Slumber

The lack of amazing flying units in FE4 and the awful dismount penalties in FE5 finally break my streak of exclusively voting for Jugdral characters in the "classic" division! Minerva's great. Good unit, set the WK archetype, and all sorts of other goodness. Haar and Jill were in a tight race, but Haar's just so damn likable that I have to give it to him, even though Jill might be the best unit in FE10. Cynthia. As much as I hate Owain, Cynthia is like a better, more likeable version of him. And with how broken children are in Awakening, she's an amazing unit who also happens to be likeable. A rarity in the modern era.

Ninian, Farina, Rath has always been my headcanon. Ninian is self-explanatory. Farina is the only female that is in Hector's route only, and thus is kind of specific to him. Plus, a Pegasus Knight knida explains why Lilina has some magical inclination. Florina and Serra could also explain this, but Lilina acts more like Farina than either of them. Plus the blue hair, which is obviously from Hector, but still. Rath's ending with Lyn is the only one that mentions Sue's birth, and Rath gets Lyn's attention immediately as soon as he shows up. Plus, Lyn living out in the plains and living with Saceans fits her personality way more than going to becoming a queen or dragging somebody else out into the middle of nowhere.

Always had a soft spot for 8. And yeah, one thing I've grown to appreciate is how well 8 does its music. I don't think any other FF has done music quite like it, where each of the major overarching plot elements has its own musical archetypes, and the themes are built off of those. Usually FF games don't quite have such a consistent musical tone. Some of them are downright all over the place.

As somebody who's been here since the Direct a week and half ago, it's pretty easy to acclimate here and just talk about stuff. So welcome.

It also has Raven, Rutger and Karel. Yeah. I'm curious as to how it was written in the Japanese script. Because it could just be an inexperienced localization team/fanslation team seeing a game partially about land disputes and wars between borders, and going crazy with the word "Marquis" for every other character without realizing it.

Third tiers convey a sense of extra scale and length. It also gives you a reason to keep trying to level units past the point where you'd usually go "Okay, time to bench this unit so they don't sponge up EXP that other character could use". I mean, that still happens, but it happens much later. Also, early game premmies are a lot more fun to use when you know they can promote again, and third tier premmies were incredibly rare. That said, unless Switch is over 30 hours like RD, I don't think there's a need for third tiers. I think I'd actually prefer third tiers over branching promotions, but third tiers WITH branching promotions? That might be interesting, but we're starting to get into Langrisser territory..

Classic: Safy. Beastly Warp unit. Nanna's up there. Vet: All are actually pretty good, but I'll go with Mist. Modern: Once again, all trash. Actually, Forrest and Brady are fun subversions. But I don't feel like voting for either.

I thought it was implied that I meant without the use of weakness exploiting weapons like the Wyrmslayer. That kind of ignores my "general rule of thumb for enemy defense scaling in the late game by using Dheginsea as a measuring stick" point entirely. That's why I said "practically impossible", and not just "impossible". Yes, Dheginsea has the highest defense in the game, but most enemies in the mid-late game have ridiculously high defense, even on Normal. And blessing a Wyrmslayer is a decent idea, but it's useful for only the one map, and Zihark would be more useful in the last two maps, since Edward gets shredded by magic

Yeah, I don't think Kita's anywhere near the worst. I just think that, for whatever reason, the way her art was presented in FE9/10 didn't do it any favors. I really like the character design and costume design of the characters she did. She did a good job conveying the idea that this is a strategy series loosely based on a medieval fantasy Europe, but that the series is still a Japanese RPG franchise. Somebody like Kozaki may be better on a technical level, and certainly it's presented in a much better way in the games, but again. Kozaki's art just doesn't fit with the series. You definitely get the fact that this is supposed to be a JRPG series, but that's about the only aspect of the series Kozaki managed to capture. Even as much as I love FE5 and Jugdral in general(And as I'm using some of her art as an avatar), I don't think Hirota's shoujou-esque art fit the series that well, either. I also don't think Wada demonstrated herself well until FE7... something about 6's designs just feel off to me.

