Slumber

When he's the only one apparently benefiting from it, I want them all to fail.

Gaius... Um... Tharja is the best class in her game. Peri makes me hungry for cotton candy. Gaius... Kellam's a decent unit. Ilyana can be pretty good in RD if you can miraculously get the +2 speed bonus from importing PoR data. Faye makes the game much easier if you make her another healer. ... Look, you could try to skin me alive and I couldn't come up with anything genuinely good to say about Gaius. Fuck Gaius.

I agree with the "Keep the big maps, rebalance the units, change the flow of the game and add more side objectives" part for FE4. It definitely needs reworking, but stripping the biggest part of its identity seems like a bad idea. The unique and cool thing about FE4 is that you're in a grand battle that literally spans the entirety of Jugdral. Fights last months and years in the narrative. I think there's a lot you can do without scrapping this and the "grand battle" feel of the giant maps.

Eh. Game companies have been doing this for a long time. The Dawn of 3D has made it a bit more obvious(Think Majora's Mask. It used a ton of reused OoT assets, and was made in about a year). FFXV has become a cow to milk, though. Game's been out for a year and a half, and Square is still releasing content for it and still shoving XV characters into whatever will take them. This is definitely more modern Square. The first FF that the milked super hard was X, and that amounted to a sequel. Come FFXIII, a game people didn't even really like, and Lightning is EVERYWHERE, there are two sequels, and XV was supposed to be another XIII offshoot. I do think it'd be for the better for Square to do what they used to, where they made a game and moved on, but eh. Anyway. Yes, next Persona game will definitely be another dancing game or something similar. I'm skeptical over remakes, since they haven't really made any sort of remakes for Persona. Enhanced ports and re-releases, but not remakes. If they went the remake route, I'd be down with Persona 2. As much as Persona 3 is the inception of "modern Persona", 5 did a few things that felt like they were testing waters to see if their audience would accept classic SMT mechanics in Persona. The answer was a resounding "Yes", so a game that bridges the gap between mainline SMT and Persona even more(Like Persona 2) would make more sense to me.

As somebody who JUST replayed BB again, I'll mention some general things, as opposed to the things I've been saying("Make it after a FE7 remake", "Add in more FE7 characters", "Rebalance weapons/units", etc.) for the last year since I joined. Diversify mission objectives. Probably since the game is supposed to originally be a huge call back to FE3, the ONLY mission objectives in FE6 are Seize. It makes the game even more monotonous than other recent games that had very little variety like SoV and Awakening. There's no good reason to stick with pure seize maps when bringing the game out of FE3's shadow. Make the maps a little more... Coherent/interesting. FE6 is obsessed, for some reason, making you go out of the way to actually reach the throne/gates. I've mentioned that one of the reasons BB is one of the most hardcore Horse Emblem games(The only game that has it beat as far as I can recall is THE Horse Emblem game, FE4. After that there'd be quite a large gap.) is because the map design is so needlessly windy, and not in interesting ways. FE6 just does everything it possibly can to keep from making your trek to the throne/gate convenient and intuitive. Unless you use Treck, because he has a horse and can carry Roy twice as fast as any foot units, it's slow and tedious in ways that would make FE4 stop and go "What am I doing?". It comes off as deliberate, but not in any way that's justified by anything in the game besides cavs and Miledy being OP. Increase the frequency of promotion items. You get very few, and you don't get them early. Premmies run roughshod over most non-premmies simply because the payoff isn't good enough for the investment for most unpromoted units in FE6. It just makes runs kind of bland when you generally rely on the same cadre of pre-baked units+a small group of units you actually built up to their level run after run. Add more villages and side objectives. Every 4 or 5 chapters you're given a chapter with a butt ton of chests to get, villages to visit, units to recruit, things to find/do, and then you're given a bunch of straightforward maps that are just "Point A to Point B, kill everything in your path with maybe one diversion". Again, it makes for not the most exciting runs. Especially with how simple the GBA gameplay is. Speaking of, expand on the GBA gameplay more. I'm not saying it has to be Tellius or Jugdral when it comes to functions and features. I'm sure people love the blunt simplicity of the GBA games. I myself have a lot of nostalgia for GBA gameplay. But FE6 was a deliberately simple game because it was designed as a casual handheld experience meant to streamline the features of the series. As time has gone on, its reputation is far from this. More than anything, it holds up as being too simple and on the difficult side. Even the franchise' standards of "streamlined" nowadays are a lot more expansive than BB. So I don't think pulling an SoV is wise, since SoV didn't do enough(To a lot of people) to modernize and fix an ambitious game. Leaving a decidedly unambiguous game as is will probably raise more than a few eyebrows and come off as low-effort.

