lenticular

Don't be afraid to just stick with the default/obvious class progressions. While you can put anyone into (almost) any class, some are pushed more heavily by the game, and those default options are all going to be fine. If a character starts out wielding a lance and has skill with lances and they say "hey, you should train me in lances and riding", then turning them into a paladin will always be a decent choice. If you just follow the path of least resistance like this then the builds that you end up with mostly aren't going to be completely optimal, but they'll certainly be good enough, especially for hard difficulty. You can start considering how to optimise builds or trying weird offbeat builds once you have a better grasp of the game's mechanics.

You know what? Sure. I've never actually played Fates. I skipped it first time around, partly because I don't get on well with the 3DS as a system and partly because of all of the terrible things I've heard about it's story, but I've been thinking about picking it up for a little while now, and this sentence was what pushed me over the edge to pick it up on eshop (which is a usability nightmare these days, apparently). So. Um. Yay. Have fun with your play through, which I probably won't be reading since I apparently have a game to play instead. (Not that you'll notice the difference given how rarely I comment.)

I forget the exact wording, but isn't it also said that when Monica went missing, everyone just assumed that she'd run away or something like that? It's somewhat amusing to imagine TWSITD kidnapping a student so they can replace her with a mole before she's rescued, only to realise that there won't be a rescue because nobody at the monastery actually gives a damn. As for the crest stones at the holy tomb, that's even further complicated by the ambiguity over how many of the Flame Emperor's actions were taken independently and how many were done in collaboration with TWSITD. I guess that it pretty much has to go nowhere as a plot point, because otherwise the game would have to account for two possible scenarios. You can't have the game say "they've done horrible things with those crest stones they stole" or "good job we stopped them stealing all the crest stones" without taking into account which actually happened in the game.

Maybe this is an example of giving the writing more credit than it deserves, but it makes sense to me at least.

What you're asking for here isn't just that other people like Flayn -- which plenty of people do, but that they like her in the same way that you like her, that they want to engage in the same activities that you do. For instance, I like Flayn a lot. In the "top ten characters" thread here last August, I ranked her as my fifth favourite character in the game. And considering how much I love the characters of this game, that's saying quite a bit. But, that said, I have zero interest in fanart of Flayn in a wedding dress kissing Byleth for a number of reasons. I'm largely indifferent to fanart, Byleth is my least favourite character in Three Houses, and the whole white wedding imagery is entirely too heteronormative for my tastes. And, honestly, given how young she is, I'm really not interested in shipping Flayn at all, personally. Essentially you're asking for people who like Flayn AND like Byleth AND are interested in shipping Flayn AND ship Byleth and Flayn together AND specifically ship male Byleth and Flayn together AND like fanart AND specifically like wedding fanart AND like that particular art style... And so on and so forth. Is it reasonable to want for other people to like exactly the same things that you do? Sure. But is it reasonable to expect this? Not even remotely. And making excuses about how people would like exactly the same things that you like if only it weren't for fish memes isn't helping anyone. If you are feeling fandom isolation and want to better connect with people then you're going to have to make compromises and try to find common ground with people who like only some of the things that you like. Which is what literally everyone in fandom has to do.

Even if all this is true... so what? How is it harming or negatively impacting you or anyone else? None of this has any bearing on your ability to play the game and enjoy Flayn's support conversations, nor on your ability to commision fanart, read fanfiction, or anything else. Maybe, at a push, jokes about her might slightly decrease the number of fanworks or online discussions about her, but really, if someone cares so little about the character that they see her purely as a joke, were they going to be creating high quality fanworks to begin with? I'm not seeing what your actual problem here is.

Shadow Dragon (DS), for being the only game in the series that has ever tempted me to play ironman style. I generally like to play games somewhat close to the developer intended way, and Shadow Dragon really beats you over the head with "hey, you really should be ironmanning this". I don't doubt it'd need even more attention to ironman Radiant Dawn or Three Houses (maddening), for example, but since they both include features that work against ironaman (unlimitted battle saves and divine pulse respectively), I've never played them that way. In terms of story, I'd agree with Three Houses. It's the only game in the series that's inspired me to research its mythological and literary inspirations.

