Altrosa

Skinship only bothered me in that the Hoshidan characters had no idea why Corrin was calling them in to stroke their face. Some even made abundantly clear they were not into it, which is a huge issue.... and probably a big reason it was cut. Conversely, Nohr based characters are fine with it and quite enjoy it, mostly. So, you could call it subtle world building that the whole "skinship" thing is just a normal way to display affection amoung that society. (Also why Corrin is down for it from being raised there.) But, I really haven't had a single use of the Switch's touchscreen, but with Nintendo pushing junk like GalGun, (and the broken promise of Night Trap being released on a Ninty console, ha) I really don't think the current Nintendo is too bothered by fanservicey games.

I wouldn't doubt them announcing the new lord is in Smash immediately following the reveal, though. On another note, am I the only one who finds it a bit odd that none of the "leaked" online shop menus for stores like Walmart and Gamestop have any FE game? Especially quirky in that the Spyro Reignited Trilogy was legitimately leaked early by Target on their Twitter by some who had the kind of access these leakers claim. Super fishy.

I got one. I love to play utility classes, but recent FE just hasn't allowed me to really go ham with anything but healers or the refresher. That mostly boils down to things like rally skills not rewarding EXP and how rare and inaccurate debuff/buff staves are. I would really like it if the old rarity and uselessness of most debuff/buff items and active use skills to get reworked, cuz right now it's not very rewarding.

Fire Emblem Echoes: "We Know We Made it Okay in Fates, but Incest is Actually Really Freaking Terrible for Everyone Involved" Coming Holiday 2018 to a Nintendo Switch near you!

I think Peri's design is great, I love her voice work, too. But, Peri breaks immersion in a really uniquely Peri way, mostly coming down to how she's completely terrible as a murderous psychopath, but everyone's attempts to rehab her end in her partner just giving up. Really, if she weren't cute with her doll like appearance, sweet voice, and childish speech patterns, she'd be executed. Her cuteness is quite literally the reason she's with Xander, too. She's probably the best example of the weird, polarizing writing of Fates. Good argument against the old support system, too, since she never changed because she needed to start from the same point no matter who supported her despite every support convo focusing on her being a serial killer that needs to sorta not be one because she's a high noble and retainer to a future king.

I doubt we'll lose Rout the Enemy maps since that was basically all of Birthright and the majority of Awakening. After a conversation on it in another thread, My Castle can go. It needs a hexl of a lot of work in both balancing and just general aesthetics for it to continue on in future games.

Ahh, FFXV, or any game helmed by Nomura, is the absolute worst possible example to use for game delays. FFXV development was reset AT LEAST twice, when they took so long the PS3 was irrelevant and when Tabata took over, so that Nomura could finally fucking finish KH3. AND FFVII REMAKE JUST GOT A TOTAL DEVELOPER RESET, TOO. Mind you, FFXV was supposed to be the sibling game to FFXIII, as Verses XIII, which had a whole trilogy released in the meantime, and FFXIV had released, failed, been reset from scratch, and was pushing it's second expansion by the time FFXV finally launched. FFVSXIII/FFXV's dev cycle was a shitstorm. The best approximation is if Birthright launched, it remaining as decisive as it is, Revelation came along a bit later to acclaim, and then Conquest took so long that it became a stand-alone FE19 on the Nintendo Switch 2. Phew.

Lustrous Daybreak sounds like the kind of literal translation nonsense you get from Google Translate. I don't buy it. Subtitles tend to change pretty dramatically between regions, anyway. If changed to Fates, for starters. Do you think we'd get another Tellius? I certainly hope IS is able to port them to the Switch's new virtua console thingy when it finally comes along.

Boob armor to me, a boobed person, always looked like a really intense sports bra than like, proper armor. That's the only practical benefit I see to them. But, form fitted leather could do that far better, more cheaply, and add less weight to themselves with the tech and materials seemingly available to the average FE lady. Furthermore, every girl in Fates that'd likely need and use a good bra in combat curiously doesn't.

While My Castle was designed as a way to boost your units underneath a vineer of a visually customizable homebase, it's way too powerful at said boosting and way too easy to utilize, yet, entirely unnecessary for any of it's uses. Even without using any online components, it has huge dividends, and as most humans choose the path of least resistance with things, the common exploitation of it isn't all that surprising. On the other hand, My Castle's really not that nice aesthetically? Your building choices were limited, and only the layout, base environment, and music could be changed (and even that was limited by path choice and completion.) All those cute life sims I've played spoiled me to environmental customization, but having some more exterior options would be required for a future game if My Castle returns in some form. God, I really wanted to fix up Corrin's room so bad. That said, I really don't think the general audience would miss My Castle if it were gone, which is very much unlike things like pair-up, class promotions, marriage, or, like, voice acting, at this point. Unless FE16's like a kingdom defense type of storyline where you would frequently return home or more Fates bubble dimension sillyness, I can't see HOW it could return as a system, either. Anyway. The only thing I like from Heroes is the simplified, nicely coordinated weapon triangle. Especially with mages, though I'm iffy on the addition of colored bows as having them be a neutral weapon could give bow units a good niche beyond the bonus to flyers.