I should probably mention more than just DQXI. Things that are probably coming this year: Smash 5 Fire Emblem Konkey Dong Topical Cream with Funk Octopath Traveler Travis Strikes Again Dark Souls remaster Mega Man 11/X Collection Things that are probably not coming this year, but soonish: Red Dead Redemption 2 Psychonauts 2 REmake 2 Metroid Prime 4 Final Fantasy 14's 3rd expansion Pokemon Switch Shin Megami Tensei 5 Things I'm kinda interested in right now but not sure if I'll be there day 1: Yakuza 6 Switch port of Ys 8 Typing this all out really goes to show how much Nintendo has monopolized my interests in gaming. Didn't used to be like this. Two years ago I probably would have laughed in your face if you told me that half of my anticipated games were Nintendo exclusives. So either Nintendo's doing a really good job, or Sony and Microsoft(Moreso Sony. M$ fucked up 10 years ago and has continued to fuck up) have fucked up big time. Probably somewhere in between.

I have a hard time keeping any interest in a alternate future Awakening. There are two ways they could go with it: A) Just a whole game of the Future Past DLC, where we already know the conclusion. It'd feel pretty lackluster, to say the least. B) They write a scenario where Lucina and co. wins. The problem with this being that Robin is full on Grima in this future and Naga is dead. They can't use the "Grima technically killed itself and bypassed its immortality" angle, and without Naga, they can't even use the Falchion to put Grima to sleep for 1000 years. Awakening goes to no small effort to explain that Lucina's future is completely fucked and unfixable. Any potential resolution to any story that takes place AFTER the events of Awakening would feel like a massive cop out.

Using Kellam as an example, gimmicks can also make OTHER characters look bad. The dude's a hometown hero. Obviously people outside if the Shepherds pay attention to him. But within the Shepherds, nobody gives a rat's ass about Kellam, and they outright ignore him. If you try to look into Kellam's character like. At all, it makes the Shepherds look like a bunch of assholes who deliberately ignore a competent member of their group for literally no reason. Peri, likewise, is a gimmick character whose gimmick makes everyone around her look bad. It's not worth the half-assed writing to potentially drag down an entire cast of characters.

Game pre-orders mean nothing in this kind of scenario. Just because a game is up for pre-order before another, doesn't mean that the one that you can pre-order first will come out first. Duke Nukem Forever was available for pre-order... 11 years before it released? Prey was like 8 years before it released. FFXV was up for pre-order like, 7 or 8. Kingdom Hearts 3 was pre-orderable a solid 3-4 years before it was ever even properly revealed. Obviously these are extreme cases where games were announced 10+ years before release, but going off of pre-order availabilty to determine this kind of stuff is silly. FE Switch and SB5 likely started production around the same time(With both games apparently starting development around the time that the last main games in either franchise was released). I don't think it's a stretch to think that Sakurai or somebody in the Smash team has communicated with IS about plans for this at some point during these similar development schedules. It's not like Fates, where it was like a year and a half development time compared to the 5 years for Smash U.

I agree. They've been slowly going back to that. Echoes was still a little vanilla in this regard, but the animations have been gradually getting back to being over the top after Awakening just had "Every special attack is just a jumping attack or a slightly longer animation with a cut-in". I doubt after the move to 3D that we'll ever get back to the elegant-but-crazy GBA era as far as ridiculous animations are concerned, but at least getting back to the Tellius era would be nice.