Continue to innovate. Don't be afraid to make changes even if they'll be divisive. Make the game that they're excited to make, even if it means killing some sacred cows. If they're excited to push even further into RPG and lifesim territory and completely remove permadeath, they should. If they want to completely ditch all the RPG trappings and just make a pure turn based tactics game with a very simple story, then they should do that instead. I want to play something that the dev team truly believes in and not "here's a copy of Three Houses because that game sold well". Don't over-reach. With Three Houses, they bit off more than they could chew, had to push back release multiple times, and still ended up releasing a game that felt unfinished in places. Being ambitious is good, but it needs to be realistic ambition. Don't over-promise. This is related to the last one. If they don't have anything to show to the public then they shouldn't show anything. If they aren't sure when a release date will be then they shouldn't announce one. I'd much rather wait to be given some meaningful information than be drip-fed scraps. And if that means we don't hear anything at all in 2021, then so be it.

I really like the design of gauntlets because of how different they feel to all the other weapon types. There really isn't a whole lot of difference between lances and axes, for instance, but gauntlets are very much their own thing. I'm hoping that in the future we might see similar levels of differentiation between the main three melee weapon types, especially if the weapon triangle stays gone. Specifically, gauntlets are great on player phase but mediocre to bad on enemy phase. Without the brave effect, and with their low might, they generally aren't going to be doing all that much damage on enemy phase and they also lack any 1-2 range options (combat arts excepted) which also makes it much harder to use them for EP builds. Given that Three Houses tends to be more focused on Player Phase than Enemy Phase, that leaves gauntlets in a really good place in terms of power level, but means they do have enough of a drawback to stop them from feeling truly overpowered.

My shortest play through was 98 hours (CF, normal classic, NG); my longest was 203 (VW, maddening classic, NG+). I am, as is apparent, a very slow player. I play with animations on, watch all supports, speak to everyone every month in the monastery, etc. I also tend to treat pretty much every map as if it's a rout map, spend way too long agonising over completely inconsequential decisions, min-max the monastery sessions to try to see as many supports as I can, etc. Basically, I do pretty much anything that comes to mind when you think of palying slowly. I don't do broken-weapon grinding or infinite-auxillary-battle grinding, and I don't turtle when I can help it, but otherwise, I'm all aboard the slow train. I also frequently do other things while I'm playing or get distracted and leave the game running unattended, which also increases the reported play time.

How does that work out in practice? Because to me, it sounds terrible. It reminds me of the gaiden chapters from DS Shadow Dragon, and that's never a good thing. I'm not sure I can think of a single game that has done "reward for failure" in a way that I've really liked.

I much prefer the short-term resource management of per-battle limits over the long-term resource management of per-game limits. If you give me a meteor tome or a warp staff and tell me that I get 5 uses for the whole game then I will probably end up never using them. Or rather, I'll get to the last chapter or two, realise I've never used them, and then spam them for very marginal gain. For me, there are two main problems with per-game limits. The first is that -- asuming a first-time play through without spoilers -- a player has no way of knowing when the rare magics are best put to use so is almost always going to use them at the wrong time. Depending on the person, that may mean they'll use them too soon and then find a better opportunity later or it may mean that they'll keep on saving them for a better use in the future which will end up never coming. And sure, some people will end up using them at the perfect optimal times, but that's more by luck then judgement. Resource management only really works when you have a reasonable idea of what sort of challenges you're going to face in the future. This is why I like limited uses per map; I can actually see the full map at once and so I can actually make informed decisions about the best spot to use my resources. Having limited uses per game can be fun and interesting on second and subsequent runs through the game, especially on LTC runs or other challenge runs that focus on optimisation. In those cases, trying to figure out the perfect place to use a rare item to get the most out of it is great. I just don't think that should be a priority when it comes to design decisions. It's something of a person preference thing, but I'd rather have a game that was great on the first time through than one that has better replayability. The other problem I have is that per-game limits restrict the possibilities for map design. Every map in Fire Emblem has to be designed under the assumption that the player won't have access to meteor, warp, fortify, etc. because many players won't. If they created a system where the player was guaranteed to have exactly one use of warp in a given map then that opens up all sorts of interesting new possibilities that they could design around. This is more wishful thinking on my part than anything else, since I don't think this is something that IS have ever really done, but it is a road I'd like to see them take in the future.

