lenticular

I want an Awakening-style sequel to Three Houses. By which I mean, a sequel set in the far future of the world after all the characters and events of the original game have faded into myth. Now, admitedly, it's not as if Awakening sets a good example here. For all the things that that game did well, respect for the source canon definitely wasn't one of them. But I think that Three Houses is a much better target for that sort of sequel than Shadow Dragon, Mystery of the Emblem, and Gaiden ever were. For starters, the world building of Three Houses is a lot more extensive, which makes it a lot easier to adapt without having to resort to making up a whole lot of nonsense. Beyond that, though, I also think that a far-future sequel would work pretty well with the themes and ideas that Three Houses already has. There are all of the ways that Edelgard is a mirror of Rhea. There's Rhea's actions being motivated by her ancient trauma/ There's Rhea being named for one of the Greek titans, the generation that preceeded and were replaced by the Olympians. There's the contrast of Indech and Macuil deliberately retreating from the world and fading into myth compared to Rhea, Seteth and Flayn trying to be an active part in it. There's the way that, at least on Crimson Flower and Verdant Wind, we're actively fighting to try to create a new world order rather than just to maintain the status quo. There's even the way that the NG+ crest item for the Crest of Goneril is called the Kalpa Dragon Sign. The basic idea of repeating patterns in history is baked into the world already. I don't know exactly what I'd want the plot to look like, since that would require a lot of work to even outline properly, but my basic thought is that Crimson Flower is canon, Edelgard won, she ended up becoming a religious figure as the leader of the gods who overthrew the previous generation of titans (despite not wanting to be) and the Church of Edelgard has now become greedy, corrupt, and nepotistic. Yeah, it's not exactly a super original plot, but I think it could be a cool way to further explore and reifnorce some of the themese of the original game.

It could have been interesting if they'd said that there was fancy Agarthan tech that specifically targeted people with crests/Nabatean blood. They could give it an in-game effect where being hit by these weapons disables your crest for a round or three, and then also explained that Jeralt's old body, bereft of the healing effects of his Crest of Seiros and going into shock as a result, just wasn't able to survive his wound. Whereas Manuela, who was young and healthy and didn't have any Crest to begin with, was no worse off than a wound with a regular weapon. But they didn't.

My first instinct is to say that this probably shouldn't ever be a thing. The series are very different from each other, and I'm not sure that a crossover would really do either one of them any favours. But that said, if it were a done deal that this crossover absolutely was going to happen and I was put in charge with figuring out how to make it work, this is what I'd do. I'd basically build it as a Paper Mario game, except with Fire Emblem combat. Paper Mario has changed up its combat so many times at this point that nobody would be surprised if it gets changed up again and oh hey, suddenly it has Fire Emblem combat now? Sure! Why not? It's not like it's any more weird and out there than lining things up on a turning wheel puzzle. The maps would be far smaller than traditional Fire Emblem maps, though. Probably comparable in size to a Heroes map. The aim would be to be able to duck in and out of them quickly so they never distract for too long from the Paper Mario style story/exploration/character interaction stuff. For the story, I'd just go with something basic. Some random evil villain has created a rift between dimensions that is threatening to destroy all worlds, and now some of the heros of those worlds have fallen through into this world and are here to help Mario out as partner characters. Say hello to Paper Marth, Paper Ike, Paper Lucina, and Paper Edelgard. (Or whoever.) These would be very cartoony and light-hearted versions of the characters who would fit into the Paper Mario mood and aesthetic, because I think it would be easier to create silly and lighthearted versions of Fire Emblem characters than to have Paper Mario suddenly pivot to being about the horrors of war. Yeah, this is a super basic and uninspiring plot, but when you're already trying to mash together two things that don't particularly belong, overcomplicating things is just a recipe for disaster. Deliberately simple has a better chance of working out here, I think.

