lenticular

Yeah, I know she isn't technically a Switch era character, which is why I opened with a disclaimer. It's not as if we're operating under rigid rules and structure here. As for move set, I can't imagine that would be a sticking point if they decided that they wanted to add her. It's not as if she'd be the first character in Smash where they had to just invent an entire move set from scratch (Captain Falcon, ROB) nor the first who had shown no hints of fighting ability beforehand (Isabel, Wii Fit Trainer). The good folks who make Smash are smart and creative and I would absolutely trust them to figure out a way to make her work.

Probably a little bit of both. The monastery stuff honestly isn't all that important in Three Houses. I've done a no-monastery run on Hard Mode and found it very playable. And I'm pretty sure that I remember @Dark Holy Elf doing a Maddening run with very restricted monastery and also reporting that it was plenty playable. But Three Houses really pushes the monastery in a way that Engage doesn't push the Somniel. Three Houses really wants you to spend time in the monastery, makes you want to think that it's more important than it actually is. Where Engage has a little bit more chill. The Somniel is there but it doesn't feel as if the game is judging you every time you decide not to do push ups. I do think that the monastery stuff is more impactful than the Somniel stuff, but I don't think the difference is as big as people might think.

Similar to Chloé, Louis benefits a lot from being an early unit who stays good into the late game. Not only does this give the inherent advantages of being useful and relevant for longer, it also means that he has little competition for resources early on (since the player will be dropping many other units), which puts him in a prime position to start getting kills and resources early and start to snowball. And like Chloé, he does start to drop off a little late on, but unlike Chloé he has a few too many weaknesses to be able to realistically patch up all of them. These are: bad res, bad speed and (if in the General class) bad move. And if you're hoping to tank, with him, he also needs a way of dealing with enemy chain attacks. And there are ways to address each of these through emblems, skills, items, and the likes. But addressing all of them would take more resources than it's reasonable to throw at a single unit so you pretty much just have to accept that there is going to be some drop-off eventually. Still a very strong unit overall, though. 8/10.

Another thing that means there's less to talk about with Engage is the skill system. With Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses, there was a lot of versatility in how you choose to build individual characters and which skills you choose to combine. With the way that Engage bundles a bunch of skills into a single package in the form of Emblems, there just aren't as many choices. And then even when you do have choices... you often don't actually have choices. SP is in short enough supply, and grinding is unrewarding enough, that a lot of skills just aren't viable choices. So character building is mostly about choosing a class and an Emblem, and then throw on a couple of skills that seem reasonable. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it shifts the focu somewhats back towards the core tactical gameplay, and away from having too much focus on builds. Whether this is a good thing or not will depend on personal taste. And, if that was their goal, it's also debatable whether they really succeeded at it given how easy it still is to build an immortal dodge tank. But it definitely cuts down on discussion points.

Not exactly a Switch era character, but since she's been more prominent on Switch than she has been in decades, I'm going to say that she counts: Pauline. As one of video gaming's original damsels in distress, I loved getting to see her as a successful and kick-ass woman in her own right in Mario Odyssey, and it would be even better if she got into Smash and finally got to beat up Donkey Kong herself (even if it's canonically not the same Donkey Kong). And for an "it's never going to happen but I still want it" pick: Madeline from Celeste. Indie games good. LGBTQIA+ characters good. Give me more (read: any) representation for both of them in Smash, please. And for meme picks, presented without further comment: Gatekeeper. Elephant Mario.

Given that we've had My Castle, then Garreg Mach, then the Somniel, I think it's reasonably safe to say that hub areas are likely to be with us for the foreseeable future. So, with that in mind, what would be your ideal implementation going forward? Personally, I enjoyed Garreg Mach from the perspective of story/world building/characterisation/immersion and would like to see something like that attempted again. But at the same time, if I'm not in the mood to wander around and talk with everyone, then it definitely can be a chore. So I'd like to see a system where everything was accessible either through the hub area or through a menu, with no mechanical difference between the two. Let wandering around and talking to everyone be either something that I do for its own sake because I enjoy it, or something that I can skip without mechanical penalty if I don't feel like it.

