Samz707

I guess another one I have is that I really only like "Adventure to Shadow" Sonic. Early Sonic feels like fighting an incredibly awful camera the entire time while what I played of the boost gameplay in Generations was really boring. (I then promptly got either FOV or motion sickness from the camera in the 2D sections and never played it again.) I also feel that SA2 was mostly a stepback from SA1, the story with Shadow was cool but alot of the gameplay changes or new gimmicks are half-functional as best.

NGL the fact Aliens dont get a free turn when you spot them is a BIG part of why I prefer old Xcom compared to new. The fact everything is massively simplified doesn't help.

For ones I'd recommend: Jagged Alliance is a fun action-points SRPG with fixed wacky characters, it's kinda like classic X-com with the mechanics but somewhat more forgiving and less randomness, they're actually kinda like Gaiden where they're all set on a series of battle maps on a island/banana republic that are linked together, just in a non-linear open fashion this time. Silent Storm is basically lite-steampunk (Mech suits though they take a very long time to appear) Jagged Alliance clone, it's 3D with full environmental destruction , (You can kill enemies by shooting through wooden walls/floors with machine guns and explosives/enough gunfire can blow holes in floors/walls for soldiers to climb/crawl through.) it's mostly mission-based but you can play random battles to grind. Not finished it yet but Fallout Tactics seems decent. Gorky 17 is basically "Resident Evil meets Vandal Hearts" (the devs were open about Vandal Hearts being an inspiration), it has no permadeath but has a bit of a horror vibe. Men of War is very different from Fire Emblem but is a fun WW2 series of rts games, it's focused on tactics and has the gimmick of being an RTS where you can directly control units like a third person shooter as well as all units having inventories to manage. (With Theatre of War seeming like a similar game with permadeath but not played much of it.) 9th Company: Roots of Terror is a kind of fun perma-death version of Men of War with some of the complexity removed set in the Soviet-Afghan war but is pretty buggy, only recommend if you're willing to put up with jank and maybe get it on sale as it's super cheap.

It would nowhere be enough but if I had to make *one* change to Fates. Just have Conquest Corrin be evil and outright kill every foe in the game.

STALKER Clear Sky. I have an unfinished run so I've been resuming it as I'm hyped for the Switch ports.

Devil May Cry 3 is worse than 2. It keeps alot of the same flaws of 2 but with a much higher difficulty making every bit of unfair damage, wonky controls or uncooperative camera moments far more frustrating than 2 where it least it generally wasn't bad enough to force you to replay sections over and over again. It also has moments like the level where you're forced to fight all the bosses again (unless you know the not-at-all hinted at path of minimum bosses!) that would have been utter hell with the American's changed orb system. (where you need consumable orbs to use checkpoints) that far surpass anything from DMC2 in terms of being terrible. I still think 2 is mediocre but 3 is just outright obnoxious and I am frankly baffled people love it so much yet dunk on 2 so hard when they feel like the same game in many ways. (Especially since I've been called bad at the game for not using exploits to "fix" my issues with it, which isn't the dunk they think it is if you freely admit to constantly using and considering using exploits like how you can cancel specific animations with certain actions "Basic gameplay".) Over the shoulder camera is obnoxious and the "PS2 and previous" main "style" of third person with "Neutral or slightly to the right position directly above the player's head" is a far superior camera system, bonus points for the for some reason mostly dead ability of third person games to still switch to a first person POV like in SOCOM or even Driv3r of all games which was perfect.

Any sort of proper squad system for a real-time game. Even something as relatively simple as how it is in Hopes is a big way to get me interested. (Or as complex as say, ARMA or Rainbow Six.)

Three Houses: Let Edelgard storm Agartha as an "Epilogue" after CF. Replace usable broken weapons with every character having permanent access to unarmed combat as long as they aren't mounted. Give Bernadetta a brawling boon.

I managed to find one of the secret shops in FE8 without a guide. That's really it. I guess also the hidden dialogue if Matthew is dead in FE7 in *that* scene with Leila but that's more due to bad play then anything clever on my end.

Gameplay-wise, probably. Story-wise is either Chrom or Corrin depending if Corrin being an avatar disqualifies them or not for me personally.

Fallout 2 Very close to just dropping the game. The combat is made worse than the first game in pretty much every way and there's more of it, my entire playthrough has felt crippled since I didn't build a character with small guns tagged (Still got the skill to 100) and I don't want to put another 50 hours into another character. The random encounters are frequently borderline if not literally unwinnable due to clearly not being play-tested and I've died/nearly died several times when my AI companions would just skip turns in combat and not actually help me or do dumb stuff like unequipping their weapon to just punch enemies. Sure it's got lots of cool stuff you can do outside of combat but I've died well over 40 times at this point and I'm just sick of it, I honestly would consider this the worst game in the series at this point.

