Interdimensional Observer

I'm not condemning other playstyles- play FE however you wish. Why I take time at the end of Etrian Odyssey games to make extra characters in the classes I never actually used in the main game and grind them up, despite me being capable of handling at least most postgame bosses without any of them. It just looks pretty. And closer to home, I do have an all-males Awakening file from years ago where everyone has Limit Breaker, maxed stats, and many have Res+10 on top of that. Would I ever do that again though? Probably not. But will I max all the Jobs in Bravely Second with everyone once I get access to Obliterate? Yes I will. Also, I liked the Einherjar in Awakening too. But the children were supposed to be more in the plot than the Einherjar, which were just cards. The children came from the future to save the world from destruction, but due to gameplay concerns (which I completely understand) none of them had a single moment in the plot outside of Lucina. Putting them in hoods and having them show up in groups of three or four for a scene or two in the main plot pre-child recruitment chapters appearance, and rewriting their paralogues a little to make them feel a bit more relevant- tweaks, not radical changes to the way things are. My main point on customization is that decisions like "do I have Stahl or Lon'qu father Severa?" don't carry that much weight. And thus people generally shouldn't be concerned about messing up their pairings if all they want to do is beat the game or fear a bad pairing will make the postgame impossible- it won't. I'll confess that I do want the differences between kids with different parents to be a little more readily significant outside of extremes like Orochi vs. Kagero to be more relevant to my playstyle, which isn't LTC or anything extreme. Just minimal to no grind and kinda sorta I guess "efficient" as vague a term as it is. I like customization and I like the idea of having kids with an assortment of skills from across their many classes, but I can't get it without severely compromising my own preferred playstyle.

Here is the most relevant text from Ephraim's versions of River of Regrets, Two Faces of Evil, and the Final Chapter: C17: C18: Final: Was Lyon being possessed by the Demon King on Ephraim's route. Well I think we can say he was being influenced beyond a reasonable doubt. The DK's words in Final cited above say that he only influenced Lyon, and it says nothing of ever outright possessing him. But there might be just a little room for thinking otherwise- the DK could be just putting on an elaborate act when he pretended to be good Lyon, and him continuing the act to the end when he is revived. Compared to when I last examined this, my view of ambiguity in the matter of Eph!Lyon has declined. It is worth noting that the DK on Eirika's route doesn't say anything like what he does on Ephraim's Final Chapter at the very same point (that of being his first words after resurrection) are much fewer, only “Now, humans…Lament your fate. Weep for the dead. Despair for the living. Wail and tremble in grief. Grovel in awe and fear. I am returned.” which to me suggests that IS wanted to go out of their way to clarify Ephraim route Lyon.