If they're not Marth, Ike, or from Awakening/Fates, I don't think developers even recognize them as FE characters. I'm sure the Heroes developers were wondering why a palette-swapped Bleach character dominated the first female CYOL poll. Then here comes red-headed Marth, and everyone thinks "Hmm... What would a red headed Marth be?" and they promptly realize "Oh, he'd suck."

Fucking finally. The gap between Japanese and western releases feels more like the gap between an obscure game with like, 2 translators stuck in a room. Not the granddaddy of JRPGs. Square keeps trying to make DQ a hit outside of Japan, but they also keep treating the west like an afterthought. Though I suppose I shouldn't bite the hand that feeds, since the game's getting some swanky upgrades and VA.

I think I'm good on mainland Archanea.If they want to touch on or revisit other continents in that world(*coughcoughJugdralcoughcough*), I'd be down. Just no more Archanea/Ylisse. Also no more Fateslandia games. Just contain that tire fire to one game. And preferably no more Magvel. They had their one shot to make it an interesting place, and they blew it hard. Either dedicate resources to make a new, interesting world, or revisit somewhere with a coherent identity. Everywhere else is still on the table.

The trade-off is that females tend to, innately, have higher speed than males. They're hit harder by con penalties, but it usually ends up evening out.

This is an odd one I entirely agree on. The quickness and surprise of criticals and skills made them a lot more effective in gameplay, and I HATE it when units never shut up. Spouting a one-liner every time there's a crit or a skill procs just seems tonally off. Having your heroes effectively say "Heh, I'm killing you, but look at how much fun I'm having." in a series built on making you feel bad every time one of YOUR units dies seems like a big clash. The series always had it with things like victory poses, but the cut-ins feel like a step too far. It's like the series went from adding stuff to ensure that this series about war wasn't too grim and sad, to making it feel like killing people is just a fun romp you have with your buddies.

Again, I'd say it's pretty important in FE5. Certainly not less important than in a lot of other games, aside from the games that are entirely "kill a anything/everything from point A to point B". Thinning enemy armies in Defend chapters helps a lot, clearing a path on Escape chapters helps a lot, being able to take out bosses with insane throne bonuses safely helps a lot. Orsin does this all better than anyone else by a wide margin. And between Safy and Orsin... In the long run, I'd rather be without Safy. The thing with Safy is, once her Repair staff runs out, there's a small army of staffers who can replace her. Anyone with a high enough staff rank, which is going to be most primary staff units, is going to be roughly as effective as Safy. Nobody can really do what Orsin can. Mareeta might come close, but she joins in the mid-game, unpromoted and low leveled, without Elite. Leveling isn't much of an issue in FE5, but she'll require a bit of babying and investment to get her up to speed. Galzus and Ced might also count, but those are your two Gotohs for the game, and you don't get them until the last 3 chapters.

