Slumber

Well, my job here is done.

There is, with a giant snowman in it. Unfortunately, at least for the main game, the winter biome is a questing area, and not so much a building area. And I'd recommend it if you want a much more streamlined/structured crafting game, and/or if you really like Dragon Quest. I went more in from the DQ fan angle, and enjoyed it a lot.

Mitsuda is pretty much my dream composer for any game. Between him and Uematsu, it'd be damn hard to pick who would be the absolute best composer. That said, I think Mitsuda was way better back when he was doing Chrono Trigger(Oddly enough, a collaborative effort with Mitsuda and Uematsu), Xenogears and Chrono Cross than he is currently. He experimented a lot more, which, IMO, let more of his personality come out. He seems to be less inventive nowadays where he seems to just go back to screeching guitars, choirs and traditional instrumentation. Which... as a guitarist, I get, but I preferred the WEIRD stuff he did back in the day. So let's say Square-era Mitsuda is who should be the next FE composer.

Ronan's stats don't fit his class, but he's still a better Archer than Leonardo *coughcough*. Speaking of Dawn Brigade units, Fiona might be the worst Cavalier in the franchise. Statistically alright, but a horribly, horribly underleveled mounted unit with bad bases, tossed into the ass-end of a hard chunk of game that pretty much punishes mounts. Fiona never has a chance to be even alright unless you baby the fuck out of her. Sophia is the worst Dark Mage in the series pretty handily. It's astounding that holding Dark tomes doesn't kill her, given her awful constitution, 0 durability and the weight of Dark Magic. Wyvern Riders might be one of the classes that have no real bad units on paper, but Altenna might be the worst Wyvern Rider in the series. Altenna, despite being beefy as hell and having a Holy Weapon, is tossed at you during a chunk of game that's really not kind to her. She gets shredded by magic, and nothing she has can help, she barely has more utility than Hannibal, a character so bad that he's borderline a meme. Shannam is Samuel to the extreme. A poor-man's knockoff of a famous Swordsman. But while Samuel's not terrible and has potential to be good, Shannam is pretty much impossible to make good, even with Scrolls. His main utility is buying shit for your army... which, now that I think about, is more than I can say about Marisa.

Now that Smash is honoring gaming legends that aren't entirely Nintendo exclusive, I think it's time they honor an early gaming icon. General Custer from Custer's Revenge. Think of his Final Smash.

TI'd like them to go back in the way Thracia handled them. Obviously not the "This lasts the whole map" way, but just in the way your army can utilize them. There were plenty of subbosses and bosses that actually made Berserk viable, and there was enough boss variety to make the other statuses work. I like that a status effect actually tied into the story, and it was the main boss of the game's main weapon(Even if this did end up meaning that doing the sidequest to nullify it made him a joke at the end). But yeah. Make them viable and I won't have much of a problem with them. It's another element to make healers fun to use, and it CAN add to the game. Just don't make Restores stupidly rare/unavailable entirely, and don't have the Hexing Rod. Also make poison a bit more threatening.

I did the main story after I got a sudden DQ craving last month. Thankfully it also coincided with the Switch release, so I just sat in bed playing it at night for two weeks. I never messed with Creative Mode in Minecraft, so Terra Incognita just didn't appeal to Mr.

Make Gaius a one-off bandit who happens to like candy. That's the only way I can see how to improve him without just erasing him, killing him, or changing him into a different character entirely. "Candy" might be the single dumbest character gimmick possible(Scratch that, writing yaoi slashfiction about your comrades might be the dumbest, but at least it didn't come with an awful pun every 3 syllables), and giving it to a recruitable character(FOR TWO GAMES) is baffling. Make Tharja a villain. An awful person obsessed with the main character would make for a much better villain than hero, and Tharja might actually be tolerable as a recurring villain like Aversa.

Danny DeVito.

FE1. FE2 is a goddamn clusterfuck, and slower than molasses going uphill. I always give credit to the team handling the remake that they managed to keep SoV as true to Gaiden as possible, while still making it way more fun than the original.

