lenticular

I still find it absolutely wild that you get such good use out of this. I always used to bring it along but I don't think that I ever had a single good opportunity to use it come up. That you do is a good reminder that play styles differ and that one person's trash is another person's treasure, and all that good stuff. As far as I'm concerned, that's an excellent change made by the localisation team. I know some people prefer localisations to be a close to literal word-for-word translations as possible, but I am definitely not one of those people. For me, if a line would come accross as crass or insensitive to an English speaking audience -- and I do believe that this one would -- then it absolutely ought to be changed in the localisation. I am not qualified to speak on whether it was a good or appropriate line in the Japanese original (I leave that judgement to Japanese LGBTQIA+ folks) but I'm glad that it didn't make it to the English version. The same thing applies in Chapter 10 after killing Kronya. I've seen this taken advantages of in speedruns to be able to quickly go after Solon immediately afterwards. It's a neat trick. Does this work? I've never thought of trying to build support with the allied unit version of Gilbert, or chapter 3 Catherine for that matter. But I also don't recall ever seeing the little support heart showing up for either of them.

They both look neat, if a little bit outside my comfort zone. Definitely better than anything that I'd managed to come up with though, thanks. At least with CK2 you can be reasonably confident that they aren't going to add any more achievements at this point. Yeah, it would still take a frankly daft amount of work, but at least it would be a known and finite daft amount of work.

This is hard to overstate. Let's look at the numbers. Mega Man 2 released exclusively on the NES/Famicom, which was a console that sold a total of 61.91 million units. This means that the game's 1.51 million sales put it on 1 out of every 41 NESs, about 2.4%. Mega Man 11 has shifted 1.60 million units, but for consoles which have a much bigger user base. The Switch has sold 114.33 million units, meaning that only about 1 out of every 71 Switches (1.4%) have a copy of Mega Man 11. Except that it's actually much worse than that. Because as well as the Switch, Mega Man 11 was actually released for the PS4 (117.2M) and Xbox 1 (at least 51M), meaning that there are over 282 million consoles out there that could run Mega Man 11, of which 1 out of every 176 actually have a copy, only 0.6%. And that's without also factoring in the enormous PC gaming market, which MM11 was also released for. Now, you might say that many people own more than one console and would be unlikely to buy the same game across multiple different systems, and that's true. But even in the best case scenario (just comparing NES to Switch), Mega Man 11 is still only about half as popular as Mega Man 2 was.

It's funny that you should say that. I mostly agree with you, but I have a friend who's had the complete opposite experience. He's good and experienced at the game (152 hours and 51/53 achievements), but he says that when he dies it's mostly due to the accumulation of chip damage over a long time rather than just having a sudden single dramatic failure. And, honestly, I don't know what he's doing to make that happen. I keep meaning to someday watch him play to find out, because I find it baffling. But yeah. I mostly have the same experience that you do, and I like it that way. It's fun to have occasional runs which are just constant fights against adversity where you have to struggle through every level and really feel like you earned the win, but if every run is like that then it can get tiring before too long and make a game lose its charm. And I do have occasional runs like that in Monster Train, though not all that often. In other news, I have been planning out my own personal A-Z of achievements. My completely arbitrary rules for this completely arbitrary challenge is that if a game might reasonably be thought of as starting with more than one letter (eg, including or exclusing an initial "The" or "A" or a subtitle or similar), then it can count as any one of those letters, but no more than one. So, The Binding of Isaac could be T or B, Sid Meier's Civilization V could be S or C, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skryim could be T, E, or S. I also have a lot of alphabet slots taken up by either crappy games or games with crappy achievements, so I thought about trying to replace them with better games. And maybe I will do that eventually and end up with a full list I can be proud of, but for now, I'm just going to aim for any game for each letter, because it would be silly to make this deliberately harder on myself. So, here's my list: Suggestions welcome for any of the ones I'm not sure about, especially J since the only other J games I can think of (Just Cause, Jurassic World Evolution, Jackbox Party Pack) don't appeal to me. Also, while looking through my Steam library for ideas for E and U games, I came across two games with achievements that I want to mention. My most-played game on Steam is Europa Universalis IV. I've played that for a ridiculous and disturbing 1754.8 hours. Which has been enough to get me 52% of its achievements (182/345). The idea of trying to 100% that game is frankly terrifying to me. Then there is a game that I don't really remember and last played in 2013 called Universe Sandbox Legacy. I checked its achievements to see if it might be worth trying for. It includes two of the worst achievements I have ever seen: one is to start the game 10,000 times, the other is to have the game running for a total of a year. Yeah, I'm gonna skip that one. I do that with books. I start reading one, but if I'm finding it slow going but don't want to drop it entirely, I'll pick u something else to read at the same time. Then if that ends up slow going too, then I'll pick up a third. I normally have the good sense to stop before I get to four at once. Normally.

