Slumber

On the whole, I like dungeons, and think they should be kept for future games. They were a fun way to present "random battles" in an FE game, and it gave you a way to explore a portion of the world, which is something I think Fire Emblem could always use. Finding new items and shrines as rewards for completing them felt nice, and the possibility of running into super enemies was a neat idea. That said, they need to be long enough and difficult enough to seem like getting into battles is an actual dire situation. Or maybe units don't replenish health after each encounter. Either way, the balance was off, and they were far too abusable.

No and maybe. Maybe as in, yes if it's limited to specific characters and situations, and only affects the ending. No if it means babies and everyone can fuck anyone. I'll say "no", just because the game has had A ranks in the past that affected endings, so S ranks feel redundant in that case.

Alright, I'm gonna bite, since you bring up the comparison to Manfroy and Loptyr. 1.) I don't think many, even people who think Awakening's villains on the whole suck, dislike Gangrel. In fact, I'd say he's the one who people consistently say should have been the main villain throughout the whole game. 2.) Whatever on Walhart. People like him. I personally think he has no personality, and it's never, ever, ever explained how or why he knows that Grima is a thing and was willing to cull the weak and cause continental was to fight it. It wasn't until SoV that people started filling in blanks that still aren't explicitly clear. On top of this, his arc really serves no purpose in the game, and feels like complete filler compared to Gangrel and the Grimleal. 3.) The Manfroy comparison to Validar doesn't work, because Manfroy worked in the shadows until after his obviously evil cult had gained near-ultimate influence in Jugdral. And even then, the bishops of the Lopto sect were still hiding behind monarchs, dukes, and all kinds of people who held actual power. Manfroy and the Lopt sect were completely successful for 15 years because they didn't come out and go "Yes, good guys, please come work with me, look at how obviously evil we are so you can put a stop to us.". Which is what Validar does, he basically taunts the protagonists with how evil he is when he's trying to get them to work with him. It also doesn't help that Validar and the Grimleal undermine the one good villain Awakening actually had. His design is awful, and him being Robin's father is just stupid, and only detracts from the game. 4.) The Grima comparison to Loptyr also doesn't work, because, once again, like Walhart, it wasn't until SoV that we got a how or why Grima is what he is. FE4 gives us a pretty clear backstory on Loptyr and what his deal is, and why he's such a threat. The game dumps Grima on us out of nowhere in the last 10 chapters of the game, and it doesn't get highlighted until the last 5 or so. He's Loptyr in the sense that he's a big dragon who could destroy the world and is worshiped by a cult. But in terms of origin(Which isn't in Awakening), motivation(Again, not in Awakening), method of revival, presence in the story, etc., it's all different. And the fact that the game has more or less 4 major villains says a lot. Only one of the 4 actually gets decent development, and even in that one case, that development doesn't come until after the villain's been dealt with in the main story. If you want to find out why Gangrel is so vengeful and hateful towards Ylisse, you have to do optional content(Which admittedly, is at least actually in the game).

You make this sound like Conquest Hard/Classic is easy, and easier than Awakening Hard/Classic.

Those issues were data center-wide, so any world on the same data centers as Balmung and Gilgamesh experienced the same problems with congestion that those two did. Which is partly why I wanted to get off Faerie and go back to Diabolos, since Primal doesn't have nearly the same population issues Aether does. It took me 3 days to get past Raubahn.

I've been playing since the ARR early access. My first character was a Monk on Diabolos. Then I took a long break in between ARR and HW, and by then, I had a different group of online friends that played on Faerie, so I made a Monk, and that was my character up until the end of SB, and got to level 70 with that Monk. But by SB's release, all of the people I played on Faerie with were mostly gone, so I had 0 motivation to play any end-game content. So I went back to my Diabolos character, where I'm currently 66 Monk/60 Astrologian and working on the SB content again, and I've found a good group back there. Plus, I don't have to share a Data Center with Balmung or Gilgamesh, so that's nice.

Aran and Nephenee fit entirely different niches, and Aran(Outside of arguably Hard) might actually see actual use in his chapters. For the reasons you'd actually use Aran, he beats Nephenee handily. His ability to cap his stats very early make him a good candidate for BEXP, too, while Nephenee take a bit longer to hit more of her caps, and will have to stick with her flaws longer. Anyway. Nolan's really the only solid, all-around DBer that I bring towards the end, and even then, Boyd usually is my #1 axer. The rest are indeed outclassed by several other units in the game. Leonardo can never hope to catch up to Rolf or Shinnon, Edward gets outclassed in the DB chapters by Zihark, putting him in a corner VERY early, Meg can't keep up in the DB chapters, and Fiona starts too low, isn't around enough, and doesn't have a functional place in the DB. Laura gets a pass for being a utility unit, and thus having a bit less competition. So yeah. Pretty much just Aran on difficulties less than hard, Nolan and sometimes Laura are likely to ever see the endgame for me.

More of a feeling last time. This more or less solidifies it.

I'm out. Done. Don't care anymore.