July is Octo Expansion and Octopath Traveler. The Crash remakes are landing on Switch, soon, too, as is the new Mario Tennis and a still steady flow of quality Nindies. I really don't think Pokémon Gen 8 is coming this year for the same reason FE16 is taking so long: Devs are building a new engine for the Switch hardware. Gen 8's first game would either be that mythical Sinnoh remake, or flip a ton of Gen 7 assets as we assumed the rumored Star would. Though, FE16 doesn't have that privilege of being able to rehash assets en masse like Pokémon does across console generations. The wait is brutal, but a 3 year dev cycle is pretty average. I'm now bemused at how many "fake" leaks we've gotten at this point. IS runs a tight ship, and I'm totally not salty that Steven Universe just got an awful leak when IS won't drop official info. Nope, not at all.

I just want a mage FE character. I've seen Tharja tossed around, but we might get lucky with FE16 having someone cooler for Smash. I think Lucina's most likely gonna get chopped since she's the cloniest of clones. She's likely going to be a skin for Marth.

I added a bit to post in edit, eep, but, that's exactly the kind of stuff Valm lacked. Shoot, even Cherche, a Valmese character, is instead a callback to Minerva, a Wyvern Ryder of FE1, instead of being a call back to basically anyone in FE2. Stuff like that. They could've explained it in one of tge DLC's, too.

Okay, but, the issue I'm saying is while I could glean some info from FE1 based on stuff in Awakening, I couldn't with Gaiden. They had options to double-down on the Gaiden stuff, too, but other than the name "Valm," there really wasn't anything there. I really think stuff like Alm's Falchion being missing was more the devs just not taking or having the time to really use the Gaiden stuff during Awakening's nutty production. Gaiden got less respect. If Walhart's explicitly not of Valm's bloodline, then the arc could've been seeking out someone who was, or on why Walhart wants to reunify back to Valentia, or even a hint of the old gods, but, nothing. Note, Awakening was my first FE.

Walhart's whole storyline felt rushed and really, there was nothing there that indicated the story of Gaiden, unlike with the whole schtick if Lucina modeling herself after Marth and Chrom and her wielding the Falchion if Archanea. Seeing it now, Valm's missing Falchion feels like it may have been one of those details IS wanted to add to Awakening that didn't stick from them throwing everything they could at the game. There is a lot of background they'd need to go through to explain Walhart being decendant of a second Hero-King, who said Hero-King was verses Marth, why Walhart was using his power for conquest as "the strong need to rule the weak" (which is very Rigel-like in retrospect), more of Virion's role and failings, etc, etc. So yeah, a huge amount of missed potential. That could be a game in itself.

I'm really curious if IS is going to try the My Castle thing again as it was for this reason and for the lack of Street Passes on the Switch. Another issue that arrose was the sheer quantity of hacked castles designed for material and ability farming. A customizable home base is a fun idea, but it still pigeonholed players into this secondary grindfest and was so exploitable. Plus, you'd want to visit castles as much as possible to gain more levels to add more to your own castle. Do people even want multiplayer in Fire Emblem? I don't mind the whole deal of putting up a pre-set, AI controlled army out in the world for a fun challenge to other players, but is it really all that rewarding?

Actually, looking at how Smash 5 was announced with the Inklings being included as a big finale and bait and switch (heh) post the 3.0 and Octo Expansion update, this has actual merit. Announce FE 16, show off Smash 5 preview tournament with a playable FE 16 character. They even performed some Fates cross promotion by using Smash 4, so they could do this.

I still stand by the Vampire Emblem concept as being a pretty good one as long as the religion aspect is done right. Much of it, though, sounded so much like what we expected Fates (particularly Conquest) to be. It's impossible to tell if this was really good fanfic using the theorized concepts players had during Fates Hype, or if IS listened to the critiques and are going hard on the dark kingdom idea after Nohr's (and Rigel's) popularity showed a fanbase for grimmer stuff.

Honestly, the only Echoes characters that really got to me were Berkut and Rinea (which, amusingly, were part of the few new additions to Echoes from Gaiden). The whole scenario was 10 kinds of screwed up and I found it fascinating to see more players lose it over Rinea forgiving Berkut verses Berkut's trauma, loss of identity, and his being manipulated to go down the darkest path somehow less messed up. It's framing, for sure, and if anything, it made Rinea out to be the most honorable character in the whole game or the most passive. I like that kind of moral grayness and the idea of trying to see situations from all angles, but hoo, that get's so touchy with certain people. My favs are problematic, and I agree Alm and Celica were pretty plain by comparison. (And I hated characters like Camilla and Xander for a really long time.)