Let's do this. I'm not going to post about every game I have 100% on, because I just don't have the patience for that, but I'll do the new ones that I've just grabbed, and maybe a handful of others if I have anything interesting to say about any of them. Also, fun fact, as I type this, I have a game open in the background because I just need to do a garbage AFK achievement to finish 100%ing it. This got long, so I'm going to put it behind a spoiler. Games talked about: Opus Magnum, Growing Up, Forager, Monster Train, Day of the Tentacle Remastered.

This is the only one of your last batch that I have any experience with. I played it for about eight and a half hours when it first came out, beat it once, and was done with it. It wasn't a bad game, it just didn't grab me in the way that I was expecting it to. Based on the genre, premise, and developer, I had really high hopes for this one; possibly they were too high and that was what left me so underwhelmed. I've been meaning to go back to this and give it another try since I saw the Advanced Edition, but I haven't got around to it yet. I also want to say that this thread has inspired me to chase some more 100% games myself. I've added two more games since it started, and am now sitting at 30. Including one new beginning letter that I didn't have before.

First off, it was really interesting to hear your thoughts about the genre, since you clearly know way more about it than I do. I really don't know what I'd be looking for in an RTS if I were to try to pick one up today. The way I always played them back in the 90s was always single player, and typically on low difficulty settings. I'd basically just play as a base builder, focussing on building up my infrastructure and economy (in as much as they existed in those games), then once I had built up an unstoppable military force, I'd just send them all en masse into the middle of the enemy base and rely on sheer weight of numbers to win. And I absolutely could not do any of the high APM clickfest anything. My manual dexterity is, and always has been, terrible. Teenage me may have loved 90s RTS games, but she was pretty terrible at the them. Brains are wild, man. But luckily for us, there are so damn many video games out there, that we all can find something that works for us. There are approximately a billion games releasing on Steam every minute, and approximately another billion on Switch. There's something out there for everyone. It's one of the things that I like about video games as a hobby. I always came down on the side that Portal was better than Portal 2, mainly because of its length. Playing Portal for the first time, damn near every second of it felt immaculate, but even on the first time through Portal 2 there were parts of it that felt like they were a bit padded to make a "full length game" for the bigger numbers are always better crowd. Looking back on it now, I find myself thinking that I really don't give a damn which one was better. They were both fantastic, and that's enough. And Portal 2's co-op is probably the high point of the pair of them. I'm sufficiently old that I don't remember Road Rash 3D on the Playstation, but do remember the original Road Rash on the Mega Drive/Genesis. Which I have the same verdict on. It was rad as hell when I was 10, but not actually any good. Dear gods, why would you do that to yourself? I mean, don't get me wrong, I like Skyrim. Skyrim is a good game (except when it's occasionally being a shit game or less-occasionally being a buggy game, but mostly it's a good game). But 100%ing it twice sounds like a miserable experience. I've played a few Zachtronics games, though not this one. But they're all pretty weird. The only one I've 100%ed is Opus Magnum (fun game, would recommend) which also has weird achievements. One for beating the game, one for beating any ten of the more difficult bonus levels, and then three for playing the weird peg-matching solitaire side game (1/10/100 times). That is a terrible idea, and I also kinda want to do it now. (Un)fortunately, I am still missing way more letters: C, E, G, J, N, Q, U, W, X, Y, Z. But I have 8 games starting with S and 5 starting with H. Weird. Probably too many missing for me to start on as a proper project, but the idea is stuck in the back of my head now. Another game that just didn't land for me at all, though it's easier for me to put my finger on why for this one. I just didn't care for the humour. Sense of humour is incredibly subjective, and if something doesn't make you laugh then it doesn't make you laugh. And there's very little as boring and awkward as sitting through a comedy skit that you don't find funny. Nothing against the game, mind, just wasn't for me. I absolutely loved Lemmings. I mean, I was a nerdy kid who was 10 when it came out and then was a teenager in the 90s. Of course I loved Lemmings. From memory, I think I had Lemmings on three different platforms: Amstrad CPC, SNES, and MS-DOS. I do remember it as being legitimately good for its time, though I'd guess that it probably wouldn't hold up all that well today. It could certainly be frustratingly janky at times, clicking multiple lemmings to try to make them build a bridge in exactly the place that you wanted rather than two pixels to the left. But it was a good time. I'd be tempted to check out any sort of spiritual successor if I wasn't so completely over zombies at this point. Audiosurf was great. And also a product of its time. It could only really have existed in the decade where mp3s had become ubiquitous but hadn't yet been largely replaced by streaming music. I didn't get anywhere close to 100%ing it back when I last played it in 2011, but my memory is that achievements were really weird because they were so dependent on the song you used. Find the right song and they could be really simple, but with the wrong song, they'd be either extremely hard or impossible.