On cuts? I agree that Cloud is the most likely cut. Even if FF7:R is on the way, it won't be out until Smash 6. Square was already pretty passé about Cloud being in Sm4sh, and Nintendo was begging them to let them have an FF character in, and it didn't seem to work out super well. If Cloud is cut and Square still wants a character in, Erdrick would be a better fit in Smash than Cloud. Dragon Quest(Especially 1-6, with 1-3 being the most iconic) is much more iconic as a Nintendo-related franchise than FF is across the globe(FF was associated with Sony for a lot longer outside of Japan than it was with Nintendo, with FF7, which has yet to even appear on a Nintendo platform, being the game that cemented the franchise on Sony platforms for a decade). Erdrick is the central character of DQ1-3, and Square has been struggling for nearly 20 years now to increase DQ's visibility outside of Japan. With DQXI on the way in the west, a DQ representative in Smash would likely be the perfect advertisement strategy. Smash is 90% of the reason FE is a thing in the west(And by extension, it's like 60% of the reason FE exists at all anymore). Couldn't hurt to try it for DQ. Snake ain't ever coming back, and if he is, he'll be a Pachinko machine. Ryu and Megaman are probably back. Capcom is a lot nicer with other devs/publishers than Square is, and honestly they want all the advertisement they can get at this point. Smash is a big 'ol billboard that never goes away. Plus, they have an actual association with Nintendo, since both Megaman and Street Fighter grew to prominence on Nintendo. Pac-Man might. Namco probably doesn't really care what the hell happens to Pac-Man(See: Pixels). Bayonetta may as well be "second party" like a Pokemon at this point, and I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo had some hefty claims on her as a character behind the scenes. She's coming back. On to first party stuff... Lucina is probably going to be relegated to a Marth skin, unless this game is an "enhanced port" of Sm4sh. Roy(Semi-clone) might get a similar treatment, but he's diverged enough from Marth that he might be safe, and fan demand was and likely sill is(Judging from Heroes) high. Robin and Ike are likely safe. Corrin's probably most at risk as as far as totally unique FE characters go. With Pokemon... Mewtwo, Jigglypuff and Pikachu are probably the most safe. Lucario and Charizard are probably probably safe. Greninja, as the "flavor of the week" Pokemon, is probably least safe, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him back. Wolf might be back, but I wouldn't be surprised if he stayed gone. Ice Climbers are probably back. If Lucina is cut and made into a skin, I'd want Dr. Mario to be a skin, as well as Dark Pit. Clones don't take up a roster slot, but strict clones don't make a roster look good. Even characters like Falco and Wolf at least move in substantially different ways from Fox, even if their movesets are identical. DP, Lucina and DrM don't, and just make the roster look padded. Cutting some fat would be for the better here. But of course, there's no reason real to do this if this is an enhanced port, since ANY work put towards these is already done.

I honestly forget Gotoh is a dragon(I just did). Xane also doesn't feel... Genuine? I guess? Hard to explain, but I don't think he's a great representation of how dragons are.

Now that it has a release date, Dragon Quest XI. I was hoping for a summer release date(I guess September 4th technically is summer) and a simultaneous Switch port, but alas. Also thank God it has voice acting.

I kind of like Holsety/Lewyn because of this. It's one of the first times we see a full-fledged dragon interacting with the cast in a meaningful capacity(Tiki's way too young in FE1-3 to really get an idea on dragons). And the way Holsety acts is pretty in-line with a dragon that loves humanity, but still subconsciously sees them as kind of "beneath" him, and thus tries to take the reins and steer them towards success, rather than leave them on their own and have them fail. But as an advisor and as a character, I do agree August does better. Anyway, to the topic at hand... Homer, Canas... You put purple hair on a mage and I'll probably like them a whole lot. I even like using Hugh, mostly because I hate using Lugh and Lilina's too much of a wild card. Lewyn, too, so I guess to go along with Homer, I just tend to like party boy bards. Miledy's really cool. I like her character and she's a beast in FE6. Boyd I like, too. He comes off as a more socially adjusted Ike, even if he's kind of an idiot(Though he's not an exaggerated idiot like Bartre, or even more extreme, Vaike). I like that he also becomes somewhat of a gentle giant after starting off as the hot-headed rival.