Fire Emblem: The Hundred Years' War! Featuring four generations across two sides- with resources spread over so long a game and the ambition of a plot so big, what could possibly go wrong? *Ahem* I wouldn't mind FE actually extending the duration of its wars- they're always over in a year outside of Genealogy (and even then it kinda is). It'd make things a little more realistic and allow for plot developments and character growth that can't be done in so short a time frame. I'd put the hard cap at 5 years though, 7 tops. On the second point, that optionality of the children made the irrelevant plot-wise, they were kinda there. They were awkwardly shoehorned into Fates, and in Awakening they ended up being less important than they were supposed to be. As for the first point you made- how customizable were the children in the 3DS games really? Let us begin with Awakening and then move into Fates. The most undeniably significant boost a parent can offer their kid is classes- which give skills and affect pretty much everything, this is major. The problem here is that if you want to go skill-hunting, the kids are going to be massively overleveled for the main game. If you want a kid to use a weapon type other than one they start with, you have to go through E rank hell, also unpleasant for a no-grind main game. The second most significant boost a parent offers is a small adjustment to the child's stat caps- but it won't make a real difference in the main game at all (not even on Lunatic+). I guess it might in Apo and Whitewing Challenge Pack, but even then you don't need children- it's doable without them, or so I've heard, the most challenging thing I bought was R&R3. The third most significant offering is the direct inheritance of 1 Skill per parent, though it's possible for this to be considered the second most important inheritance thing if the child is a Galeboy. But other than Whale Horse (to lightly jab at the skill) and Veteran, there aren't any real amazing skills to inherit, nifty ones for sure, but nothing that'll change how the kiddo plays, and Hail Norse at best will be ending up on Severa or Cynthia and maybe Morgan late in the no-grind game- at which point, will they even be worth getting? Lastly we have growths and bases inheritance- which are moot because Awakening generally has high growths and infinite leveling compensates anyhow. And on the growths side of things- you can only contribute a meager one-third of the child's growths, not including what classes add. So it's even less to a degree, the degree being if a variable parent with a high growth in a stat offers a class with a good growth in the same stat, while another parent with a lower growth offers the same or a comparable class or not. E.g. Vaike doesn't offer Yarne Sage and has crap Magic, unlike Ricken so the kid with Vaike will be awful at magic. But Kellam isn't that much worse than Ricken in affecting a kid's magic growth because they both have Sage and the difference between their 35 and 15 Magic growths for a kid is 6% growth- nearly nothing. Moving onto Fates- there is no postgame to use those stat cap alterations on, though they might see slight usefulness on Conquest or Revelation. The removal of cheap infinite leveling, the increase of growths inheritance from a third to a half (though the difference still isn't humongous between parents with close growths), and how this affects skill learning makes growths and skill inheritance matter more. First Blood inheritance matters at all only on CQ and Rev- not BR. Class inheritance took a negative hit though, as only one class gets passed on now with the rise of new class flexibility via A+ and S supports potentially giving classes. And mind you, you can only customize one parent all three games with kids- you can't do something more radical and assign Owain to Panne and Virion. The fixed parent's passings can't be adjusted at all. Further cutting into customizing space. As for hair color- just add hair dye IS! As for supports- all the variable parent convos are generic (outside of Future Past?), so you're not getting writing worth anything. One final word- Genealogy had a fair number of kids who were basically unscrewable either in offense or utility as well. They could be good or great, but certain kids just couldn't be bad. Just sayin' that to say I'm not excusing FE4's child system of having flaws.

I actually tried my hand writing some Valentian history (I'm terrible at writing characters, so world building is it for me- though I need to read more history to be truly decent even here), and I decided to address this point by blaming it on Duma's decline. When Duma was healthy and watching over Rigel, Rigel had titles of royalty and nobility, but merit and contests of strength ensured that classism wouldn't set in. A son could not inherit their father's title without proving themselves worthy of it in their own right against others potentially worthy of the same position. Yet between the year 250 and 300, Duma's judgement hit a critical point of weakness and he began to shut himself inside his Tower and Temple, apart from day to day interaction with humanity. It is around this time that classism began to set in and titles became inheritable without conditions- though the meritocratic nature endured to some degree to the day of Alm and Celica. Zofia by contrast was always classist, as Mila's bounty was abundant enough that the peasantry never had reason to complain about greedy nobles- everyone had their fill even when the nobles took more than they deserved. And Mila hated the idea of her children noble or common fighting and any of them getting hurt- she ended up enforcing the status quo as a result.

Don't forget Fire Emblem: Under the Staff. Realistic looking fantasy medieval surgery, featuring the teenage male doctor lord Nathanael of Sicilesse (or NS for short). I mean Awakening already gave us the Healing Touch.

The hell begins- do I go full offense with Hammer? Or do I take the easy way out and Stone-wall through things? DS audio quality is a problem, and the track is repetitive, but to be fair a gloriously masterpiece would be wasted on this given how many fights you'll be hearing it- particularly if you lose several times trying to best the True Arena. 7/10. Once We Part Ways from Xenoblade Chronicles