Given that "Echoing Emblem" is apparently a thing, I'm not expecting much in the way of creativity here. I would not be surprised if they just went all in with references to the titles of the Emblems' home games. So, something along the lines of Emblem of the Holy War, Emblem 776, Binding Emblem, Blazing Emblem, Sacred Emblem, Emblem of Radiance, Emblem of Dawn, Emblem of Awakening, Fated Emblem, Emblem of the Houses. I'm hoping that they don't go quite that literal (especially for Leif and Byleth), but I'm very much the type to set my expectations low so I can be pleasantly surprised.

I played and loved this when it first came out, but haven't touched it since. And also kinda haven't had much to do with RTSs in general since. I was majorly into Dune 2, then also played a decent amount of Command and Conquer, Warcraft II, and Age of Empires... and then that was pretty much it. I poked at the genre a little after that with stuff like Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds and Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War, but never really cared about either of them. I don't actually know enough about the genre to truly have a clue what I'm talking about, but I wonder if it would be fair to call AoE something of an inflection point from the early RTS games of the mid 90s into the modern genre as it is today? And that's now four games that you've mentioned here that I want to replay. And I agree with pretty much everything you had to say about it. For my money, Chimera Squad is great because it cuts out one of the worst aspects of modern XCOM, which is aggro management. Inching across the map bit by bit making sure that I only aggro enemies in the most beneficial-to-me way possible was never fun. But at the same time, being more reckless and accidentally aggroing two groups at once and getting slaughtered because of it was also never fun. Smaller engagements more or less completely killed all of that, and I for one loved it. And I also loved that my soldiers could have actual personalities and things, rather than just being "generic soldier 108" who I only care about for their stats. Weirdly, I'm pretty much exactly the opposite to you on this one. I very much am someone who plays visual novels and princess maker style games, but LLtQ just didn't do it for me. I didn't hate it and don't think it's bad. It just didn't click with me, and I couldn't tell you why. Maybe I should revisit it at some point and see if it clicks better for me now than it did in 2013.

Alliance Archers: 6.5/10 and Alliance Snipers 6/10. These are eerily similar. The stats are basically identical, with the main difference being 2 extra points of Charm on the Snipers. Which sounds like it might be significant, except that what that mostly does is cancel out the 10% accuracy bonus that Poisoned Arrows has over Fusilade. Beyond that, the Snipers have twice as much endurance, but the Archers require one lower rank of authority. If I'm only getting one of them, then it'll probably be the Archers, but there's a good chance I'll end up grabbing both of them. Alliance Cavalry: 2/10. Comparable to but worse than the Empire Cavalry (which I also gave a 2), and also worse than other D-authority battalions that become available at the same time. It's hard to think of the circumstances where I'd be seriously using this. Alliance Armored Co: 2/10. Very similar to the Seiros Armored Co. which I gave a 1.5 to. I think I like this one a little bit better for the more reliable gambit, but only a little better. Alliance Pegasus Co: 6.5/10. I agree with SnowFire that the Alliance just doesn't have the crunch for flying battalions of the other houses. Alliance Magic Users: 5.5/10. I like my gambits accurate and reliable, and Resonant Lightning just doesn't deliver. Esepcially since this is the Golden Deer and Lorenz and Lysithea are two of the least charming mages in the game. It works better on Marianne, but there are reasons I might not want to give it to her. I've stated before that my preference is to give Stride to someone with Physic (since they can be useful and effective if they are lagging behind the rest of the army) and Marianne is the only real Physic user among the native Deer students. She's also a good candidate for Dark Flier, which would stop her from using this. Long story short: I don't like Resonant Lightning. And it comes on a battalion with less attack than the comparable battalions from the other houses. I'll probably use this, but I'm not going to be enthusiastic about it. Alliance Veteran Duelists: 1/10. What if we took the already bad Alliance Cavalry, gave it a worse gambit, and increased the authority requirement? I still don't know what the devs were thinking when they decided to make a gambit that you can only use to its full potential if you're willing to stand in the middle of a group of enemies while severely injured and then give it 30% accuracy. Alliance Wyvern Co: 8/10. Hard for me to rate, since I don't really use Impregnable Wall even though I acknowledge that it is objectively good. But I gave the grounded versions from other houses a 6.5, this is clearly better than them. Partly because flight is automatically enough to secure even the trashiest battalions at least a 5/10, and partly because this seems like a gambit that would really benefit from being on a character with flying mobility. I'm not confident of my score on this, and will probably think completely differently tomorrow, but this is what I've got for now. (Not that I'm really all that confident of any of my scores, but this one even less than the rest.)

