Slumber

God, I hated how strict my high school was back in the late '00s, and we didn't even have an armed security guard(There was an on-duty police officer who would stay in the cafeteria during lunch periods). I can't imagine how I'd feel if I thought that there was a chance a hall monitor or a teacher might have pulled a gun on me. I certainly would have skipped school more.

Keep in mind, 3-4 months is also roughly the amount of time in between Awakening and Fates' announcements and their initial releases. Fire Emblem tends to get revealed pretty close to its release, at least in Japan. A summer release is possible, and actually not unlikely. As much as FE is a big Nintendo franchise, it seems to thrive in the early/mid-year release slot. I don't think Nintendo wants a fall release, when it's SUPER competitive and at least one, huge AAA title comes out nearly every week.

Birthright Xander is pretty Lawful Evil. He's not on the "I'm Evil but I obey the laws in public and get away with technicalities while committing horrible atrocities behind the scenes" like somebody like Lex Luthor, but he follows the way you'd typically see Lawful Evil in D&D. He obeys an evil empire, questions it pretty flippantly, and is too far off the deepend to be saved and pretty much kills himself(He confronts Corrin hoping he/she might kill him) because he feels guilty for not doing anything... And, well, also accidentally killing Elise in a fit of rage. Those are not the actions of a Lawful Good character, or even a Lawful Neutral. That's pretty solidly in the Evil camp, as are a lot of "My country, right or wrong" characters. And he's barely that far from becoming this again in Conquest. Difference being that he eventually sees Corrin's PoV and finally rebels against Garon. He might balance out and get pegged down to Lawful Neutral, but he commits way too many crimes in Garon's name without any hint that he wants to stop to be Lawful Good. As for Leo, I'd argue Neutral Good. He rebels against Garon on both paths because he really doesn't like what Garon's doing. Corrin's actions push him to finally abandon Garon, but it's pretty strongly hinted that he's been done Garon's nonsense for a while, and that he was the first sibling to realize something wasn't right with Garon. He might be Lawful Neutral in the sense that he is just sick of killing in Garon's name and actually doesn't really give two shakes about Hoshido, but I generally see more good in Leo than that. Elise is yeah, probably Neutral Good. Good kid, but mostly just cares about her big brothers and big sisters. Hard to tell what she'd do without them. I'd say look at this in a vacuum. In a world without Corrin, who would be the first to rebel against/leave Nohr? My money would be on Leo, with Elise probably coming with him. Xander would probably never leave, and would be complicit in the many, many atrocities that Nohr would continue to commit. He might feel bad, but he'd never do anything, because story Xander is an awful person. Camilla, likewise, would probably never leave, because in a world without Corrin, the only thing left she really cares about is killing, and Nohr lets her keep doing that. She'd probably be the first to go try to kill Leo and Elise, if anything.

No God Hand? I'm disappointed in you! Your dedication to the genre, and you're missing possibly its crowning jewel in the 3D era. I'm(mostly) kidding, but don't overlook God Hand. It takes getting used to, but it's generally very well respected by beat 'em up fans, fans of Platinum/Clover/Capcom, and fans of Character Action games.

Save your sympathies for countries that deserve it. Until we squash this insane "The only solution to violence is more violence" mentality, I don't want any countries feeling bad for us. It's not worth your time and energy.

Shovel the driveway, then chill out and play video games. Love snowy winter days(Minus the shoveling bit). Nobody bats an eye if you have a lazy day.

It's a shame this and Silent Hill will never have proper releases ever again. MGS3 is one of my all time favorite games. The only mainline MGS I don't like is 4, and even that has some great moments.

