Eltosian Kadath

I think you have hit on a really important part of why people suggest less supports here, that who each character has a support with, tells you something about their character. You lose something when characters can support with everyone, there is no sense that characters have enough of a personality to have a preference in whom they become friends/lovers with, and you never have that mystery of why certain characters might have supports together that can really draw you into seeking some odd ones out. Three Houses is a bit better then the Awakening/Fates in this regard, as not every male-female pair can marry, giving characters at least a sense that they have a sexual preference other than simply gender, and some can end earlier than others, as a poor imitation of showing their preference in friendship, but you still have every member of a house able to support with every other member of that house... This "don't watch them if they aren't for you" argument always falls flat for me. I like support, willing to grind them out even in the GBA games just to get the chance to see them, but the way they have been done in recent games have been bad, and its hard not to see what is bad about them is caused by how many of them are shoved at you. A lot of times they have to fall back on repetition to pad them out, which makes characters more one note. Watching the same basic tropes playing out again, and again, because they needed to show that off in 70% of the C supports makes that overshadow any interesting fleshing out the writers are hiding in the better supports, and make what good there is seem like accidental flukes then part of the character. Wanting them to edit the number of supports down to the ones worth seeing would be far better. To sum up my feeling on the topic, its more about having the right number of supports then necessarily "less or more", but in Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses, they clearly have too many. Adding more bad to read through to find what is good doesn't improve characters, it hurts them, and often works towards making characters less fleshed out than a more curated number of supports would.

playing the first Dark Souls huh...there is also a lantern item (I think you find it in the graveyard), and the sun larva helmet you get from around Lost Izalith area that light things up as well. Ouch, yeah you really should have ignored that NPC. Although its not like you could use her services anyway after darkening Anor Londo. Its because she is a fake, an illusion to fool gullible little Undead into going along with papa Gwyn and his definitely not evil, we promise, serpent friend kingseeker Frampt's plans to burn yourself in a magic fire. Ah yes the Fair Spider Lady, and sister of Quelaag, whose voice can only be understood with the Old Witches Ring, an item you can get at the beginning of the game if you read seemingly useless, as hugely important (which any suave gamer should). Although I don't think you need to understand her to use her services. Its gets a bit better in the sequels where you get to teleport between bonfires from the start, and to any bonfire you have reached (not just certain ones...) and the starting hub is a bit better setup.

Middle of the first Mjima part, got kinda delayed by Fantasy Land being rather difficult...and debating about whether the literal luck gambling games are worth bothering trying for the CP... I should probably get back to that...

God that is so cringe. Oof...get well soon, and hopefully you have some fun games available to distract yourself.

Have fun, its my favorite in the series. It takes gameplay story integration to an extreme, which isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I rather like it. Yeah, I did the "everyone" (they are missing the substitutes, and a lot of the minor bosses...) version, and it took a WHILE....its an odd mix, but if anyone is curious as to the results, I just copy-pasted the whole thing in the spoilre box below

It might be worth replaying it with a more recent translation patch then. Both FE 4 and FE 5 have the complete game translated (and they are both relatively recent, in last 5ish years...). I already linked to the Project Naga patch for FE 4 above, and there are even two completed ones for FE5, the slightly older Project Exile, and more recent Lil' Manster patch (which is easier to find on this site).

First find a SNES emulator, SNES 9x is my preferred emulator, but it should be easy to find one. Next you need to find a ROM, which is questionably legal, and might have some risk in this step (just make sure you run a virus scan after getting it, and note it should not be an executable file), but easy enough to google if you try. Then you need to patch it, This is the best translation patch for FE4, and you can download it here, and just follow the instructions on the page to patch it.

FE4 and FE5 are great, and well worth playing despite their age. The others pre-GBA games all have remakes that make playing the original feel kinda redundant. FE4 is well known for its story, and if you somehow haven't had its story spoiled for you, you are in for a real treat. Also checking the FE4 Secret Event page on the main Serenes Forest site for some nice little items along the way. FE5 is well known for being aggressively unfriendly to blind players, so I suggest looking things up, or asking for help whenever you think you need it. Also it is a midquel to FE4, and spoils some of FE4's story in opening scene, so you should probably play it second.

How could I not... Fun fact, Eltosian was a much older translation of Eldigan's name from the incomplete defunct translation that I first played FE4 on...

Forrest is really different from the rest of the troubadours, and an interesting character who deserves the spotlight more. Looks like I am a little late with the re-share, but here is mine

Photoshop...or even mspaint. It uses the template that was shared before and some official art to create.

One of the few to not name Forrest as Troubador. Alas all we share is Game and Wyvern pick. Also the Amelia Armor pick is almost as funny as my Kellam joke 😛 .

I disagree with this in a sense, less as a failure of writing, but as a failure of editing. Writing more is good, but you need to trim down to the best of it for the sack of quality. Trimming down the supports to the better ones, or important ones would improve the system, as opposed to this massive (seeming mandated to be so, in spite of the quality of writing) glut of them we have seen repeatedly. As that famous Shakespeare quote goes "Brevity is the soul of Wit". I don't think this really holds water, as length can easily be a detriment to the effective fleshing out of your character and setting. The classic example of this is the prequel problem, a simple statement about a character's past, or explanation of world building that lets the reader/viewer/player fill in the blanks is often more effective at fleshing a character out then explicitly spelling it out, as writers can rarely make it more engaging, relatable, or powerful to the reader/viewer/player then they themselves can, with the prequel issue being that filling in these details can often ruin the characters, world, and narrative they created without it. This is assuming that the abilities of a writer is some simplistic and binary skill. Some writers have things they do well, and things they do poorly, and the more they are forced to write about one character the more likely they are to stumble into territory that they are weak in, or be forced to fall back into repetitive territory (which I will get to after my next quote). In either case you are saddling a character with moments of bad writing, and bad writing isn't canceled out by good writing (nor good writing canceled out by bad, each have their own impact on a piece). While repetition can be really useful to a narrative, timing is extremely important with regard to repetition. Reminding people of things that were established a long time ago that will be touched upon soon is really important for keeping the reader on the same page. The issue is repetition doesn't work in supports inherently because the player is in control over when they watch supports. Watching two repetitive supports in a row, or a support that is repeating an issue that has been resolved in another support weakens the narrative, and the character they concern, as it makes them more one dimensional.

Controversial take, I know, but going back to fixed classes, without skills would be refreshing to me. Not to say that I wouldn't mind some minor skill system, like the old item based method of acquiring it, or having personal skills, or a restricted class change system, like Fates/Awakening (ignoring Robin and their spawn), but the wider open these options are, the less I tend to enjoy them. I like it when units can differentiate themselves in combat, and the more control is passed on to the player, the more they lose what makes that character unique; plus having too many options makes character building more exhausting.

Technically FE6 RNG is bugged, and does work slightly differently from the FE7 and FE8 RNG, but the bug is so minor that it isn't what makes people complain about the RNG. This classic Mekkkah pitfalls video goes over it at the beginning.

The only time Ambush Spawns, or your suggested alternative function differently from other reinforcements is when they are really close. Your solution has transformed an enemy phase problem into a player phase problem, and which will end up being worse isn't all that clear-cut, especially when we haven't seen how badly IS would mess up your reinforcement idea in practice. You are dismissing the values of a turn a lot, you might need that turn to recruit an ally, or save some loot from the enemy, or you might need that turn to save your allies by ending a map. Plus this is ignoring a lot of other dangerous positions that not being able to move past a space can add, for example what if you need to kill an enemy that turn (perhaps an enemy siege tome wielder, or status staff wielder, or killer weapon wielder, or effective weapon wielder, or looting thief, or sacking brigand, etc...), and you can't reach them thanks to the spaces that are now impassible for the player (but not the enemy...). You might need to pass through those now impassible spaces to retreat after luring in a large group of enemies, or recombine you army after sending a portion of it off to complete a side objective, etc. Plus if a map has multiple turns of reinforcements, that could extend the problem for multiple turns. I can think of one time FE actually did this, in FE6's notorious chapter 7 on HM the first set of cavalry reinforcements from the south are end of turn reinforcements, but the rest are ambush spawns. The Elibe games are actually rather inconsistent with regard to the timing of reinforcements, with the most of the early-game reinforcements of FE7 being ambush spawns, but the rest being end of turn reinforcements.