Not all games that I like are objectively good. Not all games that I dislike are objectively bad. It's OK if other people like different games to me. I'm just not the target audience for some games, and that's OK.

I don't really have much to offer in the way of feedback, but to save you from feeling that you're shouting into the void, I can say that I read it. I am generally very reticent to discuss Edelgard (or Rhea) in too much depth, because those discussions have been done to death in the fandom, and have a nasty habit of turning bitter and acrimonious. I can't and don't speak for anyone else, but I suspect that I am far from the only person here who wants nothing to do with that particular discourse. So my first reaction to seeing the title of this thread was "oh no, not another one". That's not your fault, of course, but I figured you might be interested in one reason why you haven't had any other responses.

Have Sega been taking lessons from Square? That's the sort of drug-addled nonsense of a numbering scheme that I would normally expect from Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy, and my head hurts just trying to make sense of it. Ah yes, the good old "we didn't actually bother to think about this" style achievement. The worst one of those that I can remember is also from a board game adaptation, weirdly enough. In Ticket to Ride, there's an achievement that asks you to complete 20,000 games, which obviously no reasonable human being is ever going to get because it would take over a decade even if you played 5 games of Ticket to Ride every single day. There is a guide on Steam about how to get the achievement. It involves having a bot play the game for you deliberately badly to try to lose games as quickly as possible. There is someone in the comments of the guide suggesting an improvement to the bot that would allow the achievement to be completed in "about 500 hours", which is over 20 straight days of tying up your computer doing nothing but watching a bot play Ticket to Ride really badly. But most bafflingly of all: according to Steam, 0.3% of all players have this achievement. My takeaway from this is that approximately 0.3% of all players cheat on Steam achievements. I was going to come in here and say that I think that Slay the Spire is a little bit over-rated. And I sort of do. But I also went and looked at my Steam stats for it, and I've played it for 125 hours. Oh. Yeah. If the worst that I can say about a £20 game is that I got kinda bored of it after 125 hours, then that's hardly a damning indictment. I still think it's a very good game, just maybe not the pinacle of excellence that a lot of people seem to rate it as. I didn't particularly enjoy its achievements and higher difficulty options (the true ending and ascensions). I recall feeling that they were quite restrictive and that I felt shoehorned into a relatively small number of builds, rather than having much in the way of flexibility and creativity. Mabe I should go back and look at it again at some time, and see if the higher difficulty options click better for me, but I don't really feel compelled to do so. Still a very good game though.

I love that it isn't even just that they changed their mind on how they wanted achievements to work part way through the series. Oh no. That would be too simple. They changed their mind, and then changed it back, and then changed it again to something completely different. That's impressive. According to Steam, I played this for about 3 hours back in 2011. I remember very little about it. I think maybe I had been looking for something more on the side of tower defense and it wasn't what I was after? I can't remember at all. Agreed that these achievements are terrible. There are basically two possibilities. Either you get them super easily with no effort at all and don't even notice that they're there, or trying to get one is a near impossible slog of suffering and pain. Neither option is fun, and there is no in-between. Agreed with this. Bastion is amazing and everyone should play it. So good that I bought it twice (on Steam and 360) and don't regret the double purchase. I never did 100% it on either platform though, since I was kinda bad at it and couldn't do the max difficulty challenges. The second game that you've mentioned that I kinda want to replay now. The first of your list that I have also 100%ed. And another one that I bought multiple times on different platforms. Fun game, and I'm still a little sad that it never got a proper sequel, that wasn't either a microtranscaction-filled mobile game or a change to a completely different game genre. And make that three games that you've mentioned that I now want to replay. And unlike Bastion and FTL, 100% sounds like something that I might actually be able to do without making myself hate the game.

NG+ absolutely can be broken if you want it to be. If you start off with high-power late-game builds on a few strong units, then low-man the game, then it will be very easy, for sure. But it's only as broken as you choose to make it. There's also plenty you can do with it that's just about quality of life or exploration. For instance, you can give Byleth free support levels with students to make them easier to recruit. Or you can throw a crest on your favourite commoner to let them use relics. It's a pretty flexible system overall. I would also advocate for Caspar as a Dancer, on the grounds that you're losing out on the least by doing so. But ultimately, Dancers are good. Whoever you turn into a Dancer will be good. The margins between an optimal choice Dancer and a relatively poor choice of Dancer are slim enough that I don't think it's worth quibbling over too much. I often have random nonsense vulneraries and the like in my inventory well past the point where they're useful. I put them there in the early game when they might possibly be useful, never use them, and then never take them out or replace them. It's not poor planning so much as a recognition that nothing I do with that inventory slot matters in the slightest.