I have 2 assumptions about this next Direct. The first thing being a kind of gut feeling about Directs in general, and the second is about the general content about the next Direct and why it's taking a while to hear anything about it. 1) I kind of get the impression that Directs are put together relatively quickly. While I believe that the contents of each Direct are likely planned well in advance, I think how it's all presented and when the Directs actually happen is put together on the fly. Case and point: A Way Out was part of the leaked January presentation slideshow when EA's portion got leaked back in December. Yet EA's sole representation in that Direct was Fe. Which leads me to believe that something happened with A Way Out when Nintendo was putting the presentation together. Whether it be that A Way Out wasn't ready to be shown and Nintendo didn't want to wait for it or if Nintendo simply decided it wasn't a good fit. Either way, the planned content within the Direct changed within the span of a couple weeks, and something minor got left out. 2) This next Direct isn't going to be just FE. I don't think IS has nearly enough projects to reveal to get their own Direct like last year. Rather, this next Direct is going to be a BIG one that focuses on Nintendo's major titles for the year. The January Direct was a lot of small titles probably to get those out of the way so that Nintendo can put together a presentation that's solely their big projects for the year. And I guess putting these two things together, I'm relatively certain that the reason that this is taking so long is that Nintendo's still waiting on something big to be shown off(My money is on the Switch version of DQXI, which will likely also be when the western release for that game is revealed. Nintendo and Square have been promising Switch DQXI for a long time now, and it's been a year since its release on the PS4. It could also be Pokemon Switch if Nintendo's report from a few weeks ago is to be believed.) To compare to the last Direct, if the last one was the Direct for big, AAA projects, I can guarantee that they would have waited until A Way Out was ready to be shown, if it was to be one of Nintendo's tent pole releases for the year, rather than just ignore it like they did. They can't let those slide, and they can't ignore big releases like that. So once they have everything they need for this Direct, it will probably come out pretty quick. And then we'll see FE Switch. So again, to reiterate, I really don't think there's any reason to think Nintendo's giving Fire Emblem the shaft, that it's being delayed, or that FE's "vaporware" or anything dumb like that. Fire Emblem probably isn't the reason that it's taking so long for Fire Emblem to get revealed.

Not to mention that teachers make borderline minimum wage. As if that wasn't enough of a deterrent towards people going into education(Teaching positions are filling up less and less around the country even though the student body continues to grow), asking somebody "Would you be willing to carry a gun and use it on a threatening student?" sure as shit would cause less people, who pretty much only go down this incredibly thankless job only with aspirations of helping and teaching kids(Or because they have tenure and can pretty much sleep on the job), to teach. You'd end up with a very small, speficic group of people who teach, and that group of people probably wouldn't be good for the kids.

My post was a joke.

The last time two half siblings got it on in FE4, they literally gave birth to the Anti-Christ. I think Seliph and Julia would know better.

I'd argue that Camilla is a pretty evil person who just loves Corrin, and Xander is loyal to his father to a fault. Both of them have strong evil tendencies. Xander tries to put on a "good" face that comes through in Conquest, but it falls apart in all kinds of ways in Birthright. Leo and Elise are a bit more gray/good since both of them were opposed to what Garon was doing and just wanted the fighting to stop, but Xander and especially Camilla are debatable. By comparison, I can't say any of the Hoshido siblings are evil, since the ones that are most loyal to their country are fighting for the right side. Takumi's just kind of a dick, but not evil.

Add Crusader Scrolls from FE5 so that non-Holy Blood units can mimic the growths of HB units.

We beat O6S on Saturday. Can confirm that it's easier than O5S in some ways. It's a lot more structured, and there's less randomness. But the enrage is a bit faster, and a few screw ups can lead to wipes. O7S seems like a doozy, but not impossible. Unfortunately my new job is going to get in the way of my raid nights for the foreseeable future, so I probably won't be around for our first O7S clear if we make it that far. It sucks, but we may be rescheduling.

The whole deal with Eiko's letter is one of the most memorably bits of FFIX. The fact that it causes Steiner and Beatrix to realize they have feelings for each other only makes it funnier. And yeah, as somebody who's played and beaten every FF besides XV(Been waiting for the PC version), FFIX is the best with the romance.

It's real easy to get lost in a conversation/debate or 20 around here if you let yourself. So let that be an invitation or a warning depending on how you wanna take it. I'm sure you'll have fun either way.

Welcome.

