Slumber

Waluigi.

So basically: Yeah, one handed sword beats a one handed axe Yeah, a spear beats both one handed swords and axes, but the one handed axe is probably better than the sword Two handed swords and axes are pretty even, and would both be fine against spears Halbreds wreck everything

Well, the only actual case of siblings/half-siblings* boning in FE4 is Arvis and Dierdre, and that relationship definitely isn't really painted in a good light. Outside of that, it's all cousins. Which is still gross, but you generally have to go out of your way for it. Game doesn't really push cousins on each other, gen 1, there's really only Chulain and Ayra, but we don't really know how many degrees these two are separated within the royal family, and you can end up with a gen 2 where nobody besides Leif, Altenna and Seliph are related. Whereas male Corrin and Azura is pushed pretty heavily, and they are also cousins. And the whole idea of Corrin/Azura boning any of the Nohrians is still pleeeeeeeeenty gross and weird, despite them not sharing blood. Oh, I guess there is Sylvia and Claud, but that whole relationship isn't really clear. *not counting Faval/Patty and Lana/Lester, who, being cousins from identical twins, technically makes them genetically half siblings rather than cousins, but I doubt anyone on the team thought about the actual genetics of these 4

If we're factoring in the argument of "You can only use Lyn or Eliwood", then the whole topic has to shift towards "Why would you even use Lyn in the first place?" That's not a good look for Lyn. She ends up worse than Eliwood, who gets a horse and 1-2 range options, two things that might as well be basic criteria for top tier units in FE7. If you're just arguing "Use whoever you want", nobody's disagreeing here, but it's also totally possible to level both Eliwood AND Lyn if that's what you're getting at. But we're all here because of who is better between Lyn and Marcus. Lyn robbing Eliwood of a horse, javelins and better weapon triangle control would be more reasons not to use her seriously. The argument of "If you use Lyn, she's good" becomes even shakier in this case. Because while it's technically true, you're now just robbing another bad unit of potentially becoming even better than her. Or you can not use either. I guess that also works.

Dorcas has 6 base speed and a whopping 13 con. He's slow, but that slowness is going to really only hinder him against sword units for quite a while, who you really shouldn't be tossing him against. He's strong enough to do in 1 round what speedy units with low strength tend to do, and he's going to be beefier than any of them. And, unlike most of those units who emphasize speed over strength, if you give him an effective weapon, he will likely kill whatever is in front of him safely. Also what? Axes are bad in plenty of FE games. FE7 really isn't one of them, since the game tosses out lance enemies like they're TRYING to get them killed, and Hand Axes are arguably the best utility weapon in the whole game, and simply having access to them is a positive on a list of bullet points. Doracs' is not good on the whole, but he's a totally usable early-early/midgame unit(As somebody mentioned, he's a good filler unit until you get somebody who can do his job better), and he doesn't struggle right out of the gate. Lyn starts off struggling, and eventually gets decent, but the problem with Lyn is that she essentially needs to promote to get decent. Which will rob Eliwood of the better promotion. Then you'll have to wait until until you're entering the very endgame to promote her, at which point it's really too late for her. Bartre sucks, but if we're going the "Nonono, they just suck when they join, if you train them, they'll be good eventually! That makes them a good unit!" argument, well... That also arguably applies to Bartre. You're aware Ninian isn't a combat unit, and should avoid being in fights, right? If you put Ninian in combat range, I'll put money on her dying by the third time she's attacked by anything that isn't a Bandit.

Marcus is a silver fox and you know it.

Oh good, this brain tumor of a subject got its own topic. No. In no reality is Lyn better than Marcus.

Then yeah, it would be more of a change. Can't disagree there.

I don't know what part of my post came off as "Giving him a horse wouldn't fix his problem", because literally my first sentence said it's a solution. Just not one I'm a fan of.

I've played through SD maybe... like, one and a half times in my life, so I tend to forget some of the things it actually did right.

Giving him a horse is a solution. I don't like it so much, since it does little to help with the balance for the rest of the game. For as bad as Roy is, he's not the only one hurt by FE6's map/objective design. Even giving Roy 6 move from the get-go is only a marginal step in the right direction if they keep the map design the same. I think redesigning the maps and varying the objectives would help a lot. But I also said this about SoV, and I still liked that, despite it basically doing nothing I hoped it would.

I've liked this idea. It fits with the idea of constitution in the first place. Con isn't strength, it's size. Axes don't fit better high con just because they're heavy, it's also because they're lopsided, and simply being bigger and having more leverage lets you use them better. Something that also helps with leverage is experience. Knowing how to handle weight and distribution can help make up for what you lack in size. Plus it'd give you a tangible effect with gaining weapon ranks. "Oh, I'm good enough to use Killer Weapons now, I guess I won't get any better with Steel" has always felt a bit silly.

I honestly think Roy getting more levels rather than a promotion would just be a straight up downgrade. Even when I try to use him, he's essentially required to be babied the whole game due to the structure of FE6. I usually don't even get him to level 20 by chapter 22, unless I'm going out of the way to use him, which, again, is kind of counterproductive to the structure of FE6, which has big, windy maps that are all seize maps. It's the game that's arguably closest to "Horse Emblem" outside of FE4. If he were to just get a higher level cap, he suddenly now just loses out on promotion gains, which are more important to Roy than extra levels. His growths would have to be massively improved to make up for this, and it still doesn't really fix that actually just using Roy is a problem. Roy getting better bases would help a lot more, and he might be able to physically make it halfway through a map before the horses need to ferry him across the rest, but that would still be a problem. I almost think the scructure of FE6 would need to change entirely. The "All seize" objective type that I... Think was an homage to FE3? Would have to change. More map objectives that aren't just "rush the throne/gate" would help Roy a lot. A rout or defend chapter here or there would let him be able to pick off more than just axers who happen to spawn near the start of the map. And fewer maps where the objective is a few tiles away from where your units start, but there are big obstacles in the way where you have to go allllllllll the way around the entire map, and fewer maps where you start at the exact opposite corner of a huge map(That also has big obstacles in the way).