Kingdom Archers: 7/10. Yeah, this one is all about Retribution. I seem to recall that I was very high on Retribution when we did the Gambits thread, and while I'm less high on it now than I was then, it's still a very good gambit. This battalion definitely lets you do things that you wouldn't have been able to do without it. And while it is true that you will eventually get people to A rank Authority, it isn't necessarily true that you'll get A-rank on the characters you want to be running support gambits with. Kingdom Cavalry: 5/10. Possibly the best battalion that I never use. Stride is great, of course. But you typically only want one copy of Stride, and this probably isn't it. If I'm running Stride on a healer (which is my preference) or a mage, then Seiros Holy Monks are a better fit. And if I'm running it on a physical attacker then I'm going to want the Gautier Knights instead, which are inherently available to the Blue Lions. Might see a few chapters of use if I'm running Stride on a physical attacker (which I'm probably not) and they aren't up to B Authority yet, but is never going to last for long. Kingdom Armored Co: 6.5/10. Possibly marginally weaker than the Empire version, since the Lions have better enemy phase options without it (Dedue, Dimitri, and Ingrid all have obvious enemy phase builds). That's not enough for me to score it lower, though. Kingdom Pegasus Co: 7/10. When you first get it, it's a marginal upgrade over the Seiros Pegasus Co. but a sufficiently small one that I mightn't bother levelling this up if I was only running one of them. Long term, this is maybe the third best flying battalion that the Lions get, but the other two both have much higher Authority requirement (Galatea Pegasus at B and Cichol Wyverns at A). How useful this winds up being depends on how many fliers you're running and how quickly you get them to higher Authority. If "not many" and "quickly" then this isn't going to see much use; otherwise, it probably is. Kingdom Snipers: 6/10. One of the best choices for a grounded, physically attacking unit at C Authority. By the time you get to Chapter 8, you're likely looking at moving on to B Authority and paralogue battalions, but it'll typically be a while before I get everyone up to B authority, and this remains a good choice for any stragglers. Kingdom Magic Users: 7/10. A worse gambit than the Empire equivalent, on a route with few natural mages, and against more competition in the long run. Still decent, though. Kingdom Brave Lance Co: 4/10. The Hit here is very nice, but we're up to the point of the game where there are other ways to get Hit (supports and Hit +20) and this is otherwise underwhelming. Compared to other C-authority battalions, the attack boost isn't as good as Kingdom Knights (which we probably have levelled up already too), and the gambit is far worse than Kingdom Snipers. Might see use on a unit that is struggling with hit, but not otherwise. Kingdom Wyvern Co: 5/10. If the Kingdom Cavalry are the best battalion that I don't use, this might be the worst battalion that I do use. The gambit is awful; it's the one that we collectively rated as the worst one in the game when we did the gambits thread. And the stats are adequate, but not enough to compensate for that trashy gambit. But it flies. Which means that sometimes the choice is going to be between this and nothing, and this is unambiguously a whole lot better than nothing, which means that it does see use.

Wow, that's a lot. I have 28 games on Steam sitting at 100% achievements, and I have friends who think that's a lot. But it's not even close to you. It is weird to me that the games industry at large has pretty much agreed that achievements probably ought to be a thing, but hasn't really reached any consensus about what they're actually supposed to be for. Sometimes you just get achievements for progression, sometimes for finding hidden stuff, sometimes they serve as a checklist of things you can try if you feel like it, sometimes they're just to put an exclamation mark on cool moments, sometimes they're pure grind, and sometimes they're supposed to be genuinely difficult and purely for bragging rights. Oh god. Yeah no. No way I'm trying to 100% that one. It's a great game, and I have 55 hours in it (and kinda want to play it again now that you've reminded me that it exists), but going for 100% sounds like it would suck any and all fun from the game. This is the game that convinced me that I do not like FPS games and am never going to like FPS games. Like, I already knew that I wasn't particularly into them, btu this sealed the deal for me. I own a copy of it, because I really, really wanted to play Portal, and back in the day, the only way to get it was with the Orange Box, so I've tried playing it a couple of times. And nope. Just not fun for me. And if I couldn't manage to find the fun in something that beloved, it was time for me to give up on the genre. (Also: holy hell, how is this 18 years old?)