I overall really like FF8, but I agree that Rinoa's side of the romance in that game leaves a lot to be desired. I get why it works with Squall, as it's a pretty typical story of an antisocial asshole learning to open up to his loved ones, with Rinoa being the central "loved one". The pace at which he opens up and falls in love actually feels pretty natural. But on Rinoa's end it's just "What can I do to get Squall to love me, and how can I get his friends to bug him enough to go along with it?" From the moment they meet, Rinoa's pretty much trying to hook up with him. For another FF example, I like Garnet and Zidane a bunch as a couple. They actually help each other a lot, and while Zidane can be a bit overly flirty, he does figure out throughout the game that he's mostly like that as a coping mechanism, and he doesn't realize that he actually loves Garnet until way into the second disc. Zidane is heavy emotional support for Garnet as she deals with all of her tragedies, and he's the only one she wants to see after Kuja does his thing at the end of disc 2. Garnet, meanwhile, is the one who gets Zidane to figure out who he really is when Garland mindflays him and he finds out that he's a weapon designed to destroy the world he loves. There's a lot going on both ways with these two as they both have to develop their feelings for each other rather than one developing while the other does the same thing for the whole game, so it's not quite as one sided as Squall and Rinoa. Tifa and Cloud isn't super compelling to me because it doesn't really come into focus until the end of the game even though I like Cloud and Tifa, and I don't really like Tidus and Yuna because I hate both of them as characters even though the game was pushing it for the whole game. Rosa and Cecil is fine, but it's pretty standard and underdeveloped, which is how a lot of FF4 feels as Square's first attempt at a story and character focused FF. I also like Elly and Fei in Xenogears, like @Armagonmentioned. Their very first meeting being a really atypical one that leads to some more unique developments, though I don't really like the "It's destiny" narrative of it. But it's dictated by deities, so it has a bit more justification than the usual cases of "You're destined to love each other!". I'm fine with romance in games. Even ones that aren't perfect like Squall and Rinoa I tend to enjoy a bit, so long as I like the characters and it makes sense. If it comes out of nowhere or I hate the characters, that's when I lose interest and could do without romance.

That I can't say. I'm one guy and I'm not a comedian, entertainer, or a writer like the half a dozen people who write and script for DBZA. But going back to the Ginyu Force, they managed to come up with new comedic angles for a group that was already goofy and comedic, so I have no doubt they could have done something similar with Mr. Satan.

All fair points, but all in all, I'm not really a fan of how Awakening and Fates have handled reclassing. Trashing Awakening's system and saying Fates did it better is not me saying "Fates did it right". I just think the limitations inherently imposed within Fates, particularly Conquest where resources were at their most valuable and grinding was discouraged, complement the system a lot better than how Awakening handled it. I would still like stiffer limitations than even what Conquest gave. Obviously I want the broken aspects of MyCastle gone, too. You can say "Oh, just don't use MyCastle is you want strategy", but if a mechanic in a strategy game is so unbalanced that you have to ignore core gameplay functions(That the game CONSTANTLY tosses in your face) to get more "strategy" out of the game, then maybe those mechanics should be reworked. I have similar sentiments to reclassing, where I feel like have to limit myself like crazy to get what I'd actually want out of the game. It's levels above simply ignoring good units in favor of "bad" units for more challenge like it was in old games. While I'm also not a fan of this system overall, maybe some kind of "class allowance" like SD and NM had would help a bit. But that might just make reclassing as a whole seem unnecessary, so it's probably not the route they'd go if they want it to continue being a core gameplay mechanic. I've kind of got a grasp on how I'd prefer they handle skills, but I'm still not sure how I want them to handle reclassing.

My problem is that they just took the negative aspects of Hercule in the Cell saga, and amplified them. They do this with all characters, but all of these characters(Save the Ginyu Force) aren't meant to be comedic. So when you take somebody like Vegeta's anger and pride, and amplify them by 10x, it becomes absurd and funny. But Hercule is already a comedic character. They haven't done anything with him to make him any funnier. Hercule is already a comedic fraud and a shill. Making him even more of a fraud and a shill doesn't make him even funnier, and the punchline to damn near everything he says is obvious from a mile a way with the way they're handling him because they're not actually really doing anything new with the character. And they haven't injected anything that would heighten the comedic value like they did with the Ginyu Force, where they were treated like a professional wrestling stable(Especially Recoom). Because the Ginyu Force, again, was already comedic, so just amplifying the Sentai stuff with them wouldn't have made them any funnier. They needed a few more things to make them work in DBZA. And it doesn't help that he's taken up like, 1/3 of the commentary and screentime of the last few episodes because TFS likes Mr. Satan so much.

There is probably a lot of comedic gold in the Buu arc. Though with how TFS handled Mr. Satan, it's probably for the best that we might not be getting a whole arc where he's a main character.

Again, I don't think you're wrong for having convictions about abstinence on moral grounds or religious grounds. It's just that if you're worried about feeling ignorant on things like these, it helps to try to understand the other side. So I hope I helped with that a bit.

There are a few cases of this. Most units follow their traditional classlines, but there are at least 3 cases of units promoting into a different classline(Another example, there are 4 Myrmidons in the game. 3 promote to Swordmaster, the remaining one promotes to Hero, which is part of the Fighter classline in this game), essentially giving them personal promotions. I am also a fan of this.

I did forget about that...