So, here's my personal experience of using Chloé (on Hard difficulty). I started using her when she was first recruited, and she pretty quickly became my best unit. Then she carried on being my best unit. Then she became so much my best unit that I had to start using her less often just so that she wasn't taking too much experience away from everyone else. Then she never stopped being my best unit. Then the game ended. Now, what I don't know is how much of that performance was due to her inate qualities as a unit and how much was due to luck, favouritism, or similar. I know that I gave her Lyn, which probably helped her out a ton, since everyone is better with Lyn, but beyond that I couldn't say. What I do know is that she has some definite advantages. As one of the few early-game units who are worth sticking with long term, she's in an excellent position to be shown early favouritism, which can catapult her from good to excellent. She's also well positioned to inherit skills from the first 6 emblems. If you want any of those skills (eg Canter) on your units, then you need to either use an early-game unit (many of whom are bad), or you have to wait for Chapter 17 or later. There's also the eternal "how do you weigh availability" question. Which doesn't have a satisfying answer, but her availability is great. And she's an excellent unit for all the time that she's available. I'm well aware that this might not be an objectively defensible rating, but I can't really go off anything other than my personal experience, and under that particular metric I'm going to give her 10/10.

And once again, I find myself grateful that I decided to completely avoid the weird fantasyland of Awakening DLC/Spotpass. That sounds absurd. I mean, yeah, it's Awakening, which was hardly winning any prizes for coherence of its story to begin with, but yeesh.

I am definitely one of those players when it comes to GBA FE. Playing in a way that picks up a lot of supports just isn't fun to me, and honestly this is one of the reasons why I tend not to like GBA FE as much as I like the later games. But I would say that easily accessible supports began with Path of Radiance. If anything, I'd say that individual PoR supports are easier to get than individual supports from many later games. (I am, after all, the person who nearly missed noticing that Fates has child characters since I just didn't get anyone's supports high enough until late game.) Your general point still stands, though. I do agree that there is a change to how supports are handled from Awakening onwards, but I think that it's more to do with the idea that characters aren't limited to how many different supports they can have. Which has led to other consequences like having each individual support be mechanically less significant. And there definitely is more of a focus on character relationships, I don't disagree there. I think maybe I see it as more of a gradual transition ove time than you do, though? Yeah, I think this is a good way of looking at things. Skills were prominent in Tellius, reclassing ws prominent in the DS remakes, but then Awakening took these two disparate systems and tied them together. And then we've been working on variations on that theme ever since. (Which I think is a bit of a shame, because I'd be interested in seeing a revisited version of the Tellius skill system.) I think that the tendency to lump these together is just because of the temporal overlap. Sacred Stone and Path of Radiance literally released on the same day in Europe. And I think that a lot of the differences in design can probably be chalked up to the different hardware. Both in terms of the technological differences, but also the perceived differences between what is desirable in a game for a handheld console versus a home console. You know, just the fact that the term "Fateswakening" has such traction in fandom is telling of itself. Those two games have a whole lot in common with each other that they just don't with either what went before or what came after.

Yeah, that's fair. I'm sure it would be possible, but it likely would be more work than is justified for the sort of quick and dirty approach that I'm imagining. I agree with this. If they do decide to do these remakes, this is absolutely the approach that I'd be most excited about.

As far as I'm concerned, the forums are pretty quiet recently, and having extra conversation threads is generally a good thing. If people aren't interested, then they generally just won't reply. So I wouldn't worry about it.

Personally, I hope they don't get remakes any time soon. Not because they're not worth remaking or the remakes couldn't be good, but because if they're getting remade then that means that something else isn't, and there are multiple games higher up my priority list. I would like to see old Mystery get a comparable re-release as Switch Shadow Dragon, except without the limited time nonsense this time, please. Just take the original Super Famicom game, give it a localisation and time rewind, and put it on the eshop. Maybe bundle Archanea Saga in there too. That would be great.

I agree with this. While the version of the battle that we see is pretty calm with units standing around in a nice and orderly fashion before taking their turn to move one at a time, that's pretty clearly a gameplay abstraction, and the actual "real" battle that is being represented will be much more chaotic with everyone dashing around at once, all fighting at once, and so on. It's extremely believable that the exact details of who killed whom would get lost in the fog of war. It's not quite murder, but in Path of Radiance, Naesala Which unsurprisingly makes it so nobody trust him from that point on. And then there's Radiant Dawn, where the Black Knight is briefly recruitable and lord-adjacent Sothe is absolutely not OK with that.

