Alastor15243

But that's an argument against Echoes, not in favor of the Turnwheel. Like Solvaij and I said, the only reason it feels like a convenient feature is because it's covering up bad design choices. Misclicks are another instance of bad design. Take Thracia for example. The menu for that is horrible, and it's so prone to misclicks that it's not even funny. A good menu should have all the actions that have immediate, irreversible, potentially dangerous consequences as far from the initial selection as possible. Thracia put "wait" at a higher priority than everything but "attack" (meaning that it's put above "staff" and you can frequently accidentally make your healers do nothing if you're not careful), and then put "escape", which in one map that requires you to defend a castle escape point might as well be labeled "click this to instantly lose the game", at the top of the command menu. Meaning that every time you had one of your units fend off the enemies sieging an escape point castle, every action made you run the risk of making that unit escape and leave the castle totally defenseless. That is bad design. But the solution isn't to incorporate Mila's Turnwheel to the Thracia remake, it's to fix the menu. Suggesting game-breaking features be relied on to cover up bad design just means that everyone who wants an actual challenge has to put up with more bad design. As for RNG screwage, the fact that decisions in your game can have negative outcomes is part of the entire point of a strategy game with RNG. In a well-designed game like Conquest, it's always possible to take care of an enemy threat without ever putting yourself at the mercy of the RNG to win. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a feature that goes against the initial core soul of Fire Emblem to be implemented just to keep you from being punished for suboptimal decisions with inconvenience, or to cover up a broken, overly-RNG-dependent system that's not as fun for anyone who wants to play Fire Emblem like Fire Emblem. Yeah, sorry about not replying at that time, but you said that right as I was posting my first reply (or at least I was alerted to it right as I was posting it), and I was on my phone to adding in a quote to an edited post wasn't really an option. But anyway, if the turnwheel really only functioned as random prophecies you get to send Alm retroactively as an act of god, then why are all the animations for the feature indicative of time rewinding, why is the interface clock-themed, and why is time-rewinding what the game says the artifact is doing? Does anything in that quote actually contradict the game's claim that one of its many stated features is time rewinding?

Where are you getting that from? The game explicitly tells you when you first activate the turnwheel that it “has the power to turn back time”, and it even has Alm and Celica notice the turnwheel glowing right before it uses this magic. And besides, even if it were “just” a future predictor, it’s functionally the same thing in terms of it making no sense that the heroes don’t exploit having it.

Except in the games that are actually properly balanced and not decades-old war crimes, you never actually have to put yourself in those situations if you know what you’re doing. Which means all Mila’s Turnwheel becoming a staple would do is become a crutch for bad game design, and make the series worse.

Nah, I agree without Stroud. I don’t think it’s a good idea in principle to incorporate mulligans as a mainstay standard “it is totally part of balanced gameplay to use this” feature of a game that made a name for itself with permadeath gameplay that made every action you made have a consequence. It could work, and if it somehow did then I’d be okay with it, but it would be way harder to incorporate into a satisfyingly challenging game without making it not feel like Fire Emblem anymore. If the turnwheel is to come back, I think it should be treated as a cheat code with consequences and not as a legitimate player asset.

Yes, but everywhere else in Conquest they recognized that restrictions needed to be put on how DLC could be utilized so the hardcore players the game was made for could buy and use it without cheapening their game (the fact that playing the maps gives no experience, for example). But then they add the dlc class items which were clearly not balanced with regards to the rest of the game when they easily could have been, by making them cost gold or at least making them something only promoted units could use. As it stands, if I want to use these fun and potentially fair classes on a challenge run, I have to do the developer’s job in deciding how much gold each one is worth and arbitrarily buying and selling junk until I waste that much money.

With regards to the people who have no issue with the turnwheel being available for every challenge in the game: It’s one thing to accommodate casual players. It’s another thing entirely to suggest there’s anything wrong with including a single challenge they can’t do. If there was a difficulty setting that was so difficult that the turnwheel was actually an entirely reasonable and balanced resource, I’d have no problem whatsoever with its omnipresence. But intentionally putting game-breaking elements in the hardest difficulties of what is supposed to be a hardcore permadeath strategy game just so there isn’t a single mode that alienates casuals and then making it the player’s job to invent house rules to make the game reasonably hard (for which the turnwheel is a minor example, and things like armor and food in BotW are a major one), instead of designing a mode where every asset at the player’s disposal is properly balanced, is like making a Mario with no bottomless pits and expecting the hardcore platformer fans to be satisfied playing “The Floor Is Lava”. The turnwheel is a minor example of a bad design choice, but it’s an example of a bad design choice nonetheless. And if left uncriticized it could get uglier later. We’ve already seen examples of terribly balanced casual-accommodating features that are cool, but which I can’t use challengingly without obtuse house rules, like the dlc class promotion items in Fates.

So, is anyone else really bothered by the fact that the Turnwheels exist? I don't mean the fact that they added in another safety net for casuals (though the fact that it can't be disabled, the fact that they treat it like a legitimate, non-game-breaking resource with things like cog upgrades, and the fact that it's allowed on all difficulties and there there isn't a single achievement in the entire game the Turnwheel disqualifies you from getting are all pretty annoying). I mean the fact that the game just sort of casually -- in story, mind you -- hands both of the protagonists identical artifacts with which they can make time and space play dead. I mean as great as the story of Echoes is compared to previous games, the fact remains that it only even slightly holds up to scrutiny when you willfully ignore the incontrovertible fact that these damned things exist. Our protagonists, canonically, have the power to rewind time. How is this never factored in to either of their strategies or behavior in any way whatsoever? These are people who are determined to do everything in their power to win a war and rescue a goddess respectively. Why don't they use it to avoid enemy ambushes, or escape from nasty situations, or prevent any of the unavoidable plotline deaths, some of which the protagonists would clearly give anything to undo? When Celica finally figured out she was double-crossed, how on earth could she have not thought to rewind time to before she got herself alone and vulnerable? Why would they go out of their way to give an in-story justification for the power to rewind time itself, and then not have the rest of the story be affected by this revelation in any way whatsoever?

