000 years of preparation would suggest. If he was more challenging, Idoun being a total pushover wouldn't be as bad as it is.

Because of that I find the church's decision plain weird, to be honest, even ignoring the ethical implications. According to their own beliefs, they deny a kid entrance to heaven because they don't like his mother. And I can't imagine that's the official stance of the catholic church. I'd have assumed that they would deny you snacking on Jesus' flesh (sorry ;) ), but not that they extend that exclusion to your family.