Combat Arts didn't make it to Engage under that name, but Engage Attacks certainly share a lot of DNA with them, in terms of being fancy special attacks that the player chooses to perform instead of a regular attack. Though, by the same measure, the idea of "choose to perform a special attack" wasn't new in Shadows of Valentia either. Off the top of my head, I recall that the Gamble skill worked that way in at least one of the Tellius games, for instance, and there are probably other examples too. I do like the framing of New Mystery and Shadows of Valentia being preludes to their subsequent games though, since it does make a lot more intuitive sense to talk about Awakening and Three Houses as being big touchstones for the series, while the remakes have felt more experimental. I wonder if that means we shouldn't expect a Jugdral remake (if it happens) to be either a faithful remake of Genealogy or to look similar to Three Houses and Engage, but to be a wild west of new and experimental ideas, some of which might make it into the next mainline game.

In fandom discussions, it's pretty common to see a distinction between FE games from Awakening onwards and those that came before then. I've done so myself. And in some ways, yeah, that's a meaningful distinction. Not only did it see a massive upswing to the popularity of the series, but there were also some changes to design philosophy, with more focus on social sim elements, more character building, and greater accessibility to casual players, which have largely continued to this day. But at the same time, none of these things have a clear dividing line where they were absent beforehand and then present after. Support conversations and skill systems are both longstanding features that have been growing more complicated over time. Casual mode debuted in New Mystery. And they've also continued to be developed since Awakening, especially with time rewind being introduced in Shadows of Valentia. And it's also not the only notable inflection point in the evolution of the series as a whole. There's a meaningful split between the Kaga games and the post-Kaga games, or (very similarly) between the Japan-exclusive games and the ones with international localisation. And then more recently, I think that Shadows of Valentia is another good watershed, introducing not only time rewind but also full voice acting, both of which substantially change the feel of the game. So my question is: is it still worth our while to discuss pre- and post-Awakening Fire Emblem as if they are different beasts?

2000 is pretty great, and I am proud of it, but it's not as impressive as it seems. "Daily" is chess.com's version of correspondence chess, which is heavily influenced by how much time and effort you're willing to put into each game. And when I played it, I was pretty routinely only having one game at a time and putting an hour or more into every move. Whereas I know that other people have dozens of games at once and make each move without much thought. Which is weird to me, since if you want to play quickly, why not just play with regular time controls? But regardless, it's not really comparing like with like and does over-inflate my actual strength. My rapid rating of around 1400 is a truer representation of my actual playing strength.

Part of me wants to add "don't use a title that has been used in a ton of other works" as a new rule... except that I'm now humming "find a girl, settle down, if you want you can marry" to myself, and if that isn't just the most unwittingly Fire Emblem song line then I don't know what is.

I mostly don't remember chapter titles. Or chapter numbers for that matter. There are a few that have managed to stick in my head from seeing them talked about enough in the fandom, like Elincia's Gambit or Reunion At Dawn, but those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Mostly, if I'm thinking about a chapter, I'll think of it as "the one with the wind", "the one at the Mila tree", "the one where you're supposed to stealth around the guards", and so on. And if you ever see me referring to a chapter by name or number then it's a safe bet that I've just gone and looked it up. So, mostly what I want from a chapter title is something that sounds cool and evocative and makes me enthused for the next chapter and that I will immediately forget seconds after reading it when I start to play said chapter. And what works well in those terms depends a lot on where the chapter falls in the story and what type of mood it's trying to get across. Reunion at Dawn has a very different mood and feeling to something like Clash. The former works for its position at the beginning of part 2; we're coming out of the climactic ending of part 1, leaving the little interlude, and starting to build to something else. On the other hand, for the latter, we already have the tension ratcheted up high and a simple one-word title that says "and now there's a big fight" is all that is needed. So I guess that what I want from a chapter title is one that understands the emotional core of the story beat that we're in at the time, and promises to deliver on it.