I'm pretty sure I remember 90% of the Pokemon merch I've gotten since 1997. Specifically I remember the pink Pokeball Mew I got, and I also remember the weird gold plates that used to come in Kid's Meals at Burger King when I think Pokemon the Movie 2000 came out. Also I had the Pokedex. I want to say a gen 2 version also came out.

80s nostalgia is on the way out. 90s nostalgia is the new hotness these days.

The ability to outright delete worthless units

I mean, if you want to bring proper biology into this, species need to be genetically almost identical to produce viable offspring, with the small variation only existing to ensure actual genetic variation within the species. Like-species(IE tigers and lions, horses and donkeys), which are similar but have clear, divergent genes, can only produce infertile/unviable offspring. But Fire Emblem's a video game and biology doesn't have to apply. I've accepted this ever since Dragon Ball Z, where monkey based saiyans can have viable offspring with humans, which are apes. Tellius actually might have tried to explain this, though, since Laguz and Beorc share a relatively recent common ancestor, and Branded might be the in-universe explanation for "unviability" of offspring.

Finishing up Ys VIII. I've enjoyed it a lot, and have probably gotten pretty close to 100%ing the game(Base game, at least) on the first run through. However, I could not give less of a shit about the story in the Dana segments. After a while I just started skipping those cutscenes. I really don't think they did a good job at making those parts of the story compelling or intriguing, and the implementation of "Doing things in the past influences the future in a Looper-esque way!" seems really half baked.

I don't think that one is unpopular.

Tons of things do this for me: Seasons are a big one. I have a lot of memories of playing long JRPGs in the summer as a kid, so for games like Dragon Quest 3/7/8, Final Fantasy 4/7/8/9/Tactics, Chrono Trigger/Cross, every time summer rolls around, I get a hankering to play one of those. I also have strong association with summer with Zelda OoT/MM/ALttP, as with OoT/MM, I remember going to my best friend's house and spending hours trying to figure out what to do. ALttP I just happened to play in the summer. Also, Psychonauts, because it's a game about summer camp. Fire Emblem 4/5/6 are three more I associate with summer, since that was when I hacked my PSP and spent an entire summer in high school playing a shit ton of games on that. Summer's probably the season I associate with most with video games, since it was just a time of year growing up where all I had to do was play video games, go run around the neighborhood with friends until we wanted to play more video games, or until it got dark and all we could do was stay inside and play video games late into the night. I could go on and on. Vagrant Story, Legend of Dragoon, Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, DK64, Tony Hawk, Ratchet and Clank... All of these give me strong summer-y feelings, and I go back to them often in the summer. In the fall I have tons of memories playing Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Mass Effect, XCom, Fire Emblem, Fallout 2/NV... Winter I have generally more JRPGs again, since cozying up in bed and playing video games for hours is great for the winter. Don't really have anything for spring. Food and movies have strong connections for me, too. For whatever reason, if I'm playing Path of Radiance, I feel the need to watch Harold and Kumar. If I'm watching Harold and Kumar, I feel the need to play PoR. And coincidentally, I also want to eat White Castle.

Have they said anything on this yet? I wonder how substantial the event will be.

It's like you're doing this on purpose, so you probably know what I'll say to this: You words might mean something if you actually ever touched the game in the first place. The BS in Thracia when it comes to map designs/decisions, outside of the Warp Tiles, I generally find no worse than the BS you would find in the Fates games or in RD. @Jotari's points with 12x, for example, are valid. However, some of the main things he's commenting on are also optional. I've played FE5 God knows how many times, and I've never bothered with the optional items that spawn late in the chapter. I actually didn't even know there was a Knight's Crest(The game hands them out like candy), and while I knew of the Warp Staff, it generally isn't needed, despite how OP Warp Staves are. You'll have more than enough by the time Warp Staves really start to shine. The Dancer items seem more like things along the lines of "Hey, if you really want it, you can do these specific things to get these things". And as for Tina... I actually don't remember her actually using Thief all that often. I would say, however, using Sleep and Silence on her making her unrecruitable is definite BS. It's a logical conclusion, but the game decided to be realistic for some reason and decided that Silenced and Sleeping units are unable to talk. I can't say I've ever had any of the thoughts he's had about chapter 12x when discussing its design flaws. I generally only think about that last thing I mentioned.

Then I'd have to think about the criteria here. As bad as 12x can be in some areas, and as bad as 24x is with the Warp tiles, they're engaging maps. FE1, FE2 and Awakening don't get this caveat as a whole. These are three games that give no real attempt to engage you in the maps. Which is why, as much as I actually do like SoV, I'd give the nod to... Any of the swamp maps in that game. Outside of the final map, none of them are engaging in the slightest. And they exist purposefully to slow you down, and there's nothing to do in those maps besides rout the enemies, which the game actively hinders you in doing.

The chances any Lopto Mages get into FEH are slim to none. Salem, the one heroic Lotpo Mage, is a pretty obscure side character in the most obscure FE game, even if he is the first playable Dark Mage in the franchise. Everyone else is a villain, and there are about a billion villains the game will have to add before it gets to Manfroy or Veld. Until then, it'll always be Yotsmungand. To me, at least.

PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGIIIIIIIIIIIIIII