Interdimensional Observer

My first playthrough of Fates was Conquest Classic Hard. I began thinking the game was like Awakening, and threw all my exp at Corrin thinking I could make them incredibly powerful very quickly. Then came C10. Here, I hit a wall, but through intense struggle, i overcame this masterpiece of a chapter. Every chapter thereafter on Conquest a repeat of C10- intense struggle with much, much frustration and resets abound, but the joy from completing each fight was so, so worth it. On subsequent playthroughs and runs of Birthright and Revelation, the sense of awe and wonder faded as Nohr and Hoshido became familiar. The mystique of Outlaw and Spear Fighter or skills like Poison Strike couldn't survive for forever. As I learned the fine details of the gameplay, the maps increasingly lost their majesty and became tedious. Nonetheless, I do consider Conquest to be particularly incredible in my heart due to that first run. I too love the absence of weapon durability. As I always hoard rare weaponry in older games, not having to fear some "emergency situation" springing up where I needed those weapons and thus had to hoard them, freed me to actually use those weapons (and said "emergency situation" never arise so the weapons never see use- which defeats the purpose of having them). Plus, as I never bothered with forging, I didn't feel Silvers to be underpowered or anything, and I'll always recommend buying Niles a Silver Bow.

Ike I can understand, but 3 promoted units? What difficulty did you pick? BEXP dumping can only get like 1 unit to 20/1 on Hard and probably Normal. If you're playing Easy and in an extremely casual manner, well that's the problem, not so much Neph and Brom. Hailhorse is only bad in Awakening. Unless you play on Normal/use DLC, snowballing to 35 isn't possible. Plus, the inability to use Offensive or Defensive Stances for Wailnorse in Fates makes it not so easily abusable.

There is actually a unit in Tear Ring Saga called Raquel who has awesome bases, nice skills (including Paragon) and exclusively uses Bows. However, she cannot kill humans, she will always leave them at 1HP (she can kill monsters though, and through an event with her brother Lucas can, at a price, come to kill humans late in the game). On the RD training discussion, you can buy the atk-halving command skill Flourish in 3-3 for 3000G. Not the most ideal of skills for training weaklings though.

"I'm cute and I'm innocent... looking. In truth I get tried of people breaking into falsettos and calling me by ridiculously cutesy names. When I'm not putting on this stupid show of adorableness, which I only do because it brings me closer to world domination, I get myself a good dark beer and drink till I pass out, which takes a while despite liver issues. I don't give a damn what my doctor says, and honestly if the world burned to the ground, I don't think it'd be the worst thing to ever happen."

Banned by order of the Ganglion.

Is doubly right.

Their mood is my avi's biggest problem (if their existential crisis involves existential freedom that is).

Accuse them of being a very cunning and deceptive Ditto.

I thought I remember hearing something similar with Metroid Fusion and Wario Land 4. I would have liked/not liked (b/c potential that was not realized) this too. But unused content appears to be shrinking in FE. Awakening had some juicy morsels, but there seemed to be a clear self-consciousness of players hacking into the data with things like the unused map and ending book writings.

RIP Gatrie- you died loveless, but will certainly not be forgotten due to your early contributions. May your grave be well decorated. After every prior chapter with hordes of enemies, this one does seem pretty light. A fair contrast between Maniac and Hard difficulties indeed. Maybe they should have added more Ferals. That said, I like that the boss and the Ferals actually move, they're so pathetically easy on every other difficulty (save the near death moving of the boss). I guess the fog and not overly defensive nature of this map (though you could still choke it no problem), plus its small size, all explain why they didn't overload the map. Would have been interesting if you had used Lethe or Mordecai. They get convos with the Ferals and you actually get to see a generic Feral Laguz portrait, which doesn't feature anywhere else I think. The next chapter is a pain for perfectionists. Getting Stefan, all the treasures, and maximum BEXP basically requires rigging. It also begins the true dominance of fliers. On the mage thing- Soren is very likely to come close to D Wind by C7's end, and Ilyana already has a D Thunder, so if I want to build WEXP unpromoted, I just stick to those. Getting beyond a C in any magic isn't really needed anyway; forges will suffice if you need more power (a max forged anima tome will have only 1 less might than their respective A tome).

Parenting problems can be the cause of many bad things in video games. I just completed Odin Sphere (very good game I must say) and:

Seth is the strongest unit in the game on a no-grind run, and will be comparable to a trained cavalier when looking at 20/20 averages (if you could level units beyond 20, Seth would outdo Franz in all but slightly Speed and much in Luck). Immediately after the route split begins, Seth might be a little on the broken side still, but not so much. He won't be able to double Mercs or Myrms sans AS loss on their part for instance. He'll be very good filler. If you want to overuse him before the route split, he might be able to cripple (and not kill) the knights in C8 with an Iron Sword or Lance, thus making them easier to feed to your growth units. Baiting Joshua for recruitment or sending him alone along the west side of C5 might also be decent things he can do without taking out too many baddies. Lastly, if you don't want to send Vanessa to protect the villagers in C6 from the Bael, Seth can make it just in time, give him a Vulnerary or two though because I recall a horseslayer being somewhere along the way.