You sure they weren't just correcting a completely innocent error? As in "Hey, let's try not to make the forest layout on maps look utterly blah and generic all the time" and thus they accidentally made the symbol. Similar to how they changed the symbol on the Forest Medallion in OoT3D, but I think some of these changes just lead people to see the accidental swastika after I'm in agreement with Slumber here- there is no latent anti-Semitism in Jugdral. You're reading into it. I'll add my own additions. Child hunts are simply an extension of the child slavery Kaga had included in FE1 (Linde's recruitment has Marth freeing her from them- it was changed for the NA release in Shadow Dragon). Kaga like using kidnapping as an evil his baddies engage in. Any abnormally large nasal features are simply because it's a deviation from the standards of human appearance and beauty. Generally in stories with clear heroes and villains you load up the bad guys with ugly features symbolic of their evil to distinguish them from the handsome and beautiful heroes. Evil sorcerers manipulating? That is typical of sorcerer depictions across time and place. There are loads of stories with secret societies and dark cults manipulating things in all sorts of entertainment media, and you can't call it anti-Semitic blindly. As for the mythology- IS wanted to use Norse mythology because it's epic and cool to use it. Don't think of bringing up Wagner- one can use Norse mythos, which Wagner helped popularize, without ever touching Wagner's anti-Semitism. Did Norse Pagans even know of Jews in the days before Christianity took over Scandinavia? And not every place in Jugdral has a Scandinvian name- Silesse from Silesia is Polish and German, Verdane is Verdun in France, Agustria is Austria, Manster and Ulster are Irish and the latter features loosely Japanese swordsmen. Thracia is in the Balkans/Mediterranean, and Miletos is from ancient Turkey. Isn't Leonster kinda racist towards South Thracia and allows the people there to starve? Don't mean to set up a human rights commission in Jugdral, but I think Leonster could lose a point or two from that if you have an unbiased conscience, which some non-Manster District Jugdralians might.

Lilina is also underleveled and turns out nicely when trained. You can toss a low leveled unit anywhere in an FE and give them even crappy bases and growths (not that Lilina's are bad), and not matter what some people will simply eat them up. Dare IS throw a level 5 unit in the next FE's penultimate chapter and see if that instinctive love for cute little Ests endures even at such an extreme? (Well they did already get pretty close to if not exactly that with Ena and Kurthnaga. And I don't think I hear many people praising them like so, nor Lyre/Fiona/Vika/Tormod- but not as many people have played RD as the 3DS games, so there is that issue to contend with. I wonder if upping the adorbs factor on Kurth would change anything.)

Serious, fairly bleak and containing some despair, fear, and tension. But what else would you expect when you begin walking around inside ice caverns found unbelievably inside a giant and growing space anomaly looming over Antartica with demons inside? Not to mention your high tech ship just crashed, you don't know what happened to the other three of them, and you have no idea of how you'll get out of it. You're utterly lost and can't even focus on your investigative mission- you just want to survive through an inexplicable-to-all-reason enigma you've found yourself in. This is no time for happy lighthearted music! This said, the track is a bit repetitive. 8/10, although I'm being perhaps a bit generous. Captured Phantom from Eternal Sonata

I wonder if they could ever fit in a Triangle Attack skill in this game. To make it work, you'd need the skill on all three participants to make it activate- so that'd be a lot of summoning to get your hands on and it'd cost all three of your characters a slot for one particular type of skill. On top of this, they should restrict it to only activating when all three units are the same distance from the foe- either all must have 2-range weapons with one space between them and the desired enemy, or all 1-range and adjacent to the desired enemy. I don't think we should restrict it to requiring one particular weapon type though- this wasn't the case with any Triangle Attack save the GM bros's. Not sure how much extra damage from the Triangle Attack would be significant but balanced though.

there are three more options from Sacred Stones: Ewan, Amelia, and Ross. Donnel would sweep the gauntlet in all likelihood. The rest? IDK. Ross would be Green infantry- he's easily decided on enough. Ewan's teacher is Saleh- a Sage, so I'd wager he'd be using some form of Anima magic, but I can't say which color. Amelia would from a character perspective make a Blue Horse, but she'd stand out more as a Blue Armor. Mozu- well everyone and their grandmother Niime makes her into an Archer because she's fragile as a Villager, but Blue Infantry works too and would possibly stand out more in the vast sea of heroes.