If they ever do a more technically advanced magepunk-ish faction again (like the Agarthans in Three Houses), then I want ornithopters and autogyros. You can't tell me they're any more out of place to the setting than the giant mechas that we got.

The game is not good at all about thinking about the storyline implications of Divine Pulse actually existing. This isn't the only time that it doesn't really make sense when you think about it, with the game generally either making a ague contrived handwave or just ignoring it entirely. It isn't something that's personally bothered me all that much, but I can understand why it can be jarring for some people. I agree with the fairly common sentiment of hoping that, for future games, IS gives up on trying to come up with some sort of storyline justification for time rewind and just presents it as part of the gameplay UI. Time travel in fiction is hard to do well, and generally won't make much sense unless it's a focal part of the story that the writer has really focused on getting right. Which absolutely wasn't the case in either Three Houses or Engage.

Pandreo is a lot like Fogado in that he has a very high floor and a ceiling that is decent but not spectacular, though I do think that he comes out ahead of Fogado on both fronts. Even if you do absolutely nothing with Pandreo, he's still going to be a decent performer as a High Priest with whatever equipment and Emblem/Bond Ring you have sitting around not doing anything else. That was pretty much how I used him in my first time through the game on Hard difficulty. I didn't really care for him as a charcter so I threw him into my party as filler to eventually be replaced by someone better when they came along. Nobody better came along. He just kept performing well despite getting no investment. He has a few decent class choices. Sage is a slight upgrade on High Priest, since its stats are a bit better. This is the choice if you want to retain both tome and staff access, or if you want to stay in the Mystic group (eg, for access to Thyrsus through Byleth), but has the drawback of limited mobility. If you want a higher move stat, you can either give up staves and go with Mage Knight or give up tomes (in favour of a levin sword) and go with Griffin Knight. I've only run him in High Priest, but he seems like someone who has reasonable flexibility in how he can be built. I give him 8/10 overall.

Don't overthink it. Post if you have anything to say, don't post if you don't. Treat each game on its own merits rather than trying to come up with a single hard and fast rule.

I don't really have a lot to add here other than to say that I agree with the general consensus. 7/10. To make this post slightly less devoid of content, I'll add that when I used Fogado I gave him Lucina and a longbow, for maximum dual strike coverage. Was this optimal? Not remotely. Did I have a whole lot of fun with it? Absolutely. Oh, and I'll also add that his personal is absolutely terrible, and it's hard to come up with any plausible circumstances where it would actually be useful. It's probably one of the worst in the game, which is an impressive feat given the low overall power levels of personals here. Still, going from a 1/10 down to a 0/10 rated personal does little to his overall viability as a unit.

I had never heard of this until you posted. I now have 100% achievements for Cats Hidden In Paris. I can't say it was the single most fun that I have ever had with a game, but it was absolutely worth the princely sum of 0GBP (that's roughly equivalent to 0USD or 0EUR) that I paid for it. The speedrun achievement was surprisingly tough, though. Turns out that I can either go fast or go without missing any, but not do both at once. I ended up having to take written notes for how many cats there were in each area, otherwise I'm not sure I could have managed. In the end, It took me 6 tries, with the whole thing taking me 75 minutes. I'm terrible at this game. I can only find one cat here. Maybe I'm missing the other 99 because I'm too distracted by the cuteness of the one I can see?