Oh, well then I agree to an extent. I would like an antagonist with actions that bring out sympathy. But I don't really think FE is that kind of series, so at the very least, villains that make it easy to at least sympathize with their character, or understand how they've become villains, is for the better.

That's referring to motives, not character. Sephiran's character has plenty of gray, despite him being firmly on the side of the antagonists.

I don't want to repeat myself any more than I already have, so I'll say this clearly: "Slots" aren't the only reason to keep a characters out of Smash. If it was just "slots" not being a thing, characters would virtually never get removed, and clones like Pichu and Wolf, who diverge WAY more from their originals than Lucina does, would never have been cut. Now we're getting into the region of "Why put any work into her when you could put work into a new character?" Awakening is a 6 year old game. It will be damn near 7 by the time Smash 5 comes out. The 3DS era of FE already has two distinct, unique characters in the Smash roster, with one of them ALREADY belonging to Awakening. Going along with Smash being a glorified advertisement(Which it is. It's why Pokemon get added and taken out based on the most recent gen of Pokemon to remind people that there's new Pokemon to catch), there's no reason for Lucina to be in there or to be given special attention now as opposed to 4 years ago when Smash 4 came out and Awakening was still relatively new. Lucina being a strict clone already demonstrates that, again, people are just happy seeing Lucina, and really couldn't give two shits about how she plays. Making her a Marth skin alleviates a lot of problems that people who aren't fans of FE have, while still appealing to the people who just want to see Lucina.

Shades of gray in a villain doesn't mean they're a good guy from a certain point of view. It means that they're not a completely black villain. Validar, Garon, Iago and Hans are all completely black villains. They kill and do bad things because they like it. There's not a single redeeming quality to any of these characters. Compare to someone like Sephiran. Sephiran by the time of PoR/RD, in no sense of the word, can be described as a good guy. He's intentionally stirring up chaos in order to awaken the gods so they can essentially wipe out humanity and reset everything. In Awakening and Fates, we'd get no explanation or backstop to this, he'd simply be a cackling madman, twiddling his fingers and talking about how great Ashera is. But this isn't Awakening or Fates, so we actually get to understand why this happened. Sephiran had been trying to bridge peace between the Laguz and Beorc for a thousand years, but he encountered nothing but tragedy. He lost his Laguz abilities, the people he loved died, leaders constantly went back to conflict any time peace seemed like a reality, and the final straw was his good intentions getting abused, leading to his race nearly getting exterminated and his home getting burned to the ground. He wasn't a good guy by the time of PoR/RD, but he wasn't really a bad guy(Well, bad as a person). He was somebody who just broke. You understand what brought him here. And, ironically, even though the games boils down to a God of Chaos vs. A God of Order, the story's not black and white because a lot of the villains have shades of gray. This doesn't even have to apply to main villains. FE5 is the only game I can think of in the series that ever actually explains why bandits are so common. And while there are bandits that kill and plunder for the hell of it, they actually explain that it's because the Thracian Penninsula is such a hostile, oppressive place, that it's extremely hard to make a living on honest work. People like Gomez try to be honest men and go straight like Dagdar, but they felt like there was no place for them in that life. So they went back to banditry. Again, they're bandits. Not good guys. But they're not these 100% evil faceless goons. That's what shades of gray are. Just anything that makes you stop and go "Huh. Maybe the other side has an actual reason for fighting, too."