Finn's at greater risk because A: He loses the Brave Lance on indoor maps B: He has lower stats and movement than Orsin when unmounted, and Thracia just in general isn't kind to mounted units that aren't Free/Forest Knights C: He'll burn through the Brave Lance much faster than Orsin will burn through the Pugi, because it's not as reliable as a killing weapon and it has lower uses(And Orsin can get another Pugi, Finn just gets his one Brave Lance) D: His long term usefulness falls off in comparison because his growths aren't nearly as good E: Finn's personal skill is only good for survivability to a certain point, and nothing else F: Finn's BLD sucks and he's not capturing anything important, even with the Brave Lance Finn's a good unit, but he's not Orsin good. Finn has a lot of drawbacks that Orsin simply doesn't have to worry about, and Orsin's strengths are stronger. The one thing he has going for him that Orsin doesn't is that Finn is a better rescue bot purely because of Canto. Finn, unfortunately, isn't around during the chunk of game where this would come in most handy. Asvel I've gone over a lot, but he's incredibly frail, and he's one of the worst Sages once Grafcalibur is gone. Orsin is elevated by the Pugi(Which again, will last longer and Orsin can get another), but isn't reliant on it. Asvel is much more reliant on Grafcalibur. Also, enemy stats aren't super high, but people REALLY underestimate how threatening units can be, especially with how many the game throws at you, and how deceptively high low hit rates actually are from enemies. If you can't take a few hits, you can get into a lot of trouble very quickly. Asvel will get completely overwhelmed in ways Orsin won't, and a single unlucky hit(Of which you will have many. This is Thracia we're talking about) will leave Asvel in a bad place. Two will likely leave him dead or captured. And you're right, killing enemies isn't the most important thing. Completing objectives is. Thracia is a much more objective focused game(As is every FE that isn't 1-4 and Awakening), and keeping units alive while completing objectives is priority #1. However, every single objective in this game can be completed much faster and more efficiently with a unit that can take hits and decimate the enemy army. Orsin is absolutely the best at that. You can easily beat T776 without Orsin. You can easily beat any FE without any of the units mentioned in this thread. Seth? So what, Sacred Stones is possibly the easiest FE in the series and the game tosses 8/10 units at you like they're on sale. Robin? Again, Awakening is up there in terms is of easiness and pretty much every unit can be a juggernaut with little effort. Ryoma in Birthright? You see where I'm going with this. Orsin isn't necessary and Thracia is filled with viable characters, but he at least makes a tough game easier and stands pretty clearly above the rest from minute 1 to endgame.

Sort of. It overrides his PCC in most cases. Either way, Orsin's a crit throwing machine.

Orsin. Units like Seth eventually start to taper off and a number if units can catch up to them pretty easily, and they don't have much beyond raw stats to back them up. Similarly, units like Wolf, Sedgar, Ryoma, etc. aren't available until a certain point. And units like Rutger and Robin take a bit to get going(Rutger doesn't shine until he gets the +30 cut at promotion). Orsin dominates Thracia 776 from front to back. From chapter 1, he doubles everything(Meaning he also CRITS EVERYTHING, thanks to Wrath being stupidly powerful in T776), he has very good growths that keep him above most units statistically throughout the entire game, and he has, depending on who you ask, downright the best Prf weapon in the series(It's essentially a 1-2 range Killer Handaxe with higher might and accuracy than a Handaxe). Anything that doesn't die immediately will absolutely die on Orsin's second hit. The only time Orsin isn't uncontested as the best unit in the game is between chapters 4-7 when he is separated from the party. But chapters 1-3 and 8-Final? Orsin's undisputidely the king of the playground. He's a combine harvester taken human form, absolutely obliterating everything in front of him.

Well, mad orgies certainly didn't help Lima keep the Zofian bloodline going. But more offspring wouldn't hurt.

Sigurd is the only Lord in the series that never gets to see a happy ending. And his last moments are some of the worst/most tragic of any character in the franchise period. Gen 2 implies that he's happy with Deirdre in the afterlife(Gonna be real awkward when Arvis shows up), but man his life sucked near the end. He had to sit by helplessly as his sister and brother-in-law were slaughtered pretty much in front of him, his father dies to make sure Sigurd gets the Tyrfing, Arvis, who he thought was his friend, betrays him and reveals that he's(Unwittingly) the one who kidnapped his wife and that Deride doesn't even remember who Sigurd is, and then Sigurd and most of his army are roasted alive after finding out that ALL of their heroic deeds will be portrayed as villainous and an attempt to cause civil unrest across Jugdral. Probably the single worst day that anybody in FE has.