Enemy scaling does matter very much indeed when it comes to growths. Victory or Death- the grand penultimate battle in FE7- features far too many unpromoted units. Why, I think the only chapters in the game where unpromoted don't show up are Genesis (barring the four magical/physical baddies that drop weapons), HHM Value of Life (not sure about HNM), and Final. That said, if you're playing FE7 on Hard Mode with S Ranking the game in mind, then things might be more balanced. You can't promote many units due to the Funds rank requiring you hoard most of your promotion items and stat boosters. Yet you can't stick to a small elite team either, for to get enough experience to 5-star EXP, you apparently need to get every unpromoted unit to ~15. If the enemies were much stronger, this would be almost impossible. I will also agree that Conquest was good on the enemy scaling. Plus Enfeeble, Seals, Hexing and Poison Strike all cripple your stats/bypass them. On the one hand this is cheap, but on the other by making stats less than the sole determinant of victory forces on the player the need to think strategically. Awakening on Hard was generally good with level scaling too. Birthright had a glaring midgame stagnation, with a sudden spike at Shura's chapter. Revelation had no sense of scale- it threw promoted units around like candy far too early. C11 had several Master Ninjas (C12 Berserkers), and every chapter thereafter featured at least a few promoted units. While you could view them as a good source of exp for your army of underleveled units, more often than not they were just nasty and unnecessary.

##Avatar: 9.5 Not quite perfect.

SE does print publishing on the side? Imagine SE getting their hands on FE. SerraxHector for me. It might not be shown to end in marriage, but honestly I could see it happening. RavenxRebecca wouldn't be bad, but their relationship comes off as a little brother-sister. RebeccaxWil works better romantically. KentxFiora are similarly muted, but that makes the pairing kinda dull. Farina livens things up, but it isn't quite as natural. DartxFarina is never romantic, but I could see things ending that way.

So I'm guessing from the fact they're all in promoted classes that their DLC, if it features battles, probably shouldn't be tackled until later in the game. Late C3~C4? Any idea who of Alm and Celica each character joins?

...results in a volatile chemical compound capable of exploding and leveling entire buildings. Hershey's thus became the largest arms manufacturer in the United States. Nuclear weapons were ignored as being weak, and the Soviet Union never emerged as a global superpower. The Cold War became the US and Belgium vs. the alliance of Switzerland, France, and Austria. The two blocs competed over access to African peanut and Latin American chocolate supplies. In an alternate universe, friendship...

Well Macs are generally considered ideal for the artsy, so Shigure. WCWY think be the most jolly, happy, amicable drunk?

Well Macs are generally considered ideal for the artsy, so Shigure. WCWY think be the most jolly, happy, amicable drunk?

Apologize for earlier rudeness. Summon Beelzebub's personal chef Nisroc to prepare some sinfully delicious devil's food cake. And lastly ask how Tiz is doing.

Player vs. player hasn't ever really worked well for FE. I've heard decent of TRS's, but the problem with the rest is that you need to rig/grind max stats and ludicrous forges to be at your best. The early DS RTS LostMagic let you choose between two PVP modes- one where you used your own raised team from the story mode, and one featuring fixed teams. From this, I think a fixed unit player v. player mode could work out for FE. Every playable unit in the game (plus some NPCs from the story) have fixed stats and weapons. After picking your team from the playable units, you and your opponent have the map/win conditions picked out. And then on the prep. screen you can then swap around the weapons and items your team has access to, and decide on their supports too if they have chemistry. I'd also like co-op too. Maybe do as Battalion Wars had and make the co-op battles to a degree relevant to the game's plot. Nonbattle player interactions were done decently with Fates, but we could always use improvement.

Trying to put together a tier list of the lords from a gameplay perspective, how does this look? (Sothe, Robin and Chris all being excluded). Assumes no grind efficiency, highest difficulty unless the highest is absurd (a.k.a. FE11 Merciless and FE12 & 13 Lunatic). Top: Sigurd Alm 2 Seliph High: Corrin Rev. Marth 1 Corrin CQ Ike 10 Chrom Upper Mid: Corrin BR Hector (Hector Mode) Ephraim (Ephraim Route) Ike 9 Celica 2 Lower Mid: Marth 3B2 Marth 3B1 Marth 12 Leif Marth 11 Low: Lyn (EM or HM- it doesn't matter) Eirika (Eirika Route) Micaiah Eliwood (Eliwood Mode) Bottom: Roy

It seems strange that a physical object, a magic lamp, can be transferred to Laguna. Junctions I get b/c junctions are immaterial. Also, Diablos is so good and useful, yet so very easily permanently missable. FF games are generally like this though.

Ask "Do you know where I can find a shining one of your species?"

Vulneraries healing 20 HP with a ludicrous 8 uses was done partly with the Part system in mind. For several chapters, the player doesn't get a playable healer at all. 20 HP vulneraries makes keeping everyone alive during those chapter easier. Don't know if bring back GBA Canto would be too good or not. But why not make Jugdrali-Tellian Canto a command skill you select before moving your unit, with a ~4 turn cooldown after a use of it?