Well, my number one wish is for no more child units for a long while, with a potential exception for a Genealogy remake. But if we're assuming that we have to have them and the only choice is how to have them: Assuming that we're having children work similarly to how they do in Awakening and Fates (that is, added to the existing characters, not replacing them), my main wish would be that not everyone has to be a parent. One of the things I didn't like about those games was how the mechanic reduced the cast diversity and just turned it into "hot young singles in your area", more or less. If characters are too young, too old, not interested, in a pre-existing relationship, etc. then they shouldn't be shoehorned to try to fit into the system. If we're assuming a much smaller group of potential parents, then that would make it much more practical to implement some of the more bespoke solutions people have mentioned above, like having a unique child for every pairing. Imagine that there are 30 (non-child) characters, but that only 10 of them are potential parents, then each of those 10 has 3 possible partners. That would mean there'd only need to be 15 total children, of which you could see a maximum of 5 in a specific play through. Which seems like something that could plausibly be made. If we're just talking a straight up repeat of the Awakening/Fates mechanic, then I really don't care. I don't think there's much of a difference between having kids tied exclusively to their mother or exclusively to their father.

The different relative weights that people are giving to gambits and stats are really interesting to me, and I can definitely see both sides of the argument. For me, I definitely tend to favour strong gambits, because I value the concentration of power that they offer. As an example, let's compare the Nuvelle Attendants and the Empire Magic Users. The former has strictly better stats, whereas I think it's fairly uncontroversial that the latter has the better gambit. Let us say, for sake of argument, that the stats on Nuvelle Attendants make a unit 10% better on every turn, but the gambit on the Empire Magic Users makes a unit 50% better for one out of every five turns. Now, these numbers are totally plucked out of the air and aren't meant to be accurate, but are just there to illustrate my point. Now, ostensibly, these two options should be equivalent, but I value the 50% for one turn more because it lets me deliver all that extra power onto the turns where I really need it. A lot of turns in any Fire Emblem game are fairly easy and inconsequential. Not all that much is going on, and the only way I'm going to fail or lose a unit is if I'm not paying attention and make a boneheaded mistake. In these cases, having a 10% boost isn't going to make much of a difference to me since I'm succeeding anyway. But then there are occasional turns which are genuinely difficult. Maybe it's a tough boss, a big wave of enemies, or a mess of my own making by risky play on a previous turn. On these occasions, the 10% boost is also probably not all that useful, since it's not going to be enough to make a big difference. The 50% boost, on the other hand, often can be enough to make the difference and salvaging what otherwise might have been a loss. It's the same overall increase in power, but the gambit lets me deliver that power to exactly where I need it. This is a deliberately simplistic analysis, of course. If you wanted a definitive answer as to which of these two battalions was better for a given unit, you'd have to do a much deeper dive examining stats, looking at different break points, considering each chapter in turn, comparing different play styles, different priorities, and so on and so forth. And my suspicion is that if you did sit down and do all of this, the answer you'd end up with is "it depends". It isn't hard for me to imagine play styles and priorities where the extra stats would be better, even as they aren'tmy preference. And for me, that's indicative of good design. Meaningful choices with legitimate trade-offs and no definitive right answer are at the core of strategy and tactical games. That would do it, since I am British. And it probably doesn't help that I'm mostly (I think) discussing battalions with people speaking American English, so I'm trying to reconcile the more natural British English usage with what I'm actually encountering in actual conversation. That's interesting. Thanks for the information! I do still think that they could have done better with this one, but it is always worth taking the time to remember that translation is a difficult artform with a lot of competing factors. I know that my own personal preference in translation -- especially for something like this -- is to not care too much about the direct literal translation and instead getting something that reads well in the target language (and for the target culture). But I know that there are people who think otherwise, as is evident by the people who will scream "censorship!" whenever anything is changed in a video game localisation. I think that part of my problem is that "magic users" sounds to me like it ought to be lower tier than "magic corps". "Users" just sounds like a bunch of people who do a bit of magic sometimes, whereas a "corps" sounds like a professional military group. So, if they wanted to keep those two names, I'd have preferred that they were switched around. But I think I'd maybe have gone with something like "Empire Veteran Mages". Although that might give the impression that they are a higher tier than they actually are. Empire Elite Wyvern Co. and Alliance Master Archers are both B rank, after all, but I don't think that "veteran" reads as being as strong as "elite" or "master". I'll also note that "sorcery" is a term used in multiple battalions: the School of Sorcery Soldiers, Vestra Sorcery Engineers, and Ordelia Sorcery Co. So I don't think that there would have been a problem with using "sorcerers" in the name here. But yes. Translation is hard, for sure.