All church units: Give them some appropriate class masteries when they join. It would make sense in storyline for Hanneman to have already mastered being a mage, for instance. This would stop them from being in a hole to begin with and would mean you wouldn't have to spend time with them in lower tier classes to back fill the masteries they should already have. The one church unit I wouldn't do this with is Cyril since it wouldn't make storyline sense. Instead, I'd fold his existing personal into his base growth rate, and give him a new personal that increases his class xp gain. Manuela: A lot of what I'd like to do with Manuela would take bigger changes, but if we're looking only at small character tweaks, I think there are two viable routes. One would be to get rid of her weakness in reason and make her viable as a Gremory or possibly even a Mortal Savant. My other idea would be to turn her into a dedicated magic weapon attacker. For stats, nerf her strength but increase her magic. Maybe something like 7+30 strength and 10+40 magic? Then also give her a strength in lances and the ability to learn Frozen Lance. She might be encroaching a bit too much on Ingrid's niche at that point, though, so maybe give Ingrid a small strength buff to compensate. Flayn: Ditch Heal and Nosferatu and give her Recover at D and Seraphim at D+ instead. She is literally the patron saint of white magic, so if anyone gets to break the mold and not follow the unwritten rule of Heal and Nosferatu it should be her. I think this gives her a really compelling faith list which would be a good incentive to use her, but without physic she isn't just strictly better than all other healers. Ashe: Get rid of his personal and replace it with a new one that gives him crit +10. I really like this idea. Nerfing Thyrsus in general is also a good balance change, and having +2 range be unique to Lorenz would really give him a cool niche. If you want to keep one authority bae per house, then maybe Linhardt? It would make perfect sense from a story/lore perspective, since Linhardt has zero interest in commanding others, and it wouldn't hurt him too much in terms of gameplay since he has such a narrow focus and so can afford to put some extra time into training authority.

I will generally avoid buying from game companies in two circumstances: 1. If I don't trust that company not to screw me over. For instance, Activision has developed a habit of launching games without microtransactions, then adding them in later. I do not buy or play any games that have microtransactions. As such, I will not buy any games from Activision, even if they initially look like something I would like to play. I do not trust them not to add microtransactions later. 2. If there are two games that I am equally excited for and I only have the time/budget for one of them, then I will buy from the company which I find less morally objectionable. Beyond that, everything is a case-by-case basis.

My take on this is that Fire Emblem is at its best when it isn't even trying to make bosses a thing. It's predominantly a game of armies versus armies, and trying to squeeze the square peg of a boss fight into the round hole that is the series' core mechanics has never worked for me. It's possible to make games where a 12 vs 1 battle is fun and compelling, but that isn't what FE mechanics are designed for and it isn't what they're good at. For me, the ideal boss fight is no boss fight at all, so by that metric, I'd consider Three Houses to be one of the worst games in the series for boss fights since it actually devotes more time to them. The final boss of Cindered Shadows is my single least favourite map in the game by a long way, and may even be my least favourite map in the series. I found it way too long and tedious without being at all dangerous or challenging or ever making me think there was any chance I would fail. The less we get of that sort of thing, the happier I will be.