The only thing that makes me question that is that we only ever see Oliver promoted and using Light magic, but his base class technically is a Priest/Cleric.

My rule of thumb for whether or not a unit is worth using in the long run: Is it physically possible/practical for them to harm Dheginsea? Defense skyrockets over the course of the game for enemy units, and Dheginsea is, in my experience, a good measuring stick to whether or not a unit will be worthwhile in the late game. Even if you get ridiculously lucky with forging(You'd need to max out might on a Silver Sword and get at least a +2 Might bonus), it is practically impossible for any of the myrms to do even 1 damage to Dheginsea. Which to me, means that these units won't cut it as the game goes on. Sword Saints wield the weakest(Well, second weakest after knives) physical weapons and have an utterly pathetic strength cap. For Edward to even stay viable for more than a handful of part 3 chapters, you need to baby him a lot. Which is fine, we all have units we like and love giving all the EXP to when we can, but I don't think giving preferential treatment to a unit necessitates a high score. Otherwise, Fiona wouldn't be considered one of, if not THE worst unit in the game. At least with other units who could never hope to dent Dheginsea, like Sothe or Zihark, function as semi-Oifayes, who help a lot with carrying weaker units. Edward doesn't get this. That's just my take.

Call me biased or crazy, but I could never rate any of the Myrms higher than a 7 in RD. They just fall off SO hard in the mid-late game that I feel like it's entirely pointless to raise any of them up(Especially Edward), even on Hard. It takes a while for Edward to get going, then he's useful for about 5 chapters before he's obsolete again. Zihark is semi-useful, as he can carry the DB in the chapters he's around, but otherwise, yeah. Really, really not a fan of them in FE10.

I'm guessing Rhys and Laura will be lumped in with healers. Oliver probably was forgotten.

FE7. I saw Marth and Roy in Melee, interested in who they were, but never looked into it. Then, when I bought Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced, there was a little promotional pamphlet that was advertising a bunch of high-profile adventure/RPG games for the GBA in its middle years. From what I recall, it was FFTA, Sword of Mana, A Link to the Past, and finally, Fire Emblem 7(Or just Fire Emblem at the time). So I was immediately curious, since I saw a badass group of dudes wielding giant weapons and fighting dragons. I eventually bought all of these games, just because I was in such a hardcore JRPG kick at the time. Fire Emblem is probably the one that left the biggest impression on me.