On a more serious note, I'll hit some generals I want: Shades of gray in the villains. Whether it be sympathetic backstories, or clear, understandable motivations, give us ANYTHING that makes the villains not as cartoonish as they were in Awakening and Fates. World building. Fates dropped the ball harder than any game in the franchise, barring possibly SS, a game that was simply made because IS had some extra time and resources in between FE7 and 9. Build a world, mythology, ACTUALLY NAME THE CONTINENT THE GAME IS SET ON, all of this. It makes the world believable. Either stick to a dark tone or a light hearted one. The constant flipping between "Oh man, I can't believe X was just brutally murdered" and "Oh man, look at this whacky zany character and look at their shenanigans" absolutely ruined the tone of Fates. Awakening kind of pulled it off because it never quite went grimdark like Fates did, and the serious moments brought the tone down for a while. You also didn't have stuff like people bringing up how the goofy prankster stoner priest died suddenly then just everyone moves on. It's so tone deaf and stupid. Preferably, no dragon boss. Do something new. If there is a dragon boss, don't make him so unbelievably powerful that the moment something that makes them seem weak happens, their entire existence becomes a contradiction. No goddamn time/space travel. I feel like a lot of people will echo these sentiments, but there's a reason for that.

How was your day?

I'm hoping competency. I'm expecting incompetency.

A skin would be the best bet, since she would technically still be there if people looked hard enough.

You're bringing up hypotheticals to defend realities. Palutena, Pit and Shulk aren't from FE. They're from their own games, and they're representing their games, as is everyone in Smash. IF they WERE FE characters, then yes. That would still be too many FE characters. And if they needed to be in the game, you know who would be the first person replaced by them? Lucina. And yes, "fun" is an important part of Smash. But this is a thread about Lucina. If there was a character in Smash that added the least amount of fun, it would be her. She's one of the strictest clones in the game, only without the person she's a clone of's gimmick. Dark Pit at least has a different FS, even if it is a clone of another character's FS. Lucina? All Marth. And again, she's Marth with training wheels. Marth isn't that difficult of a character to learn, and if you play Lucina enough, there's really no good reason to not move on to Marth. Most people who play Smash for enough time are going to see Lucina and go "Why is she here?". She does less damage than Marth while bringing nothing new to the table. The few people who are going to be upset if Lucina is removed are simply happy just seeing her, which is a bad reason to keep a character in a video game(Which is a glorified advertisement) when it's already stirring up shit among the people who don't fall into that crowd.

I'm not seeing the correlation. From "The only reason for females to use axes is if they can't use javelins" to "Echidna's the only person this applies to, and she's no worse than male counterparts in this regard", I'm not sure how the connection is "These units are punished for existing". Don't use axes on these characters. It's why con and weapon weight are a thing. Could there be some beefier females more along the lines of Echidna, or a bit more balance to make the penalty less harsh to smaller con units? Sure. But I'm not connecting the dots you're putting down. I do agree that unit weapon ranks should come into play more. I've argued since I started posting here that weapon proficiency mitigating speed penalties from weapon weight would be a nice way to handle this. But again, the thing you're saying "punishes units for existing" is the entire reason con and weight exists.