As I've mentioned before, I don't tend to recruit units that I'm not planning to use. And the native Black Eagles students do not get any battalions from paralogues in Part 1. Most of them have their paralogues in Part 2, with the lone exception, Dorothea, not getting a battalion from her paralogue. (Aside: I find this very odd about Dorothea. The only other students whose paralogues don't give a battalion are Claude and Hubert, both of whom get their own personal battalions auto assigned at the start of Part 2. Even among non-student, it's pretty rare. By my count, the only other characters who don't get a battalion from their paralogue are Catherine, Gilbert, Jeritza, and Byleth. I wonder if the original design intent was to have the Opera Co. Volunteers available as Dorothea's paralogue reward battalion, but they decided that Dance of the Goddess was too powerful to be giving out as early as Chapter 7? Regardless, I do wish that Dorothea got more from her paralogue than just a Goddess Ring.) Anyway, while it is probable that I will be recruiting at least some people with White Clouds paralogues, it isn't entirely guaranteed (except for Flayn), and there probably won't be many of them. That means that these battalions are seeing less competition than they would if we were playing as one of the other houses, which makes them relatively better than they would be on other routes. Empire Cavalary: 2/10. A D-rank battalion that arrives in Chapter 8 had better do something spectacular or unique. This does not, which means that it isn't good. Empire Armored Co: 6.5/10. On the other hand, this one does, in the form of Impregnable Wall. Though, I admit that this is hard for me to rate. Impregnable wall is a very strong gambit... but I find that I seldom actually use it. I don't know why. It's super good. I just... don't? Maybe it's a play style thing? So I'm left stuck between rating this based on how much use I personally get from it (where it would score lower) and how objectively good I think that it probably is (where it would score higher). My final score is an unsatisfying compromise, but I can't think of any better way to handle this. Empire Pegasus Co: 7.5/10. Another D rank battalion, but this one's selling point is that it's flying, which is automatically enough to catapult it out of the lower ranks and into usability. Unless you've either recruited Ingrid or managed to get up to A rank authority for Cichol Wyverns, this is probably the best flying battalion you have available in Part 1. And depending on which units you recruit and how many fliers you're running, it's not ridiculous to suggest that this might still be seeing use into endgame. Empire Snipers: 5/10. While I do largely agree with Dark Holy Elf's analysis, I think that I might be a little more likely to use this battalion than they are, given how I'm probably getting fewer paralogue battalions. It's still hard to get excited about what is essentially another copy of a battalion that we had two of 5 chapters ago. Empire Magic Users: 8/10. First off, I just want to say that the name on this is pretty awful. "Magic Users"? Really? That was the best you could come up with? Oh well. I won't hold it against them in my ranking. And this is really good. +5 Magic Attack and +5 Charm are both very competitive for that authority rank and the recruitment chapter, and the gambit is a great one. This is almost certainly seeing play -- and being very strong -- from the moment that it becomes available, and is another one that might conceivably last until end game. It depends on how many mages you're running, who you're recruiting, and the relative value weighting of gambits and stats, but I'm pretty sure that I have run this right up to the end of the game without it feeling out of place. Empire Pavise Co: 4/10. Like the Snipers but not as good. Yes, they have more prot, but they give up might, hit, and avoid in order to get it. And their gambit is one that we already have two copies of from the knights battalions from Chapter 3. Yeah, the niche of putting these onto an armour tank does technically exist, but no, I don't really believe in it. Empire Wyvern Co: 6.5/10. I'm finding it a little tricky to objectively grade these, just by virtue of them coming in at the same time as the Empire Pegasus Co. My initial gut reaction is to see that these require C authority but have overall worse stats and a worse gambit than a similar battalion that comesw available at the same time but only requires D authority, and to therefore think that this must be awful. But no, is isn't. It's still a flying battalion, there still aren't many alternatives, the stats are still OK, the gambit is still... well, OK, the gambit is pretty awful. But overall, this is a solid battalion, even if it is immediately overshadowed. (Another aside: Is anyone else having trouble deciding whether to refer to battalions in the singular or the plural? I find myself wanting to type "The Empire Snipers are a mediocre battalion" but also "Let's talk about the Empire Snipers. This battalion is mediocre." I think I'm switching between "it" and "they" when talking about battalions as well, and the inconsistency is irritating me.)

I'm curious, why did you choose Rolento? For me, he's one of the least memorable characters in the game. I'm not exactly a Final Fight super-fan, but I did play a ton of it in the arcades back in the day, and I still remember a lot of the characters. Not just the three playable characters, but the bosses and the generic enemies as well. But Rolento? I've no memory of him at all. Not even after I looked him up online. But there must be something about him that I'm missing, or you wouldn't have picked him.