Robin. Name one other unit who is in a game where beating the highest difficulty is a difficult undertaking and where essentially soloing with them is considered the most viable strategy.

Worst: Anankos. Terrible end to a game that destroyed my soul. Absolutely no challenge in either phase, disappointing design, and almost no challenge whatsoever. Best: Very torn between Ashera and Takumi. Ashera has the best final boss theme, the best atmosphere, the best dramatic tension, and is the only one where you're actually fighting the boss itself for any serious amount of time or at any significant risk. Takumi himself is a pushover if you know what you're doing, but the actual fight to get to him is easily the best in any final battle in the series, and has more of that Conquest goodness that I love. Ultimately I decided to go with Takumi because I haven't played Radiant Dawn in nearly eight years and I can't fully say I'm not overplaying the battle itself.

Personally I'd like to see Griffon Riders return as their own class tree, as sword users, so we finally have swordfighting fliers again. They've been sorely missed, and riding on griffons wouldn't be a half bad way to do it. Anyway, my vote goes to the taguel. It's basically a worse version of a class (swordmaster) that's already a worse version of another class (assassin), uses the most boring, unversatile and objectively terrible weapon type in the entire game, and to top it all off, it's not even a cool thing to turn into!

Validar: This isn't over... Damn you BOOOOOOTH! *Lilith jumps in front of the blast* In fact, you could ruin just about any scene in fire emblem that involves an attack by having Lilith jump out of nowhere, get hit once, and ragdoll to the ground.

Okay, so, have you ever had a character in a Fire Emblem game where, due to your meaningless personal experience, you're all but positive that every resource on them on the planet is lying to you about their growth rates? Like, every time you've used them, damn near every time, you've consistently gotten really good or really terrible stats with them? For me it's Jakob. Fucking Jakob. I have literally never gotten a good Jakob. Everyone's talking about how his "mediocre" stats are vastly compensated for by his ludicrous skill availability due to his quirk as a weird tier-1-tier-2 hybrid, but... what mediocre stats? I cannot remember getting a single good level with this guy, and nearly every time I've used him it's been all but a neverending steam of consistently getting HP, Skill and Luck. Also, Rinkah. It takes every fiber of my being to believe the resources that say she has a 45% strength growth as an oni savage.

Seeing how Breath of the Wild is so utterly unrecognizable as a Zelda game that nobody would ever be able to guess it was a Zelda game if all of the aesthetics and text were changed, I would very much not like to see this happen to Fire Emblem. I see no reason why a game should "re-invent" itself so thoroughly that everything fans love about it is gone, and it's only the fact that BotW was such an amazing game that this even remotely sounds like a good idea.

Yeah, that’s why I think it would be too alien from traditional fire emblem to make the entire game. It should just be one of several countries.

I'm assuming you mean in real life, because when we have flying horses and dragons, I'm pretty sure Lions would make a better fantasy game mount. Though camels could be good too...

Oh come on, an African nation as one of the countries in a Fire Emblem world would be cool! Ancient African cultures taken to fantasy extremes? Picture it: their cavalry could be axe and lance users riding fucking lions.

Edit: Oops, already started? Damn. I was going to suggest Azama as a Blacksmith, since the oni savage classes are fun but criminally underused.

Except, you know, no garbage debuffs, no as penalty, and you get it for free letting you spend your money elsewhere.

Very high might, a dodge bonus and dragon skin piercing are hardly things to sneeze at.

Wow, this would've been great. Really the biggest issue with Conquest's story is that the game won't let the universe admit that what Corrin did was selfish rather than noble and that the Hoshidans literally have no reason whatsoever to forgive him. The final battle as it stands is an undeservedly triumphant and heroic battle against a possessed asshole whose assholery was totally the evil spirits making him question Corrin's divinity. Making it into a dark and tragic culmination of the consequences of Corrin's terrible decisions, ending in horribly strained relations between Nohr and Hoshido, would have been awesome. Because then the gameplay couldn't be about you allying with one side and fighting the other in both routes, and apparently IS considered having a coherent plot to be secondary to that.

Thank you! I’ll be starting up writing again soon, just taking a holiday break and catching myself up on the series as well to make sure I didn’t forget anything over the series’ long production process.Tying up any loose ends left, ESPECIALLY with Azura, is going to be a very delicate operation.

I thought you couldn't give the amiibo present accessories? It never let me.

Whoever they are, I hope they're able/allowed to draw genuine human emotion. One of the biggest problems I have with Fates' presentation (apart from the generally floaty and cartoonish models and physics that make battles generally uninteresting compared to the gba games, Tellius series or Echoes, and make any non-CG cutscenes that make any attempt at drama fall on their face) is that the portrait mugshots used for dialogue scenes are just so... stilted. Like, a few of them, like Elise and Keaton, do the more humorous emotions fairly well, but it eventually occurred to me that despite the tons of death and misery that surrounds the avatar, they don't even have expressions for "my mother is dead" sorrow or "you killed my mother" anger. All of the mugshots and emotions seemed to have been designed with nothing but support conversations in mind, and it's so difficult to care about what's happening when you can't even believe that the characters care.

So the dark crown is Garon's crown? Can you visit some of the people who visit you and send the dark crown to them?

If it weren’t for the voice acting I would have read every one of Berkut’s post-losing-to-Alm lines as if he were Anakin Skywalker. I just can’t help seeing the parallels in his behavior.