Because Fire Emblem doesn't get privileges just because of seniority. If that's how it worked, Donkey Kong and Mario would have far and away the most reps, with Zelda not too far behind. Then Kid Icarus. Actually, Game and Watch would have the most characters. Smash is a glorified advertisement for Nintendo franchises, and it uses other Nintendo franchises to advertise itself. Slots aren't a thing, but development time and game image are. Distance yourself from being a Fire Emblem fan. Then ask "Why in the world does Fire Emblem have more characters than any other series on the roster except Mario?" To anyone who has no idea what Fire Emblem is, that probably isn't going to help sell the game, because they're just seeing a bunch of characters they've never heard of. To anyone who knows about Fire Emblem and isn't a fan, it's just going to cause a string of jokes(which is did), calling the game "Smash Emblem" or "Super Fire Emblem Bros", which again, isn't going to really help anything. If you're a Fire Emblem fan, then great. You're the only person who's going to look at the roster and go "Yeah, this seems okay." The better strategy, and the one that Smash has been going for since inception, is to pack the roster with more franchises people know, and add in a lot of characters people might not know to get people interested. It goes back to this series basically being a glorified advertisement. It's also why, up until Smash U, Pokemon and Mario were generally the most prevalent franchises represented in Smash. Fire Emblem only ever had 2 reps at most. Then Smash U comes, and suddenly there's more FE representation than any franchise besides Mario. It ties Pokemon and beats Zelda of all things. Fire Emblem at its best doesn't even manage to touch Pokemon and Mario at their worst, saleswise. The newest Zelda outsold the console it launched on, and it still doesn't get the same love in Smash that FE does. There's absolutely no reason to the insane prevalence of Fire Emblem in Smash's roster, and anybody who isn't an FE fan is scratching their head. They'll see a roster dominated by a franchise that relatively few people care about, and they'll either be turned off or crack jokes. It's not a good look for Fire Emblem or Smash. And as for Lucina, Sakurai has been cracking down on clones. Clones from the same franchise generally get the boot. Falco is the one notable exception I can think of. Ganondorf was likely saved because Zelda could have used more representation, and he was at least from a different franchise as Captain Falcon. Similar deal with Young Link, who ended up becoming Toon Link. Not so much a bump from being in a different franchise, more like a bump from having something new to draw inspiration from. But Wolf, Pichu and Roy(Initially)? All got the boot. The most egregious clone still around from prior to Lucina was Doctor Mario. I don't really know why Doctor Mario of all things stayed, but he's an exception rather than a rule. Lucina has virtually... Everything going against her. You say "Sakurai puts people in if he thinks they can contribute something", but Lucina is literally just training wheels Marth. She might be the laziest clone in Smash history besides Dark Pit. She doesn't look much different than Marth. She is the second character from a single game that's part of a franchise that has too many characters in Smash, which isn't the newest game in the franchise anymore. If Sakurai put in characters if he thought contributed something, then nobody would ever get cut from the roster. We know that's not true. A lot of characters get added in because they want to fill out the roster more and have a big number to point to on the game box. "Look at how many characters are in the game!" Lucina is a prime example of this. Her inclusion came very late in development, and she's a complete moveset clone. The only reason she's there is because she's an Awakening fan favorite while Awakening was still hot shit in 2014, and Fates came out near the end of Smash U's development. The same thing more or less happened with Roy and Melee, and Roy was cut for two games until getting an overhaul and released as DLC. If she doesn't get cut, I'll be shocked. The only way this doesn't happen is if the game is like an enhanced port of Smash U and EVERYTHING gets ported over.

Games abruptly taking control away from you to show you an in-engine cutscene. As weird as it is, I prefer hard-cuts to black, followed by directed cutscenes. The Naughty Dog(I'll call it this because they're the most guilty of doing this all the time) way of doing it where it seemlessly transitions to cutscenes and seemlessly transitions out is very cinematic, but it's very awkward in gaming, where you're left with a few second where you have to process what the hell is going on, and then you have a few seconds of awkward standing around as you fumble your controller when you realize after another few seconds that you're not in a cutscene anymore. There's a whole process from "I'm playing a game" to "Oh, I'm watching a cutscene" back to "Shit, I have control again" that does the exact opposite of what developers intend. It doesn't convince me that I'm more in the world, it convinces me that I have no control and it actually takes me out way more. Ironically, I find that the old school way of doing it, where it's a hard cut to a clear cutscene, does a way better job of keeping me immersed in the game. On that note, I fucking hate walking and talking in games when the NPCs walk slower than your slowest movement speed. WHY DO DEVELOPERS KEEP DOING THIS?!

It's weird. They're part of the same universe and they both spawned from the same game, but I'd consider them different series. There's enough divergence, and there are crossover games(Though the crossover games usually have the Mario title) that also treat them as separate from each other. Plus, for their little icons in the Smash games, DK is separate from Mario. Mario gets the mushroom, DK gets the... well, the DK.

If that's the case, then fair enough, but I've always remembered the opposite.

He may have seen it in the future, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the future of the Fates' world. Plus, the Fates' reincarnation characters ruin any idea that Awakening might be in the future. Unless spirits also can travel to different worlds and across different dimensions, I believe(Correct me if I'm wrong here) Rhajat says something to Corrin that implies that Corrin is the reincarnation of Robin, and that both of them have met before, referencing Tharja and Robin in Awakening.