Been returning to finally finish Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land. A pretty cool 2012 IOS strategy game that got ported to Android and PC, sadly it was delisted (with some of the developers going on to make Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics. Not played Achtung! yet (as it honestly looks like they downgraded the game, such as only 4 party members instead of 8 but I'm really enjoying Wasted Land.

I agree with Roy being good. (and FE7 arguably makes him more interesting with the Ninian situation.) I think FE is in a weird case of there not really being any interesting (as far as I'm concerned) crossovers outside of occasionally the dialogue in FEH yet there's tons of terrible crossover stuff. That said I'd probably not really be into any more crossover stuff (outside maybe if they do a Valentia/Archanea crossover thing) since they'd almost certainly include characters I can't stand (even in FEH I ignore the main story completely and skip the story of most events.) since I really hate some of the main characters so they'd likely be included and either A: make up a decent chunk of the writing or B: Have me be forced to use them.

Thankfully I don't suffer from that, I just find it annoying. The less amount of enemy skills and skills in general/larger icons in SOV make it not an issue for me but 3H actually letting me use buttons is very much something I appreciated. (and as I said, I'd probably have just used buttons in SOV anyway if it let me.)

I don't find FE skills generally have memorable icons. Also I said, and you can boot up SOV to confirm this, SOV A: moves icons to a more natural to press position and B: has the icons be much larger. Even then I said I would prefer buttons even in SOV, the game where I consider the touchscreen to finally not be a source of frustration when I'm just trying to get a map over with. I find it finicky (at least with no stylus) and honestly prefer the 3H menus that people criticize so much for checking skills since I'm not constantly moving my hands on/off buttons to use a touch screen.

As far as I'm aware, you can only check enemy skills in 3DS era by tapping on the skill icons.

I've not played the DS games but even in Echoes I kinda wish I could just use buttons instead of a touch screen. Granted, the first two 3DS games having way too tiny icons in awkward sections of the touch screen are fixed in SOV by both moving the icons and making them larger but I'd still prefer actually being able to use buttons to check things rather than tapping icons. It always felt finicky and gimmicky to me.

I love Rescue carrying units in the GBA games.

NGL I still wish they had it be a feature. Being able to summon a neutral monster that attacks everyone on command would have been fun.

I won't name names to avoid a war but I do feel even some Fire Emblem games fall into that "More like "regular" RPGs" trap, where it feels more like stats than strategy. Even some SRPGs I like such as Fallout Tactics or Silent Storm do suffer from not encouraging "non-standard" tactics as much. (Just look at alot of SRPGs set in the modern day like Jagged Alliance where equipment such as mines would in theory add strategy but in reality there's little-to-no use in actually using them, Fire Emblem Blazing Blade having most enemies be melee actually made them more useful than most SRPGs.)

GBA definitely imo. 3H has strong designs but the actual graphical implementation isn't the best. Echoes is great but it's right next to some truly awful stuff from the other 3DS games.

Indeed Narcian is the best, FE6 remake having voiced Narcian would make it the objectively best Fire Emblem game and officially give Heroes no reason to exist anymore outside of breadcrumbing me more SOV. (It always bugs me how people and the game act like Mustafa is an complete innocent when his entire goal is to essentially get the shepherds executed without a fight so his conscience is clean despite the fact he'd still be responsible for their deaths.)

I found Mustafa's whole thing to fall incredibly flat to the point where he actually came off as less sympathetic. He basically causes his own death with his stupidity at worst and at best is a coward who'd rather see the Shepherds captured and executed because he doesn't want to kill them himself but still too much of a coward to attempt letting them go, essentially coming off as incredibly slimy or incredibly stupid to me. I am genuinely baffled anyone felt bad for killing him. I honestly respect outright villains like Narcian more than him.

Outside of maybe references with similar but clearly not intended to be literally the same characters, not really. I like FE being standalone and it doesn't help I did not like any of the characters that returned in Fates. At most, I'd like a small joke where you meed an NPC who's suspiciously similar but not supposed to literally be them as an in-joke. As people mentioned, it at least makes sense in Shadows of Valentia/Gaiden because those are explicitly the same universe and the fact they travelled to Valentia has an actual reason. As opposed to the Awakening characters who are in Fates purely because popular and with (from what I've seen) a half-assed excuse locked away in DLC. I only want to see any returning characters if it makes sense (Like SOV) instead of more multiverse nonsense.

I like the 3H system with how understandable it is (as well as no limits) but I have a soft spot for SOV, mainly because Alm and Faye actually has a negative support effect as Faye loses dodge when close to Alm. It helps sell how obsessed she is.