I would say "maybe yes", but tentatively so. I also didn't care for the original Baldur's Gate, but am enjoying BG3 a whole lot more. I'm not as high on it as many people seem to be, but am enjoying it even so. I'd have it at something like a 7 or 8 out of 10, whereas consensus seems to have it somewhere around a 9 or 10. I think that the combat is much better than BG1. Partly that's just because I think that 5E is a better system than 2E was, but I also think they absolutely made the right decision to ditch real-time-with-pause and just go fully turn-based instead. D&D rules were designed for turn-based play, and not trying to fit the square peg into a round hole makes them flow much more smoothly. Obviously, the caveat there is that some people just don't care for turn based systems, but given that we're on a Fire Emblem board, I hardly see that as a likely problem for anyone here. You absolutely can't get the freedom and flexibility of a TTRPG into an RPG-on-a-computer, but BG3 does a better job of it than any other RPG-on-a-computer that I've ever played. There are so many little interactions programmed in, predicting a lot of the things that you might want to try. And even beyond those, some instances where things that the devs probably never thought of can just arise naturally from the systems. But, with that said, the devs obviously couldn't think of literally everything. There have been times when I wanted to approach a situation in some specific way and I wasn't able to, times when I did things "out of order" and it made things play out strangely. But it speaks volumes that it feels like a letdown when this sort of thing happens, rather than just feeling like the norm. The biggest advantage that it has over an actual TTRPG is that you can play it solo, so you don't have to worry about finding a group or scheduling problems, but can just play it in your own time and at your own pace. Being an inherently social activity is a strength of TTRPGs, but can also be a weakness. This is going to vary a lot from person to person, of course. The other advantage is that it's a professionally written and acted story. Whenever I've played TTRPGs, none of my groups (including myself) have ever been able to act worth a damn. Which is fine, that's not really the point, but the voice acting here is really good and offers something that I just don't get with tabletop.

Whereas to me, CRPG just means any RPG on a computer, as opposed to a TTRPG (tabletop) or LARP (live action). This is similar to one of the definitions mentioned in the video you linked, except even broader, since I would include console games as well, since that's not what I'm contrasting against. I'm not here to argue definitions, though. I just wanted to know how you were using the term so I could understand the point you were making.

How are you defining CRPG here? For me, I'd use a broad definition that would include series like Pokémon, Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, World of Warcraft, etc. which are all pretty obviously mainstream. I'm assuming you're going with a different definition, though.

The mess hall page for Fates lists that the daikon/cabbage food ("vegetable salad") gives Defence +2. Given that daikon and cabbage both give res, I assume that that's a mistake and it's supposed to say "Resistance +2".

It's hardly surprising that it's a bigger deal than the first two Baldur's Gate games. D&D is a way hotter license now than it was 25 years ago, what with Critical Role, Stranger Things, and the general ascent of nerd culture. D&D 5E (the system used in BG3) is also way more accessible to a general audience than AD&D 2E (the system for BG1 & 2). And I'd also add that Larian was a much more respected studio before BG3 than BioWare was before BG1; it's easy to think of BioWare in terms of what they later became, but BG1 was only their second ever game and I had to go and look up what their first one was (it was Shattered Steel).

As a thief, I think he's worse than Yunaka. The best way to build thief, as far as I'm concerned, is to make use of the Covert type to build a terrain-reliant dodge tank, either with Corrin's fog veins or by making use of existing terrain features. If you're doing that, one of the obvious weaknesses is Mystic units who can just completely bypass your terrain bonus, which is why I prefer Yunaka for that build. And if you class change out of thief, he doesn't have that much to recommend him above other units. He joins too late to get credit for helping out in the early game and for picking up skills from the early emblems, and he just doesn't stack up that well against the other units who are joining at around the same time as him. He's still perfectly competent, either as a thief or changed to another strong physical class, but doesn't really stand out from the crowd. 6/10.

It's definitely more important for spellcasters. Spells are categorised by power level, from level 0 (aka cantrips) up to level 6 (level 9 in tabletop DnD, but BG3 has a lower level cap). You can cast cantrips as often as you like, but you only have a limited number of spell slots to cast other spells, which depends on your level and your stats. So, if I have two third-level spell slots, I'm only allowed to cast two third-level spells. These don't recharge every fight, but only when you rest. So there's a world of difference between a fight where you have all your spell slots, cast all your biggest spells and blow everything up, and the same fight when you're completely out of spell slots and just have to plink away with cantrips. Even for non-casters, most of them get some sort of ability or resource that only recharges when they rest, but it's typically not as pronounced as it is for spellcasters.

