Jotari
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Posts posted by Jotari
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Well it's only been two days since I redid the menus for promotion, but I'm glad to announce another two major developments. The first is Easy Mode. It now gives all playable units Paragon to increase exp gain. This is something I've been intending to do for a while, but I had to do it manually for each character recruitment. I think I covered everyone, but if you see anyone who doesn't have Paragon on easy mode, or who inexplicably has it on normal or hard mode, then please report it.
The second major change is some alterations to Chapter 3. There are now two gatekeeper npcs who will get a few hits in on the enemies before they're swiftly slaughtered. And the two now has four NPCs scattered about whom you can warn to go inside and gain 50exp to whatever character talked to them. The enemy levels have also been reduced slightly. Hopefully this will make the chapter feel more dynamic and interesting.
The third major change is the you can now revisit Port Warren. Marisha has been moved from the Salamander statue to here and it's also where you need to go after the route split to find Malice. It also lets you recruit Spartacus or Anna if you failed to recruit them earlier, and go at a certain time and you can recruit Rollo several chapters early too. If you visit after the route split a Dagon will be attacking the town and by defeating it you can get the powerful Dracoshield+. Finally, Caesar's sister Iulia is there for a bonus conversation that just exists for its own sake. Because, well, I made the portrait for Iulia for one very brief cutscene in the Mace route and thought she should have a bit more presence than that.
For anyone in the middle of a playthrough right now, you won't be able to visit Port Warren on a current save. You'll have to start the game again, or send your save file to me and I can individually modifiy it to open Warren access. Because of this I've labelled the most recent UPS file PyrathiWarlordsV1.1
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8 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:
@Jotari You have me curious, knowing of your seemingly endless enthusiasm for FE projects... may I ask what you need the map for?
And all the links are from the wiki.org site, for clarification.
It's very early days yet, in fact I'm not meant to be even working on it at all until I finish off my Masters. But, basically, with Pyrathi done, the next planned project is a Macedon prequel with Minerva as the protagonist and pacing reminiscent of a Mega Man game.
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29 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:
File:FESD Archanea.png - Fire Emblem Wiki Size of this preview: 800 × 598 pixels. Other resolution: 1,024 × 765 pixels.
And this one is a bigger version from the link on that page:(1,024 × 765 pixels, file size: 1.1 MB, MIME type: image/png)
Nice. Perfect I'd even say.
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26 minutes ago, lenticular said:
I'm entirely in agreement with everyone else saying that twists for the sake of twists are terrible and that there are no truly original stories. So I have to wonder if something was lost in translation here. Because, honestly, this kind of just makes him come across as a bit of a bozo. It just makes me assume that there is some sort of context or nuance that isn't coming across.
I was thinking about this some more, and realised that there is a pretty notable exception to this general trend: music. Sure, the absolute most basic and milquetoast taste in music is just to listen to whatever happens to be in the charts at that the time, but listening to decades old music is pretty common and unremarkable. If someone is really into 60s music or 80s music then that's not likely to raise eyebrows in the same way as someone who's really into 60s movies or 80s novels.
I wonder if this is just because of the relative time commitments. Watching a movie takes about 2 hours. Reading a novel takes maybe 5-10 hours. Listening to a song takes about 3 minutes. This means that most of us are going to be listening to a whole lot more songs than we are watching movies or reading novels, so maybe that's what encourages us to be a bit more diverse in our consumption?
This is true. Or, at least, it is more true than it would be for other forms of media. There is definitely a stereotype when it comes to music of old people not being able to relate to youths and being shocked when young people have never heard of a given band that was popular several decades ago. Not sure I explained that well, so I'll just post a Simpsons clip that encapsulates what I'm talking about.
Though, to counter my own point now, I think as time goes on "who" made a piece of music becomes quite irrelevant compared to the actual music itself. Which might play into that perception. An old person might be agahst that some youngesters don't know who the Beetles are, but if you play a few songs they will probably recognize the most iconic ones. For my own direct experience of that, I've asked some Japanese kids if they know who Queen is and virtually none of them do. But tap out "We Will Rick You" and they'll recognize it instantly.
So, uh what am I trying to say with all this. I... don't really know to be honest. Your time investment point is probably correct though and my final addition would be that as young people age and start making stuff like TV shows and movies, they often carry along the music of their youth with them and put them in soundtracks. Music is also so emblematic of a specific decade, at least for the 20th century, that it's often used to set the tone for a scene set in the recent past. It's easier and impactful for visual media to play a recognizeable 60s song than it is to show off a book or movie from the era to set the mood (though they do do that in occassion too).