I actually hope IS goes back to simpler systems than Fates. None of Fates' new mechanics were unbalanced by any means, but if just cluttered the gameplay so much. Debuffs for weapons was fine for one game, but it'd really turn me off of the series if it came back. Go back to weapon durability, which I think is what they'll do. 2nd gens need to stop if there's no time skip and the parents don't die off. After just one game of just trying to justify the existence of children fighting alongside parents, it's already falling apart and starting to feel tacked on. I don't think many people liked how it was handled in Fates. Go back to how FE4 handled it. Kill/bench the parents, shift emphasis entirely to the kids. Kids will probably come back, however. I don't know how they'll deal with it, it could be a standard FE with no kids, since kids didn't sell people on Fates, or there could be kids and they'll have another bad excuse for them. Or they could to the fully split generations, since they'll likely try to ease us in to an FE4 remake. My Castle needs to be revamped. Again, it was novel for what it was in Fates, but I don't want to see it as it was in Fates in anymore games. It felt clunky, and like an unnecessary meta-mechanic with too much micromanaging. It will probably come back revamped. Avatars need to stop, or if they're in, stop making them Mary Sues who take up all the spotlight. Alternatively, actually make them characters instead of blank stand-ins for what the developers think we're like. Because as they are now, Robin and Corrin are boring as dirt and detract from both of the games they're in. Even Kris detracts from NM, and he/she's not even propped up as THE main character. They'll probably do none of this however, and the Avatar will be another aggravating stand-in who everybody can't stop loving and does everything(Or does absolutely nothing until the plot demands it, THEN they can suddenly do anything). Pair up has been fixed in Fates, so if it returns, I won't be upset. However, I prefer the old school rescue mechanic. I don't know if it will return, one of the things I am not 100% on. Get rid of all the alternative weapon types. Once again, having the usual sword/lance/axe/bow/magics+knives and another parallel set of similar but slightly different weapon types was fine for Fates, but it clutters up the gameplay and in any other FE game that doesn't have an east vs. west theme would give the game an inconsistent visual style. They'll probably go back to the classic weapon triangle with a few kinks thrown in like knives, differentiating magic and light/dark magics. Aside from that, I actually expect them to adopt some ideas that we'll see in Echoes. Awakening took a lot from New Mystery/SD(Class swapping, Casual Mode, Avatars), so we might get a glimpse of Switch's new mechanics in Echoes. Maybe we'll get dungeon crawling and some more traditional JRPG mechanics like towns in Switch. Overall, I think they'll back away from concepts that were generally divisive in Fates(How they handled weapons, how the children were implemented), and tighten up the things that got praised(My Castle, the continued rebalancing of Awakening mechanics like Pair-Up). There is one thing I really want them to address in Switch though: Stop trying to make characters so goddamn weird and eccentric. Make them grounded again, make their eccentricities an extra facet of their personality, and not the main defining characteristic. Awakening had the most one note, anime-stereotype characters in the series. While it worked for some, I can't stand most of the Awakening cast and I hate thinking that this is the same series as the Jugdral cast. Fates had generally more rounded characters, but they were still super anime and tonally all over the place because most characters had one really overstated personality trait, and the devs actually tried to write character development around this. It worked for some(Charlotte), and it absolutely failed for others(Peri, who I really like ironically). Fire Emblem's supposed to be a series about country destroying wars, brutal civil wars, and sometimes destructive gods who want to kill everyone. Make the characters act like it, goddammit. Also, a hope that I don't expect them to address at all: Stop with the world maps. It's killing the balance of the series. Once again, Fates really put a cap on how much you could abuse overworld leveling, but it still had balance issues. It takes away from the idea that these games are supposed to be these desperate situations and these characters are trying to stop impending doom by grinding EXP on the map that they just fled from because the enemy army is in hot pursuit.

I will say the general designs are a lot better for Echoes. That Knight in the trailer looks like it's wearing actual knight armor, and not a metal nightmare.

Even if it's less bouncy, it still has that same exaggerated aesthetic and the character models are still more hunched over. Maybe Echoes will sell me on the 3DS aesthetic, but I don't think it will convince me that it's appropriate for the Jugdral games.

Ahhhh. I can't choose between Julia, Linoan, Sara and Salem. They're all so good. Screw it, I'll give my vote to Salem, since he's unlikely to get love from anybody else in this poll. Canas for vet, for being potentially one of the most useful units in the game with Luna at the end(Also true for other Luna wielders in the other games, but fuck 'em). Henry for modern. One of the few VERY eccentric characters of the new games that I really liked.

Also, a part of me doesn't want to see the Jugdral games on 3DS. I just... really don't like the 3DS aesthetic, where everyone's all hunched over and bouncing up and down, everyone jumps 10 feet in the air to do a normal attack, all crit animations are the same, and the models are just super exaggerated. FE4 and 5 are a little more grounded and darker than that animation style would convey properly.

So, anybody have any thoughts on if IS should roll the Elibe games together into one generational story like FE4? Some stuff would be pretty easy, like Roy, Liliana, Sue, Hugh, whose fathers we know, but not the mothers, Lugh, Ray and Wolt, whose mothers we know, but not the fathers, Clarine and Klein, who we know both parents, so doing the FE4-style of children might work for them. But then there's all of the other characters who have no relation to FE7 characters and stuff like Igrene, who was born before FE7, Fir, who has a canonical mother and father, Geese, who is the brother of Geitz, and Niime and Dayan, who are the parents of two FE7 characters. So I think the thought is nice, but I don't know how it'd work without making those 7 characters who would be more malleable more broken than every other character.