I do play chess at an intermediate level, though almost exclusively online. And I tend to go in cycles where I sometimes play a lot but then sometimes hardly play at all for a while, and I'm in one of the latter at the moment. For anyone for whom these numbers are meaningful, my chess.com elo ratings are about 1100 blitz, 1400 rapid, and 2000 daily. I also used to play a whole lot of Scrabble, but haven't played in years. I was pretty good at it, though. Not anywhere close to tournament level play, but a strong casual player. Beyond that, I have at least some experience with most styles of board games. Classic games like draughts (aka checkers), backgammon, and go. 20th century games like Monopoly, Cluedo (aka Clue), or Risk. And modern "German style" games like Ticket to Ride, Pandemic or Small World. These days, I'm mostly limited by time and having people to play with, so I'll maybe play a few games of Ticket to Ride per year and that's about it. But overall, yeah, I love board games. I don't really see that much common ground between board games and Fire Emblem, though. They occupy very different niches in my brain and are rewarding and fun for me in very different ways. I don't think it's at all strange for anyone to be into one but not the other.

One thing that I do think is worth noting about Céline is that I think she's the sort of unit whose value varies quite a lot based on difficulty level. This often tends to be the case with hybrid attackers or jack-of-all-trades style units. Being just barely good enough at lots of different things is great; being not quite good enough at lots of different things is pretty lousy. So I think that Normal-mode Céline is notably better than Maddening-mode Céline. (My experience and rating was based on having used her mostly on Hard and a bit on Maddening.)

Digital and physical each have pretty sizable benefits and drawbacks when compared to each other. Digital requires less storage space, can be bought and then played quickly and at any time, can't be lost or damaged, has way less barrier to entry for indie devs, and so on. Obviously. Whereas physical can more easily be lent out or resold, don't depend on a company keeping their servers online, work even if you have bad/no internet access, and so on. Also obviously. I don't think it's right to say that either one is better than the other. It's just a personal preference thing which one an individual prefers. (I personally like digital as well, but that's just me.)

Lots of good choices here (including basically every arcade game ever made) but I'm going to say Pong. Yeah, it's incredibly basic by modern standards (and by "modern" I mean "1980 or later") but it's still a super fun casual multiplayer experience. You absolutely need to have the proper paddle controls for it though. Pong with mouse/keyboard/gamepad/joystick sucks.

For everyday wear, I'm going to say Volke. Though without all the daggers since I'd rather not get arrested. Looks super comfy, and I do like long coats. For a party or special occasion, I'll go with Calill. I'd modify the skirt of the dress to show slightly less leg and change the heels to flats because screw heels, but otherwise I love it. And just to get myself out of Tellius, if I were to explicitly be cosplaying a Fire Emblem character, I think I would like to try Petra.