26 minutes ago, lenticular said:Back to the main topic, I've also thought of another trend that I am weary of: endless sequels, prequels, midquels, remakes, demakes, remasters, reimaginings, spin-offs, adaptations, extended universes, cinematic universes, alternate universes, and so on. Which isn't to say that media franchises are inherently a bad thing. I mean, we're sitting here having this discussion on a fan site for a game series that has seen somewhere between 14 and 25 games, depending on how you count. Any individual new game or movie that's part of a bigger franchise isn't really the problem. Rather, the problem is the absence -- or at least the paucity -- of original stand-alone titles.
To defend our taste in fictional universes, Fire Emblem is much less a franchise than most franchise. Since it entirely changes it setting and cast every five years. Sure we have fifty something versions of ghost cameo Marth, but by and large each new Fire Emblem entry (or every second entry) is a new story and not a sequel or a reboot. It is a franchise in the technical sense, but compared to other franchises Fire Emblem functions more of a brand name than a real franchise.
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A small update, but one that took a tonne of time to implement.
I discovered the menu split patch and implemented it for class change. So you can just directly choose what you want instead of being prompted yes or no for a dozen options on loop. Much more professional looking. -
Depends how you want to play. If playing most optimally for Awakening then Chrom is a backpack who never fights by himself and Robin is magic focused (particularly Dark Magic) and the sole receiver of any exp. But that's one hell of a boring way to play the game. Awakening isn't the kind of game with any bad builds. It has good builds and it has curbstomp builds. You can build Robin anyway you wand independently of Chrom.
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33 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:
One of my favorite characters in the series, if not my favorite period, is Arran, from Archanea - specifically, his New Mystery of the Emblem inception. The concept of a Jeigan whose bad potential is justified not by age, but by a terminal illness, is quite interesting, and it makes him the one FE unit for whom death during the campaign can be argued as a fine ending to his character.
This is already pretty neat, but in New Mystery he gets a support chain where he discusses what it means to be a knight with Kris. He once served an unnamed lord somewhere in Archanea, and he believed absolute, blind loyalty to one's liege was the duty of a knight. Basically, he used to be a Camus. But one day, said lord ordered him to put down a rebellion. They were only peasants, starving after a bad harvest and making themselves heard to survive. Arran followed the order. Wracked with guilt, he wandered the world until he met Marth. Serving him, he discovered the true meaning of being a knight.
"A knight isn't a puppet that blindly follows orders. That is not loyalty. To fight for a cause I believe in, under a liege I believe in. That is what it means to be a knight."
Still one of my favorite lines in the series to this day. By the time you get his A support with Kris, he's likely already close to falling off. Him dying a hero's death shortly after this conversation is a truly compelling end to his character arc. Or, you can keep him until the end so he can get a glimpse of the peaceful world he helped created before he succumbs to his sickness. There is no cure and no way to save him, but however he dies, he dies happy and without regrets.
To add to this, while he's certainly not a minor character, I do like how Athos just dies at the end of the game. But he's still a playable character that you took to the end of the game, and thus he's still entitled to his own ending card, wherein all they can tell us is "yeah, he died. You were there, you saw it." Well I try to put an amusing spin on it, but really they do genuinely make it work. The whole "we won the final battle, but important ancillary guy died!" is a very common trope in video games in general, it's quite surprising Fire Emblem only did something like that once.
36 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:He once served an unnamed lord somewhere in Archanea
I wonder where. He does specify that he's an Altean Knight when Marth actually meets him Shadow Dragon. But if course Already is a good guy nation with no bad aristocratsTM. And he says another kingdom. If New Mystery was more interested in utilizing it's full cast Tellius style, it probably would have been Lang that ordered it and Arran could have a personal thing with him. Still, on the other hand, the world does feel bigger when it's not anyone you meet and just some guy that exists somewhere. Still, I'd like the country to be specified. I nominate Gra.
33 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:Beautifully tragic concept for a character that was greatly expanded upon in the remake. New Mystery supports are a bit hit or miss and there needed to be more Krisless supports, I won't deny it, but there are still some gems to be found there. As cool as the concept is, without the FE12 support he'd just be a guy that doesn't speak a word in the entire game.
People love to blame Kris for everything, but there was really never a chance of having a full support catalogue in a game with 70+ characters. That being said, I think everyone should have had at least one Kris Convo and one non Kris Convo at minimum.
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27 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:
To be really perfect, he needs the heterochromia.
10 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:And the best part is that the portrait is an edit of a vanilla FE7 portrait - Heath, to be specific. His colors were different but he has the same ridiculous two-colored hair. People bashed Alear like this had never been a thing before in the series lol
I'm fine with Alear's hair. It's the two pieces that cross like an x right over their forehead that drives me nuts. Like, it looks like those two strands are glued together. And they should be annoying as all hell to Alear themself for always brushing against the edge of their vision. Genuinely ruins the whole design for me.