I think it depends on how strong the sales of the Switch are. If it gets off to a bad start, I could see Nintendo encourage developers to continue focusing development on the 3DS, and we'll probably see at least one of the Jugdral games on the 3DS. If the Switch sells gangbusters, I could see them shifting focus completely to the Switch. IS is at a point with Fire Emblem where they're very likely at a very fluid development stage. They're putting out a 3DS game a month and a half after the Switch launch, and they're going to be completely devoted to developing the Switch game. I imagine plans for the next FE will be discussed seriously by the end of 2017(If FE Switch comes out early-mid 2018) or in early 2018 at the latest, and they'll probably have a good idea of how well the Switch is doing by holiday 2017. That's probably when they'll decide if they switch to Switch, or they keep supporting the 3DS.

The thing is, the "improvements" to SD were half steps, rather than whole steps. New Mystery is where you see whole steps, and that game isn't nearly as divisive as SD. Yeah, there weren't many characters with 0% growth rates(They were still there, but the revamped class system was supposed to compensate and give units better growths) in major stats, but the growth rates they DID have weren't very high. There are so, so, SO many worthless units in Shadow Dragon that liking a character and wanting to use them was an extreme gamble. Even accounting for classes, most units had pathetic growth rates, and somebody like Darros, who is a good unit, can only ever get a 25% speed growth at MOST, on top of an awful base speed state. This makes progression in SD feel incredibly slow, as you'll only ever see a handful of units make meaningful gains by leveling up, and it's a hold-over of the FE games before 4(Though 4 had its own issues for making character progression feel slow in the first gen). Adding promotions to classes that could promote doesn't do a whole lot to fix that, since aside from Barst, any axe-fighter isn't going to feel much different at promotion than they did at recruitment. The only "newer" aspect I can think of is how the game introduced growth rates that were tied to class and swappable classes, which is something I've never been a fan of. It worked best in New Mystery and Fates, but here it just effectively forces units into archetypes dependent on their class, which was already an archetype. The series has done methods of influencing character stats in the past, and they've all been better than forcing a unit to play as a class that doesn't fit their bases and growths to fix bad stats. The other new thing it does is how it handles gaiden maps, but that feels like something that was thought up 25 years ago, before anybody gave any serious thought to gameplay balance. This one aspect is actually something that is a step back compared the original FE1. And yes, I was being hyperbolic by saying it "ignores advancements in the series", but it really only meets the bare minimum. You can skip animations? That's cool. The game still feels slow as dirt because it doesn't feel like your units grow in any meaningful ways, the maps aren't very appealing, the story is barebones and the characters get almost literally no development. In FEs where the story, characters, and maps fail(*coughcoughAwakeningcoughcough*), it's at least fun to see your party flesh out and your units develop. And in this regard, Shadow Dragon still feels like a very, very old FE. Forging is cool, but that's a very minor newer FE feature that SD got right. What about supports, or in-between chapter conversations? Various other things that have been with the series since the SNES? Gone.

Fates does have pretty bitchin' maps. I'd still say Thracia and Radiant Dawn have better maps though. That chapter 14 map of Thracia is just... I love it so much. Fire Emblem needs more maps where you're playing a very tight defensive game. It shows up here and there, but the setting of holding off an INSANE, large-scale city siege is so good.

Yeah, of the things I'd praise Awakening for, map design/objetive design is definitely not one of them. Anyway. Shadow Dragon is... whatever. As said, it's way too faithful to 25 year-old game design. It more or less completely neglects the advancements the series has made over this time period, and it just feels... off. It's ugly and the characters are boring. That said, there's a chunk of the fandom that still really enjoys it, so it may be worth your time if you are curious. You might like it more than some of us. New Mystery, on the other hand, is what would happen if you took an ancient Fire Emblem, and remade it with the bells and whistles you would expect out of a Fire Emblem game made in the 10s. It's a very good game, even for FE standards. Kris being a bit of a Mary Sue hurts it, but if you're not familiar with the original FE3, Kris is no worse of a Mary Sue than Robin or Corrin, and at least the entire story doesn't revolve around him/her. It's still a Marth game, it's just for some reason, everyone loves his sidekick. Shadows of Valentia claims to be a faithful remake, but that remains to be seen, as we know very little of it.

It fits with the name and the role, though.