While XII was a game I would have thought fit the bill like, 5-10 years ago, I actually liked a good chunk of the characters in FFXII after replaying it a few years back. At least, Basch, Ashe and Balthier, who are more or less the main, main characters. It's just the style of characters in Ivalice. They're a lot more flowery and Shakespearean than they are loud and emotive, which is a bit of a personal preference. I like characters who aren't always shouting out their emotions, which is way too typical of JRPGs. But I do agree that they don't interact much with the world, and a lot of the story happens divorced from their actions. It really isn't until like, halfway through the story that they got super involved. I think it was replaying X and playing XIII that got me to appreciate XII a bit more. Simply because the more subdued, calm dialogue was a breath of fresh air from the cartoons of X and the melodramatic infighting from XIII. And if you want to talk about people not interacting with the world, the characters of XIII barely interacted with each other. It made XII very digestible by comparison.

It's a careful balance. If I don't care about the characters, why would I care about what's happening? Conversely, if I don't care about the story, why do I care about the actions of the characters? So both are very important and can affect each other very directly. That said, I think characters edge out story by a bit, simply because stories where I get to enjoy the characters, regardless of the content or context of said story, are still ultimately enjoyable. I can think of multiple bad/meh stories that get carried by the strength of the characters, but not so much the other way around.

Machyua would be a pretty amazing unit if she didn't have Orsin as direct competition. Actually, all of the FE5 counterparts are way better than the subs. Machyua's just all around really good. Lara is a great utility unit and can potentially promote three times. Karin's a solid unit and flyers in general can become great if they get scroll'd to be a bit tankier. Carrion's one of the few worthwhile mounted units in the game. Miranda's legitimately one of the best units in the game, even if she does promote to a less ideal class. As opposed to trash, utility trash, flying trash, mounted trash, and decent, but unmounted in a game that really punishes unmounted units.

Oh, well that makes it perfectly okay to treat your child like an experiment without their consent.

Hey. You show more respect to Machyua. She's the VERY first proper Merc/Hero in the franchise.

I didn't expect equal distribution, and I fully expected some games to get preferential treatment. Chrom was the reveal character, after all. But I was at least hoping that people from more than 3 games would be represented. Go look at any of the threads that were made prior to the "It's going to be SD, Awakening and Fates" comment, and you'll see pretty much everyone hoping/expecting at least one or two representatives from each game. I really was far from alone when it came to expecting units from all throughout the franchise. Then the "SD, Awakening, and Fates" comment came out, and some people saw the writing on the wall, but some people were at least hoping for equal distribution if they were just limiting themselves to 3 games. And now that's pretty much out the window, as every new piece of information about the game that's coming out is "Don't expect equal distribution, expect more Awakening." For some people, that's great. For me, it's pretty much the worst outcome imaginable.

Characters with more than one character trait. For real, though, I want a new Bard. And like, the classic version of a Bard, not the Elphin/Nils version. One that travels around gaining intel, and is competent in wind magic/light magic(And possibly enjoys booze and women), but doesn't wear the typical mage get-up.

Because I care more about Glade's mooks than I do Glade.

I was initially looking forward to this as being a big celebration of Fire Emblem in Warriors(A franchise I'm not really a fan of) form, which got me excited. Then they announced that it was mostly going to be Shadow Dragon, Awakening, and Fates, my enthusiasm dropped significantly, because by and large, those are my three least favorite casts in the franchise. And their "There'd be too many swordies" reasoning was so confusing and stupid that it frustrated me. But, I do actually like a fair chunk of Fates' characters, and while I really don't care for the Archanea characters because I think they're as bland as all hell, I do respect the archetypes many of them set, and the potential for expansion could be fun. But with a lot of these interviews, the focus comes back to Awakening, which is hands down my least favorite cast in the franchise. And things like "Oh yeah, Donnel's a meme, and people like memes, so we'll think about adding him. Thanks for constantly memeing about Donnel, Kotaku." just make me wonder why I would ever play this if it's a franchise I'm not super into and characters I don't like are going to be front and center. It's cool if other people are still excited, but this game is turning out to be everything I didn't want it to be.

Serena I agree with, since Several was already an alright character, but Gaius and Tharja were so godawful that Asugi and Rhajat being tolerable is, in fact, a major improvement.

I won't argue the second part(I think compared to the game it followed, which seems to have a cast people LOVE, it has the stronger cast), but I really don't think any other story in the franchise can be picked apart like Fates'. The badness of Fates' story is so unique, even in the context of the franchise. Some games have boring stories(The Archanea games) or stories that go nowhere for dozens of hours(Sacred Stones), but nothing is flat out... baffling like Fates' story is. That said, I hate how the person in the link is presenting their gripes.

Not a fan of frozen pizza.

This game is looking more and more like a hard pass as more info and interviews come out.

Well dammit.

$3 a song with a DLC library of over 1000 songs in Rockband is just brutal. I already probably bought 60ish songs previously. The $1.79 per song during sales is still bad for my wallet, but I've probably saved over $50 on JUST DLC for the game. I mean, how am I supposed to live without Creed, Disturbed, Nickelback, Fall Out Boy and Linkin Park?!

Shhhhh... I agree with this, especially in regards to lords. I didn't even think about it recently until I had to explain to somebody why I didn't like Eirika, but in a good handful of the games(At least Sacred Stones, Radiant Dawn and Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia), the female lords are the ones who fuck up, and their male counterparts have to come in and fix things. I'd still say Eirika's the worst case, since Micaiah and Celica do have somewhat understandable/sympathetic reasons behind their flaws, while Eirika literally takes suggestions from Satan, but it's made worse by Ephraim, Ike and Alm essentially being flawless heroes.