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19 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:
I think the Kitsune map fucking over any horse based army is splendid.
That's kind of the issue, isn't it? Fliers have a built in weakness to bows. Armoured have an effective weakness to magic. But there's no weapon wide counter to horses. Horses just win. Even though pike walls were the famous counter to cavalry; certainly a lot more so than shooting down a freaking flying horse or using a flame thrower on someone in plate mail. But make horses weak to lances and you have an issue that it's just weird for the weapon triangle and probably nerfs cavalry too much. But if we had beast units just casually in the enemy ranks at the same ratio as bows then cavalry would have a pretty solid counter.
Or, yeah, just more ridersbanes on the enemy in general. Now that they've innovated that little exclamation mark bubble there's really no good reason not to kit the enemy out in them more if horses are dominating things. That being said, cavalry domination hasn't been too bad in the most recent releases.
19 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:Mountains should probably affect fliers as well... I ain´t heard of no gawdamn birb on Mt. Everest (but maybe I just don´t listen)
According to our lord and savior, Google, the highest flying bird is Ruppell's Vulture, which can reach heights of 11,000 meters. While Everest is 8,000 meters. So, yeah, birds above Everest are possible. Which is pretty freaking wild. Still I doubt Ruppell's Vulture could carry Ruppell up there, and without oxygen masks and a good parka, the riders are still going to feel some impacts of those heights.
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3 minutes ago, Revier said:
Tbh I kinda wonder what it is about the NES portraits that make them look so goofy. Theoretically they have the right overall shape, and not too bad shading. Perhaps it has to do with their chins being really large?
NES portraits are just wildly variable in quality.
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25 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:
Fire Emblem players are only expected to know basic addition and subtraction. And the real nerds may know some stats. Like the odds of a 20% true hit, 30% crit hitting and also killing Rutger. 6% any time that berserker is alive to swing at him.
The only thing I can say for certain, is that 30% of the time, Rutger crits every time.
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31 minutes ago, Integrity said:
what does 9 have to do with any of this i'm so cornfused
e: 3! is 6 and i completely fucked it up and posted 3^2. i am leaving my shame public.
I didn't know exclamation points were even used in mathematics.
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11 minutes ago, Integrity said:
that's the 3ds games, boss
I don't believe in the existence of the digit 3!....or I forgot to type it, which ever makes me seem less of a fool XD Hey, at least I voted for the correct set on the poll.
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1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:
To be more clear: in the original Japanese, their names are transliterations of the first twelve counting numbers in German. So Mus is アインス, or "Eins"; Bovis is ツヴァイ, or "Zwei"; and so on.
Ah, yes, I meant Japanese. Would be weird if in the German versions they were just unaltered One to Twelve.
Also re:Travant discourse. He wouldn't be pretty or female enough to have avid supporters.
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The elitist in me is raging and crying, but I think I have to say the 3DS games. Not necessarily for the portraits or battle animation, but just for the overall aesthetic of the visual design. A bit hard to put into words, but, I guess, like, the menu icons, palette and the maps as something to just look at. Mila Tree, Hoshidan cherry blossoms, SoV just being generally pretty. That sort of stuff.
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1 hour ago, BrightBow said:
Yes, the site only lists the UK names.
Interesting that they didn't simply keep the German number names for the English translation, though. Not like anyone complains about Frieren at the Funeral using simple German verbs as character names.
It says NOE Name and NOA Name.
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12 minutes ago, BrightBow said:
Shadow Dragon reversed that and used the numbers 1 to 10 in Japanese instead.
I suppose Ichi is not that bad of a name for a generic.
I'm looking at the Shadow a Dragon name chart now and I don't see that.
https://serenesforest.net/shadow-dragon/general/name-chart/
It seems they went Latin (or Greek, where ever decimal comes from, I think Latin, could google, won't google) there but was the more direct translation for number to number. At least in the US. The European translation gave the very creative interpretation of naming them all after Greek mountains...I think. But hey, that gives us Athos which is kind of fun. Also on these names, the Japanese one gave us the 12 months of the year in English, which both the American and Europeans adapted by using, at least from what I can see, completely random and unrelated names. But one of them is Agustus, which they put on the replacement unit with the Id for March in Japan, not August. It is funny to see how this complete throw away part of localization was handled by two different translation teams who knew they had free reign to change whatever they wanted because no one would care.