It's been mostly 3rd party ports and indie games. You forget Labo launched today. Another thing that may factor in to the break is Nintendo's delayed online services. On FE's front, IS may have a new system in place to replace street pass functionality that Ninty's delayed is bugging up. But that's me spitballing.

A really good explanation of the craziness of recent game's hit rates and the problems resulting. I rewatched it and I think I did mispeak. The issue is more that skill is a stat unrelated to hit and avoid, so you can have units that appear to ONLY land crits since the game uses a separate roll for each, and thus the crit rate can be sky high on any accuracy. But, I'll Devil's Advocate a bit and give example on how RNG rolls get fanagly with the FE14 system in favor of players. I made a Corrin that was skill+/mag- and married Saizo. This gave Asugi and Kanna overly high Skill growths and a slew of Skill stat reliant abilities and access to Hoshidan Ward (which boosts skill activation rates even further). So, the kids had Lethality and Dragonfang, coupled with Poison Strike, and easy to use self heals as their personals skills. Also, Dragon Ward, which buffs defense on allies. Saizo is a fast unit, and passed his nigh guaranteed doubling to his kids, increasing the chances of getting crits/skills in more. And Shurikenfaire happened. I accidentally made 4 glass cannons that more or less trivialized the second half of the already pretty easy Birthright by inadvertently pushing the RNG grossly in my favor. This was my blind first run, too. But, because of how hard everything leaned in my favor, at some point, the only RNG left was which skill would activate, not if one would, and if I was RNG screwed, I'd double, Poison Strike, or both. Strategy fell to the wayside to just making sure I was in heal range of Saizo. It got too easy. Saying all that, if we remove the four RNG stats and go the Heroes route of skills being innate, based on map positions, or be on turn timers, it might be pertinent to also remove "classes" as we know them and make every unit unique... But that instead rolls right into the even worse issue of some units just objectionably being better in combat than others, especially without Heroes' skill inheritence system or some other method of boosting and customizing units. It'd be like finding a spider in your kitchen and fixing that problem by burning the house down. TLDR: I accidently built units that Fates' player friendly RNG buffed the shit out of and part of the reward was boredom, but I still don't see the Heroes alternative as better.

There was that note from earlier that Cipher has a series hitting this autumn that has zero hints on the game it's based on, which was the same sort of vagueness held over what eventually turned into the Echoes set. But, I'd like the Cipher units to pop in like they did in Echoes, though, preferably not as DLC exclusives. Actually, DLC is a conversation in itself. Echoes was lambasted for how expensive it's entire slew of DLC is, but, all three 3DS games has a huge amount of DLC, some of which hid lots of unique lore and character development and other packs had classes and skills behind them. I just hope we don't get a Heir's of Fate sort of series, where an entire ending path is in small DLC chunks sold separately.

It took about 8 months for me to swallow my silly Fates favoritism to give SoV a shot, precisely because I felt off trying to voice an opinion when I hadn't invested any real time to it.. and I still generally didn't care for most of it, but found plenty of aspects I did, which was the exact same view I had before playing it. The only thing that happened different was that I started seeing the flaws in Fates more. I feel like this sums up what gives the reclassing based combat it's advantage. It gives players more agency as you can erase those disadvantages you have from using certain units over others.

I lean towards probably. Nintendo needed to pull out everything they could to hype up the Switch after the WiiU. But, it's biting a few games in the ass, FE16 among them. Pokémon confuses me as it's announcement stated early 2019 at the earliest. I had a rant on how dissapointing SuMo was for me here, but my big worry is that the new game will ignore the new hardware capabilities and it just be more or less USUM without the island theme and lag... which would technically be improvements as we'd have a full region map to explore, and, more importantly, smoother gameplay, but that's basic functionality that a key Nintendo property should always have. Or worse, have a barren endgame as ORAS and SUMO did. But, yeah, I really don't understand the "clipping" of other game releases, and Nintendo's dropped that a bit. Octopath Traveler and the Octo Expansion are both coming out on July 13th, for example. Octo.

No, thank you. The RNG is actually something that was made as rough as it was in early games to add to the realism, and Hit/Crit rates have been nerfed to the ground after the new maths of Fates. It's calculated on a curve now, and crits override and ignore hit rates. That's why high skill units are crit machines and why even decent accuracy lands so often and low accuracy is a death sentence. Removing these stats outright would change up some things for better and worse, it would need 90 other gameplay elements to be retooled and balanced out to deal with the lack of RNG in direct combat. Heroes handles this with the Gachas, skill eatin-"inheriting," and the star ratings. Heroes has units so far ahead of others based on weaponry and innate skills, so without the RNG and unit building depending on your gacha luck and IRL funds, every player's army would be pretty homogeneous. At that point, it's less a strategy game, and more a puzzle game about finding the right solution to beat the other army. That's oddly impersonal for an FE game. I do like Heroes's weapon triangle putting the 3 types of magic (back) in, but it's a pretty different format in all other fronts from mainline FE.