A couple of minor self-imposed rules that I typically run for myself: No dismounting. Flying units are already extremely powerful and I don't like being able to easily negate their biggest weakness. Everyone I use must end up in a different class. Obviously, it isn't possible to have everyone in the same class right from the start, since there aren't many beginner classes, but there are more than enough advanced/master classes to go around. This is to stop myself from leaning too heavily on the most powerful classes, and force myself to try to make the most of some of the weaker ones. This is especially the case since I always train up at least 15 people (12 deployments and three adjutants).

Given that they managed to make combat rabbits a thing, I think it's fair to assume that pretty much any imaginable animal is on the table. I think I'd like to see peacocks as a support unit with equivalents to dance and rally and some sort of healing; lemurs as a speedy unit with extra combat and movement bonuses in forest tiles; and as a tank unit, either mammoths or triceratops because why the hell not?

Yeah, my memory is fuzzy. Honestly, I'm lucky if I can remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, so it's entirely likely I'm conflating memories of different games here. I do remember it definitely being a problem at some point, but maybe that wasn't in Shadow Dragon, since that had way fewer mechanics so less need to look up additional details. Yep. It really makes me appreciate the Switch though. Having all the series that Nintendo shunted off onto handhelds for a while finally be back on home console is very welcome. I wonder if difficulty level has anything to do with that. I think that I played through Shadow Dragon on Normal, because I'm not normally an ironman player but wanted to make an exception for Shadow Dragon given how much it's pushed there, and was wary of over-taxing myself. I probably would have been better served by a harder difficulty level, though, that would have kept me more engaged. I definitely played at something below H3, because there is absolutely no way I'd have sat through the early-game boss nonsense. I'd assume that the higher the difficulty level, the longer it takes to clear each level, whereas the time doing errands with Marth probably stays fairly constant. And as I read back what I wrote, I realise it also ties into what you were saying about the existence of casual mode. Casual mode isn't at all appealing to me, but I'm generally a reset-when-anyone-dies sort of player, and I kinda did exactly what you were talking about by being more scared of permadeath than I actually should have been and making the game worse for myself as a result. It's not the same as people who play on casual and complete every level trivially by throwing bodies at it, but I do think it's related. So my wish for Fire Emblem difficulty is this: it should always be possible to change between difficulty levels in the middle of a run. I'm sure it would introduce a few weirdnesses here and there, but I doubt it would be anything too serious. I definitly think it would be worth it, though. I'd be more eager to try harder difficulties if I didn't fear being locked into something too hard and having to restart halfway through.

For usability: a big part of my problem with the DS/3DS games is simply that they're on handheld devices, and I don't really care for handheld gaming. I've always found that the place I need to hold a handheld device in order to comfortably control it isn't the same as where I need it to be able to comfortably see it. So, being exclusively on handhelds isn't a good start. (And the DS was the first Nintendo handheld without the option to play on a home console, since there was no equivalent to the Super Gameboy or Gameboy Player, and yes, I did play Sacred Stones on the GameCube.) Being on handheld alone would make me a little grumpy, but I wouldn't mark a game down too heavily for it, but the FE games also committed the DS cardinal sin of requiring frequent switching between button controls and touch screen controls. I'm sure that this isn't universal, but I have a few RSI issues and having to frequently switch controls like that absolutely wrecks my hand and arm if I'm not careful. For pacing, there's two parts: why I like Three Houses and why I dislike Shadow Dragon. I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent about Three Houses before you actually get to that point, but the short version is that as well as playing strategy and tactics games, I also play walking sims, life sims, and visual novels, so all the parts that you -- and many other people -- view as filler, I think of as extra gameplay. For me, there was no downtime between gameplay segments, there was simply shifts in the style of gameplay between different genres that I enjoy. Shadow Dragon, on the other hand, I had some real issues with largely related to the size of the maps, and how Marth felt overloaded. He's the only unit who can visit villages, the only unit who can seize, and one of only three units who can open chests without a key. Since he's a forced deploy and a game over if he dies, he also needs to see a decent amount of combat so he doesn't fall behind. Given that he can't reclass, he's also always going to be lagging behind high move characters like paladins or dracoknights. Combine all of this together, and I found myself way too often in positions where I had essentially beaten the level, but then spent a good while longer tediously ferrying Marth from one side of the huge map to another having him stop off at every side-objective along the way. And to make matters worse, given that a lot of reinforcements carry on spawning pretty much indefinitely, which meant that the process often was just about threatening enough to require concentration but nowhere near threatening enough to be challenging or interesting. I found it very tedious, and it really made the game feel like it dragged for me. (In the game's defence, I've only played it once and did it ironman, and I managed to get Julian killed which left my options for chests as either Marth or a Rickard so underleveled that he'd die to a strong breeze. This probably contributed to my problem as it meant I had to do even more stuff with Marth than I otherwise would have, so that's somewhat on me. But given how strongly the game pushes ironman, and given that they explicitly decided not to make thieves replaceable via reclassing, I think that a lot of it can be blamed on the game. It was still a problem for me even before I lost Julian, with that only exacerbating it.) Maybe characters could be split off from writing into a ranking of their own? How much I like the characters tends to be a big influence on how much I like FE games as a whole. This could include the character writing, but also character design, art and animations, cool factor, distinctiveness, how well their in-game performance matches their design and writing, etc. Basically, how much the characters make you excited to use them.