PC gaming is the ultimate way of spreading games around the world to everyone everywhere. I mean I don't do it because I don't have a PC, but I have nothing against it. It isn't like I buy systems for their third party exclusives. And Nintendo's first party stuff, which they make a lot of, will never go PC without severe financial difficulties, so there is no fear when buying their systems that everything will suddenly become diffuse.

Actual historical troubadours sang for a living, as RD actually alludes to. Just slap Azura or Shigure on a pony and have them sing in rhythm with their galloping steed. Or, make someone a little adventurous and dance while standing atop their horse.

Has a name that if you remove one letter from spells "Baka Gin", or in other words, Japanese idiot alcohol made from juniper berries.

Help them out by fusing a bunch Mitamas to them. Exact same form, just more stats, and maybe some nice new skills.

He is, his class is (SS Wind) Archsage in RD, and his highest tome rank in PoR is in Wind and he comes with an Elwind tome. Now if only we could get Greil, plus maybe some enemies too. The Black Knight, Ashnard, and Petrine would all work together for a banner I guess.

Childhood! Sweet, sweet childhood, oh days of innocence and freedom from fear and knowledge! How I recall jumping back and forth across those platforms in front of the shop, hearing the sound of 5 rupees being earned. Visiting every house, walking through the tall grass throwing rocks and cutting signs. Buying the Deku Shield and finding the Kokiri Sword before venturing towards the first dungeon without the ridiculously long opening sequences of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess! But alas, you chose but reminiscence's silver medal- truest purest timeless nostalgia makes one feel utterly lost in it all. 9/10 Odin Sphere's Theme from Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir If you want, here is the same piece with the opening cinematics that go with it. (I only include it b/c it's spoiler free and has no VAs or gameplay or other sounds to interrupt the listening to the music. If you don't want the visuals to influence your opinion, click the first link.)

Looks incredible. I only a novice MM player, and it's only through plentiful, though not "every-single-jump-I-make" abusive, use of restore points that I made it through MM1-4 in the 3DS Legacy Collection, plus MMX on the Wii U (and they're something I wish Sony had in their PS1 Classics- MMX4 is owning me). I do see they're lacking a bunch of things in terms of bosses, enemies, and weapons, but I'm expecting gradual free updates should fix this. I'm not fond of them buffing the weapons- altering their properties should be something every player gets to do on their own. We should also be able to adjust the HP and attack values of enemies according to their "species", and their weapon weaknesses too- Pharaoh Man immune to all but Top Spin/Hard Knuckle anyone?

Fairly jungle/tribal in feeling, with a little bit of an strangeness to it in that predominant instrument- I can't tell what it is though. The track does pick up with the bits of vocal and other instruments, so I'll say a 6.5/10. The True Mirror from Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

Palla and Catria- the elder and middle two of the Whitewing sisters. These two are always near equals, with Catria's Speed and Res leads outweighing Palla's Str lead in the case of SoV (barring the Trainee Lance- but that is paid DLC only). Even so, Palla isn't very far behind. Both girls are rather weak during the desert portion of Act 3 despite their good flight mitigating the desert terrain, but once promoted prove invaluable for Act 4 and useful in the final battle too. Not at all invincible juggernauts for sure, but they're still top notch units. Atlas- he needs to be hightailed back to the Seabound Shrine ASAP if he doesn't want to be a liability. Amazing Atk is undermined by a lack of Speed and other stats, so you have to find a way around this. Archer and a Killer Bow is the easiest way to give Atlas a good offense, and you get an Iron and a Steel on Celica's side of things, so you can forge two Killers if you don't mind shelling out the Silver. Mercenary gives Atlas the Speed he lacks, but you already have 3-4 other potential Dreads on Celica's team, so he's redundant. Mage lets him Rescue (with amazing range via his high Atk) and shifts him from being an attacker into a utility unit. Celica doesn't get any Rescue barring paid DLC, so Atlas can fill in a unique niche here. The problem is getting him to a level 4 Sage is difficult, and when Rescue finally is learned, if it ever is, there won't be a lot to do with it. Cav doesn't do anything to fix his Speed or durability, and Knight is an immovable joke. Jesse- joins underleveled as a mere Mercenary when the Mercs joining prior to him have likely upped themselves to Myrmidon. He also has competition potentially from Deen, and there are only so many good swords to go around. He like anyone else makes a good Dread, but in loosely defined "efficient" play he'll never make it there.