Anyway, on the original topic here, to sum up. Deadlords with German name first. German names, though not deadlords reused in DS replacement units. Awakening brings back Deadlords and German number names are localized as Latin Animal names.
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1 hour ago, ping said:
Seliph did not randomly hook up with Lana
Oh wow. The only time Seliph hasn't got hitched with Lana for me was when he hooked up with her substitute Muirne.
1 hour ago, ping said:...all three Loptyr dudes on the castles have had the same lines. Hm.
Honestly it gets to a point where you question why these guys have names and faces at all. Like, they have had generics guard castles in previous chapters. Chapter 6 comes to mind.
1 hour ago, ping said:Manfroy first - who is quite tanky even by the standards of the quite tanky Dark Bishop class. He has Pursuit, Adept, and Charm
He is such a charismatic and charming individual than Manfroy.
1 hour ago, ping said:I assume they're all named after scientific species names
In German they're named for the numbers 1-12. For Awakening's English localization they chose to make that less boring for anyone remotely familiar with German and called them by the scientific name for the Chinese Zodiac animals.
Edit: Now that I think about it it was probably Shadow Dragon's replacement units responsible for these names and not Awakening's reuse of the Dead Lords
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2 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:
being in range of 2 dracos from the center will
I accidentally made this quote completely as is on mobile, and how I'd love to figure out what I did so I can quote specific sections of long posts.
Anyway, on topic, linked AI is one of my most liked things about the DS games, but suffice to say, yes, this is an absolutely terrible example of it. In general though, it helps to make the enemy actually feel like they're more intelligent and require strategies st least marginally more complex than Fire Emblem's age old "bait in the outer most enemy and then run away". Which is way too much of the overall Fire Emblem series experience.
EDIT: oh wow, it's just been there as a pop up when you highlight, all this time. Quote section. No more tedious breaking up of quotes for me.
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4 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:
Alright, time to put in some effor-
Hey if you want to take it seriously and put effort into something that could be genuinely good, then that's welcome too.
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1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:
The "no holy blood" nations really get shafted, huh.
The ending does say the empire mostly left Verdane alone because "why even bother oppressing them?"
1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:I actually found a really funny way to trivialize Brian on my last playthrough... hm, but I won't give any unprompted advice. Best of luck dealing with his Helswath.
My go to Brian counter is to just buy Shannan on the castle and let the enemy feel the wrath of avoid bonuses. Then kill everything by canto retreating into the castle.
1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:As I once heard this nicknamed- "the Wall of Edda". Do ya think they went a little overboard with the "Have Res Or Stay Home!" messaging?
-Although, it is Edda, dukedom of the Holy Staff. Have to represent staffiness.
Seliph did just get that shiny new sword ensuring he has res
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1 hour ago, ping said:
Huh, that's weird. I could have sworn in my most recent playthrough I specifically noted how weird it was that Brian didn't appear in the chapter intro but but Radan did. Could this be variable based on pairings or something?
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15 hours ago, Uscari said:
1. Quality of Life
Oh yes. Absolutely, especially on the speed aspect. That being said, doesn't the Bargain options in the shop change fro Chapter to Chapter? I could have sworn they did (and honestly I think it's better game design if they do, as you need to weigh current finances against later finances in regards to actual need for the weapon and FOMO).
15 hours ago, Uscari said:2. Laguz Changes
Even ignoring obvious stuff like no 1-2 range, I still feel like they've heavily held back by not starting each chapter with a transformation gauge (which also annoys me from a lore perspective, come on guys, with the exception of a few Part 4 chapters, you know you're going into battle why aren't you ready to transform? It's like every Laguz is secretly Vaike and forgot to charge up in their down time). Por!Mordecai is actually probably the best non-royal laguz purely for his early game movement and smite utility.
15 hours ago, Uscari said:3. +1 range for Marksmen
Yeah, it's pretty great, especially with the Double Bow being the best offensive weapon in the game. Honestly Range+ could have just been their mastery skill. But making interesting and useful mastery skills versus flashy critical hits was never what they were aiming for.
Range+ skills do come back in Three Houses, and Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia has innate 1-3 range on all archers, and 1-5 range if they have a weapon.
15 hours ago, Uscari said:4. Ledges
Yes. Ledges good. And it's a shame Radiant Dawn is the only game to have them. You're right that they basically have no counter play. On retrospect, given that later games give magic attacks the ability to ignore terrain, mages being the counter play to ledges would work pretty well. Especially given mages are probably at their weakest overall in Radiant Dawn.