You know, one of the things that I most enjoy about this playlog is how completely differently you view the series to how I do, and nowhere is that more readily apparent than when you do the ratings. Just as a for instance that I know you would vehemently disagree with, I considered the pacing in Shadow Dragon to be worse than the pacing in Three Houses, and I consider the DS/3DS era to be the series' nadir of horrible usability (I've never played any of the Japan-only titles, mind, and would probably change my mind if I played SDatBoL). And if that isn't proof that we think about Fire Emblem radically differently, I don't know what is. But I really like reading these precisely because of how different we are, and because even when I disagree with you, I can always understand where you're coming from. I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to speak up and show appreciation, since I am a regular reader but fairly infrequent commenter.

Her spell list is the worst in the game among characters who want to be in magic classes. It's worse than a lot of characters who generally shouldn't be going anywhere near magic classes like Bernadetta and Shamir. It's as if someone decided to try to make a hybrid of Linhardt and Hubert, but accidentally took Linhardt's reason list and Hubert's faith list rather than the other way around (the good version of this had to wait until DLC). For stats, she has mag and dex that are both good but not amazing, and pretty much everything else lies somewhere between average and bad. Having the combination of rally strength and rally speed is definitely nice, but is also easy to overstate. It's definitely pretty common for that rally to make the difference between killing a unit and not. However, it does use to units to do so, and a lot of the time it's equally as effective to have one unit chip with a bow or magic, and then the second unit get the kill. Chipping first also gives experience to both units, whereas rallying gets no experience, meaning that a dedicated rallybot will quickly be left behind. There are times when rallying is better than any other option, but I find them fairly rare. Even if you aren't planning on rallying at all, having a boon in authority is always a plus, though. I admit that I've never used Crusher, but I'm also hard-pressed to see why I'd want to. Especially since we're assuming strictly no grinding of any form, I'm going to assume thav umbral steel is fairly plentiful but not infinite. Even if it is possible to make Dust into a delete button, it has the same resource cost per use as Atrocity, or as a Swift Strikes or Frozen Lance with the Lance of Ruin. These seem comparably hard hitting, morre accurate, and requiring a lot less build set-up, which makes Dust not seem worth it. And if you're using Crusher without Dust, it's like a Bolt Axe+ except you give up on 1-3 range for only 4 extra might? That doesn't sound remotely worth it. Maybe I'd change my mind if I actually tried it, but for now, Crusher seems to be a "strictly for fun" sort of option. Finally, I think it's worth mentioning her +might linked attacks with Mercedes and Gilbert. These are nice to have but not as impactful as they could be. Mercedes is generally going to be in the backlines and Gilbert doesn't show up until part 2, which makes both of them fairly weak for this purpose. Still better to have them than not, but not great. Overall, I find Annette to be probably the weakest mage in the game, and don't find her other niches impressive enough to compensate for this, so I give her 4/10.