Well it looks like he got a little better with this once he left IS, Berwick at least isn't too bad for Axes. But Kaga dumped the weapon triangle from his Saga games, so his deemphasis on axes doesn't create any problems from a gameplay perspective. As for what would have become of FE, there probably wouldn't have been the GBA "return to simplicity", but I think it's near impossible to predict anything beyond that era. By the way, has Kaga given any update on Vestaria Saga Part 2 yet? And what of fans translating Berwick, and anything of a translation of Vestaria (I know it'd be illegal to mess with SRPG Maker to insert an translation, but is anyone at least doing a translation, if not the actual creation of a patch)?

So basically we're looking at ~2, possibly 3 million with the thousand ships burning, soldiers drawn from the Valm continent? Plus however many Ylisseans and Feroxi get brought over by Chrom and co.; they realistically should have at least a few hundreds of thousands as well, unless this is 100% a case of the heroic few crushing the villainous many. With so many troops, I have my doubts as to how fast they could possibly be moved around. I should also bring up how Valm the country is said to have originally been very small until Walhart swept the continent (which had to have taken some time, maybe a few years, given Gangrel noticed it as King of Plegia). How much of his army was that of former states he pressed into his services is uncertain, but wouldn't you think they'd fight less than ferociously if they were pressed into Walhart's services? Unless he was just that popular among the rank and file. If Walhart's army is entirely his own without impressment (prior forcing the Resistance into his fold), then it only serves to inflate the population and military numbers even more.

Depends on which version of Fates you want to talk about. Personal skills never make a unit by the way, they're only the cherries atop a sundae. Large maps = movement matters more. Smaller maps = movement matters less. Things like beating thieves to chests and bandits to villages is easier when you have more move to get there faster. Binding Blade also puts you on a time limit to unlock Gaiden chapters and with them the true ending, while Blazing does the same sometimes and Tellius gives you BEXP for clearing battles within turn limits. All of this, mounted units give you more leeway on, so as long as their combat isn't meaningfully worse than that of foot units, and every FE gives you at least a few awesome mounties so that isn't a problem. And it isn't like you have to use all your move on a given turn just because you have more, you can use less if you want to. Enemy density also matters. The more enemies there are, the harder it is to wipe out a bunch and be "safe" when the enemy phase rolls around, thus the being able to fight on the enemy phase matters more. Wide open maps also favor the enemy phase because it becomes more difficult to play defensively via chokepoints and pick off enemies one by one on the player phase. Thus, PCs with weak enemy phase, like Archers and fragile Mages, lose value. Terrain too matters. Path of Radiance overall has smaller maps than Binding, but fliers find themselves with a unique advantage in a number of chapters. Really shows this on Celica's Acts 3 and 4. Sigurd wouldn't have been broken if he wasn't mounted by the way. Yet just as important are: his possession of Pursuit, awesome bases, average to good growths for FE4 Gen 1, and a powerful weapon from nearly the get go in the Silver Sword, which he pretty much deserves b/c the rest of his competition has some significant issue which explains why they don't deserve it so much. When all of these factors are combined, we get Sigod.

You can head north without killing Grieth and fight the one battle before the Dragon Shrine and the Temple of Mila, but Palla, Catria and Atlas will all leave once it ends. That happened on my first playthrough. It might be worth doing, as you can cheaply convert the boss's dropped Shadow Sword (just 50 Silver) into a Brave Sword, which is nifty and might be useful for the desert. Of course it'll mean another 1-2 annoying graveyard battles.

No point in waiting Heart Seal right away, Underdog isn't that good. Being able to attack from a distance will make it easier for her to earn experience, and it'll let her work on building her bow rank sooner.