To be fair you can get the bad ending, and then reload your last save and lookup what you need to for the good ending (and by extension other half of the game), which isn't that big of a deal as long as you have the power of the internet.

Congrats...although the problem with math is that it is so important to everything that You might be surprised, and even if it isn't better than latter games (debatable for sure, and despite my preference it isn't a clear-cut case) that doesn't mean it isn't worth playing. There is something strangely charming and brilliant about the upside-down castle, with the way it lets doors and platforms just be where they end up being because the game knows you have the movement abilities to deal with that by now, and I don't think any of its successors really captures that same feel. Also its willingness to just let you miss half the game if you don't fulfill obscure conditions you probably need a guide to discover makes me strangely nostalgic for a bygone era, but your mileage may vary on that one. @Sooks People have found ways to turn it into a get rich quick scheme by scamming people, and using classic pyramid scheme tactics, which probably shouldn't be legal, but are because lawmakers don't know how to deal with the internet. The people who bought in late and will probably lose their shirts are desperate to con more people into the pyramid so they can make all the money people at the top of the pyramid promised them, which has led to a cult like desperation to the whole thing, and unfortunately video game companies that are willing to sell gambling to children are perfectly happy to get their cut of this scam. ...ick, excuse while I throw up a little... (and only half of that is from trying to explain NFTs)

I can think of a few, IO for instance just mentioned the Fire Dragon Graveyard, and one set of those could block your path forward due to them spawning across a line of forts. Even when it is just disparate forts or stairs, those might be the spaces you were expecting to pass through, or needed to pass through to reach something in time, which this new mechanic has unexpectedly transformed into impassible terrain. Also, if the game has unblockable reinforcements they might be moved into unexpected positions that block the way forward by enemy and allies occupying spaces. There might be design decisions that make this rarely be an issue, but I seem to remember you remarking on Shadow Dragon having design decisions that made you feel the Ambush Spawns were rarely an issue in that game either...

As someone that never played FE3 I didn't come in with expectation for them. Admittedly it is a headspace you have to get into for this, but the Save points of a map have been placed where they are for a reason, and a lot of them are just before reinforcement triggers, or spaced for you to reach them about a turn before reinforcements show up, when approaching them at normal pace, which gives you an idea of when those reinforcements will show up, with the normal cues for where they show up that FE likes to use. If reinforcements are set to spawn in a way that blocks a path you wanted to take, and those enemies can't be targeted, you now have spaces that cannot be entered or passed through because they are occupied by enemies you can not target. With Ambush spawns you can either move through the space they haven't spawned in yet, or kill them if they end up in a space that is blocking the path you want to take.

Then I suppose the decision in Three Houses to restrict it to the highest difficulty only is one positive move it made for the series in your eyes... It would come with a newer unfair problem entirely, that there are now spaces that you physically can not move through in any way shape or form, as they are occupied by enemies you cannot remove.

Uh oh...get some rest, and get well soon, and I hope its not the 'rona

On the contrary, the value of Ambush spawns is in second or non-blind playthroughs. When you know about reinforcements beforehand its really easy to cheese them, and ambush spawns remove one of the big ways of doing so, giving reinforcements in general a staying power that the would lack otherwise. As for blind play, FE has been trying to protect blind-players from the dangers of Ambush Spawns by restricting them to only the higher difficulties since Shadow Dragon... I find this a bit ironic, as I found the placement of the save tiles to be a valuable indicator for the timing/triggers of FE12s ambush spawns, making them some of the easiest to predict, and thus deal with, ambush spawns in the series.

Serenes Forest 😛

I think my controversial takes here are not putting Conquest in the top right corner, and having Thracia be the middle of difficulty. The difficulty line of FE7, FE15, FE4, and FE14R is the part I am least certain of, but otherwise I am fairly satisfied with this one.