I have a gnome warlock/paladin who I got to level 5 yesterday. I have mixed feelings about the game, but overall more positive than negative. On the plus side, it does a better job than any other CRPG that I can think of at capturing the expansiveness and open-endedness of TTRPGs. You have so many options for things that you can try or ways you can approach problems, and a lot of them actually work. It manages to have both emergent narative and constructive narative in a way that's really quite impressive. On the minus, side, though, the cost of this expansiveness is that the game feels very janky at time. Stuff like inventory management is a frustrating chore, for instance. Or weird pathing issues where the game makes you move manually. Or the overall balance seems off; without much (any?) disincentive from taking long rests whenever you like, a lot of resource management from the original DnD rules just isn't there, and it can feel weird sometimes. Still a good game and one that I'm mostly having fun with, but a frustrating one too.

Ooh! Ooh! Me! Pick me! That was me! I was, in fact, an active poster on rec.games.roguelike.adom back in the late 1990s. Though I do try not to grognard too hard. But yeah, I also have a big soft spot for Dungeons of Dredmor. I currently sit at 80.1 hours played and 48/122 achievements, mostly between 2011 and 2014. And, remarkably, I do have the achievement for beating Dredmor (on easy with permadeath) but not the achievement for losing to Dredmor. I can't actually remember the fight, but given that pretty much everyone who isn't me says that it's badly designed unfair garbage, I assume I just lucked out. I always described the game by saying that it was to Rogue as Monkey Island was to Adventure. I think I still stand by that description. I remember being excited for Clockwork Empires when it was first announced. It was a cool concept. But then it also happened right about the time I was getting disilusioned about paying money for Early Access games that were cool concepts but not much else. It was right about the same time as Spacebase DF-9, which was the game that pretty much killed Early Access for me. And then the more I saw of Clockwork Empires, the more glad I was that I hadn't just jumped right on it. Which is sad. It probably had the potential to be great if they'd had more time and money for it, but alas, they did not. With hindsight, yeah, trying to make something that would feel like Dwarf Fortress but with an actually usable UI was probably overambitious for their second project as a studio. I actually recommended Dungeons of Dredmor to a friend last year. He was searching for something to play and looking for recommendations, so I looked through my Steam library and said, "hey, did you ever play this..." He actually has more hours in the game than I do at this point. I tried picking it up again last year as well, to play alongside him and so I'd actually know what he was talking about when he told me about different builds he was using or whatever. And, sadly, for me at least, the magic was gone. The whole thing just played so damn slowly. All the attack annimations and the likes are great, but having to sit through them for every single attack made things drag. I do wish that more developers had jumped on the idea of Berlin interpretation roguelikes except with graphics and a UI and stuff. They probably do exist somewhere, but are so buried underneath the modern understanding of the term "roguelike" that they're harder to find than they should be.

Based on the way the case went (and on my lay understanding of the law), not very much. If anything. I can easily see that the original name could have been a trademark infringement, being just about similar enough that I can imagine a confused grandparent accidentally buying Emblem Sage as a gift for their grandchild who had asked for Fire Emblem for their birthday. But, as far as I'm aware, that name was just about the only thing that Nintendo/IS successfully managed to get Kaga to change.