Sorrow's Furnace (Guild Wars). Yeah, there are a lot of Guild Wars areas that I could choose, because I spent so many hours in that game and have so many fond memories. The Jade Sea and Echovald Forest are both great shouts, and I also have a lot of fondness for Vabbi and the Fissure of Woe, but I'm going to say Sorrow's Furnace as my favourite. A big sprawling underground dwarven mine complex, occupied by the evil faction of dwarves, and complete with ancient ruins, steampunk style tech and everything else you could want in a dwarven mine. Then add in a fun quest chain (assisting the slave revolt was a personal favourite), and the chance to get some of the best weapons in the game, and this place was just an all around winner. The Palace of Darkness (The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past). So you've played through all the dungeons on the map, collected the three mcguffins, secured the Master Sword, and then defeated the evil wizard who kidnapped Zelda. Then you're teleported into the Dark World and learn that you need to beat another seven dungeons and collect another seven mcguffins. Hardly revolutionary now, but when the game was new and I was a kid, seeing the sudden expansion of the scope of the game like that was amazing. And as the first dungeon of the Dark World, the Palace of Darkness managed to really hit it out of the park on two fronts. First, it's a significant step up in difficulty from what went before. The training wheels have come off and things have got real. Second, it has just enough similarities to its Light World counterpart, the Eastern Palace that you notice the whole "dark reflection" thing going on, but nowhere ner so many that it would feel boring, repetitive or derivative. This place is great. Vash'jir (World of Warcraft). These days, I would rather gnaw off my right arm than go anywhere near World of Warcraft, but back when I used to play it, this zone was my absolute favourite. This is not a popular choice, because it's an underwater level and everyone hates underwater levels. Except for me. I love underwater levels. And this one was so damn pretty and made me feel at peace. Except when I was fighting naga. That part wasn't so peaceful. Cascade Kingdom (Super Mario Odyssey). Another somewhat unpopular opinion. Not that most people dislike this, but few people seem to like it as much as I do. It's not one that I ever really see come up when people talk about favourite kingdoms in Odyssey, but I love it. I honestly couldn't tell you why, though. Maybe it's the music? Maybe it's the big waterfall? Maybe it's the compact size? Whatever it is, playing this level just makes me happy. Planet (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri). Is it cheating to name the setting for an entire game? Well, I'm going to do it anyway. SMAC had more story than any other 4X game that I'd played at the time, and most of that was down to the setting, Planet, which was almost a character in its own right. It felt properly alien, and then seeing its development over the game both surprised and delighted me. Afterlife (Mass Effect 2). Mass Effect 2 is an action RPG and while there are times when it leans into the RPG side of things, there are other times when it leans more heavily into the action side and basically just feels like a shooter. But then for one mission ("Samara: The Ardat-Yakshi") there is no shooting at all, no action at all. It's all just wandering around talking to people, which is such a great change of pace for the game, and was only so memorable because the rest of the game is so shooty. And then to make it better, much of the level is spent in a cool futuristic nightclub with heavy ties to the criminal underworld. The Lab (Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt). Does anyone else even remember this game? It was such a great looking game for the SNES, and while all of the levels had their own great unique looks, the lab was my favourite. What can I say, I just like the mad science aesthetic, and this had Van der Graaff generators, Bunsen burners, dripping acid, the lot. Tower of Eternal Flames (Ancient Domains of Mystery). There aren't that many games that have levels where environmental hazards truly feel hazardous. As befits the name, this tower's fires will mess you up if you aren't prepared for it, not only dealing a lot of fire damage, but also burning up much of your best equipment. Managing to get a character past this challenge always felt really satisfying and signified that they were a serious contender to go on to the end game and maybe try to pick up an elusive victory. The Border House (The Longest Journey). I love The Longest Journey, and this place was the perfect way to open the adventure, both for the player and for the player character, April. It's a perfect thematic prelude.

Céline does feel like a definite step up from the (non-Alear) units that went before her, but that isn't saying all that much. My experience of using her was that she always managed to stay just barely good enough for me not to drop her. She never turned into a liability, but also never felt like a particularly strong asset. Her bases and growths are nothing to write home about and while her personal skill might get an occasional bit of use, it's mostly trash. What really helps keep her relevant is the Vidame class, which she has unique access to. Vidame is one of only two classes in the game that has access to three weapon types. And one of the three is the ever-useful staves. It's also a mystical class, which makes her a good choice for emblems with interesting bonuses for mystical units (Byleth, Celica and Marth all come to mind as decent choices). Compared to the other mystical classes, Vidame comes with worse magic growth, but better speed and def bases, and much better strength. It's not a strict upgrade, but it's an interesting option. Vidame also learns the Ignis skill, which is not the best skill in the world, but is better than Spell Harmony or Self-Healing which are the other choices for mystical units. As a general note, for dex% chance to proc skills, offensive ones (like Ignis) are much more useful than defensive ones (like Alfred's Golden Lotus). Offensive ones are generally taking something you want to be doing anyway (attacking) and turning a good outcome (doing some damage) into an even better outcome (doing more damage, maybe enough to turn chip damage into a kill). On the other hand, Golden Lotus is at its most impactful if it's turning a catastrophically bad outcome (takes enough damage to die) into a moderately bad outcome (takes some damage but still lives) except that this never really happens, because I'm not going to be leaving Alfred (or anyone) in situations where they'll die if their skill doesn't proc. But doing chip damage with Céline is something that I will do often so Ignis will get a chance to turn several of those into kills. It's not the best skill, but it's solid. Overall, while she does still end up getting outclassed by later units, I don't think she's as badly outclassed as previous units we've discussed, and Vidame does make sure that if you stick with her than she'll always be able to offer something that is unique, if not especially strong. I'm wavering between giving her a 5 and a 6, and while I cou.ld give her 5.5, I'm really loathe to do that. So I think I'm going to say that she falls a little way short of a 6 and end up giving her 5/10.