On the plus side, Mercedes is the best dedicated healer in the game. On the minus side, dedicated healer is not a role that I value. If you try to build someone whose only role is to heal then they end up sitting around like a lemon on turns when you don't have anyone damaged. Which is less than ideal. Now, this is something of a playstyle thing; I know some people are happy to say that if they have a turn where their healer is idle then that means they're doing well so can afford to have a wasted turn and I can't say that they're wrong. For me, though, I hate having to do that, so I mostly like to go for characters and builds that can heal when needed and do other stuff when not. Happily for Mercedes, her offense is OK. Bolganone at C and Ragnarok at A and a magic stat of 10+50 isn't going to win any prizes, but it is serviceable chip damage at the least. Her crest is largely irrelevant given how rarely she's going to be running out of spell uses anyway, and she's not likely to be taking enough hits for the crest effects of the Rafail Gem to matter. Magic Bow Sniper is absolutely a legit build once you get to it, but it takes too long to come online to count for much. It's possible as a pivot for Mercedes if you start her off as a healer but want to move away from that role as you recruit more units and grab more versatile builds, but probably not recommended. Overall, I give her 5.5/10.

I doubt they'll do more. If they were intending a series of these, it would be especially weird for them to do the limited time only thing. That they are doing that makes it seem that this is a one-off that they're doing for the anniversary only. Maybe they'd change their mind if this ends up being particularly successful for them, but I don't think it will be. I don't see there being all that much appetite for this.

Got to say that this is hard for me to get excited about. While there are a few exceptions, most NES games really don't hold up all that well, and nothing that I've heard about FE:SDatBoL particularly makes me believe this is an exception. Maybe I'd be more excited if the DS remake wasn't a thing and I hadn't already played that, but it is and I have. "Now you get to play the version with NES graphics and 1990's idea of game balance" isn't a draw. I mean, I'm happy for the people who are going to be into this, but it does nothing for me personally.

I am very tempted to give him an even 7.78 to mirror what Ferdinand ended up with, since they are extremely similar units, but I will resist. First, to get it out of the way, I don't think his magic abilities factor into his final rating. It's certainly a viable path for him, especially on hard/normal, and it makes him a more interesting as a unit, but it's nowhere near optimal. I can imagine a few cases where lightning axe might be the best option against an enemy with high def and low res, but unless you're compromising his overall performance by taking him down magic class paths for things like fiendish blow, he lacks the mag or res numbers for it to be particularly impressive. Considered as a purely physical unit, his bases and growth are decent across the board without having anything that really stands out as amazing. His skill proficiencies are also largely decent. Weakness in bows is never good, but isn't too big a deal, and strength in axes, lances, and riding are very nice. He has a natural path into paladin and a relatively easy time getting into the wyvern classes, since he is neutral in flying. His standout combat art is Swift Strikes which is very strong. I don't consider it the be all and end all that some people do, since there are plenty of other ways to achieve similar effects, but it is undeniably very good. He also has the potential to pick up extra damage from his personal, and from his special bonds with Felix and Ingrid, neither of which should be underrated. At best, this can give him +8 damage, which is huge, but even more modestly, consider the situation where he's standing next to Ingrid, she's wielding a ranged weapon, and they have a B support. He then deals an extra 4 damage and takes 2 less, which is not to be sneezed at. His personal also pairs up really well with Hilda's and Leonie's personals if you recruit him to the Golden Deer, which is particularly easy to do as female Byleth. Overall, he's very solid but doesn't have anything to push him over the top into true greatness. I can't decide between a 6.5 and a 7 and since I don't want to descend into the madness of finer gradations, I'll use personal bias against his philandering ways to mark him down to a final score of 6.5/10.