I'd actually been thinking about making a similar thread to this, but focused more on the idea of "just what is the core identity of Fire Emblem?" since that's something that seems to get brought up and argued over in every permadeath discussion. Legally speaking, I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that an awful lot of Fire Emblem's identity isn't protected. It's a pretty well established principle that you can't copyright game mechanics. If I wanted to make a game that has turn based tactical combat on a grid with a player phase and an enemy phase, where damage is strength + weapon might - defense and you get to hit twice if your speed is 4 points higher than the enemy, etc. etc. then I probably could. And a lot of the names of mechanical elements are too generic to have any chance of legal protection. I'm thinking things like "strength" or "steel sword". (There is some history of patent trolling within the games industry to try to get around the non-copyrightability of game mechanics, but to the best of my knowledge, none of them have ever gone to court, and IS and Nintendo haven't tried to take out any patents regarding Fire Emblem anyway, so it's something of a moot point.) The big and obvious legal protection would be trademarks, especially for the name of the series and the games. If I make a new game series and call it Emblem of Flames, with entries like Umbral Dragon, Path of Luminosity, and Holy Stones, then I am absolutely getting a letter from Nintendo's lawyers. Likewise, I suspect some of their characters are protected. If my game stars Marp, prince of Aldea then that's probably not going to fly (unless it's a parody). A lot of elements of individual games would be protected by copyright, but they are typically not stuff that relates to series identity. You obvious can't just directly copy maps, dialogue, art, code, etc. but most of those things are completely new from one Fire Emblem game to the next anyway. In summary: stuff like names and characters are probably protected; stuff like game mechanics probably aren't. And I think that, morally and ethically, the law is pretty much right here. I think people should be able to copy and iterate on game mechanics as much as they want. Because, ultimately, the core ideas aren't what makes the game. The game is about map design, multiple balance passes, character design, combat animations, dialogue, ui, and so on and so forth. If someone else wants to make a Fire Emblem style game, is willing to put in all the work to do all that stuff, and isn't trying to pass themselves off as actually being Fire Emblem, then they absolutely should be able to do so.

For sure. I guess that my argument would be that the learning curve without online is considerably steeper than the learning curve with online. And that I personally found this extra steepness more frustrating than rewarding. (Like I said, my version of all this is very low on the hyperbole.)

I have played without online, and while I don't agree with Mir's more hyperbolic objections, I will say that I had problems with it. Now, it certainly didn't help that this was my first playthrough and I was playing entirely sight-unseen and spoiler-free so I doubtless made a lot of mistakes like putting down buildings in the wrong order or not making enough use of the arena. And it definitely didn't help that the food resource that I randomly got was daikon (which buffs res). The game was certainly still playable, but I definitely felt that there was a certain friction there. Cooking felt useless. Forging felt weirdly restricted. Having way more buildings available than I had DVP to place them made me way more worried about which ones I should build than I should have been. That sort of stuff.

For me, I think it's pretty close and largely depends on my mood. As you say, Radiant Dawn is a more ambitious game, but it only sticks the landing on some of the things it tries and ends up more inconsistent as a result. Radiant Dawn has both the higher highs and the lower lows of the two games. Sometimes I'm willing to sit through the lows to get to the highs, but sometimes I want the more streamlined and consistent package that is Path of Radiance. Path of Radiance was also my first Fire Emblem, so there is definitely at least a little bit of nostalgia bias there. The army splitting in Radiant Dawn never quite worked for me, especially with balance across different units. I always like raising up my group of idiots from zeroes to heroes, so it feels unsatisfying when the game just keeps on throwing OP units at me and I don't have to care about them stealing xp. This is especially the case for the Dawn Brigade, with Sothe, Volug, Tauroneo, Nailah and the Black Knight all fitting into that pattern. I also feel the loss of Support conversations in Radiant Dawn. And I think that removing basic UI features in the hardest difficulty setting is one of the single worst decisions in any Fire Emblem game. So, overall, I'd say that I generally favour Path of Radiance... except that if I were to sit down and replay one of them right now, it would be Radiant Dawn. That's just what I'm in the mood for. So I don't know. Let's still say Path of Radiance, but only by a hair.

Ohhh, that makes sense! I'd best keep that card hidden from my friend who's been building a coin flip deck in Magic recently.

"This card does nothing" (on the card underneath Roy) is my favourite part. At least it's truth in advertising. Commercial TCGs wouldn't ever dare to print that on their crappy pack-filler.