15 hours ago, Uscari said:6. 3D Visuals
Radiant Dawn was their first real attempt at a 3D game. I think Path of Radiance came out quite a bit later than they wanted. But yeah, even hardware aside, it's clear they had improved for Radiant Dawn. Neither visuals are enough to blow me away though. Fire Emblem has really sucked at cinematography for a long time now and it's one of the biggest bones I have to pick with the series (and, sadly, Radiant Dawn is probably the best they've ever been when it comes to cinematography...which is condemning with very faint praise).
14 hours ago, vanguard333 said:Path of Radiance is my favourite game in the franchise, and my favourite game of all time, but there are definitely areas where Radiant Dawn made improvements.
6. The 3D visuals were definitely an improvement. I don't think it has much to do with hardware, as the Wii was almost the same as the GameCube in terms of its power, but more a matter of Path of Radiance being the first 3D Fire Emblem game. Before it, they were all 2D games that relied on sprites. In fact, I think it might be the first game Intelligent Systems ever made that used 3D models; everything before then in their list of games used sprites as far as I can tell, with the possible exception of Cubivore; a game I never heard of until I saw it on Intelligent Systems' list of games.
7. I'm not sure that's a plus. I honestly really liked Path of Radiance's emphasis on enemy phase combat; with how much every FE game since has been entirely focused on the player-phase, Path of Radiance's emphasis on the enemy phase is something that I do miss.
One big improvement that I can think of is in the area of weapons. All three melee weapons having a "strong, but heavy" version and the existence of 1-2 range non-magical swords was definitely a big improvement over the only 1-2 range swords really only being useful in the hands of Mist and/or Elincia.
Another improvement would be that skills can be removed without being completely erased. One thing I didn't like in Path of Radiance was that deleting a skill meant it being completely erased; in Radiant Dawn, it instead becomes a skill scroll that can be given to another unit. I also like that skills that characters have by default don't cost skill points, meaning there's still incentive to have units keep the skills they already have.
I'm very sure the Paper Mario games used models. They were just, very, very spritey looking models. But they were 3D interacting with a 3D environment. But, yeah, that's why I prefaced my own comment with first "real" attempt at 3D.
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To get even more meta and deconstructive with it, what even is a main story? For example, in the Third Doctor run of Doctor Who, the actor, Jon Pertwee (also know as the best Doctor, don't @ me on that unless it's unconditional praise) insisted on several scenes at the start of the story where the Doctor is teaching his partner something. He (the actor) called them "Moments of Charm". Said scenes almost never come back for the "main plot" being the monster of the week. And if they did then it'd feel a bit choreographed, like James Bond getting the exact gadgets he needs. Which isn't bad, just different. But the point is, what is the "main story" of Doctor Who? Because while these Moments of Charm don't contribute to the story of the then monster of the week episode, they do contribute to the over all character arc of the Doctor and the relationships he's building with humans while exiled on Earth. So what is the main story? The main episode (or rather series of episodes as classic Doctor Who serials was always several episodes long before a new story started) or the overall series long story of the protagonist? This might seem like a niche example but it's also kind of not. Every story of sufficient length is going to be broken up chapters, maybe even whole books. Even individual scenes are going to have their own flow and intention. Like, if I write a paragraph about the weather, it is not contributing to the main story (unless the story is about metrology or something), but it is contributing to that individual scene to set the tone and possibly invoking emotion. It's making that scene work and that scene should be making other scenes work in tandem. And we can argue about what those collection of scenes mean for a main plot (is Shadows of Valentia about killing gods and man standing up for themselves or is it about finding a balance between hedonism and tough love, or is it saying religion sucks. All of those? None of those because they contradict? For it's failings at least there's a discussion and different perspective and interpretations to be had), but what's ultimately important is if the individual scenes and moments are engaging. I don't think I've ever walked away from a story saying "man I hated every individual scene of that but the overall work really spoke to me"*. At best I'd say "I got what they were going for but the execution fell flat." On the other hand I have definitely walked away from something saying "that was bad overall, but that one moment was really great." One of my favorite writers, Kurt Vonnegut, lacks what you could easily identify as a Main Plot in most of his books. He usually just has some interesting characters with a themeactially interesting scenario. And in one book, his most famous, Slaughterhouse V, he has an alien character describe their alien literature by saying
"There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time."
Which not only ties into the stories own themes of the story's approach to time but perfectly describes how the book is structured.
so tl;Dr I fully agree every scene has to have a reason and purpose, but I reject the notion that a story has to have a main plot, or that a main plot is even something necessarily important.
*Okay I can think of one work where I walked away saying individually nothing worked but I liked the overall product, and that's the first Devil May Cry game which thought had a lot of issues but managed to come together into something greater than the sum of its parts. Though that's almost entirely gameplay related and not narrative as it barely even has a story.