Favourites: Radiant Dawn has enough of a tie back to the title of the previous game to feel connected but not so much as to feel tired, has ties into the plot of the story (Priestess of Dawn, etc.), and carries a clear and powerful concept. Echoes: Shadows of Valentia manages to both convey "hey, this is a remake" but also work as a stand-alone, given the multiple ways of interepeting "shadows". Least favourites: Gaiden. I don't know how this sounds to a Japanese speaker, but to an English speaker it's either "why didn't they translate the name?" or it's "why are they just calling it a side story and not giving it an actual name?". Thracia 776, mainly for the same reason as Dark Holy Elf, but I also dislike fantasy places named directly for real world places which makes it worse. Engage either makes me think that Picard is giving an order or that I can't get through to someone on the phone. Maybe it will grow on me over time, or maybe it won't.

Well, I think it wasn't until my fifth time through the game that I stopped making a point of running around the monastery and speaking to everyone every month, so I think it's fair to say that my tolerance (and in many ways even like) for the Monastery is also pretty high. But even so, I did one or two recon missions in an early playthrough, decided I didn't like them, and haven't done anyt since.

Oh boy. Essar Research Group: 0/10. Going to start this one with what I suspect might be a controversial take. So, first off, I'll just acknowledge that mechanically and statistically these are pretty great. In a hypothetical game where I had all battalions unlocked and available starting in chapter 2, I would definitely use these. However, this is not that hypothetical situation. And in reality, we have to do multiple online liason missions if we want to get these. And let me tell you, I am not doing multiple online liason missions. There are multiple different reasons why I play video games. Mostly I play to have fun. But sometimes I want to challenge myself, relax, or express myself creatively. Maybe I enjoy following a story, appreciating the graphics, or just generally seeing the game as art. The online liason missions do not offer me any of these experiences. Rather, I find them tedious, annoying, and a waste of my time. As such, I don't do them. As such, I have never got the Essar Research Group, probably will never get the Essar Research Group, and prior to this thread, I didn't even know that they existed. Since using this inherently requires an activity that detracts from the central point of a video game, I cannot give them anything other than 0/10. I would give the same score if they gave +100 to all stats and came with a gambit that combined Stride, Retribution, Resonant Flames, and Ashes and Dust all at once. For people who actually like the minigame, I can easily see how you would score this very highly. However, I don't like it which my score reflects. (For the record, if a battalion existed that was unlocked through tea parties or fishing, I would probably give it the same score.) Nuvelle Chamberlain Co: 6/10. For this and the next two, I will admit that I may have a degree of personal bias here, since I find the idea of sending maids and butlers into battle to be extremely silly. I've tried to score them as objectively as I can, but I will acknoweldge that some of the bias may have managed to sneak in. That said: Great stats, awful gambit. I think the main source of contention here will be on how to weigh those two factors. For me, this battalion will typically see a little bit of use when I first get it, but ends up getting swapped out before too long for something with a better gambit. And if that means I have to sacrifice a couple of points of attack then so be it. I find that having a gambit that I will actually ever use will make a difference to more battles than that extra attack will. Nuvelle Attendants Co: 6.5/10. Basically the exact same comments as the Chamberlains, except that we're now dealing with magic attack rather than physical. Which is the reason for the slightly incresed score. There just aren't as many other options that does what this does, which is more incentive to keep with it. Nuvelle Stewards Co: 5/10. I find it hard to get excited about battalions with hybrid attack stats. Because, ultimately, how many hybrid attackers am I running in a single game? Often none. Sometimes one. Maybe two, at a push. And for that matter, they also need to be grounded hybrid attackers, which means that it's even less likely that I'm running more than one other unit that might want this. And there are enough other better options for hybrid attackers (Leicester Dicers, Gloucester Knights, Edmund Troops, and Supreme Armored Co.) that I'm just not interested in these in the long term. And if I'm using only magical or only physical attacks, then these end up just having OK stats and a somewhat poor gambit. I might use these a little, but not for long. Seiros Brawlers: 1/10 and Seiros Armored Co: 1.5/10. I'm also on team "wait, when do we get these again?" which I think is pretty telling. We're a bunch of Fire Emblem nerds who are choosing to spend our free time discussing intricate nuances of this game that was released over three years ago. And even we don't remember these. My assumption is that we don't remember them because they appear at a time when they're completely irrelevant and we don't actually use them or even think twice about them. Of course I'm not buying mediocre E and D rank battalions in chapter 8, when most of my team have moved onto C or even B rank authority, and those stragglers who I do have left behind are using the fully leveled up battalions that I've been using since early game. That's so obvious that I wouldn't give it a second thought.

I would say that if you're thinking of early-promoting someone then it's probably worthwhile to throw some bexp at them instead/as well. The scaling for bexp cost to go a level is pretty aggressive. Giving a level to your unpromoted level 14 Edward will cost a quarter of the bexp that you'd need to promote someone from --/--/19 to --/--/20. There are also individual levels later on that will award more bexp in one go than the 7500 that you currently have, so there's very little point in trying to save it, unless you have some very specific use in mind.